Too Many Cooking Shows Spoil the Broth

As usual, the girls and I went for coffee last Friday after school. Kazza enjoyed a scrumptious avocado and fetta smash, Lee-lee ordered a muffin, Kyles scoffed a savoury crepe, Shazza demolished a caramel tart with whipped cream on the side and I had nuffink.

I always remember what everyone else eats. I think it’s because I wish I was eating it but I can’t because of the menopause and the hormones and the, well, fat. 

It’s quite amazing I can recall what people eat in such fine detail as I spend twice as long as I should cleaning my teeth because by the time I’ve finished flossing the bottom row I forget if I’ve done the top ones and have to start all over. 

I can go on doing it for ages or at least until Scotto checks on me that I haven't passed out in the shower. 

But you ask me what so and so had for morning tea last Tuesday week in 2007, I’d be able to tell you.

Anyway, as we sat there chatting, the chef stormed out the front and he looked angry. He was ferociously staring up and down the pavement with what looked like murder on his mind. Like, if he’d had a meat cleaver or a machete I’d have ducked under the table or run screaming into the carpark leaving my fellow diners to their peril. They all had their backs to him so they didn't notice him and by the time he’d got through slaughtering them I’d be halfway to Brisbane I reckon. 

Luckily, he didn't go crazy but it started me thinking about how cranky the everyday, run of the mill chef must be getting with the plethora of cooking programs on the telly. Imagine all the wankers dining at restaurants and cafes complaining about how their tarts aren't quite tart enough or how uncrispy their crispy duck was. 

I’ve always found chefs to be slightly unhinged anyway, so I can imagine this sudden wave of phony expertise on all matters culinary has to be driving them mental.

I felt dismayed last night, because I’ve only just recovered from My Kitchen Rules dominating the screen and I see Masterchef has started up now. You can only look at a plate with merconium smeared artistically across it once and make a witty joke without it becoming stale. I was sick of bagging out Pete Evans and I was bored with poking fun at the pretentious dishes and Scotto was sick of me complaining so he passed me the remote control.

I found a David Attenborough show about what seemed to be an adorable mummy mouse in Texas or Mexico or somewhere… there were cacti in the landscape anyway. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly played comically in the background. She was a Grasshopper Mouse also known as a Scorpion mouse, and she gave birth to a litter of tiny mouses in a hole in the ground. 

One particular baby mouse, clearly a rebellious, a#*hole teenager already, after only a mere hour of life, left home and met up with a sinister tarantula, was almost eaten whole by a rattle snake and practically drowned in an unseasonal flood.

Meanwhile, Mummy mouse went out looking for him and nabbed dinner on her trip by snapping at a deadly scorpion and biting it into two pieces and lugging it back to her nest.

Then came the truly frightening part.

Mummy mouse sat back on her haunches, threw her tiny head back, fastening her psychotic beady eyes on the moon and howled like a werewolf.


I’m never going to Texas. I’ve never liked mice at the best of times and frankly I’d rather be confronted by a frenzied chef with a chopping knife after someone complained he overcooked the harvested lobster roulade.

I know you all think I make stuff up so here's the proof.

Question: What's creeps you out you the most? Scorpions, tarantulas, rattle snakes, howling mice or Pete Evans?

Blogger's Block: Why it's Happened to Me.

Dorothy

I've been waiting for something to inspire me. 

I can’t think of anything to write about even though I've only written one post this week which is unlike me. 

The reason is, I've been using all my creative energy writing the manuscript of my book.

Sorry.

I know how boring it is when one of your fool friends suddenly thinks they’re Stephen King and carries on with silly statements like, ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe the character (who I made up in my lunatic head) just did what they did when I was writing my novel last night!’.

That sort of pretentious crap even annoys me.

I would never say that because since I’m the one writing the words, my characters aren’t getting any of the bloody credit. I would never pretend to be swept away by an invisible muse who takes over my keyboard and gains possession of my simple mind.

No. My muse is all blood sweat and tears. And Google.

But I'm going to tell you all this now to protect myself in case I get arrested.

If Scotto is ever found bludgeoned to death on the kitchen floor, I’ll be the first suspect. But I didn't do it, okay?

The FBI (or whatever they’re called in Australia… AFP? Very boring sounding) will confiscate my laptop, have me handcuffed and be pushing my head down roughly into the back of a cop car, quicker than you can say ‘unsophisticated, waffling hack’.

Lately, I’ve been entering incriminating search terms into Google like these:

Ghosts: are they real and do they pull hair?

Paranormal psychics in Sydney and surrounding area

How do parents react when a very small child goes missing?

Sinister/evil/malevolent/scary stuff

Doppelgangers and their prevalence in Australia

What happens when you come out of an induced coma, do you remember being hit on the head?

End stage kidney disease and can you treat it at home?

Fraud and its penalties in NSW

Where can you buy bags of blood?

Crows and witch symbolism

How can I become a bikie?

What do people look like immediately after death?

How do you run someone off the road on a cliff?

