Killing a Fly with a Ukulele is Probably the Wrong Thing To Do

Futile Housekeeping & Funny Faces

2012-01-28T21:26:00.000+10:00

I'm not sure if that's Unaustralian

2012-01-26T21:34:00.000+10:00

Tonight we had a barbecue dinner at the house of some friends to celebrate Australia Day.

But Mr de Elba went to a concert in the big smoke, I did only an 82% good-enough job wrangling my Little Guys, in a fit of disorganisation I brought takeaway noodles instead of sausages or steak to put on the barbecue and claimed it was "a nod to Australia's multi-cultural heritage," and in my disconnectedness after playing with then serving dessert to the children I failed to realise the adults were all waiting before eating their own dessert and bogged into a lamington without using a plate and created a winter wonderland with the coconut. Then as the behaviour was getting ratty among the children we made a hasty getaway as soon as we finished dessert.

Now I am wondering - was that Unaustralian?

Happy New Year!

2012-01-24T16:49:00.000+10:00

The first of January is a bit of an anti-climax. New Year? There's nothing much new about going from one holiday-day into another. Things are very much the same.

The first day of school, however, is something else! New beginnings, the end of the oh-so-long aimless days of summer holidays, time to get back into routine! Happy New Year at last!

Year 2, full of happy expectations for this year, because he has his favourite teacher!

Prep, and enjoying her new wardrobe so much!

Everything swims on her, despite being the smallest size.

And hats don't fit on pony tails.

Staying home with Mummy this year! Woohoo!

Looking forward to catching up in the playground if they possibly can.

How you doin?

Looks like a friendly gesture, but really pretending to cream you with a Nerf gun.

That thing with his ear? His Uncle WeeBro did that. All the time. And still does.

Wishes she could go to school, but can't.

Remember January

2012-01-21T12:46:00.000+10:00

Remember last January? Floods. It was terrible.

The bio on Brendon Walmsley's webpage describes him as "one of our country's finest singer songwriters and multi Golden Guitar winners" and it's easy to see why in his recent song, "Remember January" which he wrote to commemorate the floods and the spirit of Australians in the cleanup.

Check it out:

Awesome!

2012-01-17T17:10:00.002+10:00

After my exhilarating conversation with the scammer yesterday, I sat down to blog about it. I am surprised I got the post done however, because my internet seemed to be half broken / half impossibly slow.

"Brilliant!" I thought. "The scammer has caught up with me and remotely broken my internet!" Logic sometimes escapes me in cases of technological failure.

Later last night I was able to ask Mr de Elba to have a look at the problem. Initially he was stumped, but he eventually managed to solve the problem by -erm- restarting the modem. A thing I'd tried myself, but had become confused and reset the router instead. I am so clever.

To test the connection, he typed in a few random search engines and news sites. He ran out of ideas and started thinking of other sites he could type in for testing purposes.

Now once a man solves a problem, he feels quite awesome. And once a man feels awesome, what does he do? He thinks to himself, "I am awesome," and for the heck of it, he types in iamawesome.com

We burst out laughing. Try it! Go to http://iamawesome.com/ and see for yourself!

Can we do that again?

2012-01-16T18:53:00.004+10:00

I have just had the BEST! FUN! EVAH! with a telephone scammer! It's that scam that involves people with extremely heavy accents calling random people and asking about their computers. Their first questions is to confirm that "you have the Windows operating system" and I believe that if you're gullible or even just clever and decide to string them along, they then attempt to get you to log on to a particular site and give them details. I wouldn't know, as I never let them get that far.

I can't believe they are still trying this old one. Everyone knows about them yet they still call at dinnertime and try their luck with you. What's more amazing is I can't believe they don't have a database of people they have already called complete with black marks beside the names of the people who KNOW they are a scam and have called them out about it in the past, like I have on three separate occasions.

Usually the conversation goes down like this:

Caller: Hello Madam, I am calling from [even more unintelligible] about your computer system in your home? I believe you have the Windows Operating system?

Me, in an loud and accusing voice: You're that SCAM, aren't you?!?

Caller: *click*

It would appear that I am on to them and perhaps shouldn't be called again, but alas, I continue to receive calls. Mr de Elba always wishes that he was home to receive them because he is quite computer savvy and could string them along wonderfully, but it's always little ole me, and my only weapon is to say the word SCAM loudly and often.

Today's call was more fulfilling than the previous ones, because although I was obviously on to her and couldn't be persuaded she was legitimate, she kept ... on ... going! It was dinnertime and the phone is close to the noise, but I really wanted to talk to the scammer so I took it outside and stood near the worm farm, which is where I conduct all my important business. It's the only place where the children can't be heard (provided they don't follow me.)

Please bear in mind her accent was very strong. It just made her punchline even funnier.

Caller: Hello Ma'am, I am calling from [completely unintelligible] about the computer system in your home. You have the Windows operating system?

Me: I know you! You're the SCAM that's all over the internet!

Caller: Ma'am? I am calling about your computer? You have the Windows operating system?

Me: Aha! You can't possibly know that because I have never called you and you don't know me and you have no information whatever about the computer system in my home. You're the SCAM everyone is talking about!

Caller: Why are you saying I am a scam? I am not a scam. So you don't have a home computer?

Me, realising that if I denied I had a computer, this fun would be over with far too soon: Yes, I have a computer.

Caller: And you have the Windows operating system?

Me: See, that's how I know you're from that SCAM!

Caller, angrily: Okay, because you are saying I am a scam, I will have to write a formal complaint about you!

Me: Excellent! And who will you complain to? My MANAGER?

Caller: No, to the police. I will put in a complaint to the police!

Me, wondering what offense I could possibly be charged under: Wonderful, I would love that! You called me, so I assume you have my phone number and address! Is there any other information you need to have?

Caller, irate: Ma'am, you are a BLOODY IDIOT! You are a BLOODY IDIOT! *click*

Which was, I think, the high point of 2012 for me so far. Being called a bloody idiot in an extremely thick Indian accent by a scammer because I called her a scammer. I am floating on clouds tonight! I can do anything! I am invincible!

Classifieds

2012-01-14T19:19:00.001+10:00

Dare me? I really want to place the following Classified in our local paper. If you think I should, and if it's free or cheap, I think I will.

GIVEAWAY Ugly Christmas Tree. Impossible to make it look nice. Consistent performance: looks awful every year. Would suit decorator up for a challenge. Phone Givinya 0433 444 555. Please.

Everyone shops at KMart

2012-01-13T19:21:00.002+10:00

As soon as we arrived at our holiday house, I went to KMart to shop for swimwear for the children. Crazy huh? Who goes to the beach without swimmers? Well, apparently, it's easy to forget them if the children decide the preceding afternoon that they hafta-hafta-hafta swim in the neighbour's pool. As soon as the decision was made, I knew I would either be packing damp swimmers in the morning, or would forget them altogether.

As it was, I packed mine and Mr de Elba's (because they were dry) and forgot the kids' (because they were outside drying on the airer.) Hence the trip to KMart for swimwear shopping as soon as we got there.

Justamum's kids needed a few swimmers so she came with me. We quickly picked out what we needed for Woody, Jessie, Belle and Banana, and then I looked for a swimming shirt for Buzz. I wanted something that would be visible in the surf, as I knew I would be counting heads a lot of the time and a distinctive swimming shirt was going to facilitate matters greatly. However, there seemed to be limited choice when it came to visible colours.

Fluoro orange, they did not have. There seemed to be a large amount of black which is just not all that good when it comes to counting heads.

Red! What about red? Poor Justamum had to suffer my deliberations regarding the relative merits of the RED shirt with BLACK sleeves and the BLACK shirt with RED sleeves.

I'll spare you descriptions of my deliberating.

I finally decided that since the sleeves would be the most visible part, I'd go with RED sleeves.

Yay! Look at Buzz, happy in his new swimming shirt!

Surely he would be EASY to spot in the surf now! All I had to do was find the red sleeves!!

Shortly after, I realised that everyone shops at KMart.

Counting to Seven

2012-01-12T18:44:00.002+10:00

Mr and Mrs de Elba,

Justamum and Justadad,

ARE YOU READY? GO!

One, two ..... three, four ......., five six ....... seven!

In these pictures I have omitted the hundreds of people also in the surf. It loses a genuine-ness, but I omit them for time reasons. And because some of them were not pretty. (As a general rule, wouldn't you wear BIGGER swimmers the bigger you got? Not so in Australia. It seems that the bigger you are, the flimsier the swimmers you wear. Yeesh.)

Buzz often played out in the deep with Belle as they are both older (6 and 7 years old) and are very safe. It will be a few more years before we choose not to include them in the head count, but they gave us no panicky moments this year. They could usually be found together, Buzz in a black shirt with red sleeves, Belle in a black shirt with cute little purple swimmers.

Jessie and Banana are four and five years old, and they loved playing in the shallow water together, splashing in the waves and running up the beach squealing. Jessie was in a purple shirt and swimmers that angered her frequently for no apparent reason, and Banana wore white and light pink (I think.)

Woody and Boris are two and three years old, and they were usually playing in the sand and fighting over beach toys. Although they became more confident in the water towards the end of the week, they started off both unwilling to get wet, so this limited their potential for getting lost to sand, crowds, and leaving the beach rather than drowning. This lowered our anxiety rating from 98% all the way down to 91%. Awesome. Woody in a red shirt with blue sleeves, light blue shorts, Boris in light and dark blue shirt and blue swimmers.

Baby Bimi is one year old and she was generally with the adult doing the head-counting. We still counted her though. It seemed right. She wore white with pink like Banana.

One, two, three ....... four-five-six-seven!

At times, a swimming child would decide to come up to the beach and join the sandcastle-makers. This was relatively easy to count like the example above, and sometimes gravitated into "One, two ....... three-four-five-six-seven," which was also easy.

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven!

Perhaps the easiest configuration of all occurred when everyone decided it was time to build sandcastles and fight. Often, two or three of the adults would go for a swim when this happened.

One, ....... um, two, ....... three, four ....... five? Yes, five ....... six ....... ....... oh crap.

This didn't often happen. It was usually resolved by looking behind the shade tent, or a little further up the beach.

I love the beach!

2012-01-11T21:28:00.001+10:00

Indeed, I would have attempted to blog every day of January if we hadn't left for a holiday at the beach the day after New Years Day. I may have even started more blog posts with the word "indeed" as I did with this one.

It's not as if I was offline - the house we stayed in was generous with its WiFi and we had iPads, iPods, notebooks and goodness-knows-what-else. But I just really hate editing my typing on the iPad. I have a hate-hate relationship with the little magnifying glass device I have to use to place my cursor way back THERE in the text so I spent the time reading your blogs and checking Facebook. Even though I'm not actually ON Facebook. As I will continue to do until -erm- my husband changes the password on his account.

We stayed in a house with Justamum and her family. Seven children, aged 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1, and four adults, ages unspecified, made for fun times! We love hanging out with those guys and having them with us doubled the fun.

My one big regret is that we didn't take any photos at all. Taking photos is such a chore for me, I wish I was like those of you who always have a camera ready to snap away, but I worry life will pass me by uncaptured and unblogged. I am considering whipping up some pics of my own in MS Paint to recreate some of the moments for you, but I will leave that for a time when I'm not falling asleep and am on something a little more manageable than my iPad. Something with a mouse. Arrow keys. MS Paint. Whatever.

Just pretending

2012-01-01T21:44:00.000+10:00

I can't believe that so far this year, I have managed to blog every single day. Amazing, for me, but it will just be a little quote from Jessie.

Me, faffing around the kitchen trying to get many things for many people, making mistakes and admonishing self: No, don't put the hot kettle in the fridge, that's not where it goes!
Jessie: Mum! Are you just pretending to be an idiot?
Me: Ah yeah, that's it. Just pretending.

To finish off 2011 ...

2011-12-31T15:00:00.000+10:00

The Many Days of Christmas

2011-12-30T20:52:00.001+10:00

Whew! Christmas this year was a mammoth effort, with many different celebrations with different groups of people on different days. The saving grace was that all the days were low-key and we didn't go overboard with presents, food or anything else. It was just the absence of Nanna Naps each day that made me so exhausted.

The weather in our part of Australia has been much nicer than it was this time last year. We've had some showers at night but the days have been warm and sunny, and the children have wanted nothing more than to be outside enjoying it.

Apart from that, there's not much to report. Just trivia like:

Mr de Elba shaved the dog again. She's remained tick-free since September, and she looks nice with her sleek Number One hairdo.
If you choose to move Christmas festivities to a park, you're likely to get your photo in the local paper.
If you stand lop-sided in the photo for the paper, you may end up looking like you're an A-cup on one side and a DD-cup on the other. Most people wouldn't notice this though: it would serve you well not to mention it to anyone and you may just get away with it.
Kids are nice to have around. The six-week Christmas holiday is really an endurance event, but it is nice to have the little guys around.
Soon they will all be fighting and I may retract that.
Afternoon naps for everyone are great ... until bedtime blows out and everyone is up late.
I keep thinking I should get on Facebook but I'm just not making the leap. It does look like fun though.
My desk here would be a whole lot tidier if I didn't go to bed so early.
Waking up early doesn't translate into a clean desk.
I need to watch more TV so that I actually get the folding done. I just hate watching TV, that's all.
Jessie may be the perfect nativity "Mary" in all the practices but end up crying and pouting through the performance due to a wardrobe malfunction involving her headpiece.
Your blogs are all interesting and wonderful, and I may not have anything interesting to blog ever again until things start going wrong or falling apart again. Not that I'm complaining ...

Nice to chat with you again. We should do this more often.

Legs Eleven! Knees Zero-Zero!

2011-12-19T14:20:00.001+10:00

I was playing keys at church yesterday. There would have been 700-800 people there, and when I play I try not do anything that would make a spectacle of myself.

After much joking among the band regarding how bad/good/fantastic it would be if one day, someone would fall in the baptismal tank while negotiating their entry or exit from the stage, and also after choosing some extremely unwise wedges that hurt my legs and feet, made my toes numb and made walking difficult, I managed NOT to disgrace myself in this manner.

I curbed the worst effects of my Bad Hair Day, I wore a red shirt and I chose a straight denim skirt that came to just above the knee. I was certain that up on stage there was no danger of flashing anyone, even when the skirt rode up a little as I perched on my stool (I can't stand and pedal because of this.)

I thought I was safe until the pastor, having delivered his message from the stage, moved down onto the steps at the front to say something very serious and important just before the final song.

Hang on, I thought. I am always quite aware of the line of sight from the video recorder, through the spot where the pastor is standing, to the band behind. It seemed that after he moved, I was in the danger zone.

I turned and looked at the screen (the brand-new WI-I-IDE screen!) behind me. There was the pastor, saying his final thing and beside him, like a bright shining number 11, were MY LEGS with their knobbly knees and white nearly-35-year-old skin. And they were HUGE on the big screen!

