Oh Deer

Charlotte has just returned from a trip with Nanny to Bundeena.  Very excited about the last two days, she recounted her adventures over dinner, including this little pearl…

“And Daddy we got to feed a deer!”

“A deer?”

“Yeah Daddy a DEER!”

“Did she have a baby deer with her?”

“No Daddy but she was a girl and she was called Barbie!”

“Barbie?  What did she look like?”

“A deer!”

Oh dear.

More Fun With Craft Wood

I’ve been pretty creative when it comes to the decoration of my children’s rooms. Charlotte has a pink and green room with big butterfly wall stickers floating up her wall.  James has the most soothing, lovely shade of blue I could find and he has under-the-sea themed stickers all over the place.  Unfortunately there's one area I neglected when decorating and Charlotte's been agitating for me to fix it ever since we moved.

I love having photos of my family and friends all over the house and Charlotte is no different.  She longs for her own photo wall like we had at our last house but, since we moved, all she’s had are a few frames on her bookshelf.  So I decided to turn to my friends the craft wood shapes from Bunnings for some cheap and easy decorating.

First up you’ll need to choose the shape you want.  You can buy a sheet of MDF and design your own but I’ve gone with pre-cut flower-shaped coasters.  They’re 83 cents each from Bunnings.  They also sell plain round coasters and star shaped ones that are even cheaper.  Secondly you’ll need to paint your shapes with the colours of your choice.  I've gone with pink, blue and purple.

Next up you’ll need some photos of family and friends.

And then you need to find a suitable guide to cut your photos to size.  My flower coasters needed a round-shaped centre and this port glass worked perfectly*.

Whack the glass down over the photo and use your trusty utility knife to cut it out.

You can use blu-tac to temporarily stick your photos onto your flower.  The advantage of this is that you can change the photos periodically.  Unfortunately if you have littlies that like to peel the photos off, all you’ll have is a mess.  For this reason I chose to glue my photos down using PVA. 

For added interest and colour I’ve chosen to cover some butterfly craft wood shapes in a pretty contrasting Japanese parchment paper.

That’s it!  Fix your flower frames to the wall with blu tac or those 3M command strip thingies and for less than $15 your kiddy has a photo wall of their own.

*  Hubby prefers his fortified in large quantities and uses a red wine glass.  So these glasses are almost never in use. 

All About Our Curse

Somewhere in our murky past one of our ancestors did something terrible to someone with power and we were cursed.  Not a major curse.  We’re not doomed to die a horrible death at a young age or anything.  Nope, for us it’s that medical situations always occur at the least convenient time.  A major tooth infection at the stage of pregnancy where you can’t take anything stronger than half a Panadol.  A fever when you’re on holidays down the coast and it’s a public holiday so all the chemists are closed.  Gall bladder attack at 4am on Christmas morning.  So I figure that whoever we annoyed either didn’t have a huge amount of power in the curse area or it was a reasonably minor infraction. 

For me personally all medical emergencies* happen at around 8.27pm on a Friday night.  Why 8.27pm?  Because I know that without treatment I will have a weekend of agony and my options quickly narrow to sitting it out in Emergency at the hospital or making it to the chemist before it shuts at 9pm.

Tonight I discovered a weird growth on my gum that wasn’t there this morning.  Inspection in the mirror reveals something like the stalk of a mushroom with a pale white head – something tells me it’s not going to blossom into a cute little red toadstool with white spots that will attract the local fairy population.

For once in his miserable doom-laden prophetic existence Dr Google fails to predict a particularly painful case of terminal cancer.  Instead I am reliably informed that I have an abscess that forms fast and signals deep, bone-destroying infection.  By the way, get immediate medical attention or the infection will get horrendously painful quite quickly.

I opt for the late-night medical centre where the receptionist laughs when I ask if I’ll be able to see a doctor before they close.  I take my weird growth to the local chemist.

I always feel a bit sorry for chemists.  First of all people want to talk about their weird and embarrassing health problems in private and there’s never anywhere private to talk about it.  Second, I feel like they’re that guy in the famous parable who chooses meaningless work with no recognition and lots of pay instead of the low pay, high recognition job that means something.

I mean, let’s face it, most chemists probably know about 90% of what your doctor knows and can diagnose a patient just as well.  But all they can give you is Panadol and teething gel.  They’re getting paid well and they don’t have to spend any of it on medical insurance but it seems like a pretty raw deal to me.

One look at my weird mushroom-in-waiting and Ms Chemist agrees with Dr Google.  I can tell by the grimace that what I’m in for is not pleasant.  She reassures me that I don’t need to go to hospital (yet), agrees that the infection will get worse before it gets better and asks me what sort of pain killers I have at home.