What happens if you eat dirt from a grave?

How can you dissolve a body?


I could go on forever with the disturbing, creepy things I've searched for over the last two months but I don’t want to alert the authorities any further.

I’m of the writer's school of philosophy that subscribes to the, ‘Why do proper research when you can get all your information from the Internet’ way of thinking.

Some people say you should write what you know, but to be honest, I just don’t know very much.

If I wrote what I know, I’d start up a silly blog about five horrible teenagers who terrorise their mother with dangerous antics involving cars and only ever speak to her with savage derision, wouldn’t I?

Or I could write a blog about how a teacher almost has a nervous breakdown because her students run rings around her and her colleagues mock and torment her at every opportunity, couldn’t I?

But no. I’ve chosen to write a novel about things I’ve NEVER had any experience with.

A parent of one of my students, who happens to be a nurse, came in for a parent teacher interview a couple of months ago. Little did she know that she’d be inching towards the door attempting to escape my clutches as I relentlessly grilled her about ‘at home dialysis treatment’ after we’d talked about her son’s academic progress briefly.

She was a good sport about it but I had to make her promise not to tell my Deputy Principal I hijacked our meeting.

So anyway, I really don’t have anything to tell about this week except… I may be about to become a grandmother...

Huzzah!

Hagar and Meggles are making noises about buying a Chihuahua.

And last night I ate some meat for the first time since Australia day 2014.

Cooked by Scotto, who may or may not need to watch his back in the kitchen.

I think all this gory research has made me hungry for blood.

Have You Ever Worn Pasties?

So.

I arrived home last Friday afternoon to see that the pool guy had parked in my driveway in front of where I usually park my car. This was minimally annoying but I decided to park in Scotto’s space instead and let him figure it out.

What was more aggravating, was that Friday afternoon is a rare and treasured time of aloneness for me. Scotto is still at work and daughter, Lulu is usually serving éclairs at the donut shop where she works part time.

This aquatic infiltrator had disturbed my Friday afternoon equilibrium.

I made a coffee in the kitchen, trying to ignore his presence even though I knew he could see me through the back window.

Should I go and say hello? I wondered. It’s not like I’m Marie Antoinette and he’s the groundsman or whatever.

Eventually, I meandered out the back pretending to water the dead Bonsai Ficus plant Scotto bought me last Christmas.

“So… everything alright?” I fiddled with the shrivelled leaves on the Ficus.

“There’s something wrong with ye filter,” he growled in his Celtic brogue, twiddling his moustache.

I just made that part up he didn’t really have an accent or a moustache, but he’s a POOL CLEANER, get it?

Anyway, he fiddled with that filter for about a fudging hour and I spent a considerable amount of time working out which dog we’d be forced to sell to compensate for the thousand dollar pool filter expense that was sure to eventuate.

Finally, he rapped on our back glass door and I found him shuffling sheepishly, hiding something behind his back.

“I found this mangled inside ye filter,” he winced, holding up my daughter’s teeny, weeny bikini top.

I doubt he would even suspect it was my bikini top. Surely not?

Because that would be excruciatingly embarrassing for both of us.

I haven’t worn a bikini since girls delivered hamburgers at the drive-in, on roller skates.

It was my eighteen year old daughter, Lulu’s bikini top. But because of her sloppy attitude towards putting clothes away, now the pool guy thinks I go skinny dipping.

I told this story to Lulu as I held up the bikini top above my head in reprimand. “This could have cost us a lot of money!” I admonished.

“It looks gross, throw it out.” she scowled.

The very next day Lulu wafted into Poinker central, our bedroom.

“Do you guys have any masking tape?”

I thought she was, perhaps, manufacturing a university assignment prop or something.

“What do you need masking tape for?” I asked pleasantly, admiring the white chiffon playsuit she was currently sporting on her person.

“Nipple pasties.”

Scotto swiftly scurried away to his computer-filled, nerdy, safe room, with his hands covering his ears.

“You can’t put masking tape over your nipples,” I advised sagely. “It’ll hurt too much when you take it off.”

She looked at me as if I were Elephant Woman.

“What? You think I have hairy nipples or something, mother? Who has hairy nipples?”

“No one,” I replied, fossicking around in my drawer for the masking tape and glancing down my cleavage when I thought she wasn’t looking.

There are things that’ll happen to their bodies that these teenage girls don’t know.

If I put masking tape on my nipples now, they’d end up embarrassingly stuck to my belly button.



What fashion shortcuts do you take? Any tips?

Slow Sex

Jonathon the Tortoise

I recently read about a tortoise who’s 183 years old and still manages to have sex with three different female turtles a day. That seems excessive to me; even if he was still a twenty-three year old stud it's unfeasible.

Plus, I don’t know why those three female tortoises agree to it in the first place.

Have they not heard the saying, “Why buy the tortoise when you can get the milk for free”?

His name is Jonathon (that’d be right, Jonathon sounds like a bit of a randy name) and according to the website he witnessed “the coronation of eight British monarchs from George IV to Elizabeth II and a staggering 50 prime ministers”.

