This is from an email I recently received. I’d no idea this particular ship was being built, let alone that they were using ….. and I quote:

 

 

          “24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center.”

 

 

                          How amazing is THAT!

It is the fifth in a new class of warship - designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft. 

Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, LA, to cast the ship's bow section. When it was poured into the molds on Sept 9, 2003, 'those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,' recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. 'It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.' 

Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the 'hair on my neck stood up.' 'It had a big meaning to it for all of us,' he said. 'They knocked us down. They can't keep us down. We're going to be back.' 

The ship's motto is:

                                      'Never Forget'

 

It's quite normal to get hooked on a particular brand of foodstuff. Lots of people suffer the same problem. When we first got married and had very few pennies, his lordship used to get into a real tiz when I insisted on buying my favourite brands of stuff instead of the cheaper, dodgier kind. But I informed him that I’d managed to last all the way through College and Uni on a student grant (£2 a week) and remain loyal to my tastes and I had no intention of changing now. I simply went shopping by myself and bought what I needed and eventually he stopped moaning and ate what was put in front of him!

Even now he has his moments. Since we’ve been out here I’ve been unable to find my preferred brand of some items so I’ve had to find alternatives. The toilet paper I’ve defected to is his latest moaning point. For my entire married life, wherever we’ve lived I’ve bought Andrex ‘toilet tissue’. When we went out to Moscow, because of the shortages at the time it was advised that we took a 3 year supply of anything we really couldn’t do without. I took what we hoped would be a 3 year supply of Andrex toilet paper (have you any idea how much room that takes up?), and he was okay with that. But coming over here and finding there was no Andrex on the shelves was a bit of a problem, so I’ve defected to Charmin, the one with the little bears on it. I’ve gone from fluffy puppies to fluffy bears.

‘What’s the problem with that?’ I hear you ask. The problem is, it’s not the cheapest brand (the brand where you need to use half the roll to do the job properly and end up leaving half the paper in great big lumps all over the bathroom floor AND places I’m too polite to mention! Lovely!). So, when we go shopping all goes swimmingly until we get to the ‘paper’ aisle. Then, every single time, whoever is around to witness the conversation, he turns into Mr Scrooge.

“What’s wrong with this one? It’s 10 cents cheaper! I don’t know what’s wrong with it, it does the job!” On and on…. You’d’ve thought he’d’ve learned by now that it has absolutely no effect. We’ve been married for 32 years for heaven’s sake! It washes straight over me and by the time he’s finished mumbling, I’m long gone leaving him doing his ‘Crazy Brit’ act all on his own.

There were other things on that Moscow shopping list like Head and Shoulders shampoo, Ariel washing powder, Kleenex paper tissues and Mum deodorant. I wasn’t particularly good at working out how much or how many of certain items I could get through in 3 years. Some stuff ran out, but later in our tour a Finnish ‘Credit Card Only’ store opened and we were able to get quite a few things there, as well as there being a 6 monthly grocery order provided by the Embassy. We weren’t left to starve!

Tampax was the perfect example of my pathetic ability to estimate with any kind of accuracy. I was WAY off the mark. I was still using my ‘3 years supply’ of Tampax six years later in Bucharest and beyond! It came as one heck of a shock to the system when I eventually had to start buying them again and found that the boxes not only held less tampons, but they were nearly twice the price! That was one purchase where his lordship kept his distance! What is it with men and Tampax? I can go and buy him a jock-strap, but he can’t buy me a box of Tampax! What’s that all about?

Heinz Tomato Sauce was on the list. I’d much rather have that than any old 'el cheapo' stuff. They sell it here in whacking great containers, so we’re very happy. Heinz Salad Cream is another one of my ‘must haves’ and if you’d’ve been in the Sauce and Cream stuff aisle here when we first found it, you’d’ve been forgiven for thinking we’d gone RIGHT off our trolleys! We were literally dancing in the aisle with the bottle. Mind you, like most of the truly 'English' stuff, they only sell it in titchy tiny bottles and they explain what it is! Here in Canadia, it’s ‘Heinz Salad Cream – English Dressing’. And it’s also written in French.

Our next favourite find was Marmite. It was downright hilarious actually, because some poor shelf stacker had taken the literal translation from the label (Yeast Extract) and put it with the ‘yeast’ products, thinking it would help the bread to rise! Someone was in for a shock! Their bread was either going to be a scientific break-through, or a disaster waiting to happen! Again though, it’s only for sale out here in titchy tiny bottles that last a couple of slices of toast. It makes for a lovely Sunday treat though!

But my favourite, favourite, FAVOURITE find was Heinz Baked Beans! When we sisters were young, I remember my mum finding some dire brand of baked beans in a discount store for the grand sum of 9p a can. She served them up on toast one morning and tried to pass them off as Heinz. BIG mistake! All hell broke loose. “These aren’t Heinz!” “Oh yes they are.” “Oh no they’re not!” “Oh yes they are.” “Heinz doesn’t taste like this.” Mum takes a spoonful and tries not to choke on them. “They’re (cough!) lovely. There’s nothing wrong with them.” “They’re not lovely, they’re goppin’ and I’m not eating them!” Etc, etc. I’m sure you can imagine it. Poor mum. She owned up in the end and we never let her forget it! It was one of the stories that has passed down to the Grandchildren. Grandma and the 9p can of beans!

