Light. Sweet. Crude.

Changing my mind so often I may have pulled a muscle.

We had my very good friend Vanessa over for dinner tonight.  I don't know about you guys but I very rarely keep in touch with people I used to work with.  In the 13 years (shit) since I graduated from University and started out in the Real World I've met countless people, but only a handful have remained in my life as friends.  These people all have one thing in common - a love of wine.  That's not a coincidence.

Vanessa and I worked together all last year.  We started within a few weeks of each other; I got there first and as the resident HR person was partly responsible for her orientation and institutionalisation into the department.  She's never quite forgiven me.  Seriously, though, I knew the moment I met her that we would be Friends Forever because her caffeine withdrawal symptoms kicked in at the same time as mine (10.20am).  And because she was having a shitful time at work on account of a couple of senior horse's arse's and I could, like, totally empathise because I have lived that nightmare.  That nightmare is the first chapter in my book.

The other thing I love about Vanessa is that she's insanely smart and well-read and well-informed and I could listen to her talk about just about any subject for hours on end  and not only be entranced but educated too.  The thing she loves about me is that I keep filling up her glass and I do it without her even noticing.  I'm so sneaky like that.

But another thing?  She lives very happily on 30-odd acres of pastureland outside Canberra and makes a strong case for moving our little family out of comfortable suburbia and onto The Land.  PJ showed her some of the video he took last time he went wandering around on The Block and she swooned and sighed and said oh my god what the hell are you waiting for and look!  You could definitely fit a few horses on those 150 acres.  And just like that, I was back on board.  I wanna live in the country.

Yesterday, in the office of our new financial advisor (who deserves a whole 'nother blog post of his own) I wanted to buy a house in the city.

Turns out we might be able to do both.  Yeah, my head's spinning, too.

So Vanessa has recently adopted a brumby.  His name is Artemis but she calls him Artie.  And why wouldn't you?  He's a baby.  He's such a small little brumby that the only blanket she could find at Horseland was the kind they make for the really little ponies.  The really little girl ponies.  Artie's blankie is pink and baby-blue.

(My spell-checker is telling me that it doesn't know what a brumby is.  A brumby is a wild horse in Australia.  A brumby is an Aussie mustang.  There's an organisation in Victoria that rescues wild brumbies from the knackers and domesticates them and sells them to people with vacant paddocks or, in Vanessa's case, lonely mares.)

Artie cost about $600.  That's less than a pure-bred Jack Russell.  Much less than a pure-bread Weimarana or Doberman.   It never occured to me that I could get a horse for a pet.  I wouldn't need to ride him, he'd just be like a pet dog.  A big dog.  Vanessa says that Artie is like a big ol' dog that doesn't want to come inside.  Imagine that?  A pet that wont shed on the sofa.  And horse pooh is far less offensive than dog poo.

I wanna live in the country.

The kids can have their horses for riding, and I'll have my Brumby.  My Brumbarana.   

This could work.

Good News Day

John Edwards has announced he's endorsing Barack Obama.  I'm about as excited as a housewife from the other side of the world could possibly be. 

I'm seriously thinking about going to New York again this year, and timing my trip to coincide with the election.  I was there for the 2004 mid-term (quite by accident)  and although the result wasn't quite what I'd hoped for, it was fun to be there.  I still have my Kerry | Edwards button.

Or maybe I'll go in January, and go to Washington to see the inauguration.  Now that'd be somethin'.

Ten Things I Learned at the Melbourne Emerging Writers' Festival

I got home this morning, brimming with enthusiasm and yes, a little hung over.  (There was a social event in a pub on Saturday night and I had a few too many Stellas.  Well, that happens, we creative types like to dive in the deep end.)

The Emerging Writers' Festival was a two-day event at Town Hall in Melbourne.  There were 'skills sharing workshops' and 'panel discussions' and other hour-long sessions to go along to.  I signed up for two skills sharing workshops and circled about eight panel discussions on the timetable, and managed to go to most of them. 

To cut a long story short, here are ten things I learned this weekend, and a few I didn't:

1.  The best way to be productive is to find a corner of your house that is entirely yours, and set up your computer right there, and call it your Office.  Get out of your pyjamas and go to your Office every day, at a regular time even if you don't have any ideas when you first sit down, and just write.  Respect the fact that you are a writer, respect your work and take it seriously.

