Happy New Year

I was the only person who cried at the fireworks. I suppose it was because I was enjoying myself and let my guard down. It was also because I really love the city I was born in, that I live in and gave birth to my children in. Soppy.

Our mayor and councillors put on a wonderful New Years Eve party in a park opposite the St Marys Cathedral which is beautifully lit up at night. There were some huge carnival rides, a giant bouncy castle, a huge slippery slide and rock-climbing wall. Can you imagine this floodlit at night, the backdrop to the carnival?



They played the movie "Alvin and the Chipmunks" at 7:15 pm on a big screen and had the kids' fireworks at 9:15 after our mayor spoke about Ipswich and why it's such a great place. I don't want to be corny but I agreed with everything he said and then cried when the fireworks started.

I was remembering my Happy New Year post from last year. Remember? I did this in gingerbread:



I also got stung by a wasp. Goodness I was young and naive back then! Such fresh-faced hope simply oozing out of that gingerbread. I had no idea:

- my itching would get so bad I would ruin my arms and legs from the scratching
- I would discover it was due to bed bugs, and spend many months getting rid of them
- the dog would cost much money and plunge me deep into stress with her habit of biting other dogs
- my blood-pressure problems would come back with a vengeance and I would have many tests to determine it was simply essential hypertension and not something sinister, and go on long-term medication to manage it
- Sonny Ma-Jiminy would encounter some challenging times on the road to complete toilet-training
- our sewer would burst
- Sonny Ma-Jiminy's kindy experience would nearly send me round the twist
- I would superglue my fingers to a plastic dinosaur
- we would get burgled
- we would bite the bullet and remodel our kitchen...
- ...only to be moved away to a different city.

It's been a bit of a ride, 2008. I'm not in a place where I can do some cheesy saying in gingerbread this year.

In fact, I had an idea to write in gingerbread what I really think to usher in 2009, but it included language so frightful it would have caused a scandal among my friends who read. Mr de Elba may have lost his job due to his association with me (heh, no move! yah!)

But despite intense pressure from the two most unshockable friends I have in the WORLD, Mrs Tantrum and Crazy Sister, I have restrained myself from using gingerbread to ruin my reputation.

But I'm happy to talk about YOUR 2009.

May the Lord bless you and all who are special to you. Delight yourself in Him, and the Bible says He will give you the desires of your heart. And if you're not a praying sort of person, I hope the year is just as good, and that you don't stop reading Killing A Fly because I just said that bit from the Bible.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 ... Happy New Year!

Somebody tell me what she means ...?

Smoochy is talking. Yes! Talking. She has been talking for a little while now. But sadly, she's not making much sense.

One of her favourite things is brushing her teeth. She LOVES it, well, she used to love it until she -err- stopped loving it. I can't work out why, and I need your help.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Smoochy: Teess! Teess!

Me: Okay, let's do your teeth. Again.

Smoochy (with brush in hand): Payss, payss ...

Me: okay, we'll get some toothpaste on. Hold out your brush. Help me squeeze some on. There.

(Smoochy smiles a little then her face falls and she lets out a scream that would make your ears bleed. She gets uncontrollably angry and starts wiping the toothpaste off the brush onto the bathmat and walls.)

Me: I have absolutely no idea why you're upset.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Another thing she has always loved is milk. She's a milkaholic and has drunk buckets of the stuff from the same sipper cups for months.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Smoochy: Mook! Mook! Peeeze! Cup! Need! Peeeze, Mook!

Me: Alright, I'll get you some milk.

Smoochy: Yayy! (Claps hands.)

[Smoochy often cheers Yayy! and claps her hands when a parent finally understands her. It's not a little patronising.]

Me: Okay, here we go, pouring your milk. You look happy about that. (Smoochy nods head.) Here's your milk.

(Smoochy takes the milk and smiles a little, then lets out that ear-bleeding scream again and throws the sipper cup on the floor.)

Smoochy: No! No! Pinty! Pinty!

Me: Wha-? You mean 'plenty'?

(Smoochy nods.)

Me: Are you saying you need more in the cup?

Smoochy shakes head: Pinty! Pinty-y-y!

Me: Do you mean you've already had plenty?

Smoochy: Pinty! PINTY!

Me: Again, O Small and Powerful One, I have not a clue what you're saying.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Help me. What am I doing wrong in these scenarios? I have no idea.

Addendum: As I wrote that final sentence, Smoochy woke up. After I'd carried her and three obligatory dolls from the cot-room to the living room, she said, "Mook?" and I asked her, "Oh, no, are you going to scream and say "Plenty" again? And she smiled and nodded.

So very tired

I've always made the kids sleep in their bed or cot, but sometimes they get so tired ...

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday Mrs Tantrum and Crazy Sister ...

Happy birthday to you!

Two great blogging buddies, one I share a family with, the other I've never met, but I will when I get a kayak, 42 spare days and some level of physical stamina.

Tis Birthday Season here in December. I try to make birthdays special for my December buddies because I know they can sometimes feel a little ripped off as their festive season melts into one big blob of present-opening frenzy and then they sit and wait for another 350 days until next time. This year I've dropped the ball on a few of my good friends, which is what December Birthday People get upset about, I guess. What can I say? I'm hopeless.

Happy Birthday to:
My nephew (3rd)
My mother (7th)
My other nephew (8th)
Our small friend (15th)
Both our Good Friends (his: 18th, hers: 27th) and their baby girl (also the 27th)
Mr de E's cousin's little boy (25th)
Mrs Tantrum (27th)
My own dear Crazy Sister (28th)

... and in amongst that, there is Christmas and about four wedding anniversaries, including our own.

And then we start on the January birthdays.

Is anyone exhausted? (Alt. title: "Let's Never Do This Again")

Is anyone exhausted, or is it just me?

My brother-in-law said it very well when, after a quick visit on Christmas Eve en route to The Grandparents' place, he left saying, "Sorry this was a bit of a rush, but you know, that's The Spirit Of Christmas."

And it is, really.

What would Christmas BE without the packing and the rushing and the travelling and the family issues and the managing-children-in-the-car and the managing-children-at-The-Grandparents'-place and the re-packing and the coming home and the unpacking and the assimilating of presents into our house (somewhere, anywhere...)

I wonder what it would be like not to have to worry about the trip away and associated hassles on top of Christmas. To have Christmas largely at your own house. Perhaps pop out quickly for ONE meal to The Grandparents' place then for ANOTHER meal at The Other Grandparents' place, then back to your own place for your own space with your own people and to shower in your own bathroom and sleep in your own bed.

We've never done it. But because we're moving to the same town as both grandparents, it's what we'll be doing from now on. No more sleep-overs; I've always found them hard, now that I'm a grown-up and all.

I confess, I'm a little excited!