I tell her the strongest is some sort of Nurofen and she grimaces.  Nope, Nurofen is a blood thinner.  Why does that matter?  Because tomorrow you’ll need to go to the doctor and they’ll have to treat it.  Whoops, I’ve said too much.  Here’s the stongest codeine-based painkiller I’m legally allowed to sell you, best of luck, go to hospital if you start to get feverish, feel faint or the pain gets so bad you can’t open your mouth or swallow.

Doom.  Dooooooom.

*  And by emergency I mean whenever anything medically ambiguous occurs that you think might require a doctor soonish but probably isn’t bad enough for the emergency room.

The Rules of Marriage - Rule 2

Thou shalt not swear in front of the children lest thou is banned from speaking in front of them.

*ahem*  My bad.

The Perils of the Sunday Food Shop

1.)  Food shortages;  The first thing people should be warned about when it comes to Sunday shopping is the fact that the shelves will be about 80% empty of everything you actually want to buy.  I don’t know whether this is because the transport companies don’t deliver on weekends or because the shops are far too cheap to employ people to restock for weekend wage rates.  Regardless of the reason you will be unable to buy simple things like apples, onions or tomatoes but you will absolutely be able to buy all the weird Asian stuff that you’re unsure whether you’re supposed to eat raw or cook*.

2.)  Trolley shortages;  Similar to the food situation, you’ll also find that there’s a shortage of trolleys.  Unless you salvage one from the car park where they’re lounging around like wagging teenagers, you’ll find that there are a grand total of three trolleys left at the entrance to the store.  One will be full of rubbish, one will look like a Humvee backed over it and the final one will be being eyed off by at least three other people – one a very bogan man with tatts, singlet and thongs – one a mother with two whinging kids attached and the third a very arthritic octogenarian.  Do not ask me why but some weird law of physics, fate or similar means the octogenarian will get it.

3.)  Eleventy million other people – 90% of them apparently mental;  Everyone shops on Sunday.  Even the unemployed, stay-at-home mums and retirees who could do it on a weekday when the aisles are empty**.  No clue why – it’s just the thing to do.  This is not a problem in and of itself.  The issue is that a vast majority of them seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that they’re sharing the aisles with anyone else.  DOCS should forget about home visits – just sit quietly in Coles and wait for the abuse to start.  Hellooooo – everyone here is witnessing you screaming your head off at your kids and whacking them round the head.  Then there are the ones who walk slower than fresh-milked Jersey cows heading back to pasture – usually taking up most of the available space so you can’t skirt them.  They’re the very same people that stop in the middle of an aisle, blocking the whole way in both directions, while they contemplate whether they want their pasta shaped like spirals or shells.

The irony of these types of people is that if you dare to say anything like “excuse me can I just squeeze past” or “do you mind if I just grab a jar of tomato paste” they will glare at you as though you said, “I’ll just grab your first-born child, your credit card and your car keys if you don’t mind” while rummaging through their handbag.  Chivalry is dead.  It was offed in a mass murder along with courtesy, common decency and the words, “please”, “thank you” and “sorry”.

4.)  Stupid, stupid mistakes;  Now that my diet is back on track I thought it would be a good time to buy some multi-vitamins.  I spent seven minutes staring at the wall of various supplements trying to figure out the best (cheapest) one.  Eventually I lobbed a bulk pack into the trolley.  $19.64 later and Charles was thanking me for the Multivitamin FOR MEN that I had somehow bought.  Idiot.

5.)  Forgetting things;  There’s only one thing worse than remembering something else you were meant to get while you’re queuing up and that’s remembering it when you get home and your spouse says “did you remember to buy my Nuttelex?”  Idiot.

6.)  Stupid store policies;  I’m a Coles girl.  And there are two things about Coles that bug the hell out of me.  The first is their “no liquor” lines.  I don’t drink.  But I do put wine in my food when I’m cooking it and so I occasionally need a bottle of shiraz.  I have been in the situation where I get to the end of loading roughly $150 worth of  groceries onto the conveyor and had the checkout person say “I’m sorry this is a no liquor line” because I have a $6 bottle of shiraz.  Why do they even have this policy? 

While we’re on the subject of stupid store policies, why do I have to buy five of something to qualify for a discount?  You used to get weekly specials – items individually discounted – this week $1.54 next week on sale for $1.36.  Now you get $1.54 each or four for $4.  Why?  I like the occasional Tim Tam but I don’t need four packets.  Perhaps you’re unaware of the obesity crisis?  The food wastage issue?  Helloooo?  Is anyone out there? 

