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.