I knew it. The correct way to pronounce bruschetta.

“But we monolingual Brits have less right to pass judgment. We have the worst language skills in Europe. Many of us can’t even properly pronounce the food we eat (bruschetta is “bru-SKET-a”. We should stop saying “bru-shet-a” if we don’t want to drive Italians crazy).” (From The Guardian today).

I’ve been asking around this year and most people say bru-shet-a, but I’m sticking to my guns. It’s bru-sket-a.

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Phew. One of the side effects of the new medication I’m on is fatigue. I can verify that. It’s supposed to wear off but I’m not up to the full dose yet. Some weeks to go. Doin’ a lot of sleeping.

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Well, how about that. Just after I wrote that, the phone rang and it was Perth Clinic asking how I’m getting on. I mentioned the fatigue and they asked me to make an appointment with the doctor at the clinic, which I’ve done. Neat.

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I’m back home after a much longer spell in hospital than I expected. But I don’t mind – it was like a holiday, except that we had to make our own beds, change our own sheets and do our own laundry.

The experience was very good. Lots of people to talk to, both professionals and other patients. I got a hell of a lot out of the therapy sessions. Excellent instruction. I was sorry to leave and got some very nice feedback – very ego boosting. First names only in the hospital, so no way to catch up with the other patients, unfortunately. The occupational therapist even said if you see her outside the hospital, she won’t acknowledge you. What goes on inside stays inside.

I had a small kidney stone in the first week. Lots of blood, but not too much pain, thank goodness. I was nearly going to call an ambulance at 2am one morning, but the pain suddenly faded away and didn’t reoccur.

I also had a brain MRI. That’s an unusual experience, and not for the claustrophobic. There’s not much room in that tunnel. Lots of low frequency rhythmic drumming and vibration. Unfortunately, they didn’t find the juke box that I know is in there. I get tunes going around in my head all day, every day, 6IX type tunes.

Back to a very quiet house, with no Minnie to greet me. It’s a bit hard to get used to.

Yesterday, Minnie went to sleep, permanently. My heart is broken, but it had to be done. She had no quality of life any more and she was weighing so heavily on my mind as to badly affect me. Yesterday was, I think, the hardest day of my life.

Minnie est mort. RIP my daughter.

I’ll be offline for the next week or so (not that I’ve been saying much anyway). Things are a bit hard at the moment and I need professional help.

I’ll be saying goodbye for the last time to Minnie tomorrow morning. It has to be done, but it’s hard, very hard.

I made my first outing with the Butler Walking Group this morning. I’m embarrassed to say I only got about a third of the way to the destination and had to turn around and go back to the start. I’ve just looked at Google Earth and the destination was the site of the new Butler train station, 2.4Km round trip. The group soon went way ahead, one 6′ woman in particular striding out. I made it to 0.7Km and the lady walking with me could see I was struggling so said, “Let’s go back.” Still, I walked 1.38Km non-stop at quite a fast pace, so it wasn’t wasted. My thighs tightened up, which shows they were used.

The lady with me was Doreen, the organiser of the group, and she’s very nice. There are nearly 20 of us, all oldies like me, many much older. We had a nice coffee afterwards. They’ve told me of an Over 50s group too, so I’ll follow that up.

I’ll try to do that walk later this week at my own pace, just to see if I can do it with rest stops.

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I knew the Butler station was coming along, but apparently there’s going to be a big shopping centre there too, with Woolies and Big W. That’s OK with me.

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Having a hard time at the moment. The effect of the medication I’m on lessens and I’m having to use all the relaxation techniques I know. I see the doc at 5pm today – I hope to switch to more effective stuff. The walking helps, but it wears off.

Yes, I’ve been a bit quiet recently, sorry. That black dog is still circling, and baring his teeth, which is making me very nervous, anxious. Hard getting to sleep too, although once I am asleep, (after 1 – 2 hours trying), I sleep well.

Exercise helps, and I’ve discovered the Butler Walking Group. Mondays at 9am at the community centre. That’s 850m away, and I’ve done the walk there to check. Had a brekky with friends this morning, but next Monday I’ll be there.

My legs have really come back. It’s those beach stairs that have done it. I did four ascents last Monday! In March, I was battling to do one, with my stick. I don’t use the stick any more. I can enjoy walking again. I’ve also lost more than 10Kg over the past year, which helps.

