Ridin'

Greg's been using describing words like "scintillating" when referring to me lately.(Talk about brag!) I didn't realise he knew irregular words like that ;P We came excruciatingly close to being sprung by Mum the other night! She always appears at the front door late at night after her dancing, seemingly out-of-nowhere. Fancy your climax being met with the recognition that your mother-in-law is spit seconds away from joining you in the room! We didn't get away with it completely, she was straight up "Did I catch you with your pants down?" Poor Greg was hilarious bouncing his way to the laundry with his pants caught up around his ankles. I was trying to have a serious conversation with her about school-related stuff and kept having to bury my head into the throw rug and laugh at the thought of him, and my embarrassment and the fact that it could have been so, so much worse.

He keeps bringing up another baby. I don't know if I've got enough patience for three! I'm not real good with chaos - I need my peaceful alone time desperately or I feel like I'm doing my head in. Although friends have got this most mellowed out, adorable little cup-cake-of-a-girl, I could handle on of those!

I just went for a pushbike ride with Mum. 46 k's this time! The last bit was gruelling coz I'd stopped at the servo and with the dicky valve I've got in the back tyre I didn't realise I over-inflated it and had to ride half the way home with a hugely warped, misshapen tyre knocking into the bike frame. We went all the back roads the 23k's to my block, where we stopped for a drink of water and a wander 'round. Mum reckons I can probably stop paying for slashing and start hitting it with the ride-on now. (I always consult her for all things yard and lawn related.) Then we rode about another half hour into town for lunch at the coffee-shop. Then about an hour home! I've got a sore bum don't worry.

Showtime

Yum! I made the yummiest roast vegies last night - took them out at the last minute for a sprinkle of roast vege seasoning, soy sauce and Parmesan cheese - mmmm. Not to mention the steamed potato's I mixed with olive oil, feta cheese, semi dried tomatoes, parsley and Celtic sea salt, and the yummy corn cobs from Rusties and the marinated, crispy, fatty, tasty roast chicken pieces. I just ate some left overs, mmmmm, that was after two pieces of finnan bread with avocado and tomato.... Can't see myself shifting any weight any time soon eating like this!

Cool. Grand Designs is on. I love this show.

Amazingly the weather stayed beautiful for the show on Friday. We met Mum there so checked out the pavilion and all the school displays first. Bub was big enough for the little kids' rides this year. I made myself sick going on the teacups with him (I'm bad with motion sickness and the carnie lady was spinning us around heaps in these tight little circles. Blurgh!).
And he was happy as Larry sitting in the engine of the little blue train.
He won a ball-gun scooping up ducks with Greg.
Izzy wasn't in the mood for rides (his two cousins were dressed like emo's with heavy eye makeup and painted-on teadrops so he was doing his best to disassociate himself from them and just stayed hanging-out with us) so that saved me a bit of money. We stopped for dinner under the pavilion and ate good chicken curry and drank tea courtesy of the Girl Guides or Rotary or some organisation I'm grateful to for supplying us with real plates and cups and cutlery.
Then backed dinner up with some good carnie food - waffles and mock-cream. We rode the Ferris wheel, checked out all the chookies,
watched the fire works, and it was hard to do all this without stopping every 5 meters to talk to people!

With a block of chocolate fudge and some honeycomb in easy reach on the dashboard we made the drive to Cairns after the show. Greg's parents where up over the weekend so we caught up with them at the family home. But Greg's ulterior motive for the trip was to buy an LCD flat screen - Sony was giving away 35,000 Playstation 3's and we registered our purchase when they were down to like 6! (Thousand - phew!) He makes these grossly expensive purchases and I'm just happy picking up a few bargains at the op-shop. Which I did, of course. Got to visit the park without throwing up in it. And have a cuppa and a Ferraro rocher at my gf's brand new place. All these small things make me happy.

My Baby's 2!

I was called in to work Friday so party preparations where taking place deep into the night. Check out the front cover of this month's Better Homes and Gardens mag' to see Bubby's birthday cake - and here's me with only one round cake tin having to cook each of the three layers one after the other!

Anakin was so keen for his birthday to come around. Every night for ages we've been talking about it and he listened entranced as we listed who'd be here and the food we were planning... As soon as there was a pause he'd be saying "What else Mum? What else?" "There'll be balloons and party decorations" "What else?" "You'll have a cake and we'll sing happy birthday and you'll get to blow out your candles.." "What else?"..


So when the day finally arrived he was in such a happy delirium. I barely saw him once the party started, he made the perfect host mingling from crowd to crowd. It was a beautiful day. Heaps of lovely people, heaps of delectible food (my fruit skewers where an art form),
kids running around everywhere, the weather stayed good and Anakin had such a memorable day. Sunday he was sitting up on the bank of the garden and I could see him looking around and remembering all the fun and busyness of the previous day, he started clapping and saying "Hurray for the party! Yay!" Could you want anymore thanks than that? So I'm pretty sure he had a good time, and all of his 50 odd guests too.