Too many words

Sonny Ma-Jiminy's language developed early. He has always interacted with his environment using words, words, words, words, words. It's good to see a kid with strong language skills, but wow. Sonny Ma-Jiminy makes my head spin.

The other night, I served up some scrambled eggs for dinner (yes, I'm on top of things here) and this is what he said, "This is a yummy dinner! I love these eggs! Eggs are the awesomest dinner. These eggs taste great. Mum, these eggs taste really nice..." and on and on and on.

It was great that he was enjoying good food, but there's a limit.

I said, "Sonny do you find it difficult to eat them with your mandible flapping about like that? Or are you okay with that?"

He grinned at me and said in a joyfully surprised voice, "I'm okay with that!!"

And last night I gazed dumbly at him as he described something about his new Tonka truck in minute detail. A veritable WALL OF WORDS was issuing from his mouth without a break. There was nothing I could do but sit, hostage-like, listening to it all. This is why I was so amazed when, through sheer force of habit, he was compelled to punctuate his rapid monologue at intervals to shout at me as if I wasn't listening.

"The cab is up here and the driver can sit in there but he can't get in this side, there's no door, he has to ...MUM!!!... he has to climb up in here and get in the back and then he can drive the truck over here to pick up a load of ...MUM!!!... he can drive over here to pick up a load of rocks and then he can ...MUM!!!"

As if I wasn't sitting there, my eyes glued to his face, hanging off every word because his very manner demanded complete attention.

Potential Fireball in my Kitchen

I'm pretty mad. When buying the appliances for my new kitchen, was was sort-of talked into, sort-of tricked by the salesman into buying the most expensive model, even though I wanted the mid-range model.

He managed this by asking me some dumb question about oven cleaning (it might have been the time he asked, "Do you enjoy cleaning your oven?" with such seriousness on his face, as if I might have said, "I do, actually, it's one of my guilty pleasures.") When I answered that I wasn't all that keen on cleaning my oven, he surreptitiously changed my choice of oven to the pyrolytic cleaning model. So that's what I ended up getting.

I was a bit shocked to see the price of the overall package jump up, but I thought, what the heck, I'll live here and use my oven for MANY more years to come, it might end up being worth it."

And of course, you know that a fortnight after the kitchen was finished, it appeared we were indeed moving, a fact I still haven't come to terms with.

Now, what does the "Pyrolytic" model do that other ovens don't?

Well, the salesman claimed that I would have have practically NO CLEANING to do in my new oven, as the pyrolytic feature heats the oven up to something ridiculous, like 500 decrees C (that's 932 degrees F, I kid you not) and it blitzes all grease to kindgom come. At worst, the only residue is some ash that can be wiped out.

That temperature is HOT. It's like having a controlled fireball in your kitchen. It's like the surface of the sun. It is so hot that the light doesn't work during cleaning and once a certain temperature is reached, THE OVEN LOCKS ITS OWN DOOR and will not unlock it until it cools down to a more reasonable temperature.

Would that be worth the extra money, you think?

Perhaps.

That is, it would be worth it IF the included oven trays could be put through the pyrolytic cleaning process.

IF the included wire racks could be put through the pyrolytic cleaning process.

IF the side-rails could be put through the pyrolytic cleaning process.

IF you didn't need to do the abovementioned items the old-fashioned way, with elbow grease and oven cleaner.

IF it did not say "After every use, wipe the oven with a solution of washing-up liquid and allow to dry."

IF it didn't say, "First, remove the worst of the residue manually."

IF it did not say, "Residue that is not removed may cause changes to the surface colour when Pyroluxe is used."

How glad am I that I spent the extra money on it?

Not at all.

Humbug.

Torture By Duck

I thought it was a good idea at the time.

I recently remembered that when my siblings and I were young, we loved the 1971 movie "Million Dollar Duck." I wondered if Sonny Ma-Jiminy and Smoochy Girl would be interested in it, and I went about getting a copy.

The first few times the children saw it, it was a success. Sonny seemed to understand the storyline and made clever comments so I knew he 'got it'. But as with most movies and DVDs that Sonny has, it got old quickly. He became sick of watching it and complained whenever it was on.

The problem was, Smoochy Girl is IN LOVE with it. She asks for it all day, starting with first thing in the morning. Straight after "Ook! Cup! Need! Peeze? Peeeze? Peeeeeze?" she starts begging for "Guck! Guck! Need! Guck! Peeze? Peeeze? Peeeeeze?" And I made a rule that we only watch Guck once a day.


I am sick of it.

Sonny is sick of it.

Mr de Elba is sick of it.

And Smoochy herself is sick of it by the time the opening credits with the cute little animated duck are over. That's all she seems to like. Every time the duck makes an appearance, she shouts, "Dere ee iz!" Once the credits are over, she's grumpy but she gest even grumpier if you turn it off.

These days, life has me beaten iunto submission to a point where I leave Guck on until everyone is so sick of it they leave the room.


It's Torture by Duck, and I can do without it.

Yeah, yeah ...

You are so right.

Photos 1 and 3 were indeed the same, in the original post where that series was used I was just using it as an illustration to show how I expected the place to be destroyed soon after I finished my 90-minute tidying odyssey. I wasn't going to deliberately mess it up for the photo, but I wanted to illustrate ... Hope you didn't think I was trying to fool you!

Yes, it was the decorated half of the tree Sonny frought to me, sadly minus most of the decorations. We're spending some time this morning trying to straighten out the tree and re-decorate it.

It is quite warm for cocoa, you're right, but we are suckers for punishment - we keep up the warm drinks in summer. I personally drink fewer of them, but still, cocoa is nice when the day has been a huge hassle from start to finish and you finally get to sit down!

Rate of Messing > Rate of Tidying

WHY are there two shifting spanners on my bathroom vanity? Because the children put them there. That's one example. I have a trillion more. Yes, a trillion.

When Sonny wakes up in the morning, he just walks around and tears up the house. Smoochy is forced to whine and cry, "Muh-yee! Muh-yee" (middle syllables are too much bother) until I get her up, change her nappy and release her to join in the tearing up of the house with her big brother. She loves it and laughs, and he claims he "has" to continue tearing up the joint because she's laughing and therefore it must continue.

By the time I become functional and put my contact lenses in, the house is barely recognisable.

If I go back to bed for a few more minutes, they appear at my side (MY side!) of the bed regularly to give me things I don't want to hold, remove items from my bedside table and demand drinks (Smoochy Girl, the milkaholic: "Ook! Cup! Need! Peeze? Peeeze? Peeeeeze?")

This morning, Sonny appeared beside my bed lugging the Entire Top Section Of The Christmas Tree. Wh-? Huh? "I need you to stand the Christmas Tree up. Smoochy knocked it over." Yeah, right.

