Labelling Kids

No idea what any of this is about...

L is for Labelling Children

April A-Z Challenge

Since I’ve been working as a relief teacher, working in random schools and teaching drama to a new class of twenty-five kids every hour, six times a day, I’ve been developing a labelling system to get a grip on how I should approach my behaviour management strategy.

In other words, I’ve developed a creative plan ensuring how I will get through the hour without ending it with, (a) children swinging from the ceiling fan (b) me stringing children up on the ceiling fan (c) me hanging from the ceiling fan by a piece of string, with a blue face, choking out the words, ‘I actually wanted to be a hairdresser when I left school, fudge my life.’

My first clever strategy is to get to know their names. I go around in a circle and get them to say their name and ‘what they love’. 

I can instantly tell who the little fudgers are by their answers. For example, if they say their name is, ‘Jeff’ and they love killing guinea pigs, I instantly know they are a fudging trouble-maker.

Apparently, saying your name is Jeff to the relief teacher, is supposed to be hilariously funny. What the fudge? Is there a reasonable explanation for this? Anyone?

So anyway, my first ploy is to identify the ‘Jeff’ in the class and make him (it’s usually a him) the leader of the first dramatic activity.

‘Jeff’ is usually so fudging SHOCKED to be given an actual job with responsibility, he falls into line for the rest of the lesson.

Once his shady amigos click on to the fact that Jeff seems to like the relief teacher, they all fall into line too. Booya!

Of course it doesn’t work if Jeff is super ADHD because then he forgets he likes me ten seconds after the first activity and then he and his mates all turn against me like wolves on a fudging stupidly blinking rabbit in the head lights of an oncoming semi-fudging-trailer.

There’s also always a Miss Bossy Boots (and it’s always a Miss) in the class who tells everyone to shoosh and tries to tell me her life story (all six years of it) when I’m desperately trying to explain to the other twenty-five rabid hyped up kids, how to sit in a circle. I never realised that five year olds don’t know what a fudging circle is???

Miss Bossy is always my BEST ally. Get in sweet with her and it’s almost as good as having a teacher aide in the room. As long as she doesn’t try to take over the lesson by chastising Jeff, who invariably takes extreme offence and starts cartwheeling around the classroom in a violent fashion and winds up kicking someone in the eye.


And we all know that it’s always fun and games until someone gets kicked in the eye.

Linking up with Grace from With Some Grace for #FYBF

Kinky Feathered Friends

Zebra Patterned Tufted-Tit

K is for Kinky Feathered Friends

April A-Z Challenge

According to Wikipedia, "Jizz, is the indefinable quality of a particular species, the 'vibe' it gives off". It stems from the word, gist.

What did you think it meant? A type of improvised music played on saxophones and trombones and mispronounced by New Zealanders?
As in, "Let's go to the Jizz Club, Bro! It'll be fully sick, Bro!"

It’s a ‘birding’ term really which is most often used by bird watchers. I’ve become an amateur bird-watcher, you know, although I’m not sure if there are any actual professional bird watchers in the field. I’ve never met one anyway.

When we sit on the veranda in our new ornithological paradise, drinking wine and discussing world issues, I often suss out the ‘jizz’ of random birds who alight on our electricity wires.

“That’s a red-crested flommity jibbet,” I’ll say casually to Scotto. “I can tell by its unique call. Or perhaps it’s a Pygmy Nutsack… I’m not sure.”

He believes me every time. I can’t trick him on magpies though. He knows they aren’t really called Piebald Bushtits, Hoary Smews or Suited Dickcissels and he gets very angry at me because the magpie is one of the ONLY birds he can identify and he won’t have a bar of my rubbish.

We have a bird that whistles the tune of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It starts up about 5:00 am, just after the bloody Kookaburras. Sometimes the Close Encounter bird misses the very last note. Dee-da-doo-da…??? I’m left with an earworm for the rest of the day.

We also have the 'Microwave Bird' who sounds like our microwave beep and sends me racing into the kitchen every five seconds to see what I’ve burned.

There’s also the 'Telephone Bird' and the 'Bing Bong' bird, both fairly irritating after a few hours of them.

I must add I’m not really a bird expert yet. I’m still in the early learning phase.

“God, those black ducks quacking up in the tree were annoying me this morning!” I complained to Scotto yesterday.

"They were crows, Pinky,” he sighed. “Not ducks.”

If you know me well, you would be aware that I have a phobia of crows because I believe they are the messengers from Hell. I was horrified.


NB: For some reason, when I looked up ‘Jizz’ on the Internet, a considerable number of porn sites inexplicably came up on Google. Weird, huh?? I wonder if they’ve been making porn movies with birds in them? I wouldn't be surprised with the rude names some of them have. Tell you what, I’ll do some research on it and get back to you later.

What's your favourite bird? (I know, dumbest question ever.)

Jinxed Phones

J is for Jinxed Phones

April A-Z Challenge

Our phone reception up here on the mountain is pitiful. When I take or make a call I have to stand on the front lawn with the snakes, and even then the phone screeches out a really weird, extra-terrestrial type of sound before dropping out completely.

Not very good for a relief teacher who waits for phone calls, is it? There’s a 2 centimetre square area on my bedside table where the signal is good but if I pick up the phone it dies an instant death.

It’s not just my service provider either. If you look up and down our street after 5:00pm you can spot various neighbours shuffling on the footpath with their phone pressed up against their ear and an irate expression on their faces.

Of course we could get a home phone but I don’t remember how to use one. I’d probably garotte myself by attempting to walk around with the cord wrapped around my throat.

Scotto’s phone has been possessed by an evil entity. He was out on a computer job today and his phone took it upon itself to send his boss (who’d sent him out on the job) a text saying, “I’m at the cinema.”