7.)  Checkouts;  I would be a huge fan of self-checkout if it weren’t for the fact that they’ve tried to make them “Smart”.  The idea behind weighing the bag as each item is added is probably to prevent theft.  I personally believe thieves will simply pocket anything they’re stealing or simply find a way to hide it in the trolley as they go.  So this ridiculous method of keeping tabs on customers is simply an annoying delay and a waste of time.

Should you choose a person-attended checkout option you will unfortunately face a host of other issues beginning with people’s unwillingness to put the divider behind their shopping to distinguish their purchases from yours***, progressing with checkout operators that move slower than glaciers and ending with people who have no idea that their credit card is already maxed out necessitating plastic roulette before you get your turn.

Sunday shopping.  Love it.

*  Buying it anyway and Googling probably won’t help you because no doubt in their efforts to assimilate your weird Asian food of choice into the Western diet the supermarkets have renamed it to make it seem less weird and less Asian and therefore there’s less information about it on the Internet.  Jackfruit or star fruit anyone?

** And almost certainly fully stocked.

*** This annoys me so much that I have considered carrying those $30 razor blades for men in my trolley and quietly slipping it amongst their items when they’re not looking so they will learn to USE THE BLOODY DIVIDER.

The Rules of Marriage - Rule 1

Care and consideration will only be given if the state you’re in is not your own fault.  If it’s self-inflicted due to drinking, staying up too late or stupidity I reserve the right to laugh.  I also reserve the right to go about normal domestic business from 10am without having to turn down the television, music or children.

Yes, you’re allowed to be grumpy about that.  No I don’t have to listen to you being grumpy.

Of course I still love you.

My Little Fruit Bats

I love fruit in all its forms.  I would eat it 24/7 were it cheap enough and nutritionally balanced.  So great is my love of Mother Nature's sweet little treats that I could probably be the first vegan ever to be morbidly obese.  Yup.  I could definitely overdose on fruit*.

My fruit-eating obsession has been well and truly passed on to both of my children.  Occasionally they seem reluctant to try a new one but as soon as the sweet, pulpy goodness touches their tongues you can almost see their pupils dilate and suddenly it's "More, more, more!"

Charles is a slave to strawberries but he's not as obsessed as us and there are some fruits he  won't eat.  So he calls us his little fruit bats, indulges us by buying our fix and shakes his head in disbelief at the sheer volume we can put away.

Tonight I made lamb salad for Charles and I for dinner.  For the kids – because they hate salad, I made fish fingers with fruit salad.  At this time of year fruit is cheap and plentiful and you can buy mounds of the stuff you don’t normally get.  So their bowls were loaded with kakayaberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and grapes.  They were thrilled with the fare on offer and ploughed their way through dinner in fairly short order.  Naturally having cleaned their bowls they felt that they were rightfully entitled to dessert. 

Luckily for me I’d managed to score a kilo of cherries from a roadside cherry van and forgotten to include them in their fruit salad so I proceeded to sit with the bowl and my trusty cherry pipper – pipping them one by one for the little fruit bats.  After the first three all sense of restraint and propriety were abandoned.  Rather than take the cherry from me they were simply opening their mouths to receive their share and squawking whenever their sibling was fed instead of themselves. 

The cherries themselves were huge and barely fit into the pipper.  For whatever reason James decided that the only way for the cherry to enter his mouth was whole and he would scream with outrage whenever I tried to halve it for him so it would fit.  As a result, cherry juice would stream unchecked down his front whenever he closed his gob.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the first ever vampire fruit bat;

 *  And I did once.  One Summer I was given a tray of mangoes and challenged to eat them all before they went bad.  24 mangoes in six days is not an endurance event my body was trained to cope with.  I turned an interesting shade of yellow, felt ill for about a month** and couldn't eat the wretched things for the next two summers.  So while I could eat fruit 24/7 I know it would have to be different kinds of fruit.

** And we won't go into any of the other side effects.  

Sang Choy Bow and Apple/Rhubarb Pie

I feel a warning about my style of cooking is required before we just jump in with the recipe.  You should know that I am not a cook who measures much when it comes to my favourite recipes – after a while you just know how much you like, particularly when it comes to spices and seasoning.  I also grew up on a farm where we cooked in a woodfired oven which took a bipolar approach to temperature so I tend not to stick to temperatures too much and I’m hopeless at predicting how long something will take to cook.  Mind you, I can usually smell when food is ready (particularly with baking) or I just see whether it looks cooked or a skewer comes out clean – you get the idea – cooking by instinct.  So please do not read and attempt these unless you're kind of okay with a more fluid style of cooking.

