Like a ratty old jumper

I've shrugged studying back over my head again. Assignments, group work, countless readings that I'm not doing enough of.  It's all so familiar and well-worn. I know how to do this. I am doing it.  Quelle horreur.

I've not much to say this week.

1. My Little Guy is off with his Dad for 9 sleeps having the first half of the Easter hols 2 hours away from me. I miss his squirmy little body and his silly little voice and his little rat-fingers trying to tickle me.

2. The Big Guy's kids are off with their Mum on the normal week-on-week-off schedule. Thus we are kidless and it's sucky. And nice, but only for a little while.

4. The chickehs are doing well.  I am trying to train them to leap for food, which works sometimes but only if they can see the food.  Then they flutter and leap to get it. Dry cat food = nomnomnom. Perhaps I will open a  chicken circus one day. No doubt I will have to teach them other tricks besides chasing me and leaping. I will ponder it further.

5. I signed my fellowship contract today and I feel like a fraud because I'm nowhere near as Fellow-y as the other Fellows, but c'est la vie.  I am still deciding whether to change my position title on our website (I'm the webmaster) because of my fraud-y-feeling.

6. I got a Very Good Mark for my first assignment but I'm pissed off because the marks came from the peer ratings and our lecturer had told us that those ratings didn't count for anything and as it turned out they counted completely and I'd been soooooooo (SO) kind to the other students while they killed me with Death-By-Powerpoint. Now my choices in this matter are thus:
       a) keep marking everyone stupidly high (47 out of 50),
       b) mark everyone else a average grade only (30 out of 50) unless they blow my mind,
       d) write "I refuse to participate because it's so patently invalid to have me marking my peers".
What would you do?

And here's a picture for your eyes.

The traditional Venice shot. Ahhhh, holidays, they go so fast.

For your viewing pleasure

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/50-unexplainable-black-white-photos

I'm particularly fond of these six.

#2 - who did they kill and why are they all so happy?
#8 - the best kind of stalkers
#10 - no words for this
#22 - why?why?why?
#28 - she's so adoring
#46 - olde-time-math-nerds

Tell me which are your faves and why :)

The running of the chickehs

As promised.

Thanks for the love.

Slow carbs and dead chickehs

What is this space for?

I'm not here very much, I read all your blogs and I comment here there and everywhere but I'm not sure what I'm doing here. Anyway...

Updates:
1.  Our chickehs were all eaten by foxes while we were in Italy. It was awful for our housesitter and awful for us when we got home because I did not see the letter she'd written us so I went searching for the chickens in the dark with a torch through our large backyard :(

The coop wasn't strong enough. Foxy Loxy got in and killed my chickeh-darlings. So sad.

We have new chickehs, they lay an egg a day each and I love them. Which sounds weird after just telling you all about our poor first set of chickens.  But we waited a while, and we got these from someone who didn't want them anymore and I really do love chickens.  These 3 are very funny, in that they chase me around the backyard for treats. They also climb the back stairs and cluck around on our patio in hope of finding/getting dry cat food (their favourite treat). I will endeavour to record them one day soon and post the vid of them here.




2.  The Big Guy and I have been on the 4 hour body diet and we've both lost tummy fat and are finding the diet relatively easy. (Kinda.)

Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates. Don’t eat bread, pasta, rice (brown or white), any grains (including corn), potatoes, breaded fried food or dairy (except some lactose-free cheeses) on your slow-carb days (except cauliflower).

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again. Meals should include protein, legumes, and non-starchy vegetables; eat as much as you like, 3-4x/day.

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories. Avoid milk (including soy), sweetened soda (no more than 16oz of diet), and fruit juice. One or two glasses of red wine are permitted.

Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit. Tomatoes and avocados are okay (the latter in moderation).

Rule #5: Take one day off per week. Go nuts and eat lots of calories to keep your metabolic rate (thyroid function, conversion of T4 to T3, leptin) up. Do at least five days of rules 1-4 before following rule 5.

Saturday is Crazy Day for us and we're both finding it hard to eat all the stuff we can't eat all week; not because there's not enough time, but because we just don't feel like it that much and it's hard to schedule eating crap into the day. I had pancakes with syrup and fruit last Saturday and was ill for a few hours after.  I think my body likes the veges/legumes/protein diet.



