Oh dear, now my mother has taken to sending me articles about people being gruesomely urdered by large Australian animals.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/article315306.ece

Today is our first wedding anniversary! Paper wedding anniversary, so we both made each other gifts out of paper.

We both took off work and went geocaching with the dogs instead, and unfroze and ate the top part of our wedding cake from last year, and tonight we’re going out to dinner at the Ritz, where we went to dinner on our wedding
night, except at that time we were both too sick with bronchitis to enjoy it so tonight we intend to have a wonderful dinner to make up!

It’s been a whole year (it doesn’t seem like it) and I’m gladder than ever with my choice of husband. I hope all years will be as sweet!

It is also, incidentally, two months to the day before we leave for Australia.

University of Queensland has a scholarship for students who are undertaking research into dried fruits. I don’t really know what to say about that.
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My mother has a strange and disturbing problem. She got a horrible case of the respiratory flu from my brother more than a month ago which took all of a  month to abate (and she isn’t even fully recovered yet). While she was sick, she got a strange small bump on her face which she thinks has something to do with her body trying to get rid of toxins. Anyway.

The odd and disturbing thing is, this bump bleeds profusely under the slightest provocation. If she washes her face gently, if some hair sticks to her face while she’s moving about and she brushes it off, *anything* will make this little bump start to bleed… and bleed… and bleed…

Last Saturday Zaubi and I got up and were about to make breakfast (thinking my mother was still sleeping) when she came into the kitchen from her bedroom, with a towel clamped over her face, and announced that her face had been bleeding since 10PM the night before. Indeed, the towel was soaked with blood and the wastebasket in her bathroom was full of blood-drenched paper towels. Such a small cut, and such a ridiculous amount of blood, blood everywhere [it was 10 hours of straight bleeding, after all]. She did not want to go to the ER because they always end up charging you an arm and a leg and besides she didn’t feel that they would do much good, as the rules for stopping blood flow is pressure, and she had been applying pressure all night which did not help and indeed, when the pressure was removed, only made things worse.

She called my aunt, who is a doctor, and who called her ER in Virginia and then told her to apply pressure while lying flat down for *12 hours* and then remove the bandage by dampening it. My mother didn’t like this solution (who would want to lie down for 12 hours???). Meanwhile I had looked online for homeopathic remedies and discovered that cayenne pepper, along with yarrow, kelp, and some other plants, is a remedy for unstoppable bleeding. We lay her down on the sofa and I applied cayenne pepper liberally to her cheek and the wound. It continued to bleed determinedly for about 5 minutes, then slowed and stopped altogether (although I had to reapply the pepper several times so by the time it stopped she had a literal mountain of gummy blood-pepper mixture on that cheek).

Quite amazing. Where all else failed, cayenne pepper did the trick. You would think that it would sting, but it didn’t, and it worked like a charm. The scary pepper mountain took a day to dry up and fall off, but then all was well until a couple days ago when she brushed her face again by mistake and the whole thing started up again. This time, however, I applied the cayenne pepper right away and it stopped quicker than previously.

I guess it’s good to know that cayenne can do such miraculous things. Still, this bleeding thing bothers me. What is this mysterious little bump, and why does it bleed indefinitely with no sign of clotting?

Talking to shipping companies is giving me a big pain in my ass. This and that and insurance and pallatizing and there is NO way to get insurance unless you are professionally packed and I know that is going to cost a zillion dollars and how much is standard for a company paying someone’s relocation costs anyway? I have no idea what is too much. I am trying so damn hard to be frugal but I don’t want my belongings broken by inept cargo lifters either.

Ugh, ugh.

I’m also annoyed because Hanscom called me up and canceled my flight lesson today because my plane is down (AGAIN). I’m thinking I’m not going to be able to finish before we leave. Didn’t I say that already? Therefore I have gotten in touch with some Australian flying people and asked them how much of my US training would apply if I had to finish getting my license in Australia. And it is twice as expensive to fly in Aussie as it is here.

Ugh, ugh, money.

Fuck. I’m in the most abominable mood.

Skydiving was fun. If I were richer, I might even try it again sometime!

We didn’t think we’d be able to go up at all because of the mist and cumulus clouds on Sunday morning. But at about 9:30AM, for just a short time, some blue sky showed through the cracks so off we went. I was strapped tightly to this obnoxious individual who decided that it was his goal for the day to scare me on my first jump. He kept saying things like… ”oh man, I think I’m missing a strap! How many straps are supposed to be on this thing?’ …’I don’t have a good feeling about this…’ and so on and so forth. Being myself, I sat there stolidly and said nothing. He also decided to quiz me on my VFR minimums, since he had found out I am a pilot in training.

We were first to jump (there were only two other people/tandem sets, Zaubi and this other guy) so we had the interesting experience of opening the plane door. We waddled over to it, yanked it up, and then I stood on the edge staring down at what looked exactly like a satellite photo of the earth. We were high. 13,500 feet (hyperfl0w tells me that they aren’t supposed to go that high for a first jump!).

My obnoxious guy kept starting to push me out and then grabbing the edge of the plane door so we didn’t go out after all. He was truly obnoxious. Finally, we jumped out (backwards) and then flipped over to the proper stomach down arms out position. I had only one brief moment to look down at that satellite photo and think “Oh shit! I’m about to jump out of a plane and I’m 2 and a half miles above the ground!!!” before we were there, falling through icy cold air, deafened by the wind.

I didn’t notice my face flapping around but the cold air was going up my nose which was very annoying. My obnoxious guy starting putting his arms in some configuration that caused us to spin around very fast in circles. Now I generally do not get motion sick. I have no problem with speed, sudden drops, turns, going upside down, and so on and so forth, but I cannot BEAR spinning. Spinning makes me ill. He couldn’t hear anything I said, so I reached up and slapped him on his arms so he would stop. He stopped for a little while then started up again. So I reached up and slapped him again. This was really the unforgivable sin because one thing they stress is “DO NOT GRAB YOUR INSTRUCTOR’S ARMS!!!” But I couldn’t make him stop the horrible spinning any other way.

At 4000 feet he pulled our parachute and it opened up with a  castrate-afying jerk. Then it was really beautiful. At once the air was warm, and the ground was now close enough to see more details, and we sailed gently, twirling a bit in our parachute. I asked him if we could go through one of the big poofy clouds and he complied, although it is strictly verboten. Ever since I was first in a plane at age 6 or so I have wanted to go tromping about in a big poofy cloud.

We landed before the plane even made it back. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes. It was rather anti-climactic, actually.