2.  Don't talk about your writing, ad nauseum, to anyone who'll listen.  Don't talk; write.

3.  Plumbers don't work for free.  If someone asks you to write them something, maybe just a quick piece, 500 words on traffic jams or a couple of columns for their new blog... tell them sure, happy to help, here's what it will cost you.  Remember, you're a writer, this is your job, and plumbers don't work for free.

4.  Sometimes your work just isn't good enough.  If you've been rejected seven or eight times, it's possible that you just aren't good enough.  Get someone to look at it with a critical eye.  Rework the second half.  Be brutally honest with yourself or get some brutally honest advice.  What happened to JK Rowling (got rejected dozens of times) is the exception to the rule.

5.  Don't send your work to every single publisher and hope that someone bites.  Research the publisher, see what they've published in the past and if their past work is like yours, then send them your manuscript.  Don't send your sci-fi novel to the company that publishes vegan cookbooks.

6.  Get a manuscript appraisal, but find out who will actually do the appraising.  Make sure that person knows the genre.  If you send it off for a generic appraisal the advice wont be helpful, it will be generic.  If you're going to pay for it, make sure you're paying someone who knows what they're doing.

7.  If you write something, whether it's one sentence or five chapters, and you think it's  a little off, if there's a niggling voice in the back of your mind that thinks you could do better, then you should change it.  Don't leave it there for the editor.  Don't give your manuscript to an editor until you're as happy with it as you can possibly be. 

8.  If you can, get a mentor.  Find someone who knows about writing in your genre and ask them if they could help you. If you have the opportunity, go a Writer's Retreat.  It will be worth it.

9.  An Emerging Writers' Festival wont necessarily tell you HOW to write. It will tell you about the 'banquet of resources' available to you, the pitfalls and risks, the benefits of a good writer/editor relationship, the need to address your cover letter to Mr Publisher or Ms Publisher, not To Whom It May Concern, and that if you ever do actually get published, there's no other feeling on earth like it.  But if you're an emerging writer and you still aren't sure how to develop a character or write snappy dialogue, you're in the wrong place.

On Saturday night there was a poetry reading/story telling/live performance event for all the emerging writers to go along to.  Standing in front of me at the bar was a woman from a small, independent publishing house who had spoken at 'The Pitch' session, where publishers told the audience how they would like to be pitched to.  She had ended her four-minute spiel with "good luck!" and it occurred to me, staring at the back of her head in the queue at the bar, that she was the only person who had said something directly, deliberately, pointedly positive to the crowd.  By the end of the weekend, I'd heard it from a couple of others, but out of a couple of dozen speakers and professionals and lecturers and teachers and editors and publishers and screen-writing experts and facilitators at an Emerging Writers' Festival, only a few wished us luck and talked to us as though we are about to embark on an exciting journey and this is the start of something big and isn't it wonderful?  Everyone else told their cautionary tale or described the loneliness of the writer's life or the fact that you can't break into the business unless you know someone or just painted a picture so utterly bleak that we were left wondering if there is any way we could ever, actually, possibly come close to having a manuscript accepted by a real-live publisher, let alone published.  I tapped her on the shoulder and thanked her for being so positive.

A few hours later I sat by myself in wagamama's and thought about the purpose of an emerging writers' festival, and what makes an emerging writer different from an established writer.   I couldn't help thinking about my kids, and particularly about Ella, who has started playing soccer for the first time this year.  She was so nervous last week before her first game that she wondered if she was even going to be able to do it - this from a kid who can canter a horse and smash a baseball and leap tall buildings in a single bound.  She's good at many things, but they don't give her confidence to jump into something new; she has to be jollied along and encouraged and enthusiastically cheered from the sidelines, preferably with pom-poms. 

So who were these people at the festival, telling nervous, self-deprecating, doubting emerging writers that writing was hard work, that few people ever succeed, that you can try and try and persevere but there are no guarantees that a publisher will even read your manuscript, let alone consider it for publication or return your calls?  Of course we know the odds are ridiculously against us.  You don't need to tell us that.  So what can we do to shorten those odds?  Give us something we can work with.      

While waiting for my salmon ramen, I wrote the following letter to myself in my journal:

I will write this book not only because I want to get my story finished but I need to prove these people wrong.  I've got a 7 year old and a 10 year old and half my life is spent cleaning their clothes and cooking them dinner.  The other half is spent telling them THEY CAN BE ANYTHING THEY WANT TO BE AND THEY SHOULD IGNORE OR BE ENERGISED BY ANYONE WHO DARES TO TELL THEM OTHERWISE.

