Very Sad

My computer is about 10 days out of warranty. It died. It doesn't turn on. It doesn't do anything:( My beautiful iMac G5 has failed me. I will not be online very much. I am quite depressed. This is not a good time to have to pay to get things like this fixed - not with an impending move and all the extra costs that brings with it. Very sad Bec. The house seems empty without it.

Excitement X 2

Well two exciting things have happened this week. Firstly a little blackbird has a nest right outside our office and bedroom window (it's a corner so both windows face the one garden). As I hopped out of the car today, I noticed they were away from the nest and took a quick photo with Matt's phone camera (so it's shoddy quality but what can you do)...


The other exciting thing that happened was when I went to a caesarean the other day. It was an elective caesarean because they'd previously had a caesar. They had contemplated having a trial of scar, but in the end decided it against it, which was very lucky... I was there for baby catching purposes, but from an obstetric point of view it was very cool... When they dissected down to the uterus, the uterus had ruptured! So in fact the only thing holding the baby out of the abdominal cavity was the membranes.... So imagine.... Where you expect to encounter uterus, encountering membranes. That lady and her baby are very very lucky indeed! It's hard to explain exactly how cool it really was. The fact that the scar from the previous caesar had come apart, but that the membranes were still intact. Anyway.

Must away. Matt's sister and some of her friends are visiting, which is fun, but means I willl not be blogging much.

The Perfect Tent

Matthew and I went shopping today for a new tent. Our current tent is a "two man hiking tent". You can fit two people who really like each other in it, but it's main design is to be small for hiking - it comes up to my waist in height. We are likely going to be camping when one of my friends is in Victoria, and it occured to us that she wouldn't fit in our tent... So, we finally bought a real tent like we'd planned on doing for ages.

Buying a tent is a really, really hard decision. You want a big one, so you have lots of space and in case you have a few people with you. But if it's too big it will be hard to find a good spot to camp at the beach. You want one that's waterproof, but you need to be able to get a good breeze through it for queensland hot weather camping. Tall tents blow over in the wind.... you need one that can withstand the gales that blow up the beach front and flatten tents that aren't already only waist high. You want one that you can stand up in, but if it's too tall having trees around could be prohibitive to putting a tent up (and you need trees for your hammock). It needs to be relatively quick to put up and pack up otherwise you're cutting into valuable camping time. Plus, it's good if it's a pretty colour. Then there are little accessories you never know you might want. Some tents have little zip up bits where all the guy ropes come off so they can just be zipped up into those when you're packing up, and they don't all get tangled with each other. Those tents might even have bits so nearly every window or door that's not being used, can be zipped away. Some tents have littlel pockets around the place and lots of hooks so you can hang shelves and things. Plus, it should be affordable.

You can imagine how long it took us looking at tents to decide what we wanted. When we finally decided (on a tent out of our price range), there were none in stock. So we went to one of the other stores of the same name.... Luckily they had it for $60 less then the store that was out of stock, which almost put it back in the right price range! Our tent is actually a christmas present from both sets of parents, and we are very grateful. It is blue and silver, it has two rooms, one's a sleeping room, the other one is a "kitchen" and it has lots of doors/windows. Both are fully floored and waterproof and so if we wanted to we could sleep 8 people (squishied) in it, but it is technically a 4 man tent. It is a "Geo-family 4".

We had a very late lunch - bought a sour dough breadroll and put smoked roast beef, lettuce, tomato, camembert and apricot/capsicum chutney on it. It tasted so good that we scrapped the idea we had for our left over roast lamb, bought some more sourdough bread and had the same thing for dinner except with thin slices of roast lamb instead of smoked roast beef. The simple things in life...

The Punishment Lights

*The title of this post is stolen from an episode of Weeds where a particularly annoying set of traffic lights is referred to as "the punishment lights"

What I forgot to mention about the week my parents were here...

There is a sets of lights I drive through on my way to work which is quite unreliable. It can take anywhere between 1-6 changes of lights before it'll remember to give you a green arrow to turn right. The first several times you get really angry. After a while you adjust. It becomes the set of lights you do your shoe laces up at, or brush your hair, eat your apple, drink your tea, put your hand moisturiser on, put your cuticle softener on, call Matt to say have a good day. Sometimes you get to do all of these things, the days when you think you'd like a rest to get your hair done, you go straight through them - thus the punishment factor, they evilly do the opposite of what you want. The other day I lost count how many changes of lights I sat there for. It was over 12 changes of lights, over 20 minutes. Not a single green right turning arrow. I was quite late for work. Eventually we all started to realise - it was never going to change. Eventually the two people in front of me went through the red arrow, and I did the same. I hope the red light camera was out of film! It was my only option as there are two lanes which turn right and I was on the inside (therefore trapped) lane.

