Walking the something

My kitten is quite different to any feline I've met before. Usually cats are very independent, they like to do their own thing, and that's that. Bruiser however, is always at my side. If he isn't on top of me, clinging hard, that is. He sleeps on my head, and he only goes outside when I do, although I leave the door open, in case he feels like a stroll. Maybe he'll grow out of it.

These days, when I go for my daily walk along the beach, I'm not alone. There, beside me, is Bruiser, skipping and leaping... and chirping like a little bird.

During these walks he diligently ensures he's within six feet of me at all times. We get some strange looks. I'd say he's a dog in a cat's body, but no dog I've ever walked has been so well behaved.

I don't think he's a kitten at all. He's a springlamb-babybird-showdog-overlyromanticboyfriend hybrid.

Little addicts

So I'm sitting here sweaty as hell, in old jeans and a fluro orange singlet, smudged with flour and cocoa and sticky with egg.
Yes, there's a cake in the oven.

When I first came back to my hometown I brought some drugs with me, to tide me over before I could meet with a doctor and get scripted. However, as it goes with drugs, they didn't last the distance. I found myself loitering outside the one pharmacy in town that dispenses methadone, looking for a friendly face. After an hour or so of embarrassing myself, feeling pretty desperate and fading fast, Sarah and her six year old pulled up.

Sarah! I recognized her from one of my group therapy meetings (great place to make new contacts!! heh... just joking) and knew she used to work at the local needle exchange. She was heavily pregnant. She had to dose twice a day, on site, due to her pregnancy, so she couldn't personally sell me anything. However, she invited me over, made several calls and went and picked something up for me, reluctant to even take the 10 bucks I gave her towards gas. She really saved me that day, and ever since I've dropped by to drink coffee and talk shit with someone who understands. My dad does not approve.

Yes she's pregnant and yes she's a drug addict. I know many of you are probably judging already. Well, that's what humans do. But first, let me tell you her story.

She has been on the methadone program for over three years. For the last two and half she stopped getting her period (that happened to me too when I was on the 'done) and assumed she couldn't possibly get pregnant. She got pregnant.

As soon as she found out, she raced to the doctor and asked to come off the methadone. He said no. Coming off opiates while pregnant causes such severe stress to the body that she'd most likely lose or harm the baby. Instead, against her wishes, he INCREASED the dose, to cover the extra passenger. Methadone as such isn't bad for the fetus, but there is the risk the baby will be born an addict.

Her lovely little boy was born three weeks ago, heavily addicted to opiates. She is still in hospital with him, and probably will be for another few weeks, as the doctors wean him off. So far, he's doing extremely well. He's a little more unsettled than most babies, and has wires attached here and there, but he's got chub and a little grinning face.

One of the nurses is a tiny overly-muscled woman with ridiculously short legs, a blond perm and a hard face. Another has frizzy grey hair pinned tightly to her head, coke-bottle lense glasses, an oversized, sloppy body and a permanent sneer. These are just two of her many nurses, all who are obviously and vocally angry with Sarah for "inflicting her child with an addiction." How professional. Silly me, I always thought a nurses job was to care, not judge.

Sarah knows better than anyone the enormity of what she has passed on to her child.

It is awful. But the truth is, she did EVERYTHING SHE COULD bar having an abortion. Is that what the nurses would have liked? Why does it even matter what they would like?

So, I go up every few days, so far with chocolate afghan cookies x2 batches, banana bread, peanut butter cookies and today, with a banana chocolate cake.

Bambino

I have a meeting at the A&D clinic every week, and every week I drive past the SPCA on the way there, and past again, on the way home. Last week, I thought, well, I'll JUST look. There's no harm in looking. Ha! Right.

I signed myself into the cramped kitten cage, trying not to step on any of the frolicking little bodies. I'd seen the kitten I wanted instantly. Black with white bits and pieces, a sweet little face, huddled by herself, as if lonely. It took me awhile to reach her. A pushy little tabby half her size had pounced on me and was in my arms with his face upturned towards mine, eyelashes batting before I managed to shut the mesh door behind me.

The next day I turned up at the SPCA with a cat-sized cardboard box, carefully lined with a snuggly old sweater and a back pocket full of folded twenties. Kittens aren't cheap. Unfortunately, my cardboard box caused a frown. I had to buy the SPCA logo cardboard box for an extra ten bucks. Great. There were four ladies of varying sizes behind the desk. What they all had in common was they diligently ignored me, until I began sighing loudly and shifting foot to foot. There were a lot of things to sign. The ladies kept transferring me to each other while they'd disapear then reappear and I'd be handed back until no one knew what the hell I'd paid for, who I was or what I wanted.

Finally, the kitten. Handed to me in the approved cardboard box, I could hear him crying. I put my eye to the box and peeked in. The tabby little face widened its eyes when it saw me.

As soon as I reached my car, he was out of his box and on my lap. EXTREMELY illegal, the SPCA women had warned me. I didn't care, he wasn't crying. The kitten perched there, paws on the staring wheel with a smug expression on his face until we reached the supermarket. In typical disorganised fashion I still needed to buy him food and litter. Even with the windows cracked it would be sticky hot in the car. I took the bandana from around my neck and wrapped him tight, like moses in his swaddling get-up. Only a little whiskered face peeped out. Together, the teeny baby bundle and I went shopping.