I’m sorry, but I think if he’s bonking three different girls a day he wouldn’t give a shit about monarchs of England, especially considering he lives in a zoo and is a tortoise.

I mean… what are the female tortoises even getting out of it? 

Not that we girls should view sex as something to be utilised as a manipulative strategy to ‘get’ things; things like a diamond ring, lifetime security, a cup of coffee delivered in bed in the morning, a night off from having to be the one to turn the lights out downstairs …

No. If we’re going to be using sex as a manipulative tactic we should aim for far loftier goals. And the secret is in the promise of amorous entanglement, girls. We don’t even need to actually engage in the sweaty, nasty, annoying reality of it all, if we play our cards right.

Just a wink and an oblique, suggestive nudge should do the trick.

Don’t be exploitive about it though girls. Use it solely for urgent, desperate times, like, when you don’t feel like going to the shop because you forgot to buy dog food. Or when it’s six o’clock on a Friday afternoon and you notice the wine’s run out.

But back to those female tortoises; I wonder if they compare Jonathon’s performance amongst themselves? Imagine the stress he must be under, knowing they all live in the same compound and talk about him behind his back, comparing notes probably.

There are two other male tortoises where he lives. One is called Speedy, which is completely unfunny because it’s like the complete opposite of what he must be, and the other male has the dull but strangely ironic name of ‘David’.

Jonathon has cataracts and can hardly see so maybe he thinks he’s bonking the same girl every day. But even so, three times is a lot, even if he’s in love with the tortoise he thinks he’s canoodling with, although in reality it’s three different tortoises.

All I can say is, I’m glad I’m not a female tortoise if the men are still that keen at 183 years of age.

And imagine how long he must take to get through the entire act.

You’d be able to watch the entire third series of Game of Thrones just waiting for him to get in the mood and the fourth series before he’s got to first base. He’d be so bloody slow. There are only so many shopping lists you can make in your head. The female tortoises couldn’t just lay on their back and think of England either because… well you know what happens to tortoises when they wind up on their back.

Jonathon lives on salad apparently. But I’ve been existing on salad for the last three decades and it doesn’t have that same erotic effect on me.

I guess Aesop was right. Slow and steady really does win the race.

But honestly, Jonathon needs to hang up his tools and get a hobby, like golf or Twitter.

Do you think 183 years old is too old to be still doing it?

LOL

I’ve been daringly writing LOL a fair bit in my comments on Facebook posts and on blog post comments lately and I must admit I feel a bit intrepid, daring, plucky when I do it.

It’s like the same adventurously youthful feeling I’d have walking into an eighteenth birthday party wearing a leopard skin mini skirt, stilettos and bopping along to Lego House by Eddie Redmayne. 

But sometimes I feel self-conscious writing LOL, as if I’m pretending to be someone I’m not, you know... being a middle-aged try-hard.

But now that I have finally embraced the whole LOL thing, it must surely be out of fashion… or at the very least not trendy… or just plain ‘gay’… or ‘lame’ or… ‘sucks’ or whatever they say now.

I always catch on to things five years after the fact.

It’s the same thing with awesome. Does anyone say that anymore or has it been relegated to the over 50s.

Is it now phat? or sick? or sweet?... and not totally awesome anymore?

I just don’t know.

I’d hate my teenage daughter, Lulu, to be walking out the door all dressed up on her way to the disco (or whatever they’re called now) and me say, 

“Have a great night darling, you look really FAT!” and be saying the wrong thing. How do you differentiate Phat from Fat in oral language? Is it in fact, okay to say oral anymore?

Or to be greeting my colleague who’s just lost 10 kilograms over the school holidays after a punishing regime of boot camp and strict adherence to the Paleo diet and say, “OH.MY GOD! YOU. LOOK. SICK. MOFO!”

I only recently found out what MOFO stands for. Previously I thought it was the equivalent to ‘cool dude’.

YOLO? I thought it meant goodbye… like hooroo (North Queensland for goodbye).

I wondered why people would look at me with concerned faces as I pulled out of their driveway, tooting the horn and cheerily shouting, "YOLO MOFOS!" at the top of my voice.

Texting is something else I just can’t get the hang of, particularly when communicating with my kids. I’m starting to think we adults are missing the secret messages hidden in the brevity of such texts. 

It’s a bit like the Da Vinci Code. Teenagers have invented a more succinct, efficient method of communication.

Lulu went to Melbourne this weekend and I asked her to text me a few times a day so I’d know she was still alive. It grants me ten minutes peace of mind each time I hear from her.

These are the only messages I have received thus far:

Thursday 19:36 (as she’s boarding plane): K

Thursday 23:23: Here

Friday 13:09: Alive

Friday 21:35: K

Saturday 11:30: Indeedy!

Sunday 10:14: Pick me up at 6:10

Sunday 10:14: Pick me up at 6

Sunday 10:14: Maybe 6:15

Sunday 11:06: Shit wait it’s 7 it lands

Sunday 14:38: Mum???

