Random day out

Had a day in Melbourne today, even managed to catch up with a friend at the last minute, which was really nice as I hardly ever see her :)

Here is my day in nice, somewhat abbreviated point form.

1. Get up at 4 something a.m. At least I get to watch 'Police Rescue' re-runs while I eat breakfast.

2. Fall asleep on the train (pretty normal), woken periodically by a teenage girl with the loudest laugh in the world. I also smile and pull faces in my sleep.

3. Exchange today's return ticket for one with the right date (only bought it yesterday, opened my diary to look at appointment while buying ticket & still managed to buy for the wrong date).

4. Buy ticket for next week's trip (and will discover tomorrow that I have yet again bought it for the wrong date. How exactly do I do that?)

5. Decide it is too depressing, cold and drizzly outside and that I need to be in a big warm shopping centre with some cheesecake inside me.

6. Meet a duck wandering in the plaza outside the shopping centre. It just sort of wanders around unconcerned-ly, lets me get pretty close & then waddles away, softly quacking in rebuke when I try to catch it. I abandon my duck-rescue attempts & go to find the cake. (What exactly was I planning to do with the duck when I caught it, anyway? Put it in a locker and then take it home on the train with me? Give it to the information desk?)

7. Find a shop with the most delicious, pink cake holder in the world. Robert Gordon. I actually asked the shop lady if I could take a photo. Well, she said yes ;)

8. Make a trip to the petshop, which I usually find most enjoyable. Today I just got depressed because there were two rabbits and one rabbit looked depressed and ill, it even had weepy eyes and nose. I felt so sorry for it. It had a cold at the very least. Maybe I should ring somebody....

9. Go to my appointment, the reason behind all today's shenanigans.

10. Return to meet my friend. It's so dark at 3pm that the lights came on & you could hardly see. End-of-the-world cataclysmic event disaster-movie kind of clouds.

11. When my friend arrives, her car is smoking and smells weird. Before she leaves, we rather clutzily and girly-like add more oil and look at the water like we know what we're doing but her car starts again & does get her home.

12. I have another of my nostalgic/annoyed/old lady set in her ways kind of fits where I wonder why don't they just call it spencer street station like they used to and whatever happened to that weird upstairs bit with the special ceiling, whatever architectural term you would have used for it.

13. On the way home, some poor people are lost and get off at the wrong stop and board our bus by accident. After much confusion and consultation of maps, phone calls are made and they get off at my stop, where someone is picking them up. The person picking them up I imagine was saying something like this "What? Where are you? Spell it! Where's that? How far is it from ------? Well, where's that? Can you spell that??" I gave them my phone number in case they both got lost.

14. The bus, by the way, the driver told us that it was a dark old bus so she couldn't check our tickets & that the toilet door was stuck so if we needed to go, to just give her a yell & she'd jemmy it open for us. And we could always stop in (town) if we were desperate. Unrelatedly, someone's phone (which they obviously couldn't find in the dark confines of their bus seat) rang & it's ringtone was extremely loud and R-rated. I think it woke everyone up.

15. At my arrival home, I find in the back porch a different juvenile magpie calmly waiting in the cat-trap cage. Once released, it repeatedly tries to get in house, maybe it was confused and thought inside the house was daylight and the darkness was just a big blackness of nothing waiting to swallow it up. It eventually sat there on a box of hay & fluffed up it's feathers. It made one of those 'I'm hungry, feed me' bird-beak-motions so I took pity on it and fed it a cat kibble. When I left it, it was still sitting there, possibly waiting for daylight. (It was still there in the morning, but gone by the time the other birds outside woke up.)

