Sad Snoskred

I can’t believe it.

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Wednesday morning the other half got a call from Mum. She’d fallen and she couldn’t get up. He was already up and dressed so he jumped in his car and drove over, I got up and threw clothes on as fast as I could while I called the ambulance as he drove over. The ambulance call taker took his number and while I drove over called him to get more info.

When I got there she was still conscious. She hadn’t broken anything in her fall – silly now to think my biggest concern at that time was a broken hip. The ambulance call taker was telling me to get her to focus on her breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. I kept saying it, over and over. FUCK OFF she said to me in her characteristic way, just as the call taker told me the ambulance was in the street. I ran out to direct them in, and that is when she stopped breathing. The other half called out to me to let me know and the paramedics went in and began CPR.

Time stopped. A second crew of paramedics appeared. They did everything they possibly could.. but.. she was gone.

We are in so much shock because I expected at least another 10 years before she left us. At least with Dad we had time to prepare.

She was set up over there so perfectly, everything she needed was just within reach. And it was such a peaceful spot. Mum had a family of kangaroos, visiting kookaburras, a wonderful back patio to sit and enjoy the trees.

It wasn’t until later that I found the piece of paper with all the high blood pressure readings, then I checked the machine with the past 20 readings many of which were severe hypertension. She did not tell me.

We had a doctor visit set for Wednesday afternoon and I had been going with her as they were setting her up a care plan. I’m sure she just thought oh, I’m going to the doctor today, we’ll sort it then.

She missed Dad far more than we knew. I’m happy they are together again. I’m thankful for that, sad for us.

Her last words to me were so Mother. ;) I won’t take that personally.

family, Sad Snoskred

Sometimes there are words.

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Mark Margolis as Uncle Tio

And sometimes, there are not words.

This week, I’ve completed the posts for episodes 507 and 508 over at Rewatch Breaking Bad, though the posts will not publish until mid-July.

These episodes were the last ones my very excellent work friend got to see. Cancer stole her from us in early 2013, just a few months before season 5b, as they called it, began to air.

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Oh, how she loved this show. I think she loved it even more than I did, which is saying a LOT. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the night when we were working together, we would speculate, posit theories, imagine the most insane and crazy storylines, and consider the vastness of the Breaking Bad universe.

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We would talk about the show that existed, moments that happened, what our favourite scenes and lines were. The two of us could speak many of the lines out loud from memory. I knew exactly which lines to say to her which would leave her giggling, and she knew which lines to say for me.

s03e0713

I remember one time when the phones were quiet, we spoke for an uninterrupted by phone calls hour, just about the clouds in some scenes, and the weather in Albuquerque, and how it always seemed to put on a show, for the show. We talked about how Albuquerque had become a character of the show and how it gave the show such a unique look.

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I also remember we talked about Mark Margolis and how amazing his acting was, because his character Uncle Tio was unable to speak but you saw everything you needed to know in his eyes, and he had this bell that he would ring.

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We both loved the character of Mike, especially the scene that began with him shorting out electricity with helium balloons. We talked about a spin off show that could involve him. There had already been some talk about a spin off on the podcasts – which we had both listened to.

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We both loved Jesse as a character. We loved where season four had taken his character. We loved his involvement in the major capers of season 5a. We also loved his outfits.

The final eight episodes were so perfect, she would have loved every single minute of them. She would have loved to discuss each episode with me. How much I would have loved to discuss them with her!

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How deeply thrilled she would have been to see Better Call Saul, the spin off show that appeared after Breaking Bad ended. She would have particularly loved the Mike Centric episode – Five-O – which will hopefully land Jonathan Banks a nomination for best supporting actor when the Emmy nominations are announced on July 16th, and hopefully he will win his first Emmy award at the 67th Emmy Awards due to be held in September this year.

My friend is greatly missed, by me, and by many others who adored her.

About Snoskred, death, Sad Snoskred, television shows, things to remember

Vale Mary

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mary

Mary was found dead in a corner of the chook pen this morning. She was in a place the girls hang out in the morning, where the early rays of the sun meets one of their favourite dust bathing patches.

We could not find anything wrong with her visible to the naked eye, but back when Twiggy was euthanased and sent off to be necropsied, we discovered that Twiggy had some serious nutritional deficiencies which I wrote about here – Chicken Merge & Vale Twiggy – and seeing as all 4 chooks came from the same breeder, the vet suspected that the other 3 girls would have the same problem.

