The Flamingo Files

I finally reached my tipping point. I sprayed musk scented deodorant on my hair instead of hair spray, this morning.  Why do we always do things like that, not on a Saturday when time is our own and we might even let a merry chuckle escape over our absent mindedness, but on a day when we are already running late for a meeting and feeling like something the cat regurgitated yesterday? Unless I drove my toothbrush into Mr. Flamingo’s chest I had no avenue to vent. Fix the hair, reschedule meltdown, get onto the freeway.

Feeling a bit Bite me! today. And yesterday. I tried to get it out of my system venting on Kylie Minogue,  but it was only a 10 minute fix. I am not normally a sharp tongued woman, except, as I have said previously, to Mr Flamingo, but yesterday I viewed myself as being on a snapping roll. Some of you might remember my sad incident of the bike on the stairs where I came off  the worst with a set of handlebars due to being blind on the right side. Yesterday I viewed a young man that I did not recognize and he was rolling his bike towards the collision spot so I launched into action and attacked. I asked him politely but a little more aggressively than my usual manner (which is not to speak at all)  to not chain his bike to the stair rail. He mumbled something that I couldn’t hear so I repeated myself (?) And then I realised that he saying “I work in the newsagent next door and I am just taking my bike in through the back” He had no intention of chaining his bike to the rails. Now I have to face him everyday when I go in to collect my copy of the Australian newspaper. He must be a new casual employee and I have constructed myself as an old bag in his mind’s eye. Good one Flamingo Dancer, way to go girl. Maybe he has to die…

Then I went to Subway to pick up some takeaway for dinner. Forgive me all you domestic goddesses, but sometimes I don’t cook at night. Anyway, they have this offer : buy 3 rolls get a fourth one free. Have had for ages. Works perfectly for me as we have 4 at home at the moment. So I walk in and ask for 4 rolls as usual, they make the rolls while I daydream and they tell me the amount and I hand over my card and payment is made. Then I see through my fog and think, that was more expensive that I expected??? Hmmm, wait on,  he charged me for 4. So I say, wasn’t  I suppose to get one free? HE REPLIES : ONLY IF YOU ASK DIRECTLY FOR IT? I say, but there is a sign on the front door with the offer - does it say that on the sign? I walk over to the sign and read – no fine print, just an out and out offer buy 3 get the 4^th free. The SUBWAY has recently changed hands and so is under new management. (Through my fog I had also randomly noticed that they are cutting the cheese slices into smaller halves now so we are getting less).  So I go back and argue my point. Now I am talking to like a 16 year old and there appears to be no one else there, so I realize that the policy is not his fault. He confesses that there is no way to make a refund on their computer !!!!! Probably also means he has to give 4 litres of blood and his first born if he does a refund too.

I realize that I am not going to win here, and I do have the option of another SUBWAY on my route home. I have to make my point so I say TWICE  Well you had better put that information up on your sign because there are legal ramifications to what you are doing. I know my consumer law, my daughter is a lawyer, remember! Legalese by association! Then I trounce out of the store.

That was last night and I am still feeling bad. Bad, because I took it out on some poor kid, not the manager. Bad, because I don’t usual act like that. Bad, because I was taken down. Bad, because I now have to go to a slightly less convenient SUBWAY store. Ah bite me.

Twitters. I don’t quite understand this Twitters thing. How it works. I am going to have to lasso an offspring and ask them to please explain. It looks interesting, but sometimes one does feel like one is being scheduled into someone else’s daily planner, in between flossing their teeth and picking up the dog poo on the stoop.  The extent of my technological knowledge is my cure all  - ctrl alt delete and start again. I have a way to go.

Getting a wee bit excited as this coming weekend Mr Flamingo and I are flying to Canberra for the Turner to Monet exhibition at the National Gallery. I have never been to Canberra. Mr Flamingo was there a few years back where he witnessed Dame Edna/Barry Humphries have a melt down in the dining room because his breakfast was not served at the right temperature. Apparently Mr Humphries is a little more caustic than even Dame Edna and let throw with a hissy fit that any cross dresser would have been proud of. We expect no such excitement this time, though I can get quite cross if they give me one of those stupid little honey sachets that you can never open unless you break all your fingernails and finally stab it with your knife in which case some of the honey oozes out of the sachet and onto your jeans that you were planning to wear for at least the next two days on your trip.