16. In the pitch black, I also run around the yard calling for a disobedient cat, afraid that if I leave it it might try to eat the magpie. Not that she ordinarily chases birds. I just felt responsible for the poor confused bird. I make many trips outside while getting ready for bed, because that cat really doesn't want to come in. I tread on a slug and a big magpie poo in my bare feet & avoid a spider running past me on the footpath. Eventually the cat is inside, the magpie's sleeping on my porch & my rabbit is the one being disobedient, she doesn't want to go to bed. The night has been interesting enough, so even though the bins still haven't been put out, I decide to stuff the bins!! It's time to go to bed!!

Miniature Pigs in Australia

I always loved little piglets. Neville and someone else, can't remember who was telling me recently how pigs are mainly smelly because of what they are fed & because they roll in their own mess & poo, not because they particularly want to, but because they are usually in these bare pens & roll in the wettest, muckiest spot in the pen, which is usually where they have been peeing, to keep cool. They get easily sunburnt because they don't really have hair & also can't cool down so they roll in the muck. And that they / someone they knew used to keep pigs and they were nice and clean and didn't smell as much as a lot of pigs do.

SO I was going oh poor piggies and how cool for me they can be kept clean I want one even more but STILL I know they can grow into gigantic big monster pigs, and I just want a little one.

AND THEN someone else then in another conversation told me that you CAN GET MINIATURE PIGS! THAT STAY LITTLE! Well, little-er, anyway. I was gobsmacked. So I googled some, and hey presto, here you go.....

A beautiful baby piggie :) and this wonderful astounding website:

Miniature Pigs in Australia

So yay, in my ideal menagerie (zoo ;) ), there would be one of these little babies :)

Was Not a Happy Bunny

The Big Fluff Queen, Juniper, went to the vet today to get her claws clipped. The vet even called them daggers, so no wonder she has been stabbing me when she sits on my feet lately. I might be brave enough to do it myself next time, I've just never done it before.

She handled it pretty well, until I had to get her out of her cage at home (she hasn't got a better cage yet, only my old one that you have to pick them up through the hole in the top).

When I put her on the floor, she not only GROWLED at me, twice!! but then proceeded to stamp her feet at me a number of times before hiding behind the couch. She has never growled at anything in her life. She didn't even get so upset when I had to take her to get her stitches out - and that was actually more painful!

Lucky she's pretty easy going (or forgetful, I'm not sure which ;)). She is happily teeth grinding when I pat her now, following me around, in a generally good mood for a rabbit on a warm afternoon. And no more stabbing mummy.

I know there's treats here somewhere.../ What's all the fuss and bother about?/ Teeth grinding happy bunny

International Crochet

My lovely friend brought me back some extra special craft books from Thailand.
One is a little Thai crochet book, involving lots of funky animals / animal purses. I especially love these little owls :)

The other is this Japanese craft magazine, containing lots of interesting things, sort of exotic-crafty inspirational pictures & even some nice crochet goodies to make.

They are both very exciting and precious (two random words that seemed to fit), and I mostly have only half an idea what they're talking about (another plus for picture books). BUT the crochet stuff comes with charts with international crochet symbols on them, so you can just follow them. And it's got foldout patterns in the middle for a skirt and whatever else is in there. My goodness, I do love having so many things to make that I can't decide what to do next :).

Rhubarb Pie for me

I have been thinking a lot about rhubarb lately, to the extent that I finally went out and bought two rhubarb crowns & planted them in the garden. They might not be ready to harvest until next year, but I'm very proud of them :). I want to make rhubarb jam one day, but I think that will be happening with some bought rhubarb :)

My mum had been talking about a rhubarb and banana pie she had, which she proclaimed the most beautiful pie she'd ever eaten. I actually vaguely remember eating a rhubarb and banana crumble once. Nice, comforty, creamy dessert.

So, the other day I bought some rhubarb on special & made this lovely pie from this recipe. I actually STILL don't have a pie dish, so I had to use a casserole dish (as you do), and so it wasn't quite mushy enough in the middle, but it tasted (and smelled!) absolutely delicious!! It was very sweet, but I can handle that ;). I'm going to make it again, in a proper pie dish (lol) and serve it with nice home-made custard (not the packet mix kind, either, the proper stuff with an egg yolk & corn flour, etc:)). MMMMMMM. My mum thought it was a hit!

