The SEAcret to avoiding SEAcret salespeople

One of the things that annoys me most in this world are salesmen. I know. Someone has to do it, you're just trying to make a living...whatever. Obviously a necessary evil in life. But what I want to blog about today is the bottom rung of the salesman ladder. The lowest common denominator on the sliding scale. The leeches that park themselves in the middle of the walkway at my local Westfield mall, trying to suck in anyone that walks past. Let me be clear - I have no problem with them being there. I'm sure it's an excellent spot to have a stall. No doubt they make money. What I object to is them approaching me and trying to sell me something.

It's a mall. If I want to buy your product then I'll come to you. Once, I was asked by a saleslady as I passed her stall if I was interested in 3D television. "Not at all," I shot back as I kept walking. And no sooner were those words out of my mouth than her two male colleagues started homing in on me. Before they could even speak, I held up my hand to them both.

"Hey, you heard me say no to her. Why on earth would you think I'll say yes to you? Now if you know I'm not interested and you persist in trying to get me to talk with you, you're crossing over in to harassment and I'll have to report it to Westfield."

They both immediately backed off but it didn't stop them from trying again as I came back the other way.

"Can I have just two minutes of your time?"

Hell no.

The worst offenders are the people from SEAcret. You probably know them. They're flogging a line of beauty products. And there's always at least two of them trying to fling leaflets at me or get me to "indulge in a free sample." No amount of icy cool dismissal or fiery anger has managed to deter this mob. And then recently I changed tack and uncovered the SEAcret of getting them to leave me alone. Here's how.

Today's victim is a SEAcret representative with a foreign accent. He's going to show me the full range and he's going to use my hand to do it. He never shuts up the whole time. This product is the jewel of the Mediterranean. This product is the hidden diamond of the Mediterranean. This product is the silver lining of the Mediterranean. And all the time he's massaging this and that into the back of my hand and using a spray bottle of water to wipe it off again. There's lots of eye contact, flirty smiles, etc and all the time he's holding me at the wrist with one hand and rubbing whatever lovingly onto my hand with the other.

And I'm smiling and egging him on. Ooo, yes that's lovely. I adore that one. I can't believe how good my skin feels.

It's hard not to laugh. I can see the dollar signs spinning in his head. I can almost hear his thoughts. Oh my God! She's into it! She's going to buy the whole range!!!

He's been yapping away for a good twenty minutes and now here we are at the crunch. He's about to unveil "the closer" speech. And I'm not disappointed. He's going to give me a special price on the whole range because I'm so nice and he's only here for one day. It's such a good price that we have to keep our voices down and complete the transaction before his manager notices. He never does this for anyone - but I'm just so nice and he knows how much I love the product. He wants me to have it. He pauses here to glance meaningfully at my purse. I'm sure he'd die a deliriously happy death if I simply handed over my credit card at this point. When no plastic is forthcoming he leans in conspiratorially and tells me that he can give me all the secret treasures of the Mediterranean for...and here he names a figure roughly the same as what it costs to feed my entire family for a week. For the cost of our fortnightly petrol bill he'll upgrade it to include their special hand care range. But I have to be quick! The manager must not know!

He's been holding my wrist this whole time and here I turn my hand and start massaging the back of his with my thumb. I giggle coquettishly. He's momentarily thrown but the possibility of a sale keeps the facial tic mostly under control. Oh darling, I whisper, I really can't afford any of this. I have a family and we're only on one income! I can barely afford a $3 tube of sorbolene cream for my face!

His face is blank as he tries to process it. It's like watching my Dad's face when the carefully herded Murray Greys did a neat little turn at the gate and galloped past us. It is John Howard last election night. It is stunned disbelief. Total lack of comprehension.

I lean in closely and continue, Well I really must thank you. I've really...enjoyed...this. It's been so pleasurable to have a young, handsome man massage my hand, look deeply into my eyes and talk to me like that. I feel like we're friends and it's been...quite exciting. Next time I won't be so quick to walk on past you guys. I might even come back for another sample...maybe we could try it on my face? Anyway, thank you so much, I really appreciate it!

It's been two weeks and all three of them are still avoiding me like the plague. Success!

Pretty is as pretty does

If my wardrobe were asked to justify its existence, there would be a slight shuffling of feet, some muttered words about people needing practical clothes for gardening purposes and then there'd be a clearing of the throat and a changing of the subject. It would be safe to say that it's lacking the WOW factor.

When I was little it was the 80s. And people of all ages and sexes were given license by a fashion industry on drugs to wear hot pink, plastic jewellery, accessories of all kinds (multi colour sweat bands anyone?)...well pretty much anything loud and colourful. I personally owned several different sets of fluro socks, a tracksuit top with that fluro splatter bubble paint all over it that everyone seemed to have, and a not inconsiderable collection of bursting-with-fruit-flavour plastic jewellery.

And my mum was my idol. Her best dress, in my eyes, was a deep blue arrangement with hot pink flowers exploding all over it. I made her wear it whenever I could manage to persuade her. Even without that awesome dress there was a lot of cool stuff I could have chosen from her wardrobe. In my eyes she was the most amazingly pretty mum there ever was.

When Charlotte was about three we had a brief experience going to the pool that alerted me to the fact that she was missing out on the experience of having a cool mum with really funky clothes. We were dressed to go to the pool and over my swimmers I had a huge diaphanous print top edged with sequins. As I belted her in she snaked her arms around my neck and whispered to me.

"Mama...Mama your top is so pretty with those sparkles. And I love your pretty necklace. Mama, when I'm big I want to have a pretty sparkle top and a pretty necklace and Mama I want to be pretty just like you!"

She was so excited at a pretty Mum with pretty clothes that I could have wept. A bunch of jeans and plain tops in a little girl's eyes is fashion doom. Well it's fashion doom in most people's eyes. And that's about all I owned.

So I committed to changing it, albeit slowly as we're not exactly flash with cash. Enter colour, fun and the influence of Charm School. Ebay is my secret weapon, giving me colourful, cheap, awesome clothes. Like my butterfly pants (I got them in a slightly different colour, but you get the gist);

These are by far and away my most awesome buy so far. Imported from Thailand, about $30 including postage and as comfortable as wearing pyjamas. Best of all, they got Modom's seal of approval. "Wow Mama, your pants are super cool!"