His boss texted back, “That’s nice. What are you seeing?”

Funny, eh? It took Scotto a while to notice the text had gone through before he could scramble out an explanation to his boss.

If his phone had texted me that message instead, I would have instantly thought,

1. Since when do you call it a ‘cinema’, you peculiar person?

2. Who has kidnapped my husband and is using antiquated, bizarre words?

3. Should I call the police and report an abduction or should I let Scotto get himself out of this one because any kidnapper who uses the word ‘cinema’ must be a tiny bit refined or at least have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana skin?



Or I’d have thought Scotto was having an affair with an eighty-five year old and arranging a date at Morning Melodies.

We usually refer to it as the ‘movies’. And we say it with an Austen Powers’ inflection as in, “Do you fancy going to the mmmmooooooovies?”

I’m sorry if any of you do actually call it the cinema. The ‘pitchers’ is another acceptable term, but I’d never use the word, cinema.


Recently, my auto-correct sent a silly text to a Catholic school principal who I’d only just met and who’d kindly given me some work.

I texted, “Thanks very much, Barbera* :).”

Which auto correct promptly changed to, “Thanks very much, Beelzebub :).”
You know who Beelzebub is, right? He’s the bloody devil, the Dark Lord, the fallen angel, Lucifer.

It was bloody embarrassing because then I had to send another text apologising which made me look like a very unprofessional, over-anxious and dithering fool of a woman.

How and why did auto-correct think I was communicating with Satan? It’s not like he’s on my call register or anything.

No doubt they’ll be keeping a close eye on me tomorrow when I rock up for my first day at work. It’s the story of my life, really.

* Not really her real name because I never use anyone’s real name on my blog except for Scotto and even his name is heavily disguised. (It's Scott in case you were wondering.)



What’s the worst accidental text you’ve sent or heard about?

Insect Invasion

I is for Insect Invasion.

April A-Z Challenge
We went to the mountain markets yesterday and bought a large metallic insect, artistically engineered out of butter knives. It’s very nice and I love it. It was a bargain. Scotto had to precariously man-handle the behemoth of an iron grasshopper out of the showgrounds while I nagged him not to drop it because it cost a bit, being art and all.

We’re calling it Barry, because we sold our water feature called Barry in the garage sale back in Townsville and we missed having a Barry in the family.

Dave and friends

We have a ceramic turtle called ‘Dave’ on our lounge room coffee table. I even bought him some starfish to keep him company but I can’t be arsed naming the starfish because echinoderms are so lacking in personality they don’t warrant a name really, do they?

Dad comments wryly every time he comes over, “Oh, I see you have another animal, Pinky.”

I can’t go out shopping these days without coming home with the clay/ceramic/butter knife model of an animal or insect. Almost every corner and nook in our house is adorned with farmyard livestock.

I’ve bought a possum, a dog, two lizards, a turtle, some echinoderms, cows, a rooster and a pig so far.

Is it the mountain air infiltrating my brain enticing me to spend my money on earthenware novelty creatures? Whatever it is, it MUST stop. Soon I’ll be able to open my own crap model animal gift shop.

Nevertheless, Barry has been installed on top of a rock in the recently cleared, “snake pit’. We’re wondering what else we can do to landscape the area. We’ve tossed up the idea of an octagonal wooden seat bench around the rock and a few native trees to attract birds. Any ideas?

We also bought a barbeque on Saturday. It’s the second barbeque Scotto and I have bought together so I suppose that means we’re definitely married now.

Thanks for all your suggestions the other day but the barbie solved my problem about what to cook for my visitors yesterday even though it cost us almost $1000 so it was an expensive lunch to cater for.

Mum, Dad, Sister, Nephews and Niece.

Dad turned up with a homemade tiramisu for dessert.

He’s a very good cook. We turned up randomly to his house recently and the next minute he was pulling freshly made Madeleine biscuits from the oven to accompany our cups of tea. Delicious, buttery, melt in your mouth things they were.

I’d like to say I inherited his culinary talent, but no. I was the ineffectual apple who fell off the tree, rolled down the hill and was squished by a passing tractor.

My friend, Nettie was with us at the time he performed the Madeleine miracle. “I wish I could meet a man like your Dad,” Nettie sighed when we left. “I need someone to make me Madeleine biscuits on a whim.”

Later on, I told my mother what Nettie had said. “She can have him,” Mum sniffed indignantly. “He drives me nuts with his pots and pans and bloody mess.”

I remember, as a kid, doing the washing up after Dad had cooked an experimental but elaborate and sumptuous Sunday lunch and she has a point. Men in kitchens tend to use every implement not welded to the counter.

The other day, Dad gave me the recipe for the Madeleines but as it’s unlikely I will ever sully a spatula or wet a whisk, I thought some of you might like his quick recipe.

Stuff You Need

A stick of butter (120 grams) and a few extra tablespoons for later.

A cup of plain flour and an extra tablespoon for later

Two free-range eggs

A teaspoon of vanilla

150 grams of white sugar

A tablespoon of lemon zest and one of lemon juice

A little pinch of salt

Equipment

Six small saucepans

Six small bowls

Twelve medium sized mixing bowls

As many measuring cups and spoons you can find in the kitchen drawers

Six whisks

Six Spatulas

12 Madeleine pans

Six pastry brushes

Six small sieves for dusting extra sugar on the top

# If the amount of equipment seems daunting just divide the quantity by six, I’m just passing on Dad’s recipe.

Process

1. Melt butter in sauce pans until it starts to bubble and colour then pour it in to another container, or six. Allow it to cool slightly. Take three tablespoons and set aside in as many containers as you want.

2. Mix the flour and sugar together. In a separate bowl whisk the eggs, vanilla, salt, lemon juice and zest until mixture is frothy. Make sure you spill an adequate amount of mixture on the counter so as to annoy your wife.