Those were the days. The advert at the time sang, “Beanz Meanz Heinz!”, and after the 9p can of beans we knew it was true. We were hooked! So it didn’t really surprise me to see them all lined up in the stores over here waiting for me. Let’s face it, this is the real ‘beans’ side of the Atlantic after all. I mean, you can just see the settlers with the wagons in a circle, sitting round the fire over which hangs a pot of coffee and a pan of ‘twice baked beans’ bubbling away.

I have a Heinz Baked Bean fetish, and although I wasn’t surprised to find them over here, you can imagine my delight in finding a million new flavours for me to try (I’ve pictured a few), but now I have the added problem of not knowing which flavour to get THIS week! I have to admit, I’ve fallen in love with the Baked Beans in Maple Syrup. Must be a Canadian thing! But for me, it’ll always be Heinz!

 

While we were down in Toronto last month, we took a mini road-trip round the tip of Lake Ontario and past St. Catherine’s, to the Welland Canal. We’d passed over the lower level of the canal in 2006 when we took the boys to Niagara. I can remember looking up into the hills and seeing a whacking great ship appearing out of the trees. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen, but we didn’t have the time to check it out and I’ve been whittering on at him ever since to go back and take a closer look. So that’s exactly what we did. We drove round Lake Ontario from Toronto and found the locks at Thorold. The place where 'The Ships Climb the Mountain'.

 

The original Welland Canal was built in 1829 to allow ships to travel easily from Lake Ontario (246 feet above sea level), to Lake Erie (572 feet above sea level) avoiding the difficult portages at Niagara Falls. Since then it’s been rebuilt 3 times, the latest in 1972 as part of the St Lawrence Seaway to accommodate the longer, modern ships and ‘lake boats’. They now travel through a series of 8 locks, four of which are at Thorold. A lovely local lady told me that ‘lake boats’ can be anything up to 740 foot long, but they’re considerably thinner than your average ocean going container ship because they’re built purely to fit into the locks. They don’t have to withstand the ocean’s 30 foot waves which would probably snap them clean in two! She’s the local equivalent of a ‘train-spotter’ I suppose, and passes the time taking the name and port of registration of every boat that passes through the locks.

 

 

The photo at the top shows the canal leading towards Lake Ontario, 2 rail bridges and the huge motorway bridge we’d passed over in November 2006! It just gives you an idea of the scale of it all. It's taken from the second of the Thorold locks.

 

 

The day we chose to go sight-seeing coincided with one of the biggest ‘thunder-showers’ in the area and we ended up driving round Lake Ontario in pouring (and I mean POURING) rain. But the moment we parked at the massive double lock (unique in the way it allows 2 ships to go in different directions at the same time), the rain stopped and bang on cue, the closest set of lock gates opened and the biggest, massivest ship I’ve ever seen inland, crept into the lock so slowly it was difficult to see if it was actually moving. I couldn’t believe our luck. Not only did we see that ship going UP, as the lock gates closed behind him, the other lock gates opened and another huge (but more battered) ship appeared on its way down.

 

In she comes .... and once the gates are closed ... 

The water pours in and up she comes!  

The next lot of lock gates open ....

and in she goes ....

Going ..... ...Going .... And as one door closes ....

Another opens ..............

We drove up the hill to the next lock and waited (and waited, and waited!) to see the same ship arrive at Lock 7. Above and to the right of us, there was one heck of a storm going on, and at one point we thought we were going to get caught in a mini tornado as the wind picked up and the temperature plummeted enough to give me goose bumps. But the storm passed us by and we were able to watch the ship arrive, so slowly it was barely moving. When you think of its size, and the tiny little gap it has to fit into, it makes you realise why it has to travel so slowly. There’s no room for mistakes.

It seems to be floating in mid-air!

You can barely see it moving as it inches into the lock

Everybody breath in!!

As the lock gates closed, the rain came down and we decided to drive down to Port Colborne, where the Welland Canal joins Lake Erie. It’s a lovely little place, made lovelier by the fact that the moment we stopped, so did the rain! There’s a funny ‘lift’ bridge which uses the biggest bicycle chains I’ve ever seen to lift the road clear of the canal as the ships come through, and right next to it are the remains of some of the original locks (minus gates). The new lock is a couple of miles up the canal on the other side of the bridge.

You can see the bike chains hanging in the towers 

The original locks.... 

Looking past the locks to Lake Erie.. 

Looking out to Lake Erie... and if your wondering..

this is the little chap sitting on the mini-island!

And that’s where the battery in my camera went as flat as a pancake!

Luckily, I’d taken a billion photos in 2006 of the scenic drive back through Niagara and along the river through Niagara-on-the-Lake to Lake Ontario, so maybe one day I’ll post a ‘Niagara with Pictures’ blog!

 

Quite a few people have written to me and asked if I would post a picture of the bananas AFTER I’d peeled it (It seems soooo weird to say ‘bananas – plural’ when talking about ‘it – singular’. Must be my teacher’s brain kicking in!).

 

So here you are folks. Two perfectly formed bananas laying side by side in the one banana skin + a bit of my ‘clowns head’ cereal bowl containing bran flakes and honey just sitting there waiting for the sliced banana and milk!

 

And yes, they tasted of banana (forgot who asked me that)!