I'm going to write my story - I've never felt more determined - because I can. And I enjoy writing.  If it turns out to be shit, so be it.  But I'm not going to NOT write it because a handful of people at an Emerging Writers Festival subtly suggested (deliberately or not) that I shouldn't waste my time.   

Sincere thanks to the speakers at the Festival who were inspiring or interesting or just struck a chord - Karen Andrews (of course!), Daniel Ducrou, Matthew Clayfield,  Jane Gleeson-White, Shane McCarthy, Marie Alafaci and  the guy at the Pitch skills sharing session who said you can just send your story into The Age Travel section and get lucky, so what the hell are you waiting for?

If I write my book and get invited to speak at the 2010 Emerging Writers' Festival I promise to bring my pom-poms.  Which brings me to my final lesson:

10.  Emerging writers are just seven year old kids, playing their hearts out and hoping that someone on the sideline thinks they've got potential.    

word junkie

I've just discovered The Big Word Project.  It is like The Greater Meaning of Liff but online.  Goddammit I wish I'd thought of this.

The Greater Meaning of Liff is a book of words - they're actually placenames, with the capital letter changed ie chicago - with definitions.  A chicago is the smelly wind pushed along in front of a train in the subway.

The Big Word Project is about redefining regular, everyday words.  Did I say Goodammit I wish I'd thought of this?  Because you have to BUY the word, and it costs $1 a letter.

I just spent $13 on crude, nuts and pooh.

Goddammit I wish I'd thought of this.  Those lucky bastards have sold 4000 words of varying lengths.  Let's say for argument's sake that the average word is four letters.  That's four dollars, times four thousand.  That's a lot of money.  Goddammit.

(next post from Melbourne...)

This weekend.

This weekend I am going to Melbourne for the Emerging Writers' Festival.  I booked my ticket weeks ago then called one of my old school friends who lives in St Kilda and asked if I could stay in her spare room for a couple of nights.  She said yes, but that she was going to be away, so we'd talk later about the logistics.  I called her last week to arrange everything but it turns out she had already left on her trip.  So PJ, bless him, has booked me a hotel room in the city, just down the road from where the Festival is being held.  On Friday after lunch I'm leavin' on a jet plane and I don't get back until Monday afternoon.

I know I'm not supposed to get too excited about a whole weekend in Melbourne, sans kids, but I am.  Yes of course I'm upset at missing breakfast in bed on Sunday (Mothers' Day) but I can recreate the joy by ordering room service and putting the kids on speaker-phone.  What?!  It'll be almost the same!

And with a bit of luck I'll be back on Monday night, re-energised and enthusiastic about my novel.  I don't have any work booked for June, and that self-imposed deadline is looming (the one where I want the First Crappy Draft done by my birthday on the 25th) so maybe I'll hunker down and get it done. 

Fockers

On Friday night, or maybe in the wee small hours of Saturday morning, someone helped themselves to the number plates of my car.  I didn't discover them missing until we went to the markets on Saturday morning and I was opening the boot of the car (trunk, y'all) to get something out.  I walked around the front to check if they were gone as well, and they weren't.  No, Ella, they didn't fall off when we went over the speedhump. 

I spent 45 minutes and $30 at the motor registry this morning to get my new plates, and then this afternoon I went to a couple of different places to find some new screws.  Of course the Multi Pack of Theft-Resistant Screws only contain the kind to fit the front plate.  The rear plate uses different screws and - for added joy - the holes are in the middle and not at the corners so I'm going to have to figure out how to punch two holes in the new numberplate AND THEN find the right size screws.  I'm thinking this is a weekend job for PJ.

Funny thing happened on the way to Bunnings (hardware store).  I missed the turn-off so did a u-turn inside a driveway.  As I was leaving the driveway another car was coming in, and he stopped right in front of me.  What is he doing?  What's that sound?  Is that a siren?  Oh... the driveway happened to be the entrance to the Australian Federal Police depot or something.  The policeman got out and pointed at my naked numberplate plates and I laughed and said ha ha, funny story, I'm on my way to Bunnings right now... ha ha ha.  My mother in law, visiting from the Gold Coast, was sitting in the front seat, killing herself laughing.  What are the odds, after driving around since Friday night with no plates, that I'd finally get caught by the coppers, IN THEIR OWN DRIVEWAY, less than 50m from the hardware store?  (And yes, I'd reported the theft on Saturday, so I was covered).

