Best Friends.....

Talking and laughing last night with my gym buddy and I got to wondering about what makes a friendship happen. Is it a strange aura that tells you someone is so much like you in likes and dislikes that you will hit it off auto matically.(.How boring!!) Or is it a gradual building of the relationship like exposures of photos? I cannot recall how I came to have best friends..Horrible term really implies that one friend is better than the others, not so much better but more in tune with you, I think. I am a very liberated person, I have no issues with gays, gay marriages, gays having children, I believe in freedoms , social justice, community consultation and care. I believe that Government at all levels needs to be transparent and accountable as well as answerable tot he community. I do not obey or condone all my Church, my government, my country or the world does to each other and I say so. I have been called a pinko commie lesbian Greenie bitch, I might be some or many but not all. My friends accept me and my idiosyncrasies( of which there are many) as part of the deal.

I have one friend whom is fairly strait laced in her beliefs and the Catholic Church, she is almost homophobic but I'd never place her in a position of embarrassment in regards to her beliefs. She is one of the most caring, nurturing, unassuming people you could ever met. She worries about my forthrightness and that it will get me in trouble. She understands if I don't speak up it will just build up. She worries a bit too much about what people think of her, not in a vain way, just an appearances way. But she is a wonderful person at heart. We have different views on parenting, gays, shopping but we are best friends.

Another pal, we have been friends for over 20 years and I met her through my husband( they all went to school together) she was my bridesmaid, has recently been diagnosed with MS, she has two special needs children and has a lot happening in her world. She and her husband (he was our best man) are both dog people also. Together we invented Barcardi and Raspberry as a drink, she is allergic to Coke. We enjoy a chat and a cup of tea, and when she visits its often bedlam but I can't get too angry.

My best friend is my gym and chocoholic buddy, we haven't know each other as long as I have know the other two and we had noting in common really except our girls attended the same creche years ago, we were pregnant with our second children together and she was PS and I was ex PS..Well maybe more in common than most. I left work after the birth of Mr 6, she returned to work after maternity leave, she saw me through my third pregnancy, I invited her to have a third but she was not to be had LOL. She's is a confidante, sage, and very resourceful. Who else would listen to you obsess about a topic of no interest to them, allow you to detail plans of revenge and attrition without shock nor judgment? Who else do you discuss your sex life and men with? ( Yes guys some women do talk!!!) Despite me being a stay at home mum and a late sleeper and her being a working mum and an early riser ( way too early!!!) we have a grand time and have more fun laughing at ourselves than much else. We shop together when time and funds allow, we read a lot but not always the same stuff, she likes Stephen King stuff and bios and autobios, super hero's movies and watches SMALLVILLE !!!! I like chickflics, chick lit, real literature, poetry, crime and legal novels, comic books. I watch DH and GA and CAC. She watches SMALLVILLE, Dancing with the Stars and SMALLVILLE!!! I watch ABC and SBS, she might watch them if the other 149 channels were not working. She watches SMALLVILLE!!!
Sorry, having trouble accepting this after she bought her mobile and headset to gym to watch the last 15 minutes of it. LMAO
So just my thoughts on best friends as I am lucky to have them and they all compliment themselves and me in some way. Each makes me stronger on some way and supports me in different ways. They are good to have about and I hope to have them for a very long time to come. I read somewhere once that "we could never not be best friends, as you know too much" but also that the rarest gift of all is that of the presence of a friend.

And so say all of us...........

This sums it up so poignantly I think, plus the little piccie I added:

Some people just do not get it. Everyone has varying degrees of tolerance, some of my neighbour's tolerance levels are so low, if an ant were to fart in my back yard the virulent whiners would send an anonymous complaint into council. To make matters worse they did not know, that we knew they made the complaints. Now they know we know they made the complaints - ha ha. Things have deteriorated to such a degree the Council were not going to pursue the dog complaint made by the virulent neighbours, well at least until we challenged them to investigate, and if they had enough information. Finally I believe the council is starting to realise that the dogs are not incessant barkers or disturbing the peace. The laws are there to pursue owners of persistently barking dogs not the occasional barker. You know the ones that bark all night or for extended periods not say thirty seconds. Nor is "reasonably disturbing the peace" an easy one to get either. The dogs may annoy someone with an extremely low tolerance of all canine and canine friendlies but a normal person would approach the offending neighbour directly. If I approach them to discuss if they had a complaint or were annoyed - response "they are a bit noisy sometimes". Unfortunately did not have the gumption to admit or deny making a complaint nor discuss what was annoying them. Well they would if they had any intestinal fortitude.After being subjected to these frivolous complaints and pestering of the council officers have taken matters into our own hands and forcing mediation. So how do you make a complaint to council to ensure they will harass a responsible dog owner? After suspecting that someone was attempting to cause the dogs to bark from time to time we have finally caught them out. Yes that is correct if the dogs do not bark enough to make a complaint nor for the council to make a conclusive finding go out of your way to make a dog bark so you can note the times they barked and lodge a diary with the council. Throw rocks into the back yard to stir them up. Bang on the fence everytime the dogs are asleep - that will help. Annoy your dog owning neighbour after you have conditioned the dogs to barking at the noise by doing a lot of banging and thumping near the fence line until the dogs bark. When the responsible dog owner calls the dogs away stop the noise. Note the duration of the noise by entering discrete events on the minute. When they relax thinking the dogs are settled - start up again. But do not forget to make your notes in a diary for submitting into the council. Make sure you slam every car door when leaving the house - even if you are the only person traveling. If all that is not enough, note down times that other dogs are barking in the nearby properties and report against the owner you wish to make a complaint about. Make wild and unsubstantiated claims about the impact upon you. ie how it restricts the natural enjoyment of your privacy or peace in the yard or house.Why bother go to such extraordinary lengths when you can just fabricate times the dog barks and triple the length of time the noise occurs. Fill out a diary for each of you neighbours as well, if you have not already convinced them that the dogs bark too much and to submit a letter at least. But be careful here your other neighbours may just have dogs that are the noisy barkers, or own a rooster that crows at 4:00am in the morning. In other words make sure you are squeaky clean. What will happen? Well the Council will conduct an investigation and witness the neighbours dogs barking while the responsible owner's dogs are silent. Oops!!! Also make sure the diaries actually line up as well and the dogs are actually in the yard - will look suspicious.Make sure that you and your collaborators take turns to string the complaints out over a lengthy period - say 8 months to make the Council think that there is a serious problem.When you have gone to all these efforts to put forward such a good case for continued harassment of a dog owner - how frustrating it must be when a responsible (or not responsible depending upon your perspective) dog owner that has allowed the dogs to bark for awhile to bring the complaints to a head - and just when you think you have the council on side the alleged barking suddenly ceases!!!! Damn that would hurt.
Well trained dogs are such a joy.

Whew...............

School holidays have finished ( for ten weeks at least) so its back to the regime of making lunches, getting up early, doing readers, diaries signed,making sure that if its PE or Sport that they have their sports gear, forms signed, communication book ( Mr 6 only as he is special needs) read and commented if required, library bags if library day, the list goes on...Never thought there was so much in getting ready for another school day until I wrote it all down. I had to keep reminding myself to make lunches last night or else ;after a two week respite; I would have forgotten. The kids were bathed, hair washed and ready for bed by 7.00pm, boys in bed by 7.30, then the fun began...Up and down, in and out, back and forth, playing with toys, talking to the dog through the window ( he gets up to the window to talk to them, to hear them tell it) talking to each other, telling stories to each other ....GRRRRRRR and Miss 9 has been permitted to stay up to watch a series called " The restaurant" on the Food channel with us...So she was in bed by 9.30pm and began the same routine as her siblings had been demonstrating for over 2 hours now. Eventually, the boys fell asleep, Miss 9 was still up and about, chatting and reading at 11.00pm!!!!!
Needless to say, some very tired Vegemites here this morning, I let them sleep in and took them to school late...Yes, good form for first day back for the term and they were so late I had to sign them in at the office so there were some sniggers and remarks let me tell you LOL.