Sunday 15:13: Flt delayed now 8:00

I’ve analysed these texts and these are my interpretations.

Clearly I needed to transcribe these enigmatic puzzle-like texts by applying the Fibonacci integer sequence and see what I could decode.

Notice how at first I only received short abrupt, some might even say, bad-mannered messages.

By Saturday (the third day) Lulu used a three syllable word incorporating a small measure of enthusiasm (!). This clearly points to the fact she was beginning to miss me.

By Sunday you can see just how much the fruit of my loins is missing me (perhaps subliminally) because she has sent me no less than SIX WHOLE TEXTS!

Maybe I should send a mysterious text back for her to decipher...

Something like, Catch a taxi darling. LOL.

My Blog is Not My Diary

I saw this meme the other day and frankly it gave me the shits. I’m fairly certain the person who posted it wasn't directing it at me… or were they? Who knows?

The thing is, my blog is far from a diary. If it were my diary, this is what would happen:

The men in white coats would come and lock me away in room where I’d sit, rocking in a corner and sucking my thumb maniacally for the rest of eternity.

My husband would divorce me on grounds of my utter stupidity and annoying tendencies.

My kids would hate my guts and they’d never let me take their photo again.

My dogs would sue for defamation of character and breaking privacy issues.

My cat would ring cat helpline and dob me in to the authorities.

I’d have NO friends whatsoever.

The blogs I read, aren’t diaries either.

There are informative discussions and amusing anecdotes by the doyenne of Australian blogging, Mrs Woog at Woogs World. She's my favourite.

Tantalising recipes and side stories on brilliant blogs such as, Veggie Mama and House Goes Home.

Persuasive essays on current topics at Handbag Mafia and hilarious satire on Mumabulous and Hugzilla Blog.

I could go on forever. I really could.

I don’t read rubbishy magazines anymore because I’m far too entertained by real women writing real stories, not unreliable sensationalism about who’s bonking who and which celebrity just had a baby and named it Space Shuttle, and I’m not paying money to read them either.

Many years ago, a former friend had a very bitchy, public jab at me for using too many ‘big’ words. It hurt me and embarrassed me at the time, mainly because that’s part of who I am. I’m not being pretentious, I just happen to love words.

Plus I'm a bit weird... but I can't help that. 

It's what makes me, me and I'm not ashamed of it anymore.

 I enjoy the process of writing and creating something which may or may not be entertaining to others.

Of course bloggers want other people to read their work. 

If someone brings a meticulously decorated cake into work they want everyone to admire and eat it, don’t they?

Because that’s what it is to us bloggers; our creative energies expressed in words. 

It shouldn't be something others, who are not inclined towards reading blogs belittle and I’m getting bloody sick of it. 

Would you pick on someone in regards to their penchant for using multi-syllabic words?

Fung Shway

Hagar, my middle son, turned twenty-two yesterday and fronted up for his requested roast beef/potato bake dinner tonight. 

I told him about the garage sale we had on the weekend and watched him scanning the house with the perspicacity of an eagle, eyes travelling in a 360 degree direction, hunting like a predator for something we may have neglected to hock off to absolute strangers.

“Got any spare TVs?” he asked nonchalantly, whilst wolfing down half a rare cow.

“No,” I said. “But you can have that if you want.” I pointed to a framed print, a famous print of ‘The Lighthouse Man’ which I’d filched from my sister Sam, about twelve years ago.

I’d always admired it in her lounge room and one day saw it leaning precariously against the stairs ready for the dump. “Can I have it?” I asked her that day.

“Absolutely,” she enthused. “I hate it. It’s Pedro’s (her husband). It’s bad Feng Shui. You know that guy in the photo died straight after the photo was taken. I think it's bad luck. Please, take it.”

Normally I’m a highly superstitious person, I don’t like crows, I hate the number thirteen, and I slap people on the head when I hear an ambulance approaching, but I really liked this photo. So I took it. 

Pedro arrived as I was surreptitiously loading it into my car.

“Where are you going with my photo?” he bellowed.

But my sister Sam eyed him from the veranda with a vicious scowl on her face, so he scurried away and let me take it away, watching me drive down the street with a pitiful look of mortification on his face.

So I’ve had this sinister harbinger of evil hanging on my wall for over a decade and I must say I’ve enjoyed a pretty bloody fantastic life ever since, so I have no qualms about passing it down to my third son. It could become a family heirloom in fact.

And I researched it and the lighthouse guy in the photo didn’t die straight after the photograph was taken. He’s still alive and kicking.

What do you refuse to have in your house?

The Garage Sale to End all Garage Sales.

A wrap up after my last post regarding our Garbage Garage Sale.

We still have the cat in case you were wondering. It ran away and hid on Saturday morning and didn’t reappear until about two o’clock in the afternoon. I told you cats are aliens. They know stuff they shouldn’t.

