What the cat brought in?!

My gorgeous pussycat Jedda - that's her waiting in the doona to pounce on me (!) - has been decimating the lizard population around the house ... sigh! She brings them in and plays with them until they're long dead! I have been consoling myself with the fact that at least she's not bringing in any birds, which my previous cat Mieke used to do, and which really upsets me!

However, yesterday I went out to do some shopping, and left her outside. When I came back she had obviously brought something in (through the cat-door), and was trying to get it back out from under the chest of drawers in the living room. To my utter horror, what she eventually pulled out from there was a snake!!! I nearly died! I do know there are many brown snakes around where I live, and they are extremely poisonous. This snake looked to be young and a greeny-brown colour - about 1 meter long. I have no idea what sort it was - but it did also seem to have been damaged to some extent as it was slow and wasn't really trying to attack her, more get away from her. I know I shouldn't be pleased about any damage to a wild animal, no matter what it is, but really, a snake inside your house?!! I got a towel and managed to drop it on the snake, take it outside and drop it down a bank some distance away!

And while I was looking at her trying to 'play' with the snake, I thought to myself - I don't know that I'm going to have you for long Jedda. If she thinks it's OK to play with snakes, she's going to get bitten. And there's nothing I can do. Well, I guess I could keep her in all the time, but I don't think that's going to happen. But I think I will continue with the regime of her only going out on the weekend ...

Of course another consideration is her bringing a snake into the house and losing it there!!! Wonderful thought! (not!) But having thought further about that scenario, I really think that if she has brought a snake in, then she'll be excitedly trying to find it, and hearing it moving around, so I guess I'll have to be (slightly) consoled by that ... !

Yoga under the hammock

Such a lovely morning today ... I had to help out at a training course being run at the Ipswich campus where I used to work (near where I live). I didn't have to be there till 9.30. I have a friend who used to work with me there before we all went through that big restructure/retrenchment thing at the beginning of the year. We used to do yoga together every Friday lunchtime in one of the teaching rooms there. She and her husband + stepdaughter have just come back from 7 months travelling in South America - lucky things! Mind you, I saw some video on their Facebook shot on a bus trip up the side of a mountain on what looked to be a one lane track cut into the side of a completely sheer cliff! No way I could have done that!!

Anyway ... she lives really near the campus and we arranged to do some yoga together at her place before I needed to go and get ready for the training. So we set up on the verandah and I had a gorgeous practice, managing to avoid the hammock! It was just a really nice environment - lovely garden greenery and smells, and her 2 dogs keeping an eye on us from the nearby sofa! I do miss those Friday lunchtime practices ... :) But we're going to find other times we can practice together - probably Sundays.

waiting for the storm

Hot hot day here in Queensland! We have been 'promised' storms and rain by the weather bureau later today/tomorrow. Really hope they're right - it's 34degC today (and we're still officially in mid-Spring!) and when I walk across the grass at the university, it's crunchy! I hate it when it's so dry that happens ... Usually we're complaining about the humidity here, but I don't think I'll complain about it again for a while!

Yoga was (of course) incredibly hot yesterday! Someone asked me a couple of days ago if I knew of Bikram yoga and I said that's aka Hot Yoga! Well, I think my ashtanga class qualified on that count yesterday ... :)

That 'someone' was a good friend of mine back in Brisbane on a visit for her sister's wedding. We used to work together a few years ago.  She and her then partner moved to London for his job (with Apple). We met up at a Vietnamese restaurant we'd been to before - it was so nice to see her. I'll see her next year when I'm in London - it's starting to become a real prospect!!

At work I finally got the revised eLearning website up last week. I'd had to make changes to it to include stuff about the Blackboard 9 upgrade which is consuming my work life these days! I've been doing so  many things I've never done before since I changed jobs ... really great! One of these has been helping one of the trainers to run 'What's new in Blackboard 9' courses, and I believe I'll be doing them on my own next January/February.

What ... ?!

I haven't written for ages ... what's been going on?! Difficult to say! Maybe I don't think I've got anything that exciting to write about?! Or maybe I've been caught up doing things and haven't got around/found the time to write? Or ...

Well, I don't really know the answer - sorry! I do know I've been contemplating the whole blogging/diary-writing issue lately. I do really like blogging. And I have always been a diary-writer. A few days ago, I happened to find/pick up one of my old diaries, from a pretty intense period of my life - a few years ago (relationship break-up - that sort of thing!). I didn't actually read any of the really painful entries - skipped to some that were from a bit later. But I was really struck by the difference in what I would write in that diary, and what I write in this blog.

