The Liberal Party Vaccine Mess

 

Australia had such an advantage, being relatively covid free. But, then our terrible, Morrison, federal conservative government got the vaccine rollout badly wrong, and pissed our advantage away.

If The Answer Is Barnaby Joyce

 

The insufferable climate change denying, beetroot, in the name of Barnaby Joyce, is back leading the minor, rural, conservative party. How anyone could vote for this pompous twit is beyond me.

He raged about family values during the same sex debate, all the time he was cheating on his wife with one of his staff members. I wonder if he still espouses family values?

Before Refugees Became A Political Meal Ticket

 

Before the conservative politicians weaponised refugees to score political votes, Australia used to treat refugees like human beings.

Trolling

You know something, I have an admission to make. I love trolling people on Facebook. 

Thinking about Chrissy Teigen, and all. I assume, the difference between me and her is that I never swear, I never abuse anyone, I certainly don't threaten, or worse. I just tell people what I think, in decent, eloquent language. The dweebs dislike it just as much.

And, I don't tend to troll individuals, as such, I tend to go more for the group think. I just tend to state what I think, and I'm done. I rarely go back for a follow up. I just feel that all I need to do is give my opinion, that's enough.

Well, Facebook is so boring, I have to do something to make the experience more exciting, or is that, just exciting. (I'm sure that is a sad indictment, however)

So many people making comments about things they say they hate. Then advert, after advert, after advert. 

And the conservatives are such snowflakes, let's face. Dumb and indoctrinated. And the Christians arc up beautifully because they have no facts on which to fall back.

And it amuses me, if only for a minute. I'm sure that is shameful on some level, but whatever.

Essentially, I am just stating my opinion, but often I do so it is a record of dissent in a conservative's thread. I do it to get up their nose? Maybe? 😬

Shrug.

Look-At-Me Julie

Just by the way, what is Julie Bishop giving it, with her atrocious haircut and her Barbie doll?

Julie Bishop, ex-foreign Affairs minister, the Liberal Party's original good time girl, famous for going to the opening of an envelop, almost as famous for, allegedly, doing it all on tax payers' money.

It's Human Nature, I Guess

I’m sure all Victorians can be excused for feeling a little pleased, well, not pleased, exactly, but maybe vindicated with the continued outbreak of Covid 19 in NSW, after having ScuMo and FryThemBurgers ramming home, on every occasion they possibly could, how much of failure Victoria has been throughout this pandemic. 

We’re all in it together said ScuMo and JuniorBurgers at the beginning of the pandemic, however that soon changed when the well, awful, opportunistic Federal Liberals saw how they could score politically with every bit of bad luck Victoria has endured, never falling to hold up NSW and Glady’s whateverhernameis (corrupt Glad getting away with it because she is a Liberal and that is what Liberals do) as the gold standard because it was politically expedient to do so. 

And before I get, don’t-say-that, you-make-me-feel-awful-when-you-say-that, of course it is wrong, of course none of us should feel like that, and, of course, none of us feel that towards the people of NSW, but that is what the politics of division at which the Liberal Party is a champion engenders in people.

It gets wearing when you are continually called the pariah state for no good reason other than keeping a bunch of fat, empathy deficient, Liberal Party liars in power.

Dawn

 

Sunday, then Monday

I cooked Bolognese in the morning, listening to Norah Jones. It's a Sunday morning kind of thing to do. Sam played his new game. That’s what you do on Sundays. You know, it’s just nice, looking out into the garden, not a care. When you are cutting onions and smashing garlic, I doubt Sam’s eye left that small screen.

I repotted my pot plants at midday listening to David Bowie. The sun was shining by this stage, a winter's sunny day. Hands in the dirt, wipe them on my shirt. “Ground control to Major Tom…” The Rosemary Sam planted as cuttings in pots, which I am hoping will supply the herbs for my Bolognese sauce. And those pesky agaves I acquired when David hi-tailed it up north. Of course, David had never repotted them, they are just like cut flowers to him, disposable and all that, so I have had to repot them twice since I got them. And I don’t even like agaves all that much.

