anonymous was a woman

Running genes

2011-05-05T16:33:00.005+10:00

Not from my side of the family at all - my claim to sporting fame is having got a compound fracture of the arm by falling over in a backwards-running race. These days they don't do novelty races for the athletically challenged, they just have everyone participate. I actually like the idea of that better as the novelty races were totally humiliating, even before the accident. (I graduated to being sent as far outfield as possible when playing any sort of ball game. Mostly I would then be away with the fairies whenever a ball came anywhere near me, but if I was alert enough to realise the ball was coming I would cower down at grass level with my arms over my head. This did not endear me to my team-mates nor the sports teacher.)

Anyway. Today at their primary school cross-country day Running Boy came fourth and Cheekus came eighth. (Last year Princess ran for the first time ever; in the preceding six years she had walked-and-chatted with assorted friends. She came a very creditable 20th with no preparation whatsoever.) RB's result was terrific for a sprinter over 3 km; CW's was totally unexpected as his only purposes for going to Little Aths appear to be to socialise and to inveigle his way into pushing the equipment trolley at pack-up time.

And to chase the beetles which one evening fell from the sky, we don't know why.

The dreaded stairs

2011-01-30T12:13:00.001+11:00

Who says engineers are dour? Not me...

Floods

2011-01-13T16:22:00.005+11:00

By now everyone everywhere must know about the floods in Queensland. This story brought me undone.

We're lucky, the people we know are safe. I haven't been online for yonks and I'm wondering if the crafting community is getting mobilised for flood relief the way it did for the Victorian bushfires in 2009? Otherwise, if you're local here are some ways to help; for the others, the Salvoes say donating money is the best thing to do at present.

I remember helping to sort goods donated for bushfire victims and although many things were superb and most obviously very well-meant there were too many decrepit strollers smelling of old wee, tattered lamps, obviously incomplete toy sets and so on - it looked suspiciously as if people had taken the chance to upgrade and told themselves they were being good by donating the junk they were replacing. It was still junk. There was a small mountain of stuff that simply could not be given to anyone, let alone those who had been through the bushfires. Mind you, there were many toys we volunteers thought were good but were directed to reject. The strangest thing I remember seeing was a huge crate of sweet potatoes. As we finished, pallets were made up and shrinkwrapped to send out: a load of portacots; a load of new sleeping bags donated by the manufacturer; a load of high chairs in various conditions. One day, a harried and upset woman came through to pick out particular things for a family that had been burnt out. She was a relief co-ordinator and was trying to assemble a household's worth of essentials, knowing that many of the things - a wardrobe for instance - would not be there. I don't know how much of her list she was able to find.

Anyway. Crafter I'm not, but if anything's being organised let me know.

That's that, then

2010-12-07T12:12:00.004+11:00

About a week ago I was made-redundant-by-surprise. There were some post-termination negotiations as a result of which I can't say anything more, except that if anyone is looking for a rather good senior *****r I may be interested. Cheers!

Hallelujah

2010-12-01T22:03:00.000+11:00

I like this!

Happy ummmm

2010-11-04T20:20:00.003+11:00

After only 17 years of marriage the CEO can be forgiven for forgetting it was my birthday...

There's a new frog in town

2010-10-19T22:44:00.003+11:00

We have two new frogs courtesy of J's Mum's weariness with cricket procurement and enclosure-cleaning. I have to admit that relative to a dog or even a guinea-pig, frogs do not give a great deal back in terms of companionship. J is one of Cheekus' Four First Row Best Friends. He has seven Third Row Best Friends, one of whom is the only girl in any Row, and strangely only two Second Row Best Friends.

I now have two young Spotted March Frogs. They have less appealing faces than my eight remaining Southern Browns but have beautfully patterned - spotted - skins. The little one is rather green and the bigger one is brownish grey. They are slightly less shy than the brownies and like to sit in the water. The marshies have little claws and no webbing on their feet; they can't climb very well but they swim with great verve.

The brownies like to hide in curled-up leaves and look faintly horrified at being made to swim. They like to clamber up the sides of their container using their suction-toed little treefrog feet. I think there is no doubt the brownies are obese. Their bellies bulge out all over, they ignore crickets sauntering brazenly past them and a representative sample (one) failed the hop test. This is when you let a frog climb to the top of the box, hop off, and then gently encourage it to keep hopping in the grass by moving a hand close up behind it. (No contact required.) My sample brownie managed three short, floppy, rather pathetic hops before deciding that being eaten by a hand probably wasn't so bad after all and staying put. If anyone knows of some helpful frog-conditioing exercises let me know.

First ladybird of the season

2010-10-12T22:42:00.004+11:00

She landed on Running Boy's collar and after being transferred to my finger, waddled up to the tip and flew majestically off; but her children were gone.

Attack of the Nerfs

2010-10-11T22:10:00.003+11:00

Cheekus Weekus got $20 for his birthday from fabulous Auntie S.

Footy cards? "Sold out" said two newsagents, "end of the season".

Lollies? "No." said I, "not birthday money and not twenty dollars' worth". This sparked some very impressive sulking and sooking, if Princess had been quicker with the camera vid we would be looking at an AFI Award, category Short Fiction.

Quick thinking found the local toy shop still open. While Princess Pea was trying to persuade him to buy Lego knights (armoured horse, two guards and a prisoner in a cart - "because we only have one gaol and we all always want it") he found The Best Toy Ever: a Nerf gun for $19.95. Following "TV is for weekends", "only home-made sweets" and "all kids in bed by 8:30", the "no toys of war" rule has fallen in a sad little heap. It's been confiscated once already after Running Boy could not resist firing a sticky-dart at my bum and later got Cheekus in the face. I'm told this was an accident, Cheekus popped up from a redoubt unexpectedly. The bumshot, however, was not.

Showtime

2010-09-26T20:01:00.003+10:00

Yesterday we went to the Royal Melbourne Show even though Running Boy's team was in the Grand Final. He was well rewarded with a draw and re-match next week.

We saw animals - the boys lasted through two rounds of showjumping, enough for Princess Pea to pick up basics such as clear rounds and tight vs long lines. We went on the Crazy Coaster which was terrifying. We looked unsuccessfully for the snake man, the kids hoping for a repeat of last year's "The snake wee'd on Mum!" excitement.

There was a break for dodgem cars where Cheekus Weekus put hours of Top Gear viewing into successful practice. My chiro will be forever grateful. We recovered with a bit of woodchopping championships enlivened by a female competitor nearly losing her dacks, which seemed to slow her pace a bit, and a small boy of perhaps thirteen coming third in the States Juniors ahead of several strapping great seventeen-year-olds.

On to the Animal Nursery; a chook fell asleep in Princess' lap and everyone fretted about a lamb looking for its mum and an ewe looking for its lamb. (They didn't seem to match.) There was a litter of very young piglets with their sleepy mother; there was a gorgeous donkey foal.

