Do you mainly use your right hand or your left?

Pool in all its glory!

Today was fudging “Photo” day which meant we had to have the idiot house (the one we’re putting on the market next week) ready to take photographs for the $3000 newspaper advertising campaign to go in the stupid newspaper (don’t get me fudging started about that).

So Scotto and I got up on a Sunday morning at like… earlier than 9 o’clock. 

I went straight downstairs and flicked on the rubber gloves like some sort of excited proctologist and began scouring out cupboards in the kitchen with my trusty sponge and a pot of Gumption.

I bloody love Gumption. It is the BEST thing for getting off grime. This is not a sponsored post and I DEFINITELY do not want Mr or Mrs Gumption to start sending me cases of the stuff because I’m sick of the sight of it, BUT… credit where it’s due. Not only does it dissolve most unrecognizable globules of green, unidentifiable growth, it has no fumes!

I had my head and generous upper torso jammed into my share of tiny spaces, with my arm stretched out clinging to a mottled sponge knowing full well I wasn’t about to succumb to deathly fumes because Gumption is made from freshly expressed koala milk and has no toxic properties.

That’s what Scotto told me anyway.

I put in eleven hours of hard labour yesterday and this is what my scrubbing hand looked like.

The other hand had a lot to answer for.

Right hand: 

So what the fudge did you do all day, huh? Look at me! Like… I’m all swollen and wrinkly and corpse-like and you look fresh as a daisy. You just stood by all day, hanging at Pinky’s side or perched on her hip, while I did all the work you bastard slack ass! Who do you think you are?



Left Hand: 

It’s not my fault! I was born with an impediment. I just can’t do spiral motions. I don’t have the same fine motor control as you! I can’t help it if I’m different. I would help if I could but I just haven’t got the same ability as you. I’m retarded. Don’t make fun of me. It’s against the law you know. You’re bullying me! I’m telling someone! Bully!



So anyway, I put in eight hours today which isn’t as good as eleven hours but it’s still worthy of a whinge (and a pizza).

But the good news is we’ve reached the peak of the mountain and now it’s all downhill. One more week until our first open house! Oh my fudging gawd!!!


And apart from one incident where Scotto yelled out to me when I was having a tantrum about curtain rods, “Get OVER it!”  and I screeched back with no dignity at all, “You get over it! I hate you and I hate this HOUSE!” we haven’t had one fight!

Do you have a problem with your left hand hand or are you ambidexterimosiserated?

The Flamin Flame Tree!

Flame Tree having a Drama Queen Conniption

“Looks like it’s had a bit of shell shock,” said a lady walking her dog past my front lawn as I grovelled around on my knees in the buffalo grass attempting to pick up the multitude of leaves dropped from my flame tree, enough leaves to camouflage the island of Tasmania should it decide to become a tactical commando, actually.

“I’m just waiting for its bloody mate over there to do the same thing on the other side,” I sighed, pointing to an identical flame tree on the other side of the lawn and wiping a beetle from my eyeball.

Healthy Flame Tree

She looked into the forlorn branches of the bedraggled tree and I just knew she was about to say something poignant. 

She had that horticulturalist look about her. You know… gray bushy eyebrows and a t-shirt with wind turbines decorating the front and a slogan saying, “Old environmentalists never die, they just get recycled” on the back.

“I think that tree was traumatized by having its roots cut when those guys laid your turf down,” she said, arching a furry eyebrow.

A light bulb went off in my head. It was a dull, yellow, almost burnt out light bulb and not an environmentally friendly LED one, but even so, a light bulb.

Of course! That’s why the poor tree had thrown a hissy fit at the inappropriate time of Spring. 

It wasn’t just being a bloody minded despot trying to spite me by cruelly thrusting its foliage to the ground in a vicious temper tantrum… it was ill, heinously wounded and protesting in the only way it knew how.

All the swearing and snide remarks I’d been making at it as I scrambled around its trunk, frantically plunging leaves into garbage bags, were probably making things worse. 

As soon as Christine Milne was out of ear shot I started pleading with the tree.

I stroked its trunk and breathed carbon dioxide over its branches as I whispered soppy endearments.