Sunday made for a perfect day as well with a trip to the markets. We didn't really need anything but headed down for a leisurely breakfast of thai curry, taro chips and the best sticky rice I have ever eaten. Bubby had a bounce on the jumping castle a run around on the beach and a play in the park. I bought a cool beret and a felt one for Izzy like the guy's from Myth Busters. He's into hats - like me. I realised we were missing Anakin's favourite present when we were packing up the car to take off home and had to backtrack my way asking all the marketeers if they had noticed a toy oxy-torch anywhere. I was about to give up when I heard "Yoo-hoo. Is this what you're looking for?"


Our family relations are back on track again and I'm feeling much better after several successive days of us all getting on fine. It just takes some focus sometimes with a bunch of personalities like ours living together.

Man I've been trying to finish this post for like three or four days now. I'm just going to end it here and mas later.

Clever - Less.

Wednesday at work is out of the way, (4 out of the 6 naughty ones where away today - we did experiments on surface tension for science, aerobics for daily fitness, used "paint" in the computer lab to airbrush pictures of fruit and veg' and other healthy food choices, figured masses of double digit subtractions... all without so much as an interruption. If only it was like that every week.) so now it's time to ramp up the party preparations. I want to make all sorts of food, that kind of has to be left to the last minute though. I've planned activities, with jumbo chalk, squirty bottles, bubble blowing, duplo in the tent, play doh, dressing up, face painting, Izzy's going to staple lollies to an old shirt and have the kids chase him around, then we've got the tramp' and the sandpit etc. I think I've invited too many people and if it rains (like it has been for the last four days I'm totally focaccia-ed!

I think my milk supply has pretty much dried up. Bub goes from one to the other going "Nat ones not workin', other one Mum. Nuh, that ones broken, other one.." I'm like "I've only got TWO!" Then he laughs and counts on his fingers "One, two, eight.."

I'm totally pissed off at Greg. I want to call him all sorts of names right now, all the worst ones. I fkn hate him sometimes. Izzy's been fighting back tears all afternoon, ever since we dropped his Dad off, not to be seen for another friggin' eternity probably, so I asked Greg to show some sensitivity and not to say anything mean to him (friggin' common occurrence.. GRRRUHGH), or upset him further, explaining that he was feeling pretty fragile (he's so neandathal I had to explain to him WHY he was upset when Greg KNEW we'd just gone down to drop Paul off at the bus station, idiot.) Within the hour he tore into Izzy about not feeding the chickens, when I'd only just reminded him myself that he has responsibilities around the place, especially for the animals. But Greg got totally stupid about it raising his voice and carrying on like a toolhead with this totally weird angle, "Whose idea was it to get those ducks Izzy. And who paid for those chickens hey?" ??? WTF!! We all know that we ALL wanted some poultry. And Izzy looks after them in one way or another every bloody day - sometimes he just needs reminding. He was a total arsehole about it and had Izzy bawling in about 1 minute, shouting "I hate you Greg!! I wanna go and live with my Dad!!!". Just the very thing I asked him to help me avoid. Prick. I've always had issues with the way he interacts with Izzy, and he's so wonderful with Anakin that it further highlights what a c*nt he can be to Iz. It's hard to be the Mum of two kids with different fathers. The shit I've got to put up with..

I was getting a bit clucky too (totally out of character for me) with all the talk of dressing up little girls and stuff. Well he sure put a stop to that feeling!

Soul Kitchen or a Ramsey Nightmare

Izzy's lost two more teeth! That makes it a total of four during these school holidays. Meanwhile he's in Grade 7 and has only got 8 adult teeth so it's been on the cards.

I'm sitting here in the dark, everyone else has gone to sleep - Izzy has his Dad bunking down in his room and his Nana camping in the lounge. Yesterday we had his two Aunties come down from Cairns with their families so along with all the other relies we've seen these holidays it's been non-stop around here - especially in the kitchen. I've had days where it seems like I went directly from cleaning up the dishes from the big pancake breakfast (I really do feed everyone pancakes) to launching straight into another big bake-up while taking mental notes on what needs to be bought for dinner! I'd been so busy with other catering demands that it took me three days to finally get around to making myself a birthday cake. Anakin got some practise in and helped me blow out the candles and he sang Happy Birthday so beautifully and sincerely (and has sung it to me every day since) where as the other clowns (Greg and Paul and Izzy) were so dud I made them sing it twice more and it still didn't get any better!

There's been times when I've been "Get out! Kitchen's closed! But with Anakin's birthday this weekend the madness is going to continue. Let's hope I have the stamina!