We are also still in possession of the hot rollers, the encyclopaedias, all the trophies, the pottery artefact, and the treadmill.

The foot spa was snapped up by a really old guy. I saw his car pull up to the kerb and take four metres and quite a lot of braking to actually stop. Then it took him approximately twenty minutes to extricate himself from the car and walk down the driveway.

“How much is that?” he growled, pointing at my foot spa.

“Five dollars,” I beamed.

“What is it?”

“It’s a thing you fill with water and it bubbles up and relaxes your feet,” I explained.

He seemed satisfied with that explanation and picked it up, tucking it under his arm possessively.

“What’s this?” he asked picking up a Fijian axe my son Thaddeus, brought home from a holiday years ago.

“It’s an axe,” I said.

“How much?”

I shrugged not really knowing the going price for Fijian axes,“Two dollars?” I suggested.

He handed me seven dollars.

“I hope you’re not buying that axe to keep your wife in line?” I said, half jokingly.

He turned and eyed me up and down. “It’s to protect myself from her,” he grumbled without cracking a smile.

There was another really interesting guy from Ireland, ‘Seamus’, who I noticed looking through the few poetry and drama books I’d put out.

“I have two bookcases full of Shakespeare, poetry and plays if you want to come in and look?” I asked him.

He followed me in and sat trawling through them, overflowing with praise at my collection. We had the best chat about the Romantic poets, Shakespeare and literature in general.

Scotto stuck his head in the front door and asked me to show an old lady a single bed she was interested in buying. As I took her up the stairs to the spare room, she kept looking down at poor Seamus and saying in a loud voice, “You shouldn’t be letting just anyone into your house you know! There are some terrible people around! People who’ll rob you in broad daylight. Thieves!”

I’m sure Seamus heard every word she said and felt her accusatory eyes on him as he lovingly piled up the books he wanted.

Seamus finally finished his fossicking and had a big box full of my precious classics. “You just tell me what you want to pay me for this and that will be fine,” I said.

“NO!” he replied in his lilting, west coast Irish accent. “You tell me what you want for them.”

“Twenty bucks?” I said hesitantly.

“Thirty!” he snapped back.

It’s not normally how people negotiate is it? Maybe it’s an Irish thing?

The fact is, I was thrilled someone truly appreciative is now in ownership of the books I took such great pleasure in collecting over the last twenty years.

There was another guy who kept seeing things in our garden and wanting to buy them. "Can I buy that?" he kept saying. "Will you sell me that?"

Then he went through the skip, full of junk on the front lawn and took a few things from that as well. I kind of felt sorry for his wife at home watching him turn up with a ute tray full of our crap.

Mind you, I gave away a lot of stuff to kids while their parents glared at me for offloading my garbage onto innocent children.

Bottom Line.

Money made from Garage Sale? $500

Money spent paying plumber this morning (a Sunday) to fix a burst water hammer regulator under kitchen sink? $242

The Lord giveth and then he taketh.

But looking on the bright side, we have a lot less stuff to pack when we move and my kitchen floors are now spotless after we finished mopping eighty litres of leaked water up this morning.

Fudgeerama!

Have you ever had a garage sale? Do you go to them? Ever picked up a bargain?

Pinky's Garbage Garage Sale

Pinky's Garbage Garage Sale

We’re having a garage sale tomorrow and my job today is to sort out what I’ll be selling: Scotto’s orders to me before he left for work this morning.

I’ve had all week to do it but I’ve been busy writing the Great Australian Novel and put the unpleasant job on the bottom of the list; the mythical list in my head.

Yesterday, I went for a long lunch with the girls and I should have known it would all go pear-shaped at 2:00pm (after the third bottle of wine) when Kyles informed us she’d run out of cash and needed to go to the ‘Nutella’ machine.

I woke up this morning with a headache, a disgruntled husband and the vague memory of agreeing to travel to Melbourne to watch Kyles row down the Yarra in a competition in November. Somehow, those long lunches invariably end up costing me at least a thousand dollars.

I told the girls not to come to the garage sale because I’ll be selling presents they’ve gifted me over the years and I don’t want their feelings hurt. Unless of course they’d like to buy the presents back, then they’re more than welcome.

You, however, are completely welcome to come along and sift through my treasures. I’ve listed some catalogued items below for your perusal.

An authentic, antique, pine, lacquered “Friends” plaque you could gift to a loyal, loving friend who would never stoop so low as to sell it in a garage sale (which also comes with a complimentary dust-buster). $10

A bottle of genuine, glass, magic marbles which, if planted may grow into a beanstalk or could be used to give to kids over the age of four to play with in the dirt when they complain about being bored. $2 or nearest offer.

A plethora of drama and sporting trophies so, on the rare occasion your kid misses out on a prize or award; you can whip one of these out of the cupboard and instantly dispel the tears. All offers considered.

Everything in this cupboard will go at a paltry $2 per item including the state of the art, foot spa which has only been used once in ten years by Pinky (toenails and DNA thrown in for nix which you could use to make a clone of me or perhaps spread around a crime scene in order to implicate me).