3. Combine the egg mixture with the flour and sugar, add the butter stirring with gusto but don’t over mix it. Spill with abandon.

4. Mix that extra bit of butter and flour together and use all your pastry brushes to prepare the Madeline pans. Fling brushes against wall when finished.


5. Preheat the oven to 175 C and fill the pans with the batter. Slosh around wildly on way to oven.

  

6. Bake for about thirteen minutes checking half way through. When they spring back to the touch they’re ready.

7. Cool slightly and powder with lots of messy icing sugar making sure it’s flicked well into the tile grouting on the floor.

I can assure you they're delicious!

Know any messy cooks? Or are you one?

Random Pig

Horrible Fairy Tales

H is for my review of The Huntsman and Snow White.

April A-Z Challenge

I know it’s called Snow White and the Huntsman, but I’m doing the H thing and apart from hummus dip, hives and hot flushes with bonus strategies on how to pretend you aren’t having one in a job interview, I couldn’t think of anything else to write about that starts with an H.

I’ve always loved fairy tales. As a child, Bluebeard was my favourite. Wikipedia describes it as, “The story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors.” A tad understated, I feel.

There’s quite a lot of blood and torture, the discovering of putrid corpses by a terrified young bride and the stuff you’d see on the telly after nine o’clock, but God, at seven years of age, I loved it.

Snow White, with its theme of malevolent matricide and attempted filicide, is much tamer.

But I have three problems with this movie version of Snow White.

Firstly, what was Greg Norman doing in the movie?

Secondly, does Kristen Stewart ever close her mouth to breathe?

Thirdly, why didn’t we get to see the dwarf’s’ house?

(Did you know you should never write “dwarves” because it’s not correct even though if a word ends in an “f” you should change the ‘f’ to a ‘v’ and add ‘es’. But even so, you still shouldn’t do it with the word ‘dwarf’ because it’s disrespectful to dwarves.)

In fact, I don’t think it’s even acceptable to say the word, ‘dwarf’ unless you’re referring to a planet, a tree or a rare breed of rabbit.

You can’t say bloody anything these days.

I kept expecting the wicked queen’s brother, Greg Norman, to whip out a golf club and bash Snow White in the head to prevent her from carrying on with her aggravating mouth breathing habit. Mouth breathing is a particular area of irritation to me.

I don’t know which Hemsworth brother it was in the movie because they look alike but he was okay except for having a weird hybrid accent and for being a bit ligneous (fancy word for wooden).

At the end of the movie, everyone turned to glass and was smashed to pieces, which is very unoriginal if you’ve ever seen the movie, Stardust, or any G-rated movie where they don’t want to show blood, actually.

I really wanted to see the dwarfs’ house with all their small doorways, tiny beds and miniature teacups, but no such luck. In fact I recognised quite a few of the ‘dwarfs’ and they were full statured actors who’d been shrunk with CGI and that’s surely got to be against the dwarfs’ union.

I’d give the movie a 5 out of 10… mainly because of the dwarf issues I suppose.



More movie reviews will be coming to you NEVER. I’m terrible at them aren’t I?

I Get Around

Map of Gold Coast

G is for Getting Around
April A-Z Challenge

I drove all the way to the shopping mall today, all by myself.

Don’t laugh, it took me fifty-five fudging minutes.

I got there the 'old-school' way, via looking at a map and drawing on it with a Texta.

What’s a map? Well… it’s a really big piece of paper with a lot of squiggly lines and street names and was used in the olden days to find one’s way around.

There's a picture of one such artifact above.

When we first arrived on the Gold Coast, Scotto installed a GPS in my car but I swear the bitch in it is trying to kill me. 

Not only is she very terse and snooty sounding, but she keeps attempting to lure me on to the motorway where many threatening cars whiz along at death defying speeds and it’s a place I like to avoid at all costs.

One day, while Scotto was filling up his car at a petrol station, I sneaked in and accosted the old man behind the counter.

“Don’t suppose you have any maps of the Gold Coast?” I asked in a hushed voice. No need for the young bearded hipster standing behind me to hear what I was saying.

The old guy stared at me for a second then broke out in a grin. He reached under the counter, pulled out a single folded map, blew the dust off it and handed it over. “Last one,” he said. “Have it for free, love.”
I think he thought I’d just emerged from the jungle after been living with the dingoes for a decade, or maybe he suspected I’d just been released from a twenty year, high security jail sentence or perhaps he thought I’d been kidnapped by a cultist and been hidden in an all-woman, non-internet enclave for a few years. Something like that anyway.

Apart from the fact that despite having spent quite a few wasted hours trying to refold it in the correct way, the map has been serving its purpose.

Some people learn their way around a new place of abode by repetition. If they drive around following the GPS instructions they eventually get the hang of it. My brain doesn’t work like that. I go into a type of mental torpor when I’m listening to instructions or if someone is driving me to a particular location. Nothing sinks in. I could be driven to the same place fifty times and still not know how to get there.

I have to see it in my mind from a bird’s eye view. Maybe I was a bird in a previous life?

Who knows, it would explain my penchant for sunflower seeds, feather boas and scraping my beak on cuttlefish.

I’m also a kinaesthetic learner. I learn by doing things myself.

I remember a waiter bringing out a plate once in a Mexican restaurant and saying, “Don’t touch zee plate. Eet is VERY, VERY hot.”

You know what I did, right?

The blisters lasted for ages.

Scotto accuses me of not listening but it’s just that when he starts to explain things to me all I hear is, “Wa-wah-wah-wah-wa-wah… wawawa?”