It got dark. Foolishly I disclosed the existence of the Showbag Shed, which used to be called the Hall of Manufactures. (Last year, their first Show year, I fobbed them off with one of the carnival-side, limited-choice caravans.) Agonising decisions later it was hometime. "You're the best, Mum!" said Cheekus. "You got me three showbags and you only get cross about once every two weeks!"

In which enthusiasm outruns ability

2010-09-20T21:29:00.003+10:00

For the last four years, ever since Cheekus was old enough to stand up on skis without cracking it, the big family extravagance has been to go skiing once a year. This year we stayed at Feathertop Lodge with another family. The kids made a tribe and the grownups talked, drank wine, watched the footy and skiied in various child/adult combinations. It was fabulous.

We went up a couple of days before the lovely Gs, bundled our lot into ski school and took off. The snow was powdery newfallen on deep base, the sky was blue, there was almost nobody else there and it took us very little time to get our ski-legs again. Soon we had warmed up enough to do Father Fosters, a nice tight little low-end black run.

Even though the CFO is eight inches taller than me, fit and naturally athletic I was skiing so well (really) I thought it was time to put him in his place.

"I saw your leg bend sideways" said the CFO helpfully.

Quotes

2010-09-20T00:25:00.004+10:00

Coming home from a week at Falls Creek:

Princess Pea: "Well even though the snow fight was a draw we really won a bit."
Running Boy: "Mum, how do you make a home-made bomb?"
Cheekus Weekus: "Zzzzz. Snnnrrrrk."

Fishies

2010-09-02T21:13:00.004+10:00

RIP Crowntail.

Running Boy adored him for about a fortnight. Both boys bought Bettas (Siamese fighting fish) and set-ups with saved and pooled money and a bit of a parental contribution for cleaning their room up - a bit.

We never saw Crowntail eat and we think he starved to death. We have no photo of him. After emergency talks with the staff at a different petshop we bought food that bettas actually recognise as food, which apparently isn't the case with the food supplied in the "everything you need" betta kits. Cheekus' Weekus' Longtail is doing just fine. Once we were sure we all had the hang of it, Running bought another fishy, totally parentally funded, which was the deal for finishing off the worst bits of the room, totally re-arranging it and clearing out Underthebed.

We also bought bristlenoses, one for each tank. I'm not at all convinced by shopping-centre claims that bettas are perfectly happy all alone in tiny bare jars. They may well survive (apparently they have a special organ that helps them cope with still, unaerated water in small spaces) but it looks a pretty wretched sort of existence to me, so our bettas got bigger tanks, live plants and a companion each. Apparently bristlenoses are suitable tankmates because they don't have bright colours to spark up the bettas' fighting instincts, they aren't going to nip the bettas' lovely tempting floating fins and they truffle about in little corners vacuuming up gunk. Perfect.

At one stage Longtail was overly interested in Fatty. Lots of experimental nips and rushing at hiding places. Fatty responded by fanning his or her tail out to an enormous size and whacking Longtail in the face. They have reached an understanding that seems to involve Longtail sulking in a nest at the top of the waterweed and Fatty gluing itself mouthfirst to the side of the tank. This allows everyone to watch its mouth and belly in action and has made him or her quite popular.

Starry Night, who is a halfmoon and therefore hideously expensive - for a fish - and Stickytape got along brilliantly from the beginning. They amicably shared the hiding spots at the bottom of the tank right up until last night, when Running realised Stickytape hadn't moved all day. Sure enough, we had a deceased bristlenose. S/he is currently wrapped in a tissue awaiting a decent burial. So far as we can tell Starry Night doesn't seem to be mourning.

BTW looking for pictures of fish for this post turned up, amongst other things, Sailor Moon characters (probably predictable) and Yoda. True dinks.

A s$^% of a day. Well, week really. Um, life?

2010-08-18T21:11:00.005+10:00

Uncle T died last Friday, about two months after he decided enough was enough and to stop the chemo. We all miss him very much so although his funeral this afternoon was a celebration of him rather than an outpouring of grief, it was not fun. He was a character; he was full of life; he was generous and sharp-witted and adored his family (including two wives and a later partner); he could be irascible; he was a terrific saxophonist.

This evening I backed my wonderful car straight into the hinge of somebody's ute (and clearly he thought it more wonderful than my car) in the carpark having dropped Running to basketball practice and about to ferry Princess to dance class. I was less than gracious to another mum who beetled out in the middle of post-prang discussions to ask me for subs or something. I blamed the Princess for the accident on the grounds that she had been whingeing at me immediately beforehand. Going to get fish-and-chips, me and the kids were almost run down by somebody who didn't feel the need to stop at a red-light pedestrian crossing. As I sat down to eat, accompanied in my case by a glass of red, the Princess helpfully reminded me about my resolution to drink only on the weekends.

My contract at work is up for renewal and the renewal negotiations have been going not really terribly well. Infuriatingly, I have to concede things because while the CFO's new business builds up I am the breadwinner.

Yesterday the Princess said how nice it was when her cousin the Bella picks them up from school as all the other girls envy her for having such a young and beautiful mother.

I might not have entirely disclosed to the CFO exactly how many people are turning up to our election-night party this weekend. He likes small gatherings, very rarely. I don't!

And the diamond doves have eaten all the grass seed, so the backyard is still mostly mud.

Double naughtiness

2010-08-15T21:17:00.008+10:00

Buying Papa Meilland and Souvenir de la Malmaison comprised the first naughtiness of the afternoon, because I have already put in Margaret Merril and I had told myself one baby rose was plenty to nurse through summer. But I also resisted buying Rosa Mutabilis, Aoteoroa, Scentimental and Penelope, so I think it evens out.

The Eastern Common Froglets (I think) have started spawning at my favourite nursery so I will have to decide how many frogs is enough for one family and whether I should acquire any more spawn-encrusted pond plants.

The second naughtiness was finding out my Mum's garden has Green Goddesses tucked in a corner just behind Dad's astronomy dome and deciding to get some from her, even though I had earlier been told by that same favorite nursery that they don't stock these because arum lilies can't keep themselves nice in Australia. So I didn't tell them about the plain white arums I'd bought by mail-order, wished callas came in green, and wandered off to have another coochie-coo at the tads.

Black Saturday report

2010-08-03T22:45:00.003+10:00

The Royal Commission into the 2009 Victorian bushfires has now handed down its final report. Read it here. I think you would have to be a very unusual person to be a Commissioner, to sit through the most awful evidence imaginable and still turn your mind to making things better.

I hope these recommendations don't get buried and forgotten. I thought people could never forget Ash Wednesday's impact. I remember driving past the nightmare wreckage of Lorne and Anglesea - my grandparents' caravan was burnt out at Anglesea - and some weeks later going to a party in Bendigo with a friend, how we stopped chattering when we passed the first burnt-out chimney. There were no fit words.