Wondering what to buy your kid's teacher for Christmas?

Teacher gifts no teacher will ever want to give away or sell. $2 (+ 50 cents for sentimental value)

Antique Roadshow would probably be very interested in this heirloom set of Encyclopedias, and what better way to engage your kids than by showing them how Mum and Dad used to settle historical and geographical arguments before Google came along? (Warning: may contain outdated medical advice concerning the application of leeches and health benefits of tobacco) $5 the lot.

Handmade, pottery artefact created by the artistically renowned Pinky Poinker during an Art workshop at university circa. 2000 (note: fine detail of bee on front). $300 or nearest offer, all offers considered.

Assorted books gifted to Scotto from rude, teenage step sons with low-brow sense of humour. $1

A treadmill (which previously displayed killer instincts but has since been exorcised by a priest who threw holy water over it, so it’s good to go.) $500

Hot rollers for those days you didn’t have time to wash your hair and need some poof in your coif (circa 1970). Guaranteed to provide user with Farrah Fawcett look. $5

Cat. Very old. Bites.  (Not suitable for children or haemophiliacs). Eats a lot. Has been seen eating dirt. 

No guarantee provided. No returns. Free (with extra bonus Easter egg included)

See anything you fancy? Don't arrive before 7:00am or I'll be cranky!

Pinky's Theory of Relativity

I can’t believe that except for a quick dash to the chemist and grocery store on Saturday I did not leave the house for the entire Easter weekend. That’s four days of sitting on the couch or my bed, wasting time on my laptop and nurturing a deep vein thrombosis. 

Four days I’ll never get back. 

Ninety-six hours of sloth. 

Five thousand, seven hundred and sixty minutes of idleness.

I did learn some stuff though.

I learned that not one person REALLY understands the theory of relativity. I put the challenge out there on Twitter.

Please explain the theory of relativity to me in 140 characters or less, I begged and I received only one reply which merely quoted a load of technical guff.

Scotto tried to explain it to me as we sat with the movie, Interstellar, paused on the telly until he finally lost patience with me and yelled, “You’re doing my head in, Pinky!”

“You don’t even understand it you big faker!” I accused triumphantly when he failed to come up with an answer for how someone can spend one year on Saturn in the time it takes 98 years to pass on Earth.

He attempted to enlighten me on the whole speed of light stuff by explaining how if someone throws a ball on a bus it looks as if it’s going the same speed as normal but it’s actually going sixty kms an hour faster … even though that still doesn’t explain the speed of light.

“But why would the bus driver allow someone to throw a ball on his bus?” I interrupted. “Wouldn’t that be like… dangerous? It could accidentally hit him in the back of the head, or fall under the brake or something.”

“That’s not the point, Pinky. The point is, to an outside observer the ball is only travelling at about 50 kms per hour but it’s relative to the… look, watch this part of the movie, okay.”

A guy on the screen bent a piece of paper into a circle to show how a wormhole works.

“Has anyone ever found a wormhole?” I threw down the gauntlet.

“No, but we can prove mathematically that they exist, they’re theoretical” he replied knowledgeably.

“You mean, like the Easter Bunny, multiple orgasms and low calorie cheesecake?” I said.

“No. It’s been proven via mathematics, wormholes exist.”

“Well how come no one has ever photographed one then, buddy boy?”

There was silence.

“I want to go and live on Saturn,” I said. “That way I can live for a really long time.”

He waited, considering whether or not he should reply.

“Well no Pinky, you wouldn’t live longer because time is relative.”

“And that’s why it’s called the theory of relativity,” I trumped.

“Yes,” he replied, wondering why I sounded so smug.

“Now I understand it!”

But I don’t. 

And I never will. 

Unless you’d like to have a go explaining it to me.

My theory of relativity is this.

The woman who gave birth to you is your mum and her brothers and sisters are your uncles and aunts. Their kids are your cousins and the cousin’s kids are your kid’s cousins twice removed and your second cousins. Third cousins are the children of your mum’s second cousin unless they’re step children and then they’re nothing. The thieving cousins who steal your Easter eggs you’ve been saving for months should be removed from the house at once thus making them cousins once removed.

Frame it.

Lighthouse, Bubblewrap or Helicopter Parent… which are you?

I’m becoming a tad confused with all these fancy pants terms ‘the experts’ are bringing in to define parenting.

When I brought my kids up it was merely, 

Parenting: Dodgy or Moderately Acceptable.

I mean, what the hell is a Helicopter Parent? Do they fly their kids to school in a helicopter like­­­ Tom Cruise does?

Is a Bubble-Wrap Parent one who orders Christmas presents from Etsy?

And a Lighthouse Parent???

Are they the ones who live on menacing rocky islands and have some dark, secretive, familial mystery entwined into their lives; like they’re actually brother and sister and sacrifice baby seals every full moon or something?

