In an effort to sharpen up my writing skills, I’ve decided to try and do at least one of these writing prompts from this site regularly.  I’m pretty tired and brain dead so I chose one that was fairly easy and didn’t require much brain power. Here’s  my quick attempt at one tonight:

You’re at a U2 concert when you receive a text from a friend that says, “You’ll never believe what just happened to me!” In the form of a text chat, find out what happened to your friend.

Well, I started writing this in texting language but texting language really pisses me off, so I’m writing it properly.

LYNNE:  You’ll never guess what happened!

ME: What?

LYNNE:  Guess!

ME: These texts cost me money & you said I won’t guess anyway.  What is it?

LYNNE: Guess who I saw on the way to the ladies?

ME:  Argh!  Just tell me!!!

LYNNE:  Larry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ME:  Larry who?

LYNNE:  erk you are so uncool – Larry Mullen – the cute drummer.

ME: from u2?

LYNNE: yessssss!!!!!! OMG he’s gorgeous!

ME:  I prefer Bono.  What was he doing?

LYNNE:  umm… actually, he had tools with him & started to unblock a loo.

ME: what?

LYNNE:  I dunno…Maybe times are tough?  Second job?

ME: U2 don’t need to unblock toilets for a living.  You sure it was Larren Mullen?

LYNNE: His mate called him Larry.

ME: There’s more than 1 Larry in this world you know.

LYNNE:  But what’s the chances of there being another one at a U2 concert?

ME:  You are so blonde.

There’s a book fair on this week at school, and I gave Maddy two $10 notes to take as she’s got her eye on a special notebook and pencils for sale there. She told me that they’re only allowed to take $10 at a time, so I suggested she leave one $10 note at home and bring it the next day. This is the conversation that followed:

Maddy: No, I’ll keep it in my wallet.

Me: I wouldn’t do that – someone might try to steal it.

Maddy: No, I’m not worried about that. They won’t.

Me: Well, it’s happened before, kids taking money out of other people’s wallets.

Maddy: They won’t steal it from mine – it’s got a peace sign on it.

Me: Erm, what’s that got to do with anything? That won’t stop them.

Maddy: Ohhh, yes it will Mum, believe me.

Me: How will a peace sign stop people from stealing money out of your wallet?

Maddy: Because people are afraid of it.

Me: What?!

Maddy: Peace signs scare people.

Me: What do you mean ‘peace signs scare people’???!!!

Maddy: People are afraid of it.

Me: But why do you think that?

Maddy: There was a kid at school who had a hat with a peace sign on it. Another kid came up, took one look at it, and ran away scared.

Me: Riiiiight……

Maddy: So my money will be safe in my wallet.

Me: O—-kay then…

MADDY: “Did you know that there are two places on your body, that if you get shot there, you will die instantly?”

BEN: “Where, Maddy?”

MADDY: “Your head & your neck – you will die instantly if you get shot there.”

BEN: “Not necessarily, I’ve heard of people who’ve been shot in the head or the neck and survived.”

MADDY: “No, Ben. (humouring his ignorance!) That’s just what you see in movies – in real life if you get shot in the head or the neck, you will always die instantly….(thinks for a moment)…unless you can get to a hospital.”

Click on an image below to enlarge.

Wow, Wordpress has really come along in leaps and bounds hasn’t it?  I was using Drupal on this site for the past couple of years.  I’d decided on Drupal because it could be manipulated more than Wordpress, but less than Joomla – which seemed way too complicated and had a steep learning curve.  I get bored fairly easily and I’ve wanted to makeover this site for a while.

I’ve been making other sites with Joomla and have finally gotten the hang of it, and installed Joomla on here for a while, but wasn’t happy with it.  I thought I’d give Wordpress another go.  Well, what a nice surprise – the features are vastly improved from the version I’d been using a couple of years ago.  It’s quite easy to get it looking the way you want, and is way more configurable than it used to be – and way easier than Joomla too.  Because of its popularity it has plenty of handy plugins too.  I’m going to have a look around and see what kind of stuff is available – this blog will have all the bells and whistles when I am done!

Remember the sheer agony you felt at school when you were assigned an essay to write?  Just the thought of it was exhausting, and after a few lines of fervent scribbling your pencil hand ached and you wondered whether making your letters bigger and spacing them out meant that you’d get away with writing a lot less.  Who’d have thought years later I’d be writing as a hobby and aspiring to write professionally?