When I arose this morning, not a single leaf had fallen. It may be because there really aren’t many leaves remaining on the pitiful plant anyway… or it might be because I have discovered a new talent… 

Tree Whispering!!!

What do you whisper to?? Surprise me...

Thirty Days Hath Schleptember... hic!

Thirty days hath September

This poem helps you remember

If a month of abstinence you need to choose

February’s the shortest to cut down the booze.

Which is why I can’t understand why they have Ocsober in October, which has 31 days! 

I can tell you right now, September is not the month to give up the happy juice. It’s my birthday month in September, along with all the other people who were accidentally conceived during the festive season. September is a notoriously busy month for me.


Do you find that your life really picks up pace as your birthday approaches? It’s almost as if you’re hurtling towards a momentous crescendo in a classical orchestral overture and just as it reaches its climax everything is likely to explode like the Big Bang, splattering primeval paint all over your face.

Not only is my home in a complete state of disarray (with gritty, bare floor boards where Scotto ripped the carpet up, packing cases are taking over rooms like ticks on a dog, and a half polished floor necessitates the removal of shoes at the front door) BUT also, my classroom is in the exact same state of chaotic chaos.

Term three at school, means making paper mache, fudging volcanoes with endless strips of newspaper and floury glue splattered on desks, chairs and carpet, then having to put up with twenty-two volcanoes spread out in glorious bastardry on every counter top for weeks on end.

Mess and Chaos

Mrs Poinker slowly losing her mind!

Term three also means the annual Eisteddfod and the accompanying plethora of props and costumes filling the classroom. 

I don’t mean to boast but I do pretty well in the drama section of the Eisteddfod. I used to direct plays for other classes as well as my own.

In my first year at the school in 2005 my class placed 2nd; I was just warming up.

Boring Braggy Bit...

In 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 I entered three plays in the same section of the primary school drama section and we placed first, second and third for five years in a row, obliterating the competition. Pretty awesome I think.

I got greedy in 2011 and split my own class into two plays. We were placed second and third. I was gutted.

In 2012, 2013 and 2014 I entered just my own class and we were awarded first place in each of those three years… in a row. There are usually only 5 or six other schools that enter, but even so. I’m pretty proud of my consistency.
Directing young kids in cheesy plays is pretty much the thing I do best.

This is my last year at my beloved school so you can imagine the pressure I’m putting on myself to bring home the bacon one final time. Not that anyone at school knows or cares about our achievement. I don’t think anyone has even noticed, such is the lack of appreciation for the dramatic arts in Australia. I wrote my honours thesis about the lack of drama tuition in the primary school and I still feel passionate about it.

My theory is this… generally the naughtiest kids in the class are the best at drama. They achieve success through the outlet they feel confident in and that starts a positive escalation in all the other areas of acadamia.

Anyway, no one listens to me, but you might remember the banana themed play  last year and the Pirate Extravaganza the year before... 

This year we’re doing Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs. It sounds traditional but don’t worry, there’s a banana in it. 

Snow White chokes on a poison banana instead of an apple. 

Picture it.


I don’t think we’ll win it this year because I just bragged about my past triumphs and that’s how things usually work… you know, pride goeth before a cataclysmic fall and all that shite. Oh well.

But I'm interested to know from you, do you think drama should have a bit more importance in school with less of an emphasis on sport?

Do you have enough Gumption?

I nearly used Gumption on my face tonight instead of my usual cheap face cream. I wonder what would have happened if I had? Would I have erased my deeply etched wrinkles like I’ve been erasing the deeply ingrained dirt from each of the thirty thousand wooden textured doors I’ve been scrubbing this weekend?

Or would I have discovered a brand new home-style chemical face peel?

I had to wear a wrist guard to bed last night my right hand was so tender and sore from all the circular motion of scrubbing I’ve been doing.

I could never have survived life as a chamber maid.

I don’t like it.

Cleaning sucks… just like my vacuum cleaner does when I'm knelt over the skirting boards like Saint Bernadette with her knees full of tuberculosis or whatever.

The dust should theoretically be retreating now the lawn is finally laid.

