Silly Season is here

Merry Christmas everyone, as we celebrate the buddha (Rohatsu)ooops the birth of Jesus with the rehashed pagan Babylon "the feast of the Son of Isis". It was celebrated on December 25. Raucous partying, gluttonous eating and drinking, and gift-giving were traditions of this feast,so I'm glad we stole that part too.

We Put Christmas lights up again this year,it's only 8 sets of lights and a lightup santa but it looks a lot because our frontage is so tiny. We have one of those federation railway cottages with the bullnose verandah and 4ft square of grass iether side of the path.Our street goes for 5 blocks and there are several houses with lights,so it earned a street sign that proclaims Santa Street. I live on Santa St !!!

Have been cooking and wrapping pressies all afternoon and evening, now it's all done bar the shouting.

I've made potato salad, a potato,bacon,egg and onion slice, potato bake,2 trifles, the hams been cut and the lollies are out.Hubby has organised his prawns, made his usual fried rice,has the turkey breast ready for the oven in the morning and is doing a potato bake, he does his more dry and crispy with chunks of bacon and onion,so i make a small garlic creamy one as well. If Danny eats all the slice tonight I'll have to make another one in the morning,but other than that I really only have cream to whip. I have a pavlova shell to do too, but I don't think we can fit another thing in the fridge.

seems like we have a lot of spud dishes in there !!

Then theres the KFC,when the kids were little,they were fussy eaters,and takeaway was a treat,we rarely had it,so they chose KFC for xmas,and it stuck.It's a tradition now apparently.So it's chicken, nuggets, potato gravy and coleslaw.

I'm happy as a pig in mud,all 3 kids will be here for lunch,Danny lives at home,Gemma around the corner and Chloe and Jess will be riding down after a big Christmas breakfast with her parents.I meant to take their bigger present down to Canberra with me last week for them to put under their tree, but forgot, so they will open it and have to leave it here ,till I drop it over in a few weeks time .

They have decorated the bike with tinsel and a Merry xmas sign, don't know if it will last the 120km trip at 110km p/hr, fingers crossed , it looks fun.

Don't throw your cigarette out the window if you're travelling the Hume tomorrow, they hit hard when you're on a bike...and they burn!!!

Anyhoo Have a lovely christmas, Hanukka,feast of the Son of Isis,Lenaea,Dies Natalis Invicti Solis,Alban Arthuan, Inti Raymi ,Shab-e Yaldaa,Soyal,or Appolo, Attis, Baal, Dionysus, Helios, Hercules, Horus, Mithra, Osiris, Perseus, and Theseus Day.

Thanks for reading and following :)

This poem resonated with me ,as it has with a lot of people, it has 61 comments so far.

It can be found on this blog :Where the Butterflies Go

I hope someone approaches Heather and puts it to music :)

Words

By heather grace stewart

You’re texting him and he’s texting her;
You know how it goes, mostly a blur;
Calling me geeky, or maybe just strange.
They’re just words,
But they’ll last for days.

You post a photo, a few words, not more;
They’ll laugh so hard when I walk through that door.
Calling me gay; one of the queers.
They’re just words,
But they’ll last for years.

Text it, blog it, put it on Twitter.
They’re just lies. They’re just litter.
You’re a bully on a bus
with a prepaid phone, and words.
Just words.

Is that all you’ve got?

Someday I’ll be stronger, with all this behind me,
Someday I’ll shine brighter, my true love beside me,
And you’ll be paying the same old fare;
Just a bully on a bus marked
Going Nowhere.

In about 20 years, I know the story,
You’ll come up to me with a phony “sorry.”
Wishing you’d made something out of yourself.
They’re just words,
But, somehow, they’ll help.

I’ll smile sweetly, try not to stare
at your sad old eyes and thinning hair.
Seeing the jealousy in your gaze;
You’ll have no words,
No words for days.

Text it, blog it, put it on Twitter.
They’re just lies. They’re just litter.
You’re a bully on a bus
with a prepaid phone, and words.
Just words.

Is that all you’ve got?

Someday I’ll be stronger, with all this behind me,
Someday I’ll shine brighter, my true love beside me,
And you’ll be paying the same old fare;
Just a bully on a bus marked
Going Nowhere

You’re going nowhere.

On my high horse again

Every so often I dip into transgender blogs and new stories. I can ask Chloe anything and she'll tell me of course ,but I don't like this to be our only topic of conversation. She is so much more than a just a transgender girl, with all the accumulated experiences of her 23 years.

Some sites and stories are full of support and others ,OMG such hatred and ignorance.

Some people will make an off the cuff comment they think is meant to be funny and others make a hateful statement and then sit back and wait for replies....this then becomes their invitation to spout religious or just plain hateful phobic nonsense.