Sunday, half relax, half dread, before you know it we’re into bed, and morning comes and it is “the dread” part. Monday morning. Then, of course, it is not so bad, don’t know why we get that in our heads? Because, it is nice to do as you please and then afterwards to rest.

Mondays come, and then Mondays go, that’s the best thing about Mondays. What more can I say? I work fairly autonomously, so the annoying people don’t get to me so much, even less so since I have been working from home. So, yay, let’s hear it for working from home.

Getting The Story Straight

5.50am. I was up.

I got straight to work as I have to take Buddy for a blood test at 10am.

It rained quite heavily. Milo came in about 4 times soaked rubbing against my legs. Four times I had to dry him.

7.45am. David calls. “Now I know something is wrong,” I say. David doesn’t get up until midday, usually. And he’d called me early two mornings in a row.

“Ha ha, it’s quite lovely, actually,” says David. “Being up this early. Who’d have thought?”

He’s on his way to the Gold Coast to see a specialist. David loves a specialist. He spends a lot of time seeing them. Well, I mean, he is precious. Chuckle.

8am. Sam is up.

I go a lot of my work done. I finished off work for Themidget and Thegrandpoohbah. I hoped they wouldn’t have any questions about any of it while I was gone to the vet, as I wasn’t planning to disclose my absence to any of them. They never know if I am there normally, so why start telling them now. Surely, that is one of the perks of working from home. Besides, I’d already done 4 hours and I’d only be gone for 2.

9.20am. I leave for the vet. Me & Buddy for Buddy’s blood test.

We get there right on 10am. We wait in the waiting room with a gorgeous Golden Retriever. The Golden retriever wants desperately to play with Buddy, but Bud is having none of it. Maybe, he knows the gravity of the situation he is in.

10.15am. I’m in seeing cutie Dev. “Hi, long time no see,” said Dev.

“I guess that’s a good thing,” I said.

He laughed. “Sure.”

He’s still handsome, maybe a little fatter, just a touch. Guess who’s been eating during lockdown, I thought.

I lifted Buddy onto the table and Dev examined.

“I’ve treated lymphoma in the past and I have done chemotherapy,” he said. “I’d expect to see Buddy’s lymph nodes more swollen.”

He didn’t think Buddy has lymphoma. “Only some of Buddy’s lymph nodes are swollen up and, but they all certainly aren’t all swollen.” He thinks it is more likely an infection.

“Like the ear infection for which we bought him in?”

“Well, yes.”

“But, the other vet looked at his blood under a microscope and saw something… with Buddy’s blood.”

“Oh, Karen,” said Dev. “Well, that is consistent with and infection too.”

“Oh, well, that’s good… then.”

“Yes. You’ll have to bring him back in a few weeks to check him again.”

“Sure.”

“We’ll do the blood test,” Dev said. “That wouldn’t necessary show lymphoma, but we’ll check for anything else.”

Dev picked Buddy up in his big, strong arms and took him out the back for a blood test.

I didn’t know if I should be angry, or pleased. Angry at the junior vet for what she’d put me through, or please with Dev for straightening it all out. I opted for pleased.

The 1^st of July we have to go back. Can you believe it is nearly July already?

Buddy has a shaved patch on his leg where Dev took blood, like a war wound.

We headed home, Bud and me.

What To Do With Buddy

What to do about Buddy? I didn’t have a satisfactory experience with the specialist near home when I saw them about Buddy’s luxating patellar, some time ago. I’m not really sure that they don’t put earning a dollar before the care of the animals they see. I really don’t know if we would be going down the chemotherapy route with Buddy considering his age. I wasn’t really sure why I was even taking Buddy to them? We didn’t really know what we were going to do. 

What to do? Did it make sense to spend thousands on chemotherapy, if he was in his final years? Oh, did it feel like we were letting him down if we didn’t? Bulldogs average life expectancy was around 10 years old and Buddy will be 11 very soon.

But, he was Buddy.