To me, they were more noticeable than the pastor in the middle of the shot. If you were there, leave a comment to say they were NOT. If you don't leave a comment, I will assume they WERE.

(I know they were. Long black trousers next time.)

Red Cards all round

2011-12-18T17:30:00.000+10:00

Jessie has a little writing desk in the corner of her room. She often sits there creating lovely drawings for us, gifts of love for a family she adores ...

... on her good days.

However, she has recently started drawing us "punishment pictures" for when "people are mean to her." This can mean when her brothers fight with her or when her parents discipline her, and now that we're one week into our six-week school holidays, that means ALL of us, ALL the time.

She gives these pictures out the way a soccer referee gives out red cards. They involve a violently-orange, angrily-scribbled portrait of the offender designed to insult and humiliate us. Gone are the intricate drawings of smiling family members with careful hands and feet and nice hair. Here are some examples (I blurred out Mr de Elba's name in the top left):

We've all been red-carded.

Call me "Fat G."

2011-12-17T15:23:00.001+10:00

These days, Jessie is presenting me with lots of pieces of paper with little writings and drawings on them. She addresses them all to me, and she is now calling me "Fat G."

The "F" is actually a "K" and the "g" is really an "e." But in my mind, I call myself, "Fat G." You are permitted to do the same.

Ur doin it rong

2011-12-05T16:01:00.001+10:00

If your kids take communion in a church like ours, you want them to be suitably reverent.

It's great when they learn to quietly say "Thankyou God for Jesus," and "Sorry for the wrong things that I do," before they quietly eat their bread and drink their teensy bit of juice.

But if after drinking the juice, your six year old boy lets out a burp and says, "C'n I 'ave some more?" it may be time to retire him from communion for a bit.

What DID I just say!!!

2011-11-28T19:21:00.000+10:00

Me: You've had your shower! Why have you got gravy on your face? I hope you didn't put your head down and lie in your gravy!

Woody: (puts head down and lies in gravy)

Me: I give up.

Now what did I just say?

2011-11-21T00:19:00.000+10:00

Woody was sitting quietly at the bench, watching me grate cheese. He had eaten the few little bits I had given him but I didn't want to spoil his appetite so I decided not to give him any more.

As I moved on to a new task, I placed the block of cheese on the bench in front of him, trusting him not to eat any. He is quite trustworthy, in an erratic, two-year-old sort of way.

He looked at the cheese, but didn't make a move towards it.

"Wow Woody," I said to him after a pause. "I really love that you're the sort of kid I can trust not to sink his teeth into that block of cheese right there."

Then Woody leaned forward, opened his mouth and went to sink his teeth deep into the block of cheese.

Sometimes, I think I am just giving him ideas.

The Inspiration Train to Platform Three has been delayed

2011-11-14T21:02:00.002+10:00

I've been thinking recently that I have quite possibly ceased to be A Blogger. I've comfortably slipped into being A Lot Of Other Things instead, e.g., I've become more of a Mum, Mum-who-works, Mum-who-does-the-house, swimmer, poet, Sunday School teacher, babysitter, etc, etc, and also the unthinkable: A Person Who Goes To Bed Early.

I don't know about you, but I can't be both A Person Who goes To Bed Early and a Blogger.

But not only that, I used to think, "Wow, I could blog that" all the time where now I think, "I'm pretty sure I won't be able to summon the Care Factor necessary to blog that ..." and I don't.

Pathetic, hey?

Honestly, I blame Scrabble. The Scrabble App on the iPad lures me the way that my blog used to lure me. The main difference is when I get so tired that my eyeballs feel like they are about to fall out and roll away, I now switch off my iPad and go to sleep. Back when I was a Blogger, that feeling would hit while I was in the study. I'd think, "I'm probably too tired to walk to bed now. If I stay here for ten more minutes, maybe the tiredness will go away."

And lo, a blog was born. (Because the world needed more directionless blogs.)

So if you wonder where I am - I'm still alive. I'm probably just wondering if I can get a Q word to start on a Double Letter tile and extend onto the Triple Word tile.

Or if I can get ZA and ZO horizontally and vertically simultaneously, with the common Z on a Triple Word tile.

Sad.

But here are my kids, yay:

(Dactyls)2

2011-11-01T20:51:00.000+10:00

Thank goodness I don't rely on my writing for an income. Sometimes, like the last fortnight, I just simply don't feel like writing. I've preferred to read what all my friends are writing and leave a few comments, which has been much better than trying to squeeze something out onto my blog that didn't want to come. It requires a lot of Intellectual Metamucil to digest the pleasant-but-mundane into something of interest to the General Reading Public.

For this reason, and also because of the repellent nature of the digestion-related metaphors above, I am glad I don't have ads on my blog. Earning just enough to buy a packet of gum each quarter would be quite demoralising. Instead, I prefer to treat my writings as "free for all, because you cannot put a price on art." Then I laugh.

But I haven't been not writing. I've been burying myself into a poetry project that I like to call "26 People I Have Known - an alphabetical double dactyl project." Its title is a lie - none of the characters in my poems are real, although some are based on real events, e.g.,

C is for Caitlin

Crissety Crossety
Caitlin McCormack
Commanded her children
to fight and to vent.

Caitlin said, "Sure, it is
Counterintuitive,
But the compliance?
One hundred percent!"

My double dactyl on "F" was also based on real events and was written for Tracy, who requested a double dactyl including the word "fantasmagoria."

F is for Felicity

Frighteny Nighteny
Dear sweet Felicity
Called to her Mum on a
Dark stormy night.

Forecasting fearful
Fantasmagoria,
Mum realised "funder" just
Gave Flit a "fwight."

My favourite was "O." I found the cheeky ideas tumbled out after being convinced I never could find any topic that provided such potential around the letter O. However.

O is for Ozzie

Obbledy Obbledy
Ozzie O'Sullivan
Though eighty-seven
Was darn good in bed.

Heart failure was this
Orgasmically-occupied
Octogenarian's
Downfall they said.

I was proud of that. I don't know if I'll ever get to present it anywhere, not being sure if any audience is quite ready for Ozzie.

That was fun. Now in lieu of a proper ending for this post, I'll just say good night as I'm off to get more sleep than my poor little cherubs allowed me last night.

Keep Out, and other writings

2011-10-15T21:18:00.001+10:00

I love it when kids' written language skills get good enough that they take themselves off and write their thoughts. Buzz started doing that earlier this year. His first piece of writing made us so proud. Our son, taking himself off and writing a commentary on life! It was truly wonderful. It read:

"I dont Lic you nAAw mum that you yeld at me and That you smacd me DAD"

Needless to say, we were both tremendously proud. Since then, Buzz has filled the world with his writings, even going so far as you write a stern Instruction To Self regarding the self-administration of an asthma puffer during his recent struggle with an asthma-related cough.

"nat tace 2 pufs at forst bac and secnd do or no plae" (Take 2 puffs at first break and second. Do, or no play.)

And the most recent had me in stitches. I walked past his door the other night and saw this stern warning to all:

"Keep out. Privacy. No enter. Snakes."
...

That's enough to keep me out.

Ass. U. Me.

2011-10-11T21:35:00.006+10:00

Scene One: Buzz's classroom, Monday morning before Sports Day.

Me: Hi Jen! Have you heard much about Sports Day?
Jen: Not much. Hey, is Buzz in Evans House?
Me: Yeah, sure, he's in Evans. And Elijah is too, isn't he? I remember because we lent him a yellow shirt last year on Sports Day.
Jen: Oh, that's right, you did. He's okay this year - he has a yellow shirt this time.
Me: Cool then. Well, Go Evans, hey?
Jen: Yeah, Go Evans! See you on Wednesday!

Scene Two: In car, killing time after postponing a swim on finding the swimming pool full of older women doing aqua-aerobics.

Me, to self: Hmm, actually Buzz doesn't have a yellow shirt. I wonder if I should get one before Wednesday. I wonder which shirt he wore last year? I can't even remember what he wore last year. He must have had that old long-sleeved yellow shirt. Huh. Well I'd better pop in somewhere and buy him a new yellow shirt.

Scene Three: Home

Me: Hey guess what?
Mr de Elba: What?
Me: I was talking to Jen this morning about Sports Day and when I mentioned that I'd lent Elijah a yellow shirt last year, I realised that Buzz doesn't have one for this year. So I just got this great yellow polo shirt for Buzz! It was only $9.00! Would it be funny or kitsch if I put lettering on the back with Buzz's name? Glad I thought of it actually. It would have been bad if we'd got to Wednesday morning and he didn't have a yellow shirt to wear, being in Evans House.
Mr de Elba: Rudd. Red. Buzz is in Rudd House.

- pause -

Me: Uh, yeah. So he is. Rudd.

Moral: Just because you lent someone a yellow shirt doesn't mean your own kid is in Evans. Ass. U. Me.

Four lines of silliness

2011-10-08T17:00:00.003+10:00

Lost

I used to have a toothbrush
‘Twas coloured bright lime green
I saw it last I brushed my teeth
But now it can't be seen.

(Just in case you thought I was going all posh and poetic on you.)

Double Dactyl

2011-10-06T22:25:00.001+10:00

The Double Dactyl - what a cool poetic form! I was made aware of double dactyls by the lovely Cath at The Picket Fence, who admitted that it sounded like a strange sort of dinosaur, which is what I'd been secretly thinking myself.

The rules of a double dactyl were difficult for me to grasp:

dactylic meter, meaning that the 'feet' are made up of three syllables in a 'strong-weak-weak' pattern
two verses of four lines each, each line having two of these dactylic feet (although the fourth and eighth lines usually have one dactyl followed by a single stressed syllable ... once you've understood this pattern of syllables, it's a piece of cake, I promise)
the first line of the poem is a rhyming nonsense phrase - the hardest part for me, as I am just not that into writing nonsense phrases
the second line is a name
one of the lines in the second verse is a six-syllable word, and Cath kindly sent me a list of 1,500 six syllable words to choose from Some poets add a rule that no single six-syllable word, once used in a double dactyl, should ever be knowingly used again.
the ends of each verse rhyme, and the whole thing is usually humourous.

That's a lot to take in, but once you've read a few double dactyls, you get an 'Aha!' moment and understand the structure.

My friend Cath posted a double dactyl written by her friend, poet Will Mackerras. Will's poetry blog, The Banjo Bible, is well worth a read and it includes a few superb double dactyls. Read Cath's own double dactyl, which came with a short lesson in art appreciation. Both were brilliant!

I wrote my first double dactyl in the comments on my sister's blog in her recent poetry posts while I was sleeping in the dorm at the campsite where we had our recent beach holiday. When I came home, I realised another whole double dactyl was needed to fully explain my plight (as if a 2kg gain on the scales wasn't explanation enough.)

Does this make it a Quadruple Dactyl? I am not sure.

Camp Food – Two Double Dactyls

Holey Kamoley
At Seabreeze Apartments
The weather was wondrous,
The cabins were close.

But I'll be needing some
Anticoagulants -
Though they did feed us,
The food was quite gross.

- - - - - - - - -

Yuckity Pyuckity!

“Week-long camp nourishment”:

Mass-produced, deep-fried stuff,

Battered or canned.

Cholesterol-laden with

Oil spots on napkins! Such

Inedibility!

This should be banned.

- - - - - - - - -

(The name of the campsite, although dactylic, needed to be replaced with a fictitious campsite name.)

How much fun was that? Not the eating the food, writing the poem! I know you're itching to give it a try, so here is an A-Z of hopefullypromising six-syllable words, hand-picked from my list of 1,500. This list is without an x-word. A six-syllable dactylic x-word. Sigh. Clearly, that was too much to ask.

Antibacterial

Bibliomania

Characteristically

Disciplinarian

Extemporaneous

Fantasmagoria

Germanophobia

Horizontality

Impossibility

Juxtapositional

Lexicological

Megalomaniac

Nonsensibility

Octogenarian

Psychoanalysis

Quasiequivalent

Reputability

Sentimentality

Transmississippian

Unreproducible

Veterinarian

Weatherability

Yerwamaiduguri

Zoogeography

This poetic form is growing on me. I particularly love feeling the cantering meter and then getting flattened with a six-syllable word of sheer brilliance! I haven't mastered that yet, but I'm going to enjoy trying!

Villanelle

2011-10-05T18:16:00.000+10:00

I wanted to write a Villanelle. This was crazy. I'm embarrassed to post it because it's not really a 'performance piece.'

The Villanelle has a tricky pattern of rhyme and repetition. It has 19 lines and really, you could predict that nothing good comes in 19 lines. People who know their poetry 'schematise' a Villanelle thus:

A¹bA² - abA¹ - abA² - abA¹ - abA² - abA¹A²

where 'a' and 'b' are the two different rhyme endings used, and where A¹ and A² are the two different refrains.

I read that most modern Villanelles are in pentameter, and I tried for iambic because some of the phrases I wanted to use fell into iambs. I took the liberty of varying the refrains a little bit each time, which I think is called 'breaking the rules'. I'm not sure whether it's a winner or not.

Girl Collecting Shells

Collecting shells is every girl's delight
To her dismay, her parents will forbid it.
Her parents say they know that crabs can bite.

Mum and Dad said, "Leave the shells, alright?"
But this young girl, she went ahead and did it.
Collecting shells is this sweet girl's delight.

She found a beauty, large and smooth and white
Buried in the sand which almost hid it.
Her parents warned they know that crabs can bite.

She picked it up and held her treasure tight.
What parent would so callously forbid it?
Collecting shells is this sweet girl's delight.

Predictably, this girl received a fright
When learning that an angry crab lived in it!
It's customary for crabs to give a bite.

She screamed "It bit me!" moaning in her plight!
She dropped the frightened crab and madly skidded!
Collecting shells once was this girl's delight,
But now of course, she knows that crabs can bite.

Circular Sleep-Wake Haiku

2011-10-04T19:53:00.000+10:00

If I know where this vicious circle started, I might be able to stop it.

Circular Washing Haiku

2011-10-03T19:00:00.000+10:00

Sometimes known as cirku, the circular Haiku has no fixed start or end point.

Doesn't that remind you of something?

Circular Kitchen Haiku

2011-10-02T13:08:00.000+10:00

Payoff - Five Haiku

2011-10-01T22:39:00.000+10:00

Payoff – Five Haiku

Young boy thumb-sucking

Tonsillitis, runny nose,

Scratching itchy eyes.

Conjunctivitis.

Conjunctivitis. Then more

Conjunctivitis.

Antibiotics.

Antibiotics. Then more

Antibiotics.

Bout of oral thrush.

Bout of oral thrush. Then more

Bouts of oral thrush.

No more thumb-sucking!

I thought he’d never stop that!

Thankyou, oral thrush.

Mind your step

2011-09-29T18:42:00.000+10:00

Long-time readers will remember that when we moved to our new house two and a half years ago, I was heavily pregnant with Woody. At that stage, I knew that if I put in some effort to teach Bullseye where to 'do her business', it would pay off and we'd be happy in the long run. But I was too large and uncomfortable to put the effort in, so first one then another 'number 2' went on the back lawn.

