Here's to the end of a pretty ordinary week. Mr P had to give bone marrow sample and has had appointment at Peter Mac. We're waiting to find out if he has blood cancer, leukaemia or whatever they call it now. Elder minipeeler is still having major issues with anxiety and school refusal. My MIL offered to pay for him to go to a private school she thinks would be better for him.. would've been nice to offer that last year, when I was having to enrol him in the only (really big) public school in our catchment and I was saying that I didn't have a good feeling about it, that I felt that there'd be problems for him given the issues he'd had in the past, but had no choice financially. I was equally anxious and bummed out about it and she knew that back then. Now she wants to sweep in with her money and save the day, by uprooting him and plonking him into a new school‽ I feel bad for being ungrateful. Miniest is going through a very testing rebellious and wilful stage. I'm trying to give her as much of myself as I can and my patience, as she is jealous of Elder and her dad being home all the time, which is perfectly understandable. She is academically gifted but puts in a bare minimum of effort and is wasting her awesome potential and it's hugely frustrating, but she doesn't give a shit. I am feeling older and more tired in my body and it's depressing. I've been bingeing dystopian shows on Netflix and find them comfortingly awful. I gave up on the "comedy" category.. maybe Americans just laugh at different stuff, but I found little humour there. Thankyou for reading my grumbles.
It sounds like you've got an awful lot on your plate. Just keep swimming mama, your strength is a beacon for your family.
Thankyou eagle 🛟⚓
Girl, you have so much on your plate. Like, you're the only one holding it all together. Your strength is admirable. I'm sorry you're going through all of this, it's hard! If you ever want to, or able to, catch up for a coffee and a debrief, I'm available. It sounds like you need some serious "me time". Sending you all my love and postive energy 💜
Thankyou spud 🫶
Sounds like it’s gonna be rough for a while. You can vent here anytime. We gotcha. I very much hope the tests all come back negative. But shit happens. And if it does, there are very good treatments these days and Peter Mac is world class, no better place to be. You’re doing brilliant with the minipeelers. Other people will always have opinions, but you know their needs best. And if you decide the offer of money is helpful, take it without hesitation, do whatever you think is best for the minis. The politics can be worried about later. As for Netflix, I can recommend 3 Body Problem for the dystopian genre. For comedy there’s heaps of older movies on there sometimes old school comedy is a good remedy to modern American humour. Although The Good Place is an exception, thats one of my favourite shows of recent years.
Older comedy, of course! Thanks for your kind thoughts and for the recommendation 👍
I'm so sorry to hear it. Please, if you can handle doing it get in touch with carers supports right now. If someone could help you with it that would be great.
I'll keep it in mind thanks Melba 🙂
so many hugs to you all
use all the social workers at the hospital
I'll keep that in mind Seagoon 💜
That is a nightmare week 😔
Wishing Mr P all the best for the test results, I can't imagine how stressful that would be 💜
You're totally justified in being frustrated at MIL's belated benevolence. It's nice she's offering to help, but not helpful when she's offering!
I went through a phase like Miniest and grew out of it — mostly anyway.
Before you know it, she'll be 40, and you'll laugh as you recount a story about a crazy thing she did when she was a teenager.
Take care 💜
Thanks AJ 🫶
I am so excited. Tonight I'm off to London for a month for a holiday woop woop!!
Pls give recs on things to do! Currently planning on visiting:
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Cornwall
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Bath
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Oxford
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Cambridge
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Scotland / Wales
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other places in and around London
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all Premier League stadium tours in London
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hopefully Old Trafford as well
London: Camden Town is a cool place if you're into markets and food. The usual spots in London (Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, The Mall, Buckingham Palace, Tower of London if you're into history). I enjoyed a low-key stroll through The National Gallery in London. Southbank is great for a walk too from Tower Bridge down towards Blackfriars or even Waterloo Bridge. Oh almost forgot.. Ye Olde Mitre pub. It's a tiny traditional 1547 real ale pub. I fell in love with hand pulled ales over there.
England: If you're in the south/the coast I preferred Eastbourne and Hastings to Brighton even though Brighton is the most famous. Also if you're after white cliffs, Eastbourne has more impressive ones than Dover even though the white cliffs of Dover are the more famous.
Scotland: Definitely try a nice sit-down meal of Haggis if you haven't had it before. I spent a bit of time in Edinburgh just unwinding and soaking it all in. Obviously the castle is a focus point. You can't really go wrong much there. Went to bingo at Meadowbank and that was great if you like bingo.
Wales: I only went to Cardiff and the main thing I went there for doesn't exist anymore (Doctor Who Experience). The streets and Cardiff Castle are lovely to see though.