When Chloe first told me of her feelings, there was fear and anxiety. I wasn't really sure where this was coming from , but the thought of telling people was fearful. My friends and family are very understanding people and NONE of them have let me down in this respect. So, where did it come from:? Outside people? People I don't know? Yep, there it is. Not fear for me and what they thought about me or my family really, but a fear for Chloe's safety, her job,she was moving sharehouses,so accommodation aswell. I feared the reaction to her , her person, in everyday life.All I could think of at the time was that their lives are often filled with risks and consequences that most people aren't aware of and because of stereotyping, a lot of people tend to associate transsexuals with prostitution, bar dancing and drag queen shows.

Because of who she has always been I knew that she didn't wake up one day say, "Hey, I think I'll make myself about as miserable as I can imagine , short of setting myself on fire". It hasn't been easy for her, for sure, but she has done this with the usual determination with various things that she's had her whole life. She taught herself a complex 3d animation programme at age 15 and moved 1200km away from family to study 3d at college. She spent her teen years a sensible person with no police on our doorstep . I must have told her to sit still and shut up one too many times cos she did !

So it bugs me when I read comments on blogs and especially news items, that people assume that being transgender is a choice and/or a mental problem.

I hate repeating these, but hopefully someone who thinks this way might stumble across my blog and learn something.

some of the things I've read in the past few days :

There is no such thing as 'trans-gender'!

Gender is determined at birth by your X-Y chromosomes and no amount of surgery (body mutilation) changes that FACT.

"Transgender" is a MENTAL problem, not a physical one. These freaks should be kept away from children.

If someone thinks they are a dog and as a tail attached they still aren't a dog.

All of these statements are offensive to me. One of the angers me to tears.

Life is not all black and white

I can't even imagine choosing a life of struggle but I also can't imagine going against who I am just to make others feel comfortabl­e . I don't have to think about this, but every person born in the wrong gender does.

Discovering yourself ,learning to be that person and love yourself must be hard work in an environmen­t of ignorance. We only have one life that we know of.Better to live true to yourself one second than eighty years or so as someone else's view of who you should be. Especially people who don't even know you personally.

Has anybody with a congenital heart defect made the "choice" to have a bad heart? We don't choose our gender, it is assumed at birth by external genitalia.

Medical science has shown that chromosomes do not necessarily determine physical sex, that a person can be biologically one sex and neurologically another and that gender incongruence is a medical, not purely psychological, condition.Mainstream scientific organizations worldwide, thousands of doctors and researchers agree that gender identity conditions are medical issues, not psychological.It's my understanding, the doctors try hard to screen out the individuals that need to work on their heads before they worry about their bodies.This would certainly apply to the dog tail statement!

The one that makes me furious enough to cry though is the "shouldn't be around children" I just find this a disgusting ignorant and reprehensible statement. I can't wait for Chloe and Jess to have children, they are going to make the best parents.They have a better understanding of what makes kids tick than I ever had. I have made some friends in the transgender community ,they are loving parents,aunts, uncles and grandparents. They are just people , just like you and I.

Educate ,Educate,Educate, I think this is the only way to get the message out there.

Teaching Birds To Talk..is this it?

Barbilou's wonderings answered

A great blog I follow posted some wonderful wonderings yesterday.

Today they had me wondering too and I decided I had wondered too long and had to know too.

Here are Barbilou's questions that had me pondering and asking Mr Google .

Why do only CATS purr? Why don't dogs purr?
Chickens and eggs. How long does it take for an egg to form? If a chicken lays one every day, and you were to cut her open, would she be full of eggs in various stages of development?
How do spiders not get caught in their own webs?

How nutritious is hay anyway? How can animals as big as cows get that big just eating hay?

Apparantly two species of genets purr as well.Genetta tigrina, and most likely also Genetta genetta, had been documented to purr, but other than that only cats .I didn't knw what a gennet was so there is a pic here, so now you know too.apparently they live in Africa.

Dogs don't purr because they dont have the same vocal folds and harmonics on breathing in and out that cats do.

cChicken and eggs ...easy... 21 days till egg ready to hatch :)

On average they only lay one egg a day,so there wont be a belly full of eggs, if it's killed before the first egg is laid maybe there would be the one just starting to form,getting ready for the next day and one on its way out.You'd have to have the timing and the axe just right.

Spiders are clever, they make 2 kinds of webs,one sticky one for catching flies and one non sticky for walking about on. Why don't they get mixed up ? I don't know. Perhaps they do occasionally, but if they do get one leg stuck theres another 7 they can drag themselves off with.

Hay is high in protein and energy so apparently it is especially great for long in the tooth horses and pregnant ones.

People can and do apparently eat oat hay! I wonder if they are as big as horses?

but mostly we eat whole oats...for breakfast. Porridge anyone?

A reputable Hay nutrition site assured me people eat Hay but I cannot find any recipes via Mr Google so I hope this will help.

Chloe blogs

Chloe has her own blog now...I annoyed her enough and she caved? Jess annoyed her and she caved? She hates writing with a pen,so hopefully a keyboard will work :)

I've had a look it's interesting and she writes long sentences like me.....

Trans guide to the galaxy

my reindeer has wheels

not mine but

reindeer cars are everywhere in Australia at the moment.......$25 and your car can look like this!