I don't use the punishment lights anymore. The good old days of getting everything done at one set of lights is over. Now I do what any sensible person would do - I drive up to the next set of lights, do a U-turn, and go back down to the street I wanted.

Cherries

Well my parents have been visiting this weekend and it's been a great weekend. We drove down to the mornington peninsula and visited the Digger's club gardens again - except this time I was awake and wandered around the gardens. Matt and I got carried away buying seeds for our next garden (back in queensland), so hopefully when we move back it's somewhere with a yard (and hopefully queensland gets so much rain that the water restrictions are lifted). We found a cherry farm and bought some cherries and ate nearly the entire kilo between the four of us on the drive home.... They were delicious and we were most excited. We cooked my parents salmon fillets baked on slices of orange with garlic, parsley and orange zest on top, with some lemon, basil, rocket, parmesan linguini on the side for dinner.

The next day after lunch we decided to go to the yarra valley and visit the dairy there. So we all ate lots of yummy cheese and then decided to "go for a drive" to the alpine region around Mt Buller. On the way we found another cherry farm, the cherries there were even yummier, so we bought 5kg.... We got about 1/2 way through that box on our drive. We drove down into Lake Eildon (or whatever it is called) as it is so empty compared to what it used to be.... We were a long way past the boat ramp on our drive "into" the lake, and there was nothing. By the time we got home it was quite late but we cooked eye fillet steak with green peppercorn sauce with a sort of potato bake that had mushrooms and thyme in it on the side.

Whilst my parents were staying we let them use the bed and we were using the thermorests to sleep on. As I laid on my thermorest that evening getting all the sheets arranged so it was comfortable, I lifted up one of the sheets and found a spider where I had had my feet. I'm not sure what kind of spider it was. It was about the body shape and size of a redback, but I don't think it was a redback (or a spider of the widow variety) as it had no hourglass on it's stomach. It was a brownish spider with two pink dots on its back. I got a jar and scooped it into it with the intention of having a better look at it the next day, but it was looking a little sluggish when I did all that (possibly it hadn't coped so well with my feet having been on top of it) and today it looks convincingly dead, making it tricky to get a really good photo or anything.

Dad and I had some fun political discussions where he deliberately riled me up and I disagreed with the government on everything and said I was going to "march on the capital". Issues ranging from the fact that whilst I don't want people using drugs and driving, I think random drug tests constitute an illegal search; the "anti-freedom" laws (with me citing the whole In The Name of the Father thing where similar laws got innocent people jailed); the IR laws; the evilness of terminator seeds (although he didn't give me much opposition on that); and just the way our laws are changing bringing us incrementally closer to a "big brother" type government etc etc. Always fun disagreeing with people (luckily dad and I are likely to pretend we disagree even if we don't for the sake of a "discussion").

Has been horribly hot here, and outside felt like a fan forced oven:( Hopefully tomorrow will be a cooler day, there is a breeze outside now.

Just finished reading Zig Zag Street, which Muppit gave me for my birthday - I have been laughing out loud the entire afternoon. I kept seeing bits that I thought "must post that bit on my blog" but by the end of it I would have wanted to post the whole thing (which seems somewhat illegal). Plus it's a context thing. I especially enjoyed it as it's set around the areas I've frequented (park rd, st lucia, toowong etc). I think Matthew will be glad I'm finished and am not running to him all the time insisting on reading bits aloud to him.

Mmm... I'm sure I had something useful to say, but I have forgotten...

Rain in Spring

I heard rain hitting my tin roof,
So I left my Grey's Anatomy
And I went outside to feel it
I laid down on the green grass
Of my backyard
Almost falling in my haste
To experience
And took off my shirt
I felt the drops hitting my body
I counted the ones that hit me in the mouth
What if I were a plant?
That needed this to survive
What would I be getting?
One, two, three drops
Seems like those numbers follow me
I hear a helicopter overhead
I hope they can't see me here
I'm back inside
Contemplating

Dear Victoria

Dear Victoria,
A few things I'd like to bring up before I leave. Good things and bad things.

If you are easily insulted, stop reading as the following is for people with a sense of humour (ie Queenslanders). I don't feel bad making a few points as I have copped enough flak throughout the year for my origins.