There have been more dresses, more jewellery, much more hair and makeup - the works. I have spent hours trying to learn how to do my hair the way they taught us in Charm School - elegant sweeps and curls that echo the graceful icons of the 30s and 40s. Pippa has contributed a wealth of advice and accessories. Charles is constantly on hand to help put the finishing touches to a 'do or simply to compliment me on my efforts. And I'm finally getting there.

I do admit that it's a constant struggle and I have to continuously remind myself not to go back into the rut. Two days ago I went looking for sand shoes in Kmart for swing dancing and, again, my clever fashionista daughter managed to steer me away from mediocrity.

"Mama, you have so many black shoes and they're boring. Get these ones!"

And she held up a hot pink pair. After carefully explaining that they were her style and that I wanted my own style, she tapped her chin and surveyed the shoes on offer.

"How about these?" she asked, holding up a bright, cherry red pair, "they look really good and they might be your style if you try them."

So I bought them. Charlotte was right. They were only $6, nothing special, but so far I've had two compliments on the cherry red sand shoes. Quite spontaneous - one at swimming and one at the mall.

The new wardrobe and attempts to try and do my hair and makeup more often have had quite an impact. But for me, none of this has been an easy transition. Aside from finding it easier to patch a plaster wall than do my hair in anything but a pony tail, I always feel stupid when I'm all dressed up. I feel like a clown with makeup, a tranny when I wear dresses and a fraud when it's all happening together. I am convinced everyone is looking at me and secretly laughing. And yet people I don't know literally stop me to compliment me. Men ask me if I'm single (ignoring the little ones I've got permanently attached to me). Women want to know how I got my hair to look like that. And older people sigh wistfully as they touch my hair or dress and wish out loud that people would again care about what they wear, how they look and just smile.

Compliments and confidence aside, for me the most positive aspect of attempting to be pretty is the way my daughter looks at me. For her first day at preschool this year I donned my nicest dress, my vintage polka-dot sunnies, did my hair and make-up and took her to school. And as I stood there, surrounded by her and her classmates, one wide-eyed little girl leaned in to Charlotte and whispered, "Is that your Mummy?"

"Yup! Isn't she beeyoootiful?"

"Yeah...I wish my mum dressed like that!"

Mission accomplished.

Further kitchen crimes...

You will learn more about the J-man as the blog goes on but tonight I want to introduce you. J-man is my "little" brother. Two-and-a-half years younger than me and about six inches taller. Somewhere around year 10 he stopped being an annoying brat and started the business of turning into a gentleman and one of my best friends. He is one of only three people in the world who I never have to censor myself with. I love him to death.

Writing the fridge clean blog tonight got me thinking about other people's kitchen crimes and J-man is a prime candidate. He's a chef now but back on the farm donkeys years ago when our mum was sick with cancer and we had to make dinner between us because my Dad was still at work he used to cook in the farm kitchen with me. Most nights it was passable. Okay, most nights it was a disaster. I like to think that all those years experimenting with different flavours and foods contributed to where he is today - a mad chef with awesome culinary skills.

Naturally there were other steps between experimenting as a kid and being an ace chef. When he was a bachelor he owned no device for cooking save an electric kettle. Even if he had owned a fry pan, his stove was on the fritz and he was permanently out of gas to cook with. As a result the J-man could probably put together an entire recipe book based wholly and solely on meals you can make inside your Breville kettle. Inspired!

Misuse of kettles aside, we now come to one of his "kitchen crimes". For our engagement party Charles and I were given a rather ugly platter as a gift from a family member that I don't especially like*. It instantly became the platter we use whenever we prepare a dish that has to go to someone else's house. That way, if we don't get it back, we don't care. Anyway, the platter went missing for about two years and we had no idea where we'd left it. It was one of those things we wondered about but didn't care enough about to chase. Then, just as we were becoming comfortable with the fact that the ridiculous thing had been lost for good, it made a sudden reappearance in J-man's hands.

I couldn't believe it. Even when he gave it back to me I couldn't recall when I'd given it to him and I told him so. The conversation then went like this;

"Well - remember my 21st birthday?"

"Yeah..."

"Remember how you made me a black forest cake?"

"Kinda..."

"Well you gave me the leftover cake to take home and share with my friends."

"Yeah I remember now. So you've had that platter all this time?"

"Yup."

"Gees - you've got a good memory if you can remember that."

"Oh, it wasn't hard," he said, smiling, "After we'd all tucked in the fruit on top was gone and there was only about two slices' worth left. So I chucked it in the fridge and it's been there ever since."

He sucked on his cigarette while I gaped at him in shock.

"That cake has been in there all this time? But it's been two years! Surely after all this time it must have been nothing more than a pile of mould - you're lucky you could even get it off the platter. I would have thought it'd have eaten the glaze off by now or something."

"Nah it didn't go mouldy or anything. The cream was a bit discoloured and brown but it looked pretty much how you'd given it to me."

"So why am I getting it back now, are you having a big clean up or something?"

"Not as such, no," he said, dragging on his cigarette and raising his eyebrows at me. "You know my mate Cluggo?"

"Yeah."

"Well he stayed over on the weekend and we had a bit of a bender. Seems he got up in the morning before I was up, opened the fridge and thought black forest cake would make a spectacular hangover breakfast."

"Oh my God. Is he all right?"

"Yeah he's fine. Didn't swallow it or anything. But I thought I'd better do something about it before someone else found out how old it was the hard way."

And that, my friends, is the worst kitchen crime ever.

* Don't worry, he doesn't like me much either - hence ugly, cheap platter as engagement gift.

Bin night!

Bin night at the Bateson's is always exciting. I'm one of those haphazard cleaners who shoves a plastic bag over a door handle or the end of a change table while I'm cleaning, moving it with me from room to room. Usually it makes it to the bin when I'm done, but not always. Then there's the laundry. Lint from the dryer, pocket crap that's been turned into a totally anonymous sodden grey ball during a wash cycle, it's all here waiting to be collected. So bin night consists of us sweeping the house for all of these little collections and tossing them into the bin. Then, if we have any bin space left, comes the optional extra phase of bin night.