Anyway, the moral of this story is GO TO YOUR LOCAL HARDWARE STORE RIGHT NOW and get yourself some theft-proof screws (they were in the screws aisle at Bunnings) and swap the regular screws that your car probably has now with these new screws that can't be unscrewed by fockers with screwdrivers. 

New Post over at Imperfect Parent

I've been quite busy with work this week, and school stuff, and the laundry, and I've just barely managed to squeeze out a new post over at The Imperfect Parent.  Please head on over and take a look at it because it's evidence that, despite appearances, I've been blogging really hard this week.

The search for inner peace.  And quiet.

Scenes from our holiday

If your shoes aren't flying off, you're not swinging hard enough.

This is the road between the two little villages of Central Tilba and Tilba Tilba.  PJ and I had our honeymoon in Tilba Tilba, in a house called The Valley Country Home.  It was owned by people named Catherine and Lynton; Lynton had been the Executive Chef at the Hilton in Melbourne but decided to give it away to run his own Guest House where he could cook superb meals for a few people at a time.  PJ and I have had the good fortune to eat at some bloody good restaurants in our time and nothing comes close to the food that Lynton made us. 

The house is still there but it's a private home.  The owner rents out the cottage on the same block of land - the cottage that Lynton and Catherine were building for themselves when we were there in 1996.   

The girls fed the Rainbow Lorrikeets all week.  The birds would fight over the bread, and the kids would fight over the birds.  Everyone was happy.

Sailboats in the harbour at Bermagui.  I could happily retire to a little coastal town like this, and spend my days messing about in boats.

Tense in Tents

PJ sent me a text message, an hour or so into the drive to the coast: I'd left my battery charger at home.  Oh, dear.  Was I going to become one of those people who actually experienced physical stress in the absence of a fully charged mobile (cell) phone?

Yes.  Yes I was.  My name is Trish and I don't really like being without my phone.

I had to search a few different stores but I found a charger for my phone and immediately my stress levels fell back to normal.  Not least because this meant I would now be able to contact my husband and whinge to him about the sheer hell of being on a camping trip with two children who apparently could find nothing better to do at the coast than ARGUE WITH EACH OTHER NON-STOP.

I'm well accustomed to my children arguing.  The problem with them doing it on a camping trip is that the walls of the tent are incredibly thin and not only can the neighbours (my parents on one side and a nice old couple in their caravan, enjoying the peace and quiet on another) hear everything the kids are saying ("those are my socks, they're not yours, they're mine... no they're not... yes they are...") but they can also hear everything I am saying.  I'm not sure how many times the neighbours heard me say "if you two can't stop fighting we'll go home" but if they were playing a drinking game?  Like taking a big sip of their shandies every time I made an empty threat? They would have been pissed out of their minds. 

From the archives: Part Four

LESSONS IN THE SAND

CATEGORY: LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

DATE: 19 APRIL 2005

Three years ago this week, I was at the coast with the girls and my parents when this little incident happened.  I blogged about it at the time, and I'm pretty sure I regurgitated the story again on blog #2.  Well, here I am on blog #3 and it's coming out again - in honour of the third anniversary, and just in honour of my little Ella Bella.  Sorry if you've heard this one before.

So, we're at Merry Beach and our tents are pitched at the edge of the Caravan & Camping Resort, overlooking the beach.  We could sit under the front 'verandah' of the annex and watch the girls build sandcastles. It was really lovely.  The girls were getting grubby and salty and sandy and enjoying the freedom of being on holiday and not having to worry about cleaning their rooms or fighting over the remote control. 

On Monday morning we went down to the beach, to a spot that was close enough to the water's edge for the sand to be damp, but not so close we were all going to get surprised by the incoming tide, and we built a huge Sand Fort.  A big moat all the way around, with dribble-castles all along the outer wall, protecting a large castle atop a mountainous island in the middle.  There was a winding road up the mountain to the top of the castle, with shells and rocks and seaweed decorating it all around.  It was magnificent, and we were all so proud.

By noon we were getting hungry and sunburnt, so decided to go back to the tent for some lunch.  Ella worried about leaving our castle, she thought someone might jump on it.  I told her that people had great respect for other people's sandcastles, and it would be ok.  Madeleine said that, if anything should happen to it, we could just build it again. 

While we sat and ate our sandwiches, two boys wandered over to our castle and started running around it.  Ella watched them closely, and called out to the rest of us, "those boys are stomping on it!"  The boys were throwing stones at the dribble-castles around the edges. Knocking off their steeple-tops before becoming embedded in the big castle in the middle.

