School Drop Off

Now I know that many of you are parents with school age kids and you totally get school drop offs. Everyone will have their own stresses and for me it's all about getting boys out of the house, finding a car park, and basically navigating your way through the arriving and departing cars (usually big 4WD - guilty) and the little people crossing roads. For us school pickups are worse than drop offs for car parks, however the school dropoffs are worse for an air of stress that seems to permeate. I've seen this at school and I've seen this at pre-schools. This is my summary of what happens. First of all you're in a frenzy to do all the before school stuff, which in our house is homework, lunches, jobs, uniform on, socks and shoes on, sunblock on, teeth cleaned...etc etc, as well as the normal house jobs I try to sneak in before we leave. Then it's the focused drive to school or kindy, and the manic rush in where you attempt a quick hi to the teachers while you are simulataneously putting bags in lockers, lunch stuff in fridges, watching the clock and mentally calculating if you're going to make it in time to school. I especially see this at Smith's kindy where for many parents this dropoff signals a "child free day" usually evidenced by gym gear. There is like a mad rush to get your child gone so you have as many child free minutes as possible. Right or wrong, and deny it as much as you want, this for most is the reality.
So one morning, having dropped 2 children in 2 different places, I was onto child number 3's dropoff, I pulled up and Rafe got out of the car and we were doing our normal sun block application outside the school. Suddenly a mother came rushing back to the car behind us, screaming at her toddler to "GET IN THE CAR", the little girl was playing around a bit inside the car and this brought on more frenzy for the mother who was trying to do up the car seat. She then leaped in, did a tight and dangerous 3 point turn in her big 4WD in our busy school street and accelerated off.
She had her gym gear on and my guess was her class was about to start.
Rafe and I just looked at each other and raised our eyebrows while I took just that extra minute longer to calmly and lovingly put his sun block on and give him a slow hug before he wandered to his class. Happily.
Sometimes you need to see what you look like to realise what changes you need to make.

Scarred

Some of you have followed my regular "Wildlife"posts, but this one is a doozy, and actually one that caused a "I wanna go back to NZ" plea, that once again fell on death ears.

I was about to be picked up to do a 10km run event and ran out to pop a rubbish bag in the wheely bin. But my rubbish bin was not empty. No sir. Inside the bin was the biggest freaking, most disgusting possum. Asleep. In my rubbish bin. It stirred a little as I screamed and dropped my rubbish bags and ran inside where once again I screamed at the husband ( in frenzied whispering coz if the boys had got wind of the visitor they would have been out like a shot to investigate and coming into any contact with it again would simply have been too much trauma for me for one day). The Husband was very disinterested. Or at least feigned disinterest at my pleading "can you do something about it please". I went to my run, and blame only an ok'ish run on the post stress disorder resulting with my brush with the possum. I came home. "Is the possum gone?" I asked, "Possum, what possum? Oh right, forgot all about it" came his nonchalant reply. Thinking hard about what would inspire him into action, I laid all my cards on the table and promised "pleasures of the flesh" for 7 days in a row. Nope, would need to go higher than that he said. By now my friend Zoe was involved via text, and she said her husband had offered to come and shift our possum for the same deal with her.

Men.

So putting my head back in the sand I went about my day until I saw the rubbish bag I'd discarded beside the rubbish bin, rather than in it, had been ravaged by crows or magpies. Australia, gad! Somehow seeing our rubbish spread around our yard was enough to catapult The Husband into action, and out he came. With his golf club. "I'm going to kill it" he said but I was aghast with the blimmin logistics of the situation I was worrying about mess and gore and ...remnants. He thought we had the perfect solution as the possum WAS ALREADY IN the rubbish bin. Hmm, 6 hot days later you can just imagine all the other wildlife that would be in our bin by rubbish day. He couldn't rouse the sleeping possum, so we agreed a plan when it was dark. And sure enough my brave Husband finally resolved our possum situation and we now have a large rock on top of the wheely bin to prevent any repeat incidents.

And now for my part of the deal....

Bugger!

I have been writing a story for the Sydney Herald which has a column asking for people to submit stories that gets "your blood boiling" - so for a couple of months I've been watching the column, looking at the types of stories, writing styles etc - I figure, yup, I'll give it a shot. Our writing tutor had suggested it as a good avenue to try and get work published as well as practice writing. So I wrote a bit of a story and then today, just as I was about to submit it thought I'd better do a search to see if there were any other stories about my topic. And goddamn it there was! Published the week we were in NZ in September! Now my topic is about magpies and how aggressive they are for a short period each year. there is no room for 2 of these stories each year. One magpie story a year please, is my guess. So I'm parking it. But watch out next September!

So I thought I'd through it on my blog for some light reading....

Eating Humble Mag-Pie


I’ve been living in Australia for three years and each year as the weather warms up, this brings a journey of discovery for what wildlife I will encounter. Whether it be giant cockroaches scurrying across my floor, an ant nest on the inside of my car, the ever present possum that lives ON (not in) my roof and which runs along nightly, or (shudder), the wheelie bin and all the maggot/ant/cockroach delights I’ve experienced putting my rubbish out. But the one wildlife encounter I anticipate and dread each September is the magpie mating and baby magpie season.

This is a time when magpies own the parks, the public walk ways, your back yard, your front yard, or actually any area where there are trees, the potential for worms or unsuspecting heads. Understandably they are simply being protective of their nests and their young families. Some would suggest a little over-protective perhaps.

I love to run and Sydney has some stunning walkways and running tracks. However this is when I seem to be at my most vulnerable, watching for magpie action with every centimetre of my peripheral vision. In fact just recently as I was rounding a bend on a scenic beachside track around Manly, an older BLEEDING man stopped me and warned ‘don’t go that way, there’s a magpie attacking”. “Did it get you?” I asked incredulously and probably rather stupidly as the blood was running down his face by now. His answer; “Three times!”. Of course. As I turned back I warned a little old lady with her poodle who was innocently walking in the same direction. That white poodle might as well have had a target on its back.

Research has shown that magpies can be discriminatory about who they attack, and there is in fact, some form of pre-selection criteria. The Injury Surveillance Information System (ISIS) which collects hospital emergency department records shows that the eye was the birds’ most common target, many of those attacked have been riding a bike at the time and there seemed to be more male victims than female. And of greater concern is that these birds remember their victims and wait for them to come and then attack them over and over again. Postal workers on their motor bikes are a favourite target. We have some very discerning magpies in Australia.

“Wear an ice cream container on your head”, someone once suggested to me in my first year in Australia when as a magpie novice I had only just realise the dangerous, aggressive alter ego of the humble magpie. Now I’m guessing that half of you are laughing and half are nodding in agreement at that suggestion. I haven’t had to resort to it yet.

What I do know is that I have an uneasy truce with the magpie family that has lived in a tree at the front of my house for the last 3 years. I respect their space and need for privacy and they respect my need to get my mail, pick up my newspaper and well, leave my house. We have had no incidents. We share a community, we have an understanding.

It’s just what happens when I leave my property that I worry about.

D'ouh

I got stuck in a dress in a fitting room today. I was attempting shopping and I'm in a fat mood at the moment. But still I wasn't being irrational or over optimistic, the dress was my size and on a non fat free day I wouldn't have had a second thought about trying it on. But alarm bells should have rung when there was about gizillion of this particular style on the SALE RACK. Lisa, listen...alarm bells!

And I should have listento those alarm bells again when I had trouble even getting it on. I reached that point of no return, after I'd squished my boobs into unnatural positions to pull the thing over my head. A nano second later with a resounding ..."nah.." I started rewinding the getting-the-dress-on process. But things went from bad to worse quickly. First off I'm very claustrophobic. It stems from my childhood when The Sister enjoyed holding me down usually with a blanket over me, trapped and I'd end up usually doing a little bit of wee in my pants through the ensuing hysteria and screaming. Sometimes she would add to her fun by tickling me as well which made the wee situation even worse. So I'm reversing the boob squashing technique but that's not working, I am well and truly wedged into this nasty dress with no hope or solution. I briefly thought about ripping the thing and then buying it, but that would involve using my arms, which unfortunately were also stuck. Yes, a bit of a predictament. And then of course, the cheery voice..."is everything ok..?...how's that size...?" from the hovering shop assistant. "I'm fine thanks" came my muffled reply. Bloody hell, I was anything but!

At this stage I'm on the verge of a clautrophic panic attack and they are anything but pretty or quiet. I'm sweating. My flesh andboobs are displayed is in all their glory in the many mirrors in the fitting room. But somehow with frantic shimmying and wrestling there is finally that sweet moment of release and relief.

And as I hand it back to the assistant, I casually say "I think I'll just leave it". Damn straight!

When good blogs go bad...

Why people blog is interesting - for some it's a way to share their thoughts and wisdom (hmm, not so the case with mine huh!), for others they like an audience to listen to their stories, for others it may be looking for a way to write and hope that maybe it can help earn a bit of income from doing something they love, and for others it may be a little bit of all of these.
So what about me, what's my reason - there's a few....I love to write, I don't know or care if I'm any good at it, I just feel like I have a "voice" and I have some yarns (or not as is mostly the case) and blogging is a good way of practising and getting confidence in writing. Also I feel that I have a better way of expressing myself when writing than I do when I'm talking. I'm a hopeless speaker, I get a bit all twisted with my words and don't really get my message across that cleverly. This was painfully clear in my former corporate life, when I'd write these (what I thought were fabulous) documents and then need to present them, my audience would generally be a mix of blank faces or worse, furrowed brows. Hit and sunk.
I like reading other people's blogs too, I like looking at writing styles and I often like their thoughts and ramblings. I have just started following a new blog from a TV personality and columnist Sarah Wilson http://www.sarahwilson.com/ - she seems to strike a chord with me in her columns and now in her blog writing. She's honest and earnest. I'll follow with interest for a bit to see how and where she goes. Another I have watched for ages http://www.petiteanglaise.com/. Hmm, now I've had a love/hate relationship with this one - basically it's a english woman living in Paris who had has relationship issues but who famously got fired for writing about her employers in her blog, writing her blog during work time and for writing about a painful relationship breakup minute by minute as it was happening with her partner not only a subject but one of her readers. She then went on to share her busy love life for a while, all until she was conveniently snapped up by a publisher and has written a couple of books. Now with book deal secured, new marriage and baby on her way, she awkwardly blogged for another year, especially to promote book releases or book promotion activity, until in her last blog, she admitted defeat and closed up shop. It had served it's purpose. Her life was no longer scandalous but settled and loads more financially comfortable than what it was before. Over and out for the blog. The cynics amongst us were left with a kind of yicky taste in our mouths. It seemed that the spirit of her blog was kind of self serving. But maybe they all are? Whatever the driver a blog still gets a message out. My blog often has no message, I guess I see it as a way of umm....just chatting. I expect nothing but I get a lot of pleasure when I see I've had visitors to my blog (don't worry - I just see a daily number - no other details) and I get a huge kick when someone responds and comments on my blog (although sometimes The Sister's comments can be a bit...ahem...tart if I have crossed the line, and fair enough, I need a quality control person to tell me to pull my head in and she's perfect for the job as she's had so many years practice with me).
So this is really going nowhere, just thinking and rambling. And chatting.
Thanks for stopping by.

Dreams

It's been 9 months since I kicked my addiction and had my last diet coke. An anniversary to celebrate and reflect on surely? But how come I had a dream last night about having a drink - opening a bottle and pouring a large ice cold glass full. The essence of the dream was ...it's ok to start again, just maybe one drink...every now and again. Yeah right! That's how it starts but that's certainly not what my addiction looks like a couple of weeks down the track.

So banish those dreams and banish those urges. Happy anniversary to me.

The Change

For some reason I seem to have one of those come-out-of-nowhere-stay-forever-big-gross pimples. In fact I'll call it a spot, as it doesn't sound quite as gross or pus'y (that's a hard word to write believe me, that is if it is a word?). It's the kind of spot that has made the kids look twice at my face, and with their god love'em brutal honesty, ask "what's that?" It's the kind of spot that has made me glad to stay at home and if I need to go out, has made me layer the evidence in pan cake thick makeup to miminise my trauma (and you know how attractive a big suspiciously raised blob of foundation on only one part of your face looks).

I've no idea where it's from? I haven't been eating greasy food..much. I'm not going through puberty, my hands are clean...I'm not overly stressed (hmm, maybe apart from the week I've just mentioned in the previous post). What else can cause a big influx of hormones into your body that results in large unslightly spots? Surely not.....the change...???!!! Because I am simply FAR too young for that. Far too young. Although last night I became uncharacterstically warm for a few moments. A HOT FLUSH!!!!!!???

So I was putting the kids to bed and Will had a super greasy face from the pile of extremely healthy 2 Minute Noodles he'd eaten - ok, I know it's the school holidays and I should have more time and inclination to cook nice meals for the boys. So shoot me. I said that he needed to wash his face because having a greasy face may mean that he could get pimples. Like mine. And there, I confronted it, using it, pointing to it, forcing my eldest to look at it. As quick as a flash, he was out of bed scrubbing his face.
There, not all a lost cause.

ps. I was trying to find an image of a large gross pimple to put with this post but believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to experience what I did when searching! You should all thank me.