3.  I've been going to counselling class which has (so far) taught me that I'm probably not meant to be in drama school because I fucking hate role plays. I've also been attending cognitive/personality assessment classes which have taught me that IQ is a crock and that the courts love the shitty old MMPI. But I knew that dudes, teach me something new already.



4. I like making friends in my course and my Openness domain NEO-PI score puts me square in the psychopathology section.



5. My light period and my menopause fears have combined to make me overly hopeful that I'll skip a period for the next however many months and pop a baby out  because I'll have been pregnant and that was why my period was so light and I got O pains so early.  Ha! I'll show you psychopathology.

Once a scholar ...

Always a scholar?

I've started the Master. Oh Emm Gee. So far it's interesting and I'm finding my balance between work, study and family. Ha! I'm like a somersaulting acrobat juggling three balls on a tightrope and it's only just begun.

I also had a 1.5 day period, with a sum total of about 20 ml of blood (I know this TMI because of my Lunette cup which has convenient measurements). And then yesterday afternoon/evening I had what felt like ovulation cramps - on CD6. WHAT THE FUCK? Is this the beginning of the end? Potentially you lovely ladies will get to travel down menopause road with me and hear all about the highs and lows to scare the bejeezus outta you all (there probably won't be any highs except the high temperature at night when I make the bed all manky with my night sweats).

It's scaring me.

Bones WAS my favourite show

But not anymore.

I still have a metaphorical hard-on for David Boreanaz, I still enjoy the quips and the plots, I still like beating them to the cause of death and the murderer but my love for the show has, on the whole, been tainted, destroyed even, by two things.

1. Seely Booth is in a relationship with a blondie. That just kills me. I used to spend a good proportion of any episode waiting for him to take off his shirt and do Bones, in a dream, a coma, a fantasy, whatever. I waited and sometimes he did.  Sometimes he even got nekkid with casual s.ex partners and that was cool by me. But now the writers have ruined the UST (unresolved sexual tension) between Booth and Bones and to top it off they gave him a p.orn-worthy, intelligent, Bones-liking girlfriend.  She's the antichrist peeps and I hates her. He's MY precious.

MY precious!


2. Then, not only did they screw with my fantasies, they screwed with my safe haven. Were there ever any babies or pregnant people in Bones? Noooooo, just rotting corpses and lots of s.exy thoughts. Now, NOW they have ruined that too. Ruined it so much that even tBG sighs loudly every time they mention their babyjoy.

Stoopid Hodgkins and Angela made a baby - accidentally no less. And every fucking episode has mention, no,  dedicated screen time to the pregnancy.  So I want to shoot the TV. And the writers. How dare they fuck up my favourite show so badly.


Damn.




(Not sure if these pics are NSFW - male chests shown. Are they NSFW?)

And now I'm thinking about vampire hotties, is it just me or does everyone lerv Eric Northman.

And who would you prefer - David Boreanaz or Alexander Skarsgård?

Oh My God!

Mournful-Maura ... I'm still plodding along completely unpregnantly with frequent well-timed non-contracepted s.ex to keep my hopeyheart alive. Maybe that ought to read dopeyheart. Whatever.

The other night as the Big Guy and I watched an ad that featured cute toddler twins in boy/girl nappies, tBG turned to me and sighed. He told me how sad he was that we weren't having a baby. How much he had hoped to meet our child. All in the past tense, a done deal so to speak. Blerk.

We're not having a baby peeps. I don't like that reality. Not one bit. When will I stop giving pregnant women dagger eyes and muttering 'you're so lucky' under my breath when we pass each other? When will I look at/hold a baby and be happy for baby love without feeling like crying simultaneously? When will it stop?

Being on holidays was awesomely distracting - and I can't remember seeing ANY pregnant Italian women. Can't I stay away on holidays?


Giggling-Gertie ... yesterday the Little Guy ran out on our back verandah to take some of his laundry inside. He ran so fast and as he passed the back door handle he snagged the arm of his white dress-up shirt and practically pulled himself off his feet. He scraped his arm and was in tears, very very sad when he suddenly looked at his shirt. In a tone that ought to be reserved for noticing that your arm is hanging out of the socket and there's blood gushing everywhere, he cried, "OH MY GOD! MY SHIRT!!!!" It was hilarious and I found it incredibly difficult to remain consolatory whilst wanting to roll on the ground laughing. When talking about it with tBG later, I cried laughing, it was that funny. I wish I could have taped him saying it so you could hear the horror in his voice.


Looky-Lucy