Sometimes it's a mad scooping of all the little random bits lying about the house - Charlotte's scribbles on bits of paper, junk mail, tags from any new clothing, wrappers from the top of baby jars, any scrap of refuse floating around collected and disposed of. If we're super keen (i.e. the situation has become desperate) we clean the fridge. Those of you with a careful inventory system where you buy what you need, eat it, roster leftover lunches, etc so that you never have to clean your fridge because everything is waiting in the wings for its debut into a carefully planned meal can move along now. There is no point in reading this blog post, you will only be disgusted.

So you've probably guessed that we're one of those families who aren't as careful with their fridge management. We're not as bad as some. A certain relative, who will remain nameless, is guilty of heinous fridge management crimes. Once, when she went away for a week, my brother and I cleaned her fridge. It was 1997. We found an unopened jar of sandwich relish with a useby date of 1984. No bar code, just a price sticker from a shop long since closed. I am pleased to report that I'm not that bad.

However, I do still need to clean mine out about once a month or so and, as I cleaned it out tonight, I thought of those of you who sympathise with my domestic efforts and, for your pleasure, I have constructed the TC Guide to fridge cleaning. Here we go;

1.) If you don't remember buying it, toss it. "When did we buy green bacon?" or, "Hey did you know that we had a jar of Ducth anchovies?" are not questions that need answering. Just toss it.

2.) If you can't immediately identify it, toss it. "Honey, can you tell what this is?" is, again, not a question that needs to be asked or answered. I cleaned out a fridge at work once and we had a spirited debate about what the original contents of one particular Tupperware container had been. No one would own up to owning it so it was anyone's guess and we tossed it before the mystery was solved.

3.) How neatly this follows on from the previous point! Accept that some containers, even expensive Tupperware, should not be saved. If you are experiencing the above situation do not be tempted to open the container for the purposes of identifying its contents or rescuing its person. It's gone to God. Let it go and move as quickly as you can through the five stages of grief.

4.) The only products that should contain mould are blue cheese and soft cheeses like Brie and Camembert. I know. Somewhere an Ethiopian child is starving*. And yes, there have been wars, depression, poverty and deprivation. But unless you are experiencing any of those issues right at this moment, toss the mould. Do not simply cut off the bad part and eat the rest. Yuck.

5.) Milk needs to exit the end of the carton or bottle within half a second of tipping said container up. It should not take its time oozing out and it shouldn't resemble cottage cheese when it gets there. While we're on this subject, a brief lesson regarding dairy. Contrary to the belief of many uni students, dairy does not simply graduate to a new incarnation as it gets older. Milk does not become cottage cheese, cottage cheese will not solidify into a bitey little fetta. Any resemblance to another dairy product means it is BAD. Toss it.

6.) The final fridge test. If you wouldn't put it in your own mouth right at this moment, toss it. It's not going to look better tomorrow, I promise.

Are we clear on this kiddies? Excellent. Stay tuned for more practical domestic advice!!

* Before anyone gets upset over my reference to starving Ethiopian children, let me be clear, I am not trying to be trite about the plight of starving children. I am merely referring to the parental reasoning I heard every single time I tried to abandon food as a child for any reason (gee, linked to weight issues at all?). I care very much about starving children, which is why my husband and I are long term financial supporters of Save the Children. But I don't believe that there should be any guilt attached to tossing spoiled food because somewhere in the world a starving person would happily eat it. Anyone that thinks otherwise can send me a prepaid satchel and I'll mail next week's fridge clean to their malnourished country of choice.

Pippa in Spain - Me is sick.

For those that don't know, Pippa has a flash job as editor of a nationally-distributed magazine. Which magazine it is will remain anonymous here but, as a part of her job, she gets flown around the world to various junkets where she gets to meet hugely important people who talk to her about hugely important things. Currently Pippa is in Spain. She was very excited about this trip. She's always excited about her trips. Unfortunately, I can almost 100% guarantee that the only part of Spain that Pippa is likely to see will be be the inside of airports and some boring corporate-type digs.

That's because these little jaunts are paid for by someone who wants her to see particular sights and do particular activities. And aside from their interest in what she sees and does, they have a financial interest too. So they fly her in, cram as much as they can into her schedule and fly her out before they have to pay for an extra night in a hotel so she can recover from the jet lag and pick up something local as a souvenir. This outcome is almost inevitable but hope springs eternal for Pippa. On this particular trip I think her enthusiasm and hope lasted at least 24 hours into the trip. Then we got this on Facebook, "Next time I get excited about a work trip, please mention 'remember the Spain experience?' before I get unrealistic expectations. Again."

The thing about Pippa's work trips are that, while I'm thrilled for her, I always feel a bit nervous. When Pippa disappears off the friendship radar catastrophic things tend to happen. In this instance, it's nothing spectacular (yet). After three days of being used as a human tissue by my baby boy I am, finally, as sick as a dog. Yup, the little germ piñatas have worked their magic again and naturally the height of sickness falls on a Friday giving me the weekend to feel horrible and try and recover just in time for more work on Monday. This time the bout of lurgy was somewhat more predictable than usual - the little guy has been clinging to me for comfort in his sickness for three days now and, when he's ready to sneeze, he's been seizing me with both hands and exploding directly onto my delicate person. On Wednesday I had to change my top three times.

Last night I finally fell asleep at four. I woke at seven after only three hours of sleep and felt pretty good apart from the scratchy throat and blocked sinuses. Which is how I know I'm delirious too. I worked a full day at work, getting loads done all in an effortless whirl. Luckily for my career my team leader will check my work before it's unleashed on the public. And hopefully come Monday it might have something vaguely in common with what I think I wrote. Properly structured sentences, stuff like that. I am not overly confident. In fact, as long as none of those emails contain the phrase "I'm a little teapot" I will consider the day largely a success.

To coddle my broken bod through the work experience, I existed on nothing but chicken noodle soup, diet coke (which I gave up after the third bottle when my heart started racing uncontrollably) and a Vicks inhaler donated by my generous co-worker who was sick of me snorting like a warthog. I am unsure if this was a favour, given that the application of said inhaler was like using a Q-tip to paint my nostrils and sinuses with paint stripper.

