General chit chat

good afternoon @Mazarita, @Former-Member

Lovely to read such uplifting posts xx

Hello @Former-Member, @Pepsimax, @Faith-and-Hope

Hi @Shaz51, how are you today?

Hello @Mazarita

feeling a bit out of sorts today , soo resting up and drinking moe water

went out for dinner last night -- ya , had grilled fish and a buffett , think i ate too much

and also had 2 glasses of wine , have not had a drink for 3 months -- wow , today we were going for a drive but it has been raining all day so we stayed home and resting as i have this big ache in the kidney area

how is everything today xx

@Shaz51, do you find that the epsom salt baths ease the kidney pain as well? I wonder if it was from the wine. More water is a great idea. Glad to hear you are resting too since you are not feeling well, and the rain isn't allowing anything else anyway. Cool that you went out for dinner last night.

Today has been a better day with Mum. My friend who was staying with her has gone north to visit other friends now. Mum was a bit less hyper today with just me. We went for a little walk down the beach together and Mum collected shells. And then on the bus to the local shopping village and had pies for lunch. She wanted to stay at the pokies so I've come home for a little while now and we will go back in a couple of hours to take her to church (catholic evening mass). Then I will stay with her overnight at the holiday unit. It's great that the holiday place is within easy walking distance of our place. ox

glad that today is a better day @Mazarita xx

could be the wine -- never did before but things change , thank you I think i will have epsom salt baths today xx

Good Morning @Mazarita, @Faith-and-Hope, @Pepsimax, @Former-Member 🙂

I went into my local town today, I had to take a DVD back to the machine - I'd run out of DVD's on Sunday and the library doesn't open on weekends. The machine is right outside the local shop so I decided I'd go in and get some bones for the dogs, they didn't have any, so I went to the Pet isle to get them a different sort of treat there.

I have to squeeze the packets a little as I need particularly hard treats for the young dog, otherwise he eats them in 2 seconds flat and starts looking at what the little dogs got! While I was doing that a lady came up to me and told me 'they're much cheaper at Aldi's'; I agreed and told her I always stocked up when I did go to Aldi's, and found out she was disappointed because there was no puppy milk on the shelves. Not a good day for pet shopping in my little town.

I picked out a packet of treats and grabbed a double strength iced coffee and made my way to counter. The same lady was there, right in front of me; the next thing I knew this voice was saying 'Excuse me, you don't happen to know where I could let my dog run off lead around here anywhere, by any chance?' - it was me! She was really lovely, though she didn't know of anywhere; she then asked the young lady behind the counter!

This young lady is always lovely to me and made a couple of suggestions, a local park and a football field, I didn't know where the field was but felt encouraged to have a look at the park. Which, after I purchased my items and made my way back to the car, I did. It wasn't really suitable, it's right on a busy highway and didn't go back very far; though I took both dogs, on 2 leads I tied together, for a walk around that park and they seemed to enjoy it.

I noticed a sort of paddock beside it, that appeared to have the park sign in front of it, but had a closed gate at the entrance. I wasn't game to just open the gate and go in, as I didn't want to trespass if it was private land. The next thing I did kind of amazes me, though it was one of those 'out of body experiences' and it didn't feel like I thought of it, but . . . I went to the Council!

When I walked in the lady behind the counter was busy on a phone call, so I sat down. The call went on for a little while, this was not a normal thing for me to do, I was very outside my comfort zone and found I couldn't just sit. So I got up and started looking at the pamphlets on the wall. I'd forgotten to wear my glasses so I couldn't really read them, but I could see well enough to know one of them was about feral pigs and the picture was a great big black wild boar - I think that may have been what I saw in the State forest!

Eventually the call ended and another lovely lady asked how she could assist me, I asked about the paddock next to the park; unfortunately she didn't know the area and instantly started looking for a map. As she grabbed the map another lady came out and told me where the official off lead dog area was for my local town - I didn't even know we had one! They even drew on the map how to get from the Council building to the off lead area!

It isn't ideal as it's on corner block so has 2 road frontages, but the roads aren't as busy as the other park. I couldn't find a driveway so I just drove off the road and up into the paddock a little, so I wasn't letting them out right on the road. But when I opened the back of the ute canopy and dropped the tailgate, both dogs just bound out with joy, hitting the ground running around in circles of excitement 🙂

It made me so happy to watch them zig-zag from one smell to the other, they found a couple of real treasures - a nest with broken rotten eggs, that just had to be rolled in; and a poor unfortunate stumpy-tailed lizard that had demised somehow and called for an even greater rolling! 😄 This paddock is right beside the Golf Course and I found 2 golf balls; one I threw back, the other I was too far away and decide to throw it for the dogs.

They had a great time 🙂 The paddock had been slashed, so less danger of snakes too. We eventually lost the golf ball, somewhere in the grass clippings and stubble - but, easy come easy go 🙂 The young fella got up a good pant and the little fella was able to join in. Being an offical off lead dog area they'll be no baits or traps, and although there's no fence and the possibility of one or both running out onto a road - I think it's a good compromise between safety and freedom 🙂

Gidday @Mazarita,
Well my trip into town ended up being quite exciting 🙂 First I went to the library and there was a librarian I've never seen before. She spoke to me before I'd even gone up to the counter, asking if I had a library card; I told her I did, but it was in the car. I chose my DVD's and went to the counter, she explained the reason that she'd asked was because she had to make up a card for another person and would have done so for me if I hadn't had one. She also explained that different Librarians would be coming in (I don't know why and hope my favourite Librarian is ok); and that policies were changing, you would no longer be able to take anything out without the card (I didn't realize you could). I think she was just kind of warning me that I'll have to bring my card in with me from now on. Last time I went into the library I'd ordered some Brian Cox DVDs, whilst I was at the counter I saw them on the shelf behind; there was a book there also. She offered to exchange the DVDs I'd chosen for the ones I'd ordered but I chose not to, but I happily agreed to taking the book with me as well 🙂 I have only looked through the first few pages and I'm already blown away!! I think it's like the prolog, as I haven't even started the first chapter. It has some quotes from Astronauts and I feel so strongly about them that I want to share them :-