If he sat there and had me update my Windows operating system to Windows 10 myself, and just supervised me instead of showing me how to do it and waffling on with technical jargon, I wouldn’t get so overwhelmed, lose my temper, flounce out and sulk with a wine on the veranda as much.

Anyhoo, the reason I drove to the shopping centre in the first place was to have coffee with these two Gold Coast bloggers.

Kathy from 50 Shades of Age , and Sue from Making the Mundane Merry . 

Me, Sue and Kathy.

Both are strong, resilient professional women who clicked with me instantly and who I’ve grown to love and care about through reading their blogs. New friends on the Gold Coast.

Who said blogging is a waste of time?



So are you a kinaesthetic learner, an auditory learner or a visual learner?

Fromage to all of You!

F is for Fromage

April A-Z Challenge

The only word Scotto knows how to say in French is, “Fromage”, which means cheese.

I can just imagine him if we ever go to France.

Concierge: Bonjour, Monsieur.

Scotto: Fromage!

Or

Stranger in the street: Quelle heure est-il ? (What time is it?)

Scotto: Er, Fromage.

I, on the other hand, can speak quite effluent French having studied it until Year Ten. (Polishes cheese-encrusted fingernails on lapels.)

I can count from one to ten, I can say thank you, hello, please and goodbye. I can say goodbye forever (adieu) if someone is about to die or if they’re going to war or on a journey to Mars or something, and goodbye (au revoir), if I’ll be seeing them again five seconds later in the pate aisle.

The reason I’m talking about cheese is that exactly one month ago, we went to lunch at my mother’s house with a couple of their lovely friends and in a drunken, magnanimous moment, I offered to have everyone to lunch at my place the following month. (I took a cheese platter to Mum’s hence the cheese connection. Cheese platters are my specialty since nobody actually expects you to make home-made cheese as that would be an excessive waste of time and I therefore avoid having to do any homestyle cooking of any variety.)

Somehow the month has crept up like a monk on a nun in a cheese making monastery and here I am suddenly having to make lunch for tasteful, discerning people as opposed to making lunch for Scotto. Gah!

When I promised to host the lunch a month ago, it seemed so long away I assumed I’d be dead by then but apparently that hasn’t happened.

Can anyone suggest anything tasty for an autumnal feast?

Please cut and paste recipes into the comments.

I’ll let you know which one I try and post the after photos.



Fromage xxx

Employment Ennui

E is for Employment Ennui

April A-Z Challenge

Remember I told you about a (one term only) job interview I went to a couple of weeks ago?

Well, I didn’t get the job.

Whilst I sat fretfully and neurotically reliving the interview afterwards, it occurred to me that when the principal told me about how I’d have to write all the students’ report cards at the end of term, I probably shouldn’t have screwed up my face in horror.

I also shouldn’t have audibly moaned when the principal informed me I’d have to go on a school camp (out bush) with the class in the final week of term.

I also shouldn’t have chirpily added, “Oh well, at least the camp is only for three days, I’ll just hit the pub on the way home!”

I actually did say that... I’m not joking. Nerves, I suppose.

There were two people interviewing me. One of them hesitated, stared at me when I blurted it out, then chuckled cautiously, while the other interviewer just put his head in his hands and rolled his eyes.

It took me three days to confess to Scotto what I’d said in the interview. He was gunning for me to get the job and I knew in my heart I’d shot myself in the foot; hoist by my own petard, misapplied my questionable wit and turned it against myself.

This is me about to hoist myself on my own petard.

“You can’t say things like that in job interviews, Pinky!” he gasped. “You aren’t Bridget bloody Jones, you know. You’re supposed to be a professional teacher who is responsible for nurturing young minds.”

“People need to get a sense of humour,” I whined. “My old boss would have laughed.”

“Well you aren’t in Kansas anymore, Dorothy,” he scolded.

Hmmm. So it seems.

It didn’t matter because I received a phone call the same afternoon from another school offering me three weeks’ work anyway and that school is at least twenty minutes closer to where I live.

So now I have to plan three weeks of drama lessons for classes ranging from Prep to Year Six and I’m struggling to escape the shroud of ennui that has enveloped me during my four months of long service leave.

I love teaching drama but it is hard work what with all the dynamic leaping around like frogs, wrinkle inducing facial expressions and forced enthusiasm required.

I feel confident teaching the older kids but the preppies might pose more of a challenge. I had one day of teaching drama to the little preppies (4-5 year olds) last term at the school and it was lovely. Tiny, incoherent big-eyed creatures kept coming up and hugging me around my legs. I felt truly appreciated for a change.

They can barely even speak at that age so teaching them drama is no walk in the park. I’d never done it before and when twenty-five of them all wanted to go to the toilet at the same time; I was too scared not to let them go in case of accidents. 

Then one of the minuscule critters jammed her hand in the self-closing door and squealed over and over in a pitch I’ve never heard before except in movies about blood-sucking aliens and I panicked which set the others off and yeah… it wasn’t a good way to finish the lesson ...

But I’ll be better prepared next term. Nobody will be allowed to go to the toilet or go near vicious doors unsupervised.

And I won’t use silly phrases like “hoist my own petard” when I’m talking to anyone because they’ll think I’m strange.



Any tips or advice?

Disdain

Pith Off!

D is for Disdain

April A-Z Challenge

This is the perfect portrait of disdain.

My fox-terrier, Celine, has an enviable measure of scorn and contempt for the world encompassed in her posture alone, don’t you think?

What I’d give for that style of, “Fudge off thou minions, thou art but fleas upon a mongrel dog.”

I think she’s being disdainful because we are sick of throwing the bloody ball for her and she’s cracking it.

I love the word, ‘disdain’.

I have disdain for people who post racist things on Facebook because they’re frightened of something they haven’t really investigated properly and are just going with the cherry-picking crap they read in the media.

