My Drive to Work

I live in a beautiful place. But it's far away from everything. Really far. I wouldn't mind but it's really far from my work. And I go there five days a week. And back. In peak hour.

Luckily, the first twenty minutes or so are through a national park. So I get to drive through this :

And see things like this :

And then I hit the highway. And it looks like this :



So far so good. But that soon turns to this :

And then finally this :

But I don't mind. Because after an hour and a half (if I'm lucky), I get one of these :

Maxi skim mocha, just one small scoop of chocolate. Thanks for asking.







If Not Yummy Mummy, Then Who?

I read somewhere recently that the reign of the Yummy Mummy is coming to an end. Although I never actually met one of these divine creatures (not being one myself), I saw them. Everywhere. In my pre-natal classes. In the hospital ward. At the baby clinic. At mothers group. In the mall. At the park. In my nightmares. And they made me feel really, really bad about myself. I felt bad that I couldn't wear maternity hipster skinny jeans - believe me, I wanted to. I felt bad I wasn't rich. I felt bad I didn't have time to wash my hair. Oh, there were days when I was strong enough to snicker about the fact that grown women with children were actually calling themselves 'Yummy Mummies'. But mostly I felt bad. And that made me mad. I had spent my teens and twenties feeling a bit too fat, a bit too ugly, a bit too 'last year' and what I loved most about my thirties was not worrying about that stuff anymore - unless I read a magazine, visited the Clinique counter at DJs or entered a nightclub (as if!). I was overjoyed when I fell pregnant. 'Does my gut stick out in this dress?' 'Why, yes it does. And it's divine.' And then along came Yummy Mummy. Am I sorry to see her go? Hell, no.

But I am a little nervous about who will replace her. Who will we aspire to be next? CEO Mummy, Organic Eco-Warrior Mummy (please no), Olympian Mummy, Playboy Bunny Mummy? As women tend to be the ones who chose our own ridiculous benchmarks, why don't we go easy on ourselves this time and pick someone who we can be better than, or at the very least who we can get close to. Here's my vote.

I love Britney.

Jackhammer Day

My husband sometimes works with a jackhammer. Then he has a headache when he gets home and says I couldn't imagine what it's like to have a jackhammer slamming in your ears all day. I say it must be terrible but I don't think too much about it. I never work with jackhammers.

At 6am today Jarvis wouldn't let Fletch borrow his Ninja Turtle undies so Fletch screamed. Then Jarvis screamed. Then I screamed. Then we all screamed. Then I went to work.
At 7.30am one of the girls at work sat in my office and told me the longest story about something I didn't care about. In my head I was still screaming. And I wanted coffee.
At 8am two of my staff wanted me to referee an argument they were having. I imagined they were cockatoos screeching at each other. We didn't work it out.
At 9am my phone started ringing. And ringing. And ringing. It didn't stop.
At 10am kindy rang and said my husband couldn't make it to 'Making Things with Daddy' and maybe I could come so my baby didn't feel abandoned. The activity was pieces of wood and hammers. And 30 toddlers. And their dads. And it didn't stop until midday. I had to go back to work. I wanted to go shopping.
At 1pm I had a meeting. Everyone talked a lot. About nothing. For 2 hours. I talked a lot about nothing too.
At 3pm I did a farewell speech for someone I don't like. Everyone laughed too loud. I smiled so much my face hurt.
At 4.30pm I got in the car and sat in it for a really long time. I was moving. It just didn't feel like it.
At 6pm I served dinner. My husband wasn't hungry. The boys said they didn't like it. Jarvis remembered he wanted bikkies. I ate a sausage on a roll with onions, jalapenos and ranch dressing and wished I was American. Or at least, in America.
At 7pm I had a shower with the boys. They like the echoes in the shower when you yell.
Today was a jackhammer day.

Diet

Monday 3rd October 9am - I started a diet today. I have started a diet almost every Monday for the last 20 years, but I have a really good feeling about this one. I’m even thinking of calling it a lifestyle change instead of a diet because it’s really about being healthy, isn’t it? And weight loss would be an added bonus? (I’m struggling a little bit with that but it’s early days yet). So my mindset today is that I’ll change the way I eat to be healthy, not because I really want to wear skinny jeans. But I really, really, really want to wear skinny jeans.
What’s my plan? It’s simple and obvious. Eat less, move more. No more Celebrity Slim (but how yummy is the cookies and cream shake?), cabbage soup, Atkins, South Beach, food combining, fasting, Zone, cookie diet, Dr Hay, grapefruit, Israeli Army, colonic irrigation (sorry, but I’m just keeping it real), fat free, Medifast, Pritikin, Scarsdale, VLC or Weight Watchers. Actually, to be fair to Weight Watchers I have lost about a hundred kilos with them. That’s right. 100kg. How did I do that? I joined up and lost about 10kg every year for 10 years.
So I’m going to eat more fruit, pack my lunch, use the stairs at work and stop eating cake. I am positive this is going to change my life.

Monday 3rd October 5pm … Oops.