I was sorely tempted to get mad and accuse the kids of "ruining Christmas" but I realised in time that that was a stupid thing to say, and refrained. Just as I refrained from accusing them of ruining Christmas when our box of tree decorations was outside on the deck during the Horrible Bed Bug Plague and they opened the box and threw the decorations down onto the ground one by one to see them drop. This happened day after day after day, owing to the fact that there were no high-up storage place available to me once my home became a disaster zone.

And another thing - with a toddler in the house, you either have to set up your Christmas tree on a little table to keep tiny fingers away from the decorations, or you have to decorate it like this (see it in the side of this picture):

Recently, I put that picture into a post about our new kitchen table, and a very astute commenter (Tracy) said, "I'm especially taken by your half decorated Christmas tree. :) Don't worry, you'll be able to decorate the whole thing in a few years." Here is someone who GETS IT. You're right Tracy, spot on.

I found my credit card, by the way (hooraaay!) It was UNDER the waste-paper basket in my office. Relief! But seriously - under the waste-paper basket?!?

All day. The picking-something-up and putting-it-somewhere-else. I'm not keeping up, and I'm losing my desire to try. Remember this?

Busting my guts over this will only make me mad, won't it? I should put my feet up and have a cup of hot cocoa, shouldn't I?

I honestly think your blog is scrap

That's NOT what this award means, if I understand correctly. Dee from Downunder was kind enough to offer me this award.
Here is a short explanation about this award: "Scrap means left over, fragments, discarded material. Many times truth and honesty are discarded material, considered fragments and left over. People like us need to tell it like it is, and let the scraps fall where they will."


And if that wasn't enough, Sassy Britches honoured me with this award:

The translation I believe says, "Please donate much in gold to this blogger, her writings will change the world." Either that, or "This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY" which has to do with ... "nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

In total, the tasks I must complete in order to accept these awards are to list 10 really honest things bout myself and nominate a grand total of 15 other bloggers to pass the award/s on to, preferably people who have not already received them. This is far too much for me to contemplate on a Friday.

Argh! Who hasn't received an award like this yet? Please tell me and I'll nominate you!

Tinsenpup? Mrs Tantrum? Adelaine? Help!

Grace

I want to say Grace at my place. I want my kids to get into a habit of thanking God for everything, including the food they eat. Not necessarily singing grace, I just really hate that, but saying a quick heartfelt thanks is what I'd like to foster.

The other day, we were having eggs on toast and Mr de Elba said (I believe 'off the cuff'),

"Thankyou God for eggs and wheat.
Thankyou for the food we eat. Amen."

I loved it! Honest, short, fun and it rhymed! Top marks.

I got to thinking about other graces I could write for different meals. My first one took an unexpectedly disturbing turn and needed to be abandoned:

A Husband's Grace for Roast Lamb
Thankyou for my kids and wife
And this dumb beast who gave its life
Who fell to rise and bleat no more
Lifeless on the killing floor...

Obviously that wasn't going to make the grade. I was heading towards the vegetables, and ended up in a pool of blood.

I tried some more, but they came out sounding awkward:

Grace for a Frittata
Thankyou loving Holy Father
For our vegetable frittata...

That rhyme is too tenuous.

Grace for a Pizza
Zank you Lord for now we eat za
Tasty roasted pumpkin pizza...

Way too silly.

Grace for Fish and Chips
Lord we pray these fish and chips
Do not go straight to my hips...

Getting too far away from the spirit of giving thanks for the food.

And then creativity struck and with a change of meter and a change of focus came this scrap of promise:

Grace for Sunday Morning Breakfast
Gratitude for tea and toast
Breakfast that I love the most
Comfort and simplicity
Being my priority
This Sabbath of tranquility
Thankyou, Holy Ghost.

And God would know I was talking about him, but was scratching for a rhyme there. He'd smile though, because I never call Him "Holy Ghost." It lends a dazed, ethereal feeling to the grace which is rather appropriate as that is how I feel on Sunday mornings after being woken far too early by my kids.

Speaking of which, I think there needs to be a grace in which they feature.

Grace for When I've Put Too Much Effort In
You gave me time to plan this dish
You gave me money to buy the fish
You gave more time to cook the lot
And serve it up all steamy-hot

You gave us two most lovely kids
To look at the food and hit the skids
To whinge and moan and pick at the food
To make some comments that are really quite rude

But all of these things I thank you for
And for the kids, I'll thank you more
Let me not begin to resent
The time and money and effort I spent

Let me thank you as I enjoy
My food, my husband, my girl and my boy
And remind me next time that I must be nuts
When preparing dinner to bust my guts.

Amen.

And here's a final one for meals the children actually do eat:

Grace for Anything With Rice
Lord I think it's really nice
You gave the human race its rice
Feeding those from every land
Filling tummies as you planned.

Make me thankful as I scrub
Rice from table, boy and bub,
Floor and carpet, fork and plate.
Teach me to appreciate.

Amen.

Shelves

Thankyou for your lovely comments. You make my day on a regular basis (as regular as I post anyway!) Can I share with you what Shelley said? This is priceless:

"My husband says that if you put our two boys in a padded, locked room with no windows and put two bowling balls in there with them, they'd lose one and break the other."

Oh that's so true at our house! Thanks for the laugh, Shelley!

Thanks to Joy for your suggestion of finding a higher shelf to put things on when I don't want Smoochy to touch them. I have often fantasised about a house with shelving up in the highest part of the room and putting every single thing we own up there. Nothing at floor level except the children.

Many people suggest I put things up high, but the higher I put things, the more daring and dangerous Sonny has to become in order to get them down.

Mess

There are dolls in our bed. There's a measuring cup in Sonny's room. There's an aerobie (frisbee) in our living room. I don't know why.

If I picked up 50 items before breakfast and put them in their proper places, my children would scatter 70 items. I cannot keep up with the rate of messing in this house.

A few months ago, Smoochy Girl (I assume) lost my credit card. There was no activity on that account, so I was fairly sure the card wasn't stolen. I searched high and low for a fortnight but in the end, I cancelled the card and had it replaced.

Unfortunately I forgot to change my details on a few direct debits. This (coupled with slackness on the part of my phone company) caused my mobile to be disconnected and some costly fees were charged to me before I got all cranky and demanded a reversal on the grounds that they didn't give me any warnings that my payments were being declined.

I have finally sorted out the chage of details on that and several other accounts. And yesterday, Smoochy Girl went through my purse again. Cards everywhere. And wouldn't you know it - my credit card is missing!

I'll just add it to my list of things to stress about.

Ten Years: good for the marriage, murder for the table

Today is our 10th Wedding Anniversary. Congratulations, us! Thanks to God for giving Mr de Elba to me to have and to hold these 10 years, what a loving God you are! Please can I keep him?

I post this picture again because Blogger isn't uploading anything for me tonight, and I've had to pinch the HTML code for this from my post on 6th September. Crikey, look out for the crocs just left of camera.