I made these for dinner tonight - they're two of my fastest, most tasty recipes (not to mention cheap) and I thought I would share them with you.  The first is ideal for a fast dinner on a week night.  It is;

Easy Sang Choy Bow

Ingredients

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

500g Pork Mince (I like free range organic)

250g coleslaw salad mix

Teriyaki Sauce

1 teaspoon crushed garlic/1 crushed clove of garlic

Iceberg lettuce

Cracked pepper

Method

Throw some of the olive oil (a tablespoon?  Two?) in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and add the garlic.  Cook for about 30 seconds and then throw the pork mince on top.  Cook until the meat has browned. 

Your coleslaw mix should be of the finely chopped/shredded variety.  If it’s not, give it a whiz in the food processor for a few seconds.  Then stir it through the pork.  Add some cracked pepper and a decent splash of teriyaki sauce until it tastes the way you want it to.  Whack the pot down on your table, supply the washed iceberg leaves and let your family dig in!

For dessert;

Apple and Rhubarb Country-Style Pie

Ingredients

Filling

2-3 granny smith apples

Bunch of Rhubarb

Butter

Sugar

Pastry

500g plain flour

250g butter

250g caster sugar

2 eggs

The filling of any pie is basically the stewing of the fruit with sugar to taste.  In this case my little pyrex dish holds two large grannies or three small ones plus a normal bunch of rhubarb which might weigh about 500g.  Peel, core, divest of leaves/stumps and then chop your fruit up.  I like to dice the apples finely and make the rhubarb a bit bigger.

Whack the butter in a saucepan and melt, add the fruit and cook over a medium heat until they soften and begin to mush.  Add sugar to taste.  In my case I added about 2/3 cup of white sugar which meant the pie filling was still a bit tart*.  I like to cook until the fruit is totally soft and has all sort of mushed together.  Mmm.  If you feel it’s a bit liquid/runny add some arrowroot powder to thicken it**.  Set aside to cool while you make your pastry.

Personally I’m not one for heaps of effort in the kitchen.  So for the pastry there’s none of this “rub the butter between your fingers until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs”.  Instead I dump the flour, sugar and butter into the food processor and give it a whiz until it’s all blended.  Then I add the egg.  I usually have to give it a cursory knead when I turn it out but for the most part the food processor does it for me.

You’ll only need about 2/3 of your pastry for the main pie depending on the size of the pie tin and your filling so consider putting the rest aside for a smaller pie later (alternatively double the fruit and use a bigger dish).  Roll out your dough on a piece of baking paper until it’s about 3-4 millimetres thick and is big enough to extend about ten centimetres beyond the edge of your pie dish when you pop it face down on the pastry.  Now slide your hand under the baking paper and flip the lot right side up.  Smooth the pastry into the pie dish (no need to pre-grease the dish).  Your pastry should still be sticking out past the edge of the dish by a good 5-7 centimetres.  DON’T TRIM IT OFF UNLESS YOU WANT CITY-SLICKER-STYLE PIE.

Pour your filling in, spread it around, smooth it and then fold the extra pastry in towards the middle of the dish.  This is why it’s a country-style pie…no faffing about with rolling out more pastry for a lid, just pull it up like a drawstring purse and it’s charming and quaint***.

Sprinkle the top with caster sugar or vanilla sugar to add to your charming/quaint effect.  Now bake at about 180°C for around 15-20 minutes.  If you pull your pie out now you’ll notice the sides are going nice and brown but (and you really need a glass/pyrex pie dish for this) looking at the bottom will show you that your pastry is basically uncooked mush.  What you need is a pie shield – a metal rim that sits over your crust and reflects the heat allowing the bottom of the pie to cook while halting the baking on the sides.  Haven’t got one of those?  Easy – make one from a length of aluminium foil.  Fold it in half with the shiny side facing out and wrap it around until the top and sides of your pie are covered.

Return your pie to the oven for another 20 minutes or so.  Serve your pie with ice-cream, cream or custard.  Om noms!

 *  Just the way my man likes it.

** It’s no good using cornflour/cornstarch to thicken a fruit filling because something about the citric acid in the fruit means the cornflour/starch won’t work as a thickener.  Arrowroot, on the other hand, will thicken despite the citric acid and it gives your filling a lovely glossy sheen not usually seen outside food ads where the food has been primed with varnish for its Kodak moment.

*** County-style cooking is never ever meant to convey the speed/laziness factor required to assemble the dish.  It’s all about being quaint and charming.  It just happens to be fast because chances are if you’re baking in the country a cow is in your strawberry patch and you’ll need to go chase it.  So you really don’t have time to press charming blackberry leaf pastry shapes into the dome of your carefully prepared pie of awesome.