Before we knew it, Bullseye had designated pretty much the whole lawn as a Dog Toilet and we've been picking up or avoiding the area ever since. Her two favourite places are under the swing set (very bad) and the spot where I stand when I do my gardening (also very bad.)

Nasty.

Six months ago I formulated a plan to re-designate the Dog Toilet through an elaborate routine of:

giving Bullseye to my Mum and Dad for the September week we were going to be away
watering the lawn to minimise Dog Toilet smell
spraying the lawn with that smelly stuff that's supposed to deter dogs from doing their business in that spot, and finally
when the little hound came home, keeping her at the side of the house for a few days to re-designate that as Dog Toilet. It's the best spot in the yard, I figure.

Crazy? Yeah, but it was my best shot. I don't care if you don't believe it would work, or if you tried the smelly stuff without success, I HAD to give the plan a go. You understand? It was either try it or don't. Pull out all the stops, using a week where Bullseye was scheduled for a holiday away anyway, or just give up and keep stepping in the Dog Toilet. Okay?

I was prepared for it to fail because of a number of factors. The dog going lame wasn't one of them.

Her stay in hospital was a diversion I wasn't expecting but I took it in my stride, sighing a deep sigh for the outcome of my Grand Dog Toilet Re-Designation as I did so. Still, I was hopeful that I could continue with the plan once she was home.

And now - oh joy of joys! - the dear thing is home, much less fluffy and certainly less steady on her feet, but she's home!

And what did she do once she got back on her turf?

She went out to the spot under the swings, and did a celebratory dump.

It seems that the universe is laughing at me.

The Hound is Home

2011-09-28T17:00:00.000+10:00

Three days and MANY dollars later, Bullseye is back home. She's still a bit slow on her feet and it will be a few weeks before we can take her for walks again but she's alive and we're all thankful for that.

She's looking quite funky her hew new summer do. She's short from the neck down, showing off her Dalmatian spots in her white bits while her black is pure black. I love her short coat, which is the sweetener for the fact that we'll probably have to clip her every August and keep her hair short until Autumn each year. This way, we'll be able to feel ticks on her skin before they cause her too much trouble.

The paralysis tick that caused all the heartache (and cost) is languishing in prison. There is no hope of rehabilitation and therefore there is no recommended parole period. If she lays a trillion eggs now, they can perish in prison with her.

Lame is the new black

2011-09-26T21:29:00.001+10:00

Bullseye was sequestered from the family last night. We had a makeshift gate blocking off part of the yard because we wanted her to stay there for a few days for long involved reasons that don't matter here. She didn't like being further from her people, but I planned to take her for a walk (her favourite thing) every morning of her isolation, and we played with her all yesterday, throwing the ball for her to fetch (her second favourite thing) and slipping her treats whenever we passed (her third favourite thing.)

Last night, a few hours into her incarceration, I saw her at the back door. She had escaped from her fence and come to join us and this made me feel sorry for her, but not enough to give up and let her back with us just yet. I put her back in her fenced area where I'd put her kennel, sleeping mat, and food and water bowls and told her I would be back to walk her early in the morning.

Poor Bullseye. As I lay in bed later, I heard it begin to rain. I worried that she might find that particularly depressing, but assumed she would recover from that as soon as she heard me coming with her lead to walk her in the morning. I went to sleep and didn't think much more about her.

I woke up early in the morning and went out to her, thinking she might be at the gate already, but she wasn't. She is a deep sleeper and she's not really a Morning Dog, so sometimes the waking and stretching takes a little time. When I rattled her lead, she woke up and poked her head out of the kennel.

Instead of her usual leg-extending morning stretch, she staggered out of her kennel and fumbled towards me. Thinking she must have been wrenched from a deep dream, I told her to take it easy until she'd properly woken up. But the next few metres of staggering told me she wasn't okay. She was lame.

Now at this point, the fact that she'd never been sequestered from her people before matched up pretty neatly in my mind with the fact that she'd never been lame before. I remembered how she'd been so desperate to rejoin us that she's escaped the night before, and I remembered my concern about her mental health once it started raining.

A big psychosomatic sook causing her legs to cease working, I thought.

We gave her a nice place to rest, plenty of water to drink, and lots of love for the next few hours. But instead of getting better, she started getting worse.

It was then that we suspected that she may have a paralysis tick, and the rest of the day proved that she did. Adding humiliation to insult, the vet shaved her from head to tail in order to find the tick that had attached to her neck under her collar region. Tonight she is recovering in hospital and we are all feeling a little easier about the poor little hound.

But is it any surprise to you that Little Miss Jessie, she of the never-ending drama, awoke from her nap this afternoon moaning and complaining and grumbling, "Oh no! I'm lame! My legs don't work!"

She has been clambering about on her knees, grabbing furniture and walls for support and asking to be lifted up onto chairs because of her lameness (when she remembers she is supposed to be lame, that is.)

It seems that Lame is the New Black.

It started off quite cute, but now it's getting on our nerves. What are the chances that next season, Mute is the New Black?

Crustacean: 1 - Jessie: nil.

2011-09-24T23:20:00.001+10:00

On the final morning of our time at the Sunshine Coast, Jessie begged me to have one more swim at the beach. We had bought a Skim Disk the day before and she didn't want to leave without testing it out. Although the final morning of a beach holiday is a tricky time to get wet and sandy, I decided to take her and Woody for one last visit to the beach before we packed and went home.

Things went wrong before we'd even decided where to set our towels and bags. We were walking over the sand towards the flagged area when Jessie saw an interesting shell. She had been collecting shells all week and carrying them around, worrying when she couldn't find her collections and getting cross when her brothers touched them. So when she saw that she had stepped on a very large smooth shell half-buried in the sand, she bent to pick it up.

It bit her.

On the thumb.

Reportedly quite hard.

The 4-inch-wide crab, for that is what it was, grabbed her tiny thumb in its pincers, gave her a cautionary nip, and scuttled off across the sand trying to find somewhere to hide.

Jessie lost her mind.

"TAKE ME HOME RIGHT NOW!" she screamed. "I HATE THE BEACH! I NEVER WANT TO COME BACK HERE IN MY WHOLE LIFE!!!"

Her eyes were dilated wide with fear and her little heart was pounding beneath her swimming shirt as she let out a series of panicked screams and started an odd skipping dance across the sand, trying to make the least contact with what she believed must have been the wildly crab-infested sand.

Woody, who shares a special bond with Jessie, saw the panicked crab racing away and heard his sister's screams of panic. Believing that this was The Done Thing in such situations, he followed suit.

So together, they lost their collective minds.

"IT BIT ME! IT BIT ME! IT BIT ME!" they both screamed, skipping around me in random circles. First Jessie and then Woody decided that they needed to get their feet as far away from the sand as possible, so they started climbing my body like a ladder, begging and pleading to be taken home and never forced to return to such a dangerous place.

Poor Jessie was absolutely terrified so I had been placating her since the ordeal started, telling her that the crab had just given her a pinch and there was no blood and no actual injury, and that the crab had got a terrible fright because he got stepped on ... but it was no use. My soothing words were falling on deaf ears and Jessie as Woody kept up their screaming protests.

Now I am sorry about this, but at this point, I started to laugh. Perhaps the funniest part of all this was that Woody was copying everything Jessie did and repeating everything she screamed although he hadn't had any contact with the crab himself.

Perhaps it was the fact that if Jessie could stop going crazy for a moment, she would hear what I was saying and realise she didn't have to continue going crazy. Perhaps it was that two children were climbing my body like a ladder, or maybe I was slightly hysterical myself.

Perhaps it was just that after a whole week of us pleading with her not to collect shells, it appeared that a random crustacean was going to have more luck getting through to her than two grown adults.

Whatever the reason, I started to laugh the sort of laugh that keeps going even when your lungs are empty and tears are pouring down your face. I sat on the sand with two small children clinging to me screaming, "IT BIT ME! TAKE ME HOME NOW! I HATE THE BEACH!" and I laughed like a fool.

Then I noticed that although there were only a few families on the beach at this time, they were all looking at us. Let them look, I thought.

Our new Skim Disk was the perfect thing to take Jessie's and Woody's minds off the abuses rendered by the crab and I spent a blissful hour pulling first one then the other child along, sliding along the sand and then hydroplaning in the shallow water. The morning grew warmer and the sun started beating down stronger and hotter, so by mid-morning we packed up and headed towards the car.

Then it started again.

"THERE ARE CRABBIES (seriously - 'crabbies'?) IN THE SAND! CARRY ME! THEY WILL BITE MY TOES! LIFT ME UP! CRABBIES!" Jessie and Woody screamed as I lugged towels, bags and a Skim Disk towards the carpark.

Our path took us right by the lifeguard's hut. As we got closer, the noise of the crying and screaming brought the lifeguard to the window. He may well have assumed that my children had been badly stung all over their bodies by bluebottles or had perhaps lost some limbs to sharks.

"Uh - the little one got nipped on the thumb by a crab. Thought it was a shell. No skin broken. Just ... a bit of drama," I sheepishly admitted as we trudged by.

As I packed children and accessories into the car, I thought about our much-anticipated beach holiday coming up after Christmas. Will Jessie remember about the crab, and will she agree to try the beach again? And more interestingly: will she ever collect any more shells?

As I drove off, I predicted that seashells might be safe from Jessie in the future.

Always room for another phobia

2011-09-21T23:47:00.002+10:00

We're at the beach this week, staying in cabins.

I've slept on many a bottom bunk in my life, but never before have I been scared that the top bunk would somehow fail in the middle of the night and crash down onto my sleeping body below.

Funny how things change.

A bus ride with friends

2011-09-15T21:33:00.000+10:00

Here is what the children got up to when Mr N and Miss L came to play today while Buzz was at school.

joke.doc - File Not Found

2011-09-07T21:12:00.002+10:00

Tonight my sister and I were on the Google Talk, discussing how Dad was so awesome to think about putting fertiliser on our roses for us. Unnecessary for her, because she had already done it; necessary for me, because I'd spent weeks being sick and hadn't got around to it.

I knew that Mum and Dad had visited Crazy Sister yesterday, but when I saw her say that Dad had made the trek out to visit her, I couldn't resist the obvious retort.

Sadly, this joke appeared to "go through to the wicket keeper" and I was left with no recourse but to post it on my blog.

Thookenspiel - you're doing it right

2011-09-05T21:09:00.001+10:00

Today was Thookenspiel Day. We have worked out that it is probably better used as chimes with each length of pipe suspended with string and struck with a hard mallet. There is definitely an element of 'ching' there.

In order to suspend the lengths of pipe, I needed to put a hole through one end of each of them. I only broke one drill bit in the process. Either I needed to use the masonry drill bit, or my bits are a little on the breakable side, given that it's the second drill bit I've broken. The end of the first still resides deep within my back fence.

I couldn't find anything cooler to suspend them from than an old drumstick, and with than red 8-ply acrylic, but it works well.

Both Buzz' class teacher and music teacher proclaimed it a success, so I need to thank all my readers who voted to call the thing a Thookenspiel and carry on with the original plan!

[Insert photo of finished product here. Oh that's right, I forgot to take a photo. Silly me.]

Google Talk message from my Dad

2011-09-04T22:48:00.000+10:00

Dad sent a message via Google Talk to me last week.

"I used all of that awful-smelling rose fertiliser today and treated all of your roses to the east of the driveway, and it ran out after I'd done only the top rose on the western side, the one closest to the prickly bush that looks attractive with lovely sprawling branches that resemble waves washing down a lovely little mountain stream at the onset of spring before the flooding rains come which turn a humble little stream into a savage torrent that carries all before it and digs up the banks and pulls large trees away from the spots where they grew up starting from tiny seeds a long time ago when petrol was only 44c per gallon which is just under 10c per litre. That bush - picture the right one?"

I love my Dad! Happy Fathers Day!

The Other Jessie

2011-08-31T19:04:00.000+10:00

Jessie sat in the back seat of the car cuddling her doll Maisey, holding her hot pink pen poised above her scrap-paper notebook.

"I'm going to write a story," she said. "It's called 'The Little Girl Called Jessie.' And it goes like this.

"Once upon a time there was a little girl called Jessie. She was four years old. And she had a Mum called [my name] and a Dad called [Mr de Elba's name.] And she lived at [our address.] And she went to kindy. And she had some dreadful brothers. And she also had a little baby called Maisey. Jessie and Maisey had matching pyjamas. They ..."

"Back up a bit," I said. "What sort of brothers did she have?"

A big pause. Then Jessie said, "Awful."

Silence in the car.

"Actually," she admitted, "it was a different Jessie. Not me."

Thookenspiel

2011-08-30T20:45:00.001+10:00

So the big boy Buzz brought home a note from school saying that they will be starting a unit on musical instruments next week, and it would be good if we could start collecting objects that can be used to make an instrument. I assumed that many little kids will come along with a box and some rubber bands to make a guitar, and I started wondering what we could do that would be a little bit different.

Mister Google gave me many ordinary ideas, and two good ones. One was to make a tambourine from a round lid and some jingle bells. Buzz thought this idea was terrible.

The other idea was to make a glockenspiel from different lengths of metal pipe (electrical conduit was mentioned) and both Buzz and I thought that was a great idea. I knew it would take some time and effort and probably cost a bit more, but how cool would it be to be the only kid making a glockenspiel from electrical conduit? We would be awesome.

Today after the school and kindy dropoff I took Woody to the hardware store to buy the conduit, and hopefully get a nice man to cut it to size for me. My approach was to ask if someone could cut it to size or sell me "a hacksaw that could do the job," and the two gentlemen headed off to do the selection and cutting of the pipe. This was no mean feat, because the instructions detailing how to get the notes of the major scale require that the pipe is cut to lengths involving eights of an inch, but they did it for me, correctly assuming that if I tried with a hacksaw, I'd lose not only the major scale tuning, but also some digits as well.

I was delighted. I certainly cost more than a cardboard box and rubber bands, but it cost less than I'd imagined so I gleefully paid my money and came home.

It was then that I realised that the material the men had selected didn't so much go "ching-ching-ching." It went went "thook-thook-thook." Wrong stuff. Glockenspiel fail.

Ching-ching-ching is really the minimum standard in a glockenspiel, I think.

So. I need you to tell me what to do next.

The post I never got around to writing

2011-08-28T21:38:00.000+10:00

(...and it's too late now.)

Oh! My gentle readers! I have been SO sick! It was like ElbaPlague2009, but Mr de Elba and the children didn't get (quite) as sick as they did then, I got much worse, and the whole thing has dragged on much longer. At least Buzz Lightyear didn't get vomited into.

All week, I was composing a blog post in my mind, mainly apologising for missing Swift Jan's splendid Birthday Party last Saturday. But alas, I spent the whole week groaning or sleeping and the blog post never came to be.

