I am the Mum. If life was a circus, I would be the plate-juggling lady with monkeys on her shoulders who stands on one leg on a horse's back as it canters around the ring.
I am the Writer. I use too many commas, dashes and dot-dot-dots, and I often start sentences with conjunctions because I like my blog to look the way it sounds in my mind.
I am the Hero. Life is a bit like a superhero action comic, except that the superheroes are tiny children dressed in super-suits who possess no actual powers, while I just get them food, break up fights and clean their super-suits.
Buzz is the Superhero who saves my day. He is a faithful friend and brother, willing to lead his sidekicks into intergalactic adventures ... to infinity and beyond.
Jessie is a feisty cowgirl who knows her mind and is willing to give anyone a piece of it. She is wild and spirited, she loves large animals but is terrified of small harmless critters. Jessie would rather find a rattlesnake in her boot than have her hair washed and brushed.
Woody loves rounding up his gang and charming the crowd. He's not keen on the war-whoops of the other varmints or on being smothered with too much affection, but he loves seeing the lay of the land while riding high in the arms of his Sheriffs.
Rex is the much-awaited newest member of our outfit. He joined us in July 2012, and is therefore too young to have much said about him. He drinks a lot of milk and all he can say is "Rarr!"
"No, Buzz, I AM your father."
Mr de Elba is dark and handsome with a loud laugh. He is a fun and loving father who enjoys spending time with his children. He's great at computers - this means I have my own personal IT Guy, but also that he often falls asleep in front of computer games at night. He makes great coffee, does the best Chicken Tikka Masala, cooks a mean barbecue and plays guitar frightfully well. He is, however, no good at doing accents.
Bullseye has been contributing to Blue-Tongue Lizard and Bandicoot Attrition Rates since we moved in to a new house which backs onto some forest. She either moves in quantum motion or possesses the power of ubiquity. She can often be seen, apparently simultaneously, at both the side door and the back door. Her arch-nemeses include dogs and other animals smaller than her. She harbours a deep envy of aeroplanes and birds who possess what she so desperately craves: Altitude.
Yeah, there's a good reason you never see chokoes for sale... just in buckets and baskets on the side of the road with pathetic little notes on them. "Free chokoes. Really. Free! Take as many as you like. Take some for your friends too..."
Yeah. Perhaps if they GAVE you a dollar for taking them off your hands, they'd go.
A friend of mine thought of ways to take chokoes and actually enjoy them: 1. Putting them in people's exhaust pipes 2. Throwing them at people 3. Etc...
I'm with everyone else, but they'd need to pay me more than a dollar to take them. My MUM on the other hand actually buys them at the supermarket. Then used to make me eat them. blerrch.
For the Americans among us - Chokoes are a vegetable. They grown to about the size of a capsicum (pepper?).
They are light green inside, with a seedy part in the middle. Can be peeled, seed cut out and steamed with other vegies which results in a soft texture (similar to zucchini flesh where there is no seed) but NO TASTE WHATSOEVER!
My dictionary says that it describes the perennial vine Sechium edule of tropical America and in the US is called chocho or chayote (from the Brazilian Indian name chuchu).
In Queensland they were traditionally grown over the chook-yard fence (chicken pen?) and due to their tasteless quality have been used during hard years like the depression to stretch out a small amount of apple in apple pie, or in jams or chutneys as a filler. Or as a vegetable when vegetables were too hard (or expensive) to buy.
Unless you are my Mum, in which case you choose to buy them from the shops and inflict them on your kids during times when other vegetables were affordable.
Yes, they have no taste. I imagine if there were a way to make water solid (without freezing it) you'd be coming close to the taste of a choko.
My mum served them to us too. Bought from the supermarket. On purpose. By choice. When there were other things available. She even served them up when we were having a roast lamb dinner. For years I thought chokoes tasted like gravy.
Oh, and if you don't peel them properly they still have no taste but the edges are slimy and sticky.
Some of my posts are sad, lots are funny and sometimes I subject you to my pondering. We have our celebrations, when I write a decent poem I share it with you and when I'm held hostage, I do the occasional meme.
I am a part-time speech pathologist, and try to cook, keep a garden alive and take photos that don’t make us look like we are pharmaceutically affected or dangerously homicidal.
I often suffer from Mumfail but I keep hanging on to the One who picks me up when I fall. If you email me, I’ll answer.
And if all that is too much, just read my “Best Of."
I know. It seems crazy to go back to pseudonyms now that Mister Internet knows our real (first) names. I blogged for 8 months with real names because I love the names that I gave my children, and I wanted my friends to know us better! Now that you do, I'm ready to go back to my original blog genre using pseudonyms, so here we go.
This does mean that "Jessie" is onto her fourth Blog Name. What can I say? I've never found the perfect one.
No, they didn't.
They called me Katherine.
I go by Kate.
I came up with the pseudonym Givinya de Elba in highschool and it was based on a joke from an episode of Dad's Army called 'A Soldier's Farewell.'
In the episode, after eating too much toasted cheese, Captain Mainwaring dreams he is Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. I don't remember much about the episode other than Mainwaring telling his loyal men (Jones, Pike and Godfrey) that he has been exiled to the island of Elba.
Jones quips, "Hence the expression - Givin' ya the Elber!" (giving you the elbow, i.e., pushing you around.) I thought that Givinya de Elba was a half-decent pseudonym for someone who likes to joke and push people around, and I stuck with that.
"Er, sweetheart, killing a fly with a ukulele is probably the wrong thing to do ..."
I thought it sounded like something I'd say; something that summed up the parenting experience quite well. A bizarre yet offhand, languid suggestion that pest control was best achieved without the use of musical instruments.
12 comments:
Yeah, there's a good reason you never see chokoes for sale... just in buckets and baskets on the side of the road with pathetic little notes on them. "Free chokoes. Really. Free! Take as many as you like. Take some for your friends too..."
Yeah. Perhaps if they GAVE you a dollar for taking them off your hands, they'd go.
A friend of mine thought of ways to take chokoes and actually enjoy them:
1. Putting them in people's exhaust pipes
2. Throwing them at people
3. Etc...
(Thanks A.T.)
I'm with everyone else, but they'd need to pay me more than a dollar to take them. My MUM on the other hand actually buys them at the supermarket. Then used to make me eat them. blerrch.
Huh. Learn something new every day. I've never seen one of these green guys before. I'd actually like to try one.
The trick would be to actually find one in Utah, United States. :)
Chokoes- please expand. . . I have no frame of reference!
I'm getting from Jen's comment that they're food but what do they taste like? Cause I've only rarely met a food I won't devour :)
I'm guessing they aren't very tasty.
Um, I don't get it.
For the Americans among us - Chokoes are a vegetable. They grown to about the size of a capsicum (pepper?).
They are light green inside, with a seedy part in the middle. Can be peeled, seed cut out and steamed with other vegies which results in a soft texture (similar to zucchini flesh where there is no seed) but NO TASTE WHATSOEVER!
My dictionary says that it describes the perennial vine Sechium edule of tropical America and in the US is called chocho or chayote (from the Brazilian Indian name chuchu).
In Queensland they were traditionally grown over the chook-yard fence (chicken pen?) and due to their tasteless quality have been used during hard years like the depression to stretch out a small amount of apple in apple pie, or in jams or chutneys as a filler. Or as a vegetable when vegetables were too hard (or expensive) to buy.
Unless you are my Mum, in which case you choose to buy them from the shops and inflict them on your kids during times when other vegetables were affordable.
Yes, they have no taste. I imagine if there were a way to make water solid (without freezing it) you'd be coming close to the taste of a choko.
My mum served them to us too. Bought from the supermarket. On purpose. By choice. When there were other things available. She even served them up when we were having a roast lamb dinner. For years I thought chokoes tasted like gravy.
Oh, and if you don't peel them properly they still have no taste but the edges are slimy and sticky.
OH my lovely friend... every Sunday Swift Jim & I giggle at that basket!!! So glad you blogged it!! :D
Holy Kamoley - is that basket STILL THERE?!?!?
Now THAT should tell us all something!
I just remember Mum swearing at the choko vine we inherited with the house that it was practically a weed and one day she'd kill it.
She did - good for her! But they were good missiles.
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