Unfortunately You Are Not Michael Schumacher

For the most part I like to think I’m fairly accepting of other people’s life choices.  There are not many areas where I feel that people's freedoms should be limited.  One of the biggest exceptions to that rule for me is when it comes to people’s right to make up their own mind about what they do and don’t do on the road.  You are not one person in a vacuum – you’re at the wheel of a deadly weapon manoeuvring it amongst other lives.  You owe those people a duty of care.  You owe them your care, consideration and caution.  You have no right to speed or drive while under the influence of drugs, alcohol or while fatigued.  And if you do any of those things my best hope for you is that you kill yourself before you kill someone else.

In the State Emergency Services I learned that 90 per cent of all accidents are a result of an optional behaviour – that means 90 per cent of all accidents could have been avoided and 90% of the people killed could have been saved.  Speed.  Fatigue. Alcohol. Drugs. Mobile phone. Recklessness.  I saw about a dozen crashes in my time with the SES and thinking back there was only one that was a genuine couldn’t-be-helped incident.  The rest were all stupid decisions that cost people money, freedom and life.

If I sound angry it’s because I am.  Mind you, I’m nowhere near as angry as the cops who attend accidents year after year.  Want to know why they fine you the maximum for being even a little bit over the limit?  Because they know how dangerous that little extra bit is and they’ve seen the result of people like you who were caught by circumstance before the cops got them.  It’s not pretty.  Quite honestly we’d all be happier if the majority of your body remained contained within your skin.

I have a favourite quote from Becker which goes something like, “People are idiots Margaret and if I don’t tell them they’re idiots then they won’t know they’re idiots and they won’t have a chance to improve themselves”.  It absolutely sums up how I feel about 90% of the population – but most of all how I feel about stupid drivers.  I’d love to tell them just how dumb they are.

It was blatantly obvious to me as we drove home from the Holiday from Hell that the road safe messages simply aren’t having an impact.  Either that or people have such a strong belief in reincarnation that they’re thoroughly unconcerned about shrugging off their current mortal coil.  Desperate to be like Brocky they’ve forgotten that he died at the wheel as a result of high speed. 

My favourite moment came when a young man with a car full of similarly young people in a tiny white biscuit barrel decided to overtake a line of seven cars stuck behind a truck (including us).  I thought he was going to overtake three cars and then pull in but he continued on towards the blind hill and, when a bus came over the top, he simply swerved sideways and trusted that everyone else would move out of the way for him.  Lucky for him the guy he nearly ploughed into saw him coming and had room on the shoulder to get out of his way.  You’d think he would have learned from that but twenty seconds later he did it again on a blind corner.  Genius of this kind simply cannot be taught, it’s a natural talent.

I am the first to admit that I am a total grandma on the road and thoroughly removed from the thought processes these people must be moving through*.  But occasionally I wonder what the hell these people are thinking and I wonder what I would say in response to their justifications…

1.)  I’m just as good as Brocky;  No, you’re not.  If you were you’d be racing professionally.  But keep it up and with any sort of luck you can be just as dead as Brocky**.  The difference will be that you’ll go down in history as an idiot instead of as a legend.  Unless you take someone else with you and then you’ll be a killer and an idiot.

2.)  I’ll get there heaps faster if I speed;  Well we all know the “will you get there at all” argument, so I’m not going to harp on that one.  But here’s some food for thought from my father-in-law.  He explained to me how he used to speed and drive a bit recklessly on his way to work, convinced he was getting there faster.  Then someone challenged him to time himself driving in his usual manner and then again while following the road rules.  Amazingly the difference in travel time was less than two minutes.  It was not a coincidence.  A week of each showed a similar result – on average he was getting there less than two minutes earlier.

Not convinced?  Here’s the maths.  We drove 240 kilometres from Bega to Canberra.  If we drove at 120 kilometres per hour for the whole distance – a consistent 20 kilometres an hour over the speed limit for the entire journey – we would get home in exactly two hours.  If we drove at 100 kilometres per hour we’d get home in two hours and twenty minutes.   Now this assumes a constant speed and no stops or breaks.  It scales down dramatically when you factor in normal driving conditions.  So really you’re risking your life, the lives of other people, your license and your money for about 10-15 minutes.

3.)  Everyone that sees me overtaking all these other cars in my awesome car thinks I’m awesome;  Nope.  Those of us obeying the road rules think you’re a grade-A moron and the rest of us – meaning other people like you – think you’re an idiot too because they’re convinced they can drive better than you and they know for sure their car is better than yours.  Which means that basically 100% of people witnessing your moronic behaviour think you’re a tosspot.  Except for your girlfriend/boyfriend beside you.  They probably think you’re awesome but chances are they haven’t been told anything about Darwinism.

