tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478Sat, 31 Jan 2026 22:39:57 +0000Pinky's Everyday LifeTeenagersTeachers and TeachingSatirePinky's PastDogs Cats and PetsA to Z ChallengeBringing up BabiesIn Pinky's OpinionBloggingMedical MadnessWeddings and MarriageSatirical PoetryNeurosesPinky's familyPinky's OutingsHoliday DisastersGuest PostsThe SupernaturalTheatricalsPoliticsAgePinky's Lack of Sporting AbilityVideosScotto's PhotoshoppingJoin Pinky as she dishes out humourous anecdotes and advice on life, love, kids, pets and everything else in between.https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/noreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)Blogger823125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-3486985858233445549Sat, 03 Jun 2023 08:08:00 +00002023-06-03T18:13:44.667+10:00                                                                   The Puppet Master A lot of people have wondered why Scotto and I moved to Tasmania. Probably not a LOT of people. Maybe one… or two (including my mother). ‘https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2023/06/why-i-dont-tell-my-husband-anything.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-926391123537173802Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:04:00 +00002022-04-23T07:31:05.384+10:00 Pinky’s Map of Tasmania “Land ahoy!” I screamed in nautical exhilaration. Scotto jerked out of his seasickness-tablet induced coma, rubbed his eyes and sat up looking befuddled and grumpy. “Where?” he asked as he squinted blearily through the sea-sprayed cabin window. “It’s the Apple Isle! We’re finally here!” I pointed to the hazy Devonport headland in the distance.Ten days earlier, we’d https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2021/08/pinkys-map-of-tasmania.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-4407637420080542056Sat, 24 Oct 2020 08:44:00 +00002020-10-24T18:44:37.060+10:00 “I think I’m going to run a market stall at the annual Artisan Fayre,” I said to Scotto a couple of weeks ago. He scratched his scalp and frowned. “What will you be artisanning?” he asked. “Dunno,” I squinted into the distance and my small brain quivered as it concocted a plan. “Don’t worry, I’m not thinking of selling all the paintings I’ve done of you and the dogs. I strongly suspect https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/10/pinky-goes-potty.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-6131867111348095214Sat, 29 Aug 2020 22:35:00 +00002020-08-30T08:35:05.594+10:00First thing every Monday morning, to get rid of the ‘wriggles’, I ask the kids in my year three class to tell everyone about their weekend in one phrase.  Usually the words they blurt out are, ‘sleep over’, ‘Minecraft’, or ‘dirt bike riding’.  Occasionally, someone with the bright light of scholarly promise will say something highly inappropriate, like ‘reading books’, ‘listening https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/08/what-are-you-fixated-on-lately.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-7796129606237778151Sun, 19 Jul 2020 04:14:00 +00002020-07-19T14:14:01.653+10:00 Original by Pinky! Four legs good, two legs bad.  I ponder Orwell’s chant as I begin my weekend wind-down from a hectic week.A warm, convivial sun prickles my arms, and sighing with joy at the quietude, mandatory coffee in hand, I gratefully pick up my dog-eared copy of Animal Farm. I hear my chihuahua down the side garden barking at the neighbour’s labrador for the tenth time this https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/07/how-to-relax-on-weekend.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-5805644924627513243Fri, 03 Jul 2020 07:17:00 +00002020-07-03T17:17:45.772+10:00 Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky. Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.  Keats wrote that.  I know that fact as I have been reading a lot of classic literature lately because, just like that sick eagle staring at the sky, I too am imagining all the things I failed to do in my life that I could have done except I was too busy being shallow and low brow. In three short monthshttps://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/07/ode-to-sick-eagle-turning-sixty.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-6453430528517252794Sat, 30 May 2020 05:38:00 +00002020-05-30T16:13:22.828+10:00 A bitter, ominous wind whistled through the port racks as my class of eight-year-olds huddled on the carpet inside the classroom.  There’s no such thing as social distancing when you’re eight and you can’t walk past another eight-year-old without squeezing them in a head lock or inflicting a Chinese burn. I wasn’t huddling with them. I was perched on a small chair beside a whiteboard https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/05/the-sex-talk.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-7771297474109468343Sat, 09 May 2020 05:50:00 +00002020-05-09T15:50:05.216+10:00 Week 3 of online/in class teaching is over and boy, have I learned some new stuff. Technology, never my strongest point, has taken centre stage in my planning. It has been revolutionary on a personal level as well. Just before the lockdown, I bought a Fitbit. Normally, I hate everything I buy but I am in love with my Fitbit. Every morning, Scotto asks me how I slept. “Hang on!” I say as I reachhttps://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/05/teaching-in-time-of-covid.