I remember I planned to get someone to take a photo of me sleeping, while wearing my giant Cat-In-The-Hat hat.

I also planned to write something in anapaestic tetrameter about the sorry state of everyone's health.

I was going to mention the medicine shelf in my fridge.

And I was going to say something about this:

Something like
"Come and behold our dosing devices:
All sorts of shapes and various sizes!"

And yet, it never happened. The upshot:
• Sick
• Sleeping
• Many medicines
• Various dosing devices.

Hope that will suffice.

My Kitchen

2011-08-18T10:48:00.000+10:00

By way of thankyou

2011-08-17T19:00:00.003+10:00

I dressed in the hat and you thought you were pranked,

But look at these lilies - consider me thanked!

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Part Three

2011-08-16T17:00:00.001+10:00

Part Three was a challenge. I knew from the program that I was following the main speaker's second message, her "call to action" and a time of prayer and reflection. I didn't want to prance up on stage in my hat and bow tie, wheeling my squeaky wheelbarrow full of blessing boxes and prizes, to deliver some insensitive hilarity. I think I struck a happy medium by starting seriously with content on the theme, then transitioning to some funny bits half-way through.

Part Three

In everyone’s lives are prob’ly examples
Of times when life strangles and squeezes and tramples
On mind and emotions, and then you might find
You’ve gone off the road, and your home’s far behind.

How long will you stay there? It can be a while
For one to escape from this lonely exile
One way or another you get on your track
And face towards home, and you find the Road Back.

And God gives to us those who make it their mission
To trudge every step of our tough expedition,
And these ones are keepers – they’re precious and treasured
Their words are so wise and they’re gentle and measured.

For me, some are Jodie, Priscilla and B,
In my darkest hours, these girls have helped me.
And in thanks for their comfort, their love and concern
I’ve given them plenty of laughs in return.

They laughed pretty hard when at work one day
To fix broken toys, so the children could play
I managed to fuse all my fingers – these four
With superglue to a toy dinosaur.

My cousin and I shared the great gift of mirth
When during my wedding I thought “What on EARTH
Is that on my seat?” I was really quite stricken:
I’d nearly sat down on her prank rubber chicken.

And I gave to my friends this great gift of laughter
When one day I taught Sunday School, and then after
I noticed the rip in my pants – plainly seen!
Black undies? Of course not! That day: tangerine!

What blessing to have those who share your hard road:
Those women with whom you can truly offload.
Reading these blessings is great and therefore
I think that it’s time now to pick out some more.

Part One
Part Two

Creative response

2011-08-15T19:00:00.008+10:00

When I saw my sister sitting with pen poised above her paper and a faraway look on her face during morning tea, I just knew that she was composing a "blessing" that was going to be in rhyme. As yet I hadn't read out the bit about "You get double points if you've done it in rhyme," but I could tell that she was going for gold anyway. Mum declared her handwriting not fit for the final copy, and she kindly transcribed it.

I asked the audience to give her a round of applause for her effort, but told them I couldn't possibly read it out because it was a blessing for me, and it was so outrageously kind that I wasn't even sure if it was true. The audience wasn't at all pleased with that and our host stepped up to read it out. I'm still not sure if it's true, but these 2 stanzas of perfect anapaestic tetrameter are so wonderful that I'm glad this piece got its day.

Our sister and daughter's the one we want blessed,
She's here at the conference - unusually dressed
In a tall stripy hat and a big red bow tie
We're so blessed by Kate, and there's the tale why: -

She opens her home to all sorts, and she'll feed 'em,
She gives other mums kid-free times when they need 'em,
She'll unburden your woes with a nice cup of tea.
And so there you have it: "A Blessing on ME!"

In the next session, I did have many rhyming blessings to read out, all in different meters requiring some quick pre-reading and some even quicker thinking before opening my mouth and launching off into the rhythm that the writer had intended. Many blessings, rhyming or otherwise, needed to remain unread because of time.

In all, I had about 120 blessings that didn't make it, either to be read out as an honourable mention or as one of the 4 prize-winning blessings, and that was quite gut-wrenching. Not one of the blessings in the "No" Pile deserved to be in a "No" Pile of any sort. On the following Sunday morning I asked the organisers if there was any way to hand as many blessings as possible to their intended recipients. We hope they each can find their road back home.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Part Two

2011-08-14T19:00:00.004+10:00

Part Two

Welcome back ladies, you’ve had Morning Tea
I hope it was good cos it sure was for me.
We loved Lauren’s song and also Deb’s talk
I could listen to Evelyn until six o’clock.

I’m here to remind you we’ve something quite pressing
We’ll get this neat box and we’ll draw out a blessing
But first I should like to briefly detail
Those who’ve stood by me through trial and travail.

My mother should feature and she should be first
She’s seen me at best, and she’s seen all my worst.
She cheered in the good times and calmed me in bad,
Perhaps most of all, she has put up with Dad.

My mother does things others wouldn’t, for quids
She cleans out my bins and she cares for my kids
And if I should leave all my folding, and run,
I return and I find that it’s magically done!

My sister and I – there’s five years between us
But those who we meet who never have seen us
Don’t know who is older – it makes me quite happy
When she was a babe that I once changed her nappy.

When we get together, oh we laugh, she and I!
We laugh and we laugh until she makes me cry
Or until one or other discover, surprised
That our continence somehow has been compromised.

So those are two women who I’d like to bless
But who you have thanked is what we now address
Well guess what’s in here? I am now confessing
This box is just bursting its sides with the blessing!

I’ve had a quick look, I sorta pre-planned ‘em
We find that that’s better than picking at random.
I’ll read some out now, it’s finally time!
(You get double points if you’ve done it in rhyme.)

Part One
A Creative Response
Part Three

Part One

2011-08-13T20:13:00.001+10:00

I think that it's only fair, since I shared my stress with you when I was in the throes of writing this anapaestic tetrameter, that I share the end product. Our womens' conference is called "Seasons", and we have a segment involving a "Blessing Box" where women are asked to write out little notes to others who have blessed them on their life's journey, and put them in a box. Twice during the day some honourable mentions are read out, and then some winners are also read out and the ladies who were blessed by their friends are provided with little prizes. This year, it was my job to lead the segment, which I did dressed in a ridiculously enormous Cat-In-The-Hat type of hat and a silly giant red bow tie. My first installment is below, and the others will follow.

Part One

Welcome to Seasons, we hope you’re enjoying
The day-out with friends and we trust you’re employing
The grand opportunity Seasons created
To network with friends, as we have demonstrated.

More interesting sessions you’ll prob’ly not get
Than today’s talks from Deb, and of course Bernadette
And included in your Seasons entry fee payment
There’s coffee and lunch and of course entertainment.

There’s something to do here before the day ends
I hope I remember, it simply depends
On if I forget, and I will, I’ve a hunch,
After our morning tea, and again after lunch

To come and to save all you women from guessing
What goes in this box – why this box is for blessing!
You write out a note that will bless cotton socks
Of a woman who’s blessed you – and into the box

You place it and within a few hours hence
We read out a few of these kind sentiments
And to her whose blessing is read out at random
We take some small gifts, and to her we hand 'em.

Who will you bless here? If my turn would come,
I’d bless all my friends and my sister and Mum
But who you will bless now is quite your decision
I’m sure you can see with the clearest of vision.

So pick up your paper and writing device
And write a short note that will make them feel nice
And pop the note into our neat Blessing Box
We’ll read some out later to bless their sweet socks.

And soon we will head out to have Morning Tea
And write out our Blessings so generously
I’ll ask you to bless, while you munch on your snack,
A woman who’s blessed you on your own Road Back.

Part Two
A Creative Response
Part Three

The Hateful Ladder

2011-08-12T22:34:00.003+10:00

Jessie sat eating breakfast and between bites of egg-on-toast she casually mentioned, 'That ladder outside? It hates me.'

I was absently buttering something for someone but managed to say, 'Mmm?'

She swallowed, took another bite of toast and explained, 'It whacked me. It whacked me in the eye.'

'Oh no,' I replied. 'That doesn't sound good.'

She swallowed again. 'It whacked me in the eye when I was climbing up it.'

'Really? How mean of it,' I said.

Then she nonchalantly remarked, 'See? It hates me,' and went on eating.

The Rainbow Fower (sic) and The Bad Debt

2011-08-11T12:54:00.002+10:00

This morning over breakfast, Buzz announced to Jessie with gleeful excitement, "Hey Jessie, I'm gonna get chased today!" That was weird, so I decided to eavesdrop.

"I didn't want to make you pay a dollar out of your Pig Box to the girls so I didn't. And now they're gonna chase me today!" It sounded ominous, but he was grinning from ear to ear.

Yeah, we call the Piggy Banks "Pig Boxes." It started way back here.

At this point I had to backpedal in my mind to a few days ago. Buzz had brought this lovely picture home from school. It's a picture of a "Rainbow Fower" (sic.)

I was amazed at his penmanship, his spelling, his drawing and his colouring. Could this be my six year old boy, who, above all other things, is a SIX YEAR OLD BOY? Drawing and colouring are not his forte.

I asked him who drew and coloured this spectacular Rainbow Fower. "Lulu's sister," came the immediate reply. I then dropped the subject, secure in the assumption that Lulu's sister had drawn this magnificent Rainbow Fower and donated it to this poor Rainbow-Fowerless boy in her sister's class.

Except I do have one vague recollection of a conversation I paid a small amount of attention to after this - something about if Jessie wanted to keep something, she was going to need to pay someone $1 from her Pig Box. And there was much kerfuffling around, presumably to access the Pig Box and to procure $1 from it.

I didn't pay any further attention to this, because I was somehow sure that Pig Box access wouldn't be possible, and until I was asked to assist, I didn't need to worry about this problem.

NOW I see what was going on! Lulu's sister drew a "Rainbow Fower" at school, sold it to Buzz on approval for the exclusive enjoyment of his younger sister Jessie, Buzz promised $1 in payment for goods provided but failed to come up with the money and agreed to suffer the consequences - being chased by Lulu's sister at school today.

I just find that really funny.

Anapaestic Tetrameter - Part 2

2011-08-09T20:58:00.000+10:00

Sometimes, the words just flow. I get on a roll and then after a while I write something clever, like rhyming longer words, or rhyming a word from posh language with one from not-posh language like in my Christmas poem: "Celebrating, we’re all munchin’ some expansive Christmas luncheon," and I know I'm in town.

I had a moment like that the other night when in my current poetry project I rhymed "draw out at random" with "to her we hand 'em" and I got that "we're in town" feeling.

Unfortunately tonight the creativity has left the building. Buoyed by my last two very productive days and feeling a bit of a slump tonight, I dashed out and bought a bottle of Baileys. It's been ages since I've had a bottle of anything nice, and I thought it was time. It turns out that a wee bit of alcohol, while relaxing my shoulder muscles and making me let go of my concerns and my mental lists-of-things-to-do, also stifles creativity.

First, I begin to suspect I have lost my nouns. Then I notice that creative adjectives and adverbs are gone. Pretty soon all those clever turns of phrase and posh-language words are absent and all I'm left with is my brain fluttering around like a butterfly in my cranium singing, "la la lahhh" to itself.

I suspect I may give up tonight, pour myself another Baileys and go to bed to la-la-lahhh away to myself with my butterfly brain. (I should clarify that this is quite a small amount of alcohol involved, and only a small physical effect is noticed. The major effects are noticed in the creative side of my brain, which is currently skipping along holding a daisy, and wearing only one shoe.)

Blind panic will resume tomorrow. There are only three more writing days until the conference.

Anapaestic Tetrameter

2011-08-07T22:05:00.000+10:00

Flying in the face of my new resolution never to write another blog post apologising for not having blogged enough, I just wanted to tell you that I've got a few projects on at the moment, all from different categories of Things-To-Do, and it's taking all my brain space.

For example,

I have several reports to write at work, and having got to the blind-panic stage, I am setting aside all my child-free hours to go into work and sit there to do them, rather than trying to force myself to do them at home (laughing in own face at the thought)
I have to do my BAS which I was putting off until I worked out what to do with the fact that I have accidentally claimed for the same expense twice in the same quarter, and it needs to be fixed
I have six baskets of laundry to fold. Unfolded laundry, I am certain, contributes to a large percentage of emotional difficulties among women my age. We should all get together and do a study.
I am presenting a segment at our church's women's conference next weekend, and I have decided (because it's SO much easier this way) that instead of me waffling on aimlessly, I should present the segment in anapaestic tetrameter. This means it should be a little like Dr Seuss. I am buried in a strange but satisfying world of 'feet' and syllables and words that don't fit and words that don't rhyme. Trying to weave the best words together into the best pattern is so artistically gratifying.

I'm not really getting around to these important (and increasingly urgent) jobs simply because of CKMT, as I'm sure you'll all understand. I still think often how great it would be to have those t-shirts made up, but I won't put it onto the end of the above list of things to do or I may go mad.

More Jessie (and Buzz)

2011-07-31T22:37:00.002+10:00

Both Jessie and Buzz:

say "binoclears" for binoculars. I like this because it sort-of has the word "clear" in it, appropriate for something that helps you see distant objects clearly.
say "amblyance" for ambulance. When Buzz was little, I had neglected to teach him how to call for emergency services for fear of abuse of the system by my small child. He came home from kindy proclaiming that he knew how to do it. When I questioned him he said, "I do. I dial zero-zero-zero and say 'Plice, fire or amblyance.'" This simultaneously filled me with confidence, and stripped me of it.
say "compyanno" for "piano." I think young Buzz mixed "computer" and "piano" up when he was little and has never got out of the habit. He has now taught Jessie and they both say it. Mr de Elba and I sometimes do too, now.

Buzz:

although he says "compyanno," he says "imputer" for computer. He thinks we're all wrong to put the "com" on the front, and possibly also thinks we're wrong when we leave it off "compyanno." He has on occasions had arguments with Jessie who has asserted it's "computer" only to be harshly corrected, "It's imputer!" followed by a fight.
One day recently, just on sunset, Buzz and Jessie asked to play in the playground near our shopping centre. It was nearly dusk, the bitterly cold wind was whipping around us and they still wanted a little play. I told them that it would be a very short play. Buzz asked why, apparently unconvinced by the reasons of darkness and coldness. I told him that our last play was a long one, and this was going to be a short one. He smiled happily and said, "OH, that means our next one will be a long play. It's an A-B pattern." Thanks school. (A-B pattern = A-B-A-B, as in short play - long play - short play - long play. An erroneous assumption.)

Jessie:

says "acksully-dently" for accidentally, as in the sentence, "I acksully-dently bit Dyofeff on the stomach." That is some claim.
Jessie: Are rats allergic to water?
Me: Um no, nothing on earth is allergic to water.
Jessie: How about mice?
Me: Yeesh.

And we LOLed

2011-07-29T20:48:00.000+10:00

We thought that Jessie was saying "Fashionista" when talking about a Barbie Fashionista game she had seen. Then we realised she was saying "Fashiony-Star." That was pretty close, we thought.

