The beach skirt

I love a long summer skirt. The sort I know is going to create some breezy airflowyness and also stop my legs from getting burnt, without being all heavy and hot-making. I also love a remnant in a One Week Only Fabric Shop, and the freedom that gives me to experiment with fabric. It is a great thrill to be ok with screwing up, although the fabric is quite lovely and I would have been very sad if I had screwed it up. It took me nearly a year to be ok with cutting it. It’s (I think) a linen knit, I’m guessing like the the one Sooz used for her top, and I bought all there was. I have just enough left over to make a t-shirt for a mouse.

The odd-looking spots are imperfections in and on the mirror. I was going for that comfy capacious feeling one gets from wearing something tent-like or old t-shirty, with the look of something rather more fitted and flattering. So there are little pockety bustlely thingies around the knees, which are working out quite nicely.

Now all there is to do is train the kid to take photos rather than interrupt them, and find a house where the carpet doesn’t clash so badly with my clothes.

Take a deep breath and jump in

I’ve been putting this off for a while. I told myself it’s because I’m not a joiner, I don’t need to quantify stuff to improve, and doing the numbers and conversions is not my thing, and and and… and it’s all too confronting. That’s really it isn’t it? Like the first year politics class where Verity Burgmann made us guess how much of the world’s wealth was controlled by the richest ten percent of the world’s population*, there’s something incredibly shocking about finding yourself a member of the top ten percent wealth wise. I am one of the world’s rich bastards. Even when all my clothes come from the oppie, even when my mother is complaining about how low we have the heater in winter, even when the tax bill looks a bit daunting. I live in Victoria where we burn brown coal for electricity, I live in a country where our leaders play childish games rather than make binding commitments, and there’s only so much I can do about our systemic failures.

I’m joining the Riot4Austerity. I’m confronting the numbers, and, while it’s still appalling how much of the world’s resources my family use compared to most people in poorer countries, we didn’t do too badly. Sure this first time round involved a bit of educated guessing about our consumption and waste, and a few false starts where I realised the billing period was longer than the period in the calculator, but it’s really not that hard. And now I’m sort of looking forward to the challenge.

We’re totally going to fail on the consumer spending record-keeping. I couldn’t even guess what we’ve spent for the last month so it’s not calculated here. For those who are new to the game, the idea is to get those numbers down to 10% or less, that is, 10% of the average American consumption.

R4A Calculator summary:
| Transport: 52% | Elec: 16% | H&C: 14% | Trash: 10% | Water: 20% | Food: 30% local, 50% dry, 20% wet |

*10% of the people control 90% of the wealth, and if you own a computer, you’re probably in the ten percent. Outrageous isn’t it? I didn’t even do anything except not get born in Timor Leste.

Feeling hot hot hot

I know it’s boring to read about extreme weather, but yesterday was 44 degrees here people and my friends in Europe keep posting photos of snow on Facebook.

I’ve never been a fan of the heat, but in ye olde childfree days I could just lie down with a book and try to pretend it wasn’t happening. Now I have to provide entertainment for cooped up children. Step 1, obviously, is making sure we either visit someone or have visitors, because entertaining multiple children in the company of another mother or two is less daunting than one bored three year old on my own. So I rocked, jiggled and dandled my friend’s baby while she herded the preschoolers dancing in her kitchen. We fed them icypoles, we had a contingent of visitors to share our airconditioning for the hottest part of the day, we fed them more icypoles. They were actually pretty well behaved, there was sharing of Christmas presents, nothing broke and no one got hurt. Not even when they were jumping down the stairs. Then we ran out of energy and instructed them to stare at the television for a while so we could count raffle money.

We had a nutrious dinner of rice cakes, with your choice of peanut butter, vegemite or tomato. The kid got experimental and had peanut butter and vegemite, and insisted that it was good. Eventually it was cool enough to head out for a walk to wear out his legs and give us some chance of sleep. We walked to the RSL for a cheap dessert (and what do you know, they have icy cold aircon!) felt grateful that there was no smoke in the air and that the threat of a fire starting was dropping for the day and headed home. Then we got up early to water the garden in our allocated time, gave the kid (ok, and us) a good run around using the new cricket set before giving up on good parenting for the day by 8.30 because it was already hot. The television is back on, Sesame Street was an episode I’ve seen several times before and I’m starting to wonder how many episodes they actually make, is it too early for a nap and just how many coffees can I justify in a day given the virtuous nature of setting an alarm for 6.30am when you don’t have to be anywhere?

Feel free to comment along the lines of “toughen up princess” or suggest non tv ideas that don’t require brain function.

and a Happy New Year

Here’s to a year with plenty of gentle soaking rain and an abundance of icecream

Merry Christmas!

I hope it was as fabulous for you as the discovery of cream horns was for the lad.