 For some obscure reason, known only to itself, our idiot flame tree decided to drop a semitrailer worth of leaves the day the grass was put in place. With a carpet of leaves smothering the not quite rooted lawn it was mandatory to somehow remove them so that the highly expensive grass could drink in its quota of water from the heinously expensive irrigation system. The problem was, we couldn’t walk on the grass to collect the dumb ass leaves.

Scotto is far too thunder footed (being in possession of feet like a basketball playing Hobbit) so it was up to the fleet-footed Pinky to scarper across the lawn like a dew fairy with a plethora of garbage bags.

You cannot imagine the pain involved; hunched over like a bell-ringer from a certain French cathedral, trying not to weigh very much, my lower back seizing, my face red as a beetroot/spinach smoothie and exploding in filthy expletives every time the wind blew the leaves from my desperate clutches.

I thought I was having an aneurism after I’d finished. All the veins above my neck were sticking out and throbbing like a tangle of snakes dancing to a house music remix.

I had to have a bit of a lie down.

Naturally, a sweating and panting Scotto chose that moment to wander down from his arduous painting of the upper level to find me supine on the couch with a cold tea towel on my forehead.


I’m just not cut out for this moving business.

You know the stress of moving is supposed to be equal to the death of a spouse? Just sayin...

Oven Cleaning Tip of the Century!

“The best phobia to have is to be scared of emus. You’ll never unexpectedly find them in the linen closet or hanging on the shower curtain.”

Pinky Ponker 2015.

Frame it.

But... I do have a very inconvenient phobia… about toxic cleaning products.

Not because I’m lazy and don’t like to clean, but because I’m scared of the carcigens. (Spell check didn’t recognise this word and changed it to ‘cardigans’ but I’m not at all scared of cardigans. Not unless they’re being worn by spiders or vampires.)

Oh… I just noticed after a quick google search, it’s actually ‘carcinogen’ not carcigen. That explains it. Now I think about it, I doubt anyone would be afraid of cardigans.

*Except this man.





Anyway, I bought an oven cleaner the other day and failed to read the instructions until I arrived home, when I went into an absolute, dribbling apoplexy and realised there was no way in hell I would risk my life on a frivolous task such as cleaning my stupid oven with the lethal product in my trembling hands.

But we’re selling our house and my fan-forced oven hasn’t seen the rough side of a sponge for thirteen years so something had to go down. The sides and bottom of the oven were quite respectable but the glass window was coated in a thick, impenetrable, brown concrete like substance, at least a centimetre thick.

I scarpered to my laptop and googled ‘ways to clean your oven that are unlikely to cause a fatal asthma attack or severe burns to the eyeballs’ and the first result I found was to turn up the oven to the highest temperature until everything is annihilated to a crisp and just flakes off with the light touch of a chux.

I passed on that one, strongly suspecting the oven fuse would definitely blow up or I’d end up setting the house on fire.

The second piece of advice suggested baking powder and vinegar.

Not only safe for the sinuses but CHEAP! I was on cloud nine and began preparing the gooey paste at once. There was only one problem with this eco-friendly solution.

IT DIDN’T FUDGING WORK!

AT. ALL.

So it looked like it was back to the chemical infusion of highly flammable, highly caustic, eye cauterising, skin eroding, windpipe scorching, run of the mill oven cleaner.

But meanwhile, I was still terrified I’d accidentally spray it down my oesophagus or inadvertently lick the nozzle in some kind of suicidal seizure… so I did the only sensible thing I could think of.

I asked Scotto to do the spraying.

I promised I’d return after work and mop up the greasy remains. All he had to do was spray the oven.

I arrived home excited and trembling and donned my hazmat suit in preparation for the decontamination at ground zero. 

Imagine the magnitude of my bitter disappointment when I discovered that the dangerous, noxious oven cleaner DIDN’T FUDGING WORK EITHER!!!

I suddenly lost my temper and began stabbing and gouging the glass window of the oven with a butter knife like a psychotic, frenzied housewife who just found out she’s run out of chardonnay and the local bottle’o is closed, until finally Scotto grabbed my wrist in his hand and held a strange scrunched object up to my face.

“Wet sandpaper, Pinky!” he rasped. “Let’s try wet sandpaper and elbow grease.”