We had a Royal Commission into Black Friday too; yet the same things happen over and again. Heroes like Mr Sigmund do emerge but over and over again the transcripts show rules becoming more important than their purpose. I have little faith that even with an election imminent the State Government will do anything except produce more wretched spin. Can you imagine a mum scrambling frantic kids into a car ahead of a firestorm sayng "now come on, we have to get to the Neighbourhood Safer Place!" Apparently there is no scope to nominate an area that's better than nowehere-at-all-to-run, so some towns don't even have a NSP. Places that saved lives aren't good enough.

Rest in peace and may we finally learn some lessons.

Everybody needs good Neighbours

2010-07-21T11:53:00.003+10:00

Courtesy of the Neighbours location scouts we have a bikie hive in our neighbourhood today and tomorrow. I have no idea what the storyline is.

That street is full of production trucks and as we walked to school this morning Cheekus Weekus and I saw motorbikes being unloaded. I fancied a brilliant green chopper and Cheekus had his eye on a maroon-and-black cruiser, a black-studded Harley and a very cool bike with Hot Wheels flames on the tank. We also got to see a stuntperson (we think) riding up to work, one awesome rider. Cheekus was a bit worried about her getting hurt doing stunts but reasoned out that they would all have practised first, "probably on soft sand for when they fell over".

On the way back I witnessed some action, a local bus struggling to get past a production truck. A roadie got harangued by an elderly brolly-waving passenger, the bus moved on, and it was all over.

That's quite enough now frogs

2010-06-30T00:11:00.003+10:00

We're down to about 8 frogs now. I put their box in the winter sun and didn't notice for an hour or so that the lid was loose. Only one seems to have got out; the rest know when they're onto a good thing ie a steady stream of crickets. It was a male. Only the males call and the box has been very quiet for a day or two, so I figured we had lost the only remaining boy.

At one stage the kids had named our frogs and christened a pair of likely lads Bradley and Dumbledore. They immediately became indistinguishable from every other frog we had, except Matilda. We know she is still with us because of her whale-like proportions and very pale skin.

Last night around sunset Bradley (or Dumbledore) happily sang his usual evening song from somewhere in the garden. I rushed about with a torch but of course he promptly shut up, and anyway was hiding.

Around 3 am the awful truth emerged. Bradley (or Dumbledore) had not been the last boy. He had simply been the loudest. Bradley and Dumbledore manfully croaked at each other for a good half an hour, Bradley (or Dumbledore) from the garden and Dumbledore (or Bradley) from the frogbox in the hallway right outside our bedroom. They have now been renamed Bloody Frog 1 and Bloody Frog 2.

Melted Moments

2010-06-14T22:47:00.004+10:00

Success story: Thanks to Sarah, I found a recipe for chocolate chip bikkies (we do not eat "cookies" in this house) which worked. I used 200g instead of 400g of chocolate and about 170g rather than 200+g of chopped nuts and the biscuits were still delicious. "Baking soda" is what we call bicarb. The quantities were generous so there are still two rolls of uncooked dough in the freezer.

Not-a-success story: Tweaking the bikkie recipe worked. Not following the steps for Melting Moments didn't. If you dump everything in a bowl in a frenzy because the Bella and twinnies are coming over for afternoon tea and you are only halfway through your planned cooking, you don't get a buttery lump of fragile dough as you do if you cream the butter and sugar first. You get custard-powder coloured breadcrumbs that sort of clump together but can't be worked.

Do not be tempted to add extra butter. You will produce sad flat little buttons totally incapable of being stuck together to make yoyos. (Nonetheless they all disappeared, and anyway the twinnies prefer chocolate, ideally all over their faces.) The bread in the background is no-knead, which is so 2009 but still delicious.

Postscript: A pair of ten-year-old boys absorbed in boy stuff at the kitchen bench will not investigate, respond to or fetch an adult regarding strange loud explosive blopping sounds from the stove. So much for the gingered pumpkin soup.

My garden at the end of May

2010-06-06T21:28:00.006+10:00

At the end of May:

The mulberry is shedding its leaves...

the camellias are full-budded and beginning to bloom...

there are piles and piles of autumn leaves from a productive afternoon of raking by Cheekus and me (which will leave the lawn tidy until at least tomorrow, unless the piles prove irresistible). Don't laugh. It is so a lawn. You should have seen what the vendors left behind.

The vegie patch is tragic and totally unphotographable, but the little lemon tree has excelled itself...

and bulbs are starting to shoot out of the earth.

We had a tiny queen visit too.

Dial before you dig

2010-06-03T22:29:00.010+10:00

This is a pot-bound rose from a few house renovations ago. I thought it was time it went in the garden.

This is a mattock.

These are tree roots.

This, it turns out, is not. (Hint: If it doesn't break when you tug it and it's actually straight and it's rather cold...even if it is rough and brown...don't use a large metal tool to try and break it up. Luckily the ring of metal-on-metal penetrated my brain in time.)

Going up and coming down

2010-05-16T21:48:00.004+10:00

Today we went up to Monbulk for a belated Mothers' Day celebration with my lovely mother-in-law. There are more matriarchs in our families than can be visited in a single day.

First I took Cheekus Weekus to a rollerblading party at Caribbean Rollerama. For some unfathomable small-boy reason he spent the first ninety minutes refusing even to acknowledge he was at a party. Thankfully he eventually thawed out and whizzed very happily and competently around the rink with the others. I had promised Princess Pea I would skate with her, so I did. Most of my left palm is black-and-blue because that's what I mostly landed on. (The CFO took Running Boy to his footy match, which sadly the Under 10 Blacks lost. Again. It looks like being a character-building season.)

We love being up in the hills but usually we go straight to Granny May, and straight back. Today I was behind the wheel, the only adult in the car and I went off the straight-and-narrow in search of fresh chestnuts! There were only muted objections from the back seat. Bella Vista has lovely fat glossy nuts and also hazels and walnuts. It must be well-known in some circles as there seemed to be a constant stream of people going in buying kilos of them. Later the kids and I played Giant's Treasure with a slightly souvenired golfball while the CFO and his Mum chatted. Happy, happy day.

Nick R the Second

2010-05-12T21:04:00.007+10:00

After helping the CFO wash dishes so that my breakfast could be cooked for me (and very good it was too) I went to the Stitches and Craft Show on Sunday afternoon, all by myself, as my Mothers' Day treat. I bought a little bag pattern from Nikki and a kinder girls pattern from Jodie and a Pippijoe basket kit. Now all I have to do is make them up. Easy.

Today was much more special. It seems happiness is a genuine St Kilda guernsey. Happy tenth birthday Running Boy! In his honour here is his favourite YouTube clip. Actually it's his second favourite but I can't stand to hear singing guineapigs any more.

BTW can anyone tell me how to do weblinks but without all the http stuff turning up - ie to make a tagline or word that acts as a link when clicked? [Edit - thankyou Stomper Girl, it worked...now my blog is just a little bit easier to read!]