Here's the recipe, too. Pretty easy to make really.

Fresh Banana Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients:

1/2 pound Fresh rhubarb
3 Medium bananas
1 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Orange juice
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Nutmeg
1 tablespoon Butter
1 9" unbaked double pie crust

Procedure:

Prepare pastry. Slice rhubarb (should yield 3 cups). Slice bananas (should yield 3 cups). Combine ingredients except butter and crust. Spread into pie crust. Dot with butter. Place crust on top. Bake at 450 degrees F. for 15 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F. and bake for an additional 20 minutes or until browned. From The Central Market Cookbook by Phyllis Good.

(The pie crust is a little burnt on the exposed bits because I had to use gluten-free flour)

Benny, the World's Biggest Rabbit

House Rabbit News - Pet Bunnies Blog � Benny the Flemish Giant Rabbit Vying for World Record

This rabbit is so big, he's almost scary. Wouldn't you like to snuggle up to him, tho? :)

Magpie Incident

I had my stepdad bring over the cat trap to catch this feral yowling stinky peeing tomcat that has been harassing us all hours of the night (even waking me up some early mornings!!).

I hadn't un-set it this morning and this afternoon I caught something unexpected. The source of all the racket I could hear out the back porch was a poor juvenile-ish magpie which had got itself stuck in the trap (would have been trying to eat the cat kibbles, I'm sure!).

The poor, rather stupid birdie went even more crazy when I went out there, and when I tried to get near it to open the door (which kept getting stuck, too!), it was flinging itself around so much that the little container half-full of now slightly-curdled milk was being splashed all over the place. I got the door open and somehow lost my grip as the maggie made a run for it, so it actually got banged by the door, I managed to open it again & free the poor beastie.

I don't think he'll be back. I hope he still likes me, I think he was one of the friendly ones :)

The back porch now smells very strongly of a dairy, instead of just like cat pee.

Here he is, I ran back in & grabbed the camera. It's a wonder the lens doesn't have milk on it :)

We Love Wicket

Wicket the Ewok. Well, I finally finished him (he didn't take that long to crochet, it was all the embroidering his little face and everything that I procrastinated doing for ages, because I'm not so good at that!).

My sister loved him (a birthday present) and while she was unwrapping him (a slow process) the rest of us who knew what it was sat there with these intent looks on our faces, slightly hysterical, trying not to laugh, and my little sister did let out a manic giggle which set the rest of us going for a while. We're all used to crazy otherwise inexplicable behaviour.

So, he was a hit.

The pattern came from here.

And here he is.

If you are still in the dark about who exactly he is meant to be, you need to watch Star Wars (the oldies) and even better, Caravan of Courage, a movie masterpiece from the 80's.

How Embarrassment

While running from coffee with Mum and one sis to an appointment last week, I was approached by someone & their cameraman from a local paper. I answered various questions, they took my photo, and I continued on.

By the time I get to my car I am practically hysterical (& even ring my mum to tell her just this) and have running on a loop in my head how embarrassing i can't believe i just did that how embarrassing oh my goodness what on earth and realize that they could have been talking about purple giraffes on the railway and their effect on nuclear reactions for all the sense I seemed to put in my answers.

I even need a haircut and was having a bad hair day. And I had on my glasses which look squinty in the photo. And practically everyone I've seen since then has told me about my 10 seconds of fame. And it would appear in the 'popular' day of the week's paper, wouldn't it :) Ah, could have done worse.

Here is a much doctored version ;)

I wonder if the odds for getting called for jury duty in my lifetime are any different.

Furry Butt Fursday

I was a little late for Thursday (Friday here), but this post is following this blog in paying tribute to a little furry butt, Hans. So here are my furry bunny butt shots, of one uncooperative rabbit.

And a furry butt in flight