I have disdain for homophobic bigots.

I have disdain for haters and people who are passive aggressive, judgmental, 'Creeping Jesus' dickheads.#

This, on a lighter note, is the complete opposite of disdain.

Normally he thinks he’s the Pope of Chillitown but he loosens up when he’s getting his belly rub.

This is a respectable display of self-indulgent, debauched hedonism. ##

This is my Chihuahua, Pablo, who loves his belly rub and has no disdain in his body at all when he is being spoiled by a good scratch around his generously proportioned umbilical region. (I have to be careful when I’m giving him a belly rub though because the ‘you know what’ might get in the way and I wouldn’t want to accidentally touch it. It’s the trouble with male dogs I suppose.)

All those shitty, Judgy-McJudgement people out there should just chill out and ask for a belly rub.


# Creeping Jesus (noun, British informal) a person who is obsequious or hypocritically pious (I might have had to deal with one yesterday).

## Example of redundant, repetitious, superfluous tautology.



The world would be a better place without people like that, don’t you think?

Carrying on Like a Pork Banana

C is for- Carrying on like a Pork Banana

April A-Z Challenge

I had a bit of a fight with Scotto yesterday.

We drove all the way to Burleigh in the morning, which takes about an hour from the mountain, and then spent thirty minutes in frustration looking for a parking spot. After we eventually nabbed one, it was quickly decided that I would sit under a tree and read the Saturday paper and he and Petal (my step-daughter) would go for a skateboard ride on the foreshore.

So there I was, tackling the delinquent newspaper, enjoying the gale force wind, reading the job vacancies (hadn’t even fudging started on the social pages) and they’ve both turned up, panting in my face with sweat pouring off them.

I just stared at them with my most steely of gazes.

“Back already?” I scowled. “You’ve only been at it for ten minutes!”

“Really?” replied Scotto looking crestfallen.

“Go do some more,” I suggested. “We drove all this way so make the most of it.”

If you travel all that way to go for a skate I’d expect you’d last more than ten bloody minutes.

So off they went, only to return another TEN FUDGING minutes later.

I just sat ignoring them and reading the paper. I really wasn’t ready to socially integrate with humans.

Scotto and Petal both sat watching me read my paper like groaking puppy dogs. It was very irritating.

“So how about we head off to Surfer’s Paradise,” suggested Scotto in a hopeful voice.

Now, I don’t know whether it’s because we’ve had too many visitors lately and I’ve finally reached my threshold of ‘being nice to people’ or if I was just in a bad, malevolent mood, but I cracked a full on tantrum, I cracked a bloody nana. I went off like a pork chop.

I don’t like Surfer’s Paradise much. It’s full of time share peddlers, two dollar shops and those highly aggravating people beeping around on scooters.

We stood in the carpark arguing about whether to stay or go, I felt my temper rising to Vesuvius proportions and at one stage I just wanted to dramatically throw myself under a passing Maserati I was so pissed off. (Have you ever felt like throwing yourself in front of a car when you’re angry or am I alone in this?)

Scotto won the fight and there was a tense silence as we drove up the highway towards Surfers Paradise (except for my intermittent whinging about how long it was going to take to get another bloody parking spot).

When we finally did park and headed down to the beach, we passed a young Japanese couple conducting a full on barney in their native language in the middle of the street.

“Huh. They're probably fighting because she wants to go to Burleigh and he doesn’t want to go,” I huffed in a self-righteous fashion.

That sort of broke the ice and we ended up having an okay day. Okay as far as talking to each other goes anyway. I was dumped by a few waves and almost lost my Oakley sunglasses in the surf and I was cranky about the salt water up my nose thing… but it was alright... I suppose. 

Except, Scotto sprained his ankle in the surf and even though he managed to operate the clutch on his car for the trip back up the mountain he can’t really walk and I have to wait on him now, hand and foot.

Karma really is a bitch. 

If he’d only sprained his ankle while he was skateboarding instead because then we wouldn’t have had to go to stupid Surfers Paradise.

Being Creative

Poetry Tree

B is for Being a Creative Type

April A-Z Challenge

Scotto went to a business meeting in a café up here on the mountain last week and was both alarmed and baffled when random people kept standing up in the café and reciting poetry in loud, dramatic voices.

“Then somebody stood up and played a kazoo before launching into a full on rendition of “My Heart Will Go On”, he said, with an expression of bewilderment on his face. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

I laughed my head off when he told me but then I read in the local rag it was all in the name of the “Five Senses” Culture Festival which was being launched on the mountain.

Naturally, Pinky immediately set about nutting out a way she too could be part of it this groundswell of creativity.

There’s a poetry tree in the village library where you can display a poem you’ve written so today I took one of my most brilliant, evocative pieces in to be included.

Unfortunately, all the other poems were very short (like limericks really) and mine was quite long (think John Milton’s Paradise Lost). Everybody else’s poems were creatively fashioned into lanterns and stuff and all I’d done was ask Scotto to add some fancy flowery decorations on the border of an A4 sheet.

The (really lovely) librarian said she’d have to pin my poem up because it wasn’t suitable for the poetry tree.

I bet she chucked it in the bin the second I left. Not that I’d blame her.

I’d been hoping to garner some creative cred from the locals and perhaps even be haphazardly ‘discovered’ by a discerning literary critic who might be touring the area.

Yeah… nope.

Not likely now.

Why didn’t I think of writing my poem on a lantern?

I desperately want to be thought of as ‘arty’ and it was disappointing but I’ve come up with a possible solution.

Years ago, when we were on holidays, Scotto and I dropped into an Irish pub (not actually in Ireland) and we watched an Irish band performing all their tiddle-dee=dee shenanigans. After several pints of Guinness it struck us both that we should learn to play a violin and a tin whistle and form our own Irish band.