Lest we forget

2010-05-08T21:35:00.007+10:00

We all went to the Dawn Service. The CFO started this four or five years ago when we lived in South Yarra, taking Running Boy one year, Princess Pea another. Once we all went, but Cheekus Weekus was simply too little and wriggled and whined the whole way through. He wasn't sure he wanted to go this year but we explained that I wanted to go too, and he was too young to look after himself at home in the dark.

It was dark when we got up and left around 4:30 am, all rugged up. We passed special Anzac Day busses and little streams of people on foot joining up and thickening into rivers and then a crowd, an ocean.

We were quiet through the Last Post and patiently worked our way up the steps to lay poppies. I was the only one who got told off for bad behaviour, scandalising a nice old feller by forgetting to take off my beanie when I stepped into the Shrine.

We had bacon-and-eggs for breakfast at exorbitant Anzac Day prices which sent the CFO into conniptions. Then we climbed trees along Domain Rd, sending a busybody old trout into conniptions. Such larks.

Dragonfly

2010-04-30T22:19:00.003+10:00

Walking for my afternoon coffee today I passed a big dragonfly resting on a low fence. The street is busy and people seem determined to crush small things; I have even seen a poor flattened gecko. I doubled back and the dragonfly came easily onto my finger. It wiped its eyes and was still. To my embarassment the lovely barrista at my favourite cafe saw I was trying to hide something under the takeaway counter. She thought I had done my finger again. Its wings started to hum. As I lifted my hand up to show her - she cooed, it was a lovely little creature - it started to take off. I caught it and sprinted outside and away it sailed. Here it is as its wings flickered while it decided whether a cafe was a good place to fly.

Autumn & spongecake

2010-04-18T20:27:00.004+10:00

Yesterday we dropped by a local church's market-day and although tempted by butterfly wreaths we bought only a sponge cake.

Today Princess Pea decorated it for afternoon tea, with intermittent help from Cheekus Weekus. The five of us have eaten the whole thing. It was a real CWA-style light-as-a-feather beauty.

Later Princess cooked on the stove for almost the first time, roo steaks. Yum (but no photos - she got a bit cranky over the for-the-blog cake photos so I'd stopped).

Silkworms

2010-04-14T12:04:00.014+10:00

RIP Fred, some time ago. S/he made several unsuccessful attempts to spin a cocoon, went into metamorphosis as a sort of insect mummy-thing and quietly passed away without ever emerging as a moth.

Fred was the only survivor of our final batch of eggs.

When Princess Pea was very little, we were given five silkworms from the class batch by her lovely, very kind pre-prep teacher. Toddler Running Boy wrapped them in a tissue and raced about the house whizzing the bundle up and down in his little hand. "I am taking them for a rocket ride" he said indignantly when asked. "They like it." They did not. After several more, forbidden, rocket rides, the traumatised caterpillars refused to eat and wasted away gruesomely.

We tried again with some Grade 1 silkworms and did too well. (I asked the relief teacher to have one or two at the end of the year and got the whole damned lot, to Princess' ecstatic joy.) Within a few generations there were multitudes. The CFO and I took to releasing as many as we could "back into the wild", being the Peter Pan and Wendy AIDS Memorial Garden on Commercial Rd Prahran. This was mostly mulberry trees and where we got most of the silkworms' meals. The kids agreed, eventually, to keep only a few eggs. Unfortunately the batch we chose from this generation was dud. Few hatched and fewer survived.

I should have known when to stop but we'd planted a young mulberry tree. After we moved it had been too hard monitoring each footpatch-accessible mulberry tree between work & home and covertly harvesting leaves. We couldn't stomach any repeat of the Great Lettuce Disaster. (We tried feeding them lettuce and it must have been sprayed with insecticide - the silkworms went into convulsions and died, some like hard rubber and pink, some liquefied. We explained to the kids that vets generally did not treat silkworms. Of course some lived but the Princess believes genetic damage must have caused the end of their line.)

The petshop where we get crickets for the frogs had "seasonal" boxes of silkworms for sale. Snakes or large frogs must like them. They were exorbitantly expensive,

but here we go again: these are their offspring, next year's silkworms.

Chestnuts mean Autumn

2010-04-13T23:52:00.010+10:00

When I was a child my Mum, my sister and I would go to Emerald Lake around Easter to look for chestnuts.

The trees next to the lake were always picked bare so we would head over the little hill at the back, past the stream (where once we found tadpoles) into the groves. We always managed to come home with a few. Your fingers stung from wriggling the glossy brown nuts out of their prickly cases. Often there was nothing there, or a tiddler rejected by prior fossickers, needled fingers for no return. Sometimes you would find a big fat nut...after the possums had. But we always got a few worth eating.

We'd take our booty home and put them on the coals and wait. When they exploded we would pick them out with the tongs and peel off the casing and eat them with salt, the nuts hot and slightly charred.

Now, sometimes up in the hills I've convinced the CFO to pull over so I can buy cooked or raw chestnuts by the roadside, but it's not the same. I have also bought them roasted in the CBD from footpath braziers, but again it is not the same. A proper chestnut is too hot to handle, burst, floury and delicious. I tried roasting some in the oven but this was an utter waste of effort. The children (and the CFO) have been less than captivated.

Today at the Prahran Market several stalls had big, fat, tight shiny nuts and I couldn't resist. While Princess Pea finished her school project on Debussy far too late tonight I roasted some. They were fabulous and she and I and the CFO ate the whole bowl. Chestnuts mean autumn! And I told her the story behind Smetana's Trio in G, as autumn also means reflection.

More frogging

2010-04-11T21:27:00.007+10:00

The frogs are now about full-grown. Some of them are incredibly fat, like odd-coloured ping-pong balls. We've identified them as Southern Brown Tree Frogs (Littoria Ewingii), very common and not needing a licence to be kept in Victoria. http://frogs.org.au/frogs/frog.php?frog_id=3

About once a week we trawl through the frogbox, sifting leaf-litter and looking under their bits of bark. We catch them and give them a swim. It's not clear whether they enjoy this but at least it livens up their day.

We remove any dead crickets or mouldy stuff, refill the swimming tray with clean water and reassemble the habitat.

If it's sunny we watch them swim and kick and climb and we chase any that get out of the swimming box (usually a lot. At the same time. In as many directions as possible.). Then they go back in their frogbox with fresh crickets to hunt.

However the census has been dropping. It hit a high of 31, then dropped to 20, and this week we had only 15. Evidently they haven't read the Act and are releasing themselves into the wild. These days we keep their box on the front porch.

Sadly this was too late for one.

Happy Easter

2010-04-05T20:19:00.004+10:00

We did pretty well this Easter.

We found lots of Easter eggs (even though some had been eaten by possums

and some were cunningly hidden in plain view).