Pupil Free Day today. The fact that I enjoy my job more when the kids aren't actually there makes me think I'm going to need a career change in the future, that maybe I got into the wrong field. Doh! A really well paying one where I can dress-up and look all glam. Something creative but not too stressful. Any ideas for me coz I don't have any?

Auntie Bec brought down her hairdressing kit with her yesterday and gave me this sweetest little bob, it's not concave, has basically no layering, just this cute Chicago 'do. She was so thorough. It's the best cut I've had for ever. Yay!! My new stylist is in the family!! Next time I might book in for some colour!

Did some work out at the block on the weekend. I was so happy to be out there raking and whipper-snipping in the midday sun. When Greg and Bubby came to pick me up we walked to the creek together (5 minutes!) and Bub got in for a swim! It was SO stingin' cold his little naked body went red like it'd been slapped all over. It was priceless though - watching his enthusiasm and enjoyment. Then again, he's like that mainly every day!

Greg took the kids out on the boat yesterday morning and all I've been hearing about is this massive crocodile they saw. In Anakin's words "HUGE!!" All the talk about it gave me a bad dream :( Anyone want to trade a deadly caravan for a 16ft V-bottom?

Sunday

That was MY name! I'm really dirty on her for using it too. My sister is talking baby names already and I reaffirmed yet again that "Sunday" would be my little girl's name (hypothetically) about 4 hours before I heard the news break. God! How would ya be?

It's my birthday today! Greg bought me a new Victa Pushmower! I was stoked (I was dropping hints a while back, it's a funny thing to want for your birthday I suppose). But it was cool coz I was wandering around the yard with Bub looking at the skinny little abiu tree struggling to compete with the grass, thinking to myself, if I only had a mower with a catcher I could mulch all around it with clippings and it'd grow heaps better. I followed Anakin up to the shed directly and caught sight of my birthday present BAM! the exact same thing I'd been thinking of! (Greg leaves too early for work and I didn't get to bed 'til 3.30am after picking Izzy's Dad up from the airport and driving home so we were all fast asleep when he left for work... Well mostly.. I do remember him whispering affectionate things to me and giving me a nice back rub at some stage there.)

Mum bought me a very cool rug for the lounge room with a huge peacock feather motif on it. And I also got to spend up big at the op-shop yesterday with lots of birthday money from the rest of the family. I scored big time - pants mainly - a pair of Bubblegum, Just Jeans, Portmans and Crossroads, ALL with their tags still on! Some cool tops too. My 15 year old cousin is visiting from Brissie - I'm going to have to go through my clothes a little bit more severely than last time and see if I have some choice items for her.

Anyway I'm missing out on that spunk from Ong Bak, I'm off to join the couch dwellers.

Party-Days

It's 3 o'clock in the morning, one of those times where the quiet time in my own (little) head space is worth trading in for sleep. We just concluded yet another splendid Saturday in the tropics - spent it out at Dad's having a barbecue for all of us Cancerians in the family (my Nana, my Uncle Barry and me). It was also a bit of an introduction for Chris who hasn't met some of the relies yet so I had to endure yet another barrage of comments on how our two guys could be mistaken for each other which I received by crossing my eyes and poking my tongue out to the side. Mature hey?

I made a huge batch of energy slice (have to post the recipe one day for you), a massive banana cake with fresh whipped cream and a mammoth tuna salad.

It was fun cruising all through the yard with Bubby, checking out the huge golden orb weaving spiders and taste testing things off trees. Different parts of the family (my dad, my brother, his dad and my uncle on Mum's side) own land right at the end of this dirt road backing onto forestry and world heritage rainforest, so Izzy and his cousins basically just free-range all over the place out there - they love it.

Izzy and all my sisters family stayed out there but me and Greg and Bubby headed off to the Coastguard for "fish n chip night" with Mum and one of her many, many sisters Maree, who is visiting with two of her three kids. So it was a big family day all round and tomorrow will be the same except I'll start off with Mums family at the markets and finish it off out at Dad's place. Divorced parents ... geez, I have to do so much running around.

I started thinking about plans for Anakin's birthday party, that's why I can't sleep. (That and the fact that Greg and Anakin were squashing me out of bed.) I'm trying to think of a concise way of saying "No presents please but a plate of snacks to share will be warmly received." The recipients of invites will be like - new born babies, one year olds, two year olds.. so inevitably the whole family might come along, I've never under catered in my life, but just in case I thought inviting people to bring a share plate would rule out the possibility, coz it's hard to guess numbers sometimes. What do you think?

Bubby often speaks in sentences now: "Mum's freaking-out Dad" (He kept leading me down onto the sand at the coastguard and I was worried about crocs'!) "Party-day at Poppy's, coming Izzy?"