Escape to Your Happy Place: De-Stressing on the Job

I had to share this post, as a Librarian everything in this post is familiar to me 🙂
Whilst constructing a comment for this post I rather nicely put together what I feel a Librarian’s role is really like.
“Here is what working in a Library is like: it is like being an early, primary, secondary, tertiary and ESL teacher all rolled into one except you never know what they are going to need to learn that day so you have to try and prepare for anything and you still get stymied. Oh, I forgot you are also supposed to be Police, I had a student the other day tell me that she had left her phone in the Library’s care (AKA put it on the recharge station then went to class) and therefore it was the Library’s responsibility that the phone was stolen… umm… okay… no.
I love that you have a list here, my personal escape is listening to music (Madilyn Bailey’s version of Titanium is a personal favourite). I found that I always came home from work happier on days I listened to music. But you know what this proves? Not only do Librarian’s have to be overly prepared for everyone else, we even have to plan and prepare our own stress relief hahaha.”
I should add that I mentioned nothing about technology here and that was a huge error on my part, we are also expected to be technology support for any technology ever invented. People have literally brought their new tablet from the shop, come into the Library and handed me the box and asked me to set it up for them. I have also had a child ask me why their tamagotchi died. I have had people call me and ask why their email is not working or to help them download and set up Skype over the phone. The Librarian – the true jack of all trades 🙂
Do you ever sit there and repeat, “I love my job, I love my job”?

Advertisement

The Tree of Forty Fruits

Who wants to learn about something awesome today?

The tree of forty fruits is the brainchild of Sam Van Aken, a contemporary artist and art professor at Syracuse University. Sam grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania, his background in Agriculture and his love and expertise of art has combined to produce this amazing, living piece of art. The trees are not only stunningly beautiful, but also extremely practical.  

Image by Sam Van Aken retrieved from http://www.treeof40fruit.com/

I can’t do the project enough justice so I recommend you hear about it from the man himself. Check it out, knowledge is power! I love the TED talks!!!

Recently in Australia there has been a huge jump in the number of people growing their own fruit and veg as well as creating their own jams, preservatives, relishes and chutneys 🙂 Most of us certainly do not have acreages and I can certainly see a true and vast need for trees like this in everyday life.  

Oh the horror… the horror!!!

A brief recount of numerous times I have been freaked out by movies 🙂

When I was a little girl (around 9 or 10) I stupidly convinced my babysitter that I was allowed to watch Stephen King’s It, at the time I loved all books by R. L. Stine and all things horror and it never occurred to me that perhaps this was the reason that I had night terrors (yes I was a moron haha).

Needless to say it terrified me and ever since I have hated clowns, I have never watched that movie again, but now I wonder whether me today would have any problem with it. It is a wonder that I became a Librarian when I think back on the blood balloons scene.

I probably shouldn’t even mention when my brothers and I convinced another babysitter we could watch jaws and then were scared to go to the toilet or have a bath for two weeks. My littlest brother was terrified of water for a year, to be fair he was 7 years old at the time.

And Village of the Damned, holy crap! Village of the Damned is scary to a (then) 14 year old, my brothers and I loved Superman and Look Who’s Talking so we figured a movie with Christopher Reeve and Kirstie Alley in it would be stellar – nope, nope, nope. It was freaky and these crazy children were running around making people give themselves autopsies while they were still alive… eff that for a joke. Really I was the oldest, I feel like I led my brothers astray somewhat 🙂

A couple of years ago I had a movie night with a friend, she had picked Saw number something or other, I had never seen any of the Saw movies so figured what the hell it can’t be worse than Norbit (the first movie we watched). So she turns it on… Some dude is strung up with rings through numerous parts of his body (including his jaw) and if he wants to live he has to pull himself off the rings tearing through muscle, ligament, flesh and (in the case of his jaw) bone to break free.

[I posted the above because there is no way in hell that I was posting a video of that scene and I am going to see Queen ft Adam Lambert in a month so am devouring all the Queen I can 🙂 ]

I got through two, maybe three rings and that was it, I declared, “I’m out!” grabbed the popcorn bowl and walked out. She asked me what was wrong and I said there was no way I was going to watch people mutilate themselves or be mutilated. Ugh *shudders* never again Saw movies, never again. 

Meanwhile, have you guys seen Drag me to Hell? There are some jumpy bits in it and all and the story was pretty decent for a supernatural thriller/horror, but more than anything I got the serious icks from it! Just saying you guys, if you don’t want to see formaldehyde pouring out of a very dead person’s mouth onto a very alive person then skip this film. Decent acting though! 

Daily Prompt Can’t watch this

 

What have you found in your toilet?

I read a post the other day titled “What really freaks me out…” by great snaps, goodtimes and me. It was a list (you know how much I love those) of what the author perceived as strange or irrational fears she has. I realised a couple of things whilst reading this post, one was that some of the fears I have that I thought were irrational are shared by others which made me feel like one of the freaky fears team 🙂 the other was that strange things can be found in the lavatory. Whether it be that you are afraid of finding a certain something in the loo or have actually found something creeptastic in there it seems that the old water closet has a lot to answer for.

When I was absolutely too young to be watching it (we are talking barely double digits here) I convinced my babysitter I was allowed to watch Arachnophobia – I spent the next couple of years thoroughly checking my latrine seat for spiders before sitting down. I think my fears were pretty legitimate as the Red-back spider has the nickname the toilet spider! Seriously there is even an old country song about it:

Considering what I now know perhaps I should have been more freaked out about the possibility of snakes in my throne, in doing research for this post I discovered that there is an alarming number of reports in Australia about snakes in the powder room. Not just little baby snakes either, I am talking 3 metre monsters! I mean seriously *shudders* you guys check out this newspaper story from earlier this year. 

I have found frogs in the john and when on honeymoon in Vanuatu we found crabs in the comfort station and the shower, luckily we always noticed the crabs before sitting on the privy or that could have been a rather sore honeymoon 😀

So share with me guys, what is the worst/strangest thing you have ever found in your thunderbox?

Needed some toilet humour to stop me thinking about snakes in the toilet 😀 This cartoon sourced from: http://dalmation10k.deviantart.com/art/toilet-humour-1161311

Dr. Evil

*Warning: we are still talking about lady parts 🙂

Who would have thought that my girl junk would give me posting fodder? You all seemed to enjoy my post from yesterday so I thought I would share with you what happened last night.

Yesterday the issue raised its Hulk-like head again, queue huge sigh from me because I knew I should probably go to the Docs, but I finished work at 6pm and as much as I know it is a natural part of life I really didn’t want to go and talk about my baby cannon with some random person. So I spent some time talking myself into it and off I went armed only with my somewhat rehearsed speech for the Doc and an ebook recommended to me by a really great blogger (I don’t know if she would be happy to be pinged in a post about pink bits so I will leave her alone for now LOL).

I asked for first available and silently promised myself that whoever it was I wouldn’t see them again. Husby came along for moral support… seriously I need to buy that guy a cape! Aaannnd I waited.

*Side note: waiting is not overly fun in general, but it is so much worse when you really don’t want to do whatever it is you are waiting for.

My name gets called and off went to the room. I stroll in as casually as I can, it was a pretty awesome performance if I do say so myself. All is going well, the Doc asks how he can help me and I start my speech… all good, I didn’t even stammer, I noticed a strange reaction when I said the word “vagina” his eyes slightly widened and he was blinking rapidly. I think back over what I had said, no everything was fine, why is he looking like a deer in headlights? The dude would easily be over 50… surely this is not his first cave of wonders expedition.

He wrote me out a script for a broad spectrum antibiotic, I have had this antibiotic before… for ear infections, so I was quite aware of just how broad it was. He then gave me a prescription for an over the counter cream, here I was thinking over the counter meant you didn’t need a prescription, but apparently I was mistaken. Then he asked if there was anything else he could help me with.

Umm… wait a minute… did we miss a pretty big step here? How about a physical examination? You have just prescribed me medication and aren’t even sure what the issue is. So instead of being a good little girl and running to the pharmacy with my little pieces of paper I decided to ask,

“Uhh are you going to give me a physical examination at all?” he held both hands up as if warding me off, dude wtf? My growler isn’t going to attack you.

“No, no, no” he said, “if you want a physical examination you must come in when a female doctor or nurse is on duty” pretty sure my jaw dropped open a little bit at this statement. I won’t lie I was pretty shocked and kind of annoyed because I had prepped down there as if I was visiting the gyno.

“You are not going to give me a physical examination because I am female?”

“No, you must be examined by a female doctor or nurse, I cannot examine you”

Why the hell not? WTF am I paying you for Dr. Evil? I have been examined by males at this practice previously, what changed? This is total gender discrimination. If my Husband’s balls were swollen I bet you would be all eager to get up in his shit.

 

No, I did not say any of that, I sooooo wanted to, but I didn’t. I said okay and took my little slips of paper to the chemist and got the prescriptions filled, including the cream which the chemist informed me I didn’t need a prescription for… oh fancy that. I then had to stand there in front of other customers while she gave me a lecture on how to properly administer cream to my front-butt. Awesome… because this night hasn’t been embarrassing enough.

I was quietly simmering away about Dr. Evil’s refusal to provide me with proper medical treatment because I am a woman. Husby was not trying to engage me in conversation so I guess the look on my face said everything – I should mention that it didn’t help Dr. Evil’s case that he also told me I should try to lose weight. Oh really? Because I don’t think that anytime I catch a glance of myself in the mirror, truly quality Doctoring right there matey.

It’s not like this happens dude, I know what I look like!

On the way back through the surgery I suddenly stopped and said to Hubby, “I am just going to talk to the receptionist quickly”,

“Hun just leave it alone, we’ll go to another Doctor”

“No I won’t I want to confirm that is the rule of the practice because if it is I won’t be coming back and I will be spreading the news to all my local friends too” I approached the receptionist who is always completely lovely, I did feel a little bad that I had to put her in an awkward position.

“Hi, I have a bit of a sensitive question for you, one of your Doctors just informed me that male Doctors of this practice are not able to provide females with physical examinations and I just wanted to check the accuracy of that” she was already shaking her head by the time I was halfway through the sentence.

“No, that is not correct, that is a personal choice by the Doctor not a rule of the practice” ahh so Dr. Evil is just a douche (hahaha douche get it).

I did suggest that they have a sign up or just not send female patients to this “Doctor” because I felt discriminated against and horrible about myself and I certainly felt that I received sub-standard treatment. She apologised and I quickly assured her that it was not her problem.

Let me be very opinionated for a second here… I do not care what his reasoning was for denying me half decent medical attention (even a cursory glance would have been passable). I don’t want to hear his reasons because as far as I am concerned there should be no reason that any Doctor should ever refuse someone medical attention. If he doesn’t want to examine women then he has two choices…

1. He market himself as only taking male patients
2. He gives up his profession and takes on something more suitable

If your personal opinions or beliefs or whatever are going to impede your ability to do your job in a significant way then you should not be in your profession. 

My curly haired Adonis

Warning: Some people might find this post uncomfortable to read because it is about lady parts 🙂

The other day I reached a new level of love and appreciation for my Husby, during the day I had a very slight itch in my nether regions, but it died off and so I never thought about stopping on the way home to consult a Pharmacist.

It’s very cold here at the moment and due to the fact it was a chilly 2 degrees outside I put the electric blanket on 30 minutes before we went to bed so it would be toasty warm for us. Now I am not sure why the delicious warms aggravated the situation [and I don’t care why it happened as long as it never happens again], but for some reason it did and all of a sudden I was in significant pain and itching like crazy. I have had thrush before, but this was like the Hulk version – seriously, bad (but not green, I must emphasise that NOTHING was green!

Completely mean, but DEFINITELY NOT GREEN!

I tried to manage it on my own with some Googling (yes the web doctor thinks I have cancer) and an ice pack – yes an ice pack… in 2 degree weather. What was I thinking? I’ll tell you what I was thinking, I was hoping with all my being that my twinkle cave would get frostbite and fall off. The ice calmed the itching slightly, but the pain was still horrible.

Queue my superhero checking out my lady flower to give his expert opinion of “I think it looks normal”, my response of, “trust me this is not normal, it has to be Hulk thrush or something”. He asked if I had a cream or medication for it, I replied sarcastically that of course I kept a stash of beaver cream for exactly this situation (I feel quite bad about this now, but at the time I had little patience). He calmly started Googling, I tried telling him I had already done that and tried everything, he ignored me which just added to my muffin pain fuelled rage, “What are you doing? Please tell me you are not playing a fucking game right now!” he shook his head no. So I ignored him for a bit and just lay there clutching an ice pack to my crotch feeling ridiculous, in pain, exposed (well obviously) and vulnerable.

Then I realised Husby was getting dressed, “what are you doing?? Where are you going?”

“I found a 24 hour chemist” he replied (at this point it was 12.30am), “I am going to go get some stuff to help”

“Wha…what?” I stuttered, “Where is it?”

“It’s about a 35 minute drive, I’ll be as quick as I can” he went to walk out of the room.

“Wait” I said, “Really? Are you seriously going to go to a pharmacy 30 minutes away at 1am and buy me vagina medicine?” he shrugged and replied,

“Sure, why not? That’s how I roll” he laughed and walked out the door.

I was left mystified as I realised I had the best Husby ever created, many of my girlfriends Husbands won’t even buy tampons at the supermarket and here is my curly haired Adonis off into the dark of night seeking a cure for my punaani’s ills. He came back an hour later triumphantly clutching antihistamines and thrush cream, I am not sure what the antihistamines were for, but they knocked me out for a couple of hours which was nice and the cream felt like when you put aloe vera onto sun burn…. I could almost hear the sizzle as my map of Tasmania cooled.

Best. Husband. Ever. 

Locals cheer attacks on Gaza strip

This is not the kind of post I would normally do, but then I have come to realise that there is not a lot about me that is normal so perhaps this post is exactly like me. 

Today I desperately felt the need to restore my faith in humanity as this morning it hit an all time low. Last night I turned off the news when I saw the report on the bombings, not only did I hate to see humans once again destroying each other, but I didn’t want my young nephews to see it – I do everything I can to protect my nephews and nieces from experiencing violence in the vain hope that it makes some difference so they will do better in their generation than any of the ones before them. Then today I read this article that reports locals setting up a “cinema” of sorts on a nearby hill and eating popcorn and cheering when the bombs landed, even taking pictures of each other grinning giving a thumbs up as bombs went off in the distance.

Please note that I am not trying to make any statement about the bombings themselves or the situation in this part of the world, that is not at all my aim in this post.

My aim is to express my complete and absolute disgust that anyone would sit there, eat popcorn and get their jollies by watching people be murdered, what the f#@k is wrong with you people? I’m sure there is a word or condition to describe you accurately, but I can’t currently think of anything better than “sick” and I don’t truly believe they are worth more than a four letter word so I am not going to bother spending time trying to think of anything better. 

So today I have spent some of my lunch time at work trying to re-inflate my faith in humanity, I have done this in a couple of different ways; by re-reading the post I did the other day on Sir Nicholas Winton who is a complete hero. Special thank you to the publishing company for sending me this kind message after reading the piece I wrote: 

Seriously it seems that everyone who has anything to do with this man is completely lovely! Could being a truly good person be contagious I wonder?

Then I spent some time on good ole YouTube looking for further proof that there are still good humans out there. 

This helped:

A picture is worth a thousand words

This helped A LOT!

And this was a nice little cherry on top 🙂

 

Achievement Hunter Let’s Plays – Hilarity for all

In response to The Daily Posts – Roaring Laughter, the first thing I could think of was the Let’s Play videos that Husby and I watch together.

I am somewhat addicted to watching the Achievement Hunter Let’s Play channel. I enjoy playing games, but in no way should I be considered a gamer, regardless of this I LOVE watching this channel. Why? Well because I am pretty much guaranteed an awesome belly chortle at some point during the video. These guys are very talented, somewhat professional 😉 and totally hilarious!

Source: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Achievement_Hunter

My most recent favourite was the Jeopardy videos, yes there are two and I chuckled and snorted my way through both of them. Two different groups played the game each time (other team members were in the background), I don’t want to spoiler the parts I laughed so hard I cried at, but the one in the first video had to do with the Panda question and the second videos tears also related back to the Panda question in the first video. 

Here’s Part 1

Here’s Part 2

 

Sir Nicholas Winton – the true Saint Nick!

Part of the reason I started this blog was to share; share things I knew, things I tried, things I have learned and things I think and feel. Nice and broad isn’t it, pretty much gives me a license to write whatever… oooh the glee.

When I was in High School we learnt about the Holocaust… a LOT, please don’t get me wrong I think that the Holocaust was one of the most disgusting and depraved things humans have ever done to other humans and I do believe it is important that youth are taught about it. If they do not learn of our horrific failures in our past, how can they learn from our mistakes to hopefully prevent this ever happening again? What I didn’t value about the curriculum was the fact that we learnt about it for over a semester for 3 years running and for the most part we were shown horrific videos and images that are scarred into me until this day. I am not ashamed to say that I cried during some of these videos, they were that awful. I think it is important that we were shown these images so that we have no doubt of the terror of that time, but we didn’t need to see it multiple times. I would have liked to learn a lot more about some of the people that did whatever they could to help in a time where so many people needed it.

One of these people is Sir Nicholas Winton, if you have never heard of him it is time you did. Nicholas was 29 when he organised the rescue of 669 Czech children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia during the 9 months before war broke out in 1939. Those children have grown up and had children of their own and now have grandchildren and great grandchildren, approximately 6000 people in the world today owe their lives to this man, giving the gift of so many lives perhaps he is the real Saint Nick.

 

Nicholas was living in Britain at the time and when a friend told him of the problems there he travelled to Prague for a two week holiday. He set up a small office there to meet with people that wanted to get their children to safety. Nicholas wrote for help to many countries, but only Great Britain responded offering assistance, even with their promise of aid the action was painstakingly slow and Winton and his colleagues were running out of time. To save the children they forged documents such as visas, this increased the risk they were taking, but at that point they felt there was no other choice.

8 trains full of children successfully made it to Great Britain where families were waiting to care for them. A ninth train with 250 children on it did not make it out of Prague, the children were on the train, but war was declared and transportation was suspended.

Winton is very humble and thus for many years not many people knew what this amazing man had accomplished against all odds. One day Winton’s wife found a scrapbook in their attic, it had the name of every child he had rescued, who their parents are and the families they had been placed with. 80 of these children were found to still be living in Britain, they were brought together in 1988 during an episode of the BBC program That’s Life. Winton had no idea that the audience was full of the people he had saved and describes it as one of the most emotional experiences of his life.

Sir Nicholas Winton has recently celebrated his 105^th birthday! Congratulations Saint Nick, I hope you have many years of joy ahead of you.

His daughter Barbara Winton has written Nicholas’ story in a book called “If it’s Not Impossible… The life of Sir Nicholas Winton”, I personally cannot wait to get my hands on it and I urge you all to check it out too.

52 Books in 52 weeks – June

Some different books this month including one I was quite surprised to like.

Here is the list 🙂

Number	Title	Author
23 – Jun 2-8	False Impressions Stamping Sisters mystery #3	Thayer, Terri
24 – Jun 9-15	City of Dark Magic	Flyte, Magnus
25 – Jun 16-22	City of Lost Dreams	Flyte, Magnus
26 – Jun 23-29	Darkfever	Moning, Karen Marie

 

Continuing on my path of aiming to read books I wouldn’t normally I went to the Library and grabbed a couple of books by authors I had never read – I will neither confirm or deny that part of my choice was based on alluring covers 🙂

False Impressions: Stamping Sisters mystery #3 – Terri Thayer

This was an oops, I didn’t realise it was number three until I got it home… damn fine print 🙂 Luckily this series is one of those that does not have to be read sequentially so we got along fine. I found the characters interesting and the story overall was quite good. I liked that the book was different from your typical mystery and there were character/economic points that I felt really fit with real life situations, for example the main character April has to live in her fathers restored barn with his partners parents because she does historical stamping for restoration projects for a living and there is not much call for that so she has no money – so there are those kind of side stories that make the characters more “real” and relatable which is great. I am definitely considering going back to read the other two – although I am hoping the villain is better hidden because I figured out who it was really quickly and everything after that just confirmed my thoughts until the big reveal and I was kind of sitting there going, ‘oh come one April, you are not this stupid!’

 

 

City of Dark Magic – Magnus Flyte

This book held surprise for me, here I was thinking I was getting a paranormal suspense novel with a female protagonist (Sarah Weston) who is a music student working a summer at Prague Castle Cataloguing Beethoven’s manuscripts (hello! I am a Librarian and a muso – like that wasn’t going to catch my attention haha). What I wasn’t expecting was a sexual element – which at first was really strange and to be honest whilst I now understand why she had a high libido I am not entirely sure it needed to be talked about so much, but I suppose danger, magic and sex kind of go hand in hand. Once the sexual element came in I really wasn’t expecting to like the book, I admit… I judged. I figured it was going to be literary porn masked as a serious novel, but I was pleasantly surprised and indeed rather swept away with the twists and turns in the book. It hooked me and I really, really enjoyed it – it certainly was not porn and as you got into the story you came to understand what that first shock had been about. There is a book two and I am hot on the trail to finding it 🙂

 

 

City of Lost Dreams – Magnus Flyte

I found book two! 🙂 Hooray! I do hate when you start reading a series and have to wait forever for the next book *cough cough* George R. R. Martin *cough*. Slight spoilers, but not really.

This book did have a different feel from the first one, the story was split between Prague and Venice so whilst the main protagonist was still Sarah you spent more time than in the previous book seeing the story unfold from others points of view. I really enjoyed these books for their uniqueness, it was a really different concept that not only challenged the way you looked at the world, but also in the end looked at how people choose to spend their lives. Two different immortals; one who spent their life trying to achieve and brought science and medicine forward in leaps and bounds and one who spent their time frivolously searching for a way to end it all – don’t worry they are not Vampires 🙂 Just humans.

 

 

Darkfever  – Karen Marie Moning – SOME SPOILERS

This one I just grabbed from Overdrive because I had nothing to read and it sounded interesting and had a pretty cover. Turns out I was right with my earlier assumption… danger and magic mean that at some point or other in a book you’re going to end up with sex… why is that? Whilst the whole book was not a sexual tone the couple of times it was it was kind of a shock.

I found the story okay, you have no clue who is bad and who isn’t for the entire book. The female protagonist kind of grows on you, but she spends a lot of the book insisting she is not a bimbo, but whining about her looks and nail polish… I get the impression that the fact is at the beginning she WAS a shallow bimbo, but she is supposed to be slowly changing into someone of depth due to what is happening around her. I have no clue what is going on with the character of Barrons, if I was living in that place I would be spending my days (when he is not around) going through his house from top to bottom searching for ways to protect myself from him – he seems like a psycho and throws Mac around – it’s very strange!!!

One thing that really annoyed me was that I didn’t feel like the ending was an ending, I thought it was the end of the chapter, turned the page and there was the glossary… umm wtf? I google the title… dammit it is a series and nowhere has the second book, this annoyed me because the book had no kind of conclusion, seriously… the narration is done from some point in the future as though she is telling the story of how she got there… naturally I figured the end of the book would at least get me to the point the narrator was up to, but no… nothing. It was really weird, but it also drew you in so I kind of want to read the others, although admittedly that could be my love of closure 🙂 Don’t even get me started on how Mac magically transformed into Buffy TVS after one lesson on where to stick the pointy end… just… don’t.

And so we go into July… so many books… so little time. What are you reading at the moment? I am open to suggestions 🙂