Lizzy and Kitty seem like they have thrived in their new conditions, but Mary was always that little bit smaller than they were. She has always had a bit of a sneeze though the vet could not find any specific reason for it and was sure it was nothing to be concerned about, especially as it did not come with any other symptoms.

She has now been buried under the lemon tree in the garden the chooks love to free range in whenever they get a chance. She will be missed, especially by Lizzy and Kitty with whom she was most close..

Kitty, Lizzy and Mary

Good nutrition for chooks is quite an involved process. Just yesterday Terry from Henblog wrote a post about how laying hen pellets are made. Our scratch mix includes hen pellets and I never see any pellets left behind, but we are now considering changing it up with more pellets and giving the grain as a less often treat. Especially as there is a seed in the scratch mix which the girls do not seem to eat.

As I posted when Ancona was euthanased in Vale Ancona – there are 7 other chickens in the yard for whom life continues. They live minute by minute, sucking the most joy out of each and every moment, whether it is a dirt bath, finding a bug, eating a treat from the humans.. all we can do is love them while they’re here, protect them the best we can from predators, know when it is time to let them go, and remember them when they are gone.

Given this experience with Twiggy and Mary, the chicken auctions will be unlikely to be a place we source chickens from again. We would be more likely to try and find a reliable breeder in future..

Chickens, Sad Snoskred, Vale Pets

Lightbulb Moment. Wardrobe Take 1.

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before1

Since I’m not going to work at the moment – a situation in limbo with no outcome as yet – I have been setting tasks for myself each day. It might be something tiny like clean the bathroom vanity, or sort through a pile of clutter. And then there are the huge tasks which are not a one shot deal – they require hours over a space of days in order to be completed. Sorting my cupboards fell into this huge task category.

This began with the other half, who has one small rather pitiful side of the Walk In Robe to himself. My clothes had quietly begun a takeover of his side of the walk in robe. It isn’t like my clothes don’t have space, there are at least 4 full size cupboards devoted to just my stuff. It was just easier for me to keep the most worn stuff in one spot.

He said “Do you think I can have my side of the wardrobe back?” – I said, yeah kthx lemme get to it. In the fullness of time. :)

So my outer self was not doing anything about this, but my inner self was quite busy thinking about how I would like my wardrobe to look and how it would be best organised.My internal self eventually came up with a plan as follows – Batch together –

– dresses

– going out tops

-layering wear

– jumpers

– tops only worn around the house

– skirts

– going out pants

– running errands pants

– around the house pants

– camisoles

My internal self tele-communicated with my external self, and a couple of days later I got started. I cleared a little portable rack which I can use for jobs like this. I also dug out my 50 pack of non slip coathangers which I wanted to use for tank dresses – of which I have quite a few but they are mostly worn over layering wear because I am not a fan of my arms.

I started by emptying out a rack which lives in the bedroom and contained stuff I had not worn for a while. Some of that went off to goodwill, others went to the correct area on the portable rack. Once I had this rack cleared, I chose to use it purely for dresses and began picking them out of.. well, chaos. Chaos looked like this –

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Dresses inside out, pants, tops, shorts, all kinds of wears all thrown together. This chaos probably resembles the inside of my mind over the past year.

As I sorted through a very colourful collection of outfits, I began to realise something about myself.

Over the past year, I have become less.

Typing it out like that it seems like nothing but the truth is, it is everything.

Less me being who I truly am.

Less wearing things I like.

Less outgoing.

Less comfortable.

Less fun.

Less inclined to want to have fun.

dresses1

A lot of my gorgeous dresses never saw the light of day or only got worn once or twice. Some still have tags on. I realised that I have been staying safe with my outfits, wearing the same clothes which I felt safe and comfortable in. Why dress up, it is only going to work.

I have hunkered down in my comfort zone and I was not willing to move out of it, no way, nu-huh, kthx imma gonna let you finish, but it is safer this way. If I am not being who I really am, when they reject me or say I’m not good enough at my job or point fingers in my direction, well, that has nothing to do with the real me. The real me is protected inside a bubble. You can’t hurt the real me.

The real me is safe.

You can take aim at the fake me instead.

This was quite an upsetting lightbulb moment for me.

I have been living an a-ha lyric. Specifically, from the song Cosy Prisons –

So if you’re careful – You won’t get hurt

But if your careful all the time – Then what’s it worth?

You can view the video for this song here – Cosy Prisons – worth watching just for the gorgeous Morten Harket. Still beautiful even all these years after Take On Me.

