I have sheep in the paddock next to me and they are learning to fly.
Oh, I know that you think that this is pure hyperbole, but it’s true. They’ve evolved and they’re desperately trying to be birds instead of sheep.
I was lucky to get these photos, because shortly after, they spotted me watching, jumped off their perches and ran away, trying to cheep instead of bleat.
This one is Harrold.
With my recent posts on Asylum Seekers and my silence on the drama that continues to annoy me, you would be forgiven for thinking that I’m all ‘Live and Let Live!’.
I am not.
Especially not when it comes to roosters that are attacking my hens, drakes that are looking large enough to fit nicely in a roasting tray and mice.
I normally have a “don’t kill anything you’re not going to eat” policy. I can maintain this policy in the face of everything, except mice.
We have a mouse problem. Our mouse problem is so bad that I’ve schwacked two personally in the last week, making my mouse death count higher than the cats, although the second death is maybe only 50% mine, because I did require a cat to finish it off. Hiding under the oven gets you NO MERCY.
For the record, a good schwacker is one that is covered in plastic, so that you can wipe it clean of mouse eyeballs afterwards. You’re welcome.
***
We were moving the furniture around, rearranging couches and assorted piles of junk when Nathan shouts “MOUSE!”
Of course, I came running, from where I was avoiding heavy lifting by messing around on twitter and talking to my mother on the phone.
Tucking the phone between my shoulder and ear, I spotted the mouse immediately (with a little help from Nathan). Nat was holding one end of a couch in the air and the mouse was attempting to run away. Round and round we went, me chasing and the mouse skittering, with Nathan swearing at me to ‘just fucking kill it already, what ARE YOU DOING?’
Our brilliant teamwork paid off, as I walked to the back of the couch and went ‘Huh, where’d it go?’ only to lean down and find it, clinging to the back of the couch at eye level with me. I’m not sure who was more startled, but I certainly jumped less.
The mouse found a hiding spot and I picked up a schwacker that was lying around. Sometimes there are benefits to messy bedrooms.
“You drop the couch and I’ll schwack it” I said to Nathan.
He rolled his eyes at me, knowing how well my schwacking has gone in the past and did as he was told.
The mouse took one look at me, sitting in front of it, holding a photo album as a schwacker and then did the most sensible thing possible.
It ran towards me, like a suicide mouse.
So I sensibly schwacked it on the head, killing it. I still had the phone tucked between my ear and my shoulder, giving running commentary to my mother the whole time.
I dusted myself off, and left Nathan to clean up the squashed mouse, while I finished my conversation and wiped down the photoalbum with anti bacterial stuff.
***
Mice – 2543 Veronica – 2 .
I am very proud of my two kills.
Today there is a new mouse skittering around underneath my grill. I’m hoping to avoid having to bash it to death personally – you’d never guess it but I’m really not a fan of killing things – and have instead set a trap. I’d like to kill it before I have to scrub everything with antibacterial soap again.
Hell, I’d even like to be all zen about having mice in the house, but OMFG I JUST SAW ONE, RUNNING ACROSS MY CHOPPING BOARD. Again.
They’re lucky I’m not a farmers wife.
Last night, I was having a conversation with Naomi about subscribing and subscribers and slowly, our conversation grew and morphed to include Kelley and Clairey, and we covered everything from subscribing and the state of our Google Readers to PR companies and reviews.
We tweeted so much that we sent Naomi to twitter jail and likely cluttered up the streams for nearly everyone we know (sorry guys).
But it was a lot of fun and from what people had to say, it seems it’s something that people are interested in, especially newer bloggers.
Louisa came in during the conversation and we’ve since discussed it and tonight, we’re going to trial doing the same thing, on Facebook, and invite everyone over to the Mummy Bloggers Blog facebook page to participate.
The idea is to share information on social media and how to get the best out of it, what we do personally and why.You can ask questions and we’ll endeavour to answer them, as best we can and I’ll probably be asking questions about the why’s and whyfor’s of some things.
So, meet us over on the Facebook page tonight (Wed) at 9pm AEST and we’ll hopefully be chatting up a storm.
I will tweet and remind you too.
***
A few answers to questions I know you’re going to ask:
This is only in Beta stages – we’re looking at chat room technology, or other various ways of doing the same thing easily, if there is enough interest.
We elected for Facebook, to prevent cluttering up the twitter streams – until twitter develops a mute button that allows you to filter out some people, or some hashtags, I’d prefer not to clutter it. I know how frustrating it can be to be not interested in a “twitter party” or similar thing happening and have that be all that’s in your feed.
Also facebook, we wanted the information to stick around, so that people can use it and refer to it later. Twitter is relatively transient and tweets get pushed down easily and you can miss replies and half the conversation.
If you’ve got ideas about how this could work, suggestions, or questions, please let me know in the comments and we’ll see what we can do!