Scotto even bought a tin whistle on the Internet that very night.

We promptly forgot all about it but as I was unpacking during the recent move, I serendipitously came upon it. I’ve already taught myself to play Mary had a Little Lamb and Frere Jacque.

Pretty soon I reckon I’ll have some real Irish songs down pat; a bit of Father Kelly’s Reel or Morrison’s Jig!

I’ll get a gig at the local Irish restaurant on Saturday nights, just you wait. I’m sure the neighbours will appreciate it when I finally improve on my whistling too, especially the Labrador next door who loves to join in.


What’s your creative talent?

Aggravating April Fool's Day Jokes

A is for Aggravating April Fool’s Day Jokes.

(Part of the A-Z Challenge)

Father and Daughter

We have my 14 year old step-daughter, Petal, staying with us for the first week of the school holidays. Unfortunately, her father (Scotto) has to work. That means it’s my job to provide the entertainment. 

I can’t just leave her sitting on the couch watching movies all day while I read trashy magazines and spend the day looking up miracle saint cures for loose teeth (Saint Apollonia, 250 AD, had her teeth violently ripped out of her mouth by some vicious, rowdy louts and is now the patron saint of loose teeth in case you’re interested) as well as intermittent searching for cheap solar powered, vibrating ‘snake repellers’ on the internet … can I?

There’s a three kilometre hike down to a waterfall just up the road and it occurred to me I could get off my bum and take Petal for a walk, you know, fresh air, sunshine and exercise.

But then it suddenly struck me that she might slip and fall down a steep and slippery cliff or even get lost forever in the heavy vegetation and her father would never forgive me. Especially since I’m an actual ‘step-mother’ and the waterfall is named, “Witches Falls”.

It just wouldn’t look good would it?

Mwua-ha-ha-ha-ha.

I thought of another ‘bonding’ activity though. Together we plotted a malicious prank to play on her father for April Fool’s Day . 

She’s going to stand in the hallway before he leaves for work and scream out that the toilet is overflowing and there is poo floating down the hallway. I don’t know what inspired that ingenious idea but it’s one of my best.

“What if I burst out laughing?” she asked with all the naivety of a well-brought up and ultra-polite child.

“Don’t you dare laugh,” I hissed evily. “You’ll give the game away, my sweet girl. We want to make him really believe there is actual human excrement drifting against the skirting boards.”

Mwua-ha-ha-ha-ha.

It’s going to ruin his entire morning. He hates stressful situations before 10 am. This will put him in a bad mood for the whole day. But he’ll be at work so I won’t have to put up with it.

Mwua-ha-ha-ha-ha.



I bloody hate it when people play jokes on me though.

My eldest son Thaddeus, texted me one April Fool’s day and said, “I’ve got a girl pregnant, what should I do?”
I spent forty-five minutes worrying about whether or not I was ready to be a grandmother or not.

I’d only just reconciled myself to the fact that I was indeed very ready, couldn’t wait for the (hopefully) attractive baby’s arrival and had decided the baby’s mother and I would be the best of friends and we would go for coffee and baby clothing buying expeditions together, when the little shit of a son eventually texted, “Jokes!”

Can you imagine my bitter disappointment?

It’s not fun when you’re on the receiving end but God it’s hilarious when you punk someone else.

Wish me luck.

Anyway, I know this is going to annoy some people but I signed up for an A to Z blog challenge and will be posting every day in April.

Please don’t feel compelled to comment, like or even acknowledge you’ve noticed anything appear on your timelines.

Just pretend you haven’t seen it.

Blank me.

P.S: This is not an April Fool’s day joke. I’m actually doing it. For today anyway. I might get sick of it. You know how fickle, capricious, wayward and whimsical I can be. *

* I know those words all mean the same thing.



P.P.S.: We managed to pull off the prank! Scotto fell for it hook, line and floater.

Pinky and the Mountain Men

The Mountain Men

The mountain men came today to get rid of the ‘snake pit’ (my neighbours’ description, not mine). Notice I used the apostrophe after the word ‘neighbours’ because it wasn’t just one set of neighbours who labelled it. It was at least two who have given vivid descriptions of red bellied blacks shimmying into their linen closets on a Sunday afternoon while they were casually reading the Sunday papers and sipping on a Cab Sav.

It seems the norm here.

As the mountain men cleared out our rainforest jungle, I stood at the back screen door, watching diligently for errant snakes who might daringly try to escape the tropical massacre across my backyard, akin to ‘whacking day’ on the Simpsons. 

It didn’t happen. Or if it did, I was too busy yelling at the Chihuahua for barking at the mountain men or distracted by making a cup of tea… who knows?

Anyway, there appear to be no snakes at all. But the mountain men did say that snakes like to live under rocks and there are a plethora of rocks in the now naked and exposed jungle. I also saw quite a lot of holes in the ground. 

My father assures me that snakes don’t dig holes because they can’t slither backwards so why would they dig a hole because they wouldn’t be able to get back out? But then I pictured in my mind a tunnel with a big turning circle at the bottom so I think my father is full of bullshit.

My father tells me quite a lot of lies actually.

We had to pay these mountain men a substantial amount of cash. Like… over three thousand dollars in cash. So that meant I had to go to the mountain bank and do a primitive style transaction where I had to write out a type of docket thing. What the…? 

 I haven’t done that for so fudging long! And I got really nervous. I thought the bank person might suspect me of nefarious dealings. She might have thought I was a crack whore cashing in my pimp’s weekly revenue or something it was such a large amount. I don’t know. Anyway, I gabbled a lot but she didn’t seem suspicious at all and I got away with it. She even called me ‘love’.

The good news is that Scotto and I, after laborious, heated discussions (and the happy realisation that we have no snakes), have decided to expand our family.

