medicinal purposes

having felt pretty ordinary all week and suffered all manner of aches and pains today i finally booked in for a massage. not one of those aromotherapy too-much-lavender-is-never-a-good-thing jobs but a proper 'how much pain can you take' number. i am always amazed at how unerringly folk like that can find the spot taht really hurts. i wonder if there is a secret list of places on the body that make people cringe even if they don't actually have any muscle issues whhich is handed out to chiros and physio and massueses and the like along with their diplomas on graduation day. anyway; although it hurt a tiny bit i have to say things feel a bit better. the weekend is looking up!

lucky lucky lucky

one of the fabulous things about little kids is the way experiment with words. the chubbies most recent obsession is with 'luckily': so they say "i'm a big kid but luckily mathew is a baby"; or "i'm hungry but luckily we've got a cupboard". makes me love language all over again.

toothpaste

can toothpaste go off?

i may never cook again..

okay so the other day i decided i was on strike and wasn't going to cook any more until the attitude and gratitude of the resident cook-ees improved dramatically. but today i was faced with a bit of a dilemma with a friend coming to spend the night prior to having to deliver a lecture in geelong at the ridiculous time of 8 in the morning. now this friend has never done anything but nice things for me, so letting them starve seemed a tad churlish but life was further complicated by the fact that i was going to be tied up til about 5 today and she was arriving at 6...fortunately, on the way back from burwood, i remembered this tiny little shop in this tiny little street in a tiny little suburb of geelong which sells tiny little beautiful, prepackaged gourmet meals. so tonight we ahve supped on sushi, tomato tartlets, vegetable canneloni and strawberry and white chocolate mousse. and no one has realised that i haven't lifted a finger (well, no fingers other than those punching the EFTPOS buttons...). now obviously to preserve the power of the strike i am now going to go and ruin the illusion that i am a cordon bleu cook in my spare time and 'fess up but gee it is nice to know that there are short cuts out there that don't involve deep fried chicken or MSG.

will of iron

so today i had to be a grown up girl and spend the day in melbourne for meetings and blah blah blah; this is fairly common but never before has it been such an effort. because TODAY i had to drive past not once, but twice, all the bright shiny shops which i now know live just over the werribee rainbow...factor in the fact that today is the target toy sale and i am seriously amazed that i made it to burwood at all....adulthood is not what it's cracked up to be

seeing red...

okay this is why i was cranky.

yesterday (or the day before or sometime) i read on my friend mark's blog that he'd decided to cook some different kinds of food for the benefit of his loved ones. and so i thought to myself, gee i suppose i should make a bit of an effort from time to time and do the same thing (not the same food of course, his looked way too ambitious for me, but something a bit different to my standard 5 dishes....)

so despite feeling really rather ordinary i forced myself to shop, forced myself to cook and even forced myself to 'present food attractively' (this is seriously beyond the call of duty but the books do go on and on about it...). Unfortunately although the food tasted pretty good (and looked just super--freshly shaved parmesan is definitely the way to go) all this effort generated not so much as a 'thanks' or 'gee that's nice' or 'what the heck is that green stuff?' from the other two adults in the house who were too wrapped up in their own little computer worlds to notice either the effort that went into the meal or the subsequent hex i put on their technologies...

so it turns out that although being taken for granted is irritating at the best of times, it is a whole heap worse when one is actually LOOKING for positive feedback. or any feedback at all.

red to blue

one thing that did filter through the red mist of rage that seems to be clouding my vision today was how nice it was to get visits today from a couple of folk who i had the good fortune to teach last semester. popping in, unannounced for no good reason other than to say hi, how's it going, isn't it cold? With one of these folk i also a lovely chat about wedding frocks (not my frocks i hasten to add...the less said about those the better). her's is going to be a pale blue raw silk whcih sounds lovely but i have to say that the nicest image of all came when the soon-to-be-bride told me that her wedding flowers would be whatever she picked from her mum's garden on the morning of the ceremony. isn't that the sweetest thing?? (thank goodness her mum doens't live in queensland---a bouquet of pineapples takes a bit of managing...)

back from the brink

having been on holidays to the gold coast, soaked up the rain, basked in the sun, eaten too much of the kind of food Ray Martin is always warning folk about and learnt far too much about The Price is Right (in short,had a totally fab time) i have returned south only to be sick and cranky for about the last 8 days. the one thing this crankiness has prompted me to do is re-start my blog, cause god knows, i need some place to vent that doesn't talk back. and if it does i can just turn it off. or delete it. or do anything i want really. and boy does that feel good....

and so it begins...

while i am far from the most relaxed person in the world i like to think i've taken a fairy laid back approach when it comes to the kinds of toys and games and whatnots that the chubbies decide they want to play with. apart from trying to avoid things that were excessively nasty or horribly violent i've pretty well given the kids free range when it comes to choosing stuff they want for birthdays, christmas and life in general. about the only exceptions to this are a reluctance to let them engage with super hero type products until they're old enough to critique them, and an absolute, cast iron, total embargo on Barbie products. There are about a billion reasons for this but as a parent i think i am entitled to ban the odd thing from time to time JUST BECAUSE I HATE IT. So far this has gone quite well. But the illusion of control is fading fast. Received in the mail today: a parcel for the chubbies from generous and loving aunt. A package containing two lovely, soft winter jackets for two lovely kids. One has a spider man print. the other is plastered with barbie...why is it only the WRONG mail that makes it through?