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I bought seven items of IKEA furniture last Thursday, too. All storage stuff like bedside cabinets, chests of drawers (2), sideboard, wall glass cabinet and so on.

I went to IKEA today to buy some extra shelves for bookcases, but when I got them home, they’re wrong size, too deep. I didn’t realise there were different depths. Oh well, they’re still in original wrapping. so it looks like  another long drive to return them.

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I( was out spraying Feed’n’Weed on my clover verge yesterday and a woman came up and introduced herself, saying she’s from two doors up. She likes to get to know people in the street, so we had a good chat for nearly half an hour. She’s an Aussie too! Not many of us around here. Her husband’s a very tall ex-cop, too, so a good bloke to know.

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I’m reading Bill Clinton’s autobiography at the moment, all 957 pages of it. The amount of detail is almost overwhelming, but he keeps me hooked. I have to give him  credit for stamina. His life was just endless meetings, arguments with Republican congressmen, travelling, diplomacy and dealing with enquiries. Endless! Trip to Europe and back in a day. We’re just coming up to his second run at the presidency (which we know he won, of course).

I’ve written about this before: precognition.

Yesterday about 10am, the word zootsuit popped into my mind. It’s a 60s word like bodgie and winkle pickers and so on. I haven’t thought of it since about, well, the sixties.

Lying in bed last night reading Bill Clinton’s book, about 15 pages on from where I picked it up, there was the word! Zootsuit. It was in connection with a London visit in 1969. I would have fallen over backwards if I hadn’t been lying in bed.

This is weird. I hadn’t been flicking through the pages. There’s no way I could have known the word was there. Yet 12 hours before, I’d thought of it. How does this happen?

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I’ve just been driving on the freeway. You could go months without seeing a Toyota MR2, Toyota’s mid engined mini Ferrari. But I was passed by one, a green early model, the chunky square tail-lights one.

Then three minutes later, another one passed me! This was a red curvy looking model. To see one is unusual, but to see two in three minutes is unheard of. Except you’ve just heard of it now.

I’d love to own one, but I’d never be able to get into or out of it.

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Two beach stairs today.

I’ve just got back from my 1Km walk around the lake. I couldn’t do this six months ago. I was leaning on my stick, getting puffed. Now it’s easy. This is great!

I went to the stairs yesterday, by the way, while it was so stormy, and went halfway down, and up again of course, but it was so windy that I could hardly see. There was no beach – the waves were right up to the cliffs and the base of the stairs.

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Because it was so wet and windy, we called the stone chips removal off. Another day. I spoke to next-doors and they weren’t fussed at losing them. Actually, they showed me the area they want to cover and I don’t think there would have been enough anyway.

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I’m reading Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life, all 969 pages of it. I’m only up to age 22 when he goes to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, but I’m hooked. He writes very well and has an amazing memory (or he’s making a lot of it up, probably).

The thing that strikes me is how much student politics there is in American schools, from the beginning of high school. “Class leader”, “School President”, all that sort of stuff. Maybe there is here now too, I wouldn’t know, but Clinton and his friends were campaigning and making speeches from an early age.

There were also so many prizes and awards within the high school – Merit Certificates and so on. America seems to instil a prize winning, claw your way to the top mentality from adolescence on.

2 March 2008. Back when Minnie was a surf dog.

I found it, I found it! That thing I told a few people about that had become lost in my packing up and moving. I thought it would turn up eventually, but I was beginning to lose confidence.

I found it just now wrapped in plastic in a spare plastic box of bathroom cabinet stuff, down under the new basins. The plastic wrapping made it hardly visible, which was no doubt my intention back in February.

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This is embarrassing. As I’ve said, I don’t like the quartz chips and Barry said he had a mate who would take them away. But that was many weeks ago and I’d forgotten when I was talking to my next doors – they want them too.

Well, I had a call from Barry at lunch time – “We’ll be there tomorrow with a trailer to get the chips.”

Uh oh. I think I’ll just have to ask Dave and Val how much they want and see if there’s enough to go around. I think there will be.

What to put in its place? It will be bare yellow sand initially, which will make raking up Minnie’s mess a lot easier. I wouldn’t usually consider artificial lawn, but in this area, very difficult to mow, in shade most of the time, I’ll think about it. I saw a full front lawn done in artificial turf yesterday and it does look nice. The only giveaway is that it’s too perfect.