#1 Driving
Print this and go and sit in your car. Now locate the lever for your windscreen wipers. Found it? Good. Check the other side of your wheel for a similar lever. Put the key in to your car so you have power. Now flick that lever up and down. Do you see what happens? There's a ticking or a beeping noise (depending on your car) and these little arrows appear in the dashboard. These are called INDICATORS or BLINKERS. These are generally used to let other cars know your intentions. Rather then just braking when you approach a corner and then turning, you can put these on before you brake, to let the car behind you know you will be slowing down, therefore giving them a chance to change lanes. They're also quite useful if you're planning on veering into my lane, either because you're changing lanes, merging or "borrowing" half my lane. That way I know what you're going to do and if you haven't seen me, it will be okay because I will know what it is you want to do and will be able to avoid you (hopefully).

That's the other thing. Don't borrow my lane. When you see cars parked in your lane and you want to go around them, indicate that you're going to use my lane and then come into my lane. Don't just veer into half of my lane without indicating when you reach the cars. Just because you're only half in my lane, it doesn't make a difference. I can't use the lane beside you, it's too narrow. You're in it, accept it and use the indicators as earlier discussed.

Yes, here's another concept you may not be familiar with: LANES. The white lines on the road are not some form of artistic expression, they're actually useful road markings. What you're supposed to do is to drive inbetween the white lines, and any time you cross them, you indicate your intention to do so. They aren't suggestions, they're actually a road rule. You don't drive with the white line in the middle of your car so that you're across both lines or even more dangerously you don't constantly drift half over it then back into your lane as if holding your wheel is just too much effort. It's not a horse with a mind of its own. It's a car. You are in control, you can keep it between the lines. I shouldn't have to feel terrified of being in a lane beside another car everytime I'm on the road because of the unpredictable nature of your driving. Sorry but it's true.

Now this next one is much less important because it's not actually dangerous, just really irritating. You may have been taught to leave a one and a half car length between you and the car in front of you but there are some circumstances where this isn't practical. If you stop at a light, it's actually important to drive all the way up to it so that it will turn green at an appropriate time. If you stay back two car lengths, it may stay red. Don't be shy, drive up to that white line. Also when the traffic is stopped and busy, you leaving huge gaps between the cars may be the difference between people wanting to turn left at a "turn left any time with care" sign being able to and not being able to. I'm not suggesting you have to go bumper to bumper, but 1 - 2 car lengths is too much space in stopped traffic. It irritates me. Still I would concentrate more on the first issues.

When you look over your shoulder to check when you change lanes that there's no one in your blind spot, this is called a shoulder check. Not a head check. A head check is something you get when you go to see a shrink.

#2 Mr Surgeon
Here is something I think you've got right, and I wish they'd adopt in my home state. Traditionally physicians/GPs were called Dr, and surgeons were called Mr/Miss/Ms/Mrs. This is because traditionally doctors did not perform surgery, barbers did. That is why barbers often have the candy cane like post in front of their shop - it indicates their surgeon status - the red indicating bleeding. In Queensland because these days surgeons are considered doctors (having undergone a medical training) they are called Dr such-and-such. Here I see you still keep them under the layperson umbrella of Mr such-and-such. I think I like that. Although I have found it quite hard to adjust to, and I keep referring to them as doctor all the time (which strangely I think they find insulting whilst one would thing being relegated back to a glorified barber might actually be considered more insulting).

#3 Daylight savings
We have more daylight in summer, get over it. There's more at the beginning of the day, and more at the end of the day. Changing the clock makes no sense and is a pain in the arse. It's silly, and sometimes it means some people have to work an extra hour of night shift when the clocks revert, and lose an hour of their day off when daylight savings starts. This sucks.

#4 Service
If I am giving you money for goods you are providing a service. The dictionary defines service as: an act of assistance. So what you're doing should help me not hinder me. For instance if you sell me a fridge (and I pay for delivery) when it doesn't work you should be able to come back and get it and give my money back without having to receive several threatening phonecalls three times a day for a week (hint: don't tell me you'll arrive between 6-9 and then not arrive three days in a row - I actually don't want to sit at home waiting for you every evening).

Dear Kmart if I pay extra for delivery of a fridge, I expect it to be brought into the kitchen. I don't expect that you will tell me that you are within your rights to dump it on my driveway (even though I'm on my own and there are stairs to get it up).

If I get my car serviced, I expect that you will put all the connections back in the right place, and that if you don't you will actually take responsibility for it.