Wanted to show a couple of photos from the cliffs near Eastbourne.. the first one gives you a bit of scale with the lighthouse. The second one was me demonstrating that there are absolutely no fences or safety measures of any kind.
My mum hates that second photo.
Check out Edinburgh! I got recommended it and went in with low expectations but man it was the highlight of the trip. The Churchill war rooms were amazing too. Also get on the millionaires shortbread from m&s!
all Premier League stadium tours in London
hopefully Old Trafford as well
if you're keen to see a game - tickets to premier league games are expensive and hard to come by. if there are any FA cup games on, it can be a good way to see a premier league team play, tickets are cheaper and easier to come by in the early stages.
Cornwall
do a walk on the coast - can highly recommend Polperro
Turns out I wasn't across where the FA cup was up to, good luck getting tickets to the final on the 26th of May
If you're driving to Cornwall because the train is expensive, you can take a lesser motorway for a free squiz at stone henge as you drive by. I was told by family near Exeter that Cornwall is pretty touristy and parking can be a nightmare in season, so maybe a tour bus?
The London museums and art galleries were free. May as well see all the cool shit they acquired from the world.
I'd keep an eye out for UK brands that get smashed with the Australia tax. Fashion, fragrance, alcohol etc.
Have you read The Dark is Rising sequence? Lots of Cornwall and Wales things to go see.
Watch out for "road men", which is apparently what they call eshays
all the museums , the globe theatre, have lunches in tea rooms or pubs , carnaby street, greenwich observatory, you can buy little books of walks to go on
Stone henge
Winchester
Tate Modern is just stunning, it's across the river from st pauls and it's next to the globe and the london museum
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Declining a work social event is a great way to get a secret afternoon off if everyone else is going
Especially if you’re so not popular that nobody notices you’re missing
The secret is to never be known enough for people to notice
The words work and social do not belong in the same sentence.
Kinda just laying here in a stressed out but exhausted state from the week. Had a bite to eat but too tired for much else. Think I am gonna pour a drink and make a list of the work life things that have to happen next week then go to bed. I hate feeling like I left everything in a mess but nothing seemed to get finished this week and I can already feel the wave building up for next . Gah hopefully it's just grey day blues
Feeling a bit like that except it's my travel plans that's a siren-blaring mess lol. I'm letting myself park it till tomorrow, can't fix the mess if I don't recharge right now and let my brain heal from all the load it's been placed under. Lean into the grey I say, get cozy and warm for one night at least.
You are right. Ended up just writing down what I need to do tomorrow morning in case I wake up stressed still. Now listening to the rain. Good luck with the travel plans. I am sure it will come together when you have some rest
Dins, some music and bed. Going to stick to this 6am wake up thing. It'll make it easier for when I find a role.
Enjoy your evening everyone ❤️
Sleep well, MusicMan 💜
I have a Velcro kitty this morning. Probably just a function of weather and I’m wearing wool, but makes me a bit nervy. Both WhiteBoy and Miss Tortie behaved like this when terminal. Stupid brain, just enjoy the hugs!
Miss Meow was velcro overnight. She's happily snoozing in her own bed now the heating is on, so I'm putting it down to weather.
My velcro kitty just got a health check and came back fine. Deffo something in the air at the moment.
When mine doesn't ignore me completely I get worried, but she's always been fine.
Ted bitted me, I held him. You would think I was torturing him the noise he made. 😹
Interview was rescheduled. This is fine, I am still fucking drowsy.
I miss feeling awake 😭 like cotton-wool over my brains and constantly yawning.
Puss has been chewing on my toes, since I took away the wooden fork he was gnawing on lol
I tried to post on a tolkien site, it was like trying to post on a fundamentalist site where all answers have to be from tolkien scripture 😵
You must read all of his letters, or else you're not a true Tolkien fan /s
Also, i know his name is pronounced "tok-keen" but I always say "tol-key-en" 😭
because he never wrote the same thing twice there are different versions of middle earth history and facts
so it really is like scripture with people quoting different facts at each other or quoting from gospels, ie accepted writings about tolkien
i was foolish and wrote something from real life and in my own words😹
My favourite tolkein character is Handshoe from one of his draft translations of Beowulf. Checkmate tolkeinheads
Email subject line: "Order Your Custom Branded Diaries for 2025 Now!"
OH HELLS NO. I've barely entered 2024. Geeezzzus
2025 sounds made up.
A conspiracy of diary makers, I tells ya!