So we knelt on the floor and scrubbed in little circular motions until I wanted to chew my arm off in frustration… but we got it clean in the end.

Yay.

I’m thinking I might use wet sandpaper on lots of things. Microdermabrasion?



What would you use it on?

The Secret to Getting Kids to Pay Attention!

Image source

I think I’ve discovered how to engage primary school students in the classroom… make everything you teach them revolve around poo and wee.

My class has been learning about the First Fleet and even though we’ve researched it thoroughly, studied the Industrial Revolution, the meagre rations on the ships, the landing at Botany Bay and Port Jackson, watched movies and read books about it, drew pictures; the only thing any of the kids could regurgitate in their test essay was a fleeting comment I made one day about how the convicts had to do their business in buckets below deck and that when the seas grew rough on the eight month journey, there was quite a lot of spillage.

Every single student wrote at considerable length about this one fact. 

Bugger the flogging, the scurvy, the two meals a day of stale bread and gruel… oh no. 

It was all about the poo.

One ten year old asked me which World War the First Fleet was fighting in.

“There was no World War,” I said slowly, shaking my head in incredulous defeat.

“But why were there ships then?” he persisted, not quite believing me.

“They were transporting the convicts,” I bleated. “Remember? The convicts?"

He sniffed and wandered off, clearly disappointed there was no violent war with submarines and machine guns to write about.

And then there was the student who wrote he was being transported on the 18th century vessel for stealing pizza.

Not sure they had Pizza Hut or Dominos in London back then.

It’s very hard to get a room full of kids to pay attention. They’re very bloody good at pretending to listen though. They stare at me and nod and laugh at the right time but they aren’t really taking anything in at all. They just humour me I think.

And it’s not just my personal failing as a teacher either.

We had an actual geologist from the university come to our classroom last week and the only thing the kids were interested in was the fossilised poo the gentleman had cleverly brought along. 

So I’m thinking of introducing Mr Hankey the Christmas poo into every lesson from now on.

You know… If Mr Hankey needs to carpet his bedroom which is 10 metres x 7 metres how many square metres of brown carpet will he need?

Or… if Mr Hankey weighs 500 grams how many Mr Hankeys would be needed to make 4 kilograms of poo?

Or in geography… Mr Hankey is travelling to South America. What sort of clothes should he take to suit the climate?

Or in literacy… Write an descriptive cinquain including imagery about Mr Hankey the poo.

Or in religion… What gifts did the Three Wise Christmas Poos bring the baby Jesus?

Or even in science… if we left Mr Hankey out in the wind and rain for several years what would happen to him and why? Draw a diagram to go with your explanation.

I could make classroom posters with Mr Hankey telling everyone to be respectful to each other. All poos are created equal and that sort of thing.



Or maybe I should just change career...

What do you think? Should I send by idea to the Board of Education.

Linking up with Jess from Essentially Jess for #IBOT

I Found a Diary Underneath the Wii

My Diary

Most of you probably don’t remember the song Diary by Bread. 

My parents had the album on vinyl and I’d sit and listen to that song when I was about eleven, singing along at the top of my voice with head phones on so I couldn’t hear myself. 

Imagine how appalling that would have been for the rest of the household.

While I was heavily embroiled in sorting out the rubbish from the top of my wardrobe, I found a diary I wrote when I was ten years old. I also found twelve unopened rolls of Christmas wrapping, an empty Wii box, five empty shoe boxes, some long lost baby photos and the carcass of a frighteningly over sized huntsman spider. 

I wonder how many nightly adventures that spider enjoyed crawling all over my body as I slept, snoring rhythmically and naively unaware of the horror.

Naturally, instead of continuing to heave the rubbish out to the skip as my husband sweated and toiled downstairs painting the hallway, I perched on the edge of the bed and leisurely sifted through the diary. It was quite entertaining.

"I do wish we could go again!" See... I was always a wanker.

That’s the trouble with sorting through stuff to be thrown out, it’s very distracting.


I can remember excitedly receiving the diary in the Christmas of ’69 and began diligently writing in it on January 1, 1970. 

Every day I wrote about what I did in the school holidays. I got right up to January the 23rd when I suddenly stopped with these ominous words…

Really?