If you say that you will be able to deliver a washing machine within the week, that's kind of what I expect (a month and a week are different measures of time).

#5 Melbourne Cup
Well done on getting a public holiday for a sporting event! This is something I'm really impressed by! I can't believe we don't get state-of-origin day. If we did I wonder if you'd really want the day after state of origin off for recovery. Still I'm looking forward to my public holiday pay for working 13 hours on Melbourne Cup Day. It was hard to avoid all the talk and hype about racing horses but I think it's worth it for the public holiday.

#6 Autumn
Here's something I wish I could bring home - seasons. Watching the trees change colour was wonderful. I loved the beautiful colours of autumn. It felt so British (possibly because I was in England during autumn when I went). I loved driving down those streets where the trees come across from both sides and meet in the middle.

#7 Mental Health
When somebody with a mental illness is brought into the hospital by the police for assessment because they are carrying knives and threatening people, if mental health workers release them back into the community, you have to accept that there will be a certain number of stabbings by these people. At what point is someone sick enough to come into hospital?

#8 Woolworths
It's not safeways, it's woolworths.

#9 Milk
It's not Rev, it's Trim. See Trim lets you know what kind of milk it is (not no fat, not full cream, but inbetween). Why call it Rev? It makes no sense! The packet is entirely the same (down to the competitions) but the name is different. Why?

That's all for now... There may be another installment if I notice any glaring omissions.

Where I am at

Weather: Raining/Drizzling/Overcast

Eating: scrambled eggs with cheese, onion, salami and pepper on multigrain toast

Drinking: Monk's Blend Tea

Company: none

Music: Blind Melon - No Rain
"All I can say is that the Velvet Underground is great
And I'm sitting watching Puddles gather rain
And All I can do is just pour some tea for two
and maybe even speak my point of view
But it's not sane, no
It's not sane" -- No Rain by Blind Melon

Thoughts: It's quite a lovely day here in Melbourne, all overcast and cool. Probably I'll grab an umbrella or a coat and go for a walk, I need to get out of the house. Might walk up to the shops and buy some groceries for dinner, have lots of lettuce in the garden, so I might have some form of salad. Talking of lettuce in the garden, I have to recommend growing cos lettuce rather then the flatter kinds of lettuce. Because it grows up off the ground and it's leaves aren't so inclined to rest on the ground, I think it lends itself to pests less (apart from for some reason the stupid green aphids that were on the roses like to live at the centre of our lettuce, but they don't do too much damage). I was going to go for a walk and get a coffee, but then I remembered it's sunday and for some reason all the cafes around here seem to shut on a sunday. Now in Brisbane most cafes that have a day when they are shut, shut on Monday because on the weekend people are more inclined to want to go out to coffee. Which I think makes sense.

After my walk, if I'm feeling so inclined, I might clean the bathroom, I think it's time. It is littered with matches from lighting candles - we really need to get a bin in there, but it's such a small bathroom I'm not convinced there is room.

Music has changed: Blur - Out of Time "You've been so busy lately that you haven't found the time to open up your mind"

My hands feel so dry against the skin of my face, because I have to wash them so often. Everytime I go into the SCN (special care nursery) I have to wash my hands. Before I touch the babies, I use an alcohol based hand rub, after touching the baby, I use it again - I use it between every baby. I go to theatre, I scrub in - two hand washes of 2 mins each. There are four cases, I do this four times. I go to lunch, better wash my hands. I go see a "big kid" (ie not a neonate). I use the alcohol based hand rub. I see them. I wash my hands. I get home. I'd better wash my hands just in case I forgot at work. My hands need moisturiser, but it barely helps them - it can't be undone with one lot of moisturising.

I'm feeling random and disjointed
I think it's the rain
It changes my brain
Removes all the filters
Everything makes it through
Awash with everyday stimulus

Music has changed: Bob Dylan - house of the rising sun "Oh, Mother, tell your children, Not to do what I have done"

Had a sudden thought that there was a baby I did an admission on, on Friday, and that the consultant came and pulled me away for a ward round when I was only half way through my notes... Now there will be no sign that I actually did an examination on that baby... Woops.. I did examine them, but I didn't get to write it down. I don't know why that came to mind right now, but it's going to make me feel annoyed with myself all day. I hate realising I forgot to do something at work (although as far as forgetting things, writing notes is okay, it's not actually going to effect the pts care).

