Who’s counting?

"I like to count."
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Today Ben attended medical appointment #37 for the year with another appointment next week and possibly one more before the end of the year. The Falcon, which has taken us to nearly all those appointments, ticked over 250,000km on the odometer yesterday. There are twenty five days till Christmas, though it's not such a big deal any more. Tess is counting down her final days at the AASB before starting a new job in 2014. Ben's birthday is coming up soon, adding another year to his age. Jazz is older too and still has two meals a day plus snacks in between. There are so many things to count and, as the muppet from Transylvania is fond of saying, I like to count.

Cockatoo.

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Cockatoos are very common. We often see small flocks of white cockatoos wheeling around and hear their raucous screeching. My personal favourite is the yellow tailed black cockatoo. We sometimes see them from the kitchen window and there were large flocks near Weldborough in Tasmania. Their distinctive call sounds prehistoric and they’re beautifully graceful in flight. Cockatoo also happens to be the name of a little town in the Dandenong Ranges, not far from Emerald. Ben and I drove through there once, after taking a wrong turn on the way back from Healesville, and I can’t say I remember what the town looks like. We ended up somewhere deep and dark in the Bunyip State Forest with no mobile phone reception. But I digress... back to today's theme. Cockatoo, the town, is also where Ben’s mum is now staying with a friend who owns a number of Mercedes Benz. We haven’t seen mum’s black Merc for several weeks but she has been driving a sleek SLK roadster and a more sedate silver Merc sedan. Ben’s been to visit a few times and Tess visited once too. As for me, I still can’t say what the town of Cockatoo looks like.

Uncle Ben.

According to their parents, the little nieces are quite fond of Uncle Ben and often ask about visiting. We never actually hear the girls talking and mostly just follow at a watchful distance as they busily and silently buzz around the house and garden. They visited on Saturday and again on Monday and no household object is safe from those curious little fingers. Jazz, however, is perfectly safe because they’re both terrified of her. Ben is so popular that the parents would like him to look after the nieces on occasions when the parents go out to movies or restaurants. When the time’s right, we’ll do a trial run and see how it goes.

Supernatural.

Sam and Dean
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Supernatural, with its suspenseful storylines and gruesome imagery, was once one of Ben’s favourite TV series but last year he was unable to watch for even a few minutes. Tonight we viewed an entire episode in one sitting. Dean is captured by a djinn, an evil spirit who makes Dean believe that he’s awoken in an alternate reality where life is easy and happy. However it’s just a trick of the mind that the djinn uses to preserve the hapless victim while his blood is slowly consumed. The spell is imperfect and Dean, warned by a ghostly figure, tears himself away from the lure of that perfect life. Dean's brother Sam rescues him and together they confront and destroy the evil spirit. Ben has seen the episode before but can’t remember how long ago. And what do you do after watching a gruesome, suspenseful story? It seems that painting Orks is a good way to relax when you’re wound up. And what’s an Ork? That’s a story for another time.