She's absorbed many lines from the movies she's seen, and sometimes combines them. Her cry of frustration is, "Oh for the love of crying out loud!"

And we LOLed when she dressed as a princess, cuddled her little pink doll, put a mechanical toy screwdriver to her Daddy's head and said,

"I've got killer in my eyes!" (Thanks Rango?)

Pikelets

2011-07-26T09:30:00.004+10:00

Why does every recipe for pikelets leave out Step 4? Step 4 is essential, and I'm not sure you can make pikelets without it. I think the world needs me to reinstate Step 4.

Method

Place the flour and sugar into a bowl. Stir with a wooden spoon to combine, then set aside. Whisk the milk, butter and egg together in a jug.
Add the milk and egg mixture to the flour mixture. Whisk until smooth.
Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Brush with a little melted butter. Using a tablespoon, spoon the mixture into the pan.
Burn inside forearm on edge of hot frying pan.
Cook for 2 minutes or until bubbles form. Carefully turn them over and cook for a further 1-2 minutes or until cooked through. Transfer them to a plate and repeat with the remaining mixture and remaining forearm.
Serve the pikelets warm or at room temperature, topped with jam and cream.

What are pikelets called in the USA?

Mad Hatters Tea Party

2011-07-24T23:03:00.000+10:00

Back in May, my sister and I went with our daughters to my church's women's ministry Mad Hatters Tea Party. It was a fun afternoon of tea, treats, mad hats, decorated tables and craft!

We decorated our table with a vase of fabric gerberas and rubber chickens:

The chickens were later be-hatted using the craft materials supplied.

We wore outrageous headpieces ourselves. My Crazy Sister had the best hat on the day (as informally judged by me) which featured her own hair issuing from the crown of her fabric-covered cowboy hat in a fountain of manic sparkly twists. And this is why I love her. Peanut looked splendid, as always, wearing both a pink tissue-paper headpiece and a Pleasant Attitude.

This second item was not worn on the day by Jessie, who would not be photographed in her gerbera-covered hat. I was only able to photograph the gerbera-covered hat without its wearer.

I graciously put on about 20kg just for this isolated photo, in order to make everyone else in the room feel better about their own appearance:

Some of the other ladies and their decorated tables looked like they were going for a day at the races. La-dee-DAH. I am sure the word MAD was on the invitation.

As the speaker got up to speak, Mr de Elba delivered the boys to me as he was coming to church for a music practice. I thought that three children near accessible tables laden with teatime treats might be a little bit much to handle, especially since the speaker was expecting to speak, but I was saved the humiliation of trying to manage this impossible situation because Woody threw up violently all over himself and the car just as they arrived. He came inside feeling much better and was gleefully given handfuls of chocolate slices and little cakes by his thoughtless siblings upon his arrival.

I disallowed this mass-consumption of sugar and immediately went home, washed Woody, washed his clothing and then attacked the horror in the car. The End.

Wonky Carrot - Wonky Face

2011-07-21T21:52:00.000+10:00

Injuries

2011-07-21T11:00:00.001+10:00

On Saturday, I injured my neck. As soon as I did it, I knew I was in for days of pain and stiffness, and I was right. I guess that if you are going to be sporty and lead an active lifestyle, you have to expect injuries from time to time.

I did my neck while doing a Sudoku. True story. I was sitting perfectly still and something cramped, tightened and then knotted and here I am not exercising at all, using the excuse that I'm 'nursing an injury.'

It reminds me of when my sister did her ankle at netball. She wasn't all that sporty, in fact I seem to remember that she wasn't even playing netball, she was sitting beside the courts watching. She sprained her ankle losing her footing going down the steps and ended up on crutches.

People asked her afterwards how she hurt her ankle. "Netball," she answered.

Good answer.

The Local Fishwrapper

2011-07-19T23:21:00.001+10:00

When I was a kid, this town's newspaper was different. It was well-respected as a reliable source of news but in recent years it has become sensational, with ghastly attention-grabbing headlines to mask a dearth of ghastly attention-grabbing stuff going on in the town.

When we were in the process of moving here, casual visits to our new town were marred by catching sight of the local paper screaming at us: "Woman tied up, raped in city hotel" and "Man faces court over murder" and "Couple charged over firearm offenses."

So maybe there wasn't such a dearth of ghastly attention-grabbing stuff going on after all.

And now, you don't even want to win the car they are giving away.

Apps

2011-07-17T21:42:00.002+10:00

It all started one day when I was boiling eggs. I was standing in front of my clock watching the second hand tick around so the eggs could be not a shade off perfect, wondering if I should buy an egg timer, when I had a light bulb moment: "I bet there's an app for this." And of course, there is.

I got the free "Egg Timer" App on my iPad, which I love because when the time is up, a pleasant clucking and cackling starts up, making you wonder when your neighbour got chooks. Unfortunately it's not good for timing the cooking of perfect eggs, which I consider a minimum standard in Egg Timers, so I don't use it whenever I don't need the sound of chooks on the lay.

Since then, I have found a huge variety of apps for all sorts of things I used to use notepaper for. I came across iPeriod, an app that replaces the discreet monthly circles on one's calendar. It also tracks many other issues of gynaecological interest, most of which would attract odd Google searches if I were to list them here.

For the first-time Mum, there are so many pregnancy apps. I am sure that The Pregnant Brain couldn't possibly sort them out, as I am having trouble myself. There's "Pregnancy Tips," "40 Weeks of Pregnancy," "Pregnancy - Week by Week," "Pregnancy Tracker," "Pregnancy Workouts," and the typically-named "iBaby."

Whose bright idea was it to name an app "Pregnancy Food No-No's?" Any app censorious and matronly enough to shake its iFinger at me is asking to get punched in the screen. Add a misplaced apostrophe and even in my non-pregnant state I find it completely intolerable.

There's one simply called "Pregnancy" which boasts a feature that will have all friends and family of expectant couples running for cover. "Now email your baby's kick count to your family and friends!" Yes, I'm sure they would love that.

What about the "Pregnancy Test - Prank Maker" which enables the iPhone to display realistic ultrasound images when placed on the belly of pregnant women (moderately funny,) non-pregnant women (not funny at all,) men (yeah, thigh-slappingly hilarious) or family pets (ridiculous.)

There are many different Contraction Timers for couples with enough time to grab their iPhone before the babies come flying out. There's a Labour & Delivery Bag Checklist for those times when you've lost your ability to pack a bag yourself, and a Diaper Bag Checklist for when you've lost the ability to write things like "BUY WIPES" on scraps of paper.

The reality is that either
(a) you don't have these apps, and will forget stuff, or
(b) you get these apps, and still forget stuff. Honestly.

Apps like "Baby timer" make me wonder who ARE these parents who are meticulously recording every wet and dirty nappy, every waketime, every sleep time, every feed (which side, how long, how many mLs) and then I remember that I did that in the early days with my first baby. The staff at the hospital had be believing that if I didn't record all this, the world would tip off its axis and I would be to blame. One day I guiltily stopped recording all this and I was mightily surprised to see that the baby survived. For subsequent babies I decided just to care for them instead of wasting time worrying about how I was caring for them. It saved a lot of time.

"Milk Maid" is out there to assist mothers who are pumping and storing milk, which I have occasionally tried for my babies. It made my head spin. It tracks all the milk 'stashes' kept in all the fridges you may have put pumped milk in. All over town. All over the country. Apparently. How many mLs in the 'stash', how old the milk is, everything. You can track how much milk you have pumped and stored in your upstairs fridge, downstairs fridge, Grandma's fridge, the other Grandma's fridge, the Daycare fridge and the neighbour's fridge. Would to goodness I'd had that much milk pumped and stored way back then. Like Buzz' personal manna from heaven, I only ever had enough milk for the next feed. And, like manna, it tended to go off if it wasn't used straightaway.

So all this is quite ridiculous, isn't it? Some of the apps are probably quite useful but others - well - I'm just not sure why you wouldn't use tally marks on the back of an old shopping list, or scribble something on the back of your hand. Come to think of it, I am currently tallying some things on my kitchen whiteboard that could potentially be replaced by iPad apps. Programmers, here are a few ideas.

Apple Tracker - a handy little app that is linked to a CCTV camera in the kitchen and notes each time an apple is taken from the fruit bowl and eaten, and by whom. I am now buying 20 apples every few days and I feel like I should have a better idea of who eats them and when. CCTV links to every room in the house would help me track discarded cores for easy disposal.

Head Bump Calculator - an app that tallies Woody's head bumps, graphs his tiredness, correlates tiredness with clumsiness, provides a checklist of medical symptoms of concussion and recommends when to run to Emergency.

That's what I want to see, Programmers. Get on it.

Holidays, iPads and weird looking hats

2011-07-02T21:55:00.001+10:00

The first week of school holidays has been and gone, leaving me gasping for air. Three highly-assertive young children and a husband still at work is quite a joyride. With a little less "joy" and a whole lot more "ride." In addition to that, I feel like I deserve a holiday myself. If only my maid was a little more productive when I step down from my daily tasks ... oh wait, she's imaginary. That explains it.

When I decide to treat myself to some time off and have a little rest in my comfy chair in my sunny corner, it looks a little different to how I imagine it. The way I imagine it is pretty much the way you imagined it when you read that, and to be honest, it does start out well. I get comfortable in my chair in the sun with a warm blanket over me and a Samurai Sudoku on my iPad. Soon, things take a turn for the worse. Woody clambers up to sit to the left of me and takes my iPad, insisting he needs to play Monkey Preschool Lunchbox. Jessie clambers up to sit on the right of me and makes Woody mad by "helping" him play Monkey Preschool Lunchbox. Buzz then sits on the left arm of the chair, making Woody scream loudly at having his personal space invaded. Buzz takes the iPad off the other two and while they are both screaming, he sets up a game of Tic Tac Toe. The three of them attempt to play a two-player game of Tic Tac Toe across my lap, but three children don't play two-player games very well. Woody's technique is to stab repeatedly at the screen, randomly assigning nought-cross-nought-cross-nought-cross until he has lost the game for one of his siblings, who gets very angry at Woody, who gets so angry in return that he is unable to play for a little while. This allows Buzz and Jessie to play a two-player game together. Jessie doesn't understand the turn-taking nature of the game, and once Buzz has assigned his first cross and she has done her first nought, she decides to do a second one quickly to get the edge on Buzz. What she doesn't realise is that the game is now going to place a cross in her second square, making her mad because she wanted two noughts in a row, and making Buzz mad because that's not where he wanted to put his cross. At this point I then decide to get up out of the armchair, because I'm having The Worst Rest Ever. And I find that I am firmly pinned under the blanket by the bodies of three small and angry children, and I cannot leave.

There are many things I should have done this week but didn't, one of which was write down the funny things I've heard my little guys saying so I can blog them later. Sometimes it's been hilarious but mostly it's just odd everyday conversations that, if I remember to write them down, will always remind me of what it was like living with Buzz (6), Jessie (4) and Woody (nearly 2). Conversations like:

Jessie, shouting from the other end of the house: "BUZZ! THE WOT-WOTS ARE ON!!!"
- no reply -
Jessie: "BUZZ! THE WOT-WOTS!"
Me: "Hey Buddy, it sounds like Jessie is telling you that the Wot-Wots are on."
Buzz: "Wot?"

It was funny at the time.

This morning Mr de Elba pointed to a scruffy filthy old nylon hat on the kitchen table.

Mr de E, in all innocence: "Does that hat belong to one of your parents?"
Me, looking at it: "No, I think it's actually an old one from the dress-ups box."
- pause -
Me: "But it's a fair question."
Both roll about laughing. Sorry Mum and Dad.

Roll on Week Two of holidays. I'm going to put my iPad away until it's over.

Mice

2011-06-22T21:29:00.002+10:00

The piano tuner came last week. After spending an hour tuning my sister's piano, he turned up at my house and left again after only 10 minutes. Trouble.

My main problem had been 'sticky keys' - where the little hammers don't return to their places after hitting the strings, meaning that next time you hit the key, the hammer can't get enough of a wind-up to hit the string again. Usually this is caused by damp weather, but this time I wasn't so sure.

The problem had started well before our wet summer, and it hasn't improved at all since it's become drier. This time, the problem was so bad that more than two-thirds of the keys were suffering. After playing a few bars, only random notes were able to sound and on lifting the lid and looking inside the piano, I could see up to 20 hammers sitting too far forward, not in their correct positions. I was curious to see what the tuner could do.

The piano tuner had a quick look inside and said those lovely words: "You've had a mouse."

This blog post would be much more interesting if I'd got my camera out and taken some photos at that point.

To identify a mouse problem inside a piano, the Average Joe would probably look for mouse droppings. The gifted piano tuner notices that the little tapes on most of the 88 keys that provide part of the tension needed to help the hammers return to their places were bitten clean off and had completely disappeared.

He took the guts of my piano away in his car with a promise that when he returned to place the fixed piano guts back inside the piano, we'd probably find all the little tapes made into a nest in the bottom of the keybed. Which, of course, we did.

Again, that story would have been so much better if I'd got my camera out and taken a photo.

Socks talking nonsense

2011-06-17T20:38:00.001+10:00

Jessie recently acquired five new pairs of socks. After her shower one night, I laid them all out and asked her which pair she would wear to bed with her purple pants. My SpideySense told me that she was just about to refuse the warm purple pants and demand something less suitable, so I used my SuperMumSense and put the kibosh on that immediately by pointing out the benefit of the socks with reference to the pants.

"This pair is purple, so that will match your purple pants, this pair is white with pink and purple so that will match your purple pants and your white skivvy and your -er- pink undies, and this pair is pink but they do have hippos on them and hippos like purple so they'd be good, and this pair is also pink but there's the word "FUNKY" and a picture of a monkey so I guess that funky monkey has something to do with purple ..." As I trailed off, wondering how I was going to sell the black and white stripes with reference to the purple pants, I realised that I'd given her too many options.

"I'll have these on my feet and these on my hands," she said.

And do you know, I let her, only because it appeared that she had taken it for granted that she was wearing the warm purple pants. So I guess I won, in a way. I let her put the purple socks on her hands and the white/pink/purple ones on her feet.

As I packed the other pairs of socks away, I noticed that Jessie now had four sock puppets engaged in a discussion that, on the face of it, made no sense.

Right hand, to left hand: "What? And give Rudy a midnight snack? Not likely."
Left hand, to left foot: "The skull's right. We can camp here for the night. Now, who's hungry?"
Left foot: "I am!"
Left hand: "You don't need the calories!"

And it continued to make no sense until she told me that it was from Ice Age 3. And so it is, a quote down the bottom of the page here.

No Lollies Please, We're Sick

2011-06-09T21:55:00.003+10:00

Late last month, I told you about the disaster that occurred when a well-meaning pharmacy assistant offered Jessie and Woody some lollipops. Your responses empowered me.

