I have just licked my forefinger in order to pick up the last crumb of date and walnut cake I made this morning. I’m thinking that is a particularly human thing to do. Dogs can lick their bowl clean, even raccoons use their hands to deftly wash food before eating, but what animal licks its digit and picks up the last crumb of tasty food? This and other strange and random thoughts go through my head.

Even as I was sleeping a few nights ago I had the strangest dream. I was standing in our courtyard and the neighbour’s very aggressive dog was in full attack mode and came leaping over our 6 foot tall fence. It happened so fast I hardly had time to panic, but as the dog landed on the paving he was instantly transformed into a dove with wings glowing in the sunlight.

Weird right? There is a recent study that says dogs dream similarly to humans so I wonder what the dog version of this might be? An angry human jumping the fence and transforming into Lassie?

The wet weather recently meant the causeways were closed several days last week limiting easy access into town, and the river was at a height near flood stage. The ground is saturated and literally running in small streams from the rocky outcrops. One night I woke up and heard it raining hard and it occurred to me getting food for Easter weekend might be a problem. But it wasn’t. It’s a random issue not easily predicted, depending where the heaviest rainfall has been. Also, while all this weather is going on there was a big ‘bust up’ in town one afternoon with about 150 Indigenous people behaving very badly. Police confiscated 50 weapons (no guns). They have now made several arrests and there is a two week curfew in place in the CBD for people 16yrs and under, which we wondered about, since the people committing the crime in this instance were mostly adults and it was at 3 in the afternoon*. They were on a rampage of destruction fuelled by disharmony between two families.  This was all on my mind as I tried, unsuccessfully, to get back to sleep that night and the next morning I realised I was feeling very stressed about it all. Tears ready to spill over, I sat down to read emails and over the radio comes Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera (What will be will be). I did loudly express my disapproval with an expletive that went something like ‘Screw the Universe’! I’m sure that didn’t help the situation, but it did help me blow off some frustration, and to be honest, Doris was right.

One of the more memorable messages I received through social media recently says that Karma is not some mystical event. It is the result of repeated behaviours and energetic responses. If that’s true, I wonder if that happens on a macro level as well as a personal level? Events we are living through are certainly nothing we have knowingly contributed to directly. And certainly we have been ‘lucky’ so far in the impact it has had on our personal lives, but it leaves a human being wondering. Where do I go from here if my actions are possibly contributing to this situation? Perhaps… not curse the Universe??

It has been a while since you’ve heard from me. It seems every day there is a major shift of some kind and just when I think I’ve adjusted to it, another adjustment is required…including rewriting this blog piece. In the latest episode of ‘waiting for workers part 27’ to continue repairs to the storm damage of 16months ago, the welder got Covid and so the work was postponed. The following week the plumber injured his back and that part was also postponed. The company supplying the capping and flashings for the modified gate are backed up so that is still waiting to be done. And last (for the moment) the pool safety officer rejected the self closing gate mechanisms installed and they must be done again. This has become my non-elective hobby for a while yet.

Don is regaining some of his energy after the radiation treatments but he has lost his sense of smell to a large degree and we are uncertain why that would be. There are several possibilities. We decided I could delay showering an extra day since he can’t smell much at the moment…but he misses out on the delicious aromas of soup cooking or the aforementioned date and nut cake. And we are back around to those unique pleasures we humans enjoy.

** A week into the curfew and things are much quieter, thankfully…thank you too for reading.