Chocolate has been ruined for everyone!!!

  

So it’s official someone has finally come up with a way to ruin chocolate!! Who would have thought this would ever be possible? I guess it just goes to show us that nothing is scared these days.
Vegemite flavoured chocolate is not something I would ever want to try!! For those who do not know what Vegemite is, well it is a dark brown Australian food paste made from leftover brewers’ yeast extract. Tastes really good on toast for breakfast but mixed in chocolate, yuk!!

So now we are seeing other funny flavours pop up like the images attached, which may very well be a hoax but then again if someone had the not so bright idea of putting Vegemite in chocolate what’s to stop them from trying ouzo or beer or who knows what next ???
   
   

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The homework battle

I am so sick and tired of the homework battle!!!! Why is it so hard to get the message through to teenagers that school work is important, in fact at this point of their lives it is the most important thing.

Every day when my teenage son comes out of school I ask him the very same question, “do you have any homework?” And everyday I get the same reply “no” sometimes I will also get “I did it at school”

Today after basketball training I hear from friends that there are in fact three pieces of homework due tomorrow and to make matters worse his iPad is not working and needs to be reset to factory settings.

So here I am having confiscated all the gaming controllers in the house, his laptop and any other electrical gadget that could cause distraction, trying to bite my tongue while I wrestle with the dilemma of whether or not I should write a note to get him out of trouble tomorrow, and If I do, is that just enabling him to continue disregarding his homework?

What a disgrace

The Herald Sun published the above article yesterday stating that from now on pet owners will not be able to go looking through the RSPCA s animal shelter/pound searching for their lost pet. They will instead have to produce a photo of said pet as proof of identity.

How ridiculous! What if the animal has been injured or groomed differently. The logic behind the RSPCA decision is that this is for the protection of the animals. How so??

This will no doubt lead to even more animals not being reclaimed, even more animals that will inevitably wind up being put down.

The Condom Challenge

There is a new craze sweeping across Facebook at the moment which you may or may not have heard of. If you have a teenager as I do, you have probably come across this lunacy. I don’t know about you but I am horrified to say the least.

The Condom Challenge is a dare game that involves inserting a clean condom into one’s nostril and snorting it back through the throat to be coughed out of the mouth.

Apparently this challenge has been gaining momentum since 2013 when it first appeared on YouTube.

Aside from being totally gross the risks for potentially choking to death are so great, that I just can’t get my head around why anyone would ever attempt something like this.

It really it a scary world we are living in, our children have enough to deal with without this kind of rubbish. Honestly who comes up this kind of stuff?

The Condom Chalkenge

Some days

It has just been one of those days, you know the ones I mean, they start bad and no matter what you do it just seems like you are putting out one fire after another.

Today is my dear friend and colleagues birthday, we planned a lovely morning tea for her and I was I charge of getting the cake, present and the balloons. Because the shops don’t open till 9am which is the time I start work, I had everything prepared the night before. I paid extra to have the helium balloons coated in this stuff called “lift” which is meant to prolong their life span for at least a week (I have used this stuff in helium balloons before and it works marvellously).

You can imagine my horror this morning when I found the balloons all but deflated. Turns out the lady at the party shop forgot to put the “lift” substance into the balloons. Arrgh!

Next we discovered that the advertisement we have been circulating to try and recruit for the Bayswater Buzz community newspaper has the wrong contact email details. Grrrrr!

And now my daughter has cracked it and decided that she does not want to come to Jump (indoor trampoline centre) with the rest of us. Hmmph!

The way I see it I have two choices, I can insist she comes along in which case she will no doubt spend the whole time pouting and ruin it not only for herself but for her brothers as well as the friends we are going with, or I can not let it get to me, remain calm (on the outside anyway) and try to see if anyone else has a friend who would like to come along in her place.

Turns out that a lot of children were keen to take Madelyn’s spot. So Madelyn is happy now because she doesn’t have to come along and can stay home with dad, and the boys are happy because they won’t have to listen to her whining and complaining, as for me, well I am thankful that I have managed to keep my emotions in check and find a solution that seems to please everyone. It has been a busy week,so glad it’s finally Friday.

Children and cars

What is it about cars that seem to bring out the worst in children?

You would think that by now I would know better but apparently I don’t. I stopped to pick up some breadcrumbs from the local IGA on the way home from school pick up, as I am making chicken schnitzels for dinner tonight. I was only gone a couple of minutes, but it would seem that is all that is needed for world war 3 to break out inside my little car.