Today it was a different illness, a different medication, a different pharmacy, even a different variety of highly-coloured confectionary, but exactly the same situation. Two garishly purple jelly beans were offered as Woody struggled to get out of my arms and remove all the stock from the ankle-height (!) shelves in the pharmacy while barking a horribly croupy cough that made him sound a little like a demented seal.

This time, thanks to my wonderful readers, I WAS READY!

"Oh, no thanks!" I politely asserted, "they're sick and they really shouldn't be having ..." etc.

The pharmacy assistant looked shocked and chastened. She did the only thing that she could think of in the heat of the moment - she popped the jelly beans into her own mouth (yurk.)

Victory was mine! For ten seconds. Then.

"I'm not sick!!" hissed a scandalised voice in my ear. "She should give one to me, and not one to Woody because he's sick!"

Complaints in a similar vein assailed me as I paid and hauled everyone back to the car. Jessie's pleas were falling on deaf ears so she pulled out all the stops, most likely learned from some animated kids movie: "I'm warning you!"

"That's fine, warn me all you like," I countered. "But I am now on a mission to teach pharmacy ladies that it's probably a bad idea to bribe strangers' children with sugar and then act like they're huge heroes for making them happy. [Grumble-grumble] ... darn sugar peddlars ... [grumble grumble.]"

As you can see, I have read your wonderful comments and assimilated them into my being.

But, sugary lollies being the short-term emptiness they are, the complaints were quickly forgotten and the huge fuss died down to nothing. However, since then, the phrase "I'm warning you!" has been pulled out a few more times and I think I might now have to do something about that.

A song for Woody

2011-06-09T20:29:00.000+10:00

I should blog more, shouldn't I? I just enjoy reading YOUR blogs so much, chat to my friends, stalk people on Facebook by hacking into Mr de Elba's Facebook account because I don't have one, and hanging out on My Fitness Pal - what a great site! And Nowadays instead of siting in my office in the cold, I am snuggled up in my comfy armchair with a ridiculously small laptop which is difficult to type on. IT's not all that good for blogging.

I would like to dedicate this song to Woody. It could have been written for him.

My hairdresser is rubbish

2011-06-01T21:20:00.000+10:00

Oh, wait, that was me.

I suppose I'll agree to go to a real hairdresser, like Mum said.

Jillian Michaels didn't have to put up with this

2011-05-30T20:38:00.000+10:00

I am doing Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred, and being up to Day 3, I am hurting. I have always felt goofy working out in front of my TV in my living room, but this time I choose not to feel goofy and I'll just let Jillian "kick my butt", or whatever they say.

Right now, going to a gym or joining a class would be so inconvenient and difficult to arrange. And do you want to know how easy it is, working out in front of your TV at home? Well, I'll tell you.

During the warmups, I tend to hit Woody repeatedly in the head with my arms, especially during the "windmill" moves. I stop, put Woody on the couch, do a few more windmills, hit Woody in the head a few times, stop, put Woody on the couch, do a few more windmills, hit Woody in the head a few times, stop, and put Woody on the couch. Then it's time to stop. Mixing the exercises up like this is a technique called muscle confusion, and Jillian uses it a lot.

Within the first minute of cardio, Jessie starts crying and moaning. "I don't like jumping!" she says. "Mum! I hate jumping!" This makes me a little bit grumpy. She should try having a few kids, having a quarter-full bladder and then doing some jumping jacks. She'd soon see what hating jumping is all about.

The section on Strength is filled with the sound of children grunting and moaning, rolling about on the floor and saying they can't do push-ups. That's fine by me, because while they're whinging about not being able to do pushups, they are not noticing that I can't do any either.

For the 30-Day Shred, I have taken my small yellow 1kg hand weights out of the box for my use. MY use. I have deliberately left the 1.5kg and 2.5 kg weights in the box because as Jillian says, "We don't need any injuries. Not part of the program." But while I'm doing strength, Buzz can open the box, take a set of the heavier weights out and start using them, leaving it wide open for Woody to grab the other set of weights and dangle them over my head just as I've got down on the floor to do Abs.

When Jillian said, "No injuries!" I bet she was thinking of some poor soul rolling their ankle, not being concussed by a falling 1.5kg hand weight while trying to do ab crunches. *** Thankfully, it has not happened.*** It could have happened, but the worst so far has been interrupting my routine yet again to lock the weights away.

Once the weights were safe and inaccessible, I got back to oblique crunches. I lay on my back with one ankle crossed on the other knee and one arm out to the side. Suddenly, that arm became the pillow for two little heads as they lay beside me, pressing into me as I tried to raise my chest up to my knee. At least it stopped my arm from coming up off the floor.

Buzz is such a helpful soul. During the routine, he often pauses to turn to me and repeat what Jillian says, with demonstrations. "She said you have to keep a little bend in your elbow, Mum. Like this." "You have to keep your knee straight." "She said she doesn't want any of this..." accompanied with a demonstration of The Wrong Way To Do It.

By the warm-downs, the children have often given up and gone to sit on the couch to watch me. But Buzz is often still watching, giving directions and offering helpful advice like, "No Mum, you're doing it wrong."

It's all so convenient, working out at home.

Lollipop Disaster

2011-05-27T20:24:00.001+10:00

Yesterday was one of those days that makes you want to curl up with a coffee and have a little cry, all before 7am. Just one of those days.

By midday we were finishing up at the doctors and went to the pharmacy with the prescription for antibiotics that would make our days filled with less of poor Woody's crying. Is it my imagination, or are juvenile ears less resilient than they used to be?

I had amused Jessie and Woody during the 40-minute wait at the doctor's with books, toys and blowing bubbles in the waiting room. I was now amusing them with the same bubbles as we waited for the prescription to be filled. Just when I had it all in hand, a pharmacy assistant appeared behind the counter with two garish orange and green lollipops in her hand and a big smile on her face. She asked the children, "Would you like a lollipop?"

In the future, I will be ready with The Correct Response, which will be toclap and hand over each child's eyes saying, "Oh no, I'm sorry, but they are sick and shouldn't be eating sugary lollies." Unfortunately I hesitated long enough for them both to see the lollipops and I made The Wrong Decision. I reluctantly received the lollipops and started trying to liberate them from their tough plastic coffins.

It was not easy. The plastic was really thick and difficult to break. I finally got one of the lollipops out and gave it to Jessie first, hoping that was the right decision. Aware that Woody was patiently waiting, I hurried as I tried to get the other lollipop out of its packaging.

Epic fail. First I pulled the stick clean out of the lollipop, then I broke the thing into two large pieces and a million sugary crumbs. Poor Woody.

He accepted the two large pieces with glee but once they were gone, there was no escaping the fact that due to the pharmacy lady's unhelpful generosity and my own oafishness, we were faced with fifteen minutes where Jessie HAD a lollipop, and Woody DIDN'T. And there was nothing I could do to fix the problem. If you are about to suggest that I could have taken Jessie's lollipop off her to at least even the score, please pause and think about it.

I need to be more alert at times when my children are offered with things that will make life more difficult, less healthy and are likely to blow up in all our faces. Of course, one phrase I will be rehearsing is, "Oh no, I'm sorry, but they are sick and shouldn't be eating sugary lollies."

Maybe I won't exactly say "No" ...

2011-05-21T10:22:00.000+10:00

I was reeling from a little cleanup when I wrote my last post about the painting debacle. The poor little Jessie girl - she would be devastated if I said 'No' all the time. I will get more organised and let her paint to her heart's content again soon. In preparation for this, I will remind myself of all the things I need for happy painting - I thought I'd share, because letting them paint is really fun!

An easel: I had a tiny scrappy old easel with a whiteboard that didn't wipe clean and a chalkboard section the size of a postage stamp. Not good enough. One day I bought some big sheets of 8mm MDF and got busy with my cordless drill. I am rarely happier in life than when I'm doing stuff with my cordless drill. 10 minutes later - a much improved easel! (Picture below.)

Some paper: I only have some tissue-thin cheap paper about A3 size. Is today the day I head down to the offices of the local newspaper and buy some ends-of-rolls? Maybe.

Cheap palettes, paints and brushes: Got them last year from Kmart. They're great.

Painting shirts for each child: It's quick and easy to take an old shirt with a ribbed collar, cut all the way up the back, thread elastic through the ribbing around the neck and be glad you didnt have to get your sewing machine out. Or, for the slightly longer version, you could ask a friend like Crafty Mummy to make a painting shirt for you from an old men's business shirt. (Pictures below show one of each style.) The trick is having the same number of shirts as children, and in the last blog post, I had (n-1). Not good enough, by 1.

A rule where no children squeeze paint onto their own palettes: I thought that was understood, but it wasn't.

The absence of younger, non-painting siblings in the painting area: Clearly.

Wash brushes, palettes and children after painting. It's the ideal late-afternoon activity because they can head straight for the bathroom after creating a masterpiece, just as Monet used to. Or so I'm told.

When I make sure of all of these things, painting is great!!! Wanna try it? Just don't leave the toddler hanging around, that's all.

Next time, I'll say No

2011-05-19T21:13:00.001+10:00

"Mum, can I paint on my easel?" Jessie asked for the fourth time. I sighed, but painting is usually manageable when she is alone and she has a painting shirt on. "Okay, sweetheart, I'll get Woody eating something so he won't get his hands in the paint, and then I'll come and set it up for you."

That was the beginning of the story. For the short cut to the ending of this story, read my post title above.

The long way to the ending is this. For half an hour, Jessie blissfully painted while singing a La-la-la-la! song to herself. Woody ate and then came to join her outside. I tethered him in the Fisher-Price swing above her head to keep him out of reach of the paint. Mr de Elba came home and stood transfixed at the sight of her painting and the sound of her sweet singing, with a look of love all over his face. After she had filled four pages with colourful swirls, squiggles and "a seagull carrying a kid", Buzz came home from school and they painted side-by-side. Then, in a moment of mental abstraction, I absent-mindedly took Woody out of his swing, put him down, and meandered back inside.

Soon after that, Jessie came inside brushing her hair back from her paint-streaked face and announced, "Mum, look what Buzz has done with my new orange paint."

I went, I saw, and I composed the title of this blog post in my mind. The next five minutes were filled with my annoying voice shrieking from height to strident height as I discovered more and yet more disaster involving acrylic pigment.

"Oh oh oh oh OH! Buzz, oh sweetheart you aren't allowed to squeeze paint out by yourself, that is a job for grownups and as you can see this new paint is really runny and OH NO can you just grab this rag and wipe the pavers and oh my goodness can I just reach over you there and wipe this off the OH NO Woody stop lying down in the paint, oh no! Can you just - oh my goodness look at your clothes what was I thinking when I took you down from the swing and let you wander around and just look at this over here! Oh my word are there any more rags over there and can you just OH NO I think it's time for you to get in the bath Woody and Oh don't grab that! Yes, well you may cry, of course your hands will be a scary blue colour if you grab the palette with all that blue paint on it. Just come inside and we'll get you cleaned up, you too Jessie, you've done some great painting but now it's time to finish, just come here into the bathroom - NOT you please Buzz, I am going to need you to use up that orange and that blue on these new pieces of paper here, just let me peg them onto the easel - NO WOODY don't touch that, don't step in that either, oh goodness. Buzz fill those bits of paper with orange and blue and try not to get any on your school uniform - yes I know your uniform is orange and blue but it's not going to look good so do your best to stay clean, now WOODY AND JESSIE! Come into the bathroom! WOODY! Sweetie please no, your blue hands have made the side of the bath all blue, please don't touch anything at all okay, now arms up, let's get your shirt and jumper off and now pants, nappy, socks, please don't touch that stuff, just wait here until the water is nice and warm, now hop in and hold still while I get some soap to get the paint off your face and hands, here rub this into your hands and the scary blue will come off, now JESSIE can you step out of your painting clothes and your dress, leggings, socks, oh goodness how much Napisan do I have? And now you hop in too ... look at your face, hold still while I get some soap on here, now close your eyes and look up at the water with your eyes closed - eyes closed - and rinse it off .... (breathe) .... now just have a little soak."

Hence the title of this post.

Busted

2011-05-11T22:31:00.001+10:00

"Are we lost?" Buzz asked from the back seat of the car.

"What?" I asked. "I'm driving between Daddy's work and our home. I am not lost. I wouldn't get lost!"

"Then how do you know the way?" he wondered.

"Um - Mothers' School, again. They taught us how to find our way around, and how to remember certain trips. It's been really helpful to me in terms of -um- in terms of not getting lost. Mothers' School was great."

Pause.

"Uhhh... is Mothers' School actually ... real?" he asked in disbelief.

Sprung, ten years before I was expecting to be.

Pilates of the Caribbean

2011-05-10T21:18:00.000+10:00

From So Much Pun

Watch Ur Bak

2011-05-09T21:25:00.001+10:00

From Cheezburger

Mothers' School

2011-05-08T19:00:00.000+10:00

One of my two best high school friends, who I still fondly remember as ET even though she got married and the T changed to an H, often lamented her inability to do things that her mother could. Things like slicing sandwiches so the fillings don't fall out, and packing suitcases so that everything fits neatly.

She had a theory that once a woman comes of age, possibly after her wedding but before her first child, she attends a compulsory course at a place called "Mothers' School."

At Mothers' School, one learned how to cut sandwiches, pack suitcases, and all those other things that our Mums were so good at, but that we hadn't come close to mastering.

The other day, Buzz and Jessie asked me how I was able to organise Jessie and Woody into the double stroller, walk to a little convenience store close to Buzz's school for bread and milk, then to Buzz's school to pick him up and then back again.

Okay, so they didn't come up with that, I admit that I had been mightily talking myself up: "How awesome am I that I can get the little guys ready, walk to the shops, get bread and milk and pick Buzz up on the way home? All without a car? I am astounding!!!"

Hence the elicited admiration: "Wow Mum, how do you know how to do all of that?"

Inspired by ET, I drew on our childhood legend. "Well, after I got married to Dad but before Buzz was born, I went to a place called Mothers' School. It's where they teach you how to -er- to be awesome, like me. I was in a class with my friend ET, and we learned how to, um, cut sandwiches so the filling doesn't fall out, and how to pack a suitcase so that everything fits neatly, and how to do a school pickup and get groceries even when the car is in the fixing shop!"

They were awed.

Now at this point, I was sorely tempted to come clean and say that Mothers' School was just make-believe and it was a funny thing my friend ET and I used to joke about, but I thought, "No, for once, I'm ploughing this furrow. I'm going with it."

"Oh, but no, I've always put a clear distinction between Real Life and Imagination for the kids, I can't string them along now!" I countered.

"Why not?" I argued. "It might lend some respect for the position of motherhood."

It was a bit like this:

I stuck with the yarn, worrying slightly about what would happen once I was found out. But in the end, I decided to set myself a challenge of keeping it up for as long as the children believed in it. I can't wait for the day when their eyes get wide and a look of complete "A-HA!" creeps upon their faces and they say, "but I thought it was REAL!" and I have to sheepishly admit that I was just born awesome, or some such excuse.