Excuse me? It’s still 2020
Every fule nows it's 1986. 👍
2016 was only 4 years ago as far as I'm concerned 🤷♂️
But where is the future I was promised. No flying cars, no aliens, no mega volcano, no zombies, and my clothes do not look remotely futuristic. I guess we have had a viral apocalypse (biological), and viral apocalypse (technological) can’t be too far away with the progress of AI and cyber warfare.
I need to know what outfits to plan. Are we doing the Walking Dead or Mad Max?
Feeling sick still today from the migraine yesterday so am chilling in bed with fluffy butt. Might get some music done today because the weekend is all IT learning time.
As an aside, windows server seems pretty straightforward. Nothing too crazy as yet.
Out of snot, now it's just blood. Halp
Sympathy! Been there snotted that.
Physio visit today to ward off any future migraines this weekend. Need the study time.
Expensive insurance, but hopefully worthwhile in the end!
Half my team is out with the lurgy. Week got derailed by random urgent requests and bugs and feels chaotic....
Need a strong coffee and a list I think. Flu season/COVID return seems bad and early this year. And the general level of unhingedness and stress is high out there
I have a dilemma. Boyo will become 40 in the not too distant future. He’s asked I not do a big thing because not trusting people to turn up. Based upon his 30th this is valid. So WTF do I do? Self fulfilling nothing or attempt a Thing that could end up worse?
Speak to the most reliable friends (the ones that will definitely show up) and maybe oragnise a group pub thing. Send a larger invite so more could show up, but if they don't at least it's not that awkward with others around, maybe?
Just spitballing here
Yeah, some of the people he may most want are the least reliable.
Small thing?
Maybe a nice dinner date, just the two of you? A movie and food? A daytrip somewhere?
I went to the Gold Coast for my 40th. Spent my actual 40th birthday at dreamworld. Fed the tigers, rode the rides and had a ball with the family. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I didn't want a party and the only way to stop my mother from planning one was to go interstate!
I visited the Servals at Werribee for mine. Most wiry fur. Those girls love their cream cheese! 😻
I am currently pinned down by a snoring void.
When you snore with the V O I D, the V O I D snores with you
Do the pointy pins go in and out with the wruffles?
It depends - if I give up use of my left arm entirely to provide an appropriately supportive pillow they are tucked away. If I claim the use of my arm she needs to use one leg as a support brace and things get very pointy when that happens.
Re-watching The Expanse...such a good show.
Really keen on adding Belta-lingua into my everyday's vocabulary.
Belta-lingua is the language spoken by those born and raised in space aka Belters, for those who aren't familiar with it.
It's the Klingon of the 2010's
I seem to have flipped my sleeping around to the other extreme. Now rather than sleeping at 6am, I'm sleeping at 6pm. God at this point I feel like the only time I'm happy sleeping is if I'm bucking social norms and sleeping like a madman. Besides it being an odd time to go to sleep, it hasn't been working too badly for me, especially since it's dark by those times these days. Unfortunately I forgot to tell Alexa that I took the bins out so she started making noise at 8:30 yelling at me to take the bins out (bin day was yesterday, but the reminder goes off every 24hrs til I mark it complete)
Can't get back to sleep, but I'm too tired to get up and try again in a couple of hours
Regarding bins: I miss having a garbage chute, or wheelie bins to take to the curb. My apartment building has a dumpster room downstairs but I have to lug my bags of trash and kitty litter down too it. I have no idea when "bin day" is anymore, and taking recycling down is a pain.
Try to rest if you can, and keep a good sleep schedule. It's too easy to slip into bad sleeping habits.
I have been looking at a lot of real estate listings recently and was complaining about too much grey. I think I found an antidote.
I remember so many houses like this. Very nostalgic feel. I bet many a delicious meal came out of that kitchen. Whilst the brown is not to my taste, today’s endless palette of grey is soul sucking least people used to put some personality into their houses before.
geebus the decor is the worst of the 70s
paint and spanish furniture and it might look ok
that doona cover is straight from the 80s
I bet it's solid!
Very solid - but I would have concerns about that much brick holding the heat/cold. Depending on how the rest of the design works it could be a major issue or a major benefit having that much thermal mass.
The bathroom and the canary yellow benchtops - errk.
Fuzzy girl is still a bit quiet and was fussing about something unknown last night, but she had a midnight snack and has eaten her breakfast. She's under the doona sharing the hot water bottle
Cheers cheeky monkeys 🍺🐒
Well if I must 🍸
🍺
Cheers 🍷
🍺
Cheers 🍸
🍺
Oh god I tried spicy chicken ramen. My lips! They are ACTUALLY on fire.
🧯
What's the deal with people putting the lemmy @user in their comments when they're replying to that person? I see AJ doing it, and elsewhere on lemmy it seems everyone is doing it.