BBQ Pizza is excellent

We’ve been starting to plan our camping holiday menu. Given that we’ll be starting this camping holiday after hosting Christmas lunch for 18 of the Bloke’s family (plus three extras for a late morning tea) and then joining my family on Boxing Day (my nearest and dearest fifty people) I’m feeling simple, light and vegetarian are all key words.

Tonight’s trial of BBQ pizza was a success. Simple to assemble, does not requiring a car full of special tools or hard to get ingredients, enjoyed by all three of us and minimal cleaning up. Win!

We don’t have a bbq with a hood so we kept the topping to stuff that doesn’t need to be cooked through, tomato passato (warmed on the stove then kept warm on the bbq) and basil leaves, then one with tomato and grated cheese. I’m planning olive oil, blue cheese, rocket and perhaps a nectarine for the future.

It’s a good thin pizza base recipe and you could use it as a flat bread too. Here endeth the spruik.

Nanna was right about Christmas*

* Christmas is for children and men

Dear Gareth

It was so kind of you to address your first blog post in two years to me personally. I’ve been smiling all morning since I read it. And feeling a bit old. Feel free to take responsibility for the smiles and I’ll take full responsibility for the old thing.

Anyway, it was great to read about your travel plans, and I thought, well, if Gareth can get his act together to blog after two years I can update the world on the goings on here. I’ve been letting the blog go a bit. It needs weeding and watering. And content.

Ahem. We celebrated the kid’s birthday a bit early to make sure he got his moment in the sun before everyone started talking about Christmas.

He requested an Old Macdonald Had A Farm cake. My oldest friends spent their Saturday night making marzipan animals and a tractor. I slathered the green food colouring around.

Having realised that his knees were hitting the handlebars on the trike he was given last year we decided to get him a two wheeler bike. He unwrapped the helmet first and said “it’s a helmet for riding a two wheeler, you could go to the shop and borrow a bike for me to ride”. So it turns out we overspent, because he would have been ok with just borrowing a bike every now and then. He was speechless when he unwrapped the bike, and now i understand why my grandpa enjoyed Christmas so much. Being able to give your kids something they didn’t even dare dream about is so cool.

We’ve been getting ready for Christmas. The Bloke’s family will be here Christmas Day, we’re looking forward to it and trying to work out how many extra glasses and chairs we have to borrow. I found a bunch of new plates and bowls in the local oppies and they’ve all had a run in the new (to us) dishwasher. We inherited a dishwasher. Let’s not talk about how exciting that is because it’s one of those things that contributes to feeling old. The kid has enjoyed Christmasses past, but this one is the first he’s able to anticipate and get excited about before the actual day. He’s figuring out who Santa is, and that there’ll be presents and a party and “all my friends will be there”.* The Bloke and I, atheist and apathetic about Christmas for so many years, find ourselves enjoying the making of decorations, the purchasing of presents (and getting competitive about which of us has found the Best Present) and we even bought a tree.

Our excitement hasn’t made us completely loopy, when I say “bought a tree” I mean “went to Diggers and purchased a small olive tree”. Dammit I’m not spending money on a tree that doesn’t produce edibles. Our olive tree is still very small, the kid helped pot it up and made lots of appropriate oo-ing and ah-ing noises about the decorations. The tree itself isn’t sturdy enough yet to hold up all those decorations by itself so we’ve enlisted the help of the Macquarie Dictionary.

The kid has also learned to pose for photos. The elbow on the heater cracks me up. How does he even know to reference all those Gentleman leaning on fireplaces in grand houses?

* Which is to say “my grandparents, my cousins, any aunty who brings treats (all of them) and Uncle D who has a boat and is therefore the coolest of cool”

I tried

The kid came home from daycare with a colouring in of Santa last week, I asked him who it was, he said “I dunno, um, Santa”. Then he wanted to know more about Santa, so I explained.

“So I will see Santa at Christmas?”
“No, he’ll come when you’re asleep and be gone before you wake up”
“Ahuh”

And the look on his face said “So I totally don’t have to bother remembering his name”.

Productivity

A new top, with vintage button, which is very comfy.

I was just about to photograph myself in it when the kid decided cuddles were essential, so you get two for one here.

We’ve been gardening a bit, the grass and weeds are growing at a phenomenal rate and the good stuff is coming along too. The brassicas went nuts, this was taken just before we pulled them out last week.

There are spuds and broad beans (with weeds, so many freakin’ weeds). We’ve even had our first evening snack of broad beans al fresco.

The coriander has been going off. I now have more coriander than I’ve ever had before. Even if you add up all previous coriander harvests. Cool huh?

The kid painting binge continues, and I’ve been joining in too. Today I even shelled out for good quality ink and did some work in the garden.