For the moment though, I am enjoying the charade.

"I skipped class on the day they taught us how to do the ironing," I improvised. I figured there's no use pretending anything about my ironing prowess, and the confession added to the realism. "Other classes I skipped were on how to motivate myself to fold and put away the washing once it's dry, and being a nice Mummy when I haven't had enough sleep. Let this be a lesson to you kids: don't skip classes, ever. But on the up-side, I can't half cut a decent sandwich!"

What classes did you skip at Mothers' School? What subjects do you wish for a make-up course in?

OUR ACT: not yet together

2011-05-07T16:35:00.000+10:00

Today we turned up an hour and a half late for a child's birthday party, forgetting the present and not in costume. The first thing Buzz did on arrival was to fill up a large water pistol from the drinks dispenser, which unfortunately contained cordial. Man, we are awesome.

Clap for bubbles

2011-05-06T22:56:00.002+10:00

From Monday Through Friday

Clown Hair

2011-05-05T21:08:00.002+10:00

I have enjoyed hearing from you about any struggles you have that are similar to mine, and would love to talk more about all that stuff. But today, I don't have my thoughts together on that. Instead I'd like to talk about my hair.

Do you ever wake up in the morning with absolutely perfect hair? Strangely, I did today. I washed my hair last night and not quite dried it perfectly before I went to bed. I slept on it, expecting it to be hideous when I woke up.

But when I did wake up, I found that the natural wave had sorted itself out into a perfect style. Without any product or effort, it hung in wonderful twirls, looking splendid. Even my kids noticed and complimented me on my "nice hair" (although they also use that term for when I have my hair up in rollers.)

I was elated and I stepped into the day with extra confidence, knowing I looked so stylish. With this new poise, I got ready to walk the children to school because the weather was so lovely. We all got our shoes, hats and everything else we needed.

Then I was brought back to earth. As I walked along with the warm sun at my back, I noticed my shadow on the ground. Unfortunately, what I saw was not a silhouette of awesome hair. Instead, I saw a shape that was completely unexpected. It was all because of my baseball cap.

Do you know how some CLOWNS have a huge bald dome-shaped head fringed by grizzled thatch? That was the silhouette I saw.

Great. I thought I looked awesome, but instead I was stuck in public with clown hair.

Embarrassment of plenty

2011-05-04T23:59:00.000+10:00

I have been struggling with the kids' attitudes recently. I don't want to wear those clothes, must get changed again, don't want to go to school, don't want to do this or that, this apple has a blemish so I will need another one .... a disturbing sense of entitlement has settled over them despite my best efforts to raise them without a sense of entitlement.

Cath has posted a thought-provoking post about toys. It echoes my frustration with a society that has provided my kids with too much of everything and left them sitting in a pile of plenty with nothing to console their little selves but a constant sense of dissatisfaction. It is very hard work - VERY hard work - to work in their little souls against the power of having so many clothes and so much leisure and it leaves me defeated and deflated.

I had a little victory recently by removing all my daughter's clothes from her shelves except for a few little outfits. Now when I hear, "But I don't LIKE this one," I can quite honestly say, "Well there's nothing else in the shelves, and it's not going to be good if you go around naked ..." I have noticed a higher level of satisfaction with the clothes she wears now, and the constant outfit changes are all but gone.

Do you struggle with this? What are we as parents going to do to raise our kiddliwinks into responsible adults?

Note to self

2011-05-03T20:40:00.000+10:00

If you've been using a grungy Rock Organ sound on your keyboard for the first two songs in the set in the worship band on Sunday morning ...

... and if your next song requires a soft piano sound for the big piano introduction ...

... make sure you hit the button and change the sound from Rock Organ to Piano before that third song.

If you don't, you're just setting yourself up for humiliation.

Spike

2011-05-02T20:32:00.000+10:00

What a cool dude.

It's a hairstyle that makes his siblings call him "Spike."

But as you've probably guessed, that's not hair product.

It's cake mix. Of course.

The most outrageous thing I have ever done.

2011-05-01T20:57:00.001+10:00

I have a little girl who LOVES dresses, makeup, jewellery and nail polish. She is aghast when I tell her stories of how I spent my childhood. For example, when I was about four, my childhood boyfriend Steven (with whom I didn't enjoy my first kiss, as explained in my About Me page) and I got muddy.

We got my little blue bike with the trainer wheels and placed it on my driveway, a trainer wheel each side of our ditch-like car track with the back wheel able to spin freely in the gravel like an exercise bike.

We filled up the ditch with water and got it all nice and muddy, took it in turns to sit on the little blue bike, and pedalled for our lives. A huge fountain of mud was kicked up, and splattered all down our backs. It was awesome.

Jessie was horrified at this story, correctly surmising that Steven and I got a bit dirty. She isn't keen on getting dirty, the little princess. I don't know where she gets it from, I really don't.

She isn't really happy unless she has nail polish on. She won't let me do her nails though, and always insists on doing it herself. Note to self: research nail polishes with low toxicity.

She has asked me why I don't wear dangly earrings often, why I don't use makeup, and why I don't paint my nails. I had no real reason for these terrible lapses, and so I resolved to paint my nails. I couldn't settle on a colour. My skin tone sometimes looks a little brownish and dirty with delicate pinks or almonds, and I've never tried a bright red or anything dark. So I decided to do the most outrageous thing I've ever done in my entire life (although my father would argue that my having a third baby should take that title,) and settled on my favourite colour in the whole world:

It doesn't match my new handbag in the background, but today I wore a bright blue top to match. I felt splendid, and totally outrageous. I loved it.

Bandaid Perbole

2011-04-27T14:25:00.000+10:00

bandaid perbole (n) The request for a bandaid to cover a minor injury that doesn't need one.

It came about through a conversation where we were learning the meaning of 'hyperbole' - don't ask me why my children needed to know the meaning of 'hyperbole' - something to do with overstating the case in terms of injury, or screaming unnecessarily in the face of minor inconvenience - and when Jessie finally requested a bandaid to cover an invisible injury, I (perhaps slightly inaccurately) described it as another example of hyperbole.

"No, it's not," she chirped. "It's Bandaid Perbole."

Well, call the guys at the dictionary.

I remember

2011-04-19T21:21:00.000+10:00

I remember when it was just this little guy. He used to play by himself a lot except for when he would stand, hanging on to my legs, crying up into my face. That's the way it often goes with a firstborn.

Then this little scrap of pink was born. He had a little buddy! They were best of friends for the first few months - she would lie on her playmat and he would lie beside her. Her big brown eyes would be wide and interested as she studied everything he did. She loved him so much, and he was so gentle with her.

Then she got about this big:

...and I noticed that while they lay together communicating, she would often cry or scream in anger.

I cringe when I remember how often I would call, "Leave her alone! What are you doing to her? Why is she crying?"

That is, I used to say that until one day, I watched. On my honour, that dear old boy wasn't doing anything to her. If anything, she was only responding to an invasion of her personal space by a big brother coming in to give her a little kiss, or something.

That poor big boy. He loved her so much, and still does.

To this day, her strong, offended voice is often heard multiple times a day, accusing him of dastardly acts. To be fair, he has sometimes relied on my faith in his innocence and has used that cover to sock her a good one, but often it's just the voice of the disenfranchised girl learning how to live with brothers.

I think it's good for her. (But it means that school holidays can be really difficult for the rest of us.)

Division of Labour

2011-04-15T21:23:00.000+10:00

Buzz: Mum, can you get shoes?

Mum: I've already got shoes on.

Buzz: No, I meant you can get my shoes?

Mum: What?!? Nope, you can get your own shoes, buddy! And your own socks!

Buzz: *Sigh* Alright. I'll get my shoes and socks. (Gets both.) Now I'll do this bit ... (unwraps the pair of socks and throws both at me) ... and you can put them on me.

Kindy Pickup

2011-04-12T14:09:00.004+10:00

Yesterday's kindy pickup was completely shambolic. It had rained quite heavily a few times during the day and the world was very wet. I sighed as I unclicked Buzz and Woody and led them in through the two (Two?? Two!!) child-proof gates and into Jessie's kindy. I knew that Woody would be very difficult to detach from the joys and wonders of kindy once we were finished collecting Jessie and all her stuff.

Once we'd collected Jessie, I got busy signing her out and locating her two lost hats while holding her one unlost but dripping wet hat and her sandy shoes apart from the rest of her stuff, all while trying to insert three plastic boxes and one drink bottle into her lunch bag and zipping some newsletters into her backpack.

While I was doing this, another Mum alerted me to the fact that Woody was jumping in ankle-deep puddles and was soaked to the bone from the waist down. Sigh. Noted. Cheers.

Once I'd put Jessie's backpack on her back and her lunch bag in her hand and urged her and Buzz to walk towards the first of the two child-proof gates, I grabbed Woody and held his squirming body as tightly as I could without getting too wet myself. He threw a massive tantrum, and slipped out of my grasp.

An Unhelpful Dad tried to come to my aid. He held the second of the two gates open for us, and to make him feel like he was helping, I opened the first gate and asked Buzz to hold it open for us. I scooped screaming Woody up again and got through both gates, along with Jessie and all her stuff.

By this stage, Buzz was unsure if the Unhelpful Dad was COMING or GOING, so he continued to hold the first gate open for him in case the man was COMING. The man, who was in fact GOING, only much slower than he'd planned, tried to ask Buzz to shut the first gate and walk through the second gate so the Unhelpful Dad could shut the second gate and actually GO. Unfortunately, being both Unhelpful and a Man, the Unhelpful Dad didn't exactly use the medium of oral language to communicate this, instead grabbing poor Buzz's shirt and pulling him through the gates.

By this stage, Woody had wriggled from my grasp and had slipped back inside.

Once again he was in the ankle-deep puddle, only this time he was in Tantrum Position. I tried to get him from Tantrum Position to Standing Position by pulling one arm upwards. I don't like pulling or picking up kids by one or even both arms because I don't think their little shoulder joints or muscles can properly support their weight, however the Unhelpful Dad had no such qualms. He grabbed Woody's other arm and lifted him high over the puddles. Woody dangled like that for a few metres until I decided I could do without the Unhelpful Dad's unique style of 'help' and swooped forward to grab Woody like a barrel under my free arm. The Unhelpful Dad let go of poor Woody's arm.

Once we reached the car, I stripped Woody down to his nappy which smelled too bad to be removed meaning stinky wetness seeped into his carseat on the trip home, lost one of his brand new socks on its first wearing, and started clicking three wet and muddy children into their carseats.

During this whole fiasco, the Unhelpful Dad (who didn't know my name) had called me "Mum." He referred to me as "Mum" to my kids, he called me "Mum" to my face, and by the end I had one extremely confused four year old.

"Is that man your ...?" she struggled for the right relationship word, then tried a different approach. "Are you that man's MUM?" she asked, amazed.

I knew he was listening, so I mumbled something about how the man knew I was Buzz, Jessie and Woody's Mum, so that's what he called me.

I wonder what would have happened if I'd answered, "No, I am that man's casualty."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over to you: Please detail your opinion on the law that precludes me from leaving Buzz and Woody safely in their carseats while I do a three-minute dash into the immediately-adjacent kindy to grab Jessie and her stuff, unencumbered.

A Case of the Mondays

2011-04-11T22:21:00.001+10:00

I was busy today, and got nothing done. This usually happens when I don't write a list of the things I want to do the night before. In the late afternoon I started mentally writing a blog post detailing how I wasted a day but I realised after half an hour of mentally writing out my day that I was only up to 8:50am. That would be a very long and very boring post for writer and readers alike.

Needless to say today I only managed a protracted school run, did one load of washing, dried it in the wet weather by doing a few loads in the dryer, did one load of dishes, bought birthday presents for Jessie's upcoming birthday, took my husband out for lunch, made it through a ridiculous and totally shambolic school run (why I ever let Woody out of the car in the wet weather is beyond me), stopped children from being killed by each other or me, and made a scrummy shepherds pie for dinner.

Once I popped the pie in the oven, I packed the kids in the car again to pick up Mr de Elba from work, feeling like the day was coming to a close but realising that the hard work never ended when the recently-woken Jessie needed to do a wee on the grass but we were parked near that creek out the back of Mr de Elba's work and what do you know, we'd had some heavy storms and it was fast-moving and making whooshy sounds but not as bad as that day, nevertheless Jessie was quite scared of it and screamed a bit while half-naked and weeing on the grassy bank, anyway my job in carrying her from car to river bank and back again was complicated by the fact that on her side of the car was some roadkill which I was eager for her to avoid seeing since it had all-too-recently been someone's fluffy kitten and as we sat in the car waiting, an elderly gentleman picked it up by its tail and hurled it into the swollen creek and then I texted Mr de Elba and said please come, dinner will be getting burnt.

I knew that sentence was ridiculous, but I kept it in because it progressed in much the same fashion as the whole day.

That may sound like I achieved a lot, but it doesn't feel like a lot when at the end of the day, the pile of folding on my bed is as high as my chest, the kitchen looks like a rats' playground (not enough 'CKMT' today, apparently) and Jessie's bedroom is so messy you can't walk on the floor without stepping on clothes, supersuits and other dressups, felt pens or screwed-up paper. The folding, the kitchen and Jessie's room were the three things I really wanted to do today and since they weren't done by All-Children-In-Bed Time, they will patiently wait until tomorrow.

So. Does anyone ever get A Case Of The Tuesdays?

Baffling Blogroll

2011-04-08T20:14:00.000+10:00

Is anyone else noticing weird things happen to their blogroll? Mine seems to give random blogs a time-out for a while. I rely on my blogroll to keep up with the blogs I follow, but now it looks like I have suddenly taken a dislike to my friends, not commenting on their blogs and omitting them from my blogroll. Strange.

People Power!

2011-04-05T20:58:00.001+10:00

I never forward email forwards. I usually run the content by hoax-busting sites and find that it's all quite silly and a waste of time.

The forward I received today claimed that if we boycott buying our fuel from our largest supplier, they will reduce prices and so the smaller suppliers would follow suit to be competitive. Industrial sabotage? Snopes says it wouldn't even work.

At the end of the email it said that if 20 people were to forward it to 20 more people and so on, after 6 rounds of this, 12.8 billion people would be reached. Unimaginable People Power! It urged me to do the maths and see for myself!

No amount of permutations or combinations can make the current population of the Earth more than 6.9 billion though, and I am guessing that most of those people don't have email addresses.

Or cars.

The email finished with this inconsequential claim: "Twenty Five Point Six Billion people: Now that's people power!"

It certainly would be.

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

If you receive an email forward, please remember that these sites are your friends.

http://www.google.com.au/

http://www.snopes.com/

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

http://www.truthorfiction.com/

http://www.breakthechain.org/

And this button?

You can consider that one pretty much your Humiliation Button.