Well I'd better stop rambling on, my mother would say I have "verbal diarrhoea". I will put my shoes on and go walking.

Music appropriately just changed to: Semisonic - Closing Time "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here"

Weary

It's been a rough week. Two neonatal resuscs. A new job. The other residents have only been trained in neonatal resusc today, so the rest of the week I was expected to "supervise" them (they're the same level as me so it was a bit weird). Matt's in Brisbane, and I'm here on my own. Tomorrow instead of having the day off, I have an advanced life support workshop for the entire day. I am weary. Bone weary. Plus I have sinusitis - I can't breathe through my nose, I can't taste, my face hurts and my mouth always feels dry from "mouth breathing". There endeth my whinge.

On an upnote, despite all that the song stuck in my head is "Good Day" by the dresdon dolls... it has fantastic lyrics, like the bit that goes "i'd love to have you up to see the place, & i'd like to do more than survive i'd like to rub it in your face..... hey! its been a lovely day! everything is going my way, i had so much fun today and i'm on fire" Yes. At least the music in my head is peppy and cheerful... Sometimes it ends up as a dresden dolls medly and goes into "girl anachronism" and "coin operated boy". Definately a Dresden Dolls week in my head.

I will write more when I have something either more positive or more interesting to say!

Neonate

It felt different then I thought
Your small ribs flexing beneath my fingers
As I drummed an incessant beat
Onto your heart
My two fingers
Made to look large
By your small body
One Two Three
One Two Three
One Two Three

Joseph

Well Friday Matt and I were driving along and we saw a sign for an amateur production of Joseph and the amazing technicolour dreamcoat. So we rang up and went along. I always enjoy a live musical. They did pretty well with the costumes. The narrator was really good, and Joseph did a pretty good job, although he had more of a "pretty" voice than a strong voice. The females looked like they'd been to the rehearsals, and the guys who played the brothers looked like they really hated the dancing and practiced as little as possible. But it was entertaining.

Today we had breakfast at Malling road.... Since then we have planted a few seeds (lettuce, rocket, radiccio) as our lettuce and rocket is mature and soon we will be needing a new crop. Recently our garlic looked ready and we pulled it all out of the ground and I tried to plait it together the way you see it at the shops, but it was only partially successful. Some of the garlics made normal looking heads of garlic, some of them made only a single clove of garlic, but a really big one. The photo is the best I could do holding it in front of the tiny camera mounted in my computer.

Recently I had to buy a new stethescope, as mine stopped working. Apparently the appearance of cracks in your stethescope heralds its death. I realised that it was time when I was bending over patients trying to hold the cracks together so that the tube was still one long continuous tube and the sound would actually travel along it. It seemed pathetic, and perhaps not the message I was trying to send (or maybe it is, maybe if victorian doctors all carried little begging cans with "the government can't pay us enough, will you help?" the government might reconsider a fair wage for victorian hospital doctors). I now have a maroon stethescope (to show my queensland origins), that looks the same as the one here, but without the giant cracks (which were a bit tricky to demonstrate on camera, but I have tried).

This afternoon we have cleaned up the house, it had to be done *sigh*. I started picking all the junk mail off the floor of the lounge room, only to realise it had been protecting my feet from the dirt on the floor, so then I had to vacuum the floor, and once I vacuumed the kitchen floor, it seemed like probably it needed to be washed as well. Meanwhile there have been promising sounds coming from the bedroom that I'm hoping mean Matt has hung our clothes up in the cupboard and is now vacuuming. I'm only hoping that Matt will forget that he wanted to clean the car as well... mostly because he'll want my help. It's nearly three and I think I'll have tomato and cheese on crackers for lunch (this is one of my favourite lunch snacks especially if you soak the tomato in some balsamic vinegar and sprinkle it with sugar, salt and pepper).

Tonight's dinner: we will harvest some of our lettuce, rocket, coriander. We have bought tomato, carrot, capsicum, lemon and steak... Thai style beef salad - one of my favourite meals!

I think Becky will have left for Japan by now - hope you have a fun time!!! Take lots and lots of photos, and when we next are in Brisbane we will sit down and look at them and you and the two Matt's can reminisce about Japan, and I can sit there being jealous:)

Slide

Slide
Seamlessly extract yourself
No gap is left
Like the hoardes of hell
Someone new rises where you were
No one will remember your name
Three months gone
The good, the bad, the ugly
Left behind
And it leaves you
Feeling invisible
Weightless
As if you walked along a beach
And looked back
And there were no footprints
No impact