 

For more years than I care to remember I’ve had the same thing for breakfast pretty much every single day! Am I a creature of habit? Probably. But I think I could be better described as a creature of ‘Anything for an easy life!’

 

I’m not a ‘morning person’ at all, and until I’ve had my morning walk and shower I really appreciate not being talked to, asked questions of, or given ‘choices’! So when his lordship is home and decides to make a bacon sandwich – that’s fine. Just so long as he doesn’t ask me IF I want a bacon sandwich. Crazy I know!

 

My ‘standard’ breakfast is Kellogg’s Bran Flakes served with honey, sliced banana and LOTS of milk. Just as a matter of interest, after all these years eating Kellogg’s stuff I had to go downstairs and check on the spelling!! I’ve picked out Kellogg’s boxes from supermarket shelves all over the world – and not realised there were 2 ‘G’s in his name! Fancy that!

 

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, breakfast. I then have some sort of yoghurt and a cup of tea (PG Tips). And that’s it. Breakfast is done! It’s one of those meals that just sort of … happen. I get my bowl out, which is all that remains of a three piece set making up ‘a clown’. The plate had his feet painted on it, the mug was his body and the bowl has his painted face grinning out at me and depending on my mood, I sometimes grin back! I reach down to get the cereal box, open it up and pour the cereal into the bowl. I put the box away and reach up for the honey. My favourite is Acacia. It’s smooth and sweet without any nasty ‘residue taste’, and I’ll travel miles to any shop which stocks it. Recently I’ve found it for sale in the most amazing ‘no drip-no dribble’ squeezy bottle. This is, in my humble opinion, the world’s greatest invention! I’ve always had honey in the house and I’ve bought fancy ‘honey spoons’ which have sort of worked, but can still dribble all down the side of the bowl if you don’t get it quite right. The thing that most annoys me about buying honey in a glass jar, is the way (if you’re too lazy to wipe the top of the glass jar every day) it dries out and turns to crystal form around the rim making the lid impossible to remove without the use of a sledge hammer! First thing in the morning I demand ‘simplicity’ in my life. Sledge hammers don’t quite fit into that category, so the ‘no drip-no dribble’ squeezy bottle fits into my way of existence perfectly.

 

I dribble honey artistically over my cereal before reaching across for a banana. The biggest question when choosing a banana is, ‘Shall I take one from the bottom of the bunch? Or the top of the bunch?’ This is a decision which has to be taken very seriously. Bananas from the bottom tend to get bruised more easily, so need eating first. But then you might not want to eat a bruised banana!

 

My most recent bunch of bananas has been there for a couple of days and both his lordship and I have been taking our bananas from the top – just tearing them off without even lifting them out of the basket. The other day I decided to go for a ‘bottom’ banana. So without really looking, I picked the bunch up and went to separate a banana from the remaining four, but my fingers just slid along the bottom of the bunch. At first I thought I’d picked up some paper that was perhaps stuck to them, but after I’d tried and failed to find an ‘edge’ to prise my fingers into, I looked down and couldn’t believe my eyes!

 

I’d got ‘Siamese’ bananas! Co-joined! My boring breakfast was suddenly an event of wonder and interest! Out came the camera (I am nothing if not predictable!) and photos were taken of this wondrous event. ‘Siamese bananas’ from every angle you could possibly imagine! I even decided to take a banana from the TOP of the bunch to eat for breakfast so that I could show his lordship what an amazing purchase he’d made, without even knowing!

 

We ate the ‘twins’ the following day. I peeled back the ‘double’ skin and found two perfectly formed, separate, full sized bananas laying together inside.

 

Breakfast will never be the same!

 

His lordship arrived home early the other night (which doesn’t happen very often!) to take me on a surprise trip to see the RCMP Sunset Ceremony. That’s the Royal Canadian Military Police, or Mounties! Heaven!

 

He drives past their ‘training ground’ on his way into work and just happened to notice there was something ‘special’ going on (I think it was all the big tents, flags and in particular, the whacking great bandstand that gave it away). So once he got to work he checked it out on the web and found that the Sunset Ceremony was taking place that weekend. Apparently the display only takes place once a year, then they take it out on the road – or ‘rails’ depending on how far they’re going! They load the horses into their very own train carriages, and if you’ve ever seen ‘Due South’ with Paul Gross as the Mountie who’s gone down to Chicago and ends up staying there helping out the police, there’s an episode which uses the actual train WITH the real mounties all charging out of it on their horses to catch the villain. It’s brilliant! I can remember seeing it when I lived in the UK and that’s when I fell in love with them! (Sigh!!)

 

Anyway … Even though we got there really early, the traffic was queuing for miles to park because the event was only on for a few days and it seemed as though not one person in the whole of Ottawa wanted to miss it.

 

The only down side about the whole thing was the fact it was taking place in the dying light of the day. My little HP Photosmart is fantastic in every situation except darkness with moving objects! So the later it got the more blotchy and blurred my photos became!

 

First up was a dog display where dogs from different sections of the force and their handlers race round an obstacle course. Some dogs were better than others and one was the definite ‘clown’ preferring to jump over the fence into the audience and scare them half to death. He refused every single jump but got the biggest round of applause (I think out of sympathy for his poor handler who would probably have to buy the beers that night!).

  Trying to get him back into the 'ring'!!!