It's because you can access Lemmy from other fediverse sites, like Mastodon. Iirc, Mastodon is like Twitter, so when replying to a thread or comment, the reply will @ the users they are responding to
Twitter used to do the same thing in reply tweets. Since mastodon basically just does what twitter did, they decided to clone that feature too. On mastodon, Lemmy posts just look like really long tweets a lot of the time, but with the magic of federation they can reply here too.
It is quite annoying when it gets deep and comments begin with 20 different @'s, but it's just something mastodon does and I don't think they can control it
Replying from Mastodon here. Sorry to be annoying, I like Federation 😊
Um. My ducted heating just died. I think it's the fan part of it.
Can you hit up Kmart for a little electric heater or electric throw to hold you while it's fixed? (when shops open)
Oh no! And even worse tomorrow’s the weekend so might not get trades until next week. Do you have a split system aircon? They can heat as well. Hopefully you can find ways to stay warm until it’s fixed.
Have found a tradie to come on Wednesday. Not a chance over the weekend apparently. Also, the nice person at the call centre said that they'd had more than 50 calls since 5 pm today for similar problems. Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh.
Mr Woof pushed me into second walkies. It was the right call, but it is definitely on the chilly side tonight.
My work week is finally done.
And what a cluster fuck.
While the department that I work in is profitable, overall our organisation is set to lose money this year.
Bad decisions made by the "manager" have been a contributing factor.
But.
The "manager" has gotten it in his head that if only our organisation can send an email to everyone on a partner organisation's mailing list, sales will boom.
A couple of months back, he convinced the partner organisation to send a small segment of its list an email offering them one of our organisation's products for free.
And to be fair, a reasonable number took up the free product.
This has convinced "manager" that if the partner organisation sends an email to its entire mailing list offering them a discount for buying our org's products, thousands of them will take it up. Even though many (most?) of their customers have never heard of us before.
The "manager's" boss is new in her role (she moved into it after a restructure earlier this year), and trusts what he says.
Here's where it becomes a trainwreck.
The past two years, our org has run an end of financial year sale aimed at consumers. Both times, it has increased sales a bit, but nowhere near enough to meet targets.
Marketing have tried different promotions and shown they work better. They want to run a marketing campaign to business customers for the end of financial year, and use a different approach with consumers in the new financial year.
They did a whole preso to "manager" showing that a different approach will generate more sales overall — but a lot of that revenue will fall in the new financial year.
Manager overruled them. His official reason is that he doesn't want to try anything different to last year, because that's risky.
(The real reason is he wants as many sales as possible this financial year, so that the losses from his bad decisions are as small as possible.)
So marketing are stuck with a campaign they know won't work.
"Manager's" brilliant plan is to use that campaign strategy that hasn't worked, but then to get the partner organisation to email everyone on their mailing list, which he thinks will mean thousands of people will buy products and that will make it work.
(And yes, partner org mailing everyone on their mailing list is something out org hasn't done before. But this isn't seen as "risky" by "manager" because it's his idea.)
Of course, this pissed off the business salespeople.
So to keep them on-side, he's also making marketing run the business promotion as well, even though they don't have the staff or the budget to do both.
He's only just approved all of this now, and both promotions need to start on 1 June, so the graphic designers basically have two weeks to get everything ready.
It gets worse.
The partner organisation has already explicitly told us that e-mailing everyone on their contact list during June is a hard no.
But "manager" has sold his boss on the idea, and she's said that she expects partner org to email everyone on their contact list.
Following a string of meetings, my boss is now stuck with making that happen. Even though it's a hard no from the partner org.
So I was stuck in a string of meetings today where my boss was desperately trying to find a reason to tell her contact at the partner org why they should change their policy other than "Manager" thinks it's a good idea (there isn't one). Or some fact or piece of information will persuade "manager" to see reason (I'm honestly not hopeful).
Sorry for the rant. But it's been a week!
"manager" is an absolute moron, and it's insane that his bosses don't see it. What the actual fucking fuck. These people aren't earning their wages in the slightest 😑
This is always tough. Everyone drags their feet because it won't work, then it doesn't like everyone expected, and then the manager has a new reason to blame everyone else for their poor decision
dammit I have rosacea again, looks like I have red eyes, will be scaring people over zoom and such.
( just shows how tired out i've been from sciatica )
Are you quite sure you weren’t recently bitten by a bat?
Hugs. Rest. You been healing great. Hopefully just a lil bump on the road
Put the umbrella logo in your zoom background
5 - 2. Holy shit. Can't have that happening. Need hot cuppa in the morning.
???
Is anyone here a teacher/recently completed their education degree? I have a question about practicum placement.
