Fanny Adams

I think your computer needs a little chat with Dr Plain...

You know, I'm actually quite proud of myself for controlling the car through that and not losing it. I thought I was a goner for sure... still shaking a bit.

Dear Dr Plain I feel compelled to confess that not only have I never seen this "Anchorman" movie of which you speak, but I've never heard of it either. Who wrote the original novel? Is it out in paperback yet? Why are the other patients in your waiting room starting to look at me funny? I look forward to your answers to these and more questions. Regards Fanny

GAH! Bloody P-plate drivers! GRRR!! So I'm driving down the main highway on my way to lunch with Chris. I'm on rightmost lane of three, next to the centre concrete road dividers (we drive on the left here) and there's a big truck in the middle lane to my left. All of a sudden, this young kid in the far left lane cuts in front of the truck, the truck slams on the skids and leans on the horn, the kid panics and, instead of pulling back into his lane, goes right, straight into the front of me and forces me right into the concrete divider. I hit the divider doing roughly 110kph (70mph), skim along for a bit with the front wheel going up the side of the wall. The kid takes off in front of me at full clip, I fight the wheel back onto the road, the car's still running so I chase the little bugger down, honking my horn like mad and shaking like a leaf. About 2km later, he finally decides to pull over and give me his details. He's around 18, all apologetic and scared (HA!! HE was scared!!! You shoulda seen me!!). No damage to his car but mine had around 2ft ripped off the front right bumper panel and a bloody big ding on the left. Luckily no other damage, even the indicators and lights are still working and neither of us hurt. Quote from the panel beaters to fix (cash job through a mate of my brother's) is $1000. Damn, I didn't need that right now!! Man, I thought I was dead for sure when the car hit the concrete at that speed I hate that feeling!!

I think mice are rather nice; Their tails are long, their faces small; They haven't any chins at all. Their ears are pink, their teeth are white, They run about the house at night; They nibble things they shouldn't touch, and, no one seems to like them much, but, I think mice are rather nice. (But then again, I like spiders and snakes, so who can take my word for it? )

:frown: Ahahahaha!! I think you're better at this than you realise. He might not dress up like Hugh Jackman, but I have been known to call him "Master"! :angry_smile:

Donna, I LOVE the new pic! Looking gorgeous, girl!!

Why would anyone bring a dessert to a dinner party anyway, unless asked? As the host, I would naturally expect to be putting that on as part of the dinner! Like you, I would have it planned and am not sure I'd appreciate the gesture. If you have to bring a contribution, surely the tradition is wine or failing that maybe some after-dinner mints? Gah, I hope people don't think I'm rude if I ever invited to a dinner party in the US - it would never occur to me to bring the dessert!!

Re the putting out the desserts when guest bring them: I've never really heard of someone bringing desserts to a dinner party unless they were specifically asked to do so, but if I showed up with some yummy desserts to offer and my host didn't put them out, I'd be hurt and thinking they didn't like it or it wasn't good enough. Just saying... *edits* Then again, if I had invited people to a dinner party and they showed up with desserts when I hadn't asked them to bring something, I'd probably be thinking they didn't trust my cooking enough to make a nice dessert for them! LOL! Maybe I'm just paranoid :sad_smile:

Dear Dr Plain, I seem to have an obsession about snakes, thinking about them night and day. Thoughts of them are keeping me awake at night, especially when I'm away on site for work. Can you help? PS: Tell me more about these clothespins! HAWT!

We had a power failure on site, so I spent yesterday afternoon and evening either sitting in the pool in camp (which was blood warm) or sweltering in the dark in my room :thumbup:. It did come on again just in time to go to sleep, so at least I didn't have to put up with that all night.

Fabulous news about your meds, Christasha!! You must be thrilled! And you WILL get to goal, I'm sure! :tongue2:

Please Turn Over??? :tongue2:

I do have a BIG imagination - positively obese!! :cursing::thumbup:

Well he is very eloquent and that "pretty face" comment was said with a significant pause that made it fairly clear what was meant. However, I take the point that everyone is making, which is that he wouldn't be with me if he found me that unattractive, so I'm just going to throttle back the insecurity monster and trust him. Lack of self-confidence is a far more unattractive feature than a little extra skin, so the last thing I need is to spoil everything by indulging that paranoia. Re the height, he's not tall but then again, the highest heels I ever wear are only 2", so even in those he still has 3" on me, so that's fine by me. My father is short too (5'7"), as is my oldest brother and my ex, so I guess I am just used to that height in guys. I was astonished though at his assessment of me as "tall" - that's not an adjective I've ever thought of fitting me!! Re the snakes: I was amazed at how calm I was when we were dealing with the venomous snakes. I half expected to go all "girly" and wuss out on that part, but the instructor was really good at bringing us slowly up to speed with each one. In the final "test" of the day, we had to enter a room in which 4 snakes had been released, find them wherever they had hidden themselves and catch and contain them. I couldn't believe how easy it was and how smoothly it all went. Re the "stop signs are optional" folk: I'm going to bite my tongue on this one because it is a favourite debating hobby horse of mine and I'll probably offend some people if I really get going on that topic. Suffice it to say that those attitudes account for the absolutely shocking death toll on US roads in comparison to any other western country.

Replying is the worst thing you can do - all that achieves is to confirm to the scammers that they've found a legitimate email address still in current use. It will virtually guarantee that you get more of them :smile2:.

The stupid thing is that I wasn't stressing before I was dumb enough to put the question out in the open. I knew he was into slim women but figured he was obviously into me enough to find me attractive. It's just that now that I know for sure that the attraction is for everything EXCEPT the physical look, I've gone all paranoid. Damnit, inner beauty is all very well but screw Women's Lib, I wanna be a sex toy!! *wails*

I've lost over 10" off my chest and gone from spilling out of an F cup to barely filling it :cursing:. Most of what fills the cups now is just loose skin too - there's probably not enough boob tissue there to make a decent D cup. When I lie on my back, they wrinkle up and look horrible. I used to love my boobs, even when I was at my fattest - I hate them now and can't wait for the boob job I'm planning for when I get to goal .

Is the honeymoon over? Okay folks, I need your help in dealing with this one... Things with the new BF are getting really really serious, he is wonderful, sexy and georgeous. He also really slim and fit and currently getting worried about putting on weight because he has crept over 155lb :cool2:. He is 5'8" and I am 5'3", which I thought was a pretty good match, however, all of his previous girlfriends/partners have been tiny slim women, he considers me tall! He has paid me some fabulous compliments, all of which have made me feel really good about myself - things such as "you have the sexiest mind of any woman I've met", "I love your eyes/smile/hair", "You are my every wet dream come true"... the one thing he hadn't ever said, however, was the basic "you're pretty/beautiful/etc". Foolishly, I was fishing for compliments last weekend and asked him flat out "Do you think I'm pretty?" erk... I should have known that I would get a totally honest answer... I got the dreaded "You have a very pretty face". Now as fatties, we all know what that means, don't we? What's more, it was followed up a while later with comments along the lines of "I'm really coming to realise that I've focussed way too much on the physical in the past and that what is really important to me is someone's mind, spirit, loving heart, that we are so compatible, etc, etc.." Double erk... Jeez, why didn't he just say "you have a great personality", which we all know is also code for "you're a big fatty". :cursing: Feeling sexy is such a matter of confidence. In the past, as a big fatty, I have made a point of going for men who specifically state that they are attracted to bigger women. With that knowledge, I'm usually happy to flaunt my curves and not too paranoid about the rolls. Now, however, even though I'm 80lb lighter, I'm getting paranoid about the sags and bags :tt2:. How do I deal with this? It is not his "fault" that he finds slim, fit women more physically attractive. Let's face it - they ARE. If they weren't, why would we so desperately want to be one of those women? I'm bisexual and I don't find my body physically attractive either, so why would he? He is wonderfully supportive about the weight loss and says he is happy to be patient about it, that what he cares about is that I am actively working to improve myself. He says he loves f***ing me - and we have the most amazingly mindblowing sex. However, I am less confident now about getting naked in front of him than I was before I so foolishly opened this can of worms. I love this man, I know he loves me, but my self-confidence took a beating with his honesty and I don't know how to recover it. Help!

Well they didn't have my favourite species, the old one-eyed trous... ooops, never mind!! The mining company pays for volunteers to do the Snake Catcher's course, because all of those snakes (taipan, tiger, death adder, gwardar, etc) are commonly found around the mine site and often in the camp, in the rooms and ablution blocks. When a snake is spotted, we have to call for the trained snake catchers to come and get him, then release them into the wild - I'm now one of those trained people! PS: Thanks for the compliment - I can't wait for next week, when I'm going to get the BF to take some official pics for my one year bandiversary.