'The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one Earth.'
- Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulazis Al-Saud, Space Shuttle STS-51-G

'This planet is not terra firma. It is a delicate flower and it must be cared for. It's lonely. It's small. It's isolated, and there is no resupply. And we are mistreating it. Clearly, the highest loyalty we should have is not to our own country or our own religion or our home town or even to ourselves. It should be to, number two, the family of man, and number one, the planet at large. This is our home, and this is all we've got.'
- Scott Carpenter, Mercury 7

I would change what Scott Carpenter says a little myself, where he says 'the family of man', I would say 'the family of Earthlings'. We are all connected, every living being on this fragile, life covered little rock in the Universe.

That was just the first excitement. After the library I went to my local gerenal store, the same one where I'd dared to ask a stranger if they'd have any idea where I could run my dog; which led that stranger to ask the young lady behind the counter, who gave me the advice to try a particular park. Although the park wasn't really suitable, it led me to do something quiet extraordinary for me - I went to the local Council and asked, where I learned my little town has an official off lead dog area. I was served by the same young lady today and that same little alien voice dared to pipe up again 'I want to Thank you for your advice on that park, I ended up going to the Council and discovered we have our own little off lead dog area, here in our own little town and I never would have done that without your advice!' - she smiled, it felt really good to give her a smile, and said that she was glad to help 🙂

On to the next excitement 🙂 Seeing as I was in town, I took the dogs to the (now famous for me) off lead area for a run. They galloped and sniffed and rolled and panted to their hearts content. They found the poor demised lizard again, I'm assuming it was the same one, going by the extremely high aroma that I've had to cover with Musk oil because it's too cool to bathe them right now! 😉 Another golf ball was discovered and thrown until it disappeared; and I took a fluffy yellow duck toy to play catch and to grab the young fellas attention if he headed to close to the road. The road - I believe the story goes 'all's well that ends well' but it wasn't the sort of excitement I really enjoy. The young dog did take off onto the road, he even crossed it to the other side, where he seemed very interested in something behind a very tall fence. I didn't run over, luckily you can see a fair distance along the roadway and no cars were coming; I stayed where I was and called and waved the yellow duck (would have looked quite amusing to any passer bys, I'm sure). Although it was all too intriguing for the first moment or two (which felt like light years to me at the time) he did return 🙂 I believe that's a better result than me having to go and retrieve him, as I think that teaches the wrong lesson. But after that near heart attack, I decided he'd had enough chances to risk his own life and we came back home.

Now we're all sitting in our usual spots, with a slightly tainted musk aroma wafting about. Both dogs and even the cat, have settled after there dinner and fresh bone treats; and I'm about to settled down to a couple of DVD's. 😉 🙂 😄

NBD neurobiological disorder, so much better than Mental Illness - which has always made me feel like I'm being told I'm making it up: I'm not making it up! NBD allows the physical back in. If I was making it up I could make it go away - I can't - I've tried making it down.

I've been looking at my Brian Cox book, I'm not really reading it, too many words and too complicated. But I'm still enjoying picking out tid-bits of information and it has wonderful pictures. For instance, it has the first ever photographs of individual Snow Flakes; I never knew they all have six points. They are all incredibly beautiful, intricate and fragile.

It seems to go in depth, as to why bees build hexagons to store their honey. It has a picture of someone, suspended on a crude looking rope ladder, surrounded by a swarm of bees as far as the eye can see. They are climbing to the heights of a Himalayan cliff, facing thousands of excruciating stings, to gather the precious commodity (honey) from the World’s largest bee’s home. There is nowhere that the creature Human cannot follow.

My brain was telling me Hexagon was eight sides, I had to look it up as I noticed in the picture the honeycomb cells had six sides (like the six points of the snowflakes), as I did so I remembered eight sides is Octagon and Google confirmed Hex is six. I feel like I'm losing intelligence at the moment, I think it happens regularly, like a cycle. I'm finding it hard to type, my fingers won't press the right keys - it's very frustrating. So I'm writing this on Word, so the computer can fix it; then I'll copy it and paste it in. I think it's a bit scary and I want to talk with people to try and stay in the here and now.

In 1999 a mathematician found proof that the hexagonal pattern is the most efficient engineering design. In 2013 three engineers published an article about how Honeycomb cells begin round and are transformed into hexagons. This happens when the body heat from the bees reaches a certain temperature that makes the wax flow a little, the wax then acts simular to soap bubbles, joining together at an angle of 120 degrees wherever they meet. So the bees don't have to go to the trouble of building the most efficient building shape because natural physics will do that for them. I find that amazing and very interesting.

Human Beings really don't live that long, not compared to the likes of Icebergs in the Antarctic Peninsula for instance. Every one of those Icebergs begins its life as the lightest of snowfall in Greenland. An Iceberg born in the 21st century may mean that the snow that formed it fell from the sky whilst the Egyptians were still building the Pyramids. These ancient snowflakes are transformed into Icebergs after layer upon layer of them are laid down in the same area. Reading that gives me a real sense of time and saddens me to realize how Human existence is destroying things that have existed for so long.

Thank you @Mazarita for mentioning Brian Cox to me, he's way beyond me, but I'm finding he's giving me the knowledge I need to feel alive. Not just the negatives that my previous paragraph ended in, but also of the wonders that are the nature of our World.