Ten years ago, an old teaching friend of my father's gave this table complete with 6 chairs. It belonged to his father who had recently passed away, so it had supported many dinners already. It was in pretty good shape, and then it came to us.


For the first 7 years, it remained in fairly good condition. The extension insert looked like the rest of the table.

Then Sonny Ma-Jiminy became old enough to eat at our table. I will never understand how a child can create such a mess on a table, and I will never understand how wiping the table won't result in a complete clean. Gack.

At some point, the legs went from wobbly to dangerous, with one leg frequently hanging at a shocking angle to the floor and table, which miraculously remained parallel.

But the real damage was done a few months ago when our kitchen was being renovated. The table spent a few weeks outside on the deck in the elements covered by a flimsy green tarpaulin. Then came the storms. We've had some pretty severe storms in the south-east corner of Queensland recently, and during a heavy hail storm, the tarp blew off the table.

We decided not to brave the hail to go and re-cover the table, otherwise we would have been killed by the hailstones. So we let the table get thoroughly wet, and then dry the next day. By this stage, we'd decided the time had finally come for a new table, so our old one may just have got wet and dry a few more times before being brought inside after the kitchen renovation.

Once it came inside, the veneer started peeling off and the chipboard dislodged in showers onto he floor regularly. And that's how it got to be in such bad shape. The extention insert is now unrecognisably differet from the rest of the poor sad table.

Ten years. The marriage thrived, the table didn't.

300th post

To celebrate my 300th post, we got a new kitchen table.

Actually, that's not true. We got a new kitchen table because our old one looked like this:






We bought our new one in faith, having only seen a picture of it in a catalogue with chairs, not the bench seats we wanted. We really didn't know what it would look like. But we like it. Just as well.




Sigh. Such a nice table, such a shocking phone camera on which to take pictures of it. All I want for Christmas is ... this. (I just have simple tastes.)

Let Them Eat Nectarines

I'm on strike. I'm not making dinner for my family until further notice.

I'm a little tired of wasting my time and my grocery budget planning, shopping, preparing, cooking and serving, only to scrape the lot off into the bin.

So I told my family yesterday that I was not going to be organising any dinners for them until I was ready.

The children did as they usually do, swiping fruit from the fruit bowl and begging and pleading for many cups of milk. I said, "Whatever, go for it."

Then they went to the freezer and found some half-finished frozen yoghurt. Normally I'd step in quickly and stop that sort of nonsense, but yesterday, I said, "Whatever, go for it."

They found a giant slice of watermelon in the fridge and took it to the table, along with a sharp knife. The Good Mother in me was on strike, and the Other Mother said, "Whatever, go for it."

Then Mr de Elba phoned. I told him what I was doing (nothing) and what the children were eating (everything). He thought it was all pretty amusing. Then he hatched a plan to come home via the grocery shop and save the day by making nachos. He asked me to stop the children eating stuff, but I wasn't too happy to include that in my description of Mummy On Strike.

Overall, I was pretty happy with this plan because by that stage, I was getting a little hungry myself.

At that time of day, a small trip for groceries can take a very long time. It was about Sonny's bedtime when Mr de E came home and started cooking. But it didn't bother me, because I was on strike. Mr de E made the nachos and we all sat down to eat long past both children's bedtimes. Delicious.

Then Mr de E headed off to a meeting and I bathed the children, dressed the children, cleaned the children's teeth and put the children into bed (one of whom had great trouble staying in bed.)
I fed Puppity Doggity, and then came upstairs and attacked THIS:

Some STRIKE!

Prints in the Sand

What sort of creature makes these prints in the sand?

Ah. That sort of creature.

Rubbish!

This photo was taken when Sonny Ma-Jiminy was two years old. I gave birth to Smoochy Girl three weeks after this photo was taken.

Me: Look Sonny, there's a picture of us making meatballs. That's you sitting on the bench rolling some meatballs. That's me there. And look at my big tummy! Why do you think it's so big?

(long pause for thought)

Sonny: Rubbish Food!

Meme from the burbs

Joy In The Burbs was doing a little meme I thought I'd like to try. Here it is:


Ten years ago I:
* was 21 years 11 months old
* was preparing to marry my best friend in 7 days time, and this means our 10th anniversary is coming up next Friday
* had worked for a year
* had lived in a little flat by myself for a year
* suffered most terribly from horrible panic attacks. But don't worry - God is currently busy restoring the years the locusts have eaten.


Five things on Tomorrow's To-Do List:
* fill our spare beanbag with trillions of little tiny beans so that the endless fights over our one beanbag will be put to rest. (Fights between my kids, not between me and Mr De Elba.)
* 10am - 2pm: go to Mr de Elba's work Christmas Party in the park. We're expecting a scorching 38 degrees C (100 degrees F) and it will be humid too. So a party in the park in the hottest part of the day might just kill us.
* endless pottering about the kitchen
* endless pottering about the laundry
* perhaps my parents will drop in for a little bit, but maybe the heat will keep them up on the mountain in Toowoomba!


Five snacks I enjoy:
* crackers and dip
* chips like Tasty Jacks (Louisa blogged about these and now they're on my mind. Mmm.)
* corn chips too
* macadamia nuts
* dark chocolate


Five things I would do if I were a millionaire:
* Give to the mission organisations and charities I'm interested in
* Make sure that our parents, who have supported us from infancy to independence are well taken care of
* Set us up to be comfortable but not over-comfortable (yes I know I know, that's all relative, my idea of 'comfortable' is the third world's idea of 'filthy-rich'. Don't make me any more guilty of my blessings than I already am, okay? I'm working through it with God.)
* Set up my children for their education and a little helping hand with their first homes
* See if I could find something wise to invest in.


Five places I have lived:
* Ipswich, Queensland, Australia
* Kingaroy, Queensland, Australia
* Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
* St Lucia, Queensland, Australia
* Ipswich, Queensland, Australia


Five jobs I've had:
* An ill-fated three days' employment at Hanna's clothing store before I realised that they gave me a full-time job when I wanted a casual job over Christmas.
* Receiver of paper cuts in a Back-To-School Bookstore.
.......A step up because I knew what I was getting myself in for.
* Speech Pathologist with Disability Services Queensland.
.......A step up because it was what I was trained for.
* Speech Pathologist with Education Queensland.
.......A step up because there were no lying scheming manipulative managers trying to bring me down.
* Speech Pathologist in my own private practice.
.......A step up because I am my own boss, I set my own hours, I see as many clients as I want, and I manage my own workload and professional development.


That was fun. I enjoy memes, probably because I like talking about myself. In fact, I enjoy BLOGGING because I like talking about myself.

Wanna do the meme? Go ahead, then tell me so I can pop over and check out your dark secrets ... about ... your employment history and your snacking habits ... which I could learn from having morning tea with you while reading your CV.