Hi all - been busy lately and haven't posted but back on site today and started out with doing the Snake Catcher's course - awesome fun!! It started out with a general talk on fears and controlling reactions, went on to playing pass the python with some really cute Stimpsons pythons, and then we got into the good stuff - catch and release on the big nasties! We started with the Tiger Snakes, which are ranked 4th in the world on the Most Venomous* list. There were two Tigers, each about 3-4ft and they were fairly slow moving (we were in air-conditioning, so they were cold). They were fairly easy to catch inside on the carpet. These are really gorgeous looking snakes - dark brown stripes on a yellow background/belly. Next was the Death Adder, ranked 9th. These are quite small, very fat snakes, about 18"-2ft long, but with a really fast strike rate. These we had to catch outside, in the leaf litter and around under the bushes. Third was the Gwardar (aka Western Brown), ranked 10th, one of the brown snake family. He was around 5ft, lovely reddish brown colour, quite slim and very fast. He took a bit of catching, as he kept sliding through the hook and getting away. Lastly, we had to catch a large, then a small Dugite, ranked 14th. the small one was MUCH faster and more aggressive than the bigger one - his name was "Speedy". Strangely enough, the dugites scared me more than any of the other snakes, probably because I am much more aware of them and their dangers. Dugites are native to the south west of Western Australia and are quite common around Perth, especially in new housing suburban areas. I've grown up with multiple warnings about the dangers of dugites and know them to be a really fast striking aggressive animal. (The guys in my father's rugby club gave my mother the nickname of "The Dugite", as she was known to have a really nasty bite to her tongue :biggrin: hehe). Forgive the bad photos - I gave my phone to the guy sitting next to me to take pics for me and he had the shakes really badly Anyway, the photos might not be very clear or very flattering but OMG, I look like a normal person in them!! Not a fattie! YAY ME!! Me with a Stimpsons python: Tiger snake on the carpet: Me catching a tiger snake: *25 Most Venomous Snakes in the World (Note - this is not necessarily the most dangerous, as it doesn't take into account how often they are encountered by humans, how aggressive they are, how many strikes they make, etc. It is solely on toxicity of the venom.) 1. Small-scaled snake (aka Inland Taipan, Fierce Snake) - Australia 2. Brown Snake - Australia 3. Taipan - Australia 4. Tiger Snake - Australia 5. Reevesby Island Tiger Snake - Australia 6. Beaked Sea Snake - Australia 7. Western Australian Tiger Snake - Australia 8. Chappell Island Tiger Snake - Australia 9. Death Adder - Australia 10. Gwardar (aka Western Brown) - Australia 11. Australian Copperhead - Australia 12. Indian Cobra - India 13. Black Mamba - Africa 14. Dugite - Australia 15. Papuan Black Snake - Papua/New Guinea & Australia 16. Yellow-banded Snake - Australia 17. Rough-scaled Snake - Australia 18. King Cobra - India, Southeast Asia 19. Blue-bellied Snake - Australia 20. Collett's Snake - Australia 21. King Brown Snake - Australia 22. Red-bellied Black Snake - Australia 23. Small-eyed Snake - Australia 24. Spotted Snake - Australia 25. Eastern Diamond-back Rattlesnake - USA Hmmm... 21 out of the top 25 - not bad going really

SMS, let me add my voice to Kat's and Beth's - that manner of undermining your self-confidence and emotional abuse is a very strong sign of worse to come. Once they destroy your self-esteem, it's a short step to getting you to think that their abuse is your own fault for failing to live up to their standards in some way. Don't go down that path - it gets harder and harder to get out as your inner strength is eroded. To Kat and Beth: Thank you for sharing your story. I agree with you both in that we need to share our experiences when we recognise those telltale symptoms in others around us.

I'm gonna be really pissed off if there were coz Plain knows I'VE GOT DIBS ON THOSE!!

I've been getting lots of cramps too lately, mostly in the arch of my foot or calves at night. I've looked it up on the internet and it seems the most common cause is dehydration (not drinking my water - oops) and a magnesium or calcium deficiency. I eat a lot of cheese, so I don't think it is calcium, so I'm going to step up my magnesium-rich foods and see if that helps. Food Sources of Magnesium Oddly enough, almonds are high on this list and I eat almonds almost every day, so maybe it's just the dehydration for me . This is a constant problem where I work because of the heat - it's really hard to drink enough water every day!

Thanks Donna. The pics don't do justice to those butterflies either - they moved too quickly to get a good shot! Most of them were around 4-6 inches wing span, and just gorgeous. I think my favourite photo of all those shown, though, is the one of the tiny baby crocodile perched on a branch (in the Daintree River set). He is just soooooo cute!! PS: Am I boring people to tears yet?