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Tonight I watched a National Geographic documentary about Armageddon.  It pitted the diehard Bible believers against theologian’s theories about the meaning of the book of Revelation – whether it needs to be taken literally and the end of the world is nigh, or whether it should be taken as a then contemporary text alluding to the Roman/Jewish discord which raged at the time John was committing his wildly psychedelic hallucinations to papyrus, or parchment, or whatever it was he wrote it on.

I tend to lean towards the theologian’s view.  I’ve never taken the Bible literally, and there’s a whole host of reasons why, but I won’t go into them.  I will however, make what should be an obvious observation which to me is a no-brainer, as to why the book of Revelation couldn’t be an actual prediction of the end of the world.  Let me just say that I haven’t read much of it at all – just snippets, because it bores me to tears and sounds ridiculously naive and stupid (why couldn’t Bible writers think of another conjunction other than ‘and’!)…  Anyway, the no-brainer is thus:
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Do you ever feel that there is a twilight world full of people who have the Midas touch, who can turn any crazy idea into a money making machine – people who operate and think so differently to yourself as they get about in the jet set gilt clad world, that they may as well be from another planet?  I’ve peered into this world as they conjure up riches out of thin air (or from absolute crappy ideas), and I just scratch my head and wonder how they manage it.

On a recent visit to the Queensland Art Gallery, as I gazed at the exhibits the thought often entered my head – how the hell did this crap get chosen to hang on the walls in here, and more to the point, how did the ‘artists’ manage to wangle thousands of dollars out of the museum funds for it.  Case in point – this ‘painting’ by John Olsen, painted in 1961 entitled ‘Journey into the you beaut country no. 2′.
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As parents, it’s our job to teach our children how to be good, moral, honest and caring people – a huge responsibility for which our longer life experience hopefully kits us out for the task, but occasionally the tables are turned and despite their tender years, kids end up teaching us something profound instead. That recently happened to me.

I used to be amazed at my friend Bella’s incredible selflessness when it came to dealing with her ex and what she told her children about him. Although she had plenty to gripe about her life with him to me, she never ever said a bad word to her children about him. He stopped seeing them when they were small, but she never told them about any of the bad times she’d endured with him. I asked her why she never told them the truth, and she said that they didn’t need to know any of that – that that bad period had been between her and her ex, and she didn’t want any of that vindictiveness in her children’s lives now. As I said, I was amazed, because I’d been doing exactly the opposite.

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I have very few photos of myself, mainly because I’m not particularly photogenic and I try to stay out of them, and also because I’m usually the one on the other side of the camera taking the pic. Tonight I was trying to tidy up the box we keep the photos in, and came across a few of me, so I thought I’d post some here.

First one, me as a baby. I had colic and used to scream non-stop apparently. Well, not quite true – I’d stop squawking while I was being fed, so I was fed ALOT! lol. Kind of a viscious circle really cos my dinner was what was making my tummy hurt. Poor me.

This is me and my sister Katrina. I’m digging our matching crotcheted dresses. They look to be exactly the same, which is surprising because Mum used to dress me in red (cos I had dark hair), and Katrina in blue (cos she had blue eyes). We hated it because we’d always get the same Christmas present, and as soon as Katrina opened hers up and we saw she had a blue whatever, I’d know instantly that I’d be getting the same thing, only red!

I still remember those dogs. They were battery operated, and you pulled on the leash and they’d walk along and bark.

I am probably one of THE squarest people you’ll ever come across. I’ve always been incredibly square and daggy. This pic says 1979, which means I was ELEVEN years old and still sitting on Santa’s lap. Now that’s daggy. Note the daggy hairstyle – a kind of ‘bushy thing on top of head’ look. As you’ll see in the photo after this, it only got worse…

Good grief that is BAD hair! This is a scan of a very blurry polaroid on my first day of high school. That’s my friend Jenny Key who lived next door in Blacktown. If you ever spot this photo Jenny and think the photo has come back to haunt you, don’t worry – you’re the one with the normal hairdo. (And drop me a line will you?) I was an incredibly daggy teenager – my favourite outfit was a red terry towelling tracksuite with white stripes, and occasionally, I even wore those ‘boob tube’ dresses – remember those monstrosities?!

As you can see, my taste in fashion was so sophisticated, I went from red tracky dacks to this pink and black polkadot number. This is me with Lauren, my first child. I look like I’m about 13 there but I’m actually 21.

This is me after I’d given birth to Alex, my second baby. I was about 25 I think. I look knackered!

From polkadot tshirts, we go to full medieval garb. Those are fake braids. This was at a university feast thingy. I spotted a UFO that night. (And I hadn’t been drinking).

This is one of my two blonde phases. Tons and tons of streaks which totally ruined my hair, but I liked it. It was great to have something to blame my stupidity on, other than myself.