We are buying a duck…maybe a goose. We can’t decide.


Which one would you recommend?

The Realisation of My Worst Nightmare.

My parents are in their seventies and eighties but pretty much have all their own teeth.

At lunch the other day, they were reminiscing about how when they were kids, everyone automatically went to the dentist when they turned forty and had all their teeth removed and were fitted for a full set of dentures.

A bit like when I was a kid and all women, as soon as they turned forty, had their hair cut short and permed.

But times have changed.

For most people.

I have this tooth you see. It’s hanging tenuously by a half-hearted, pathetically minded root. It’s a perfectly solid tooth, no decay, but the bone in my jaw that it’s supposed to be attached to has irrevocably disintegrated.

If it was a back tooth it wouldn’t bother me. Who needs to eat steak anyway? But oh no, the cavernous gap will be a visible boganesque giveaway every time I smile.

Jesus Christ.

How has it come to this?

Like most of you, I clean and floss my teeth. There were a few times in the eighties when I probably went to bed without cleaning my teeth after sculling strawberry daiquiris at the Beef and Bourbon in King’s Cross until five in the morning, but generally speaking I’ve been pretty dentally hygienic.

This tooth in question is a definite goner. The dentist told me.

She said I would have to have a BONE GRAFT to support the surrounding teeth and did I want her to take out the loose tooth there and then?

That was two and a half years ago and I haven’t been back. The tooth is still defiantly clinging on for dear life.

But I know eventually I have to go and have something done.

I googled ‘toothy bone grafts’ today and do you know where the dentists get the bone from?

Cadavers.

Last time I looked  up ‘cadavers’, it meant ‘dead bodies’. 

I’m desperately hoping there’s a new meaning for cadavers I somehow missed? For example, does it now mean, ‘synthetic, hygienically processed, inexpensive product transferrable to human tissue’? I could deal with that.

Since when do dentists have cadavers lying around their surgeries?

I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. I don't want some dead person's bone in my mouth for fudge's sake!!!

But then I read about what happens if you DON’T replace missing teeth. Apparently, the bone completely crumbles into non-existence, your other teeth all move forward and your face eventually collapses in on itself and you wind up looking like Mrs. McGillicuddy.

I don’t think Scotto will want to kiss me if I look like Mrs. McGillicuddy. No offence to Mrs. McGillicuddy.

And after the bone graft, you still have to wait nine months before you can have an implant, in the meantime you need invasive gum flap surgery and then afterwards you have to clean your implant with a NASA approved kit three times a fudging day.

I haven’t even mentioned the cost this dental extravaganza would entail. Think “NASA launching a fudging probe to Mars” and you’d be close.

All I can say is … why? Why are you doing this to me, ye venerable Tooth Fairy?

In the meantime I’ve informed Scotto that if I ever have to be rushed into surgery in an emergency operation scenario and the anaesthetist asks if I have any loose teeth to please be adamant that I definitely do. In fact my tooth is so loose I’ll probably swallow it in my sleep one night.

God.

Bloody hell I hate getting old.

Mountain Nuts

At the Cheese Factory

My friend Nettie came to stay over the Easter break and kept me busy with alternate bouts of aggressive-style shopping and relentless eating of highly fattening food. Nettie is a bit of a tooth girl and in her own words, “Could easily exist on cake”.

Scotto and I are terrible eaters. It often gets to five in the afternoon and neither of us has eaten all day. I don’t know why we aren’t as thin as sticks. The wine probably.

The first place I took my visitor to was the Cheese Factory where we bought triple cream Camembert infused with chocolate (an Easter theme I guess) and some Chevre L’Ail which I believe is goat’s cheese fortified with copious amounts of garlic and which I suspect contains about 1500 calories per teaspoon. My neighbour, Mrs Bunny, invited us over for drinks and nibbles on Good Friday and I’d offered to bring a cheese platter you see.

We went to the IGA after the cheese factory and were chatted up by a couple of cheeky, but really old guys in the car park. It was pension day and the seniors were out in force, let me tell you.

“Like your car, Pinky P!” They yelled out after reading my number plate. “You wouldn’t lose that in a paddock!” They were very confident. I'm sure they thought they were in with a chance.

That night we took Nettie to our favourite watering hole for dinner but we soon discovered the average age of the clientele on a Thursday night is 163 years old. Nettie is single and was hoping to spy a mountain man closer to her age so she could brag to her friends but the only ‘mountain men’ to be seen were hobbling around on walking frames and had their teeth sitting on the table beside them as they slurped soup, so we moved on to a restaurant higher up on the mountain.

We were the only people in the restaurant. The service was excellent I must say.

The average age on the mountain is said to be 49 which is old considering all the kids here. I think all the retirees up here must be pushing the average age up. Although most people here seems to be in bed by 8:30pm so who knows.

The next day we gathered our wine and beer under our armpits and trundled up to the neighbour’s house, balancing a generous cheese platter on fingertips.

As soon as we arrived, my neighbour, Mrs Bunny, grabbed Nettie and I, to take us on a tour of her house. I think she has the loveliest house in the street and was keen to have a sticky beak.

“This is my Easter Tree!” Mrs Bunny exclaimed. 

I was impressed. I’ve never made an Easter Tree in my entire life despite being a mother of five children.

However, as we were led further through the house, serious alarm bells began to ring. Each corner we turned there were more rabbits; rabbits hanging from the ceiling, rabbits adorning the walls, rabbits festooned on tables, another rabbit tree, rabbit bunting hanging over doorways, ornamental rabbits in cupboards, paper rabbits on every conceivable surface. There were chickens everywhere as well in the shape of egg cups, salt and pepper shakers and candle holders.

It was Easter Psychoville!