At home, in bed, he crawled up my body to cuddle at my throat, his little face an inch from mine he very softly extended one paw and began to gently stroke the side of my face, while gazing into my eyes. Yes it was cute, but also very slightly creepy.

That was when he was still reveling in freedom from orphanhood. And thus, I guess, on best-behaviour. I think he's forgotten all about the hell that is the SPCA already. Biting my toes (hard!!), tearing up important anything, climbing up my body to my shoulders where he digs his claws in tight. He's realised how goddam cute he is, and now he's in charge.

Guest blogger

=]]]]===;ppppp juuuuuu]
snnn =;///

-Bruiser (aka my new kitten)

Now this is art

This is an actual court sketch!! Probably one of the most dramatic court sketches ever.

Ahem, so, what do you think about the one and only Heather Mills?

My feelings are surprisingly neutral. Unlike, it seems, the rest of the world... and if there IS extraterrestrial life, they probably hate her too. But then I was never a big Beatles fan. She's always been heavily involved with charities, I like that. Gold-digger yes maybe, but hell, there wasn't a pre-nup, and that's the way it goes. It must be a hard world to live in, when millions of people who don't even know you, hate you.

It seems like she's had a rough life, and the only difference now is where the decimal point sits on her bank statement.

Her mum upped and left when she was 9.
Her dad was jailed for fraud and she was sent to live with her mother, whom she didn't get along with.
She ran away and survived homeless.
When she was 21 she reconciled with her mum, but shortly after, her mum went to hospital for minor sugery and died.
At 25 she was mown down by an ambulance and had to have her leg amputated from just below the knee.
(And as we all know) in 2006 Paul McCartney broke off their marriage via the media.

The thing I don't get, is that she named her kid (to McCartney) Beatrice Milly. Hopefully she's Beatrice Milly McCartney, not Beatrice Milly Mills. It irks me when people call their kids things like Robert Roberts or Wallace Wallace. Just, why? My mum many years ago knew a family surname Beach. They had a ton of kids, all with names like Shelley, Sandy, Rocky etc.
Guess they thought it was funny. Dorks.

double trouble etc.

Steep tea, roll cigarette. Light it. And there it is, a two headed match.

Those things make me happy. The double filter, the time 12.34. Yes I'm looking forward to the day 08/08/08. I look for four-leafed clovers every time I'm in the grass. Always I'm looking for signs, of something. Anything.



Two-headed fact:
Unfortunately for two-headed reptiles (which are pretty common) they usually don't live long. Apparently it's because they have two brains, and will often try to attack each other, in some instances successfully biting the other head clean off...

Just beachy

So, a bit about me and my exciting life.

I was on my way home this evening, heading for the warm glow of a parents' living room, when I passed a long stretch of autumn beach. It was twilight, the sunset was long melted away, but the sand still radiated heat. Abandoned sand castles dotted the high-tide mark, haunted houses now, crumbling away. I rolled up my jeans and dug my bare feet into the sand. There were all the scuffles and squeaks of night noises in the dunes. Shadows stretched longer out to eat the the beach as I walked. I could see shapes of other beachcombers but their faces were masked with dark, too anonymous to need a hello-isn't-it-a-lovely-evening. Yes, anti-social me likes that. The velvety dusk was like an invisible cape swinging around my shoulders. And I didn't even step on an errant dog poo.

Happy birthday Barbie

Barbie Millicent Rogers (yep, that's her full name) turned 59 on March 9th.

Initially the experts said Barbie was a bad idea, she'd be too expensive to produce, with no long term appeal. Typical.
Every single second, two Barbies are sold. In fact, placed head to toe, the number of Barbies sold would circle the earth 7 times. And thanks to Barbie's love of fashion, Mattel has become the biggest garment manufacturer in the world.

Of course a lot has been written about how she influences culture, and little girls in particular. Critics always seem to focus on Barbie's unrealistic proportions or the innocence she embodies. Ha! Innocence. What no one seems to acknowledge is how much Barbie loves sex, with other Barbies, with Ken, with stuffed animals. Is there a little girl who DIDN'T channel her confused hormones through Barbie's bendable legs?

politicart

Barack Obama is your new bicycle.

Hillary is mom jeans.

Enjoy!

Two placebos a day please

Prozac, the bestselling antidepressant taken by 40 million people worldwide, DOES NOT WORK and nor do similar drugs in the same class (Paxil, Seroxat, Effexor and Serzone etc.), a new study revealed last week.

"The study examined all available data on the drugs, including results from clinical trials that the manufacturers chose not to publish at the time. The trials compared the effect on patients taking the drugs with those given a placebo or sugar pill.

When all the data was pulled together, it appeared that patients had improved - but those on placebo improved just as much as those on the drugs."
-The Guardian 26/02/07


I don't know what to think about all this hoo-ha. My pills work. Don't they?

I was v skeptical before I first started paxil, I'd always thought you should just tough your way through the bad-times, but taking it changed everything. I started breathing again. And enjoying breathing.

It's hard to admit to being duped. It's hard to believe it. But drug companies have never been exactly squeaky-clean.

So, what do you think? Are you just another anti-depressanted chump?