This may be only applicable to Swinburne Online but figure I'd ask anyway.
Currently, I do 2 units a trimester and find that comfortable enough with balancing a full time job and a part time child. I'm planning the next few years to get an idea on course work, which units are available in which trimester, etc, and in between all that I have the practicum placements.
Regarding the placement, I'm looking at the unit info and its a full 12 week unit, with 20 days placement and 2 assessments (with 0% weighting - makes no sense, typo or whatever) and was wondering how intense this unit might be because I was thinking if I can squeeze it into a trimester and have 2 units plus the placement unit I can shorten my study plan to get my degree from mid-2028 to early 2028 or even end of 2027.
Hopefully this makes sense.
(also no idea how I am going to get 20 days off x 4 placements with work but that's another matter.)
There's a new Mercedes parked in the 5-minute zone outside one of Perth's city stations. It's been there a couple of days. On the first day, I thought it was a case of rich jerk parks wherever they want to and just pay the fine.
Now there are several presumably expensive tickets on the windscreen and a notice it'll be towed soon.
I wonder what the story is? Presumably if it had been stolen, police would have notified the owner by now. So has it just been abandoned? If so, why there? It's very mysterious.
Has anyone checked for bodies in the boot? (I have watched too many tv shows)
I can feel the rain coming, this does not bode well.
In other news it's nearly clock off time!
wth, it's not just rain, the temp has plummeted
Wrestling with the idea of heading off for a weekend adventure. Staring at the map but can't think of where to go.
I feel like something in the mountains would be nice but only if I can find a good book to start on because I'm currently between books. I'm not sure if I loved the first Discworld book I read.
If it wasn't likely to be so wet, I'd recommend Lake Tarli Kaarng. Have to hike in and out though. Better keep that one in mind for summer methinks.
assume you've read the expanse? I LOVED those books. the martian is also a great (if obvious) suggestion.
Have you been to Howqua Hills? You could stay in Mansfield or Jamieson and head in from there. Absolutely stunning.
Trying to find some small comfy masks to wear at work all day. Was surprised how little there is available at chemist warehouse and Priceline.
Playing gin rummy. Me winning 3 - nil.
Playing 10 cards each. If you pick up from the middle, you gotta pick them all up. Don't need to put down. If you do, big mistake. As the man found out.
Edit 4 - nil
Little things that make you enjoy life more?
For me right now, it's movies.
Watching Crackerjack in light of participating in a potential lawn bowls game next week.
Rain incoming - the good thing is that it won't last all that long - today.
Went out with mein liebe for a few beers and a pub meal. Now home getting into the aldi wine we bought. Got a dr appt on Monday for my MC script so hopefully I can feel rested; the night terrors and sleep debt are killing me.
Wheeeee!
so many hugs
I wonder what kind of music Falco would be releasing if he were still alive. I reckon they'd be absolute bangers like Rock Me Amadeus.
Gosh, I love his song Egoist.
now for an old old song
winchester cathedral -csny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI7phwtRjUA
Rain? Wasn't the sun here an hour ago?
The sun has now liquified and is falling from the sky. My vague plans to do some gardening this afternoon have definitely been shelved.
I did see it was due to rain today so I skipped watering yesterday
Breakfast 🍏🍎🍐🍊🍋🍈🫐🍓🍇🍉🍌🍒🍑🥭🍍🥥🥦🥑🫛🍆🍅🥝🥬🥒🌽🥕🥐🍠🫚🥔🧅🥯🍞🥖🥨🧀🧇🥞🧈🍳🥚🥓🥩🍗🍖🫓🍕🍟🍔🌭🥙🧆🌮🌯🥗🍲🍜🍝🥘🍛🍣🍱🥟🦪🍥🍘🍚🍙🐠🍤🪼🦀🐙 🍗🥮🍢🍡🍧🍰🧁🥧🍦🍨🎂🍮🍭🍬🍫🥜🌰🍪🍿🍯🥛☕️🍵🍺🍶🥤🧋🧃🥂🍷🥃🍸🍹🧉🔋
Coffee, yogurt and muesli please
☕️🥛🌾
Has anyone watched Dark Matter yet? I think this is the first time a book has been turned into a movie or show and i've actually read the book first. And I gotta be honest, I kind of hated the book so I'm curious to hear what people think of the show.
I've seen the ads for it and I am not enticed to start an account on whatever streaming service it's on, I forget which. There's a quote on the ad that makes me cringe super hard: "what if the person who trapped me here... is me?!"
Apple I think. And yeah I think that makes sense in the context of the book, but they sort of ruined half the plot in the trailer which is dumb AF.