But back to Pippa. I miss her like mad. If she were here she would make me think my current state of ill health was funny. She'd probably treat me to lunch, regale me with some amusing stories of how her life sucks as much as mine and I wouldn't feel so bottom-of-the-hole crappy. I have a lot of friends and even more acquaintances. But Pippa is the only one who I can tell everything to. Better than that, she's the only one (other than Charles) who can make my horrible insecurities, angst and general trials seem amusing. I am not a person who likes to have their hand patted in a "poor you" fashion. I want someone who says suck down the concrete and harden up princess, life could be a lot worse - you could have you for a best friend instead of me.

I am aware that I'm rambling but I'm horribly sick and operating on three hours of sleep and a bunch of caffeine. I miss my friend. I hope she is having a better time and that she comes home soon - safe, cross and loaded with airport souvenirs because no one let her off the junket bus so she could shop.

Why we only watch one episode at a time!

I have a very active imagination. If you think Ally McBeal without the neurotic self interest, you're kind of on the right track. My brain is forever putting a strange slant and a technicolour luminescence onto the ordinary things I see every day. I personally blame Roald Dahl. I read that man's books so often growing up that he actually moved in, became my inner monologue and never left. Mr Dahl is why I have that special knack with metaphors.

Roald aside, my over-active imagination doesn't need a lot of stimulus to shift my brain into a different gear. For example, if I watch enough episodes of one particular television show, my brain starts living in that particular world. This is one reason why I am limited to a maximum of two Scrubs episodes a day - I associate far too well with Perry Cox and in real life cutting monologues just make people cry.

When I went through my Buffy phase there was a whole three month period of my life where I couldn't go out after dark because I would almost have a panic attack because I was so convinced that I was going to be leapt upon by some fell beastie. Then there was the X-files phase...same concept, different type of beastie. House was worse...every weird tingle was some unusual form of terminal cancer pressing into an interesting part of my brain. Neurotically speaking, I peaked with "Dexter". The concept of living with a man who was secretly a sociopathic serial killer at odds with the rest of society cut a little too close to home (read my husband's blog yet? It's a curious mix of angst, anarchy and other things starting with "A". Check it out at http://seekingxen.blogspot.com/ Be warned, it's much darker than anything you'll read here.)

Aside from the interesting impacts on the way I view my world, watching a bunch of episodes of one show all at once also gives you a glaring insight into the fact that almost every TV show is formulaic. Spread out with one episode per week you don't really notice. Crashed all into a day and they're annoyingly repetitive. See if I'm wrong;

The Simpsons; Homer is an ass, Marge is doubting and yet subservient, Bart is naughty, Lisa is angsty and Maggie is almost as vapid as Santa's Little Helper. Homer will run afoul of either Flanders or Mr Burns, Bart will run afoul of Skinner or Nelson, Lisa will agonise.

Sex and the City: Carrie is the most annoying, whiny swizzle stick on the planet and is pretty much responsible for all of the drama in her life. Originally, when I was watching this one on a week-to-week basis, I thought Mr Big treated her terribly. Then I watched a whole season and realised that actually, he was just trying to have a good time with what appeared to be a sane, hot chick and it turned out that she was a neurotic stalker-type psycho. Every new season was pretty much that theme on a loop against a backdrop of various men.

Supernatural; Dean, stop being so immature and Sam, quit whining.

Medium; Alison will have a premonition. Everyone - especially her husband - will doubt her, but she'll be proven right in the end and he will eat crow.

NCIS: Some horribly obscure crime will be related to the Navy, Gibbs will butt heads with some other agency, Abby will be gothic, cool, nerdy and clingy all at once, at some point Gibbs will get to hit, shoot or glare at something... yeah...you get the drift.

Voila. I bet I can do that for almost every show on television. Anyone else had their favourite show reduced to a formula after watching too much of it?

From little seeds tall trees grow

Tonight I did my most hated of tasks on the domestic schedule. I sorted through my baby's clothes and packed away the ones that are too little. Most people think I rank about the same on the emotional warmth scale as plankton. It's true, not much can reduce me to a jellied mess - I'm slightly cynical about most things. But get me to pack away a baby jumpsuit that my little man wore hours after he was born and which will now not even fit on his giant melon head as a weird hat and I am a wreck. Even while the little guy grins and squints up into my face shouting "a-ya-ya-ya-YA-YA".

The only thing that gets me through it is knowing that the next likely candidate for those little clothes will be another Jenny-Chris masterpiece. Cousin Chloe gets about in Charlotte's clothes quite a bit (Jenny inherited EVERYTHING of Charlotte's and, happily, she actually uses it) and it is enormously satisfying to see those things getting about on a little person that we all adore so completely. Far more satisfying than dropping them into a Salvos bin. I take comfort that one day they will have a little sprout of their own who can gad about in the super-cute overalls we bought for James. But still there are tears.

This is not a new phenomenon. I cried every time I did the clothing sort with Charlotte. You'd think I'd be over it by now. But I still cry every time I have to do it for James. Charles caught me at it once and the look he gave me indicates that he clearly thinks I'm mental. As a father he's thrilled that his offspring are growing by the second and for him, there's just nothing tocry about.

This time it's worse because in all likelihood he will be my last baby. Charles and I always agreed that two children was the right number. We think it's financially responsible, environmentally responsible...and aside from all that responsibility there is the niggling thought at the base of my skull that one more baby will actually kill me.

Still, tonight over dinner, when Charles casually mentioned that he thought it was time to arrange a delicate snip to ensure there are no further offspring, I felt the rise of panic. His eyebrows shot up in total disbelief. "You want another one?"

"Ygnooooo..... But what if we change our minds later?"

Charles' expression left me in no doubt that "we" will not change our minds - he firmly believes I'm the only one who would (and he's almost certainly correct). It's interesting because, while I love my kids, I really, really don't want any more. I'm happy with the way things are - I ride the knife edge of insanity quite comfortably - I manage to wrangle, not strangle - and I am almost 100% certain that we're operating at the safe working load limit for my maternal machinery. Any more pressure and gaskets will start to blow.

So why all the angst? Frankly I'm blaming the biological clock. There is no logical reason at all to have another baby. I don't want another baby. Another baby would probably sink my career, our finances and our marriage. And yet some horrible part of my brain, which appears to be impervious to logic and reasoning, whispers "why not have just one more?" As soon as the technology is developed, I will have this traitorous group of rebel synapses excised neatly. In the meantime I'll probably go along with Charles' plans to take permanent steps to end the debate just to spite those wretched little brain cells. But I doubt I'll ever stop crying as I pack away those teeny weeny clothes...