We made it to church on time where Princess Pea socialised, Running Boy generally behaved himself extremely well other than a bit of sliding up and down the irresistibly slippery pew and Cheekus Weekus tried his crawling-under-the-pews trick again, only to be confronted by a small fierce Mum (me) who wouldn't let him escape; then he cracked the sads because there was no water. I got a special blessing for my finger at Communion.

Now we are all full of chocolate, happy and lazy.

Thomas the Tank Engine reads in the Fitzroy Gardens with Monsieur Truffe

2010-04-02T23:09:00.015+11:00

Today was glorious. We played with our ginormous collection of Thomas the Tank Engine things, accumulated over very many birthdays and Christmases. We built a track that went right round the house and made a train that used all of our engines and trucks. There were a satisfying number of very loud train wrecks.

Later, four of us went off to buy the CFO's birthday presents. I used to adore the Monsieur Truffe stall at Prahran Market and was delighted to find he has simply relocated to a little cafe in Collingwood: http://ieatidrinkiwork.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8365. The croissants are delicious, all butter and crispness, and the chocolates extraordinary. Running Boy and Cheekus Weekus tasted every variety of truffle, several times, before we settled on raspberry, lime and passionfruit . I also bought some chocolate-coated ginger for my Mum and only dribbled a little bit listening to the very Frrrench Thibault.

Then we drove past the Fitzroy Gardens and there was no reason to say "no" when they begged to get out. We played forty-forty and chasey and climbed a venerable fig tree and looked at ducks and little buggly things in the pond. We talked about how wonderful it would be to have the gardens, or at least that tree, in our backyard and we planned treehouses.

Last we swung by Readings in Carlton to howls of protest, quashed (sort of) when I pointed out we still had to get some of Daddy's presents. Cheekus refused to leave the car for some time. Then Readings worked its magic and it was much more than an hour later that we left. I sort of accidently managed to buy rather more than I meant to - Princess Pea got Kiki's Delivery Service http://www.readings.com.au/product/9322225021655/kiki-s-delivery-service, Running Boy got The Ranger's Apprentice, Cheekus got some Grug books http://www.facebook.com/pages/Grug/22365212282 and I got Sheila Chandra's Weaving My Ancestors' Voices http://www.last.fm/music/Sheila+Chandra/Weaving+My+Ancestors+Voices.

We came home to a fire and baked schnapper, and at least I managed to get Good Friday into tonight's grace.

She was right

2010-04-01T22:09:00.016+11:00

Stephanie Alexander in her excellent first edition of The Cook's Companion warns against mandoline slicers. She says they are far too dangerous for the home kitchen and recommends buying a "simple and ingenious" alternative. I have never been able to locate one of these, as Stephanie does not give its name and describes it simply as a "Japanese shredder and slicer".

I covet(ed) the ability to do paper-thin potato slices for pizza and crisps, make neat juliennes of carrot and daikon. About a week ago I bought myself a small inexpensive mandoline.

Last night I decided to make pithiviers for dessert. It was awkward slicing the apples with the hand-held finger guard until about halfway through, so I decided to take the first few slices off each piece by holding it directly in my hand. You all know where this is going, don't you?

I've lost the top 3mm off my right-hand middle finger but didn't hit or chop the bone, so emergency just patched me up and sent me home. Right now I can't drive or type properly, or swim until it heals "in its own time" as the emergency doctor told me, and I will forever have a flat-topped finger.

And of course, a few minutes beforehand I had been lecturing the kids about never touching the damn thing, because it was so sharp! (At least the pithiviers, which I cooked when I got home from emergency, were fabulous.)

Potter Puppet Pals

2010-03-31T22:22:00.003+11:00

The three children love the Potter Puppet Pals. No doubt this shows the result of bad parenting, although I think we may have managed to put a halt to unauthorised (unsupervised) YouTube surfing. We did this by exploding at Princess Pea for illicitly watching a Lady GaGa clip before it had been vetted.

Anyway, I like this one too.

We've tried to re-enact on long car trips but everyone scrambles to be Snape or Dumbledore, as they're easy, and invariably the Hermione gets the timing wrong.

Sons of beaches

2010-03-29T21:03:00.003+11:00

OK, not original.

I managed to publish my last post instead of saving it. The story continues: As well as my nailbiting survival of the Attack Of The Thing In The Seagrass, we went crabbing. Ricketts Point is a marine sanctuary so we catch and release, but the crabs are satisfyingly large. Last time we were all entertained (I'm sorry, but it was funny) by Running Boy hopping up and down with a splendid big crab hanging onto his thumb for dear life, yelling "It won't let go! It won't let go!!" Can you blame it? The crab did let go once it was back in the water. We then had a little chat about why we don't poke fingers into crevices after crabs, because there won't be any hopping up and down if it's a blue-ringed octopus we find.

To go crabbing for fun, we use a bit of old meat (week-old sausages are very good); some string; and several buckets. You tie the bait onto the string and find a bit of rock or broken shell to act as sinker.

You pop the lure into the water near a promising rock or bit of popweed and wait.

Once the crab is thoroughly occupied and before it clips off the bait and scarpers away, you hoick it out of the water. To the oohs of admiring, much smaller, kids who have come swarming from nowhere you pop it into a bucket of seawater.

Once you have too many crabs for them to be happy together you let them go and start again. Repeat ad infinitum, or until your parents haul you away for sunblock/food, whichever is the earlier.

Beaches

2010-03-26T18:54:00.008+11:00

We did manage to have a few beach days this summer just past. Usually, we go to Rickets Point where the swimming is almost boringly safe. On the last trip though as Princess Pea and I swam/crawled over low-tide seagrass, something bit my foot. It hurt and swelled up and for a little while everyone was quite excited about whether I had been bitten by something daramtically poisonous, but the swelling and pain had pretty much gone by bedtime so - no.

Own Brand isn't the same

2010-03-25T23:58:00.008+11:00

We wanted to make mousse. Melted chocolate was called for.

Chocolate is expensive so we used the Safeways home brand cooking chocolate.

It refused to melt. (It also tasted horrible so there was less sampling by Cook's Helpers than usual. Actually there wasn't, but there was less sampling by Cook.)

In the end we used it anyway, and the mousse still tasted good.

I checked the packet expecting to laugh at a ridiculously low cocoa butter percentage. Do you know what? There wasn't any cocoa butter in this stuff, only 7% reduced fat cocoa powder. Dear Safeways, even cheap cooking chocolate should be capable of being used for cooking. Please consider.

In Which It Is Evident We Are Not Practised Churchgoers

2010-03-22T20:42:00.004+11:00

Possibly we need to take the kids to church more often than Easter, Christmas, christenings, school CRE celebrations and the occasional additional visit.

A local church runs Easter and Christmas craft and Christianity workshops for primary school children. It's not our church, but the kids have been happily going. This year, Running Boy flatly refused. None of Princess Pea's friends turned up, and she has decided she is too old for it too. (It didn't help that a dear little churchlady insisted on helping her wrap up one of her creations, squishing the icing.)

