To finish off 2011 ...

The Many Days of Christmas

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!

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

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."

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

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!!!

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?

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

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

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.