Thursday Thoughts

Fifteen weeks ago, I brought home a small kitten shaped ball of fur.
Now I have a cat that is longer than half the width of my table.
I'm guessing Angel's dad must have been a big boy.
At seven months, Angel is almost as big as his mum.
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Does everyone remember the shampoos and conditioners available in Australia in the 1980s?
Thick and rich and foamy, they left your hair silky soft and gleaming like a mirror. And tangle free.
They were full of all kinds of stuff, chemical stuff, the ingredients list was like something out of a laboratory, just like the shampoos and conditioners were.
But my hair loved them! I had soft, shiny, bouncy, curls that were tangle free.

Now, shampoos and conditioners are "natural" with the kind of ingredients you might find on your breakfast table. Apple, peach, strawberry. 
Or the dinner table, herbal essences, coconut oils this,  argon oil that, morrocan oils and so on.
None of which are any good for my hair.
Yes, they clean it, yes the hair is soft, but it just doesn't feel the same.
I've been disappointed since 1990.
And what's with the conditioners??
No longer are they thick and rich, foaming up to cover the hair and actually condition it. 
No, todays conditioners are thin and feel like nothing on the hair.
The richness has been extracted and is now sold to you separately as "intensive treatments" "repair treatments", extra strengthening, extra volumising, extra shine, etc etc.
The shampoos are still thick and nicely foamy, well, most of them are. 

Bring back the Egg Creme shampoos and Protein conditioners of the 80s!!
Sold in Coles under the blue and white "Savings" label, the shampoo was bright yellow, the conditioner fairy floss pink. 
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I've seen a few funny licence plates on cars around Adelaide:
WOOKIE, WOWSER, PARTY G, ALL MINE, HEAVEN...

here's a new one: DNA-TEST. 
Truly! I saw it last Friday. or maybe it was Saturday.

My thoughts today are also with Mimsie, whose dearest friend, Precious, passed away last weekend after being with Mimsie and her husband Phil for thirteen years.
RIP Precious.

Whimsical Wednesday # 133

Welcome back to Whimsical Wednesday!

The day for your googled giggle that gets you over the hump that is Wednesday and sliding down into the weekend.

so far I have not understood any of Angel's art and have now put the toilet paper out of reach.

Musical Monday #17

Musical Monday  

I was introduced to Musical Monday by Delores who copied the meme from another site.

I think it’s a fun way to show off some of the music we like and brighten up our Mondays at the same time. 

I’ll be finding my clips on you tube, so will simply credit that site since there are often so many versions of everything and I wouldn’t want to accidentally credit the wrong artist.

Today’s clip is: Paul McCartney

Ballroom Dancing

I don't dance, but I have seen some ballroom style dancing, my old Dad+Mum-in-law were dancers and she told me once that she used to sew their costumes too. 
S had her own dressmaking business for a while and made wedding dresses as well as everything else. This is the same woman who could knit an entire Baby's Layette in two nights while watching television!

Here is the one with the lyrics for those who want to know the words.

another one of my favourites. 
My Ipod is full of favourites, I could do this for years.

Sunday Selections #181

Welcome back to Sunday Selections!

This once-a- week-meme was originally begun by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock, as a way to showcase some of the many photos we all take, but don't get around to showing on our blogs.

The rules are very simple:-

1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. link back to me, River, somewhere in your post

3. leave me a comment so that I know you've joined in and can come over and see what you've posted.

4. hop on over to TheElephant’s Child to see more of her wonderful photos.

Kath and Andrew often join in.

There are a couple of other participants too:

Jackie K at WorkingThrough It

Gillie at The View from Here

I usually go with a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week I'm continuing with some photos of the Zoo.

Otters and Meerkats 

funny little animals, Meerkats

they can sit so still for so long

then they will move and you realise it isn't a statue

this one is quite small, I think a baby.

they always post a sentinel, one who gets up high and keeps watch to warn of predators.

look right,

look left,

straight ahead.

right again, and repeat

this Otter was washing something, I'm not sure what

there's all those people with cameras again

two of many

here comes another one
I like Otters, they're so sleek and energetic.