How clean is your house?

I am convinced that once you have kids you've got two choices. Either you've got time for fun and parenting or you've got time to have a clean house. I'm thoroughly convinced that you can't do both. I've mentioned before my "essentials plus one" cleaning theory. I'm devoted to it because it is the absolute limit of my cleaning capacity and it maintains a perfect balance between sanity and appearing on the Foxtel "Hoarders" series. My mother in law claims that having a clean house is all about having "processes that work". For us the only process that would give us a clean house would involve four brand new shock collars and special dispensation from DOCS and the domestic violence network to use them for "reprogramming" purposes.

Today I cleaned our bathroom. It's only been two weeks since the last time it had a thorough clean but it is a perfect example of why there's no point trying to institute processes. Charlotte has the largest rubber duck collection known to four-year-old-kind. It is extensive, colourful and every single one of them is full of black mould. They have their own bucket - which I religiously put them into almost every single day - and yet the rubber ducky migration patterns continue. They are determined to make it into the central-heated-enabled hallway for the winter. The black mould infestation also resists my attempts to oust it. Charlotte will die of bleach poisoning before the mould succumbs to my manic ministrations of White King. We've talked over the possibility of allowing the ducks to move on to a new life (at the bottom of a landfill) and Charlotte has made it clear that this will cost me a lot in therapy later in life. So the ducks stay.

Then there's the mouth wash. In theory Charles and I are the only ones that use it but somehow there is forever a puddle of congealed evil-smelling green. Sometimes, for variety, the puddle manages to super glue a bobby pin or two to the surface of the vanity. If I'm lucky I'll notice it before the rust stain sets into the porcelain. How the rust can permeate the green when it takes me and my good pal Easy-off BAM a solid ten minutes of soaking followed by a frenzied bout of scrubbing remains a domestic mystery.

There are other bathroom horrors, too many and too disgusting to list here, but I always find myself mentally checking my dates to make sure it's only been two weeks since the last clean. Clearly there is a weird warp in the space time continuum that allows six months of soap scum to accumulate over a mere two weeks in my bathroom.

While we're on the subject of domestic matters, I should note that since I mentioned the "essentials plus one" method in my blog it seems that a number of you have adopted it with great success. It would be enormously ironic if I became associated with a cleaning movement that sweeps the nation (haha "sweeps" the nation, get it? - boom tish!). The E+1 (catchy, no?) method seems to work for the time-strapped domestic goddesses among us. Anyway, the positive reaction I've been getting has been enormously encouraging and I've been more diligent than ever in my attempts to achieve this goal. The results have been amazingly good. I seem to be slowly clawing my way forward in the domestic cleanliness stakes.

My Dad used to say that life is full of "have to dos" and "want to dos" and that it's important to make sure that the "have to dos" get done first so you can enjoy the "want to dos". Remember as you go through life that "have to dos" shouldn't always be about your chore list. Sometimes the most important "have to dos" aren't chores at all. So, with a nod to my Dad's domestic rules, I'd like to say that I "want" to have a clean house - but I "have" to be a good Mum. And that probably has more to do with the migrating ducks than the build-up of soap scum. Remember what's important folks - it's not always about the shiny clean surface.

Happy Mothers Day

Most of the loves in our lives are conditional. Few are constant and unfailing. Our parents are often the only people who will love us no matter what we do. And so often we forget to appreciate them while they are here. It's not until that foundation of love is gone from our lives that we suddenly realise how unstable we are without it.

My mother was a study in maternal love. For birthdays she would let us choose which cake we wanted out of the Woman's Weekly children's cake book and then it would magically appear at our party. She would sew the most amazing dresses for my ballet concerts and even made me a white, frilly party dress when I was six and had outgrown my pink one. Later, when we moved to the farm she would keep us at home when it snowed and we would spend the day outside making snowmen followed by hot chocolates inside in front of the fire. Our birthdays were always special days, tinsel decorating our place at the dining table, the dinner of our choice, and fun activities all over town. I can still remember the warmth of cuddles in bed with her (she was not a morning person)...I can even remember her smell.

When I was four my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The lump in her breast was so large by that time that I had told her in the shower one day that it was getting bigger. She'd been to doctors about it from the day she'd first found it. Every single one of them had turned her away without ever conducting any tests. You're too young for breast cancer. It's probably because you're still breast feeding your son - he's one now and too old for that. I am still filled with unholy rage about this. If I think about it for too long hot tears of rage spill over and I can feel my anger raging like black thunderclouds boiling through my head. Their cavalier attitude and glib dismissals cost her everything.

She died on a bright January day when I was ten. It was two weeks before my brother's eighth birthday.

Throughout my life I've had days of deep depression when I can't even get out of bed because I miss her so badly and nothing makes the pain better. I've always felt so angry because I didn't have the chance to know my Mum beyond a maternal figure - to grow up and become friends and share adult secrets. I envy mothers and daughters shopping in the mall, meeting for lunches and giggling over coffees. I'll never know what that's like.

When I was pregnant with my own daughter I was overjoyed to find a new connection with my Mum. I realised that I was probably feeling a lot of the things she felt when she was pregnant and suddenly I began to understand her and see her in a whole new light. When Charlotte was born I felt even closer to her and it was easy to imagine, as I struggled through those first few months, how she must have struggled too. I needed her badly then and the pain was fresh again. But it was finally touched with the soothing balm of understanding and closeness.

The biggest revelation out of that has been an understanding of why she fought the cancer so hard and why she lived so long. Her battle raged for so many years - long past the time when life was pleasant or easy for her. All my ignorant youth this baffled me and I swore that if I ever faced such a thing I would allow the waters of inevitability to take me along into eternity. But when I became a mother I finally understood why she would choose to fight so hard. Because when you have children you are suddenly anchored in life and love. They root you in this existence, holding you fast. Every instinct urges you to hang on, provide one more day of love and protection for them because you know that no one else can love them like you do.