So, I called my vet and spoke to them. I said I didn’t really know what to do? The receptionist was very sympathetic, as she’d had a dog with lymphoma some time ago. She thought that they usually take a biopsy for detection of lymphoma. She went to talk to their senior vet.

I made an appointment with my vet for a blood test for Buddy at 10am tomorrow.

The Specialist

I called the specialist to get an appointment for Buddy. The receptionist asked me what was wrong with Buddy, as I explained, I teared up unexpectedly. I wasn’t expecting to do that. It just caught me

“Oh, that’s no good,” she said. 

She said she didn’t have a mobile for me, so I gave it to her. I told her the landline she most likely had was not operational any longer.

The woman I needed to speak to was on the phone, so she had to call me back. I waited for an hour and a half, nearly two hours when I called her back. Was that too long for someone in my position to have to wait? I wondered? The woman I needed to speak to answered the phone.

“I had 17 messages to get through,” she said. “I was just writing you an email as we don’t have a phone number for you?”

“But I just gave the receptionist my mobile number.”

This was all starting off well, I thought.

I got an appointment for 9.30am on Friday. Buddy wasn’t to eat in the morning. I might have to leave him with them for tests.

Xi Jinping With His Dog

The Chinese leader and his dog

 

Spoke To Jill

I talked to Jill about Buddy and where she went for Bear’s cancer treatment. She said it was a cancer specialist in the eastern suburbs. She advised not to go the specialist route, or opt for chemotherapy treatment. She said I should just treat him with supportive care at this stage in his life.

Jill surprised me when she said she suspected that Bear’s cancer may well have come back and that she is not going to do anything about it now.

Buddy and Bear are almost the same age, I think bear is a year younger than Buddy.

We took Buddy and Bruno for a walk later and all the people in the street loved Buddy as they usually do, saying how fantastic he is. I felt kind of sad, all things considered. He doesn’t seem like a dog that is terminally ill.

Buddy’s Ear Infection

We left for the vet mid afternoon. Buddy had an ear infection for a few days, he’d been doing the ear rubbing thing. We were lucky to get an appointment as our vert is usually booked up, but we got put on the cancellation list and somebody cancelled.

Bruno came too.

The traffic was atrocious. WTF? I don’t know why? (Was it the over protective mother’s school run? Surely not?) We got to the vet at 3.50pm, 10 minutes late.

But, then we were ushered into a consultation room where we waited half an hour for them. I think in the end we waited longer than half any hour in that small, airless room.

A young girl vet attended to us in due course. The girl vet spoke with what seemed like a broad Queensland accent, like a whining chainsaw, she was really hard to understand with her accent and the mask she was wearing. 

She examined him around his neck, and then in his groin. Buddy got a finger up his arse, which sure stopped his panting for a moment. 

She took a little blood to look at under a slide. She disappeared with that for a time.

In due course, she came back. The news was bad, potentially bad. She started talking about lymphoma. How did we get to lymphoma from an ear infection? 

She said it was her preliminary findings and that it would need to be confirmed by a blood test, which she could do, tomorrow, I wasn’t sure why it had to be done tomorrow?

If we had to come back tomorrow, I thought we might as well go to a specialist and have it done, as a specialist would have all the treatment options.

We were referred to a cancer specialist closest to home. The same place that wanted to operate on Buddy’s knee immediately at a cost of $2500, five years ago, which was the reason we started coming to this vet to see Dev, who said it didn’t need to be done straight away. And if it did he’d charge about $1000. 

So, we left, a little shell shocked. Lovely Bud, he just seemed like his normal self. 

Sam would ask me later, “Do you think that vet (her name was Karen, {that’s not her name, but I couldn’t resist. You don’t think I am going to tell you her real name, now do you?} I would find out later) was on meth?”

“You think everyone is on meth.”

Sam laughed.

“But, you know,” I said. “I know what you mean.” 

She was thin and fidgety, and a bit kind of nervy. Maybe that was just because we couldn’t understand her clearly. I don’t know. 

I didn’t know what we were going to do.