I had one crying, one screaming and one sulking. Clearly they were all over tired and hungry. In future I will make sure I drop them off home first, it’s just not worth the heart ache.

Chaos

I was so disappointed today! My son has finally joined a soccer team something he has been wanting to do for a while now, and the soccer season is about to kick off on Sunday. Today only 3 days before the opening game we were advised that we would finally be collecting the uniforms and kits, for which we have paid quite handsomely for I might add, back in November last year when we first registered for soccer.

I received a text message this morning asking if I would be able to help out with the distributing of the kits, to which I said ofcourse I would. So as promised I turned up early ready to help out, only to discover the most chaotic, the most unorganised event I could have ever imagined.

All the sizes they ordered were all wrong, apparently they have a large amount of XXS and Mediums but no Small sizes. Even the few children that did mange to get their kits today did not necessarily receive the correct size.

I mean come on people, what a disgrace!! The children are so excited so looking forward to finally receiving their gear and then this. You only had 6 months to arrange this. How could you mess up so badly? What happens to the kids that won’t have a uniform in which to play in on Sunday?

The people who were so called in charge today had no idea, they were totally clueless. Our boys don’t even have their player jerseys yet. How bad is that!

I was really looking forward to soccer, I know how much this means to my son, and I was so pleased that he was finally going to get a chance to play the sport he loves so much, however if today was any indication of what we can expect from the club, then I am really worried.

Freedom of the Press

Freedom of the press, yeah right!!! What I am finding more and more is that there is no such thing as freedom of the press. That is just a glorified saying that people use to convey the message that what is published is the absolute truth, uncensored, unbiased in any way. What a joke!

I am not a journalist, but I write for two local papers, and I am here to tell you that there is absolutely no such thing as freedom of the press.

Everyone and everything has an agenda and we are all censored accordingly to some degree. It’s all about not rocking the boat or upsetting the wrong people. As a writer I find this very difficult to come to terms with. At least when writing fiction there are no external influences that I need to be mindful of. The world I create is mine alone, it exists only in my imagination, and I am free to envision it any way I like. This unfortunately is not so in real life.

Pick your battles. Sometimes it’s better to lose the argument in order to win the war. You name it I’ve heard it all. The papers I write for are not political in any way, and yet politics are rife.

I am sure you are all aware of this, as am I, but it really does get my goat. We should be able to write without censorship and leave it up to the reader to form his or her own opinion once they have all the facts.

Image is courtesy of Google images.

3 Weeks old and already being offered for sale!

I came across this post on Facebook today was horrified and saddened to read that some people have absolutely no regard for animals and merely see them as a commodity.

Three weeks young and already being offered for sale!

Yes that’s right – three weeks young; not even old enough to be walking, fully weaned or to be toileting on their own….

A supporter of Starting Over Dog Rescue found this post and shared it on Facebook.

Under DEPI (Department of Environment and Primary Industry) regulations all dogs offered for sale need to be vaccinated and microchipped. Any Vet will tell you that they won’t do this until the puppy is at least 6 weeks of age and healthy.

At 8 weeks puppies can be separated socially, but any sooner and they will most likely have socialising development issues.

With social media being so prevalent you would think people would know better….. But unfortunately they don’t.

Starting Over Dog Rescue have shared this post in the hope of educating people to realise that this kind of conduct is not Acceptable!!

There was a great response to this post and many people queried if they were merely being advertised as for sale but not intending to be released before 8 weeks. I must admit the ad was not clear. It simply stated that the puppies which were Border Collie x German Shepherd were being offered for sale. I would like to give the owner the benefit of the doubt here, but I must admit I am not feeling too confident. Either way if this post helps to raise awareness then that can only be a good thing right?

Editing! Why is it such a gruelling task?

I have spent most of today trying to edit my novel.

Boy this is such a gruesome task. For some reason I just can’t seem to disconnect from the story and just focus on the editing.

Even when I try breaking it up into chunks and concentrate on say one chapter, or one page or even one sentence, I just can’t bring myself to alter any of the words.

I find myself reshuffling sentences, or adding full stops, commas, capital letters. But changing the words, I just can’t. These are my words.My story. In my mind and in my imagination, this is how it has all played out.

To change the words would be like trying to change the story. Yet I know it must be done. I will seriously need to enlist the help of a professional editor, I can’t see any other way around this.

Would appreciate any advice or thoughts or tips on what others writers do. How do you tackle the daunting task of editing? Surely I can’t be the only one that struggles with this? And if I am, what am I doing wrong?