ms crankypants

Sorry I haven’t been here more often; I think doing a lot of corporate writing for tender responses has turned my brain into a buzzword-spitting bullshit bingo machine. Innovative! Ka-pow! Solution! Ka-ching! Nah, I promise I haven’t been using waffle-words to bid for the supply of things that have already been invented.

Anyway, I was in the city during the week to run some errands and was checking my blog feed while waiting for a tram. My favourite librarian had just posted a blog entry that one of his poems was on show at an exhibition at Flinders Street station. And I, at the time, was one stop from Flinders Street station. Freaky coincidence and serendipitious planetary timing, I think so.

I swooshed my soon-to-be axed casual user’s travel card through the turnstiles and checked out the Moving Galleries exhibition. What a grand idea to bring arts to the peeps at the train station.

I took a pic of all three poems on this panel as I like them all in different ways, but congratulations to the comrade in the middle for having his work acknowledged in public.

Crank-o-meter: edified

July 23rd, 2011 | Tags: not cranky | Category: Uncategorized, not cranky | Comments (10)

A couple of weeks ago I helped staff a booth at a big-arse manufacturing trade show.

I learned why I’ve never worked in retail jobs dealing with the public and why I probably shouldn’t. Ever. There’s some raving fruit amongst the public and they all seemed to gravitate towards me. Maybe it’s my sunny disposition and pleasant face that attract nutters from miles away, or maybe they cling like barnacles to anyone who gives them more than a passing glance of eye contact. I don’t know, but it’s scary.

The funniest visitor was a chap who wanted some information on lightweight materials for a project he was working on.

“What are you building?” I asked (regretfully, with hindsight).

“A flying car. The materials need to be as light as possible.”

My brain seemed to split in two, with one half deciding it wanted to say, “You’re bloody kidding me,” and the other, polite, nutter-attracting half wanting to say, “Oh, really, that’s fascinating. Tell me more.”

I’d cracked the sads earlier at a co-worker earlier for coming in over the top of my enquiries and ’stealing’ the possible leads, and he made the mistake of trying to steal Mr AirCar before listening to the conversation. This time I let him push in and I stepped back to watch the show.

Half an hour later, and after I’d been for a long walk and refreshment break, Mr AirCar was lamenting how the strict our government is with rules governing flying cars. Who’d a thunk it? Apparently you just don’t build one and take to the sky; there are other considerations such as licencing, road/airworthiness and not having mid-air collisions and killing the poor punters at ground level. As much as I think my taxes are wasted at times, I don’t mind a few dollars going towards development of flying car policy and regulation.

A long fifteen minutes later, and after I’d gone to another stand to steal a stress ball (I needed it by then), he’d spread his blueprints over the table. This man was hell-bent on putting his car in the air. I looked at the designs and couldn’t see the reason why the wings were going to be transported in a trailer behind the car — you press a button from the console and the wings will emerge so you can take to the skies. Goodness knows how you take off, land and control a moveable trailer behind the car — I am obviously ignorant of the laws of physics relating to flying cars.

I didn’t want to ask questions about the trailer in case I was dragged back into the conversation, so I stood back and dusted the booth while my co-worker tried to extricate himself from the man’s clutches. That, my friends, is payback for stealing my leads.

But feel free to shoot me down in flames (not literally) if flying cars come soon to a dealership near you.

Crank-o-meter: scared for the future

June 5th, 2011 | Tags: work | Category: work | Comments (9)

Maybe the title of this expo isn’t exclusionist and I’m the one who’s obsessed with gender-neutral language; I think I’ll go and grow my armpit hair and knit a Germaine Greer statue out of hemp.

Crank-o-meter: defeated

May 9th, 2011 | Tags: feminism, marketing | Category: Uncategorized, feminism, marketing | Comments (7)

I was at mum and dad’s last night for a belated birthday dinner (mine, and delayed because mum forgot to buy my present) and I didn’t hear dad in the house. Mum was in a tizz because dinner was late (not in a tizz because she forgot my present for the second time, but that’s okay, I’m a big girl now and shan’t cry) and she said dad was out the back releasing Saturday the house-invading possum.

I said, “Why, he’ll be back by morning,” and remembered one shouldn’t be a smart-arse when one’s mother is holding a wooden spoon.

Out the back window was dad looking skyward into the upper branches of a tree, like he was waiting for a brush-tailed, marsupial version of Godot. Instead of releasing Saturday into the front paddock again, where he found the back of the house to enter, they had released him at the back of the house, where the distance to the cat enclosure was an even shorter scurry. The only possible flaw to his possible return plans was that my brother was away, so there was no warm and furry face to nest in until daybreak.

I tried double or nothing with the wooden spoon and said, “Close the door to my brother’s bedroom as Saturday will be back by morning; don’t want the cats getting to him before you do.” Amazingly, I still got dinner and a serve of rather tasty plum and berry cobbler with custard for dessert — crime does pay.

The phone rang this morning. Mum. Saturday bypassed the cat enclosure and settled himself back in the cardboard box in his former cage (I think they left the door open, just in case). Back to a life of grevillea blossoms, watermelon and sweet corn.

Crank-o-meter: gloating

April 25th, 2011 | Tags: animals are fun | Category: animals are fun | Comments (9)

Yesterday was one of those autumn days that the sun’s rays through the window warmed the ageing bones of human and fur monster alike.

Pickles camped on the right-hand side of the newspaper, so I slide him to the left and kept reading. He kipped for about an hour in his paper bag.

Crank-o-meter: wanting to return in the next life as Lord Pickles Cranklesworth

April 17th, 2011 | Tags: animals are fun | Category: animals are fun | Comments (5)

This is offensive, against the sisterhood and just plain trading on my insecurities about ageing, yeah? (click on the pic to enlarge)

It’s made me cranky to the point of not yet replying because I can’t make the words come out in rational sentences. The exclamation points are making me froth at the (slightly lined) mouth!

Crank-o-meter: getting frown lines at a rapid rate

April 8th, 2011 | Tags: feminism, shittypants | Category: feminism, shittypants | Comments (15)

Hello, all is well here but I’ve just had nothing of interest to talk about. Except baby elephants:

Hang on, I can’t embed videos for some silly reason, so check the little elephants out here.

Thanks, _owl_, for being the field reporter of baby elephant adventures online. I’m currently laying irrigation trenches in the back yard for the pools I’m installing in the elephant park-to-be.

The new job is turning out well apart from some silly anxiety from insecurity and placing too much pressure on myself. This hasn’t occurred in the past and I think it’s a fallout from all the crap at the last job. The odd irony is that I’m going to an industry breakfast next week and two of the hosting organisation’s committee members are: the man who probably recommended to my former boss to cut my role (he is a consultant there and may have been the one to suggest offing me exactly one week before I’d have been legally eligible for the four weeks’ redundancy payout – nothing about the situation has made me as residually seething as that); and the woman who is now working at the old company and presumably in my former job (even though the role was made redundant – fighting that battle isn’t worth the trauma after thinking about it). I’m going to have to slap on 15 coats of bravado to survive that couple of hours, but being awesome and smiley is the best revenge, so on the day my fake grin will be visible from the Mercury probe (the planet, not the thermometer).

But what I really wanted to talk about was my brother. My still-lives-at-mum-and-dad’s-place, bushy-bearded, outlaw-ish, heavily-tattooed younger brother is a modern-day version of Dr Dolittle. Animals just gravitate to him (and not just because many could nest in his wild hair). He’s not the sort of chap that family friends tend to suggest as a dating prospect to their daughters, but boy oh boy, his phone runs hot when they want someone to house-sit their pets when they go away.

Even mum’s released rescue possums have taken a shine to him:

Apparently the brush-tailed possum named Saturday was re-homed in a tree the previous weekend, however, a life of living on a bed of bark and finding his own two square meals a day wasn’t to his taste.

Prior to surprising the bejesus out of my brother at 2am with his face-licking arrival, he would have made a trek down the tree and ventured through a couple of paddocks to the house. There were no doors or windows open, being autumn and nighttime and all, so he seems to have cased the perimeter for other opportunities to infiltrate Possum Holiday Home Central. Somehow he broke into the external cat enclosure which was made by my dad and built to withstand foxes, alpacas and probably elephants given a test, and then located the cat door that opens into my brother’s bedroom. He worked out how to activate the cat flap without waking my brother or the three cats in the house and settled into the bum fluff on my brother’s face.

After realising the addition to his face wasn’t Siamese, Burmese or Devon Rex, my brother got up and placed Saturday in his old rescue cage for mum to sort out in the morning. She called me later and marvelled at his adventure (I still can’t work out if she meant her son’s or her possum’s).

Volunteers aren’t supposed to domesticate or keep rescued animals, but I suspect the cat enclosure will be added to or sub-divided until Saturday realises that winsome young lady possums live on the other side of the mesh.

Crank-o-meter: laughing

April 1st, 2011 | Tags: animals are fun, work | Category: animals are fun, work | Comments (5)

Hello, I’m still around. (comradeharps: there’s a picture below, so be careful at work).

I’ve finished the temp gig and sampled every food place in the Collins — Exhibition — Little Bourke — Swanston Street grid, so come and talk to me if you want to know where to get minced beef in your tofu and vegetables.

The good folk at the temp gig were lovely and took me to lunch and gave me lots of hugs on my last day. One lady (from another department, mind you) gripped me octopus-style and demanded I not leave, which was sweet but unsettling. I had to make sure she didn’t steal my ID card so I couldn’t leave the building. While the work (being blackbanned from almost every hospital in Victoria for haranguing doctors who can’t complete simple paperwork) wasn’t a good fit for my, um, temperament and patience, the people were lovely and I can only hope for the same culture in the new job.

My favourite memory of the last two months was the state government’s advisory notice in the women’s toilets. The mind boggles.

Please excuse me while I go and polish my shoes and iron a shirt for my first day tomorrow — and devote some time to a wee panic attack!

Crank-o-meter: nervous

March 8th, 2011 | Tags: work | Category: work | Leave a comment

I woke the other morning flat on my back but with my head locked at 20-degree angle. It was quirky fun times for a few minutes to walk to the right while facing the left, but the white-hot shooting pains along my neck weren’t tolerable.

I got to work and decided that some kind of therapy was required at lunchtime. The only place I’d walked past during lunch breaks was Vigorous Thai Massage – have you ever seen a business, wondered if it was legitimate and decided to walk past rather than risk the alternate service you suspect is on offer? When I lived interstate, the unsustainably-quiet-during-the-day Turkish bread shop was closed one morning and the neighour said that police conducted a raid the previous night as the (producer of delicious bread, actually) business was a front for the one of the largest heroin dealerships in southern Sydney. See, it happens!

The Vigorous Thai Massage shopfront wasn’t top of my mind as far as illegal activities, but I’ve heard enough stories from travellers to Thailand being offered more than they bargained for when captive and relaxed on the massage table. I stood at the front window, did a quick risk assessment on the discomfort in my neck region compared with the risk of being locked in a small room and having additional services offered and thought, damn it, live a little.

The young man running operations at the front desk helped me select a neck and shoulder treatment and barked orders to, “Get in the room, top off, bra off and face down.” I sighed with relief that his brusque efficiency screamed of professional services and not happy endings, so I arranged myself in the required manner and waited quietly.

Then a woman entered the room stealthily, closed the door behind her with a gentle click and climbed on the bench with her legs spread across my back.

Perhaps my earlier suspicions were correct!

Shut up, imagination!

I’m just sayin’!

Be quiet and just breathe! And don’t say that loathsome “I’m just sayin’” phrase ever again!

The first tiny fist of steel that pressed my rib through a lung reassured me that we weren’t there for fun. A second hand forced a rib on the other side to skewer my heart through my liver into an organ kebab and all was fine.

The rearrangement of my chest organs felt good afterwards but my neck still hurt for a couple of days.

Crank-o-meter: achey breaky

February 5th, 2011 | Tags: embarrassing stuff | Category: embarrassing stuff | Leave a comment