 

He did (I think) come into his own when they brought out ‘the purse snatcher’. He got THAT bit right and mauled the poor bloke so badly it took 2 officers to peel him away. Even when the poor ‘purse snatcher’ had been read his rights, he was still being bitten to bits. He eventually made a run for it with the dog chasing him right out of the arena, leaving one officer still on his knees wondering what on earth had happened and his handler trailing along behind!

Got 'im!! 

Just when you think you're safe from harm ...

Next came the ‘rider training’ display, which was rather like watching a local gymkhana except that these guys used guns to SHOOT the balloons, and lances to STAB the flags! It was all pretty cool (and noisy) stuff.

 

Yes, that's a gun in his hand!

Next up (or down!) were the ‘Skyhawks’ parachute team. The display ground was right at the end of the Air Museum runway and I’d already photographed the ‘Skyhawks’ plane taking off earlier in the evening. The announcer directed our attention from the arena to the sky and down they came, three at a time. The first jumper had a massive Canadian Flag dangling and as he fell, the band played the Canadian national anthem.

 

They didn’t land in the arena and aimed primarily for a narrow strip of field near the car park. There was only one of them who seemed to land a little closer to the cars than the others. I have to admit that I missed the flair of the British Parachute Regiment’s ‘Red Devils’, and the fabulous ‘finale’ of the RAF ‘Falcons’, who always seem to managed to line up on the display ground as the Hercules C140 they’ve just jumped out of swoops across them. Mind you, they all jump at the same time and this arena was far too small for the ‘Skyhawks’ to land in.

 

The ‘Skyhawks’ did go one better though. Right at the end of the entire display – in the darkness, their aircraft (maybe with them all waving from the windows – who knows?) departed from the airport and with every available light switched on performed a ‘fly-past’ overhead (which WAS pretty cool!). It was like watching a UFO appearing out of the night sky (but I didn’t get any photos of that).

 

Going up...........        

Coming down! The 'flag' is on the left. The parachute is smaller than the flag!

....................................

One of the funniest races I’ve ever seen was the ‘Departmental Race’ where a ‘volunteer’ (Yeah! Right!) from every department of the RCMP raced two at a time, round the outside track where a load of obstacles had been placed. The traffic police sauntered round, stopping at the obstacles and giving them parking tickets; the SWAT guys got to the punch bag and simply blasted it off its stand; and the forensic girls stopped at just about every obstacle taking swabs and finger prints!

 

I felt so sorry for the SWAT blokes though. It was a really hot and humid evening and there they were in full riot gear complete with heavy bullet proof protection. I don’t think there was one bit of their body that wasn’t covered. They had their dogs with them and even THEY were wearing heavy bullet proof vests! The last obstacle was to carry a HUGE bag of sand 50 metres. When the forensic girls got there, all the hunky blokes from their team came rushing across the track and carried both them AND the bag of sand across the finish line! The dog handlers carried their dogs instead - including the heavy vests! In that heat! But I loved it! Mainly because I’d not seen anything like it before.

 

The 'hottest' bloke on parade!!!

THEN, my mounties arrived, in their red uniforms, carrying their lances (with the little flags on), and riding on their beautiful black horses. They performed the ‘Musical Ride’, a wonderful array of precision riding where a simple mistake could result in being stabbed with a lance, or knocked off your horse! It was very much like the RAF Regiment performing their ‘6 billion moves without a command’, but these guys travel on horse back and move so fast they're often a blur of red and black and you're wondering how on earth they don't collide with each other and end up in a heap of legs and tails. And of course it's all accompanied by music!

Taking the salute...

            Going round and round in circles

'The Wedding'. Parading underneath the lances....

It was wonderful, definitely my idea of Mountie Heaven!

Going to the dentist was a unique experience! Because she:

 

a) Didn’t know me,

b) Didn’t believe what I’d written about the amount of anesthetic I needed to kill ALL pain, and

c) Thought I was joking about being a complete wimp where pain is concerned.

 

So instead of giving me enough of the stuff to knock out a horse, she opted for the 'less is more' method! BIG mistake!

Shortly after the first injection she pinched my lip and asked if I could feel it. OUCH! Yes! And I could feel the entire area around that part of my mouth. In fact, the only thing that WAS tingling was the back of my throat where I'd swallowed the gel she used to deaden the effect of the needle! So did she give me a second dose? No! She gave it, "Another 5 minutes for the medication to take effect." What effect does that have? The tingling at the back of my throat wears off! Brilliant!

So she gives in and injects a bit more. Result – slightly numb jaw and tingling lip. Off she goes, drilling away. You know how you can sense that they’re drilling for gold a little too near a section that isn’t quite dead yet? Well, that happened about a second after she’d started. She whacked that nerve and I jumped a mile. She’d told me to raise my hand if I needed to stop. One hand? Both my arms went up taking with it her elbow, the drill and the little dish of god knows what that she’d placed on my ample bosom (which she was using as a makeshift table!). How she didn’t drill through my lip I’ll never know! Result – Injection number three, which I swear was a double dose. It did the trick and 30 minutes later I had a lovely white tooth and a mouth the size of a football!

I went for the second installment a couple of days later and would you believe, we went through the whole rigmarole again! This time, I needed 3 shots BEFORE she’d even start. I’m not kidding, that stuff must be like water! Then when she was satisfied that it was safe (heh heh!) off she went. I only had to twitch this time though and she’d got that needle in my jaw for a fourth (and final) time. She was taking no chances poor love! I’m glad she did because at one point I swear she was using the same drill head they used to excavate the Channel Tunnel. It was awful! And that was before she put a screw through the tooth to the jaw to build the filling round and help strengthen it before covering it completely.

