We don’t have pets, but we do have some amusing animals in our lives. Here are some photos of our favourites so far…
An air of resigned dignity on this poor kangaroo. The new management really don’t take her qualifications seriously.
Amazed at Daiman Hirst’s dove.
Grrrr. No idea what this Lego minifig is. Some poor man trapped in a crocodile suit?
A once terrifying dragon rendered harmless by a bunch of grapes.
So busy.
It’s a croissant cat!!
At the top of this blog, there’s a picture of a mysterious fried square thing on a plate. It’s secret identity shall now be revealed as … Hong Kong French toast.
It’s not French and it’s not toast. It has has so little nutritional value that perhaps it isn’t technically food either. It is, however, one of our favourite Hong Kong special snacks.
Hong Kong French toast is usually:
You might feel your arteries hardening a little as you look at these pictures…
Classic Hong Kong French toast
Sharing the bounty of saturated fat and refined sugar.
Burp.
One day I found myself hopping with a clickety click of the mouse from pictures of vintage French cheese labels, to a pro-anorexia, self-harm Tumblr site. I have never seen one of these before because I am neither interested in anorexia nor self-harm.
I started off scrolling through:
I then ended up stumbling through a stream of:
I rolled through these images for a while, wondering at the curious mix of cute sunny fluffy animals and deep self-loathing. Is this what it feels like to be a modern young woman? Is this what my daughter will fall in to as she grows up? Is there any place on the web where it is NOT appropriate to include kittens?
As sad as that desperate collection of images was, I’ve had a tiny useful glimpse in to a dark place that I want nothing to do with.
Thank you Mrs Internet for teaching me a little about the girls who cut themselves because they don’t have a gap between their thighs. And for kittens. Let there always be kittens.
I’ve recently stopped being a Stay-At-Home-Mum (SAHM). I am now a Mostly-At-Work-Mum (MAWM).
It’s Sunday night. Before I pack my bag for work, I have:
[Aside: I don’t recall seeing mums in films doing any of these tasks. They spend a lot of time at kitchen benches slicing loaves of sourdough bread, or washing lettuce.]
During the week, I have outsourced a large proportion of my kid-related responsibilities, so these little things I do at night and on weekends keep me connected with them.
We still have some excellent conversations.
My son’s answer to peak oil and energy resource depletion: “Buy a load of dead animals and bury them in the ground.” [This was his variation on the boring old coalification process where coal is formed from prehistoric fossils…]
My daughter was drawing a sea horse. “It’s a French sea horse,” she explained. “Why?” I asked. “Because it’s wearing a bow tie and has a moustache.” Of course.
So let’s get on with that work-life balance.
Several weeks after leaving Facebook, my life continues on.
Older
I had a decidedly non-digital afternoon tea with some delightful ‘old girls’ from my school. I’m not using ‘old’ in a pejorative sense. One of my companions had graduated from school in 1944!
My days are usually spent in the company of people my own age, or with children. It was quite brilliant to share shortbread with an entirely different generation. No-one secretly checked their messages under the tablecloth. No-one leapt away from the table to grab their iPad to look up the EXACT name of their angina medication. And no-one posted photos of us with mouthfuls of date slice on FB.
I felt younger and springier. Hopeful that I would one day be a feisty senior with sturdy boots and a backpack full of cake, talking too loudly to the bus driver.
We shall be exchanging addresses and sending cards to keep in touch. Hooray!
Further away
I’ve been thinking about the ‘unreal’ friendships that I left behind on FB. I might have commented on photos of their 5 course Peruvian degustation meal, but I really didn’t know what was going on in their lives. I never asked “How are you?” on Facebook.
Once, a friend received a disturbing email from her very good friend overseas. Lots of apologies for being a bad friend, inadequate mother and general life-failure. Alarming .
Even more sad than the actual email, was our first thought: “Is this real or a hoax?” How could we tell if it was some crazy spam or a genuinely troubling communication? It turned out to be genuine, and I felt so guilty for doubting its authenticity.
I treat email as administrative and functional. In this case, the medium (email) did not match the message (I am feeling truly awful and need a friend).
We have to ask “How are you?” a lot more often. And be happy even if we just get a 🙂 back.