I'm a mother myself now. Ironically, to an older girl and a younger boy, just as my mother was. My life in many ways echoes hers. I find myself saying the things she said, standing in anger the way she stood, cuddling my children in bed, making cakes out of the Women's Weekly cake book and sewing pretty dresses for my delighted daughter. It's a kind of immortality, those echoes of love rippling through my children's lives. She may not ever know them but in many ways they know her and for that I am grateful.

In loving memory of my mum Sharon 11/11/1950-13/01/1990. I will always love you.

Wait...she did what?

No matter how vigilant you think you are as a parent there will always be a moment in your life where your attention is elsewhere and it costs you. And I’m not just talking about the interference of third parties – not every parent will have a Madeline McCann moment but I guarantee that every parent has a moment where they glanced away and their kid did something soul-destroyingly destructive. Kids are like demi-Gods. Maybe it’s because no one’s explained the rules of space and time in a way that they understand, allowing them to bend them at will. Maybe they have superpowers. Maybe they are just so darn fast you can’t see them. Having been a mother for four years now I can confidently say that something’s up and the little blighters have figured out ways to get into mischief no matter how closely you watch them. It’s uncanny.

Charlotte is shockingly creative on the naughty front. She commenced her career of doing my head in at the tender age of eight months old. I was swapping some cakes over in the oven, a two minute non-event, when I noticed how eerily quiet it was. This, as all parents will tell you, is a sure sign that trouble is up. And sure enough I returned to the living room to find that Miss-I-Can’t­-Even-Walk-Yet had grabbed a box of nappies, pushed it in front of the couch, used it to climb onto the seat of the couch, then the arm of the couch and was now balanced precariously, picking books off the bookshelf that the couch was there to protect one by one and tossing them to the ground below.

From that kicking off point she has gotten better and better at avoiding detection while she quietly wreaks havoc. The permanent marker incident is widely considered the pinnacle of her career, but other notable mentions include the painting incident that took place shortly after we moved into our new house. In this case she’d been outside for a while and, as usual, it was the creepy sound of nothing that tipped us off. I looked out the window to check on her and found her studiously running a paint roller up and down the bars of the stair rail on the back steps. It took me a few moments to realise she’d found the paint roller I was soaking after painting James’ bedroom.

Charles and I hurtled outside and snatched it off her and then commenced rapidly washing the brand new Colorbond fence, the side of the house, the sleepers in the garden, the stairs and the stair rail to try and get rid of the paint before it dried. While we did that she disappeared inside and put painty little hand prints all over the brand new leather couch.

A lot of these incidents stem from wanting to be like Mum and Dad. She’s dying to sew like me, cook like me, paint like Daddy and, in general, grow up and be our best friend. As a result, we can’t really leave anything we’re working on lying around. I learned my lesson a year ago when her cousin Chloe was on the way. I was working hard at a baby quilt for Jenny’s baby shower and went to bed shortly after finishing the main panel for the front of the quilt. The next day I started attaching the borders but couldn’t find the fourth and final piece.

I looked high and low. Charles helped and I had to convince him that I’d cut a fourth piece at all. Finally, in sheer desperation, I raided the garbage bin where I’d thrown all the excess scraps and finally realised what had happened. Madam had taken it and my scissors, cutting it up so she could “help” me. I’d grabbed it with the rest of the scraps because, by the time she was done with it, it looked like it had been fed through a lawn mower.

Quite pregnant myself I had to drive clear across town to Spotlight in Queanbeyan to buy 20cm of that wretched fabric so I could finish the quilt. The 98c cost of the fabric was surely more than the petrol but it was worth learning the hard way not to leave my sewing within her grasp. It could have been worse…it could have been the main quilt panel which had taken me a couple of hours to make.

Charles has learned this very same lesson over the weekend. He came home yesterday and attempted to use his top notch utility knife to cut open a box of goods for our business. Unfortunately for him someone had super glued it shut. Further exploration revealed, to his horror, that Charlotte had taken quite a few of his delicate modelling tools and carefully glued them together. She was very precise and quite accurate. Only two drops of super glue on the dining table and none at all on her hands. Poor Charles didn’t know whether to be proud or cross and had to settle on something in between. We’re lucky it didn’t wind up in a trip to the emergency ward. It will, however, cost Daddy a trip to Bunnings for a new set of modelling tools.

Madam was totally unrepentant despite being sent to her room in deep disgrace while I tried hard not to giggle in the kitchen. As soon as Charles and his thundercloud left to go and fetch us more dinner ingredients (surprise dinner guest), her sunny little face was beaming into mine in the kitchen.

“Hello you. You’re in trouble and you’re meant to be in your room.”

“I’m in trouble with Daddy,” she corrected me brightly, “and he’s not here!”

“Mmm. And do you know why you’re in trouble with Daddy?”

“Because Daddy doesn’t want me to have any fun?”

“No – you’re in trouble because you glued Daddy’s tools together. And you know you’re not allowed to touch Daddy’s tools.”

“No Mama, I’m not allowed to touch your tools. You tell me all the time.”

“Well you’re not allowed to touch Daddy’s tools either and I think you know that. Daddy loves his tools and you glued them all together. How would you like it if I took your Roly Moe* and glued him to all your other toys?”

There is no metaphor that can accurately convey the horror that passes over her face when I say this. Roly Moe is her everything. I send her back to her room to think about that and when Daddy comes home she darts out to deliver her genuine apology.

“Daddy I’m really, really sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Really sorry.”

Everyone knows that Daddys mean fun and Mamas mean business. Daddy is probably not mean enough to threaten the sanctity of Roly Moe’s perfect furry existence, but Mama certainly is. Mind you, I’m not the one whose tools are being glued together!

* Roly Moe is the ugliest soft toy you can imagine. He is a grey mole with weird goggle eyes and features in the recent Disney movie “G Force”. I have no idea what his name is in that movie but Charlotte has christened him “Roly Moe”. She won him on her own out of a skill tester and he is prized above all others, including “Nyamie”.

And today's plus one event is...

I have just dropped both of the kids off at daycare. It's one o'clock and for a while there I didn't think we were going to make it at all. They were ready at ten but it quickly became obvious that James was thoroughly out of sorts and needed his morning sleep before he went anywhere (especially important since he is continuing to protest against his placement in daycare by refusing to sleep there). It is only my second day at home without either of them. I feel like someone has cut off a limb and I keep having mini panic attacks where my brain says, "Oh my God, where's the baby?!" and I get halfway to the toilet (where, my irrational brain presumes, he has drowned) before I remember that he's safe at daycare.