When I was a kid, I wouldn't have said anything.  I would have been upset, but I wouldn't have jumped up out of my seat and run down to the beach.  Madeleine was doing what I was doing - watching the boys, seeing that they were wrecking it, but knowing that we wouldn't get there in time to stop them from completely destroying it, and also knowing that even if we did get there in time, we wouldn't know what to say.  I was upset because we'd worked hard on it, but resigned to losing it because, well, it was only a sandcastle and we could build another one.  But mostly, I wasn't going to run over and tell those boys to stop because I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

But Ella was watching them and she was getting angry.  Come on, she said, let's go and tell them to leave it alone.  Eventually, when the boys were clearly jumping all over it, we got out of our seats and joined Ella as she ran towards the castle.  Grandpa came too, and as we got closer the two boys looked up and quickly stopped jumping and started to walk away.  Madeleine and I held back, surveying the damage, not sure quite what we should say to these boys.  But Ella was furious.  She walked straight up to these two boys, who looked as though they must have been about ten years old, and certainly twice her size, and she yelled at them.  "Hey, you boys, don't you jump on our sandcastle! We made that sandcastle and now you have wrecked it! It was precious for us! How would you like it if we wrecked something that was precious for you? Huh? How do you think that would make you feel?! You wouldn't like it, would you? You should say sorry to us!"

My heart was bursting with pride.  These two boys just looked down at their feet, clearly embarrassed at being caught red-handed, and quite humiliated at being spoken to like that by a four year old and not having anything to say back.  There was I, holding Madeleine's hand back at the ruined castle, watching my littlest girl stand up for herself, tell those boys that what they had done was wrong, and demanding that they apologise.  My mind skipped, fast-forward to the future, and I could see her speaking with the same sort of passion to a large oil company that had polluted the Great Barrier Reef, or to a Government that had cut funding to education or health care. 

She was not self-conscious for a moment. She didn't even look back to see if the rest of us were following her into this battle; she went in there by herself. If I was in that situation, even today, I would be too shy or cautious or cowardly to stand up and tell those boys off.  As it was, I stayed back and didn't say anything (though I would have stepped in and growled like a Mother Bear if either of those boys had even looked as though they might yell back at my baby girl).

The whole thing highlighted the differences between my two girls.  Madeleine was never really concerned about the sandcastle.  She said we could always build another one, that it didn't really matter.  But Ella was outraged that someone should show such a lack of respect for her hard work, and she took that anger and confronted those boys and stood up for herself. 

I respect Madeleine's ability to put it into perspective, to see that some things aren't worth getting upset about.  Some days she gets herself all worked up about something, and I hear myself telling her not to be so precious. But on the other hand I think it is important to stand up for yourself when you feel you have been wronged.

Very recently, at work, I was upset at the way a particular issue affecting me had been handled.  I spoke up, and when I did I was accused of "making a big fuss about something that wasn't that important." And worse, was accused of "being the sort of person who gets worked up over little things."  I could not have disagreed more, and for the first time in living memory I actually defended myself.  I said that I disagreed that I was 'that sort of person' and that this particular issue was extremely important to ME (even if he thought it was a petty thing). Afterwards, I felt as though I had fought a great battle.  It didn't matter that I only half-won the war; what was significant for me was that I had stood up for myself, whereas on all the hundreds of previous occasions when someone has said something to me that I disagreed with, or done something to me that was unfair or unjust, I had just let it go, telling myself that it wasn't worth getting upset about.

I wish I had Ella's courage.  Seeing her in action has inspired me like I've never been inspired before.  Next time I feel that my sandcastle is being stomped on, I'll be up out of my seat as quickly as she was and I'll tell the person with big clumsy feet to think about how their words or actions made me feel.  And then I'll demand an apology.

We built another sandcastle the next day, and drew a sign in the sand with a stick: Please Don't Jump On Me.  Then Ella and Madeleine and Grandpa drew a big circle around the whole thing, and wrote in even bigger letters "No Boys!"

From the archives: Part Three

OUCH

CATEGORY: Navel-Gazing

DATE: 3.12.05  8.45PM

I am typing this with my left hand and just the index finger of my right hand because the rest of my fingers have blisters on them from putting out the fire in Madeleine's bedroom.