Wiping the benches and running the world

2011-04-04T21:02:00.000+10:00

Believing (as I do) that I run the world, I started wondering one day what sort of t-shirt logo could encapsulate the massive achievements I carve into each day. I thought about my work as a speech pathologist, my work in kid's ministry and my work managing a family of five. Then I looked at what my day held for me, and I knew that my logo had to be ...

ckmt today.

Because I not only run the world, I also wipe the benches after I've done it.

La-Lo, and why I don't blog often

2011-03-31T21:05:00.000+10:00

Woody came down the hallway, shouting at me. It's the language that he speaks. When I emerged, he saw me and started screaming and pointing towards the kitchen, squatting low for emphasis. It sounded urgent.

Buzz had not taken his toys away, and Jessie had not smothered him with cuddles. In order to tell me what had happened, Woody led me to the kitchen bench. I saw that he had pushed Jessie's chair up to the bench (!) and was now climbing up to where the kettle was (!) while gesturing towards the Milo tin and and screaming desperately, "La-Lo! La-Lo!"

He wanted Milo, and had found that he couldn't make it himself, the poor little dear. That was what was causing him such distress.

I was happy for him to have a drink of warm Milo, but to reinforce that I am the Milo-getter, I took the chair and child away, and hit the button on the kettle.

It took three seconds to boil.

Meaning it has been very recently boiled.

My 20 month old baby boiled the kettle to make himself some Milo.

Now this, I thought once my heart rate had returned to normal, was a bloggable moment. But I hesitated to blog it, because a common fear had arisen. "People are going to criticise me," I thought, "for allowing a universe in which Woody could push a chair up to a bench and access a kettle, even though he's never given any indication that he would think about it."

And this is why my blogging has been so patchy recently. You can hardly fail to have noticed that I don't post as often, and I can pretty confidently say it is because of the horrible people out there on the Internet. I have no fear of people wanting to find out our identities and hunt us down, but I do fear the thing that can never hurt me - words.

I've seen some ghastly things said about other bloggers, and I've had some dodgy things said to me on my blog. All of it slices through me and leaves me wanting to retreat.

For instance I recently re-read an old post where baby Woody had been bitten by Jessie during a fight between Jessie and Buzz which took place in Woody's cot. In response to the fact that something bad happened this one day that Buzz and Jessie climbed into the cot, some dastardly anonymous commenter had written, and I am not kidding,

"And what are you going to do to stop them climbing into his cot again?"

I know you're finding it hard to believe. It's true. Someone truly thought it appropriate to indicate that the whole thing would not have happened if I had somehow secured the area properly (true but outrageous) and that I should have foreseen all of this even though they always played so nicely together before (absolute lunacy.)

I don't know how someone so foolish even came to my blog. I don't usually attract that element. I usually get sound, sensible people like you.

And here we are with another domestic absurdity. What will people say about this, I wonder? That perhaps I should have foreseen the possibility that Woody would one day use that heavy chair to get to that bench to switch on that kettle? And perhaps I should have taken steps like:
► putting that specific chair into storage?
► selling my kettle?
► never allowing him to watch me make Milo?
► binding his legs together so he wasn't mobile?

Well, just in case you're wondering, that's exactly what I've done. The chair and the kettle have gone and whatwasIgoingtousethemforanyway, and I have a blindfold near the bench so he can't ever see me doing anything. I also have some strong ropes handy. Just in case.

I only mention this in case anyone reading is thinking of blasting me because Woody tried to make himself a warm Milo.

(Seriously, would I be safe to blog more? I would love to, but fear a 'Killing A Fly Without Pity' site popping up somewhere.)

(Which, incidentally, is exactly how I kill flies. Without Pity.)

Have you ever superglued something to yourself?

2011-03-26T23:05:00.000+10:00

I can honestly say I have never seen anything like this before. Words fail me.

Although I do remember doing this. Seems we all have our Superglue disasters.

What Nana doesn't know ...

2011-03-24T21:14:00.000+10:00

When Mr de Elba and I were in college, we didn't yet own a car. We rarely needed a car, and so this was okay. But once, Mr de Elba's Nana was in a hospital in the middle of Brisbane City and didn't need her car so she lent it to Mr de Elba for a few weeks because he had some events he needed to get to during that time.

The car was a little white Hyundai Excel: perfect for running around town. Mr de Elba found it tremendously useful for getting to and from his events and in the meantime it sat quite happily in the carpark out the front of his residential college.

Not the actual Excel, but it gives you the idea.

One day, I walked over to his college to visit and we whiled away some hours reading, wasting time on his computer and talking about this and that. Possibly this. We had fallen into a state of inertia and were sprawled out on the bed and floor, wondering how long it was until dinner (not unlike the minions in my care in the present day.)

We gradually became aware of a very annoying noise. It had been going on for some time but we hadn't noticed exactly when it began. It was the sound of a car horn being continually deployed in one very long beeeeep. "I wish someone would stop that," said Mr de Elba.

"It's driving me mad," I replied.

Some time passed, and then he said, "It sounds like it's coming from the carpark. I'm going to have a look." We both went out onto the balcony to look over at the carpark which contained a few groups of disgruntled college men standing around presumably to see what could be done about the car emitting the noise. We remembered our current good fortune in being lent the Excel by Nana, and swelled with pride. We scanned the carpark to check it was still there, and it was. Good.

It was around about this point in proceedings that we realised that the continuous car horn sounded not unlike the horn on the Excel. And it then took us a few seconds longer than it took you, dear reader, to grasp the inevitable truth that they were, indeed, one and the same.

We raced downstairs and into the carpark.

"We dunno whose it is," one bloke said with a shrug. "Probably gone out," another assumed.

"Um, actually..." Mr de Elba started.

"What? Is it yours?" somebody asked.

"Well it's my Nana's..." he replied weakly. And we all trooped over to the offending Excel to see what could be done. We gazed in through the window.

These were the days of those old steering wheel locks.

Nana's lock had conveniently adjusted its position during the day, and had fallen down onto the steering wheel. It fell to where it could easily depress the centre panel, which of course was the car horn. Problem solved.

Mr de Elba said, "Right, the car's locked so I'll grab the keys." It was about then that those of us still gazing in through the window saw the keys hanging in the ignition. Problem not solved, in fact.

Which do you think would take longer - for the RACQ to answer a callout to a residential college at 4pm on a lazy Sunday, or for a kind friend to drive Mr de Elba from St Lucia into the inner city of Brisbane to the hospital where Nana was to retrieve the spare keys? Mr de Elba made the quick decision to do a mercy dash into the city, find Nana's hospital room, gratefully accept the keys, remain to engage in polite conversation for a decent period of time, all the while being mindful that the horn was still blaring in a carpark 30 minutes away, and dash back.

He unlocked the door, removed the steering wheel lock and horn fell silent.

My whole body felt a physical WHUMP of relief as the noise ceased and the men went back to their rooms. In the past hour, I'd built up a fair amount of stress because of the ongoing giant-mosquito-like noise ate away at my brain. More stress had been piled on to me from being the centre of embarrassing attention, but perhaps the most stress had seeped through my bones as I witnessed what the college men were doing to Nana's Excel while Mr de Elba was away.

They had whiled away the hour by trying to halt the faltering, stuttering horn which was ever-decreasing in pitch as the battery drained away.

Men being men (and Excels being small and light,) they had busied themselves by getting three or four of them on each side of the car and rocking it violently on its suspension, trying to dislodge the steering lock.

I'm sure Nana never did that to her Excel, for any reason.

And so I judiciously chose never to tell her.

Daydawn Muesli Bars and Disappearing Berlei Briefs

2011-03-19T21:23:00.000+10:00

Sometimes, it pays to let a company know when their product doesn't come up to scratch.

When my sister was in high school, she and about a dozen of her friends were disenchanted with the new smaller size of the muesli bars produced by Uncle Toby's rival Daydawn. On a spare page of her Science notebook, she wrote a kind note to Daydawn pointing out her disappointment and asked all her friends to sign it. Daydawn thoughtfully sent her four boxes of six muesli bars each, all in very unusual flavours.

Inspired by her example, I have summoned courage to write to a company whose product's shortcomings should really be brought to their attention.

Dear Berlei,

I have always loved your products especially the black Berlei Curves Embroidery Wirefree bra, which is why, when I saw your ‘Barely There’ range of briefs, I had to give them a go.

They boasted ‘flat seams finished with velvet soft edging to help prevent ride-up’ which sounded great to me. I was in need of new underwear, and knowing that Berlei was a great brand, I bought four pairs.

In the fitting rooms at Myer, they seemed like a great fit despite the constraints of not being able to actually walk around in them, and having the Barely Theres over the top of my regular briefs.

Outside the fitting rooms at Myer, the story changed.

The Australian Dental Association recommends regular flossing, but this was ridiculous.

Without the structure of elastic in the seams, the flat-seamed velvet-edged legs of my new Barely Theres were free to slide wherever they pleased, and settled on following the path of least resistance into places where only an involved Search and Rescue could find them. And when you’re out in public, involved Search and Rescues are not quite the done thing. Especially at work.

The effect was somewhat lessened with liberal application of moisturiser to the butt cheeks, but that’s an awful lot of moisturiser in my case.

Oh Berlei, can you offer me something to soften the disappointment in my large purchase of expensive disappearing briefs? If nothing else, it’s costing me a fortune in moisturiser.

Yours,
Givinya de Elba
etc.

Have you ever written to a company? Have they assuaged your disappointment in their product?

The King's Speech

2011-03-09T20:26:00.002+10:00

A tremendously professionally interesting movie, by all accounts.

Who let the pedant out?

2011-03-08T16:59:00.000+10:00

Diabetes in the news: remember this scary government proposal? Although doctors apparently disagreed, it appeared that the government was proposing "diabetes" for us, which I was reluctant to take advantage of.

I was checking out some of the Recipe Collections on taste.com.au recently, and I noticed that when I clicked on a link, it automatically filled in the search box for me. The diabetes-friendly recipes came up with this spelling in the search box. You only have my word for it that I did not fill the search box in myself this way.I thought that somehow, the spelling "dietbeties" was appropriate, given that the recipes listed were appropriate for people with diabetes.

International Womens Day has been a time of renewed calls for equal pay for women. I am fortunate not to suffer this glass ceiling in my industry (in fact, I earn more than many men I know, but don't tell them.) This article was on a news website today:

I was surprised - I'm left wondering which industries pay a worker more if he is male, and less if she is female? I have only worked in government where the pay is the same, and in private practice where I set my fees. Can anyone tell me about where the pay discrepancy lies? I'd be genuinely interested to learn more.

The caption below the picture (of women walking to work) does offer us hope though. Perhaps women don't earn more money than men, but they do get to walk home with 84% of the men they work with, which is a good consolation prize. They could put their accumulated men to work in the home, doing the floors, washing, lawns, etc. So that's good at least.

Enemy of All Year One

2011-03-04T19:39:00.003+10:00

I take all three children into Buzz' classroom in the mornings. I have decided to manage them as well as I can in the mornings while I help Buzz get a new home reader and write the title in his folder - I figure this means I have permission not to take the little ones in to school when I pick up Buzz in the afternoons. (Buzz comes to the car by himself in the afternoons.)

Jessie is quite easily managed while we help Buzz sort out the morning routine, but Woody is another story. He
☻ walks out of the classroom
☻ sits on the big seats outside
☻ wanders back into the classroom
☻ touches some stuff
☻ drinks from three or four kids' water bottles
☻ raids the baskets of markers
☻ tries to draw on the blackboards
☻ touches some more stuff
☻ steals pencils off kids' desks
☻ tries to write on the walls
☻ walks out of the classroom again ... etcetera.

Yesterday while I was busy helping Buzz (whose real name is Nat, you might remember,) transcribe the titles of his new reading books into his folder, I realised I'd half-heard a bit of classroom chatter that was strangely repetitive.

There had been a few comments referring to the same person, and it seems that the person was fast becoming a Nuisance of Grand Proportions. A Nemesis, an Enemy of All Year One.

The name of the Nuisance was, apparently, "Natsbaby."

And Natsbaby was threatening to destroy the tiny worlds of the Year One students.

"Natsbaby has gone outside!" called one.

"Natsbaby came back in but he's got pens!" yelled another.

"Don't let Natsbaby near the books," warned a third.

One child was climbing up a stepladder, trying to find a safe place to put a hammer and some nails left by a workman. "What are you doing?" Buzz (Nat) asked his friend.

"I'm just hiding these from Natsbaby," he said, "he's trying to get 'em."

So I guess that's Woody's Nemesis Name.

When he is good,

he is very very good,

and when he is not,

he is "Natsbaby."

Hits a little close to home

2011-03-01T19:05:00.000+10:00

I wrote a new song today, while I was driving the children home. It goes to the tune of "Rock-a-bye your bear."

       Everybody cry ... Wah! Wah! Wah!
       Everybody moan ... M-o-o-o-a-a-a-n!
       Whinge to your Mother ... MUH-MEEEE!
       Then you turn around ... Yippee!

Buzz and I were in stitches, rolling about in our seats laughing. Buzz was gasping, "Whinge to your Moth... ha ha ha!"

Jessie was petulantly hissing from her corner, "It's not even funny!"

I guess someone was feeling a little challenged by the song.

A new family photo

2011-02-24T21:07:00.001+10:00

It's been 17 months since the last one!

Two New Widgets!

2011-02-23T22:17:00.001+10:00

It's almost as exciting as new underpants!

If you look over there on the left, just below the blurb about me which none of you need to read as you have formed your own conclusions, and yet you still keep coming back ... << over there << ... you will find a little widget that you can click on to Google Chat with me. If you want. And if I'm online. And if I can work the thing, once one of you decides to take the plunge and chat with me.

And over there on the right below The Killing A Fly Story which is most certainly very dull and is rarely read suggesting I should probably put all my Post Labels into something more usable instead of burying them in the text ... >> over there >> ... you will find a widget that is helpfully showcasing three random posts from the past. I wanted to put that there because I have been reading some of my old stuff, and some of it is mildly interesting. You might find it mildly interesting too.

It will be a real Forrest Gump Box Of Chocolates in that widget though. I estimate that only a fifth of the links will be entertaining, but every now and then, you should find a gem.

Like this post about when baby Jessie was too quiet. There are some darling photos of her little baby legs.

There is this post, where Buzz demonstrates a lack of manners, instead relying on an innovative method of getting what he wants.

Or this post about stupid injuries, which I was reminded of recently when I did myself the very same kitchen-scissors injury for the umpteenth time, wondering how I could be so stupid. Again.

I only wish the widget was so discerning.

Jessie, we need to talk.

2011-02-22T21:30:00.000+10:00

My sweet, it is quite one thing to get out of bed and trash the room if you can't sleep.

It is another thing to fall asleep in the mess, with your face resting on a coat hanger.

But falling asleep in a plastic box?

Surely can't be comfortable.