My friends, the two Js were moving on and almost out of sight, so I hurried on after them.

pain free! for now.

so I've been to the dentist, sat in the chair for close to two hours with my mouth stretched wide and filled with various potentially pain producing implements and now I'm home again. Minus the nerves in one lower molar.

Yes, another root canal has been done. I remember these from years ago, when the procedure was much more painful than it is now. I still felt a bit of pain during the process, but nothing unbearable.
Dentistry really has made remarkable progress since the fifties and sixties when a lot of the time a tooth was pulled out rather than saved. Because that was the cheaper option. It still is, but people and dentists are more aware now of the importance of keeping teeth as long as possible.

I now have medication in the tooth and a temporary filling and I'll go back in three weeks for the permanent filling. They do this to be sure the tooth doesn't become infected. it is much easier to remove a temporary filling and reclean the root canals than it is to remove a permanent filling.

So I've lost a few hours, paid a few (lots) dollars and lost the painful aching I've had since that flare-up I wrote about ten days ago. That's a win for me.

Saturday Angel

Ready for your weekly dose of Angelic cuteness?

I know there's a pen hiding here, I saw mum push it under.

got it! now what shall I write?

uh-oh, mum's coming back, I'd better get down.

I'll pretend I was under here the whole time, she'll never know.

this is another thing I like to do, watching all that swirling water.

Wednesday's Words on a Friday

On Wednesdays, Delores, from Under The Porch Light, has a meme which she calls

“Words for Wednesday”.

She puts up a selection of six words which we then use in a short story, or a poem.

I’m hopeless at poetry so I always do a story.

It’s a fun challenge…why not join in?

This week's words are:

1. clandestine

2. surgical

3. cove

4. creeping

5. mastodon 

6. garish

there is also a phrase, "under the mat and off the grid", which I won't be using today,

and a photo of an older style small kitchen, which I also won't be using today. 

Here is my story:

Billy and Joe were excited. They'd set up this clandestine meeting with Sam, whose Uncle Claude was one of the guards at the museum. 

Billy's mum was the town's homeopath and had her office in the front of their home.

Billy had stolen some surgical gloves from his mum's office and he and Joe each wore a pair as they came creeping into the museum after closing hours through the unlocked door Sam had left for them. 

He sometimes helped Uncle Claude lock up so it was easy enough for him to "accidentally" skip a door when checking. 

Billy had convinced Joe not to wear his usual garish clothes, Joe wasn't happy about it, but if he wanted to be unseen, the bright orange and blue hawaiian shirts he favoured just wouldn't do on this occasion. 

Their plan was to steal one of the Mastodon bones from the exhibit and bury it in the cove. 

Two weeks from now they planned to go down to the cove for a picnic, dig sand for a sandcastle and "discover" an ancient bone. 

They'd be famous! They'd be in all the papers! Maybe even on TV!

Billy, Joe and Sam didn't know this plan was doomed. 

Failure wasn't in their vocabulary, they were only seven years old and hadn't really thought this thing through. 

There were things they hadn't considered. 

All three had completely forgotten that it would be near dark outside when they got back out of the museum, none of them knew the way to the cove apart from heading in the general direction of the beach, none of them realised the beach was actually four miles away. 

Until now, they'd only been to the cove when their parents had driven them on hot summer days. 

None of them knew how heavy a Mastodon bone would be either. 

They crept into the Stone Age exhibits room and stared at all the bones and dinosaurs. The Mastodon was huge! And all the bones were connected. How were they going to get a loose one? Surely there must be a loose one lying around somewhere? 

Maybe they could wiggle a rib bone enough to disconnect it from the others. 

Sam and Joe held onto the Mastodon leg while Billy tried to wiggle a rib, trying to be as quiet as possible. 

It didn't work of course, they had made enough noise "creeping" in to alert Uncle Claude who had been following them, unseen, this whole time. 

Now, Uncle Claude walked into the room and stood there tapping his foot. 

"Ahem!"