4.)  I have great reactions.  If something happens I’ll be able to react in time;  Here’s the thing about the way your brain works (and I’m assuming for the sake of this argument that your brain does work, all evidence to the contrary).  It filters some of the information you’re getting while you drive to help you cope with what it perceives to be an unnatural high speed.  So you feel like you’re in control but the reality is that your body is not physically equipped to receive a message from the brain that will allow you to avoid an accident in time. 

Example;  Ten years ago I was a psychology student in university.  As a part of our study we did tests on reaction times and I happened to be one of the fastest in the class in all the tests we administered so I know my reactions, on average, are pretty darn good.  Three months later a guy ran a stop sign at 60 kilometres an hour.  I was doing 60 when he ploughed into me.  And while my brain saw him coming and knew there was going to be an accident, my body simply couldn’t react in time to do anything to save me.  This is a really hard concept to grasp until you’re the one looking at the inevitable grill of a Mack truck but you might like to just go with me on this one.  Your reaction times are of almost no consequence once you hit 60 kilometres an hour (That’s 40 miles for our American friends).

5.)  I’m not hurting anyone.  If I speed and I crash then the only person who dies is me;  Yeah.  No.  First of all, you’re not the only one on the road.  Second, law of physics – in a collision the faster moving of the two objects is the one that survives the impact best.  I remember one of the guys in the SES showing me a report (complete with pictures) about a car accident where a drunk guy in a Hilux sailed through an intersection at 120 and hit a Barina doing 60.  The guy was so paralytic when they dragged him out that he could barely walk.  He was convinced he’d hit a “f$#kin’ ‘roo”.  His bumper was mildly bent.  The Barina he hit looked like it had been fed through an industrial shredder.  He had mild whiplash.  Three of the four teenage girls in the Barina were dead.  The fourth was critically injured. 

That story, more than anything else, has always stuck with me.  The pictures horrified me and I know he would have seen them***.  I’ve always wondered what it would be like to drive home after you’ve been drinking, go to sleep thinking you hit a ‘roo and wake up with a hangover only to discover that you’re responsible for wiping three young people off the face of the earth and traumatising a fourth for life.  How do you live with that?

I don’t think that the road safe message will ever get through to some people.  Bullet-proof from youth or over-confident because they’re older and have avoided accidents right up until now – whatever the reason some people are just able to say “That won’t happen to me” and that’s an end to it.  But for the record – you’re an idiot.  And if I don’t tell you you’re an idiot then you won’t know you’re an idiot and you won’t have a chance to improve yourself.

*  Or not.  Maybe the assumption that they have thought processes is where I’m going wrong?
**  This post is in no way meant to be a swipe at Brocky.  The man was a legend and part of the reason that he was a legend was because he kept it on the racetrack.  When the great man was killed in that accident his team mate was tragically killed as well.  Brock's team mate was a trained professional who knew the risks when he got in that car.  He was not an innocent bystander caught in the wrong place at the wrong time...and therein lies the difference.
*** Trust me kiddies, those angry cops who fine you the max for speeding will also find a way to show you the damage you've wrought in all its technicolour gory detail when you finally come out of your medically induced coma.

The Holiday From Hell

The first inkling that our holiday was not going to go well occurred the night before we left.  Charlotte, excited about visiting Opa, Omara and the beach, is still bouncing around at 10:30pm.  At eleven we’re still telling her to calm down and go to sleep and she’s still deliriously perky.  In addition to this, we haven’t really packed or prepared but we're in agreement that we’ll do it in the morning before we leave.   

The next morning the little Viking sows the seed of his own circadian dysfunction.  Normally he gets up at about 8:30 in the morning, has some breakfast and then hits the pillow at about 11.30 for a sleep.  Unfortunately on this particular day he wakes at 6:30, has his bowl of Weeties for breakfast and then gets dozy at about eight.  I have misgivings about it but it's also convenient that he'll be asleep while we pack so I put him down early and let him sleep.  

Meanwhile Charlotte has woken early (for her) and is still excited, meaning she’s had about four hours less sleep than usual.  James sleeps while we pack.  And sleeps.  And sleeps.  And sleeps.  At midday we’re done packing and he wakes up not long after that.  He is now, unfortunately, full of beans and raring to go while his sister is flagging a little.  We decide to leave immediately and resolve to let them have McDonalds for lunch on the way.

Essentially we begin our journey to Bega with two children well out of their routines and hyped up on sugar from junk food.  They proceed to behave like nervous German Shepherds with bladder control and temperament issues.  We stop often for the bathroom, there is much mediation about who gets what and the portable DVD players we’ve installed for them are nigh on useless.  Charlotte wants to change hers every five minutes and James, in his excitement at having his own personal mini-theatre with Playschool on a loop, repeatedly kicks the DVD player causing it to stop, start, rewind and crash at regular intervals.