And remember, 9pm AEST tonight on the Mummy Bloggers Blog Facebook page.
Mother’s day has never been a big thing in our house. I’m sort of blaming Nathan for this fact, because the kids are little and it’s his job to buy me something (anything!) for mother’s day. Or at least ensure I get a sleep in and a cup of tea made for me.
Of course, like everything though, this hasn’t happened and I’ve spent my previous 4 mother’s days walking around the house grumbling about being under-appreciated and screamed at. Thanks kids, mummy loves you too.
I’m not bitter.
Anyway, this year being the first year that Amy is at school, there will be a mother’s day gift coming home for me, probably hand pasted with glitter on it somewhere. Considering it will be my first mothers day gift, it’s going to be brilliant, whatever it is. I’m quite looking forward to it.
I’m lucky. My biggest worry is that I won’t get a cup of tea, or that Amy will jump all over me in excitement and make sure that I can’t sleep. Both of these things are likely to happen.
Some mothers aren’t so lucky, and there is a big drive to buy charity gifts for mother’s day this year.
UNICEF has an online store, where you can buy charity presents for this mother’s day. The Mother/Baby pack is especially important, because it would allow a HIV positive woman to give birth and breastfeed, without passing HIV to her baby. One thousand babies a day are infected with HIV, and without treatment, many will die before their second birthday. Medical centres are often long distances from remote villages and travelling to them is beyond most mothers means. The mother/baby pack allows medication to be distributed and used easily by the mother.
So, if you’re wondering what to get your mother this year, or trying to work out what your older kids can buy you, and you’d like to help out a family in need, then the UNICEF shop is for you.
***
Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Kidspot and I received monetary compensation for writing it. I wouldn’t have agreed to participate in a campaign that I didn’t feel strongly about however, and I think that UNICEF’s charity gifts are an excellent idea.
NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard.
And so over a fortnight has passed since the announcement that a detention centre will be built at the old army barracks in Pontville, around 25 minutes from where I live, and I am still spending a lot of time throwing my arms in the air and shouting at the TV ‘OH MY GOD, THEY ARE NOT HERE ILLEGALLY. REALLY!’
The attitude portrayed by some members of the local community has been appalling. “But they’re BOAT PEOPLE. If they had all that money to get here by boat, they should have arrived on a plane.” Yes, an actual comment. I was tempted to throw the newspaper across the car, but it wouldn’t have changed anything.
A grand total of 4% of asylum seekers arrive by boat. FOUR PERCENT. So, of the 400 asylum seekers to be housed at Pontville, roughly, oh, 16 of them arrived by boat? Maybe 17, if we want to be generous and round up.
One lady said that she didn’t like it because her house overlooks the detention site. Another asked if maybe we could house them somewhere else? Just for his peace of mind you see, there’s no telling what those people would do if they escaped into the community.
I’ve been trying very hard not to read comments about the detention centre, or asylum seekers, because I start to get twitchy when I hear blatant ignorance being spouted as fact and there is only so much ranting I can expect Nathan to listen to.
But let’s talk about it here.
It is not illegal to seek asylum, even if you’re arriving by boat. According to Australia’s agreement as part of the UN, Australia is legally obligated to take people seeking asylum. No matter HOW they get here.
They are not criminals. Government policy is what locks them up behind razor wire and 3m fences, not criminal activity.
We do not know what they ran from, but likely it’s worse than not being able to buy milk for their morning coffee. They are here because they fled for their lives.
If I hear one more person shout “BUT THEY’RE QUEUE JUMPING” I might just start throwing things. They are not queue jumping. There is no line to get into Australia.
“BUT THEY’RE HERE ILLEGALLY!” – See my first point. It’s not illegal to seek asylum. What is illegal is overstaying your visa – but we don’t hear anyone screeching about the white British backpackers who are here illegally. Is it a skin colour thing? Or maybe it’s religion…
The term “Boat People” upsets me. Not only is it plain wrong, but it paints the asylum seekers in a bad light. Like “Ooooooh, careful, the boat people will get you with their giant fangs and nasty nasty ways…”
They’re not “Boat People”. They are just people, who went through unspeakable things to get to a country, in the hope that they would be safe. Their religion, the colour of their skin, what they believe in, none of that matters.
They are just people. With families, and mothers and hopes and dreams.
Just people.
And we ought to show a little more humanity in welcoming them, instead of letting the politicians tell us what to think, because “STOP THE BOATS” is a handy election slogan, pandering to an upper-class white christian society, scared of colour and change.
Some good has come out of this, the Tasmanian Asylum Seeker Support page on Facebook has over 450 “likes” and the Mayor of Brighton, Tony Foster is requesting that the community remain as welcoming as we did back in 1999, when Brighton housed Kosovo refugees.
So the question remains, do people fear the asylum seekers because they’re secretly racist?
Or is there something else I’m missing here.
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