Blood Clot Anyone

We had our weekly, Webex team meeting. It had been a rather dull, quiet affair. Oh, I don't know why, maybe it is because it is winter, maybe it is the rain and the cold, maybe it is the lockdown, I don’t know.

It had just been the managers and then mostly my boss talking, you know, a lot of blah, blah, blah. I tend to tune out, I have to admit. Good thing there is no comprehension test when they are all done. (Remember those, I used to ace those, but not in this context, I suspect) 

At the end of the meeting, our boss asked, "Does anyone have any funny stories to tell?"

Apparently, nobody did.

"Did anyone do anything interesting on the weekend?"

Again, no.

"Does anyone have anything to tell us?"

Silence.

"Does anyone have anything to say?"

All mute.

"Anything?"

Nothing.

So, I decided to give it a go, even though I really had nothing. "I had my Astra Zenica shot four days ago, and now I am waiting for my blood clot to show up."

"What?" said my boss.

"Day 4 to day 20 is the critical period for blood clots, I'm on day four, so it could turn up any time."

Everyone laughed.

"Thank you, Christian,” said our boss. “I can always rely on you. And on that note..."

Dark Sense of Humour

Apparently, there was some report/study/finding/something that said a dark sense of humour is an indication that someone might get dementia in later life.

Do you know how many of my friends contacted me to tell me I was a goner.

I guess, it comes across on here, that what I write is supposed to be funny. I pick the things that amuse me and my dark, absurdist sense of humour. Life is absurd - you know, point and laugh - not the least for the fact you work for fifty years to get a few years off at the end. I can't take all of this too seriously.

You Are All A Cat's Arse

We were having a Webex meeting, you may know it as Zoom, and I was listening to the others yap on, when Milo, my cat, jumped up onto my desk. He has a habit of doing that. It is not the first time they have met him.

I use a laptop, with a large second screen attached, so most of my focus is directed at the large screen. But, of course, the camera is still on the smaller laptop screen. 

Suddenly, they were all laughing. What had happened while I was watching the large screen, and patting Milo at the same time, he had backed up to the smaller screen and his bum hole had pushed right up to the camera on my laptop, so they were all getting one giant cat's arse.

That's my boy, I thought, I couldn't have passed better judgement on all of them, if I tried.

 

 

Ha ha, cats are devious, cats are spooky. Do you think cats ever do anything unconsciously? I like to think not. Such little scamps, our feline mates.

Covid Shot, Blood Clot, Not

One covid shot, now just waiting for the blood clot. I wonder where is the spot? Will it be a red dot, that I got? In my veins, like red snot? Perhaps, what would help is a vodka shot? Or, some lovely pot. Oh, those thoughts I have to blot. And we'll all get through it ready, or not.

One of my mates asked me if I was branching out into rap?

Talk About A Bunch Of Whingers

It seems now that every night on the news we have small business owners whinging and whining about the state of things. Um, er, hey small business owners, which part of 'it’s a pandemic' don’t you understand?

"Can we be given a clear timeline of what the future holds?"

"No, it is a pandemic."

Bring Them Home to Biloela

 

You know, I do wonder if the rest of the world views Australians as heartless as the Morrison Liberal (for anyone outside of Australia, the Liberal Party is the Conservative party in Australia) Govt portrays us?

Does the rest of the world view the people of Australia as awful and mean spirited as our federal government is? I wonder.

Chatty Cathy

There is an IT chick at work, I call her holyblabbermouthbatman, who never stops talking. I mean never. I’m not exaggerating. She is loud and opinionated too, but of course. 

You go to the lunch room and she is the one talking. I can take a crap at work, and I can hear her in the lunch room. I can’t ever hear anyone else.

I said at work one day, “Holyblabbermouthbatman will still be talking 3 days after she has died.”

Whoever I said it to replied, “Oh, I like Holyblabbermouthbatman.”

I didn’t add the talking underwater comment after that.

I find her really annoying. Sam said I was being mean, and I really should try to be nicer to people, it would make me a nicer person. 