By the time we get to Cooma I want to strangle them both.  We stop briefly for toilets and drinks.  Two minutes on from Cooma and I realise that I’ve not only chipped my windscreen, but that chip has now turned into a sizeable crack right in my line of vision, ideal for catching the sunlight and blinding me at fairly regular intervals.  We continue on to my Dad’s house.

It’s at about this point that Charles remembers that the Portacot is now at my mother-in-law’s house and not with Dad at all.  It’s 3pm.  Our only hope of containing James so he will sleep is to make it into Bega before Country Target closes and purchase a Portacot.  We make it in time and are forced to shell out $$$ for a Portacot that we’re not even sure he will fit into.  Given the (extremely) low odds that we will ever be able to use it again given our Danny DeVito sized toddler, I speculate about our chances of returning it on the way home in two days.  Charles reprimands me for being cheap and says we should give it to Kat as a baby shower gift instead.  I instantly feel better about having to buy it.

At my Dad’s house the kids unleash their combined cabin fever under the new pergola Dad has built.  He provides two wash tubs and a hose with a trickle of water, we furnish a cheese platter.  Then we sit down to watch the kids, eat the nosh and relax.  Charlotte and James proceed to alternate between wetting each other with the hose, wetting us with the hose, rolling through the fine bluestones, fighting over the hose and generally behaving so badly that we constantly have to yell, manhandle and threaten.  

Fed up with playing Water Police we plonk them down in the bath to clean them up and they immediately begin turning the bathroom into their own personal Wet ‘n Wild theme park.  When the mess is pointed out to them Charlotte promptly attempts to fix it by yanking all the towels out of the linen cupboard and throwing them down to soak up the water.

Then it’s time to set up the cot.  Despite everything we do one side simply will not lock into place.  No amount of persuasion* has the slightest impact on the wretched thing.  It remains impervious to our efforts.  My Dad proffers scissors to cut it open so we can have a look at the mechanism.  These are declined.  Instructions are read and followed.  Nada.  Finally I give up.  Charles takes over and I leave him contemplating one of the poles from the bonus bassinet thingy and a roll of packing tape.  It’s not long before he rejects these and gives up too.  

Our choices now seem to be either put our son down to sleep in a death-trap or try and get him to sleep with us.  In the double bed.  Not to mention that he has never in his tiny life deigned to fall asleep with us.  Given the options available to us the scissors, pole and packing tape start to look attractive.

Then I’m struck by inspiration and log onto the Internet on Dad’s positively ancient PC.  A quick Google search of “Dreamtime Portacot” reveals a host of negative reviews, proof that we paid about $50 more than everyone else in Australia (curse you and your over-inflation of prices Country Target) and reassurance that about 90% of complainants customers have experienced the same problem as we’re having.  Thanks to their discussion of Dreamtime-Portacot issues, it’s only two minutes later that I manage to rectify the situation.  When I inform him that I’ve fixed it, Charles gets this weird look on his face that makes me unsure whether he’s going to kiss me or kill me.

Nothing has been arranged for dinner and by 6pm the kids are getting whiny.  It is immediately obvious to me that Tamara does not want to cook.  Dad states that he flat out refuses to go out for dinner because he wants to watch the Edinborough Military Tattoo.  By 7pm I’ve had enough of the to-ing and fro-ing and so I order everyone into the car.  We head to town to the only Chinese restaurant within a 100 kilometres radius to order takeaway.  We are informed that the wait for food will be more than an hour.  

So for New Year’s Eve we wind up eating BBQ chook from Coles, pre-made Coles pasta salad and a green salad made by me.  Dad is thrilled and says, “Wow this is really good!” at least five times during the meal in an attempt to jolly Tamara and I out of our resentment at being forced to prepare a dodgy meal that is more than likely laced with salmonella on New Year’s Eve purely because he didn’t want to go out.  Charles cautiously agrees with him and receives the evil eye.

That night James refuses to sleep and screams off and on for most of the night.  By 3am we’re exhausted and fed up and we wind up cuddling him between us.  Amazingly he sleeps.  Unfortunately with two rather large adults and the little Viking there is not a spare inch of double bed available and we have to be careful not to roll over too enthusiastically lest we hit the deck.  Deep sleep is therefore not an option.  Charlotte insists on joining us at 5am, slotting herself in upside-down at the bottom of the bed – a fact I don’t discover until I accidentally kick her in the head.