I need to get back to the first lyrics of that same song –

Take a moment if you dare
Catch yourself a breath of air
There’s another life out there
And you should try it

I’m going to write more about this, obviously, because once I realised this I began to think about how I got to this place, and I want to show you the end results of the tidy up.

I am not sure if the posts will all be public because a lot of this is due to goings on at work – but if I password protect them I’ll let you know in advance and tell you to email me for the password.

Right now, I haz a flu, my eyes ache, I feel terrible, so I’m going to leave this here for now. Watch out for another post on this later this week.

get organised, Sad Snoskred

Just the other night..

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I was looking for a snack and I ended up with a banana. It made me think of Pixie from Daisy The Curly Cat. I went to see if maybe my kitties would like them a banana, and it turns out that the Little Kitty did, and she ate all the stringy bits I had pulled off the banana..

Then just a few minutes ago I went into my feed reader only to see that Pixie has gone to the rainbow bridge. It is surprising to me how many tears I have just shed for a kitty I was never lucky enough to meet in person.

I will never be able to look at a banana without thinking of Pixie. I am thinking of you Daisy, and Daisy’s Mommy. I’m sorry. I have a sad, too – as you suggest Daisy I will go and hug my kitties now.

kitties, Sad Snoskred

Olympics VS Commonwealth Games

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An absolutely disgraceful display of nastiness is present over at Fox Sports slash news.com.au re the Beijing Olympics. Some people are having a go at two Aussie swimmers who won silver.

Because Australia gets to compete in the Commonwealth Games every 4 years, there are some people who have very high expectations of Aussie athletes. The last Commonwealth Games were held on Australian soil in Melbourne, and we won a total of 221 medals, 84 of those gold. Previous to that, we won 207 total (82 gold) in Manchester in 2002.

We had the best ever medal tally for Australia at the Olympics when we hosted the games in Sydney, and there we won a total of 58 medals – only 16 of those were gold. In 2004 we came home with only 49 medals, 17 of those were gold which was our best ever gold medal tally for an Olympics..

As far as I am concerned just showing up at an Olympic games is a massive achievement. It represents years of training and hard work. Winning a medal regardless of the colour of that medal is something to be incredibly proud of.

The coverage of the games is terrible this year – so Aussie biased, and when the Aussies don’t qualify or get a medal, they barely get another mention. I suspect this is a large part of the problem – the commentators are giving people the wrong idea about what it means to get to the games.

I have managed to catch one entire competition which was the mens 77kg weightlifting. I don’t know if we had anyone from Australia competing, I never saw anyone from here. Even so, I greatly enjoyed watching the competition because I got to see a lot of what was going on and the commentators seemed intelligent and told me a fair bit of the backstory of the people involved.

This was one highlight of a pretty awful coverage otherwise – usually Channel 7 flick from one sport to another often not even returning to the sport you were just getting into, stuff is cut to pieces, it is just bad form. Oh, and enough swimming already. We don’t need to see every single heat of every single race, and please don’t replay one medal win 20 times a day instead of showing us live goings on.

I also did get to see some of the synchronised diving but unfortunately it wasn’t the full competition. I love diving, gymnastics, the synchronised swimming and diving, things like the hammer and the javelin. I wish they would have synchronised weightlifting across some of the classes, that would be cool to see, don’t you think? Especially seeing the various sizes of the different weight classes on the same stage.

I have to say the Chinese are putting on an impressive show! The water cube is wicked with the changing colour LED’s. The opening ceremony was very impressive even though nobody watches that kind of thing. It is a shame about the pollution – I am hopeful this will start them thinking about what they are doing to their environment and how unhealthy it is for the people who live there let alone anyone who would like to visit.

Sad Snoskred, wrong world

Perspective.

12 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

I wasn’t going to write this post today and I’m sorry if this one hits a little close to home for anyone. I’m sitting in my parents house waiting for the carpet cleaners to finish cleaning the carpets at our old house, but something is on my mind and it just won’t go away. So here I am to blog about it.

A blogger I have been reading since November’s Nablopomo 2006 found out today that after being treated for breast cancer a couple of years ago, she now has cancer in several other places.

Sepha has been on my mind for over a week now after she posted about her trip to Peru and a really positive post about coming home from there knowing what she wants to do next.

When I read it, I began thinking about trust. I trust my body right now, today. What if it let me down? It’s not just about cancer, anything could happen. Who would look after my cats if something happened to both of us, like a car accident? Who could I trust to do it the way I want it done? Pets are a big commitment, just as big as having children.