I strongly suspect I was a Drop Sheet Parent. I was like the old, dirty sheet lying around the skirting boards waiting for the careless tradies to drop their shit all over me and I’d have to catch it. You know what I mean, placate teachers, pay fines, smooth over holes punched in the walls after brotherly skirmishes etc.

Or maybe I was a Hamburger Parent; the meat that gave meaning to the two buns, the slice of cheese, the annoying pickle and the whimsical squirt of mayo. Without the meat it just didn’t work and the condiments would end up killing each other in a battle of sibling supremacy.

Possibly, my mode of parenting was the Donkey Style. 

I allowed them to ride me and ride me until after being whipped and flogged for moving too slowly I eventually collapsed in the dust and they sold me to the glue factory.

Or perhaps I used The Kitchen Fridge parenting technique where I replenished the earthly needs of the family every day, stocking their sustenance supplies up regularly but living in a thankless, cold and clinical world where I was largely ignored unless someone needed something, whereupon they’d just front up, stare at me for a long time and complain that I was boring.

The truth is, I was probably utilising the Sherman Tank Parenting Technique. I’d lay prone in the mud as they gleaned pleasure at driving over the top of me repetitively, with their flag raised and hooting in joyous revolt.


The carry on about different parenting styles bores me to blood-streaked tears. Do people realise that this parenting thing has been going on for quite a while; like at least ten to fifteen years?

Fair enough, some parents have a lot to answer for.

There must have been some atrocious parents according to history.

Jack the Ripper’s Mum for instance: “Sorry little Jackie, but Mummy’s off to Cheap Tuesday so here’s a bag of lollies for dinner and keep yourself occupied with Carmageddon on Xbox while I’m out… and by the way don’t answer the door to strangers.”

But all this weasel word labelling, guilt-mongering and yawn-worthy claptrap is driving me nuts.


How would you define your parenting style?

Pinky's Easter Message

I arrived in the staffroom on Tuesday and noticed this little guy in my pigeon hole. It was a thoughtful gift from my teaching buddy, Tenielle (and if you think I haven’t made a hundred and one unwelcome, lame and cheesy jokes about her and I being the "Captain and Tenielle", then you’d be wrong).

Now whilst I thought it was a kind-hearted gesture, it also reminded me I needed to pick up Easter eggs for my class so off to the shopping centre I hopped on Tuesday afternoon and purchased this lot for a cool fifty bucks or so.

Migraine territory!

Buying eggs for twenty-three kids is impossible to do on the cheap and it made me a teeny bit cranky. 

I also bought a Ferrero Rocher rabbit for Tenielle, one for my teacher aide and a spare in case I’d forgotten anyone. 

If there’s one thing I hate it’s being caught short when you receive something and you've nothing to give back and I really did feel there was someone else I should be buying an egg for. It was on the tip of my tongue.

So imagine my extreme annoyance when I arrived at work on Wednesday and there was this sitting in my pigeon hole.

Ferrero Rocher

The note said, “Thanks for your love, support and the laughs every day”, no name provided.

“Who the fudge left this here?” I grumped loudly, looking around the staff room cagily. “I did my Easter shopping yesterday and now I’ll have to fudging well go back again.”

Kyles sat at the table looking coy. “Was it you?” I demanded.

“Maybe… maybe I’m sorry I did now.”

“Here take this then,” I fished around in the bag and gave her my spare rabbit (which was exactly the same bloody type as the one she’d gifted me).

“Thanks,” she grinned.

“You realise that’s my spare rabbit. And I’ll have to leave the one you gave me in my pigeon hole or Tenielle will think I’ve regifted the same egg you gave me. Shite! What a mess!”

Lee-lee walked in the staffroom door and I spun around on her, “I hope you’re not giving me an Easter egg because I have no spares,” I barked.

“Not that I know of,” she answered timidly.

O’Reilly walked in soon after. “You weren’t planning on giving me an Easter egg were you?” I challenged him.

“Not if you don’t want me to Pinky,” he replied politely. “I’ll just eat the one I bought for you myself. It’s all good.”

“Fine,” I said. “Enjoy it.”

That afternoon the school cleaner Judy, popped her head in my room to wish me a happy Easter and give me a bag of chocolate eggs for my class. She also showed me the pretty Easter card (in the shape of a chicken and everything) Tenielle’s class had made and the charming bag of choccy eggs which accompanied said card.

I was going to explain to Judy that I’d given her (spare) egg away to fudging Kyles and I was devastated I had nothing to give her but I didn’t because… well she already thinks I’m a bit strange.

The moral of the story is: Don’t bother giving me unexpected Easter eggs because I don’t want them thank you unless you give me at least two shopping day's notice.


Happy Easter and may peace and generosity of spirit find you and your loved ones.

P.S. Kyles has known me for nearly ten years and is well aware I don't eat chocolate so I can only presume her ulterior motive was to get a chocolate rabbit in return so she could gobble it down. I cannot believe the lengths some people will go to for chocolate; especially her writing  that very corny note which was clearly subterfuge. 

Don't Listen to Other People's Shite!