I had the attention span of a gnat.

I did revisit the diary from time to time including this revealing snippet about my mother!!!

Quick! Someone call DOCS!

I think things must have picked up in my life around October. This cryptic note scrawled in the diary seems to indicate a surge in my love life.

 Obviously I had to delete the evidence in case my sister, Sam saw it and told on me for having a boyfriend, but I got a thrill writing it down, I’m sure.

What a stroll down memory lane eh?

Love, Pinky xxx

Did you keep a diary when you were a child?

Man, You Wouldn’t Believe How Much I Spend on Grass!

The 'Before' Shot.

Our lawn has been dug up, ready for the brand new Buffalo grass to be splendiferously* laid. Our irrigation and lawn man is called Bill and he’s married to my colleague at work, Donna (a.k.a. Sausage Roll Rebellion villain). 

I told him he should call his company Buffalo Bill and surprisingly it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that. His last name is Crabb... but he’d hardly want to be calling his company Crabb Grass and Irrigation, would he?

Anyway, if you need to get your lawn spruced up or a watering system put in place let me know and I’ll pass on the details (but if you live in Canada he may take a while to return your call).

The only problem is that Bill is having a bit of trouble sourcing grass. Can you imagine him calling around the contractors saying, “Hey man, it’s Bill. Know where I can get my hands on some grass?”

Scotto finished painting the outside of the house and is currently annoying everyone (me) with signs everywhere telling us not to touch the interior walls.

The carpeting will be done within a fortnight. The wooden blinds have been cleaned, the wooden window sills sanded and tinted, new curtains in the lounge room, the front foyer will be re-sanded and polished and I’m packing up useless items and scrubbing bathrooms.

Financial Cost: about 20 fudging thousand dollars $$$$.

Emotional/Mental Cost:

Every single one of the four dogs has paint on its body… somewhere.

Lulu (19 year old daughter) is cracking a mental because everything looks different and it’s stressing her out.

I decided I can’t throw away the kid’s astoundingly huge collection of plastic trophies and realised I really am a sentimental old woman after all.

Scotto got a job on the Gold Coast and will be moving two months ahead of me and I’m worried he might have such a good time he’ll just start sending me postcards of meter maids and that’ll be the last I hear of him.

Not really.

I don’t think my 14 year old cat will handle the move. She doesn’t like change because she’s so old and frail. (Who am I kidding? That bitch could take down a wedge-tailed eagle. She’ll be super keen to move so I’ll have to fork out several hundreds of dollars to have the fudging twenty dollar cat transported in a luxury trailer down the Queensland coast while I’ll be sweating in my four cylinder car with a German shepherd and a Silky Terrier breathing their bad breath down my neck as I traverse the potholes on the Bruce Highway).



* I thought I made that word up but Spell Check seems to think it’s okay???

Any moving tips you'd like to pass on to me?

Pinky's Very Exclusive Beauty Secret

Scotto walked into the bathroom last night as I was putting Anusol on my face. “Haven’t you got the wrong end, Pinky?” he asked innocently.

“No,” I replied. “I just put face cream on my bum. I think I know what I’m doing buddy boy.”

He shook his head and went back to watching his Netflix movie.

I read that you can use haemorrhoid cream on broken veins, which I have on my left cheek… (and it’s not from drinking alcohol, okay, it’s from washing my face in hot water or eating chilli or having too many saunas or something). 

Apparently it works the same way as it does on the piles in your bottom. It shrinks the little buggers. But at the other end of my body I seem to have developed a dry, flaky tailbone. What’s that about? Can anyone tell me? At first I thought it was a bed sore from lying around too much. My tail bone is actually peeling so I rubbed some of my inexpensive but ultra-rich eye cream into it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Speaking of bums, I’ve had the most fantastic idea for my book week costume this year.

This will be my last year at the school after ten long years and I want to go out with a bang. I want those kids sobbing and wailing on the last day because they’ll be missing that rascally old Mrs Poinker. I don’t want them all cheering and whooping when it’s announced I’m leaving. Imagine how mortifying that would be.

So, knowing how much kids love anything to do with bums and poo, I’m going as “The Day My Bum Went Psycho.”