Thanks

I need to thank all of you lovely readers for your kind words on my blog. Especially since I've been crying at the washing line and stupid things like that.

Femina, Dee, Tinsenpup, Musing, Jen, Heather, Longdarkhairblueeyes, Alison, Joy and Mrs Tantrum all were so kind and thoughtful, and Hippomanic Jen even offered to come and help us sift through some of the accumulated stuff that has overgrown various dark corners of the place in the last 5 years.

When I confessed to crying while hanging out washing with a blue party hat on my head, I received such lovely hugs and thoughs from Heather, Swift Jan, Hip-Jen and the Jen with the 3 babies, Crazy Sister, and LDHBE.

Tracy P pointed out (and she's right) that my dearest treasures will be coming with me, and I'm glad that they're all able to throw their arms around me and make me feel much better.

Groovyoldlady was also correct in her observation that my drawings are indeed mediocre. I'm thankful that she enjoyed her first visit here even though she stepped into a sad post. For more of a laugh, read about the nipple-pinching kitchen scissors.

Mrs Tantrum said she felt my pain. It's good to know there's a good friend a short 42-day kayak trip away who understands that party hats are painful. She confessed: "I had to wear a CARS movie party hat to the grocery store the other day on the command of Bacon. It was horrifiying. Every time I attempted to remove it, he screamed like I was beating him within an inch of his life, so I left it on and took in the random stares and smiled. I see now that I should have just put on the waterworks instead."

Funny how some friendships will be changed forever by this move of ours because we'll be further apart :( some will be strengthened because we'll be closer together, and others will be unchanged, because the blogging will go on.

PS: I can't help but notice how under my post about the letter "O", nobody has commented! You've all ganged up on me to leave a big fat "0" down the bottom, to prove that "0" isn't that hard to achieve! Thanks for the lesson, point taken.

"O"

There's a meme floating around right now which asks bloggers to list their ten top favourite things that start with a particular letter. Jen at Buried With Children inspired me with her wonderful list of things that start with "S" so I asked her to give me a letter and I'd try.

She asked the handsome Hayden to assign me a letter. Hayden chose "O".

So now I'm in real trouble. Thanks Hayden. A vowel.

Where to start? Obviously, the first thing was to google "things that begin with o".

This was hopeless. Most of the hits were for other bloggers who attempted this meme, and here are some of the uninspiring things thay have listed:

Osama bin Laden, Oprah, Obama, Opossum, Outhouse, Old School Friends, Ostrich, October, Offers of Marriage, Onyx, and Oil paintings.

Ya what?

I'm struggling with "O".

Men think differently to women

How does one begin to think about getting rid of heaps of junk, and then packing all that remains into boxes? How does one remove every single item from their first real home and transport it all to their new home, ready to start some new memories?

And what about when all the boxes have gone? When everything has had its final clean and you stand together in the empty house you have loved so much, all alone apart from the light fittings and the echoes, what do you DO?

Do you sit down in the middle of the bare floor and cry together?

Do you buy a packet of chips and a bottle of red wine and celebrate a final few moments before you move on?

Do you shut the door, turn around and walk away without looking back?

I thought it might be good to ask Mr de Elba.

"When everything is packed and gone and we stand together here with nothing but the memories, what will we DO?" I asked.

"Sex in the kitchen!!" came his gleeful reply.

Typical.

Party party party

I saw something funny today. I didn't have my camera on me, so I'll have to re-create it and because I'm not good at Photoshop, I'll have to use MS Paint.

I looked out the window and saw Sonny Ma-Jiminy climbing the neighbour's fence with a red party hat on his head. He looked a little bit like this:

I thought that was pretty funny until I thought about what I must have looked like at the time:

Cooking with a blue party hat on my head.

In fact, since Sonny had the bright idea that we should all put party hats on, I've done a few weird things with a blue party hat. Here is me at the washing line:

Yeah. That's me crying at the washing line with a blue party hat on my head. I was crying because I wrote that previous post, and things were getting real for me. By 'real' I mean 'real sad'. I was feeling miserable and alone. So I did the only sensible thing: I hung out washing while crying.

At least I was dressed for a party.

Blogging it into existence

I once said, "If I don't blog it, it doesn't exist."

I have avoided blogging about this, and therefore it hasn't really existed so far. But at the risk of bringing it into the realm of reality, I need to blog about it, so I don't go mad.

A few weeks ago, Mr de Elba was offered a job in a different town. It it a good job for him, and I think he's the right person for the position. So it looks like we're moving.

I've had to keep this under my hat until Mr de Elba could tell the people who need to be told (it would be terribly poor form if they found out from his wife's blog!) That's been very hard for me, because I have been feeling shocked, devastated, bereft, and just plain reallyreallysad,
and without the benefit of my cathartic blogging, I fear the stress has eaten me alive.

Woody Allen said, "I can't express anger. That's my problem. I just grow a tumor instead." And so I've wanted to express all the feelings I've had the last few weeks, but instead I've just - broken up inside.

Question and Answer Time
Here are the answers to some questions people have asked me.

How far are we moving? Not far. Our new place will be a little over an hour away. But leaving this place that I love so much is ripping the heart out of me at the moment.

Where is it? We are moving from Ipswich (red dot on map below) to Toowoomba (blue dot), the town where I grew up. It means that our children will grow up living very close to their grandparents ("The Grammas", as Sonny Ma-Jiminy calls them) and this has to be a good thing. Here's a map to show how ridiculously close our new place is, and also to give you the heads-up on the states of Australia in case you were wondering.

Are your parents delighted you'll be moving closer? To be honest, they have been very kind and understanding about how devastated the move has made me, and have sympathised with the amount of crying I have done over the last few weeks. They are not using my time of grief to kick up their heels and celebrate in my face. They've been really supportive.

What is wrong with you? Pull yourself together. Why are you so upset? I admit, this is my own fault. It's because I love this place so much. It's because I've become so jolly thankful for all that God has given us that saying Goodbye to it all is really hurting me at the moment.

If I hated Ipswich, I wouldn't be so sad. If I didn't like my friends and was glad to see the back of them, I'd be cool. If I was getting itchy feet and ready for a move, I'd be more excited. But none of that is true.

How is everyone else taking it? Yeah they're fine. Mr de Elba has an exciting job to go to, and Smoochy is too small to be worried at all. Sonny is loving the idea of moving. He puts his arms around me and says in a really sympathetic voice, "It's okay to move, Mum. It's really good to move because our old house is just about to fall down." That's a crazy thing to say about or lovely house. He's also said, "Having new trees is much better than having old trees. When you look at them, it makes ... your brain ... better." And this I believe proves he has no clue what he's talking about.

Why sell the piano?