 

I was really impressed (and totally spaced out!) and now have 2 beautiful white teeth. It annoys me immensely that they’re down at the bottom, because no-one can see them. I tell you one thing though, she gave me so much medication – whatever it was – that my back pain has totally GONE! That’s almost 3 days later and my back is still blissfully numb. I’m going to ask her for a TUB of that stuff for future use!

 

Okay people …. After two years out here in Canada, I’ve at last plucked up the courage to find myself a dentist. I have to admit it took a filling to drop out of one tooth and another to fall apart to give me that extra ‘shove’ in the right direction, but I’ve been for the initial appointment and have the bill to prove it!

 

As soon as I got home, I emailed his lordship (who was mid flight between somewhere in the Yukon and Vancouver, or Vancouver and Montreal. You can’t say he doesn’t get around much!) to let him know why his bank statement is going to be ‘rather low’ in a couple of weeks! And when I read it over just before I sent it, I thought, “You know? I reckon my avid readers would enjoy this JUST as much as his lordship!” In fact, I think you’ll enjoy it more than him (and learn a lot more about my smile at the same time!).

 

Here goes:

 

“What a performance!!!!
 
Ye gods! An hour in the chair - and that was just having my teeth minutely cleaned and polished and X-rayed and inspected! By two dentists! I tell you matey, you certainly got your money's worth!
 
It cost you the princely sum of:
 
$6,913.60
 
Wait a moment.... No, I’m looking at the wrong bit of paper. THAT is the estimate to have my 'Dracula' teeth filed down, my front teeth filed down and the missing teeth 'bridged' between the two - which will give me a wonderful Amuricun beaming white smile! (Yeah! Right! For someone who has a pathological hatred of drills and at that price, I don't think so.)
 
So, back to reality: 
 
It cost you the princely sum of:
 
$1,054.20
 
Wait a moment ..... No. Wrong again, I really ought to get my filing system sorted out. THAT is the estimate to replace the 'retainer falsies' like I have now. (Now THAT's a more realistic number! However, I think I'll wait until another tooth drops out and THEN change them - thank you very much!)
 
So, it cost you the princely sum of: $204.00
 
Yes. That’s it! Did you see how I did that? I started with the massive figure and worked my way down to a figure that is marginally short of EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE and yet when you read it, you were thinking - "Wow, that's better!" Even though it's 5 times the price I used to pay in the UK.
 
BUT (you should know there's always a ‘but’ - and did you notice how I calmed you down before dropping the BIGGY on you??), where was I?
 
BUT ..... I need (and you knew this anyway) 2 more appointments (45 minutes apiece), supposedly for fillings, but one may turn into a crown if she can't save the tooth. And boy, that'll cost you!!
 
Didn't I tell you to get medical and dental? You've only got yourself to blame for the fact that we're going to be living like paupers in our old age! Mind you, at least I'll be able to chew my rat on a stick with my own beautifully tended teeth!
 
Hope you enjoy Montreal as much as I enjoyed the dentist chair..... Heh heh!
 
Oh, there is one more thing, as they need the pin number for my British Credit card (and I don't know it. Come to think about it, I've never known it!), I'm going to have to pay for my dental care with the debit card. Sorry!
 
Love you loads, (and thank you for the nice shiny teeth)”

 

Now anyone who has always thought that I don’t know how to write a soppy lovey-dovey letter knows that they are perfectly correct! It did have a row of little kisses at the end, but I left them off (didn’t want to make you all blush!). I can guarantee that his lordship will be checking the bank balance as we speak and no doubt discontinuing my bendy piece of plastic!

 

The dentists (plural) were great and really made me feel at ease. At one point I even found myself boogying along with that darn Kylie M. song: ‘Can’t Get You out of My Head’. And I swear I heard the dentist substituting the words, ‘….Out of Your Teeth’ as she scraped away in time to the music! I have to admit though that it was really weird being treated in a single area that had only head-high barriers separating the dentist chairs, and a VERY short corridor from the waiting patients. You could hear everything quite clearly from there.

 

Then, once you were led into the ‘drilling’ department, you could hear everything that was going on in the next treatment area. At times, the drilling from next door REALLY started to freak me out – I’m terrified of the things. I’m thinking quite seriously about taking my MP3 player when I go next time and tuning it all out. Honestly, there are no doors or anything, and people just wandered past on their way to the toilet, or to reception …. Very strange! I can’t say I’m looking forward to having my fillings replaced on a public viewing platform, but they seem to know what they’re doing and have very definite ideas about what they want to do with my mouth (wire it shut!).

 

I think they’re living in Dreamland as far as that goes! $7,000 for a new smile? If you take a look at the Dracula picture at the top, that’s pretty much my smile at the moment. Okay, the BIG teeth aren’t QUITE so long and the short ones are falsies on a bionic titanium ‘retainer’ (as she calls it!). They’re the ones she wants to ‘cement’ to the healthy teeth on either side, which by my reckoning means that the entire ‘frontage’ will be falsies!! Glued in falsies instead of your common garden ‘My teeth are like stars, they come out at night!’ falsies? Come to think of it, I DO sound like Dracula!!!