When I was cleaning out cupboards on the weekend I found a large and anatomically correct bottom which 22 year old son Hagar bought for a costume party one year.

Sneak preview!

Scotto fashioned a poo for me to hang around my neck.

Realistic Poo!

*I did ask Kaz, Shazzy, Lee-lee and Kyles if they wanted to dress up as poos and we could do the group thing but they're very unadventurous and boring so they declined.



The only problem is, the bum is just a tiny bit too realistic. I’m going to have to shove some blu-tac in a certain area and put a fig leaf over it or something.



But can you just imagine it? Those kids are going to go ballistic!

Would you like to see the photos after the event?
Got any beauty secrets?

Linking up with Jess from Essentially Jess for #IBOT

I was Nearly Arrested Yesterday!

You said what, Pinky???

I was running late for work yesterday and was annoyed to notice two police cars parked on the side of the road and a rangy policeman waving me over on to a side street. 

As I said, I was already late and it was a bit inconvenient. I considered putting my foot down and squealing off with my tyres smoking and my rude finger pressed up against the window but I thought that might make me even later to school… you know, in the long run.

I pulled up beside the cop and wound down my window. “Good morning,” said the twelve year old, rosy cheeked policeman. “We’re doing random checks on vehicles. Did you drink any alcohol last night, madam?”

“Hell yeah, I did!” I replied, hoping I’d make him laugh and then he’d say, “On your way then you cheeky, old bugger.”

But he just blinked. “Had a good night’s sleep and some breakfast though I hope?”

I nodded mutely, even though I hadn’t slept well at all and definitely hadn’t eaten breakfast. I could see this policeman had no sense of humour whatsoever.

“Can I see your licence please, madam?” he asked without smiling and clicking his heels together.

It was at this point I started to get nervous. My hands shook as the policeman watched me searching through my wallet in a fluster and my credit cards and shite spilled on to my lap and the floor and all the while he stared at me in an accusatory fashion. 

I hadn’t done anything wrong. Why was I acting so guilty for God’s sake? Why do cops always make me feel guilty?

“I’m going to need you to supply a breath sample, madam,” he smirked, as he unwrapped a tube from a plastic bag and plugged it into a walkie talkie thing.

My brain began to spiral in an uncontrolled vortex. How many drinks had I actually scoffed down last night? We’d had my friend and real estate agent, Nettie, over and I’d gone a bit silly. What time did I have my last one? Ten o’clock? 

Yes. My last drink was at ten o’clock and I’d had about five drinks over the night. That meant my liver should theoretically have finished its mopping up of vile toxins by three o’clock in the morning and it was currently seven-thirty so unless there was something seriously wrong with my hepatic system (which wouldn’t surprise me) I should be in the clear.

Then I remembered the mouth wash I’d used less than 5 minutes before. What if that was enough to put me over the limit? 

Damn my obsession with clean breath. Would they let me make one phone call so I could let my Deputy Principal know I'd been arrested so she'd have to get someone else to do my oval duty at big lunch? Would they cuff me and push my head down as I got into the cop car?

The young policeman watched the numbers clicking on his machine as I huffed and wheezed into the tube and I swear he looked disappointed at the final result.

"Have a nice day," he grimaced in defeat.

As I drove off, the older cop (the one much closer to my age), yelled out to me exuberantly,“Why does your number plate say ‘Pinky P’ when your car’s yellow?”

I poked my head out the window, “It’s not my car,” I shouted. “I stole it!”

I could see him laughing in the rear vision window as I puttered off.

Life is wasted on the young.

Have you been pulled over ever?

Did you make any jokes?

Do you get nervous in an unwarranted way or are you actually a criminal?

I had a fantastic IKEA!

Pablo being a model.

There always seems to be a casualty when I go away on a trip.

Somehow, despite checking every fudging drawer and cupboard, the bathroom sink and under the bed, I always manage to leave something behind; like a hairdryer, an eye cream or a valuable, family heirloom earring.*

After I arrived home last weekend, I realised I’d left my brand new shower cap dangling on the nozzle at Mum and Dad’s house. Now, I know shower caps only cost $2 but it took me weeks to find where they stock them in Coles and I’ve forgotten which aisle and shelf they were on and the thought of going through the whole tiring process again is too much to bear so I’ll have to put up with my hideously stained old one with stretched elastic that lets the water in and makes the entire exercise of wearing a shower cap pointless.

