Australia wants to kill you.

I can't find any photos of our dog Mischka in my computer. If she was a lion made out of stone with a massive ballsack, she would look *exactly* like the pic above.

She almost died yesterday. Five bad-arse ticks. Thank God Dave noticed the first one on her leg, he bent down and pulled it off and said, "Is this a beetle?" And we realised it was a tick when he threw it on the driveway and it popped and Mishka's blood sprayed everywhere. By the time we got her to the vet, her back legs were all shaky and her throat was raspy from the swelling. The vet took three more and out, looked straight at me and said (in front of the kids) "I can't promise you she will make it through the night. These are the worst kinds of ticks you can get and they've been pumping poison into her for a while."

The blood in my face went cold, and I pretended I was completely ok. I'm so great at that! The dog after us was euthanised and the sad owner walked its limp body out soon after. Death was everywhere!

It always is.

Mischka is fine - the good people of twitter cared more about her than the kids did. Probably because I am so awesome at pretending in front of the kids. Max turned to me a few months ago, accusingly. "Mum, you never told me how serious dad was when he had cancer."

I said mate, I didn't want you to worry! I was doing enough worrying for our whole entire family!

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So, our dog didn't die. But I came home anyway ... did you know, that if you are away on a family holiday and it's cold and wet and rainy and you are the one doing most of the child-wrangling ... it's easier to just wrangle at home? I drove the kids home today. A two hour trip was a five-hour one, because I suck at solo-parenting and had to take a detour when we almost ran out of petrol. And then stop for burgers. Then milk, also: DVD's. At the end I was gripping the wheel, driving - thinking, this is so boring. I hate driving. Being an adult sucks.

Dave stayed back at the Bucket Bong Beach House. He's obsessed with clearing all the lantana, and all the changes he's going to make. We didn't argue at all, I just know when to call a spade a spade. Now I'm here and I get the bed all to myself and the kids are contained.

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On the drive home I thought about many things. Like, how come people aren't offended by Eminem anymore? Also, why would the creator of the Universe invent ticks? It doesn't make sense. I asked the vet yesterday, crouched down on the floor patting Mischka. She answered, "Just to annoy the absolute shit out of us."

My friend Kit told me on twitter that she doesn't know if she could come to Australia ... we have too many deadly creatures.

And we do! How hardcore - venomous snakes, deadly funnelweb spiders, crocodiles, sharks, dingos that steal babies, tiny tick murderers. And us Aussies are all just used to it. (Or, we develop internal anxiety that runs deep to our cores.)

So, rest of the world? Come and visit Australia. We'll *try* not to kill you, but we can't promise anything.

(There's a faraway shot of Mischka HERE.)

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