The piano was unplayable. It needed a complete overhaul of all the playing guts inside. There'd be precious little of the original piano left if you'd tried to make it playable. I made that perfectly clear in my ad, hence the lack of interest.

The tuning was so bad that whenever Crazy Sister and I hopped on for a play, it was like "Guess this tune." The sound board would have cracked if you'd tried to tune it to concert pitch, so really it was just a pretty shell.

I've played my new Yamaha for years now, and this old one was taking up space at Mum's place, never played.

Oh eBay, thou treacherous enticement.

I have bought some real bargains from eBay. Unfortunately, others are also buying bargains from me and I'm wondering if it's all worthwhile.

When you sell something that for some reason isn't all that tempting to buyers, you want to list it at a starting price low enough to encourage some interest. But it seems that the three things I have listed have been so un-tempting that the best I've managed is to interest ONLY ONE buyer who has not had anyone to enter a bidding war with.

Something tells me that the meagre interest I have received would have been completely obliterated if I'd put higher starting prices on these things. So whaddaya do?

Here is a list of my leet selling skills with eBay.

Item 1: Chunky Silver Heels - Ladies Shoes - Size 5

UNSOLD, despite a funny-ish ad.


Item 2: Near New - Doc Martens Ten Holers - Size 5
SOLD for crazy price of $19.00. Apparently not a lot of people are in the market for Docs that would fit a leprechaun.


Item 3: Antique Victor Upright Piano (1908)
SOLD for an even crazier price of $21.00. That's Australian dollars. I am not kidding.


Pah. Can't I at least get TWO bidders who will fight it out together so I can get some decent cash for my pre-loved stuff?

Storm in a Sipper Cup

There's an ad for a painkiller that's caused such a storm in the US that my head is whirling from reading about it in blogs.




Here in Australia, we have only seen this Motrin Ad on people's blogs. And I am at a great disadvantage because I have no speakers or headphones on my computer so I can't hear any of the video responses. Thankfully the ad itself was visual, so I think I get the gist, but I understand from comments on blogs that it's the flip, condescending voice that put people off more. And that's the bit I'm not getting from my computer.


I was a bit shocked to see responses on youtube from "outraged baby-wearing mommas" and I decided not to click on them, partly because they scared me a bit and partly because I wouldn't be able to hear them anyway.


This was the only video response that I could understand without the benefit of sound on my computer:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=TpqpAGLS2t4&feature=related

Initially, I had embedded it into this post, but the screen that it rested on was a bit of a shock, given the tone of "Killing A Fly" so I took the embedded video out and left you the link. Do click on it. It's great.

And here's the embarrassing bit. I must be terribly backward and stupid and wrong and a bad mother, but to tell you the honest truth ...

with no fake smiling ...

or lies ...

I - er - sorta...

Oh I can't say this...


whenIwearmybabyinoneofthosethingsmybackhurtsalittlewellactuallyitsortahurtsalot.


There. It's out. Firebomb my house if you wish. Blame it on the fact that I don't have speakers and therefore have missed the entire point of the commercial and all the responses to it. But it's true.

Thanksgiving in Australia

... doesn't really exist. Christmas is our huge celebration, with its 6-week summer school holidays from mid-December until late January. New Year's Eve is just about as big with many people. Easter is our other big celebration of note, as it involves a 4-day long weekend.

We love our public holidays, most of which fall on Mondays in Term 2 (April-May-June). Celebrating the birthday of the Queen, the Australia labour movement or those who fought and lost their lives for our country by taking a day off is right up our alley. It's The Australian Way.

But most of us only know about Thanksgiving from our American and Canadian friends.

We know it is big in the US, but we didn't know that Canada celebrated Thanksgiving earlier (in October) until we looked "Thanksgiving" up on Wikipedia.

Well really, that was just me.

However, because all of this thankfulness is going on in blogs everywhere, it's spread to us. That's why we're going on about things we're thankful for, without the hassles of the turkey and 5:00am cooking marathons.

Happy Thanksgiving - it's the little things...

I am thankful for ...

- My trip to visit my parents and Crazy Sister, Harpo, and Peanut

- A safe trip home

- Sonny Ma-Jiminy's kindy, which (although it has given me no end of stress this year) he LOVES

- My two lovely children, who were gorgeous in the car all the way back from kindy and around the supermarket getting a few groceries for dinner ...

- ... and who then accompanied me outside so I could collect the mail and take the bins in from the kerb

- Smoochy Girl who walked with me the whole way

- Sonny Ma-Jiminy, who kept busy watching the water I emptied from the bins trickle down the gutter to the drain

- the endless opportunities to keep humble, like when I came back from doing the bins only to find that Sonny had given up watching the water, gone inside, hit the button on the automatic garage door and locked me out.

- my neighbours who (to my knowledge) didn't take a video of me knocking on my own door, ringing my own bell and shouting, "SONNY! OPEN THE GARAGE DOOR FOR ME PLEASE!!" and post it on youtube.

- The incredible cuteness of a nearly-4-year-old boy wandering around upstairs (wondering where the food was and why I wasn't giving it to him) suddenly realising he'd locked me out and saying, "OH!" in that gorgeous, vacant, innocent Oh-I-Completely-Forgot voice

- That he's cool enough to tramp downstairs and let me in.

I'm not there

On Monday as I raced out the door to take Mr de Elba to catch his train so he could catch his plane so he could catch his shuttle bus so he could catch his boat so he could catch his golf buggy trailer thing so he could start his amazing Schoolies experience, my Crazy Sister called me.

As the phone rang, Mr de Elba called, "No no no no no!" but I answered it anyway, knowing that he would take another 5 mintues to get out of the house at any rate. Crazy Sister had some wacky plan and I remember saying, "Yes, yes, okay, whatever, let's talk later, thxvrymchgoawaybye!"

And I didn't think much more about it until I saw these words on her blog 24 hours later: "Today, I drove nearly three hours in the car with my kids."

Hm.

My parents' house is nearly three hours from her house.

I had a vague recollection, about as clear as a long-forgotten dream, that on Monday morning, Crazy Sister was hatching a plan for us to convene at Mum's house (okay, it's Dad's house too, but he just reads the paper, watches TV and gets mad at our kids) around Wednesday-ish.

I called. She was waiting for me. I was (at that stage) not planning to go.

Sigh.

I got off the phone, packed, picked up the kids from Aunty Awesome's house and did the trip to Mum's house.

So here I am. We are blogging together tonight. Our kids are all finally alseep. Dad has been getting mad at our kids. Mum made four salads and took off to a ladies' thing. Crazy Sister is claiming that her yawns do not mean that my blogging is boring her, but that they really mean that her throat temporarily needed widening.

I will log off and if you don't hear from me until Thursday or Friday, you can rest in the knowledge that all is well.

Except for Dad getting mad at my kids.