She was reading in bed tonight, and a moth came into her room and flew around her bedside lamp-light.  She turned her desk-light on in an effort to lure the moth away from her bed, but for some reason wanted to dim the desk light so she put a tissue over the light.  The halogen globe had obviously heated the lamp up enough to ignite the tissue, which burned and then fell onto her desk, which of course was covered with papers, plastic dolls, and the box of tissues. 

She came screaming down the hallway to tell me - I thought she was saying there was a spider in her room, and told her not to panic so much.  Of course I saw the flames straight away, and grabbed a nearby small cushion and started to smother the little spot-fires that had ignited across her desk. The noticeboard above her desk was starting to catch alight but I got to it before it really started to burn.

I don't know how I burned my fingers exactly, but they really hurt. 

I haven't needed a stiff drink so badly since the day Madeleine, aged about two, wandered out the front door and headed for our busy street.  I'm going to need to go to the salon this week and have those extra grey hairs 'disappeared'.

I don't even want to think about what would have happened if I had been in the shower, or if she had fallen asleep (she sleeps with the bedroom door closed), or if the posters on her notice board had caught alight, or the bookshelf beside the desk had started to burn, or any of those other scenarios that would have been reported in tomorrow's newspaper.  Sometimes life seems so precarious, doesn't it?

From the archives: Part Two

BAD HAIR LIFE

CATEGORY: LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

DATE: 23.01.2005 11.28AM

So I'm at the supermarket, and there were about six check-outs open (not including the 8 items or less Express Lane) and they needed at least ten. Every checkout had three full trolleys lined up, and the queue for the Express Lane went back to Fruit & Veg.  It was finally my turn, with my half-trolley load, and while I watched the cashier scan my groceries, the next guy in line behind me suddenly remembered he'd forgotten something and headed back up Aisle 3.  The conveyer belt was now empty, as my groceries were loaded into bags (the recycled kind), and just as the man returned with his toilet paper, a stocky woman with unfortunate hair and a tragic, relic-from-the-sixties halter-neck top,  jumped in front of him and dumped her basket full of groceries down on the conveyer belt.

The guy, the cashier and I all looked at this woman in utter disbelief. She just stood there, daring us to say something.  I think she acknowledged that she'd jumped in front, but it wasn't by way of an apology, it was more like 'I saw the chance so I took it'.   And that was it.  She had come from nowhere - I don't think she had been in the long line to the Express Lane, and she certainly hadn't been behind the guy and his trolley.  She just appeared.

Oh. My. God.  What would have been the appropriate response?  I looked at the cashier and we both shared a moment of "did you see that?!"  The guy was just staring at this woman's bad hair, clearly not sure if it would be more appropriate to tell her to piss off or suggest the name of a good salon.  For my part, I would have loved to have said exactly what came to mind at that moment, which was "you just pushed in, and this guy has been waiting ten minutes and you have just come from nowhere and shoved your way into this queue with no regard for him or for any of the people in the Express Lane and now you stand there, knowing that we are all far too polite and well brought-up to tell you, who clearly has not had the benefit of being raised by humans, that you should get out of this queue and join the end of the Express Lane and wait your turn like everybody else in this supermarket." I could have shortened the whole thing to "are you kiddin' me?" but I think the longer version packed a little more punch.  Pity I couldn't get a word out.  She knew I was looking at her - she probably hadn't realised that I had appraised her hair and her genealogy in those few seconds - but since she refused to make eye contact with any of us she denied us the opportunity to let her know how we felt.  She stood there, like a defiant toddler who refuses to wear a nappy despite the urine cascading down their legs, daring us to tell her to bugger off.  And none of us would.  Because me, the cashier, and the guy with the trolley were brought up right.

And we all secretly knew that this woman's punishment, for this misdemeanour and everything else that she does in her life, is metered upon her every time she goes into the hair salon and Shazza looks at her with the expression that says "why even bother, honey, there's simply nothing I can do with that mess."

From the archives: Part One

KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS...

CATEGORY: CHILD-REARING

DATE: 12.10.04  6.18PM

...here are a few of my favourites...

Feb '02 - Madeleine aged nearly four, Ella two and a bit...
Ella was touching Madeleine's face and apparently not being very careful. So Madeleine said "you have to be very gentle with me because this is Daddy's Very Precious Girl."

Mar '02 - Madeleine, for her 4th birthday, was given a Mermaid costume from her Nana and Grandpa, complete with swishy-fish tail and shell-bikini.  As her Aunt approached her for a birthday hug, Madeleine stopped and said "be careful of my boobies."

