Haaaaa-le-lu-jah, make it stop!

I am going to reclaim what's mine.  I feel like Simba in 'The Lion King' (who I daresay was a blatant rip-off of the old manga cartoon 'Kimba the White Lion'), or Hamlet, or anyone who's ever tapped the shoulder of a queue-jumper.  I am going to barge into the lounge room and snatch (or maybe just gently clasp) my iPod back from my 9yo, who has been driving me mad with all the crap he's downloaded.  It's all fart sounds, dogs barking, and 'The Hallelujah Chorus'.  Handel did not compose this just to have some twerp of a kid press an icon that causes 'Haaaaa-le-LU-jah!' every five minutes, especially when someone in the house makes a declarative statement ('Look, there's your missing soccer shin pad, right there!' 'Haaaaa-le-LU-jah!').   I will admit the Handel hook was funny the first time.  By the twentieth time, it's lost its shine. 

Was reading a major newspaper today, and it was about the quarreling between two 'brothel barons' in Sydney, and about the impending parole of a punter who is serving time for providing cocaine to two escorts that actually killed them.  I don't mind this story, but I don't see why two businessmen having a dispute is actually news - it's just the salacious sex industry angle that's earned this a piece in the paper.  What's actually bugging me is the paper goes on to state that from having viewed documents, they can confirm well-known identities have paid for sex.  Well, knock me down with a feather pulled from the bottom of my cockatiel's cage!  No.  Really?  People have paid for sex?  So bloody what?  If these are legal establishments, and the transactions all involve consenting adults, I fail to see why it is being reported about.

Anyway, my holiday is over.  I return to paid work tomorrow.  Do I look forward to this?  No.  Do I like my work?  Yes, very much so.  But I'd rather stay at home and continue to work on the insurance claim, compiling monetary values on the things we have lost, and get things done so the repairs and painting can be done to the house.  I have to take my almost 13yo to the library so he can print out some work for school.  He will turn 13 this week.  I look at him, and can almost look him in the eye (and I am a tall woman)!  13years ago this week, a slippery warm bundle with a worried expression on his face was placed into my arms; that worried face now looks like it is developing its first adolescent zit.  Gawd.