Noisy day today. The construction site next door seems to be digging out all the earth where their underground carpark is going to go. Currently they have a massive embankment of dirt visible over our shared fence. Gidget is unimpressed. (But sitting with excellent symmetry!)
We had a late night staying up to see as many of the results roll in as we could, and so today my mind is all ajumble with everything I noticed. Forgive me for the dot point-style post! For context, if you haven’t heard, it’s pretty clear that the Liberal/National government has been defeated and that Labor will lead the next one, but it’s still not clear whether they have a …
Took a little selfie with Gidget this morning… and at the same time I get to show off this neat new jumper I bought, featuring Chilean “riot dog” Negro Matapacos! 😄 Gonna wear it out tonight to our little Election Night party.
Gidget’s week has been full of ups and downs. Some days she’s felt starved (Monday when she nagged Viv to give her ⅔ of her daily food before 6am was a bad one) but as the week’s gone on she’s seemed better and better about the diet. She’s weighed in at 7kg a couple of days, which suggests it’s doing what it’s supposed to! The biggest down has been the poo-stravaganza she launched when I was in the shower yesterday, but I suppose her human servants’ dedication must be tested occasionally… (she’s NEVER done anything like it before, so idk, I hope it’s a one-off).
Today I discovered that the English word country is in fact cognate to Latin (and descendents’) contra; apparently it comes (via Old French) from a Vulgar Latin phrase terra contrata “land lying opposite”. Wouldn’t have guessed that! 😲 The Anglo-Saxon word is land.
The other day I discovered that according to the AEC, you’re still supposed to have a valid reason for voting early (whether in person or via postal vote) and not just voting on election day. Officially you’re allowed to vote early if you:1
Why did I get a personally-addressed letter in the mail purporting to be from John Howard? And what’s more, why DIDN’T Vivian get one? 🤨 Not that either of us was gonna vote Liberal regardless of stupid letters that reek of desperation…
I’ve been debating with myself whether I even want to post this entry because it is a little petty, but it’s been playing on my mind and I just can’t resist. As the title suggests, this is a tale about how the Eurovision Song Contest destroys families, at least for a few minutes when two sisters who rarely agree on anything anyway cannot agree on how they judge different …
Gizmo decided to be a real bro to his best friend Gidget when he visited last night. He nagged and nagged Vivian to feed him cat food until Vivian finally caved in. Then the second the food hit the bowl, he ducked out and let Gidget violate her diet by eating everything 🤣
Gidget today has been so desperate to show me the malign impact of this diet the vet has her on that a) she grabbed a bit of (clean) kitty litter off the floor and pretended to eat it; and b) she actually had to eat the bit of meat-for-humans that had fallen on the floor so I put it in her bowl (usually she rejects all human food as an insult to cats).
On the bright side, her desperation means she’s apparently willing to eat wet food again, haha. I think it’ll be good for her if she goes back to eating it, because a serving size of wet food is waaay bigger than one of dry so she might not scoff them down as quickly 😑
Jessica Smith is a left-wing feminist who loves animals, books, gaming, and cooking; she’s also very interested in linguistics, history, technology and society.