Then a few short days later she posted about her lymphnodes being palpable. I began thinking about my body and what it would mean to me to be in a position where I’d beaten cancer once and find myself possiby facing it a second time. I think I would be furious, terribly angry.

Today I checked her blog first thing and saw the news I did not want to see. You can read her post here.

I will not lie to you, I have spent some serious time bawling when I should be unpacking. I’m just so sorry, Sepha. Life is not fair.

Then I stop and think about the people I know who had cancer for a long time. My own Grandmother, who had cancer when she was 60, had radiotherapy and then lived till she was 85, when one day she decided to mop under the washing machine and slipped on a wet floor as she pushed it back into place, breaking her pelvis.

Soon after she was admitted to hospital they discovered she had bowel cancer. I think internally she had known it for a long time but she did not want to be told for certain, she did not want to let it change her. She just wanted to keep going as long as she could. I can understand that.

Would I rather not know, even if there was a chance it could be fixed and I could live a lot longer? I think so. This is why I put off having things checked out. This is why we all do that.

What I remember about my Grandmother is the joy she took out of each and every day she was here, the love she gave us, the ability she had to push herself even when she was elderly. She took us out all the time, to museums, to art galleries, to the beach, to all kinds of places.

She sucked the marrow out of life up until her last moments. I remember her coming to visit us from the hospital and looking at us so intently, like she was trying to fix the image of us in her mind before leaving us for good. The next day she slipped quietly away in the morning before any of us had a chance to get to the hospital. That would be exactly the way she wanted it.

The Other Half’s mother was told in the late 90s that she would not see Christmas 1998. She saw five more Christmas-es. I do not think any doctor should ever be putting an expiry date on someone like that. Some people, when told they will expire, do exactly that. Some people simply refuse to go when a doctor says they will go.

In fact we should not even ask “How long do I have”. None of us know that.

None of us know what the future holds for us.

I could get hit by a car later this afternoon.

It is up to us to take each and every moment we are given and make the most of it.

Are you living the life you want to live? If not, why not? How can you get there? What does it require? How unimportant are the material things when the end of your life is approaching? How important will it be that you live in a clean house, that your washing is done, that you sat for half an hour and watched the news which doesn’t affect you in a personal way? Would it be better to spend that time with family, friends, kids, pets?

The internet is important in some ways. It is our way to leave a lasting impression of ourselves here for future generations. It is a way to examine, to journal, to consider other points of view, to connect with people we may never have been lucky enough to meet in our real lives. But it is not the be all and end all.

There are many questions I will be asking myself in the future but my determination is not to waste as much time on unimportant things. Treasure each moment. Push myself to do the things I want to do, instead of the things I “should” do.

Those of you who I have met on the internet – you are all very important to me. Though we have never met in person it does not stop me from thinking of you as good friends. When things like this happen I feel this more strongly than usual.

I am thankful for whatever led me to you – or you to me. I am thankful you take the time to share your thoughts, experiences, and dreams with us all. I laugh when you laugh, I cry when you cry, I get angry when you get angry. I don’t believe any of that is wasted time.

I believe that working 60 hour weeks in order to pay a mortgage and have money for your children when you are gone is a waste of time. Will your kids remember the nice things they had, everything you worked so hard to give them at your funeral? No, they will simply be thinking “I wish we’d had more time together”.

I believe that you should do more things that make you happy. Whatever that is for you.

If your job is making you miserable, quit. Why waste a second somewhere you’re not happy? Cut back, shave your budget, make positive changes.

If your relationship is making you miserable, get the heck out of there. It is better to be on your own than with someone who isn’t making you happy.

If your home is making you unhappy, move. Go to the place you most want to be. It may mean sacrifices but in the end it is worth it, if it will make you happy.

If you own things that make you feel uncomfortable? Sell those things or give them away.

If your friends whine, complain, bitch, and make you feel like shyte, get rid of those friends. There are people out there who are better for you. Go and find them.

Take time out. Take a holiday at least once a year. Take a sick day. Take the kids out of school and go somewhere as a family. My Mother was always so worried about us missing a day from school. School teaches kids how to read and write, how to add things up, but one day off from that isn’t going to mean they can’t function in society.

As Ferris Bueller said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it“.

I’m going to ask you a tough question. Maybe some of you are up for answering it in the comments section, maybe some of you are not. In either case, at least answer it to yourself.

What is the one thing, right now, you wish you could change about your life?

Update – Sepha passed away Thursday 9 July 2009.

Sad Snoskred