I may as well just go and get a bucket of water and plunge my tiny head in it for all the protection it gives me.

So if Coles confuses me in this manner, imagine how circumspect I was when Scotto and I decided (as a frivolous experiment to check how strong our marriage actually is) to stop in to IKEA on the way to the airport on Sunday. We don’t have an IKEA in our one-horse town (or an Aldi) and I’m sick of being an ignoramus when people talk excitedly about how IKEA causes a high level of antagonism between them and their spouse.

I don’t like to miss out on good blog fodder like that.

The parking lot was an ideal place for me to start. 

“Well you could have got that parking spot if you’d been on the ball!” I nagged in my high pitched shrill. “That was a bit close to the pylon, don’t you think! You nearly dinged the car!” I taunted.

But there was no satisfyingly tetchy reaction from Scotto. That’s okay, I thought. I’m just warming up. There’s plenty of time to ignite an argument once we get inside.

But once I’d gained access to the place, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.. It was quite simple to follow the illuminated arrows on the floor and mosey along like a stupefied cow being led through stiles, around and around what seemed, on the surface, to be a furniture shop.

I mean, is that all it is? A furniture shop? Why do couples get divorced after they go there?

I was expecting something far more antagonising. I thought there might be sexy Swedish blondes wearing fur bikinis soaking in Jacuzzis or something and I’d have to keep clipping Scotto over the ear to get his attention.

I’m far more likely to divorce my husband after a trip to Bunnings with all the drill bits and socket wrenches and stuff.

According to my research, walking through kitchen displays brings up touchy subjects like “who does the most cooking” and the fact that most couples who go there are already probably under stress because they’re renovating.

My favourite IKEA Kitchen

It seems as though the more choices there are available, the more scope there is for disagreement.

Fortunately, I don’t think Scotto and I have very passionate feelings about furniture. We save our rage for more important things.

We might get into an argument about him traipsing through the kitchen with his big ugly size 13 feet after I’ve just mopped it, or because he smacked my neurotic Chihuahua on the nose for barking incessantly at the cat, or the fact that I think all zombie movies are pathetically stupid and you’d have to be an intellectually challenged moron with glue for brains to watch them.

We might bicker over who’s going downstairs to check if the kitchen’s on fire at 2 o’clock in the morning because the smoke alarm is screaming blue murder after an unsuspecting gecko accidentally ran across it, or we might squabble because I was clumsy and tripped over the bathroom scales in the middle of the night making a shattering noise loud enough to wake the neighbours three doors down ( it happened last night) and when he gets up one hour later and does the exact same thing and I accuse him of trying to pay me back in a spiteful way by waking me up in precisely the same startling fashion… but we’d never argue about a silly piece of furniture. That would be ludicrous.

Nor would be argue about assembling flat packs, because for a start I’d be nowhere in the vicinity when Scotto was doing the assemblifying. 

I quite liked IKEA.

They even throw in the view!

In fact I think I could live in an IKEA store if they looked into doing a bit of plumbing... you know, actual flushing toilets. 

If they were smart they’d rent their little scenery things out at night to Uni students.

The cutlery drawer was all we could afford.

*There are no valuable heirlooms in our family that I know of. That was just to impress you.

Do you always accidentally leave something behind when you go on holidays? Ever had a fight in IKEA?

Linking up with Grace from With Some Grace for #FYBF

My Homework from ProBlogger

I arrived home from the ProBlogger event, held at the fabulous Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast last night and now I have to write an eBook. Or is it an Ebook? Or an EBOOK? Or an ebOOk? 

I’m not sure which, but anyway... I have to write one.

According to the highly professional speakers we had the pleasure of listening to on the weekend, the best bloggers give back to their reading community. But in the last two and a half years I’ve given you all nothing but a headache and a niggling suspicion there’s something extremely wrong with me. I need to lift my game.

I did think about it at length and I sort of decided I could probably write about “The Disgraceful Habits of Appalling Old Women” considering my reputed behaviour. I could write an electronic book about how to be a disgusting old bat with a side dressing of style.