I glanced over my shoulder at Nettie and tried to silently communicate my grave fears for our safety with my face.

I could hear Scotto outside talking to the other husbands and wondered if I should call him inside in case something happened and we weren’t ever going to be let out. Mrs Bunny might murder us and melt us down to make rabbit candles or something.

“You really must love Easter, Mrs Bunny,” I stammered, smiling earnestly.

“I do!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining gleefully as she took in her surrounds.

“And what does Mr Bunny think about all this stuff?” Nettie queried cautiously.

Mrs Bunny shrugged. “He’s happy if I’m happy.”

“So… do you leave this display up all year?” I asked, spinning in 360 degrees and gesturing at the magnificent display.

She looked at me as though I were touched in the head. “No, of course not. Do you think I’m nuts or something? It’ll all be packed up on Monday.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“But you should see my Christmas display, this is nothing compared to that…” she added thoughtfully.

Later when we sat outside drinking and eating, the other neighbours teased Mrs Bunny about how many white vans pull up at her house delivering packages at all times of the day. Mrs Bunny loves Internet shopping apparently.



We had a really fantastic time. Mrs Bunny is as eccentric as you can get but quite hilarious and a gracious hostess. She’s also the self-appointed neighbourhood watch person as she’s taken an early retirement and is home a lot. I think we stayed for about five hours and finally staggered home only because the dogs needed feeding. It’s lovely to have good neighbours and I’m thrilled to bits to have new friends.

And I can’t talk about people collecting things because I have a cow collection so I guess Ms Bunny has just taken things a few steps further. Maybe when the mountain air gets into my system I’ll be just as loopy. Can’t imagine it though…

Cow Corner

Sadly, we didn't find Nettie a 'Mountain Man' under the age of 100, so I thought I might send her one like this...

Hope you all had a happy Easter or whatever you celebrate.

Anyone collect odd things?

Don't Mention the Blog!

Get a job! I can't take home brand biscuits for one more day my leetle Conchita.

There’s a Facebook group up here JUST for the mountain folk and Scotto is already a member. Not me, I’m not, because… it’s very exclusive and well, you know… I’d rather remain anonymous for a while for various reasons. I’m not hiding from the police or anything (for now) but how am I going to write stories on my blog if the people I’m writing about start reading it? Anyway, the people on the FB page are a great source of knowledge about all things that go on up here on the mountain.

Scotto asked about a problem with the septic tank last night and he was promptly advised to put a container of yoghurt down the loo. Apparently we now need to feed our toilet antibiographical bacteria or whatever it’s called. WHAT THE BROWN SLUDGY FUDGE?

I don’t know about you but I think that’s a bit weird… maybe they were having a lend of us, you know how tradesmen send their first year apprentices to the hardware store to get a left handed screw driver, a long weight or a bucket of dial tone, maybe the locals were doing something like that.

Besides, if we FEED the toilet bacteria, the things that live deep down in the abyss could grow into virtually anything, poo monsters most likely.

Who here has EVER fed their toilet?

And they also said if you don’t want to use yoghurt you can put sugar down the loo instead. What exactly exists in the pits of our septic tank? A sweet-toothed, dairy product aficionado with long tentacles and sharp pincers who’s preparing to rise up and nip us on the bum when we’re taking our daily constitutionals?

Speaking of bathrooms and toilets, I almost inadvertently scattered my brains all over the floor last night. I slipped on the cheap and treacherous bathmat which some idiot* had stupidly placed on the extremely glossy tiles.

Smack down hard I went, first landing on my tailbone, then my elbow and finally the back of my head ricocheted off the glass shower door. I wasn’t knocked out but I went straight to bed after the incident and fell asleep immediately. I’ve heard you should never do that after a head injury. My last words to Scotto were, “If I die in my sleep can you remember to throw that cheap, shitty bathmat out before our Easter guests arrive and please tell my kids I love them.”

He just nodded absentmindedly and kept watching the telly. When I woke up I thought I must have broken my elbow it hurt so much.

“How am I going to drive to my job interview today?” I wailed piteously.

I did manage to get myself to the interview despite getting lost both ways, on the way there and on the way home. Thank God for my Global Positioning System. I could almost hear the poor woman inside the GPS tut-tutting and shaking her head in disappointment every time I discovered (too late) I was in the wrong lane and failed to take the correct exit. “Recalculating… again, you useless git of a person,” I’m sure I heard her grumble in her odd English accent.

I wonder if I’ll get the job. Naturally they queried my aptitude with technology during the very thorough grilling. They needed to know how much the silly old bat knew about computers and if she could use her probably sparse knowledge to teach small children.

I somehow mustered the common sense to realise they weren’t interested in how many Twitter followers I have.

“I can utilise Microsoft Word with a great deal of expertise,” I smiled nervously.

“Oh, that’s good. You mean you can use Excel and everything?” the lovely interviewer asked.

“No, just the Word bit,” I replied, deflated.

“I have a blog,” I blurted out in desperation. “I’ve published an eBook too.”
They bowed their heads and wrote something down on their pads after failing to conceal slightly furrowed brows.

“Please don’t look it up,” I whispered after realising what a very, very stupid thing it was I’d just done.

“Don’t mention the blog” is what I recited to myself all the way down the hill on the way to the interview. First thing I blab about? The stupid blog. God, I hope they don’t look it up. I blame my idiocy on late onset concussion.

I left the interview with a headache and now I’m wondering if it’s the result of a slow bleed on the brain from my fall or just a tension headache, probably the former knowing my luck.



Somehow I don’t think I’ll get the job. Oh well. I can always work in a shoe shop.

"How will you ever get a job in a shoe shop you silly woman? You know nothing about fashion!"

* Me

Anyone got a suggestion for an alternate career to teaching?