Some have it tough

Mr de Elba is off on a Schoolies week camp this week. Now brace yourself, because this is the BEST schoolies anyone will ever have, and I really pity those poor sad schoolies at the Gold Coast right now. Twelve years of schooling, and they get subjected to this.

Check this out.

Well, that's the website for next year's schoolies fun. But they don't have cool websites up for this year's events. So here's the deal. (Mr de Elba has never had time to take photos in the past, so I'll search for some to show you.)

Mr de Elba, along with other leaders and a heap of school-leavers are flying out of Brisbane today for Proserpine. From there they will spend some time at Airlie Beach,

in a resort in Long Island,
and sailing tall ships around the Whitsunday Islands.

The weather today as they fly out is wonderful - warm and dry and very sunny. The kids who go are usually pretty well-behaved, and there are not all that many hassles for the leaders.

It's hard not to be jealous.

If you love something ...

Sometimes you hear the beginning of something that sounds like it could be a really important word or piece of advice for you in your current situation.

Today I had the feeling that I was about to hear something significant.


Sonny Ma-Jiminy and Smochy Girl were watching Veggie Tales and I overheard Larry say, "Remember: if you love something, let it go..."

And I had a recollection that those words are the beginning of a wise saying I heard once, about love, loss and something-or-other-quite-deep. I couldn't remember the end of the saying, so I hung off Larry's words as he completed the proverb. This is what he ended up saying:

"Remember, if you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you ..."

"Yes...?" I thought.

"...it's probably hungry."

No help at all, except for making me laugh.

Reposted

I wrote something recently, and I got such a lovely bunch of funny comments on it, I thought I'd re-post it here.

----------------------------------------------------------------

This morning I noticed I have an ENORMOUS muffin-top spilling out over the waistband of my favourite 3/4 jeans.

It must have come from eating too many muffins.

Then as I turned around, I caught sight of my thighs.

Crikey.

I don't remember eating the dugong.



Dugong: from here.

Moth Pressure

We stayed with my parents over the weekend. This was lovely, apart from the fact that when my Dad snores, it sounds like a grizzly bear drowning in a bucket of porridge.*

But you know, no matter how much you love them, parents have their quirks. And they can be weird.

Now, I don't particularly care if I get insects in my house. If it's easier for me to leave the screen door open when I go through it while balancing a small child in one arm and an enormous bin of recycling in the other, then I just leave it open.

If I find a fly in my house later in the day, I just wave at it with my hand. My parents, if they're visiting, chase it relentlessly with the swat until that creature is dead and disposed of.

Me? Not-so-much.

So this weekend when I was staying at my parents' place, I was highly amused to see my father's dislike of insects in action.

"When you've finished brushing your teeth, just -uh- turn the light off."

I nodded.

"It's just that the light attracts moths."

I wondered why this was a problem, given that all the windows and doors have screens on them.

"See - right now, we've got all this Moth Pressure."

Moth Pressure? I looked to where he was pointing. Sure enough, there were eight to ten moths on the outside of the window and screen. I'm sure that if they could have come in, they would have. But they hadn't. They were just sitting on the outside of the window, minding their own business.

Exerting a certain level of "Moth Pressure."

Sheesh. Gotta love my Dad.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------

* I thought that was a quote I'd heard somewhere before. I can't find it anywhere. The closest I found was this great quote that was featured on Blogtations: "Imagine what a chainsaw trapped in a bucket of mucus sounds like. Yea. Got it? Now try sleeping next to that."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Postscript: I'm in the mood to do Google Image Searches on odd phrases. So here goes: "Moth Pressure." Mister Google didn't disappoint.

Exhibit A, on an Art website: an artist using Corel Painter to develop this piece, called "pressure moth":




And Exhibit B, a recipe on a blog, with a picture of something called "pressure-cooked moth dal":



Thankyou Mister Google.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I see from many blogger's recent posts that Thanksgiving is coming up on 27 November. While you've been preparing your turkey recipes and planning major coronary heart attacks, Australia has been saying, "Wha?"

But I like the idea of Thanksgiving. That is, if there's any major Giving of Thanks involved. Let me just write a list of the things I'm thankful for.

Things I Am So Thankful For, It Hurts

1. My husband
2. My boy, Sonny Ma-Jiminy
3. My girl, Smoochy Girl
4. My education, my job and my ability to earn some money to support my family
5. My lovely town, which I'll tell you is Ipswich, Queensland, because after reading my blog, there is no way on earth any trolls or pervs would be remotely interested in tracking me down. I'm just not that sort of blogger.
6. My lovely house
7. My lovely kitchen. It was a huge thing, to renovate it, but it's done, and I am SO enjoying pottering about in it!
8. Our neighbours and our cute little cul-de-sac
9. Our church, although it has the worst driveway in the world. The thought of jolting along the pot-holed driveway alone is enough to turn me off going some mornings.
10. The local heated pool, wonderful for kids to swim and play in without getting cold!
11. The local RAAF base, with its awesome F111s and the giant C-17, and also the occasional Caribou.
12. The Ipswich Annual Show, whose fireworks displays we can see easily from our back deck.
13. The proximity to the animal park and the Workshops Railway Museum
14. The proximity to Brisbane, while being far enough away to miss out on the traffic
15. And of course, our wonderful friends. We've got some lovely people to laugh with, eat with and live alongside. We just love them!


So there you are. The things I'm SO thankful for, it nearly hurts! Some are obviously much more important than others, but they are all things I thank God for so much!

Stay tuned for more on my train of thought over this Thanksgiving season!



Addendum: Other things I am so thankful for, I forgot to mention them:

16. Mr de Elba's Aunty who lives a 5 minute walk away and who is the Family Daycare Carer for Sonny and Smoochy. They love her, and she loves them. Her style of care is right up my alley, and she gets paid for it! So I don't feel as if I am imposing on her all the time! A perfect setup.

17. A totally awesome kindy for Sonny for next years, which will be a relief after this year's kindy teacher hasw made it a really difficult time. She made me cry last Friday, and I really get the feeling she doesn't enjoy teaching Sonny at All. I think there's a personality clash between Sonny and her, and this doesn't surprise me because there's on between ME and HER!

18. We're in the catchment for a really good state school for Sonny Ma-Jiminy. People who have difficulties at other state schools in the town try to get in at our local school, because it's known to be really good. And we'll have no difficulty getting Sonny in, because we live so close!

Cauliflower Sheep

One day, I used Google Image Search to find pictures corresponding with the search term "chicken money." I wasn't hopeful that there were ANY pictures on the Internet of anything resembling "chicken money," so I was quite amazed to find the following images:







Can you believe those pictures even exist?

I was so amazed that I decided to stick a vegetable and an animal together and do a Google Image Search for that. "There's no way there'll be anything remotely like, um, 'cauliflower' and , er, 'sheep'," I said.

So I googled "cauliflower sheep."

Silly me. Of course there are heaps of cauliflower sheep on the Internet. I found plenty of images just like this one:
Of course.

Wasted Post

Hi Everyone. I'm here but have been stressed out of my tiny brain, so there's been nothing I've had the time to put down into a post.

Except at work, every "bathroom" in the building has been locked for a year now because some vandalism was occurring. But it actually stopped ages ago. It's locking the door after the vandals have bolted, but whatever, better late than never.

This means that everyone (speech therapy kids included) has had to take "the key" with them whenever they've needed to go. This is frightfully inconvenient.

I've found that I'm such a subversive character. Whenever I go to the "bathroom" - stop - turn around - go back - get the key - and actually GO to the "bathroom", I now leave it unlocked. Heh. And over the last month or so, I've gone one better.

I have discovered (I can't imagine HOW) that the doors to the men's are usually unlocked. So I just go there.

I was wondering today if it was blogworthy, but I decided that unless I dropped my mobile in the men's toilet, it wasn't.

And I didn't drop my phone, so it was a waste of time telling you all about that.

Of Killing Birds With Stones

So here's an interesting thing.

I was making a spinach and feta pull-apart today. Great recipe! I don't usually mess about with yeast and dough and kneading and rising because the end product is sometimes a little heavy and if you can't finish it the day it's made (and our family usually can't), it's a bit of a loss the next day.

Anyway, the recipe calls for 10 minutes of kneading. That's a lot of physical activity for someone like me. But I was getting into it and noticing how it was working my upper body. And then I noticed that because the dough was fairly stiff, I had to 'brace' my body so I could knead properly.

The muscles I was working were for core stability, and in particular the transverse abdominals. These are the ones I need to exercise regularly to help what (I think) Kaz Cooke calls "achy breaky pelvis" - the sacro-iliac dysfunction I got when I was pregnant and haven't yet lost due to low tone and lax joints and grumble grumble grumble. And kneading the bread was the best workout I'd given those muscles for a while!

Then I remembered how the pelvic floor works in synergy with the transverse abdominals and if I try to exercise that at the same time, I'd be making bread, toning the upper body, dealing with the achy breaky pelvis and solving the sneezing problem all in one!

This is a recipe I'll have to make more often.

True Greatness ...?

Sonny Ma-Jiminy and I have just finished reading our first Secret Seven novel together. With a little re-iteration of important points, explanation of trickier things and frequent revisions to help us remember the storyline, Sonny has understood the story and really enjoyed it.

He's enjoyed it so much that he now (like all of us when we were kids) wants to be one of the Secret Seven. He doesn't get alliteration, so he thinks it's fine for there to be a Secret Eight following his inclusion.


SMJ: Mum, I could be one of them. Can we ... (struggles to explain how to write himself in to the adventure) ... open this page (turns to the page with the Secret Seven's pictures and names) and ... put me in here?

Me: I guess we could always imagine that you're one of the Seven.

SMJ: Maybe we could ask God to ...

(What? He's asking for Divine Assistance to become one of the Secret Seven?!?)

SMJ: Maybe God could ... (changing his approach) ... maybe you could turn into a Fairy and make me go in this page here ...?

(So Mummy turning into a Fairy is better than God?!?)

Me: Well, hmm. I'm not sure.

So Many Questions

Thanks to all my readers who keep on coming back, even though it's been a bit boring here at Killing A Fly. I told myself that when the next NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) came up, I'd be in on the fun because I like to post about once a day anyway. But this NaBloPoMo, I've hit the doldrums.

Your comments keep me going, and you've challenged me to visit more blogs and comment more often. Here I'll attempt to answer some of the questions you've asked me in recent days.

I confessed to you my lack of desire to use the word "heinous" due to the two commonly-used unfortunately-rhyming pronunciations in this corner of the world. Heather mentioned that the only pronunciation she's heard is "hay-ness" and blow me down, that's correct! Dictionary.com says that those who say "hee-ness" are wrong. I always knew that. I just thought that "hay-ness" couldn't possibly be right either.

Many of you are interested in the voting system here. Australian residents over the age of 18 are required to vote in all Federal, State and Local Government elections and referendums.

If you fail to vote in Federal elections you'll receive a letter asking you to provide your reason for not voting. If they're not happy with your reason, you will get a fine. If you don't reply or pay the fine, you may be taken to court. If you are found guilty you will be fined and may have to pay court costs. I assume this is because Australia does not have a Disneyland, and the Australian Electoral Commission has nothing better to do with their time.

Dee reminded me that in our recent federal election, the Labour candidate (whose name was Kevin, how Aussie is that?) had his "Kevin '07" slogan on everything from t-shirts to buses. And she's right. It was very in-your-face for us Aussies, and frankly, quite uncomfortable to 85% of the nation. Did y'all know we had an election, and that a bloke called Kevin won? We did, and he did. Remember that, because I'm thinking up a quiz on Australian trivia for my US readers, and you might need to know that.

Mrs Tantrum was right - my US readers do 'let it all hang out' a bit regarding political leanings, to the point that when she followed it up with "Wanna hear about my poop?" I headed straight over to her blog to hear all about it. Then I realised it was a rhetorical question.

Hot Tub Lizzy (nice blog header, by the way) asked if Smoochy got any soup in her - I rather think she did! She loves it. And Jen and Mrs Tantrum asked for the recipe. It's a good one. I start by caramelising some onions in butter then adding chopped potato and pumpkin along with enough half & half milk & water to cover them. They simmer away then I add about 3 chicken stock cubes and half a teaspoon each of nutmeg and paprika. That all boils away until the pumpkin and potato is nice and soft, and then I blend it. The clue is in the the caramelised onions. They give a lovely sweet taste. Don't ask about exact measures, ours and yours don't match up anyway. Just throw the ingredients in until they look right. That's what I do.

And finally, Le asked where the term "The Cone Of Silence" came from, and I guess this means she's not a Get Smart fan. Here it is, Le, The Cone Of Silence.

The Cone Of Silence

Our Cone Of Silence is one of our most fun toys. Look at us discussing our State Secrets!

Style or service?

I love the whiteboard in my new kitchen. It's usually very nicely laid out with magnets, notes, reminders and photos of my lovely little family. But as you probably expected, style went out the window and its purpose was changed to one of purely service, as Sonny and Smoochy amused themselves while I cooked dinner:

They had a great time. Then they went out the back and played hopscotch:


And then they came back inside and ate buckets of pumpkin soup:





There was a time when they were too little to amuse themselves like big kids, and making dinner was so terribly difficult (as it still is, in between the whiteboardin' and the hopscotchin'.)

But as I watched them play, I was reminded that they grow up quickly and the joys and hassles of one stage are quickly replaced by those of the next. Dear sweet little things.