Hah! Holyblabbermouthbatman needs therapy, she never stops talking. Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap. Never. OMG on and on and on and on she goes.

One afternoon I was heading around to the IT department, as I approached I could hear Holyblabbermouthbatman talking. Oh, er, I thought. I mentally braced myself for the onslaught. When I got there, she was the only person in the department. I laughed, as I walked through.

“Tell me what’s so funny,” she asked. (demanded, in her own kind of way)

“Oh, nothing,” I said.

“Oh, no, I’m having a bad afternoon, I would really like to hear something funny.”

I didn’t stop walking, I know that is how to deal with her, and I just sashayed through the exit doors on the other side of the department and was gone.

Anyway, I have just found out she is pregnant. I’m really surprised that she stopped talking long enough for her husband (boyfriend, common law partner, sperm donor, one night stand, drunken mistake, unknown assailant) to have …  you know?

Oh no, could you imagine the sex talk? Why did I think of that? Thank the lordly do dah day I’m not in the office, as we work closely together and if I heard her dulcet tones (if your dulcet tones are akin to shattering glass) I’d be mentally constructing her dirty talk and that could scar a person.

Anyway, we can all be pretty sure there was no oral sex involved.

Of course, I haven't been in the office for over a year, and I haven't had my ears bleed by Holyblabbermouthbatman for that long. I haven't seen her. I haven't heard her.  I'm surprised how triggered I was (Ha ha triggered, made to reminisce is more like it) hearing her name when whoever it was who told me she was pregnant. The full horror of her obsessional behaviour came back to me in its full surround sound quality.

Did I tell you she has one of those nasally voices? 

And she laughs the loudest at her own jokes.

Simultaneously Pleased and Displeased

Pinch, punch, and all that. Oh, my goodness, June already. Half the year has gone. Winter is no longer coming. 

Just by the way, my favourite was Robb Stark, not what’s his name over who everyone drooled. Then I saw him as prince Charming in those cream tights. Mmmm. That was followed by him, allegedly, having a gay relationship with that boy singer, who’s name I never committed to memory. Then he was banging that other cutie, Taron Edgerton, in Rocket Man, with Taron Edgerton saying he enjoyed every minute of his gay sex scenes with Richard Maddon. (Taron is such a scamp)

But, I digress.

I've got 5 hours of training this afternoon, because the brains trust that is HR have come up with some new (probably hair-brained) procedure and, of course, those geniuses can't make a decision on their own, so I have to be a part of the team assessing what they want to do. (Yay! 🙌)

It is usually a disaster when HR get all excited about doing something. It usually involves a creche (naturally), a lunch (they don't get those mum bods from celery alone), and ultimately a huge problem created for everyone else, so hang on.

So, I was signing in this morning thinking to myself, I have a lot to get done now that the HR slags have roped me into their, no doubt, half baked idea. Suddenly I'm not going to cruise into the weekend as I usually do, I'm going to have to hustle to get everything completed before midday. 

I was just mentally stringing a plan together for the rest of the morning, while I cursed HR, of course, prioritising what I had to do, when I realised it was Tuesday, not Wednesday. (Oh, it’s Tuesday. 😀)

I was simultaneously pleased and displeased. Oh! Oh?

"Oh yay, it's Tuesday, I have plenty of time. Oh rats, it is not the end of my week. Boohoo!"

And, you know, any new procedures introduced by HR are always to benefit HR, always to make HR’s life easier, or for legal reasons. It’s not normally for the staff. Or, the new procedure is an unmitigated mistake because the HR professionals loved the colour, “Loovvvv it!” and skipped the function altogether.

I remember at the awful law firm, those HR professionals bought an application simply because they thought it could do performance reviews, that one of the modules they were buying could do performance reviews. (There was a girlie titter all around, and champagne for everyone, as HR professionals love to celebrate their successes) It was a complete failure at everything else it was supposed to do, and it made a number of people’s work lives more difficult, and sometime later I found out the application couldn’t do performance reviews either.

So, let’s see what the brains trust has bought us today?