I was going to telephone ahead and warr Prime Minister Kev and his good lady Therese that we would be dropping by, but then I thought what the hey, let’s catch Therese in her red chenille dressing gown and fluffy green dinosaur slippers, and Kev in his boxers – bet they are a superman silk print . That would be more Australian, don’t you think? Arrive at meal time, unannounced, walk in through the back door.

Prickly reception. This was a subject I was going to blog about and so left myself a cryptic message. Prickly reception.  So cryptic that now I can’t remember what it signified. Anyone want to take a stab at it? It wasn’t about falling into a cactus, I know that.

Once, in my second career, I worked in a University Library. One day I was walking through the stacks when I heard some giggling and laughing, and other strange noises. I retraced my steps and lo, a pair of students, male and female, were in a rather compromising position on the floor. To put it bluntly they were having intercourse, riding the range.  What makes people do that? Do they ever think that their big thrill is another person’s OH MY GOD!  I wonder if they ever sensed that I ran back and told every staff member I could find and all eyes were on them as they walked out later.

Even the library’s study room doors have to have glass windows cut into them so students can be watched. Oh those pulsating hormones – where do they go?

Young birds babble much like human infants do and have their own special brain circuits to do it, researchers report.

Their findings suggest that learning to sing - and also to speak - is a process independent of adult singing or speech.

Michael Fee from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US says research also suggests that other aspects of infant learning are equally independent in the brain.

"Young birds learn their songs in a series of stages," he said.

"They start out just as humans do, by babbling.

"The brain really learns how to use its body by making spontaneous movements and seeing what happens."  http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/04/2234666.htm

As we all know they perfected their babbling outside our bedroom window last week. Once again, can I just state I just need to know nature is out there doing its thing, I don’t have to be out in the middle of it!

Our workplace participates in a Green Initiative, which means we switch off lights, switch off computers at night, print on both side of the paper etc. The parent group came around today on a fact finding/spying mission and randomly selected some of us to ask questions. They also peered into my recycling box and poked around in my waste bin. It was like showing my dirty undies in public. I feel strangely violated in some way. Is that wrong? Am I suffering from some paranoia, persecution complex? They peered, said thanks and left…did I pass their test? Was my rubbish up to standard? Where is my star sticker to take home for Mum? Are they going to write me up on some Green billboard of shame (using both sides of the board of course) to punish me for my sins? I said I recycled everything I could, but I did have a yoghurt encrusted cardboard container in my waste bin. I should have rinsed it and recycled it shouldn’t  have I? FORGIVE ME! I’LL DO BETTER NEXT TIME, I PROMISE! Sigh, another imperfection.

Boss away again today. It is the office joke. Most Monday’s he pretends he has to have a Carer’s Day – he only has two children and a separated wife. We are only allowed 5 carers days a year. 5 into 52 weeks does not go, even according to my math. They must have non existent immune symptoms if it is the truth!  Any long weekend he has to have another day of as well – usually sick then. I think I need to have his type of weekend if he needs another day just to recover. Now when the message comes through that he is sick, no one says a word they just laugh out loud and do that snorting noise that people do when they know you are lying, and want other people to know that they know. He keeps telling me how much work he has to do – if he came for a full week he would actually have some down time in his workday. He could have a little snooze under the desk we wouldn’t hold that against him at all. Heavens most of us have been asleep at our desks for years!  He needs to get more original with his excuses – there was this dog and it was chasing this hippo down the street and they started to get into a fight  in my driveway and I couldn’t open my garage door to drive the car out and then the walrus….you know, let us dangle in potential belief for a second or two before we snort our  wry amusement.

It’s a life, someone has to live it.