Aug '02 - Madeleine's hair is always falling onto her face, but she rarely lets me put it up into a ponytail or headband.  One morning she was sitting at the bench doing some colouring in, while I was brushing it.  I offered to put in in a ponytail and she said no.  PJ suggested we pin it back, but she kept saying no.  As I stood there, fussing with her hair, PJ said "but the bobby-pins will stop your hair from bothering you." Her immediate reply, "it's not my hair that's bothering me, it's Mummy!"

Nov '02 - after a discussion about my three siblings, Madeleine asked...
"Mummy, how come you only had two kids?"
"So I could hold your hand in one hand and Ella's in the other"
(thinks about this for a moment)
"How many hands does Nana have?"

Madeleine, just shy of her 5th birthday, had obviously seen one of the boys in the kindergarten using the toilet, and she was trying to tell me about 'the thing they pull out'.  It told her it was called a penis and this is what boys have.  I said girls don't have them, they have something else. "What's it called?" she wanted to know.  And I said "a vagina".  She paused, then whispered, "oh, Mummy... that's a beautiful name!"

On the plane to Brisbane to see Nana & Pop, Ella (3 yrs) was looking out her window at the wing.  She caught a glimpse out the opposite window, and in a very loud, very excited voice, announced to me and all the passengers... "Look, Mummy! Two wings!"

July '04 - Looking at my watch at the end of the day, I suddenly realised how late it was.  "It's six o'clock already, how did that happen?" I said out loud, to myself. From behind me came Ella's little voice - "Well, Mummy, the sun went down and it got dark and now it's night and that's how it happened."

July '04 - PJ and the girls were having a conversation about how "you're my beautiful girls and I made you", and Madeleine said "No, Mummy made us".  PJ replied "Well, I started you".  Ella looked at him, thought about it for a second, and then asked "did you make our legs or our heads?"

By the time you read this...

... I'll be on the way to the beach.  I'm taking the kids camping for a couple of days.  With my parents.  PJ's staying in Canberra because he has to work.  Which means it's me and the four people on this planet whom I love almost more than my heart can stand and yet all four of them can make me tear my hair out by the roots. 

While we're away, you can read some more of the old posts I've dragged up from the archives.  They'll be set to post each day for the next few days.  While I'm away.  Isn't that clever? 

Wish me luck.

I wish I could like her, I really do.

Hillary Clinton is in the death throes.  You have to imagine that even her supporters are starting to get a little uncomfortable with some of the things that are coming out of her mouth these days.  She's like the bully in the playground who has finally been confronted by their victim and can't come up with anything intelligent to say.

Barack Obama gave a rousing speech to 35,000 people in Philadelphia a couple of days ago.  I can't think of any other politician in my lifetime (I was born after JFK died) who can speak as eloquently as Barack Obama.  There have been a few inspired comments here and there, but nobody as consistently goose-bump-raising as Barack Obama.  Which is why it makes me so mad to hear people in America saying things like "he's all talk".  Are you even listening to what he's saying?  Or are you just so unaccustomed to hearing a real, live orator that you switch off? 

I'm like that with tricky math problems.  I avoid maths like the plague, because as soon as I see all those big numbers, my eyes glaze over and I have to reach for my calculator.  It's OK, I'm happy to admit that maths dumbfounds me.  Doesn't mean I have to dislike it or question its value.

Anyway, Barack Obama gave a fantastic speech to one of the biggest crowds gathered during a primary, and Clinton's reaction?

“I don’t want to show up and give one of these whoop-de-do speeches and, you know, and just kind of get everybody whipped up," she said, "and those [of you who are for me] feel great and, you know, try to convince some of you to be for me.”

Which is playground bully-speak for "Yeah? So? Come on guys, let's get out of here" (slinks away with bat and ball...)

There are going to be so many books about this primary campaign.  There's going to be a whole 'nother section in bookstores, right next to all the How Bush/Cheney Ruined America, with pages and pages devoted to How Hillary Lost The Election in 2008 And Blew Her Chance At Contesting The Race In 2016.  And somewhere in there will be a copy of The Greatest Speeches America Has Ever Heard and Barack Obama will get his own chapter, right after JFK.

Pokin' fun

"You know... my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl." (HRC, in Indiana, April 12, 2008)

We have to do everything possible to keep guns out of the hands of children, and we need to stand firm on behalf of the sensible gun control legislation that passed the Senate and then was watered down in the House. It does not make sense for us at this point in our history to turn our backs on the reality that there are too many guns and too many children have access to those guns-and we have to act to prevent that. (HRC, remarks to the NEA, Orlando, FL, July 5, 1999).