 

Seriously though, no Dracula teeth?

 

It just wouldn’t be me!

Every morning (unless it’s raining, or particularly windy, or freezing cold, or boiling hot, or foggy, or if I sleep in, or if I’m ill ….), I think I’ll start again.

 

MOST mornings around 7 o’clock, I get up and go for a 40ish minute walk around the neighbourhood. It’s lovely at that time of day. The sun is up, but not too hot, there’s usually a soft breeze to keep you cool and there’s hardly any traffic on the roads.

 

The only people you come across at that time in morning are the dog walkers complete with their super, duper, pooper-scoopers (plastic bags!); other walkers like me (but generally fitter!); and those crazy ‘joggers’ who you can hear pounding down the pavement behind you for miles before they ‘wheeze’ past, dripping sweat in their wake and spitting into the grass by the side of the path.

 

The Red Cardinals are ‘birdie, birdie, birdie’ing’ from high in the tree tops while the North American Robins (whacking great things the size of your average British blackbird) take advantage of the soft morning earth and dig for the worms in people’s newly seeded front gardens. They make me smile as they try desperately to avoid my shadow as it blocks out the sunlight. The big black ‘grackles’ swoop from chimney to chimney and kick up one heck of a racket with their noisy ‘squaaawk’ing’, while the soft grey pigeons walk daintily along the kerb-stones, nodding their heads with every stride and ‘coo-coo’ing’ in the most genteel manner.

 

I walked past one house that’d just had all the turf removed from the front garden, and smack in the middle of this big blank space was a little black squirrel frantically digging for the nuts he’d obviously buried there last Autumn! I even muttered, “You’re onto a loser there son!” as I strode past. Poor chap! At the next house along, I watched a tiny little chipmunk scamper across the road in front of me. He was the smallest little fella’ I’d seen since I’ve been out here, with his tail stuck right up into the air as he skipped. They are so cute!

 

An animal I rarely see out here, are cats! One of my neighbours has one, but doesn’t let it out unless she’s there with it and she gets really upset when it strays into other neighbour’s gardens. The only other one I’ve seen in the last 2 years was a big fat ginger tom standing watch under a bird feeder about 4 streets away. So when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sleek black animal cross my path this morning, I automatically thought it was a rather big black squirrel with a very thin tail (well, it was from quite a distance and I wasn’t actually looking ‘at’ it!). It vanished behind a bush and as I drew closer it sauntered out and began to prowl along the edge of the grass towards the shade of a tree, where it hunkered down in classic ‘I’m watching something …’ pose.

 

When we first got married, his lordship bought me a kitten which grew into that magnificent animal in the picture. My Nelson! He was mainly white with big black splodges over his back and a particularly lovely black splodge over one eye (hence the name – Nelson), and he was the stupidest cat EVER! For a start, he thought he was a dog (which can’t’ve helped) and followed me to the shops, went for walks with me and chased all the dogs in the neighbourhood – especially a massive Red Setter by the name of Clodagh! Nelson made that dog’s life a misery. The poor thing couldn’t walk along the path behind our house without being harassed by my cat, and if there’d been a ‘Canine Psycho-therapist’ in existence back then he would’ve made an absolute fortune PURELY from that one mutt!

 

The other thing about Nelson was that he was an amazingly pathetic hunter! He’d got all the moves, the hunkering down … head almost on the paws …. forward shuffle ….. hunker down some more ….. eyes bright and glued on the prey ….. wiggle of the hips ……. And then he’d go and wreck it all by being impatient and leaping WAAAAAAAY too soon and nowhere near fast or far enough!!

 

One winter, I’d thrown bread crumbs out onto the newly fallen snow in our tiny enclosed back garden and the area was full of starlings, blackbirds, sparrows and a couple of tiny UK robins, all arguing over each and every crumb with a great flapping of wings in the process. Nelson was sitting on the kitchen windowsill and pawing at the glass as he pretended he was catching every single bird and having the feast of his life (in his dreams!!!). As he got more and more agitated, I opened the back door for him and he didn’t even look at what was on the ground (the snow), he just LEAPT! Talk about one giant leap for cat-kind!!! He made it …. And immediately disappeared into a foot of snow! Even the birds seemed to stop and stare in amazement as the cat froze in shock, wondering what on earth had happened to the garden (he’d not been out in the snow before).

 

After what seemed the longest time, he suddenly remembered what he was after and started floundering around trying to get a foot hold on the snow. Have you ever had that dream where you’re running like crazy and getting absolutely nowhere? Well, watching my cat churn up snow was exactly like that dream. Most of the birds carried on feeding while the others just hopped onto the fence from where they commenced an aerial bombardment of the cat, zooming down over his head, but far enough away to be safe from his flailing paws. In a display of synchronized aeronautics that can best be described as resembling a Royal Air Force ‘Red Arrows’ routine, those birds totally befuddled my increasingly annoyed cat. They came at him from above, from behind, from the sides and at times, from all four directions at once. It was the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen, but in the back of my mind was the nagging realization that this cat was never, ever going to make a hunter. Disco dancer? Yes, and a darn good one too. But hunter? Not in a million years! So I’d better get used to the idea that I was stuck forever feeding him from tins!