So what to do with my precious time? Yesterday the plus one in my "essentials plus one" domestic management plan consisted of Charlotte and I putting together the flat pack outdoor love seat/swing thing my Dad gave me for Christmas. This had reached the top of the list over and above dealing with the huge mound of kiddy clothes I need to parcel up for Jenny purely because I couldn't handle celebrating Yule in June knowing that a December Christmas present was languishing in its box in the backyard. You might think that's bad, but I assure it's got nothing on today's "plus one". Cleaning my car.

We have two X-Trails. One is white. It's mine because it has car seats for the kids and a steering wheel cover featuring pink and cow skulls complete with horns (you can take the girl out of the country...) The other is silver and is Charles' only because I made the mistake of referring to it on purchase as our "Silvertail", the nic name of Charles' beloved Manly Sea Eagles. Since the kids are largely my domain and my car has the car seats for them, my car also carries all their crap. I make an effort to clean it out every month or two and it usually takes me a couple of hours. I sort, I clean, I vacuum and then somehow within a week it's all back again.

This time is worse than most. It's coming up to two months now since the last frenzy and the contents of the car are starting to spill out when doors are opened. The boot is hard to close and stuff I don't recognise is floating to the surface of the mass which fills the footspace where the kids sit. The nature of the stuff involved is also getting weirder and weirder. I knew we were in real trouble when Pippa asked me why there was a plastic Christmas tree in the back seat of our car. I've checked. She wasn't making a poor joke. There is a three foot high plastic Christmas tree in the back seat of my car and I don't know how it got there.

This blog post is obviously an exercise in work avoidance as much as it is a confession. I'm scared that there will be something lurking in the car that will eat me. It might even wind up being the plastic Christmas tree which has taken on a kind of benign-sinister-lurking-presence in my head because I really don't know where it came from. I have a theory that the sheer volume and variety of stuff in the car, coupled with my emotional focus on it, has opened a weird "stuff portal" into a parallel dimension. Somewhere through time and space another mother is scratching her head at the appearance of a stainless steel sippy cup and the absence of her Christmas tree. This would also go a long way to explaining the column heater that has just appeared in the boot.

Pray for me people - I'm going in.

My most embarrassing moment as a parent (so far)

Charles has told me that there needs to be more blog posts, more often and that they should be shorter. So in the spirit of shorter posts, here's a brief little anecdote to amuse and disgust you.

Children are little germ bombs. Before kids I actually had accrued sick leave. After kids all that got swallowed up as Madam caught every thing going at daycare. The most frequent culprits are colds and bouts of mild gastro. They have become an almost fortnightly occurrence in our house.

When James was only four months old I was shopping in Lincraft with the kids. We'd made it all the way to the front counter when the cramps started. Since I was done shopping I reasoned that I had time to pay for my things. Unfortunately the cramps were ramping up fast and I had to excuse myself from the shop rather quickly.

"Mama!" Charlotte panted as I hustled her along, "Mama why are we going so fast?"

"Because darling, if Mama doesn't get to a toilet soon she's going to have a really, really bad accident," I whispered, leaning down as we ran.

"Okay Mama!" she squeaked and bless her little socks she started running as fast as she could and dragging me along.

"Come on Mama! We don't want you to have a really bad accident!" she shouted as we hurtled along.

I prayed that the other shoppers weren't paying attention or couldn't understand her squeaky little voice.

She barrelled around the corner into the corridor where the toilets are and slammed her hand down on the button to open the door to the disabled toilet (which we always use because it fits all of us at once, including the enormous jogger stroller).

To my horror, as the door swung slowly open, it revealed by degrees a rather startled looking gentleman with his tackle out, preparing to do his business. As I stood, frozen in shock, and he tried to mumble something about he thought he'd locked the door, Madam darted in and addressed him with her hands on her hips and eyes narrowed.

"You have to get out now so my Mama can use the toilet otherwise she's going to have a really, really big accident!"

"Charlotte! Come out and let that poor man finish what he's doing!" I gasped, mortified.

"Er...that's okay. I think it's going to be about fifteen minutes before I'm good to go anyways," he muttered, sidling out.

As I prepared to use the facilities, blushing madly and checking twice to make sure the door was properly locked, Charlotte addressed me with the same hands-on-hips-narrowed-eyes stance.

"Mama," she said sternly, "if we take things out of a shop without paying for them, that's stealing."

And she gestured to the bottom of the stroller where all of my items from Lincraft lay, waiting for me to go back and explain and pay for them. Happy days.

How do I love him? Let me count the ways...

There are a lot of things I love about my husband – the gifts he’s brought to my life have been many. At first, some of them were subtle. For example, the first time he slept overnight at my house on a work night my house mate Jules and I awoke to a brand new experience in the form of an interesting new obstacle in our living room complete with its own accessory. I came across Jules clutching her robe around her and staring blearily at it in stunned disbelief.

“What is it?” she asked, miffed.

“Not a clue,” I responded.

“It obviously came with Charles. Does it live here now?”

“Apparently.”

“Maybe it could…not? I don’t need to see stuff like that.”

“Don’t worry - I’ll talk to him.”

Turns out the ironing board and iron were both mine. Our uni-lifestyle coupled with a love of wash and wear clothing meant we’d never actually pulled it out before.

Domestically he was reasonably well trained. He’d managed to keep his room tidy amidst the chaos of a group house that was so filthy I refused to sit on the couches or even break my stride lest the crud start creeping up my ankles. In this respect I wasn’t disappointed – he moved in and managed to tidy up reasonably well after himself. He even tidied up after Jules and I which was quite impressive.

There were other issues to contend with as we slowly integrated out lives. I thought moving in together would be a simple transference of his one bedroom out of the group house into my mobile home. I was confident that two trailer loads would do it. Turns out Charles’ accumulations amounted to far more than one bedroom.

“I’ve got my whole degree,” he announced brightly, yanking an enormous box out of the linen cupboard.

“Er…yes, I know. In information technology.”