"I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life." (HRC, 16 March 1992, in response to a reporter's question).

"If I didn't kick Bill Clinton's ass every day, he wouldn't be worth anything." (HRC, in James B. Stewart's 'Bloodsport: The President and his Adversaries" p91)

"Yes, I will, I will, because you know why, those lobbyist whether you like it or not represent real Americans, they actually do..." (HRC at the Presidential Leadership Forum, YearlyKos Conference, August 4, 2007, in response to the question of whether she would continue to accept money from lobbyists)   

"I wanna get this shit over with, and get these damn people outta here." (HRC, picked up on a security microphone in the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock, after speaking to the Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters." (link)

Missing? Really? What a cryin' shame.

"Sexes differ on bag issue

Like death, taxes and computer hard drives conking out, losing luggage is a fact of life if you are a regular traveler.

Three billion bags are checked into airports annually, and 1 per cent of these go missing. Which may not sound like much but that's 30 million bags.

But it seems men and women react differently when they realise the worst has happened.

Online financial services companyartog.com.au asked 2328 Australians what they did when one of their bags went missing and discovered that women just went out and borrowed some clothes. On the other hand, 51 per cent of male respondents admitted they would scream and shout at staff before making a hasty exit to buy a replacement wardrobe."

I read this little story in the travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend and thought... d'uh.  Really?  Is that newsworthy?  And even more importantly, is that such a surprise?

I made a long list of the contents of my luggage when I went to New York in 2004, giving approximate values and estimated replacement costs.  Because I was secretly hoping Qantas would send my suitcase to Botswana and I'd have to go shopping for a brand new wardrobe.  IN NEW YORK.

More Audacity from Hillary

"When we get to talk about character we need to look at the whole person and we need to look at the kind of way that person conducts themself...Part of what I believe with all my heart is that the voters are tired of people who lie to them...the voters are tired of people who act like something they're not... "

You know, I've never been the kind of person who will slow down to look at a train wreck, but I've been making an exception for the Hillary campaign.  I just can't look away.  It's absolutely fascinating.

The reason I keep going back to the coalface

I've said yes, definitely, to that job.  It's only about six days of contact hours spread across two and a bit weeks so really, not that much of a stretch.  Plus, it will help out with the purchase of one of these:

It's the new Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM telephoto zoom lens.

Which I will need to go with my new one of these:

That's the new Canon EOS 450D with 18-55mm IS lens.

I'm a little bit excited. 

We bought a Canon EOS 50e back in about 1997.  No, it's not a digital camera.  But it was a great camera and was responsible for some of the best pictures I think I've ever taken.  One day I might load it up with a roll of black and white film and take it for a spin, for old time's sake.  But it's been in its little padded cell, neglected, for about four years.

In 2004 we bought a very handy Kodak point-and-shoot that has served us very well (almost all the photos you've seen on this website have been taken with the Kodak).  But I have yearned to get a digital SLR with a good zoom lens.  So that's what I'm going to get. 

And then I'm going to get lessons, because the dark truth of the matter is that I never really learned how to properly use my SLR.  I don't know how to manipulate an SLR to get the best out of a shot.  But I think I have a good eye for composition. 

The thing that always stopped me from experimenting endlessly with my 50e was that every crappy photograph cost me 50c.  Remember what that was like?  Getting a packet of photos back from the 24hour developer shop and finding half of them really sucked?  I used to celebrate every really great print and was thrilled if my roll of 36 yielded more than five or six album-worthy shots.  With a digital SLR, I can tweak the aperture and increase the depth of field and take ten shots and then see how they look on the little screen conveniently located on the camera. 

And then, if it still doesn't work, I'm going to get myself one of these:

Again, I have no idea how to use all this stuff but The Pioneer Woman will show me the way.

(I'm writing this post on PJ's laptop because mine is being virus-scanned; PJ's laptop wont allow pop-ups or somethin' so I can't add the links to the Canon sites or to The Pioneer Woman's awesome Photoshop tutorial pages.  I'll be back to put the hyperlinks in when my laptop has been de-loused.) 

I want to have Jon Stewart's babies

Apparently the link is broken...  I'll try again:

HERE (go to Gaffe-In)

or

HERE

or maybe this will work: