More Election distortion ...

Leader of the Opposition, Mr Tony Abbot MP

I cannot get my head around this person. I guess as soon as I heard the word "Catholic" used to describe his religious background, I switched off to him. Normally I associate Catholics as being Labor candidates, and the fact this guy is a Liberal is a bit twitchy. But I put up a pickky of JG so here is one of him.

Would I vote for him? I doubt it. His party doesn't seem to have many coherent policies that would actually benefit individuals other than the fact that usually with a Liberal Government, taxes can come down and that has to be good somewhere - if you are a worker. There wouldn't be too much for those of us getting progressively older.

I thought I would follow him on twitter - the guy can't tweet. Anyone who cannot tweet or even get a minion to tweet for him has something intrinsically wrong with them. You are a Politician of the 21C, social networking is where it is at. I don't recall much by way of following him on facebook either.

To give Julia Gillard a few points, however, the woman can tweet, even if it is a minion doing it for her, at least it is there. Kevin Rudd can sort of tweet; I started following him just before the "fall". I felt bad for him, I have to admit. I think most Labor Pollies are a bit more "human" than Liberal Pollies.

My biggest problem is that my Parents were both Liberal supporters for many years, and I mean actual members of the Liberal Party. But one day, my father actually questioned something, and they were shown the door. So I have been pretty brainwashed against Labor, and feel that looking at the crookedness of NSW state Politics (Labor) my brainwashing has been correct.

Which is why i hate voting for either of them.

If Labor is still in thick with the Greens, well that is just asking for big trouble. Greenies in this country, heck greenies anywhere are major trouble and not interested in people one little bit; other than how they can make the candidates look good. I would never support them, ever. Green politics are whitewashing a terrible agenda, part of which is to reduce the population of the world to less than 1 billion people. I often wonder how they would do that. And it is creepy to think about.

Reading between the lines of the Labor website is interesting, but you would have to be pretty astute to notice the games they play with people.

I never trust people with fake australian accents, anyhow.

Plodding ....

The Old Person

It is not exciting to say we went to the Mall today for shopping - I have to use a trolley to get any mileage out of my old bod these days. The daughter had a few chores to do there so we decided to do our grocery shopping there. At one stage while waiting for her I spotted a papermaking kit on special in the book shop. Now a kid's kit has sort of been on my wishlist, on about page three, so I only bought it because I convinced the old person to pay for it.

Paper making is one of those things that I would like to try my hand at as part of the general craft stuff that I do, teaching myself this and that dabbling, if you will in the amusing arts. So this weekend I thought I would grab the grandsons, and go try it. They will get a bit of a buzz to do something totally different. Grandson1 is in high school now, so it may not be "cool". But GS2 is happy to do "kid" things any time. I think if GS2 could have stayed a grade 3 person forever he would be happy .

I haven't talked about the old person much lately as he hasn't lived here for a while, but he still hangs around. He has to contribute to his half of keeping up her ladyship the ex racehorse. But lately he has become even worse in trying to dominate all things. He wants me to get another job so that we can move to the South Coast and have a little fishing house "sell the horses - we should get something for them"; yeah, the knackers will probably give us $200 for her ladyship and we'd have to pay him to take the really old Arabian mare. Over my dead body. (Yeah, yeah, I know the line from MIB).

I often find myself wondering why the heck I still put up with him, even suggesting to him a few other women who might get interested in him. One sort of was going to, but he said something stupid and now she doesn't want a bar of him. But I guess I am just a sucker for someone with a car who will drive me around without complaining more than usual about it. Also, he will clean up after the horses; even without being asked. He buys their hay too, so I can't exactly go on too much about him.

Moving right along ...

We have an election coming up on the 28th or there abouts. I'm not to bothered by politics. I vote only because in Australia it is compulsory. If you are caught not voting, you can pay a fine. Well I say, bugger that for a joke, go along, get my name crossed off, get my papers. If there is a goofy party that isn't too off the wall, I will vote for them (hey, someone has to) or I will just neatly fold the papers and put them into the box required. I cannot get over how some papers would easily fit my dining room table almost. That is so ridiculous.

I'm not sure taxing the mining companies is a really good thing. Okay, they are making a load of money, but they are actually getting in and doing it, not the government. They pay taxes on their profits and a pretty hefty slug it is too. But they have the Superannuation funds as their main investors, and with more of us getting older, we need a decent return on our money. They also take young people, give them proper training and employment, which not many other large sectors are prepared to do. So taxing them more to pay for some fruitloop scheme that should never see the light of day doesn't really make sense to me.

But then I am a "capitalist" and think everyone has the opportunity to make money legally in this country and should be able to. Yes, our social programs are some of the best in the world, but many of them need a good tweek too. But that is a path best not trodden at the moment so I don't get on my high horse about it.

I am supposed to be happy because we have a woman Prime Minister. I am supposed to be happy simply because I am a woman, not that she has any good/new/decent ideas. As The Daughter said, if she had taken the GST of womens' sanitary requirements, she might listen to the rest of what she had to say. My daughter is not of the same political persuasion as I am, either. (She's the only one - lol).

Sometimes I wonder what the future will hold for those to come after, but I wont be around to witness much of it. I can only prepare my family for what I know, and they have to learn and adjust for themselves to make the future. Hopefully it will be good to them. Okay I don't want to get maudlin here so I might leave this subject.

Still, next week is my colonoscopy, the week after is the Craft and Quilting show at Rosehill Gardens Racecourse and then the election. Two are much the same thing, so I will just look forward to the Craft and Quiltin show at my favourite venue. I love Rosehill Gardens Racecourse it is a super place.

Sleeping ...

All my adult life, until I moved to Sydney, I was never sick. Never spent a moment in hospital unless it was to give birth, and once when I had some stomach pains. Then I moved to Sydney and after about five years, I started getting this and that wrong with me. Often to the words "There doesn't seem to be anyting wrong" after great, torturous visits to the Radiologists. So now that I am pretty much over the worst of my depression, something else comes along. Turns out I have a swollen transverse colon. A CT scan couldn't detect what was wrong so I have been recommended for a colonoscopy.

But to add to that discomfort, I have been coughing, because I have not been keeping warm enough. I layer up, but still feel cold. So this keeps me awake at night. During the day, warm drinks or food seem to relieve it.

So this morning I slept till 11.00 am just before my daughter left for work. I had been awake most of the night - again. Tonight I am going to take in a thermos full of hot tea and see if that doesn't help. Oh, and a hot water bottle.

It's okay, I will get through this, just like everything else, and probably be told much the same thing. I have loads of crafting to do, and any day now, they will ring about the servicing of my machine and I will be off sewing again. I have plenty to do, so I am not dwelling on this.

Finally sorted the camera and uploading ... lol

Sorry it's been a bit longer than I thought. Life sometimes gets in the way when we are making other plans. I have not been idle, but have got the photos from the camera downloaded to the computer and compressed. They were very big files, for whatever reason. Now they are manageable and I am able to post.







This is the cover for the album. It was one fat quarter of fabric. I tried to get the flower coloured with stamp ink the same yellow as the leaves. The red on the petals matches as well. The button has a gold centre. I have had that button for around 30 years and finally found something to use it on.

The cover is lightly padded with doll stuffing and the inside has a cardstock base. The base of the cover is 2mm chipboard, specially for archival use.





This gives you an idea of the thickness of the album. The pages themselves are 22cm x 22cm and there are 43 of them. I will share some of the pages on Bilum which you can access by clicking here.

Back - after quite some time ...

I have decided to take up blogging again, now that the worst of my depression is past. I was treated this time with a stronger medication and did some time with a psychologist. I am slowly coming off the medication and hopefully that will be that. I know the source of the depression and what to do about it, so it should not be a bother to me anymore.

I have done a few things while away, one of which was a 42 page album with the covers for my Aunt in Adelaide. My father was living in Adelaide and had the family album I made for him, but with him now moving to Canberra, she has not family contact. So I downloaded 22 recent photographs of myself and my sisters and our respective families and grandkids. I did scrapbooking and stamping for all the photos. After I had done all that, I thought I had better tell her who everyone was, so duplicating all the pages I wrote a little about each person. With an intro page, and the pages for the two horses and kitten, it came to 42 pages.

After that, I made the covers for the album with chipboard and fabric. I used some stuffing in the front cover. I coloured up a flower for the cover and hung some tags from one corner. Do I have photos? Yes, some. Do I have them on the computer to show everyone. When I have finished working out how to do this I will post them.

Presently I am working on a small album for the old person. The daughter has been taken to work almost every day by him, so it will be a small thank you for him. It has pictures of Her Ladyship the exracehorse and her two foals, Goldie and Cody. I will put in a few more over time.

I am preparing a couple of great diatribes, one for Alien Horses and one for Alien Thoughts. Well just expressing some opinions, anyhow. I hope to be taking both of those blogs in a little new direction soon.

Thank you for being so patient, and I will update from time to time as memory serves me.

Purity of Heart

When I was a child we lived by a code of sorts, and of all things, purity of heart was the most important.

Much of the code consisted of things like, giving to the poor (luckily we didn't know any poor people, or I would have wondered what to give them).

Help little old ladies across the road (even though my mother still had to hold my hand to cross the road).

Always let your horse go home on a loose rein (even if he could outrun the Melbourne Cup champions at dinner time)

Follow the ten commandments, which in turn consisted of love God before all other gods (there were others?), do not steal, do not kill, do not bear false witness (and if I was ever to be a witness in court, I would not bear falsely) and do not covet your neighbour's wife, donkey or worldly goods (since I was a girl, I wasn't likely to covet his wife, he didn't have a donkey, so I couldn't covet it, but I knew I would have if he had had one, and our worldly goods were actually more coveteous than his). The worst things you could be were a yella belly or an Indian giver.

These were sort of formed when I was about seven years old and more or less do me these days as well, albeit somewhat modified. Of course, I now know there are actually 10 ten commandments and I try to live by them. There are other codes that help us live, but these are a good place to start.

I have talked to others from around my generation and a bit before, and they had very similar codes they lived by.