“No I mean my whole degree,” he said flipping open the box, “Every lecture note, every assignment, everything.”

“But why?”

He looked at me then like I was mad. In vain I reasoned and pleaded but in the end it simply came down to practicalities. I lived in a mobile home with two bedrooms apart from the Master. Jules occupied one and I told him that he could have the other but I simply couldn’t make the place any bigger than it was. Somehow (and I suspect it involves having played a lot of tetras in the past) Charles made most of it fit. A lot got thrown out – including most of his degree. As soon as I related this story to his mother she looked at him keenly and asked whether he’d finally be taking his boxes out of their attic as well.

Apart from the sheer volume of stuff he comes with, the only other hiccup in Charles’ domestic training was cooking. Here he was clueless. He knew how to cook one thing (and I use the term “cook” loosely as each time it would take me an hour of boiling and scrubbing the saucepan to clear the charcoal from the bottom) – a tomato-based casserole boiled to within an inch of existence that he would parcel up and freeze individually – eating one portion a night. I was unimpressed and uninspired at the prospect of eating the same thing every single day and so cooking duties fell largely to me until I got a job working from 4pm to Midnight in a media company.

To his credit he tried. His first attempt was vegetable soup – which I’d asked him to make because it was quite simple, filling and tasty. I gave him some brief instructions over the phone – dice the veggies, boil in stock, blend if you want your soup to be smooth. I was thrilled when he showed up to share dinner in the form of a blended vegetable soup with me. Then I tasted it. And spat it out.

“Good Lord, what on earth did you do to it?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, hurt, “I made it like you said.”

“That is not how I told you to make it!”

“Well….I might have added some curry paste for flavour.”

“But it tastes like fish!”

The eyes darted a bit.

“I might have added a tin of tuna as well.”

“But it’s meant to be vegetable soup. And I don’t eat fish!”

“Well I thought it needed some protein!”

That night we wound up eating hot dogs from the servo. Charles’ next attempt at cooking was satay lamb. I okayed this one on the proviso that he follow whatever recipe he was using to the letter. I was pretty confident when he showed up with dinner that we were onto a winner. The rice was fluffy, the satay smelled great. Then I tasted it.

“DON’T tell me that there’s anything wrong with it!” Charles exclaimed, before I could say or do anything, “I followed the recipe and it’s very tasty, so just eat it!”

I sat staring at him, a mouth full of dinner, trying to will my mouth to form a protective barrier of saliva around the offending mouthful so I could tolerate it until he’d had a chance to taste it. The salt level of the food was aiding me in this quest and my saliva glands were powering up to pressure hose capacity in an attempt to defuse the critical situation in my mouth.

Charles, eyeing me carefully took a bite. Instantly his eyes went wide and he spat it straight back out.

“You don’t have to eat it,” he said quickly and I immediately spat mine straight back into the bowl.

“What did you do?” I asked, blinking back the tears.

“I don’t know. I did everything the recipe said!”

“But it’s so salty! How much peanut butter did you put in?”

“The whole jar…” he whispered.

That night we wound up eating hot dogs from the servo. I am still confident that I would have suffered kidney failure if I’d managed to down that mouthful. He called me later and admitted that closer reading of the recipe had called for two tablespoons of peanut butter and he’d used a 500g jar. He’d made a huge amount of the abominable stuff and it was decided that the dog would get it all. But even after we washed all the sauce away she just looked from the bowl to us and back again in a completely bemused way, looking more confused than usual, which is quite difficult for her to do given that she is quite a vapid animal to begin with thanks largely to a steady diet of marijuana smoke when she was a puppy (not from me, but from the home I rescued her from).

Unfortunately these little adventures into the epicurean world relegated Charles to the backseat in our kitchen for years afterwards. He couldn’t be persuaded to try again and even when I asked him for assistance with my own creations he’d get cagey. It didn’t help that I was raised on a farm cooking in a wood stove. I was quite comfortable cooking without time and temperature guides and knew how to check to see if something was done or not. Charles hates this method of cooking. To Charles cooking is scientific, formulaic and accurate. If a recipe says bake for 40 minutes at 180ºC, then that sucker is getting cooked for 40 minutes and at the end it comes out – regardless of whether it’s still sloshing around in the tin or it’s been baked to the same colour and consistency as a hockey puck. And if it’s a GOOD recipe then it should be properly cooked. To date the only recipe he’s found that he can do this with is, ironically, ANZAC biscuits.

So for years I have been the resident cook and, theoretically at least, Charles washes up. Over time he’s gradually increased his abilities and he quite often helps out in the kitchen but it’s rare for him to take the lead unless it involves his beloved Weber, which is a thoroughly scientific and wholly reliable exercise.

Now we come to the point of this week’s blog entry and the reason for the title above. I have already told you how Charles has been forced to take my place in the domestic duties of late, while I work at becoming a swim teacher. And it has been a rude shock for him. Impressively, rather than simply hold the fort and manage the kids, leaving the other duties for me when I come home, Charles has manned up and decided that he will achieve everything that I achieve on the domestic front. Including the making of dinner, often at the end of a day of looking after children.

And the results are incredible. We began with country potato and bacon soup. At first, it was looking dicey. The soup was far too watery, the bacon and onion were on their way to incineration and I had an attack of the giggles that wounded his pride horribly. Amazingly he managed to yank it all together and I found myself dining on the best potato and bacon soup that I’ve ever had the pleasure of consuming.

From there things have only gotten better. There has been lamb casserole and lamb steak in minted glazed. Plans are afoot for stuffed chicken breast with macadamia and honey glaze. He has followed the recipes religiously to their conclusions and every time has been a success. His confidence is growing and on one occasion he even realised that the dish had finished cooking and he pulled it out before the allotted time was up (for me this is the most incredible achievement of all because my man is a stickler for the rules). Charles is rightfully proud of his success but he was quick to indicate that he didn’t think he’d ever be able to be an intuitive cook who fiddles with recipes like I do. I was quick to reassure him that he’s selling himself short. He has an excellent sense of taste and with time, he will be able to adjust dishes to his liking. I have every faith that he will quickly surpass my own efforts.

After all, he’s only cooked a couple of meals so far and they’ve been a raging success. Even Charlotte tucked in to the lamb with mint glaze without complaint. And that’s really saying something.