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-7179608208899373794Sat, 25 Apr 2020 07:50:00 +00002020-04-25T18:07:54.875+10:00 I’ve previously written about how I discovered I was dumb. I’d donated my raw genetic data to a website, they analysed it and provided me with information regarding my genetic traits.Last time I looked at it, I was devastated to learn that my cognitive ability was at an AVERAGE standard. Click here to read the post if you can be botheredThis fact hobbled my self-esteem for a while, until I https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/04/isolation-internet.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-4778476967534109894Sat, 04 Apr 2020 23:22:00 +00002020-04-05T09:22:06.197+10:00 I’ve been particularly wanting to tell you about my student, Phineas. My student, Phineas, is of the seventy-five-year-old man in a seven-year old’s body ilk. Phineas is the type of ‘elderly’ gentleman who always displays an inordinate sense of polite etiquette but can’t stand silliness. Phineas merely furrows his fuzzy wise eyebrows at me when I make a joke.  He’s a tough crowd. Phineashttps://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/04/avoid-kids-like-plague.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-4678175540157012203Sat, 14 Mar 2020 07:05:00 +00002020-04-05T15:19:18.996+10:00 Joffrey the chicken hiding in the bushes Standing at the entrance of our local shop yesterday, swearing prolifically and attempting to separate the shopping baskets which some idiot had jammed together, I felt a light tap on my shoulder. It was an elderly gentleman. “Can I help you with that?” he asked. “They’re a nuisance when they get stuck together, aren’t they?” he added, https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/03/covid-19-world-gone-crazy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-402116403305697150Sat, 07 Mar 2020 06:28:00 +00002020-03-07T16:28:38.184+10:00 As I sat in the doctor’s waiting room on Thursday, not touching the dog-eared magazines because of possible germs, I nervously started up a conversation with the receptionist. “Have you been busy with pseudo Corona virus victims?” I feigned nonchalance about the topic. “It’s ridiculous,” she scoffed and wagged her pen in the air. “There’s so much hype in the media it’s a joke. It’s https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/03/my-brush-with-corona-virus.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-2141271008641895085Sat, 22 Feb 2020 07:21:00 +00002020-05-30T13:59:22.100+10:00 The Poop Troupe While we were overseas recently, we left our aged dogs and cat at home and my parents moved in to look after (read: spoil) them.  My other three dogs (the Poop Troupe), were booked into a luxury suite at an elite boarding kennel (complete with a swimming pool, four poster beds, verandah, air-conditioning, a television, wall art and twice-daily nature walks).  I https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/02/when-house-sitters-steal.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-8261713180574046512Sat, 08 Feb 2020 05:59:00 +00002020-02-08T15:59:14.543+10:00 Reptile House, London Zoo a la Harry Potter! “I don’t want to alarm you,” said Scotto standing in the bedroom doorway at ten o’clock last Wednesday night, “but there’s a snake in the house.” If he’d said, “I don't want to alarm you, but there’s a snake in my pants,” I would have laughed.  But he said, ‘in the house’ so I knew he wasn’t joking or making a silly euphemism. “You mean, a https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/02/the-reptile-house.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-4860006154906357323Sun, 26 Jan 2020 08:11:00 +00002020-01-26T18:11:57.064+10:00 Literally, the first thing Scotto did when we arrived in Paris, was to step in dog poop. Figuratively, the first thing Scotto did when we arrived in Paris, was to lose his shit. I’d only recently calmed down from my phobia of travelling on the Eurostar under the depths of the English Channel and couldn’t offer much sympathy. As the train had plunged into darkness on the journey, I couldn’t https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/01/pinky-and-scotto-in-paris.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-8674212137284447452Sat, 18 Jan 2020 05:14:00 +00002020-01-18T15:50:09.692+10:00 Bath “Do you think that’s a ghost?” I asked Lulu.  Mr Darcy: Jane Austen Centre I was showing her a photograph taken of Mr Darcy in the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. She grabbed my phone and inspected it with the intensity of a hard-core sceptic. “Look!” I said, swiping the phone. “It’s in this photo as well. And if you look closely it’s in this one on the right https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/01/pinky-and-scottos-european-vacation_18.