On New Year’s Day itself we attempt to salvage some happy and decide to take the kids to the beach.  Thinking of the loose wedding ring that has been slipping off at inopportune times for the past six months, I warn Charles to take his jewellery off before we head down to the beach.  On the way to the beach I realise he’s ignored my advice.  Since this happens a lot and never, ever is resolved in my favour, I let it go and say nothing.

The beach is awesome.  We have a fantastic time and James in particular is beyond excited to be there.  He sits right where the waves will wash over him up to his chest and squeals in pleasure every time the water hits him.  Despite turning blue from the cold he still screams inconsolably when we decide it’s time to go.  Charlotte is not thrilled either but we still chalk it up as a success.    

As soon as we get home James goes down for his afternoon sleep.  Unfortunately he wakes up feverish, flushed, very cross and clearly sick.  Since it’s New Year’s Day, everything is closed except Coles.  And supermarkets are not allowed to sell junior paracetamol.  So we head to the Bega hospital where we get in line.  Charles sits outside with James in the cool to get his temperature down while I wait inside for us to be called. This is about the point where he realises that he’s no longer in possession of his wedding ring.  His 19^th Century antique wedding ring.  His very $$$ 19^th Century antique wedding ring.  His very $$$ 19^thCentury wedding ring that his wife warned him to remove.

He begins to look for it while I wait to see a doctor. An hour after we arrived and we’re in.  I apologise to the triage nurse for coming to hospital for such a minor reason and explain that all I need is some junior paracetamol to bring James’ temperature down.  She waves off my apology, informs me that only the doctor can provide paracetamol and indicates that it will be a three to four hour wait.  

At this point Charles decides he would rather administer a controlled dose of adult paracetamol than wait for the doctor so it’s back to Coles.  At home with the help of the Internet we quickly establish the correct dose and mix it up.  Easy.  Unfortunately James refuses to drink the stuff.  Even some grenadine does not improve the taste sufficiently for his delicate little palate.  Charles proceeds to return to the beach to look for his ring while I nurse the sick one.  

That night James wakes up at 3am again when the Panadol wears off and for the second night in a row I’m bereft of sleep while I nurse a grumpy Viking.

Having realised that my husband would live with regret forever if he didn’t do everything in his power to recover his ring** (which has gone from “she’ll be right” status to “my most treasured possession”) I managed to find a treasure hunter on the Internet complete with high-tech equipment.  I arranged for him to come down from Sydney to look for the ring and so all of 2 January is spent out looking for the bloody thing.  

After two hours crawling through the cold surf I am burned bright pink.  Charles looks all day with the treasure hunter and they get four large sinkers, two aluminium cans, a spark plug, nine bottle tops, three ring pulls and a weird square bit of metal but nothing vaguely resembling jewellery.  He is also burned even pinker than I am.  The upshot of the search for the ring is that instead of going home on 2 January we’re down the coast for one more night.  James decides he will sleep.  I ring Kat and arrange for her to feed our poor dog who is probably wondering where we are.  I also arrange a motel for our treasure hunter because I can’t live with him having an accident from fatigue on his way back to Sydney.  Unfortunately I'm so burnt that I wake up every time I roll over and my skin grinds against the sheet.


By the time we're ready to go home the crack in the windscreen has made it almost halfway across the expanse of glass.  In our panic to locate the ring, we’ve forgotten to arrange to have it fixed.  The next day, on 3 January, we start to head home but are almost halted just outside Bega by a sign warning us that there is no petrol for over 100 kilometres.  But we’re sure we saw bowsers in Bemboka, which is only 30 kilometres away, and we know we have enough petrol to get there so we continue.

Turns out we were right – we did see bowsers in Bemboka.  Positively ancient cobweb-encrusted ones out the front of the long-closed servo.  So we have to turn around and drive the 30km back to Bega where we find that premium is our only option.  We spend $$$ on fuel and then start all over again.  Since we’re returning the day before everyone has to go back to work, the roads are choked with over-enthusiastic drivers determined to make it home in roughly the same time as it would have taken them in a learjet.  Indicating appears to be optional, speed limits are more a sort of “guideline” than a hard and fast rule and apparently every cop between Bega and Canberra is either on holidays or asleep.  We personally witness four very close incidents that would have become catastrophic head-ons had other drivers not noticed and compensated for the idiocy of the morons involved***.

By the time we get home I have an amazingly intense stress headache and Charles is showing all the hallmarks of a downward depression spiral.  Previously we'd been planning more travel in the near future but now I think it will take a solid month before we’ve recovered enough to venture anywhere to do anything.

*Swearing, hitting, yanking, pleading, grunting, threatening, praying, fiddling...

** Not to mention that we would have to go look for it every single time we came down to the coast in future.  Just in case.

***More on that in the next blog post “Unfortunately You Are Not Michael Schumacher”.