 

The black cat I saw today was hunkered down in ‘hunter’ mode and I slowed down to watch as he shuffled forward. He was after a robin which was ruffling through the twigs in a corner of the garden. Puss gave me a cursory glance to acknowledge that he knew I was there and then prepared to stalk his prey. It didn’t take long. He’d obviously been to the ‘Nelson School of Stalking’ and failed the course because the bird flew off, totally bored with the entire performance.

 

The cat however, blamed me. He gave me that look of absolute disdain that only a cat can give. “That’s YOUR fault …. You …. HUMAN!” On the list of ‘How to Show Your Owner You Are Not Happy’, it’s the expression that’s one up from the one you get when your furry ball of joy is expecting a gorgeous Tuna dinner and is presented with a dish of dry cat food. You know that “What the heck is THIS?” expression you get before he stalks off with his nose in the air to eat next door’s cat food.

 

If he sees me wandering down his street again, I think he’ll stay hidden behind the shrubbery and save hunting till after I’m well out of the way!

 

Food Glorious Food

I don't normally do these Photo challenges, but the title of this one was just too inviting!

My entry is the photograph I took of the 'food' (and I use the word VERY loosely) my sons cremated on our little barbecue back in the UK. Anyone who believes the myth that ALL men can cook food on a barbecue, beware! They can't!

I think the evidence speaks for itself......

The photo I'd LOVE to put up but daren't because they'd never speak to me again, is the one of my sons (taking by clandestine means), in the act of 'cooking' the above..... One is playing 'keepy-uppy' with a soccer ball, and the other is sitting reading the newspaper, both totally oblivious to the flames pouring out of the charcoal fired barbi!!!!

What makes this photo all the more poignant, is the fact that at the time, both boys were working summer jobs as CHEFS at a sea-side restaurant! Needless to say, they both decided that cooking was not to be their eventual profession!

This email landed on my machine today and when I did a bit of research on Sheriff Arpaio, I found this particular email has been doing the rounds since 2003! I still thought it was worth reproducing, and I’ve added a couple of paragraphs at the bottom with information of what the good Sheriff has been up to more recently.

 

Enjoy! This man is truly my hero!

 

“TO THOSE OF YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH JOE ARPAIO, HE IS THE MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF ( ARIZONA ) AND HE KEEPS GETTING ELECTED OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

These are some of the reasons why:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio created the "tent city jail" to save Arizona from
spending tens of million of dollars on another expensive prison complex.

He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for
them.

He banned smoking and 'rude' magazines in the jails, took away their
weightlifting equipment and cut off all but "G" movies. He says: "they're
in jail to pay a debt to society not to build muscles so they can assault
innocent people when they leave."

He started chain gangs to use the inmates to do free work on county and city
projects and save taxpayer's money.

Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn't get sued for discrimination.

He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but
only allows the Disney channel and the weather channel.

When asked why the weather channel, he replied: "so these morons will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs."

He cut off coffee because it has zero nutritional value and is therefore a waste of taxpayer money *(by eliminating the estimated 5,000 cups of coffee served daily for 5,400 inmates, it was expected the county would
save $94,158 a year). When the inmates complained, he told them, "This isn't the Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it, don't come back."

He also bought the Newt Gingrich lecture series on US history that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a
Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series that actually tells
the truth for a change would be welcome and that it might even explain
why 95% of the inmates were in his jails in the first place.

With temperatures being even hotter than usual in Phoenix (116 degrees just
set a new record for June 2nd), the Associated Press reports: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed- wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts.

One Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing pink boxer shorts were chatting in the tents, where temperatures reached 128 degrees. "This is hell. It feels like we live in a furnace," said Ernesto Gonzales, an inmate for 2 years with 10 more to go. "It's inhumane."

Joe Arpaio, who makes his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic. "Criminals should be punished for their crimes - not live in luxury until it's time for parole, only to go out and commit more crimes so they can come back in to live on taxpayers money and enjoy things many taxpayers can't afford to have for themselves."

On that Wednesday he told all the inmates who were complaining of the heat in the tents: "It's between 120 to 130 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents too, and they have to walk all day in the sun, wearing full battle gear and get shot at, and they have not committed any crimes, so shut your damned mouths!"

Way to go, Sheriff! If all prisons were like yours there would be a lot less crime and we would not be in the current position of running out of prison spaces.

Sheriff Joe was just re-elected Sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona.”

 

In September 2007, another email began to circulate regarding Sheriff Arpaio heading into the world of a different kind of animal! Apparently, Maricopa County was spending around $18 million a year on stray domestic pets, so the Sheriff took the majority of the department over. The animals are fed and cared for by the prisoners (who have been given tuition in animal nutrition and behaviour) and they even give classes to people who are interested in adopting a stray animal. The budget has fallen to an amazing $3 million!

 

Sheriff Arpaio’s latest venture is into the area of illegal immigration. He wasn’t happy with what the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were doing in his area, so he has trained 40 deputies in the art of enforcing the national immigration laws. He’s set up a hotline number where people can report suspected illegal ‘aliens’ and painted it’s number on all his prison vehicles. He has since bought 4 brand new buses for the specific purpose of ‘hauling folks back to the border’, so it’s obviously working!

 

You’ve got to love this man! His office has the most amazing web site, complete with: ‘Mug Shots’; Deadbeat Parents and much, much more.

 

You’ve got to bear in mind that I’m a Brit! Things like this just don’t exist in the UK! I tried ‘Scotland Yard’s’ Official Website and got a pop group!!! Sort of sums it up really!