The girls from work, you know... Shazza, Kaz, Leelee, Kyles and I, often go for coffee on Friday afternoon. 

We go to a random café, a different one each time and the girls all order creamy, caramel, chocolate, lemon cheesecake, sticky icky confectioneries whilst I sip on a pathetic muggachino with far less sugar than I’d prefer and salivate like a dog as I watch them licking their spoons with relish.

Sigh.

Anyway, last Friday, somehow the subject of the book I’m currently writing came up. (It may have been me who brought it up I can’t recall.)

“I’ve written twenty-one chapters already!” I squealed.

They swapped surreptitious glances as if to say, “Who got on to this fudging topic? Shut her up someone!”

Anyway, I proceeded to tell them the entire plot, leaving out the special, mysterious bits of course.

“It’s about a kindergarten teacher,” I pontificated grandly. “She doesn’t eat much, like… she just eats boiled eggs and a dry Ryvita every now and then and she drives a yellow Volkswagen. She also has a mini Fox Terrier called Mildred who she adores and who goes everywhere with her.”

Shazza yawned, “So… it’s a thinly veiled novel all about you, Pinky.”

“No!” I almost shouted. The guy behind the counter looked over, alerted to a possible café skirmish, his finger poised on the 000 speed dial.

“It’s not about me! It’s about a girl called Mabel! She’s only twenty-nine and she’s blonde! I’m a brunette!”

“But you still think you’re twenty-nine, Pinky,” quipped Kyles, sucking excess caramel from the end of her spoon. “It’s about you isn’t it?”

It was basically an ‘eyes glazed over moment” from then on. 

They haven’t even starting reading it. They don’t care. Even Scotto feels forced to read it if he expects his Sunday morning “breakfast in bed”.

It’s the same as when Scotto starts telling me about why the updates on my computer are important and I shouldn’t keep postponing them for four hours every time they show up; my eyes glaze over to the point where I totter forward dribbling in boredom and he has to prop me up with a pillow whilst still lecturing me on the perils of Microsoft bullshite.

And like, when I’m sitting in a staff meeting and someone starts arguing about who should man the senior boys' toilets after the second lunch bell; my eyes glaze over. It’s been discussed about forty million fudging times and frankly… I’m sick of it. No sane person wants to venture anywhere near the senior boys' toilets so let’s just leave it at that.

Leave them to it I say… let them go all Lord of the Flies. And there are a lot of flies I’m here to tell you.

Or when someone I know (no names) starts telling me about how they went to boot camp that morning and had to push a fudging tyre up a cliff then dive into the rocky surf and swim five miles chasing the tyre until a shark ate them and they died. Yawn. (The story went something like that I’m not sure because I fell asleep.)

Basically I don’t want to listen to other people’s shite and they don’t want to listen to mine.

Which is why I write a blog.

No one can interrupt me and I can’t see you rolling your eyes and picking at your fingernails in boredom.

Which conversations leave you with your eyes glazed over?

Dear Gog...

I teach nine and ten year old students in a Catholic school and part of our religious curriculum entails teaching them about different types of prayer; prayers of petition, prayers of thanksgiving and prayers asking for forgiveness.

Even if you're a non-believer, it's nevertheless an excellent reflective exercise to get the kids to think about what they're grateful for; what they think is the most important thing in life and how they could make themselves into better people.

Today they completed a test requiring them to create their own prayers and whilst I normally despise marking assessment, I was rewarded with a few laughs marking this one.

I hoped for lofty answers professing gratitude for their secure lives and loving families and a desire to see an end to war, violence and poverty... but it seems the kids have other priorities.

Below are some of the funny responses:



Dear Gog, Can you please make the Cowboys win every footy game they play?

Dear God, I would like to catch a good fish.

Dear God, Thank you for making X Box.

Dear God, Help me not to be a sore loser or winner at the handball match against my cousin.

Dear God, Please forgive me for ignoring my mum this morning.

Dear God, Please help me with the Weetbix triathlon.

Dear God, Thank you for making the trees because they are really cool and also very branchy. And wooden.

Dear God, Forgive me for shooting my brother in the face yesterday with my machine gun witch (sic) is acshalee (sic) a nerf gun by the way.

Dear God, Thanks for all my family and the cute bunnies in the world.

* Dear God, Please forgive me for what me and my friends did on the weekend.

Dear God, I am sorry for using Jesuses (sic) and your name in vain. I will never do it again and I mean it this time.

Dear God, Can i have a birthday party?

Dear God, Forgive my sister for slamming the car door on my leg this morning.

Dear God, Please help me get ungroundeded (sic) so i can play with Connor and have a sleepover that's all I ask for.

Dear God, Can I have a car?

Dear God, Can I please have a frozen razcoke?
(I think that's a rasberry frozen coke...)

Dear God, You are fantiactial at making stuff.

Dear God, Please forgive the Titans for loosing the footy game.


*Now I don't know if God was listening or not but I'd really love to know what that kid did on the weekend that was so bad. 

The mind boggles.