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-2375858650417100315Mon, 13 Jan 2020 06:25:00 +00002020-01-13T16:42:36.249+10:00 (Video above is clandestine footage taken of Pinky descending a castle staircase) On looking back at our holiday photographs, I can honestly say that I don’t care if I don’t see any moss-encrusted turrets, Gothic spires or stained-glass windows for a while. I don’t care if I don’t get to lug a suitcase along cobblestones in the rain, decipher the engineering of a hotel shower faucet or climb https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2020/01/pinky-and-scottos-european-vacation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-7130240955552568791Fri, 13 Dec 2019 07:33:00 +00002019-12-13T17:36:05.944+10:00 Like Dick Whittington and his cat, in a few days’ time, Scotto and I are off to London to make our fortune. Unlike Dick Whittington we are not taking our cat.  (Frankly, it doesn’t deserve an overseas holiday since it recently cost me $800 at the vet after getting a bacterial infection from eating a gecko. It annoyed me a lot because cats are supposed to have nine lives and I probably https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2019/12/a-possible-white-christmas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-4219099679790399463Sat, 23 Nov 2019 05:56:00 +00002019-11-23T15:56:09.663+10:00 Recently, I bravely uploaded my raw genetic data into a website that can tell you what predispositions you have towards dreadful diseases, personality quirks and whether asparagus makes your wee smell funny or not. Daunting much? Naturally, it turns out that I harbour particular genes which predispose me to the usual horrible afflictions like, ALL the types of cancer (including prostate), https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2019/11/im-not-smart-and-i-can-prove-it.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-6927277738499983488Sat, 09 Nov 2019 07:05:00 +00002019-11-09T17:05:13.966+10:00 My Tent Part of the recent school camp last week involved actual camping. You know what I mean, the ‘sleeping on the ground with only a veneer of delicate nylon between you and the local bunyips’ style of camping. To say that I wasn’t looking forward to it is like saying that Russell Coight is a bit accident prone. Two other teachers and I, chaperoned seventeen boys and six girls on the https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2019/11/surviving-school-camp-just.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-836121159200706550Sat, 26 Oct 2019 06:19:00 +00002019-10-26T16:19:03.559+10:00 Polly I happened to be sitting between my principal and the school librarian during a meeting last week as the staff deliberated over the titillating task of refining and pimping a dreary mission statement. The teachers in the room had just concluded a half hour’s heated discussion on whether the word, ‘promoting’ was more effective than the word, ‘enhancing’ and I had wanted to slash my https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2019/10/its-not-about-size-of-sausage.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-5889794265007197234Sat, 07 Sep 2019 05:31:00 +00002019-09-07T15:31:14.843+10:00 “Are you a vegan, Mrs Poinker?” The question had come out of the blue in the middle of a Math lesson and now the entire class sat staring at me with disparaging faces waiting for me to answer young Buster ‘Muscles’ Calhoun’s provocative question. Buster Calhoun’s parents own a cattle farm. I think a few other kids in my class have parents who own cattle farms. Several of the teachers I work https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2019/09/how-to-be-vegan-pariah.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-3395440716119025997Sun, 18 Aug 2019 06:43:00 +00002019-08-18T16:43:04.750+10:00 Like many schools, my school endeavours to teach children to be kind. We want our students to grow up displaying empathy for others, to show compassion and to not act like they would if they were say… the sole surviving species in an apocalyptic scenario where everyone over the age of sixteen was dead and they were free to pillage the world eating each other’s brains. Part of this education in https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2019/08/toast-tuesday.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-4402762059607858035Sun, 04 Aug 2019 08:53:00 +00002019-08-04T18:53:09.322+10:00 We recently ripped up the carpet in our bedroom and replaced it with a vinyl/timber hybrid that, according to the man at Harvey Norman, is fully waterproof.  More importantly, it’s vomit, diarrhea and urine proof so now when it’s 4:00 am and gentle heaving sounds emanate from under the doona and we feel a Chihuahua scrabbling desperately up through the bedclothes to get to the bathroom, https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2019/08/just-how-boring-am-i.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2926983399996837478.post-8527684297691544006Thu, 04 Jul 2019 08:56:00 +00002019-07-04T18:56:12.260+10:00 Thirteen months ago, I gave up alcohol.  At the same time, I decided to give up drugs.  Not hard drugs (which I’d be too chicken to ever take in case I started gnawing people’s faces off or drinking so much water my brain exploded), but any medication that might interfere with my brainwaves.  You know, that superior intellectual brain of mine which I must protect at all https://www.pinkypoinker.com.au/2019/07/my-body-is-temple.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Pinky Poinker)0