At dinnertime, Princess told us that Cheekus Weekus possibly hadn't quite got the point. "Cheekus died" she said. "Pardon?" "Cheekus lay down being dead at the front when we were supposed to be going up to learn a new song. He wouldn't move. A little old lady all hunched over patted him on the head, I think she was asking him to get up, but he just screwed up his eyes and lay there." It got worse.

"I tried to escape" he said. "You know all those long chairs in the church? I crawled under them but then I gave up. The someone spotted me and I got really embarrassed." Yes, rather than learn a new Easter song, in church, Cheekus tried to get away through the pews but was rumbled by another little old lady. At least he was embarrassed!

Growing up

2010-03-19T22:16:00.003+11:00

Princess Pea had her ears pierced as a birthday present. She has been nagging for years, and I had always said not until she was sixteen. Then I remembered how two of my younger sisters dealt with a similar edict: behind the garage with a cork and a needle.

This was the week she was able to take out the piercing studs, so we went out to our local hideous big shopping centre and hunted earrings. Princess chose some very lovely luminously bluegreen studs made, we were told, of crushed opal and some cheeky little ones for everyday. (She hasn't quite settled on her style, there were agonies of decision over the artfully mismatched skulls vs the cute little animals.) We had to track down a particular type, because everyone was wearing them, but didn't buy them, because everyone is wearing them and she wants to be individual. Oh to be twelve again!

Poor poss

2010-03-18T22:21:00.007+11:00

Last night we had a refugee make a nest under the folding chairs on the deck.

A few days ago the kids found a boules set which we've carted from house to house for a fair while without anyone caring too much about it. Now they've decided it's what they'll do on warm afternoons when they are kicked off electronics. While the boys and the CFO were playing, they saw a very small possum scuttle up the stair handrail into the crabapple tree that hangs over the deck. It began to forage in the leaves. There wasn't much to forage for, we had very little blossom and virtually no fruit this year.

The CFO managed to sneak some apple slices onto the deck railing just below the tree and the little possum came down. It was desperate. It ate three pieces straight off even with three small fascinated humans hovering well within its personal space. It was very young, probably last year's baby finally kicked off mum's back. Brushtails are not actually very attractive but this one was so little and clutched its bits of apple while peering at us with round red popeyes that we all fell in love with it. It crept down onto the deck where the CFO had put a small bowl of water, crawled into a nook behind a chair and started to lick its tail. A dog must have been at it, the tip was gone and there were red nicks and notches and knotted fur. Poss curled into a ball and slept.

Sometime in the night it moved on. We hope it finds a proper nest and no more dogs.

Vanity and Irony

2010-02-18T21:21:00.004+11:00

"...live together in perfect harmony/side by side in my peabrain,/ o Lord...

I've just had a medical checkup, largely because my nice young doctor enthused about how I was at the age where it was Government-funded so wouldn't cost a zac. Hmmm. All sorts of tests. Blood pressure is always low. After Running Boy's birth they wouldn't let me out of recovery for ages because they were waiting for my blood pressure to go up. In the end they believed me when I said it never would and let me out to cuddle him.

For many, many years I have used sunblock every day, even in winter. It never got rid of any freckles but the blood tests showed it did achieve something: I have appallingly low levels of Vitamin D. Normal is 120-140 thingummies and mine is 30. This may explain why I am always tired and usually flat. Now I have to chug 3000 micrograms of D a day for three months and get eight minutes of sun exposure daily.

And go back in three months to...check on a suspicious-looking mole on my ivory (but freckled) decolletage.

Paradise Lost

2010-02-17T23:54:00.007+11:00

...and paradise regained.

Sorry Milton.

Remembering

2010-02-07T23:26:00.003+11:00

A year ago today we had our housewarming. It was less organised than I'd wanted because the car broke down in the heat that afternoon, stranding me by the road. I was home late and far too hot. Instead of taking Princess Pea to her friend's birthday party I got a lift home from a kind stranger while the CFO took her over in a taxi. Instead of preparing salads and things and tidying up, I went to the bottom of the pool for as long as I could. The CFO kept his eye on me until I was no longer beetroot coloured and was again talking rationally. Each time I surfaced the air was apocalyptic hot.

It was a great party, faces everywhere, pool thick with kids and everyone mixing and talking and dancing and drinking. We love our friends.

While I was getting heat-stressed, homes and towns were burning. While we were cooling down and having fun, people were dying. The news took a day or so to come in. BY Sunday afternoon everyone know it was bad. By Monday that day was named Black Saturday and the toll was still rising.

A year on many of the survivors' stories have come out. When I find the link, there's a community-based book that can be ordered online. There's another more official one with funds going to the CFA. I'll edit this post later with the details.

If you have a strong stomach, read the Royal Commission's interim reports: http://royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Interim-Reports . But please do more than that. I'm old enough to remember Ash Wednesday as a young adult, and we all said then "never again". If enough people force things to be done, instead of the Commission's findings and recommendations being buried or ignored, maybe Black Saturday will be the last.

God bless and heal; rest in peace.

Summer roundup

2010-02-03T21:36:00.004+11:00

School resumed on Monday. Everyone likes their teachers and (generally) their classmates. Nobody likes the heat. I chucked a wobbly when the predinner squabbling led to fights over a small fan at the dinner table and culminated in Cheekus Weekus knocking the big fan right over. Their collective punishment was - and this shows I am a Bad Mum - to be ordered to go for a swim in the pool instead of using electronic entertainment. To work off my shame I was the first in.

So...this summer we learned to ride a RipStik; raised an unknown number of froglets (one turned up in the pool tonight); found that guinea pigs love to free-range; saw Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jnr yum yum), Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakwel (Running Boy says "OK") & Fantastic Mr Fox (RB says "excellent I really liked it"); hosted a Chaos Dinner and some barbeque-y sorts of things; worked looong hours, as always; bought lots of fabric but did nothing with it; got a second car; started scrap-booking; watched Hoodwinked so many times on DVD we know the lines by heart; went to Rickets Point and caught crabs; went to Philip Island and say giant stingrays; got totally nicked off about the local council closing down the local oval to joggers, dogs and kids for FOUR WEEKS over the holidays for rehabilitation but let the cricket club keep training and playing weekend matches that whole time when it has two other grounds to use, not that I am a bit fixated on this, having three lively kids, oh no;

...did actually bake an orange cake; made up fabulous Base Stations and flying cars and things from Lego because it's more fun than making power miners & stuff according to the directions (though we did a fair bit of that too); were delighted by my baby grand-nieces and celebrated their beautiful mother's birthday; built a new fence; saw baby ducklings being rescued at Daylesford; completed Boot Camp; and took up jogging.

I really did mean to blog about most of these things but I think this is about as far as I will get. And I've lost all the pictures somewhere in the hard drive.

But I can manage to mention a giveaway: go and have a look at Knot Sew Crafty...http://knotsocrafty.typepad.com/knot_sew_crafty/ (and no, I have no idea how to do a link properly so shoosh up.)

