Month: November 2006

I realised that yesterday, while I posted, I forgot to give you a weather update.
The myriad inquiries* from you all made me realise just how much you all depend on it for your daily mood rating.
It was overcast and rained for much of the day, then did that awful humid/muggy thing, then fined to quite a lovely afternoon.
*****
Today was stunning. It was around 30C, blue skies and just delightful.
This morning was the boys’ cousin’s birthday – only Chef and Felix went as Jasper has conjunctivitis and Oscar had a low-grade temp and headache (that cleared to nothing by lunchtime). It gave me some breathing space to prepare the pies and tarts I was making for this afternoon’s thanksgiving gathering at the Doodles’.
I made the glaze for the ham, a pecan pie with Joke’s filling (it was magnificent) and a custard tart, that was sublime. Recipes will be up tomorrow. Maybe. I also made proper gravy for the turkey, which was sensational, if I might say so myself.
I’d post pictures, but they’re on the camera I left at their place.
I’d unload pics from my phone camera, but we got home at around 9pm (9pm!) and my Dad rang, to inform me some lovely person had found my phone and called him as the home number wasn’t answering.
Yeah, welcome to first trimester peoples. This has been going on for weeks.
*****
In other news …
I was the phone-a-friend friend for Muzbot and Judo today as they took part in AdventureMax – it was so fun to feel like I was helping in some small way. And next year, oh, next year I’ll have a 5 month old, so maybe the year after (because boobage people, boobage issues impede my physical abilities) I want to do it.
*****
Inspired by Joke, while it certainly isn’t an Australian celebration, the things I am thankful for include:
– wonderful friends such as my best friend from school, Kirrily, who after we spoke the other week, sent me** an early birthday*** present of a massive box of fresh fruit and vegetables, including: apples, pears, oranges, rockmelon, tomatoes, cucumber, capsicum – red and green, zucchini, broccoli, new potatoes, sweet potatoes and pumpkin.
– wonderful friends such as J and K who today told me that my facial and pedicure I’d booked for my birthday, that I’d cancelled because of our financial issues, were back on because they were giving them to me as a birthday present****.
– For Chef, who just grows and grows in his roles of husband and father every.single.day – and who still loves me, even though I’m as mad as a cut snake.
– For my children, who take my breath away and make my heart ache more than they make me vile with rage and dumbstruck with frustration. And who love me regardless of how cranky I am when I get home from work.
– For this little sprogget growing inside, who has quite frankly freaked me out way more than I ever would have anticipated but who will make our family unit complete.
– and for this place, my little realm of the web, and the people it has let me ‘meet’ that I now can’t imagine my life without.

* none.
** she and her family live at Narromine, about 8 hours north-west inland of Sydney.
*** 8 December peoples, write it down.
**** as I said, 8 December peoples, get it on that calendar.

Look at the chick’s legs second in from the left. They might be called the Pussy Cat Dolls, but that doesn’t mean we need to see their very own felines …

I love this colour – my Mum’s bridesmaids wore this colour:

Hmmm, when publicity gets a bit thin on the ground … get thinner!
The biggest communal wardrobe catastrophe in quite some time:

but given a good run for their money by this:

Curiously, not dead yet:

Not the AMAs, but a crime against women … (is it not WRONG for a woman to look this good with her third pregnancy and nearing the end of it!?!)

I really can’t tolerate laziness. And yes, it is different to procrastinating.

The energy I draw from having Jasper on my lap going in to work and coming home from it is massive.

I really really really like burrito wraps, they don’t need to be burritos, it’s just the texture and taste of the wrap-bread. I’m basically addicted at the moment.

How much I wish my life was different, but how happy I am with it anyway. Weird.

That watching friends – on the cusp of new love (and them realising they are in love when we’d all been hoping and they hadn’t really acknowledged or realised it) – is exhilerating and mesmerising and makes me re-realise what I have with Chef.

Christmas is so close and I haven ‘t started baking or shopping. This year we’re doing a real tree (we have a very large, very impressive fake one) and the boys are so excited. Our current $$$ fiasco is making all of this quite difficult to plan/pay for and quite stressful.

And that I have stuff I need to post here but have been holding off doing so for myriad reasons and now it just seems weird that it’s not here but I don’t really know how to introduce it.

So maybe I’ll just redirect you all to here and you can figure it out.

I think it was high 20s today.
The cricket has started – the Ashes series, so that is the end of any coherent sentence out of any man I know for the next few days, then some respite and then complete sporting tragic behaviour once more. We turned on some glorious weather for it all.
Apparently it’s going to pour soon as Mum’s back and knees are really sore.
Nothing else to report really, just another day.

in the 30s again, 60 bushfires burning across the state, 10 out of control. All night you could smell bushfires. This morning – and all day – the sky has been a hazy shade of smoky beige and the air, even in the middle of the city smells of bushfires. The winds have been amazing, which kind of figures.
*****
You know how most afternoons nights you get home from work and you’re tired, cranky, and irritable? And you have this tone of trying to sound interested and all Mary Poppins, but everyone knows you’re just Cruella in a fake fur coat? And that after you’ve yelled at the kids, got them into bed, told them you’re coming back to read a story/sing a song when you know full well you’re not and the guilt settles in like a impenetrable fog? Well tonight, I didn’t have one of those.

Tonight I got home, we all went over to the beach. The boys swam and played in the water, dug in the sand, and we just hung out as a family. And we were all happy, until Felix found a two-pronged stem thingy off one of the pine trees, Chef made an inappropriate reference to whipping and me, so he naturally whipped Oscar with it, which resulted in it being confiscated and well, the tears that resulted were the tears of a small school boy having got through a long hot day of school, a long afternoon and too fun at the beach.

The end.