Here’s one I wrote earlier
Love is not dead, it’s just resting. How often do you tell your loved ones that they are loved? On a sliding scale, I think the most romantic medium are (with 1 being most lovely):
I’ve un-friended Facebook.
I’ve haven’t been popping in to FB’s corporate blue cyber-lounge very much recently. FB was dropping down to the bottom of my To Do list. It was above “Pick up next-door cat’s poo in my garden” but below “Find lost sink plunger”. [We have sub-standard plumbing in this house.]
I decided that in 2013 I would *leave* Facebook. I’m not closing my account, but I’m just not actively checking it or updating it. It’s a bit of a relief actually.
Good things about leaving Facebook
Bad things about leaving Facebook
[After a long pause… ]
Life after Facebook
I read that Facebook is the email of the digital natives. Ubiquitous, functional and essential. I hope that’s wrong, as I’m going to live without it.
This was my first post on Facebook – 3 July 2007:
[From me to friend] Now I’m a zombie chump thanks to you.
This was my last post on Facebook – 9 December 2012:
2013 new year resolution SPOILER: Only 23 more sleeps until I leave* Facebook.
*I’m not even going to pretend to check/update very often. Just can’t be arsed.
There are plenty of other ways we can connect: twitter, linkedin, flickr, pinterest, my blog, your blog, email, skype, landline, mobile, post, or meet me for a coffee?
(But not google+… I suspect that I will be on that even less than FB.)
Here’s one I wrote earlier
We are all alone together. Looking down the hill, the lights of the party twinkled and crinkled through the trees. The wafts of voices floated up past me in the dark. I could see my friends arranging and rearranging themselves in to little clumps of conversation and mid-priced wine.
I am, like, so not popular. I am not a very popular person. I only have:
I’ve been suffering from an extreme case of blog procrastination. If this blog was a small child, well-meaning strangers would frown at its unsuitable footwear and thin arms.
But hooray! All the planets are aligned, the Interweb is working, and my hands are warm enough to type.
Quite a few people stumble here by searching for Lego. So to feed up my poor malnourished blog, here are some amusing Lego pictures. Does anyone ever get tired of cute Lego? Not me.
Grrrr. No idea what this Lego minifig is. Some poor man trapped in a crocodile suit?
We had a hard time trying to describe what ‘a hippy’ was to the kids.
Proof that I was in New York
I did make an ambitious claim several weeks ago that I would put up some pictures from my NY mini-break. Here they are:
The ancient Chinese culture and traditions on display in Chinatown.
The 9/11 memorial at sunset.
It’s a croissant cat!!
Central Park. It looks fake, doesn’t it? But it really was this pretty…
At The Met I found out that mid-18th century French porcelain could be terrifying.
So, the blog child-beast has been fed. And I can happily procrastinate away for another short while.
Here’s one I wrote earlier
Lego love for all the family. It really really hurts when I step on hard, sharp, pointy bits of Lego. I suffer through strange foot indentations because Lego is wonderful.
Too lazy for words. Greetings from New York. I’ve just popped over for a high-end mini-break with husband.
Greetings from New York. I’ve just popped over for a high-end mini-break with husband.
If I was a proper blogger, I would be photographing my food and posting pictures up with tasting notes. Or reviewing the toenail art of the woman lounging at the bar.
But the good camera is broken and we forgot to unlock our mobile phones, so we are without Wandering Web. We are officially free to just go about tourist-ing without sending out a real-life feed of NY delights.
Use the power of your mind to imagine that the following were posted over the last couple of days:
This post was the blog equivalent of ‘freshening up’ a stale bread roll in a microwave. A more nutritionally-balanced post will appear when I’m back.
Byeeee, Lorraine
It was a quiet morning at home. I was pondering the largeness of my multivitamin tablet.
Then I took some pictures:
Hello! We love our Omega-3 fish oils.
Delivering the drugs.
ALL the vitamins you need in one MASSIVE pill.
The love drugs.
Here’s one I wrote earlier
I heard a bus shelter singing In these drippy flannel grey spring days, I love colour. My eyes are hungry for bright shiny colourful things. Like these…
Pictures of words Someone has poured concrete in to my sinus cavities (I have a cold). This is a lazy ‘picture post’ today. I am too tired to write many words, so here are some pictures of words that have made me smile …
A life less digital 