I'm a lumberpig and I'm OK

2010-01-13T22:25:00.007+11:00

Reports recieved of damage in a vegetable patch. Note sweetcorn grazed off at base. Noted that this is third plant to be attacked. Attacks apparently coincide with guinea pigs' free-range garden time. Informant conceded that corn is guinea-pigs' favourite treat.

Suspects observed acting suspiciously; that is, they were suspicious of the investigating officer.

A young female cavy apprehended. Observed attempting to consume evidence while in custody.

Bail refused.

Fame

2010-01-13T22:07:00.003+11:00

A red-letter day today. First, I noticed I have two comments - thankyou Ladydi and Frogdancer! One of these days I will work out how to respond.

Second, I showed the children this blog. They were fascinated, especially by the bits about themselves. Running Boy says he was not "terrified" about skin cancer. Princess Pea debated several pseudonyms before deciding she was happy with Princess Pea after all. Cheekus Weekus wanted more pictures of himself and his guinea-pig. All wanted to know why there weren;t more photos (answer: becuase I;m still wokrng out how, and half the photos I planned to post seem to have vanished fomr the hard drive.) The CFO, who is not actually a child, objected to my description of NYE before admitting it was accurate.

Finally, I have been puplished on What's That Bug and Cicadamania. Pity I can't type. I'll now go and have a Bex and a lie down to recover from all this glory.

They grow up so fast

2010-01-04T22:42:00.015+11:00

On hatching, they were tiny specks clinging to the wall of their tub. We lost count but when there didn't seem to be any more in the spawn-jelly we think we had over sixty - not moving, not eating, just like little sticks. Sometimes, when we peered into the tub casting a shadow, they would dart briefly, but never very far and never of their own accord. We put lots of pondweed in to give them oxygen and fretted about what to feed them.

After several weeks of thawed chopped frozen lettuce (yum) we started feeding them a little bit of plant-based fish food for protein. It must have worked. They became very fat. Now when you looked at them, they would swim about in rapid panic, dive to the bottom of the tub and hide, then totally forget why they were down there and slowly, rather elegantly float to the surface to see if any food had rained down. You could see their little mouths opening and closing as they foraged and see their tiny hearts beating.

Then some grew hind legs. The kids were so excited!

And one day - a froglet. This one objected to being scooped up and hopped onto the tub wall, so it was clearly ready to leave the water. It's hard to see in the first photo, but it still has a tail trailing behind it.

The tail was almost completely absorbed after two days out of the tub.

We fretted some more about what to feed them. The kids and I made a habitat of leaves and mulch and bark hideyholes and caught the tiniest buggy things we could for their food. The froglets didn't seem to take much notice of even the crawliest bugs. I convinced myself the older froglets were getting thin and weak, so we bought a box of small crickets at a pet shop. The crickets hopped about and escaped even more than the frogs, and the frogs were terrified of them. Each time a cricket came near, the froglet would scramble away.

Yesterday Cheekus Weekus helped me release ten metamorphlings at the nursery they came from as spawn. (We checked first that this was OK.) Each one was a tiny, perfect frog with beady little golden eyes. a pretty eye-stripe and greatly varied dorsal stripes or colouration, white belly & throat and sun-sparkled greenbrown skin. We think somewhere between two and five more adventurous siblings got out the night before (my fault, I didn't secure the muslin cover well enough). Luckily they were on top of the dead dishwasher on the front porch so had a good chance of making it to the fishpond. When taken out of their travel box each of the released babies paused on CW's hand - to his great delight, because he hadn't been allowed to handle them - then hopped away into a permanent garden bed next to the water plants section of the nursery. One jump, two jumps and we couldn't see them any more.

Goodbye and good luck...and only another forty-odd to go...

Happy New Year 2010

2010-01-02T00:55:00.006+11:00

Not a big night for us - we'd planned to picnic in the King's Domain Gardens then see the family fireworks in town. But the weather was too hot for movement of any kind, so I put together a salady dinner which we finished just before the rain hit. This was about the time we would have been in our possie waiting for the fireworks so we were pretty glad we'd stayed at home. The CFO fell asleep about 10 pm and didn't emerge until dawn 2010, but the kids managed to stay up to see in the New Year (Cheekus Weekus fell asleep 2 nanoseconds past midnight and had to be carried to bed; at 11:50 Running Boy announced that he was going to spend "the rest of the year" lying on the sofa and appeared to be trying not to get caught shutting his eyes. Princess Pea was very sensible about the whole thing - at five-to she said she was going to bed because she was tired, but changed her mind when she found out how close it was to the next year.)

The four of us watched the Sydney fireworks on TV - yah boo sucks Channel 9 for not televising anything local - ate chocolates, played Junior Scrabble, squabbled, all the usual.

This year I did a symbolic or token or propitiatory sample of all of the things I hope I will manage to do well, or at least do, in 2010. I cleaned one bathroom; mended a pair of trousers; knitted a bit; tidied up a little; texted friends; drank good champagne; did some situps and pushups; had an idea for a work project; played games with the kids; handfed a guinea pig; put up the Christmas tinsel (again) after it fell down (again); invented a salad; and found a cyclamen, which I thought had been killed when the new fence went up, putting out new leaves. May 2010 allow you to do all the things you hope to do.

Excuses, excuses

2009-12-31T11:05:00.007+11:00

On the one hand, the oven has been repaired and I tracked down almond meal at the nuts-and-pulses stall at Prahran Market. (Does anyone know anywhere else it's available?) On the other hand, the forecast is for 38 degrees and it took several attempts to make Toll House Cookies rather than Toll House Cookie Slice Sort of Baked Stuff Totally Filling the Baking Tray.

If we baked, Cheekus Weekus would help rather than playing on the Wii and Running Boy would probably help too, if running electrical appliances was involved. Princess Pea would drift in to reality from being lost-in-a-book, currently New Moon. But then they all like to play Sport Resort together and surely that's good sibling togetherness that should be encouraged while it lasts?

It would give me a chance to show my best friends, who are superb cooks, that I am not a total loss to baking. It would also give me a chance to prove conclusively that I should stick to soup.

I would gain the high moral ground by involving everyone in a Good Family Activity while the CFO is out having the pool pump repaired (the latest appliance to fail), so that I can then lecture him, or at least know that I could lecture him, about putting the kids in front of the TV while I am at work/out doing needful things. They might just all look at me blankly and whine about the Wii turning off.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained...I will try a flourless orange cake!

Oh and by the way - a post or so ago I said the guinea-pigs loved hiding under the pool blanket. They're not aquapiggies: the pool blanket is spread out over the back lawn for cleaning and ariing before we install it.

