I was driving to the Dentists early this morning, listening as I often do to LAFM.  The breakfast show was on, and Mel was bitching about her children's pet guinea pigs, which had been 'passed on' from another family, and which she now wanted to get rid of as her kids weren't bothered with them anymore.

If I hadn't already been running late, I would have pulled over and called the station to give this woman an ear full.

Not only was she setting a terrible example by not making sure her kids looked after their pets, but now she wanted to pass them on like hand-me-down clothes or perhaps an old car!  Not only that, but she was doing it on local radio!!  Hey, I'm sure she's a great parent, and I'm sure she had no bad intent, but the simple fact that she thought nothing of making it a topic of general conversation really pissed me off.

What's that, you say?  They're only a couple of stupid guinea pigs?
Well, that may be so, but in my humble, personal opinion, when you bring a pet into your home, you make a commitment to provide for it.  The pet cannot choose whether or not it wants to be there, it can't make you like it (or dislike it), and it certainly can't feed itself.  It certainly (in most cases) can't find somewhere better to live if it thinks you're doing a crap job of looking after it.  Much like a baby, pets rely on their owners to provide everything for them.

To the parents out there who 'let' their kids get/talk them into getting a pet and then complain when the kids aren't interested anymore, suck it up!!  You're the parent, you made the decision, now it's your responsibility.  First, it might be something little, like a guinea pig, fish or bird - what about when your kids then have kids?  Perhaps even while they're living at home?  What about when the excitement wears off - are Mum and Dad going to pick up the pieces and look after the baby?  Or perhaps just put an ad in the paper: Give Away Baby to good home, great with kids!!

I do digress - I tend not to be the best author in the world when I'm writing about something that makes me mad, but I'm sure by now you've gotten the point.  Well, I hope so anyway.

My Birthday was yesterday (February 12 - mark it in for next year!), and I had a pretty damn good day considering I'm now on the far side of the 1/4 Century.

I had planned to start off with a nice extra hour of sleep after Broc left, even with the cats yelling at me for food - that I can tune out from.  The big black dog sticking his face under the doonah and snuffling his big, cold, wet nose into the small of my back is a little harder to ignore.

Breakfast, if you can call it that, consisted of mini bake-at-home Ciabatta rolls with assorted indulgent toppings including sun dried tomatoes and basil pesto, Mmmm...

Spent the day at home doing little bits of housework at my leisure, interrupted only by a relaxing visit from my Mother-In-Law with a lovely card & present for me.  Later on, Casey also dropped by with a pressie for me!

For dinner, I talked Broc into taking me out somewhere, and he picked the Jailhouse Grill, one of my favorite places to eat.  I had something a little different to the usual, their Scallop & Bacon Kebabs, which were just YUMMY!

We passed on staying for dessert, instead dropping by Coles on the way home to pick up one of our favorite desserts - a box of Brandy Snaps and a can of Cream!

Doesn't sound like a very exciting day, but the celebrations continue today with cake for lunch soon courtesy of Dan, then on to Festivale for tea & drinkies with Broc, Mum, Jeff and whoever else we run into!  But more on that tomorrow (when I eventually wake up).

Wow, I haven't posted since NOVEMBER!!

I seem to have a habit of doing this... I'll post for a while, then get too caught up in the rest of my life to ever find time to post anything.  Either that, or I sit down to post, and decide that my boring life isn't interesting enough for anyone else to read - or even for me to bother writing about!

But the fact is, there's lots of interesting stuff!  So from now on, I'm going to spend a few minutes every day or two writing about stuff that's going on.  It may not be interesting to you, or it might be fantastic.

Unfortunately I don't have the patience or writing skill to keep a blog that is actually useful for any purpose other than to keep our friends and family appraised of what's going on in our lives.