I was always aware that I would self-censor a bit in a blog that is open to the world (well, whoever can be bothered to read this, that is!) It's inevitable - in fact sometimes I'm amazed that a shy person like myself can happily open her life up to all and sundry on the web! But - because I know everyone can read this, there are obviously going to be things I'm not going to write about here, for whatever reason.

However, it was quite a shock looking at the old diary. I poured so much out into that, it really makes my blog seem very superficial! I had no idea how much I was self-censoring! So, I thought about that for a while, and then decided to set up an additional, totally private blog, to use the same way I used my old paper diary. I know I could carry on writing in a physical diary - and when I go travelling I do a bit (in addition to blogging). But I guess I'm a child of the internet nowadays (well, I kind of like to think of myself that way !) - and I would rather be writing online!

So - quite pleased with myself about that! I will see how much use it gets - I have no intention of stopping writing here! Just giving myself another outlet for more private musings ...

Stopping now - I'll write a more interesting post in a day or two!

L'Oratorio d'Aurelia

Went to see this wonderful whimsical circus-type performance last night. Aurelia - emerging from the chest of drawers above, is French, and has worked on stage with her family almost since she was born. Her mother, the youngest daughter of Charlie Chaplin (!), designed and produced this amazing show.

"The show looks like the world of a mischievous child, full of freakish creatures, both comical and frightening.

It’s a surreal world that some have compared to the paintings of Salvador Dali or Rene Magritte. There are many poetic elements in it, like the scene in which Aurelia plays an old Italian song on alarm clocks old and new."
(quote from an online review - http://www.theworld.org/2009/07/29/aurelias-oratorio/)

Well worth catching if you can ... :)

Happy Weekend!

Well, things are looking up again .. for me if not for Jedda who is locked into the house for the next few days! Went to a lovely yoga class yesterday afternoon. It ended up being a led one (not Mysore) and various poses were left out to accommodate everyone there. I started off being annoyed by that, but luckily let go of it and it was just what I needed. I wasn't feeling very strong (too many missed practices!) and - well it was just what I needed. Jedda, I hasten to add, is still on the mend. Her voice is coming back to normal, and she's more active (and more demanding!) So that's a big relief.

Today some friends came to lunch. One of them, Ross, had offered to help me with one of my 2 garden projects - converting the pool into a garden pond. He had managed to find an old plastic garden table that was being thrown out, which we'd agreed I'd need to place pots on. So he turned up with that, plus some fish and plants he'd take from his own garden ponds (his garden is just a wonderful tropical paradise in a suburban backyard - amazing!)



Here he is placing one of the plants on the table ...

And this is the view I have sitting at the breakfast table ... (without him of course!)




We all had a lovely time eating and drinking and enjoying the day.

And finally, below is a photo taken last weekend (seems like an age ago now!) when I was in Sydney, and Mum and I went to lunch at Jo and Emma (nephew and girlfriend)'s new flat with the million dollar view over Sydney Harbour ...




That's Jo and Peter (nephews), Mum and my brother-in-law John.

Oh what a week!

My poor little pussycat Jedda! I was away last weekend in Sydney (maybe another post!) and she was in the 'pet motel'. Got back, collected her and let her out in the garden for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon before bringing her in. Next morning I noticed she was a bit subdued but thought she was just pleased to be home. When I got back on Monday evening she wasn't there to greet me - as she normally always is. Found her in the bedroom, picked her up and she made this really strange, low sound. Gave her a bit of a tickle, and found a lump on her throat, which turned out to be a paralysis tick!

Well, I managed to get it off intact, and then thought - what should I do now? My local vet had gone home for the day, so I went to Google, and discovered that I really had to take her to a vet. Found one that had an on-call vet, not too far away, and off we went. I ended up having to leave her there for 3 nights! Her throat had got a bit paralysed and she had been starting to stagger. I finally picked her up last night, and ended up taking a 'carer's day' today to look after her. She's still liable to chuck up, choke, and her voice is really quite low still! I don't even know if it's ever going to get back to how it was before ... :)

She is definitely better tonight than she was when I picked her up yesterday - thank goodness. Don't even ask how much it costs to have a cat in a vet hospital for 3 nights - horrifying!!

My friend Ronnie was blogging about how important dogs are to humans. Well, cats are the same (but different of course!)