Christmas-tree cake

2009-12-27T22:54:00.004+11:00

Christmas is done for another year. Very little socialising, partly becuase we're tired and partly because we're not terribly good at it. Cheekus Weekus and Running Boy found Santa's stash under our bed but RB had the good sense not to make any comments and CW accepted my explanation that they were toys "for other people". Princess Pea got a Ripstik and can more or less use it. The guinea-pigs got a pot of grass that Running Boy grew for them. They're free-range by day which means that they spend a lot of time under the pool blanket we just bought from friends. (The pigs wriggle little ruffles up into a tunnel network and scutter about.) The tads got extra lettuce. Fred kept on sleeping in his/her coccoon. Our tree looked wonderful, we bought new tinsel and brought out all the special decorations the kids have made.

It took three separate Christmas meals to see all of the various sides of family on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day and today was just for blobbing.

We are also eating our famous icecream cake, an adaptation of a recipe by John Lethlean. Buy a paper Christmas-tree baking mould - we get ours from The Essential Ingredient. Let a small tub of vanilla icecream go all runny. Chop Toblerone into small pieces. Previously we've used about two-thirds of a large block but this year almost all of it went into the mix. Cheekus Weekus was in charge of chopping and got a bit carried away, although he was canny enough to save one triangle for himself. Add roughly chopped pistachios - about half a cupful - and a cup or so of raspberries. You can also use mixed berries, just don't put too many in. Really large boysenberries don't work too well. Stir everything into gloppy icecream, place the mould on a baking tray to catch leaks and pour it all in. Allow to set overnight. This year we added chopped jelly snakes, which the kids loved but I didn't. We all agreed that very large pieces of Toblerone aren't the good idea one might expect them to be.

Season's Greetings to you all!

GO!!!!!

2009-12-13T22:11:00.007+11:00

Running Boy's Medley relay team made the Little Athletics State Championships on time results, by a squeak. He's been very excited for weeks. It was on this afternoon at Olympic Park.

He went to the Crystal Creek aths camp to prepare and came back happy, exhausted and lobster red. I have never had a child peel from sunburn so we were horrified, but eventually accepted his tearful protests that he really had put sunblock on and that the kids weren't allowed outside without sunblock. (We think he must have waved a finger's worth of block at himself first thing in the morning no repeats. He's since been terrified enough with tales of skin cancer that he now seems to be doing the job properly.)

After long delays - the timer was off meaning lots and lots of false starts - he ran his heart out. I was at the final straight and I shouted. My voice is a rasp now. Running Boy was fourth (last) runner up in their heat. He chased them down from fourth to second, he cleared by a metre and was moving up to take the leader. His leg twisted fifteen metres out from the finish! Thank God he didn't fall. They missed the finals by half a second.

The Moz

2009-12-09T17:39:00.003+11:00

Possibly I was very naughty in a previous life, or perhaps I have been poor at assisting old ladies across the road.

In the year we have lived at this house, the dishwasher failed (on its second use), and was so bad that the repair-man wouldn't even take a callout fee. He told us to junk it. The tumble-dryer died. The (two year-old) washing machine danced its death across the laundry floor. An electric heater (new that winter) decided that "off" was discretionary. A pipe burst in the solar pool heater, sending a glorious waterfall down a bedroom wall. Two notebooks and a desktop computer stopped working for no particular reason, and a new laptop never worked at all. The DVD player would only operate in black-and-white. After two repairs, the mechanic conceded that possibly our ice-cream really was like concrete, rather than me being a silly fussy woman, given that the freezer insisted on setting to minus thirty degrees. (To compensate, the fridge section was keeping meat and dairy nice and warm.)

The door fell off the oven one night while I was hosting bookgoup. This really didn't bother me too much as it was so filthy that I had refused ever to use it. (The vendor appeared not to have cleaned the house at all between auction and settlement. More on this another day.) It did bother me though that the inner heatproof door on the new oven shattered into tiny pieces two months after purchase.

But worst of all? On Saturday morning I found that a kamikazi woodbeetle had self-immolated in the water-level window of the electric kettle.

Etiquette

2009-12-02T13:50:00.001+11:00

On Monday I walked past the King's Domain gardens woolgathering. There was something odd about a man ahead of me, but I couldn't think why. He was medium-tallish, wearing a red-and-black rainjacket, monk's-tonsure bald, unremarkable.

Something small and white in the middle of his head bobbed gently up and down in time with his walk. It wasn't so small as to be hard to see. Once you saw it, it was impossible not to keep on seeing it.

Should I have run up to tell him he had a fluffy white feather stuck to his scalp?

*&%^&$ maggies

2009-11-29T21:21:00.001+11:00

We now have fewer tadpoles than hatched out, we believe, although it's hard to tell because they dive to the bottom of their box and hide in muck. This is probably because our backyard magpie family have found them to be a quick and accessible protein source. We find them to be amusing little bumblefats which more or less blunder onto their food (frozen shredded lettuce) and into each other. Running Boy plans to build some sort of Frog Empire from generations to come.

I am extremely law-abiding and these were not "taken from the wild" (which is against the law in Victoria). We acquired them when we bought a pond plant to combat the riotous algae our fish werre struggling to swim through. I read somewhere that algae grows because the water doesn't have enough oxygen, and the solution is to get more below-the-surface pond plants. The algae is still flourishing because the plant had frogspawn attached and I didn't want bubby tads to become fishdinners. It's the truth, your Honour.

In Which we are Interrupted by Greywater

2009-11-04T12:31:00.005+11:00

We live in a house that is tatty and tired, but very conveniently located and on a relatively large block. It's our fourth renovation and fifth or sixth house in 17 years of marriage.

The occupants are me and my husband, The CFO; our kids Princess Pea (Big), Running Boy (Mid) and Cheekus Weekus (Small):

four fish; four guinea pigs:

Fred (our silkworm), about 64 tadpoles and several thousand slaters (mostly Armadillidium vulgare) http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/other-invertebrates/walking-with-woodlice/identification.html. The Weevil Who Lived In the Mandarin Tree has now vanished. So have the inchworms big and small - I think going in for show-and-tell on "Letter I" day was too much for them, even though they were duly returned to their grapefruit tree.

When we moved in, the garden was mostly thin tanbark at the front and ivy-and-junk-trees-right-on-the-fenceline at the back. All of this was effectively the only barrier, and the neighbour's large dog was an enthusiastic visitor, so before very long we had nice new high boundary fences. In turn this led to sowing lawns and planting things riotously as if we had spent the last three years in an inner-suburban terrace with a modernist architectural carspace as the only outdoor area.

Melbourne is still in 3A water restrictions http://www.melbournewater.com.au/content/water_conservation/water_restrictions/Stage_3a_water_restrictions_-_questions_and_answers.asp?bhcp=1 . We soon found that riotous planting + 3a means putting a plug in the laundry sink, shoving the outlet pipe from the washing machine over the sink, keeping an ear out for sloshy water sounds and many frantic dashes with buckets. Luckily, there is a lot of laundry to be done. Unluckily, overflows are common. Maybe we should move the un-hung paintings and prints from the floor next to the laundry...?