 

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Home Page:

http://www.mcso.org/index.php?a=Home

 

General information:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/arpaio.asp

 

And the British equivalent:

http://www.lincs.police.uk/

We’ve been in this house just over a year and last year I did nothing to the garden because I wanted to see what it already had to offer. As far as the grass was concerned – not a lot, especially out in the back garden. His lordship did try to nudge it into a state of ‘green-ness’, but it didn’t really want to play along and despite all his efforts, remained looking more like the surface of a playing field. So this year, we decided to bring in the ‘professionals’ and see if they could make it look any better (well, let’s face it, it can’t really look any worse!).

 

Yesterday, I had an unannounced first visit from the ‘Green Space’ garden people, who proceeded to shower my 'grass' (and I use the word ‘grass’ VERY loosely) with white pellets which they warned me NOT TO WALK ON. They didn’t tell me why and I didn’t ask. Maybe my feet will fall off. I’m not into walking on mud, so as far as I was concerned their instructions would be very easy to follow. What I didn’t take into account were the dainty feet of my next three visitors!  

 

The Green Space van had barely left the street when there was a knock at the door. The lads from ‘Campbell Tree Experts’ who pruned my trees and trimmed the hedges a couple of days ago had returned to pin two branches of my maple tree together. It has one trunk which split into two as it grew. Now, the two trunks are fighting for superiority and a crack is emerging. If they aren’t pinned together with a ‘mini high-wire’, they’ll end up doing ‘the splits’! So, across the forbidden mud the two of them went wearing their whacking great hob-nailed boots and grinding the white pellets into the clay! They did a fabulous job with the wire and if I didn’t know it was there, I don’t think I would notice it at all, unlike the fluorescent yellow safety rope they’d put there while they were working up the tree a couple of days ago. You can see the wire above it in the photograph.

 

Next, came the Campbell’s stump grinder guy, who traipsed across the forbidden mud carrying a sheet of hardboard and a garden spade. He leaned the piece of wood against the spade about 3 feet from the tree stump and cleared off again. I was about to go and see what had happened to him, when I heard the most amazing racket coming up the path at the side of the garage! I’ve never seen a ‘stump grinder’ before and hadn’t expected it to be so long and thin. I suppose they’re designed that way so they can get through domestic garden gates. With its massive engine mount at one end and the ‘cutting edge’ spinning wildly at the ‘working’ end, it looked the muckiest, heaviest, most cumbersome piece of machinery I’ve seen for a long time, and there it was literally burying those little white pellets that we weren’t supposed to be walking on, right into the ground! But however heavy it seemed, the chap handled it as though it was as light as a feather. And it was soooooo noisy!

 

He just plonked the ‘cutting edge’ onto the side of the trunk and it chewed away, spinning the flakes and wood-shavings straight into the barrier he had created with the sheet of wood and spade. He’d placed it exactly in the right place. There were a few errant pieces which went spinning across the garden (one decapitated my one and only tulip out there!), but most of the shavings and wood chunks were captured by his simple ‘garden protector’. Like he said, it’s the simplest ideas that work the best. It didn’t take long and when he’d finished he churned his way back across what was left of the pellets to the gate.

 

As if that wasn’t enough, I realised that with his lordship not here, it was up to me to clear up the pile of shavings and wood-chips before it started to rain. They were in a neat, but solid heap where the ‘garden protector’ had stood and I didn’t want them blowing all over the place. I got the garden rake and shuffled the errant bits from around the garden and then shoved as much of it as would fit, back into the hole where the stump had been. The rest I shoved the short distance to the shelter of the fence (to be dealt with at a later date by his lordship!). That was when I realised that I’d not only trampled yet more of the little white pellets into the clay, I’d swept a load of them up with the wood shavings!

 

Oh well, if the grass grows, it grows. And if it doesn’t? Try again next year!

 

Another email …. I’ve read this one before, but it still made me howl with laughter. So I thought I’d share it with you lot!

 

You find out interesting things when you have sons, like:-

1.          A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 200 m² house to a depth of 10 cm.
 
2.          If you spray hair spray on dust balls and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
 
3.          A 3-year old Boy's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
 
4.          If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 20 Kg boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 6m x 6m room.
 
5.          You should not throw cricket balls up when the ceiling fan is on. When using a ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a cricket ball a long way.
 
6.          The glass in windows (even double-glazed) doesn't stop a cricket ball hit by a ceiling fan.
 
7.          When you hear the toilet flush and the words 'uh oh', it's already too late.
 
8.          Brake fluid mixed with bleach makes smoke, and lots of it.
 
9.          A six-year old Boy can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36-year old Man says they can only do it in the movies,
 
10. Certain Lego's will pass through the digestive tract of a 4- year old Boy.
 
11. Play dough and microwave should not be used in the same sentence.
 
12. Super glue is forever.
 
13. No matter how many jelly crystals you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.
 
14. Pool filters do not like jelly crystals.
 
15. VCR's do not eject 'BL&T' sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.
 
16. Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
 
17. Marbles in petrol tanks make lots of noise when driving.
 
18. You probably DO NOT want to know what that smell is.
 
19. Always look in the oven before you turn it on; plastic toys do not like ovens.
 
20. The fire department in Brisbane, Qld, has a 5-minute response time.