Moving On

When we first moved into this house, I had very mixed feelings. We moved in a rush and really only took it because there was nothing else in the area. We also knew it would probably only be available for a year and that wasn't ideal. I eventually decided to take it on the proviso that we could move again to somewhere I liked after six months.

But day by day, it started growing on me. Six months came and went and I said it was because I couldn't be bothered packing and moving again. Then spring came and we knew if we had to move again in the new year as expected, we really needed to find something soon as houses in our area are in huge demand in the summer. I looked at a few places and passed up a gorgeous house a stone's throw from the beach. Because of the expense of moving. Allegedly.

Then, a fortnight ago, the agent called and asked if we wanted to sign a lease for another six months and I said absolutely. I wanted to spend the summer here and that would take us through to March or so then I could find my dream house. And I was secretly happy. I asked him to let me know when we could sign the papers.

Yesterday, I had some friends over and as I showed them around, it hit me. I was in absolute love with this house. While I was putting the kids shoes on so we could take our guests down to the creek in our yard (we have a slight snake issue ... nothing major but we have a 'shoe rule' for the backyard) I got an email from the agent. Yay! The lease is ready. Except not. We got our notice. The owner is moving back sooner than expected. We've got til January but with the summer rush here, we can't afford to wait. I was supposed to host Christmas here. I planted veggies last week.

While I sat in shock pondering 'house karma', our four year old visitor ran up and said he and Jarvis had found a snake. I thought it was probably wishful thinking on his part becuase despite our recent episode, it's not really snake season yet. Nevertheless, I went down into the yard, shoeless, and there was indeed a snake. Jarvis told me not to worry, it was just a python, he'd patted it and it hadn't bitten him. "See Mum, no bites". I had a small heart attack. Our reptile loving pre-teen neighbour came over to scare it away and found two more. He asked me for a bag and a rope because one was something he hadn't really seen before and he wanted to catch it. It was a brown snake, not unheard of around here but not at all welcome in my yard, especially with Jarvy's snake-patting habit.

It was like the snake came to tell me the house wasn't the right one for us so I felt better about having to move. We haven't had a full summer here yet and I'm not sure I can survive the reptile invasion. I looked at two houses today. We're going to be okay.

My Garden

I've never had a garden before. We lived in houses when I was growing up but I never really noticed the gardens. I've lived in flats for the last 20 years and have been lucky to keep a pot plant alive.

We moved into this house in January this year and it has more garden than you could ever want. Nobody had lived there for a while and it was a pretty hot and harsh summer, so it was a bit sparse but we weeded, pulled up dead stuff and watered and watered and watered. Winter came and everything was so lovely and green but I'm not a gardener and didn't really know what was planted there.

This spring has been awesome. Every day, something new appears. It's a bit of a hodge podge but I really love it.

We have these :

And these :

And some of these :

And tons of these (I love them) :

And we also have one of these :

Yes, that's my porch roof. Yes, I sit under it every day. Yes, that's my lounge room right through those doors. Yes, my kids leave the doors open every time they go out. Yes, it's September. Yes, snakes are supposed to be hibernating.

We might move back to a flat this summer. Still deciding.

The Christmas Layby. Never Again.

I have always been most organised with my Christmas preparations. I keep an eye out through the year for the perfect gifts for my family and friends. I’ve always finished shopping by September and usually have everything wrapped by October – I buy cards and wrapping in the New Year sales. I keep spreadsheets for shopping and referencing previous gifts.

This hasn’t happened the last few years as I’ve had the two children (instead of one or none!) and last year I even had to send the husband out on Christmas Eve as I had forgotten so many things. The gift wrap did not match and it all made me feel very itchy. I vowed it could never happen again.

Last year started off well. In June, the major stores all had their mid-year sales and offered Christmas lay-bys. I’d never noticed these before but they seemed just the thing for me. Do all your shopping in one go, have six months to pay for it and not have to store everything at home.

So I organised a babysitter and headed off with my marked catalogues. Just like every other person on the planet apparently. The stores were chaotic, the good stuff was sold out (the cynic in me wondered if it ever existed), the staff were rude and frazzled and the lay-by lines were loooong. But I persevered and filled a trolley for November birthdays, stocking fillers and tons of other stuff. And then I waited in line. For a really long time. Luckily, that made my fervour for the Christmas lay-by cool down enough to realise that not everyone I know would really want a Christmas gift from Big W. Let alone from the Big W Mid-Year Sale-a-Thon. So by the time I reached the check-out, my trolley was almost empty.

A few days later, when the trauma wore off, I felt slightly smug that I had at least a portion of my shopping done, and someone else was storing it for me. All I had to do now was make my fortnightly payment. And do the rest (the majority) of my Christmas shopping – but I was a bit in denial about that.

But that was in June. Then in mid-October and I only had $8.00 left to pay. I couldn’t figure out how to stretch that out over 5 more fortnights, so it looked like I would be storing the junk after all. Why junk? Well, in June Ben-10 and Batman were the heroes of the day. By Christmas, they were dead to us. So I essentially had a trolley load of unusable DVDs, pyjamas, underwear and books. And I still had to do the rest of the shopping.

Not sure what this year's plan of attack will be ... am I thinking about this too early?