I was sitting in the teacher's staff room today, regaling my friends with stories about how I was running around with a certain breed of blogging buddies at the ProBlogger function on Friday night and what delirious fun I’d had drinking champagne and ripping off my mouth filter.

 Over my punitive tuna and spinach salad (after a weekend of pina colada-flavoured, macaroon decadence), I told the girls how I left my husband chatting to a decidedly attractive blogger (who looked exactly like Olivia Newton John, actually) and on the way back from the toilet I decided to make an impromptu visit to a bar at the resort with the gals without telling him and how he then lost me for an hour and a half despite calling me eighteen times on my mobile until he eventually grew suspicious and wandered into the bar where I was having a freaking whale of a time 'networking' and proceeded to greet him with a highly animated Mexican Wave (for one) and then he was very cranky and started to speak to me in a raised voice and I told him it was all the fault of my blogging buddies and that they’d led me astray and I was just an innocent acolyte who’d been abducted and besides, the last time I’d seen him, he was talking to Olivia Newton John, so I was the one who should be angry, not him, and would he like to buy me a drink now that he was here. He bucked up about it for a few minutes insisting I’d set him up with Olivia as a subterfuge but after a while he forgot about it and went and bought himself a beer.

I noticed Kaz and Kyles giving each other secretive looks at the staff room table as they listened to my waffling.

“So… Scotto was angry at your blogging pals, not you?” Kyles gave me the stink eye.

“Yes!” I beamed. “Only for a bit, though.”

“So he was angry with them the same way he gets angry with us when we ‘lead you astray’?” Kaz said in a sour voice. I didn’t like the way she used air quotes when she said ‘lead you astray’.

“Do you think maybe it could be you leading others astray, Pinky?” Kyles tapped her fork against her Tupperware container of ‘tuna something’.

I thought about it for a few seconds and realised it was a preposterous notion. Here I am, a dear little old lady, nearly FIFTY-FIVE years old for gawd’s sake. These young girls come along and force champagne down my neck… what am I supposed to do? Say no?

But even though I don’t think I did anything wrong, I don’t suppose Appalling Old Women will be my Eee Book after all.

I think it will be,


Twenty Best Chihuahua Recipes

Chihuahua Schnitzel! Yum!

Me and Kathy from 50 Shades of Age

 

Kat, Kerryn and Pinky

Me and the star of Aussie blogging... Mrs Woog!

It honestly was an even better conference than 2014.

Congratulations to everyone who was involved in the planning. Can't wait for next year!

Linking up with Essentially Jess for #IBOT

For the Parents of Daughters...

A little poem I wrote for the parents of daughters...

                Minotaurs

 I stare at the blackness 

where the shadows

creep on the flickering walls and the blurred,

grey corners leer.

Twist my head again, see

the glowing of the clock

on the shelf, throbbing with its news

and cruel barbs of malice; forcing me

from the cosy warmness to the frigid floor boards,

blindly grope the stiff blinds

dirty with dustballs, filth, cobwebs,

and the prints of my fingers

in the thick coating of grime…



See a taxi parked, a carriage

in black and white, like a magic coach

on the road it’s pulled to a stop

near the kerb. She is home

at last, with a wave

at the driver,

and her shoes clatter up the stairs. She is

safe. In a place where sentinels, watch

the clock on the shelf.



The knob of thread I offered her at birth

spools back. Like that bundle of string clutched by

Ariadne of Knossos

waiting alone, she

gripped the fraying fibre tight

as she shivered, hearing the roar

of the monster.



I kept her so close

in a spider’s web of the finest silk

netting while the dewdrops glistened

in proud joy. Too much to fear

in the ugliness

that wants her; danger springs

from the unknown plexus of life

where just a move, a slip, a lapse

can raze. How long? How long, til spirit bites,

and breaks free when she severs the cord,

amputates the string for good

and then soars through the air

in ecstatic pursuit

of mystery

and Minotaurs.



I could grasp and strain,

stretch my spider hand. She

was a borrowed treasure, but

it’s time now

to let go.

To my daughter, love Pinky xxx