Third Weird Thing

Ok, the third weird thing about me is my irrational fear of crocodiles. Now that I think about it it's probably quite a rational fear. I know Steve Irwin used to think they were nice, and cute, and adorable and worth saving. Bugger that.

Apart from the endless recurring nightmares I used to have about crocodiles, me and my crocodile homies have some history.

You're probably all tired of me mentioning that I'm from the Northern Territory of Australia. I'm tired of me mentioning it. However, besides me mentioning it endlessly, it was actually a fairly interesting place to grow up. My parents were camping and fishing folk, much to my chagrin. I'm more of the sleeping, movie-going, reading folk myself.

We often when to Kakadu National Park before it was a National Park, and before it became a tourist mecca. We used to fish for barramundi at a place called Yellow Waters, which is now a real tourist mecca, but used to be just a great place to fish. See photo. Nice huh?

So moving right along. You'll have to forgive my over-use of measurements in the following paragraph. I'm trying to give you some perspective of size (and frighten the bejesus out of you at the same time). My apologies for the imperialists out there - I tend to think in Metric these days. Although I'm 5'3" tall. Don't ask me what that it is centimetres. But I digress....

One day we were fishing at this lovely spot in a 6 metre long aluminium dinghy (aka dodgy tin can). When out of the corner of my eye I saw a 5 metre long (16 foot) crocodile hurl itself out of the water and drag a full-grown 1000kg water buffalo by the neck into the water, never to be seen again (after a bit of splashing and kicking). At the time I was about 20 metres (65.6167979 feet) away from where the buffalo used to stand. Gulp.

THEN, when I was a bit older, I took my sweet English penfriend on the Jumping Crocodile Cruise. The photo at the top of this post is one of the crocodiles that they tempt to jump up and bite chicken carcasses off sticks. All was going well, we were enjoying the little sweet croccies jumping up etc etc la la la gaiety and fun.

By the way, we were sitting on the lower deck of a boat with glass sides, and right against the window. The commentator then announced that we were in for a special 'treat" today, because Molokai, the king crocodile of this part of the river was heading towards the boat. We craned our necks to get a view and couldn't really see anything but swirling water. right.next.to.where.we.were.sitting. Then this massive crocodile (about 7 metres long) propels itself straight out of the water with nothing separating us except a pane of glass. I could see green muck on his four-inch long teeth. I could not have put my arms around the girth of its head, let alone its body. I could have smelled its breath if I had not felt all the blood drain out of my face and take all the strength inside me not to faint.

The rest of the Jumping Croc Cruise was not as la la la gaiety or fun. We tried not to think about what would happen if the boat capsized into the brown murky river. We tried not to think about having a massive coronary seizure before your skin even touched the water from pure, unadulterated terror.

I'll also refer you to a previous post where I once did some croc flirting with another friend.

Enough said I hope.

A QUICK MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

I am changing the subject from my weird things theme to talk about...drum roll....

REDUNDANCY

The hell-hole that was formerly my workplace made someone redundant yesterday. Someone who didn't deserve to be made redundant. Someone who was relying on working for the next 5 years to fund her retirement. A lady generous enough to donate one of her kidneys to save her husband's life (and it has so far).

Well the girls and I have just been together for a few hours commiserating. We have laughed and cried, drunk wine and beer, bitched, dobbed, digressed, got angry, got sad.

So there is nothing else for it Jude, but to trawl the wharves, or tap-dance in the mall. Have fun!

2nd weird thing

I am a human flotation device. However I'm not colour-coded in the safety colours of red, yellow or orange (unless I am sunburnt). I'm one of those people who can read a book while floating in the pool. I can recline on my side whilst floating. I'm of those people who does not sink in the water even though I am not moving at all. Treading water? Who needs it.

Sadly this also means that I cannot be a scuba diver. I tried once. I had to wear the most massive weight belt. I could not rise to the surface even when I wanted to. Which caused me to panic. Panicking+ Scuba Diving = no good. Money > drain.

Apparently it's all got to do with the distribution of air between my fat cells. I am fat by the way, but this is irrelevant. Apparently I also have a lot of air between my fat. yay.

I've just done a google-search on this, and obviously didn't type in a very good search specification. The nett result of my search is that I would really like to try a flotation tank. This is completely beside the point. I am seriously considering writing a post on my short attention span. Perhaps this will be the third weird thing about me.

793!

I've been reading a lot of blogs in the past few days. I've seen this little meme where everyone has to write six weird things about themselves. I have not been tagged to do this because I don't have any internet friends :( awwwww. Well hopefully now you'll keep reading and not think that I'm too sappy.But I thought I would do this thingimy anyway.

First weird thing about me

As a prelude to this, I am slightly obsessive compulsive, so some of this weirdness really is an illness. Ewww. Germs.

1) I originate from the Northern Territory of Australia, quite a large land mass that has an inordinately small number of people living in it, mostly because the vast majority of it is desert. The other reason that nobody lives there is that the top half is in the tropics and is hot and cycloney. Anyways......Car Number Plates in the NT consist of two lots of three numbers. When I see these numbers, I just have to take away the smaller number from the big number in my head. Even when I'm driving which can be dangerous as I'm concentrating on subtraction and not the road.

I do work in accounting however, and maybe this is not that weird. Maybe I was destined to work in accounting because of these number plates. If only someone would explain it to me......

Mess

This is the rubbish bag of crap that was spread all over the laundry floor when I woke up a couple of mornings ago. The contents include two newspapers and the foam bit out of an ironing board cover, shredded into hundreds of minute pieces. See two posts ago, "Girl and Her Dog"

Expense

This is what the electrical cord to the dryer looks like now. See previous post "Girl and Her Dog". I don't have a photo of the internet router that she relieved herself on that sizzled and smoked. I also don't have photos of the three leads that she has chewed up, or the pile of socks and undies that she has ruined. This is just the start.

A Girl and Her Dog

I fell for the emotion of the idea. A dog. Just what she always wanted. What she talked about incessantly. To make up for being an only child. I loved dogs when I was a kid.I remembered the love that I felt for my favourite dogs. Remembered seeing my dad cry when one of our dogs died.

I had to talk hard and fast. In reality I had to beg hard and fast. C really did not want a dog. The timing was not right. I begged, I pleaded. I was an idiot.

C caved in. I wish he hadn't have. I would have been angry at him, and not understood. I understand now! Can I take it back?

Maybe I am lucky

I haven't thought about this blog for a long time. There are still a number of blogs that I read regularly and enjoy. In fact I will have to update my link-list for sure.

Quite often I dwell on the fact that I think my life isn't so great. This is predominantly my fault, as I think I am just about the laziest person who ever lived. But every now and then your read about someone else's misfortune, and it gives you a big fat slap in the face. Read this and be slapped;

Leanne, I'm praying for you, and I'm not a believer!