Beauty Tip of the Week

Pluck your eyebrows completely, and redraw them further up your forehead. This will give the illusion of interest in whatever the hell people are rabbiting on at you about THIS time. Without risking wrinkles by raising your eyebrows yourself.

Who’s the Daft Bint??

I decided that, as a fairly permanent dweller in Queensland, I should pay attention to the election circus.

Crikey!

Either these clowns are dropping balls they’re supposed to be juggling, or my maths skills are deteriorating faster than I thought possible.

I followed Anna Bligh’s twitter. OK, fairly quiet, but occasional tidbits of info. Like this –

Apprenticeship and Traineeship Incentive Scheme announcement

Beauty! I thought. While I don’t have a vested interest these days, long in the distant past of my career, I got my start via a traineeship which provided tax benefits to my employer.

Now, as some kind lackey in Anna’s office explained to me over Twitter – the vast majority of it public – the new incentive means that an employer pays NO payroll tax for a new apprentice, PLUS gets a discount of 25% of what that apprentice’s payroll tax would have equalled, off their current payroll tax bill. So, if they employ a new apprentice, their payroll tax actually goes down, rather than up. Nice, huh?

Now, I’m not dumb. Honest. That bit I could understand no worries. This is the bit that confuses the hell outta me – claimed to be a quote straight from the horse’s mouth –

“That means a business with 20 employees including five apprentices could now pay no payroll tax for their entire workforce,” Anna says.

Errr…

How the HELL does that work?

Patiently awaiting your feedback on the question raised in the title of this post – who’s the daft bint?

Whose maths skills will soon lead her to ask, “How many eggs in this dozen?”

Update: Hubby kindly pointed out that payroll tax in queensland only comes into effect once you have a certain number of employees. Research led me to the conclusion that he wasn’t quite right on that score. Payroll tax is payable, as far as I can tell, once your wages bill hits one million dollars.

I’m still trying to puzzle out the significance of 20 employees, 5 of them being apprentices. If you have further information, feel free to explain in words of 2 syllables or less 😉

Acts of God

The bushfires down in Victoria have been a huge tragedy. Lives lost, communities shattered, people in mourning all over the world. Every now and then I turn away from yet another news report, another Twitter, another blog post about friends lost, people dead, towns burnt to the ground.

Something I didn’t turn away from was a video from Westboro Baptist Church in the USA. Somewhere. I don’t really care where exactly they are. I’m not going to link to it, because I wouldn’t inflict that on anyone. Apparently the bushfires are God’s vengeance upon Australia. Australia, I heard, has done many horrible things, including spawning Heath Ledger (oh, my boy, I still miss ya, luv), sending the Chaser to visit them, and holding the Gay Mardi Gras. Tellingly, it’s the Chaser visit that seemed to upset Fred Phelps the most.

Want to know what upset me?

The palpable hate spewing out of that video. I’m sitting here in tears at the thought. “God hates Australia,” they said. “God sent this fire upon the nation he hates most of all” (or words to that effect, I’m not quoting perfectly).

I laid down, and I talked to God. I asked him – “This isn’t you, is it? Do you hate Australia? Do you revel in our pain?”

Because this is not the God I signed up to follow. The God I signed up with came in love when I was suffering and told me how much he loved me. The God I signed up with led me to acts of love. The God I signed up with loves the world, he ‘loved us while we were still sinners.” I signed up with a God of love. These people preach a God of hate.

So I said to him, “This guy sounds an awful lot like an Old Testament prophet – so is he? Is he speaking your message while the false prophets speak a fake message of peace and love and harmony?”

He didn’t answer.

Woohoo!

As a writer, I lack self-confidence.

Like, hugely.

While I enjoy my own fiction, and in fact have a good enough opinion of it to try to get fans, I’m very wary of getting reviews of any type. Because I know it has flaws. Some of them I just can’t do much about right now, like the fact that I’m writing multiple stories all at once. Some things are just… how they are.

HOWEVER…

A few weeks ago, I finally got up the courage to submit Nomesque Fiction to a site called Web Fiction Online. Every site submitted gets (eventually) reviewed by the editorial team. Which in and of itself absolutely amazes me. Plus, members can review and rate others’ fiction.

Last night I noticed, by sheer coincidence, that one of the team was in the process of reviewing NF. EEEEEK! I was terrified. What if she HATED it?

Well, here’s the review – see for yourself:

Listing for Nomesque Fiction on Web Fiction Guide

Wowsers! 😮

This really blew my socks off.

Hiatus

(I love that word)

Bubba Boy was sick. Right in the middle of an oh-my-god-gotta-get-this-out-the-door project release at work. GAH. Talk about stress.

Then I got sick.

Then Bubba Boy got sick again – and this time we got a little worried and took him off to the doctor and found out it was…

CROUP.

Holy crap.

I was brought up on books written in the 18th-19th centuries, so that word sends shudders up and down my spine. Despite the fact that it’s very rarely fatal or even overly serious these days.

For those not up on childhood diseases, croup is a slightly weird case. It’s not something that can be vaccinated against (yet) because it can be caused by a number of different viruses. If said virus gets busy in the wrong place – in the tubes leading to the lungs – you get a dry, hacking, seal-like cough that just goes on and on, as the virus irritates the tissue and the lungs respond by trying to blow it the hell away (yippee ki-yay, MF). Happily, the night before we took him to the doctor was the worst of it, and he’s been on the mend ever since. Although last night was the first that he actually slept THROUGH for a while. I think. Maybe I was just so tired I slept through his wailing. Don’t worry, it’s not as horrible as it sounds – I was only on backup wakerupper duty.

So, yeah. I’ve been staggering about bleary-eyed for a couple of weeks, and honestly, not been hugely interested in blogging about the amount and colour of snot coming out of my nose, or the earth-shattering decisions between sleeping under my desk and imbibing more coffee. Did I do wrong? Did you WANT to know about my snot? Bad bloody luck, weirdo.

Anyway, I’m back. Yay me, right? *snicker*