Aaarrrghhh!!! I hate Spiders!!!

I was sitting at a friends house the other night, enjoying wonderful food and company, when I saw it...
It had materialised out of nowhere. It was sitting there on the table, right next to my friend's dinner plate.
I was frozen in fear and horror as it sat on the table looking like it belonged there.
It was awful, it was hideous to look at, it was the biggest, most disgusting spider you had EVER seen.

...And it was LIME!!!!!
And I don't like Lime Spiders!
At first I thought it was something innocuous, like a Spearmint milkshake, or the contents of a broken lava lamp, or that an unfortunate guest had the flu really bad and had repeatedly used that particular glass to sneeze into.
But no! It was that curdling combination of Lime Soda and Ice cream.
Why do people drink these things when there is a perfectly tasty alternative if you just break open a battery?
Why would you want to drink something that looks like the the losing pile in a Kermit Vs Yoda vomiting contest?
Why bother writing a third reason to dislike this drink when I could be making another coffee instead?
It's one of those strange mysteries of the universe I will never understand.
So, Like most people who don't understand things, I want to get rid of it!
I have written to certain manufacturers and have patented a potent potion. I have come up with a product that I think will be most beneficial in ridding the world of these congealing concoctions.

　

Who's with me in the abhorrence of non-arachnid spiders?
...Or are you a lover of Spiders?

The Annual Christmas letter

Dear family and friends,

I'm just sending you out our annual christmas letter to let you know how our ever-so-humble little family have been doing over the past year.
This year has been full of many fantastic achievements, as I'm sure your own families would have experienced also.
I shall modestly try and list the achievements of the family, including my boy's growing and learning experiences over the year.
Firstly there was Jasper, who started the year off with a bang, when he started going kinder. Dropping him off on that first day was a sad day for me, but he soon settled in and made loads of friends.
But I would have to say his most crowning achievement this year would have been, when playing around on the swing set at kinder, he managed to come up with a solution for global warming. Here he is standing with Al Gore being presented with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Next is Atticus, who has recently made great leaps with his speech, and is yammering on all day, running around outside, finding bugs and climbing the chook shed. But my favoutrite part of the year for him, was when he made it into the Guinness Book of records for simultaneously performing open heart surgery while reading Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Ninja and I have been very busy with work, the kids and our endless, various, charitable, altruistic edeavours and humanitarian acts this year. Such as saving the reputation of the misunderstood Cane Toad and our tireless research into ingrown toenails.
 You also may remember that we purchased a holiday house at the start of the year, which we have been renovating. Ninja and I have been doing all the work ourselves and are very pleased with the result. We would have had it done within 6 months, but we couldn't make up our minds on the tiling in the 3 floor bathroom and I did my back digging out the pool.
 

I'd list more of their successes and achievements from over the year, but I'm running late for my

Women
Artfully
Negotiating
Kindness
Everywhere
Round
Saudi Arabia

meeting.
I hope you all have had a happy and successful year as we have, and all the best Christmas wishes to you and your families.
xoxo

I'm a clairvoyant. I know I'm going to die of a heart attack.

Yes, I am the posessor of mystic powers beyond many's comprehension. My kind are often called seers, oracles, psychics, soothsayers and mediums.
But I personally like to call myself a mother-of-children-who-like-to-climb-high-stuff.
I know that I will most likely die of heart failure after going outside one day to find my children perched atop the TV antenna trying to tune in Tokyo.
On any given day I will let them outside and they will head straight for the nearest tree, swing-set or shed, and proceed to climb it until they can climb no more.
One big problem with this is the getting down factor...they don't actually factor-in getting down.
Unlike kittens stuck in trees, I haven't yet had to resort to calling the fire department, but I'm sure that day is coming.
My 4 year old is quite capable at getting down from any of the above climbed things, but my 2 year old tends to use the "Muuuuuuuuum!! I'm stuck!!" method of descending from whatever he has scaled.
I'm OK to get him down from here:

And I can also get him down if he climbs our chook shed.
But what am I supposed to do If I come across this?

Or this?

Or even this?

　

Unless I can wrap them in bubble wrap, or buy 486 matresses and scatter them around the place under anything tall, or feed them up with the l’Élixir du bouncy balls, my demise has been written. It was nice knowing you all. I'd better go brew some chamomile tea, shoot myself in the butt with half a pack of rhino tranquilisers and then go check on where the boys are...

Ranter Claus and her cranky sack (this has nothing to do with Christmas)

I was in full Ranter Claus mode yesterday.
I had a sack full of cranky and I was handing some out to what ever victims dare stumbled my way.
While I didn't go as far as to stand on my front veranda yelling "Ho! Ho! Ho! Oh, and look, another skanky Ho!" at the high school girls walking past after school. I still did have quite a few more cranky gifts stowed away.
After 2 hours sleep the night before and a week of virulent gastro attacking my household, my temper was slightly frayed.
It all started with the fact that my very fragile esophagus (due to my channeling Mr Creosote from Monty Python for the last couple of days) was not cooperating with my usual morning ritual of pouring percolators full of coffee down my throat until my eyelids stayed open of their own free will. I had massive heartburn, so I was forced into doing coffee shots with a Quik-eze chaser.
After that was a blur of rantings about George Carlin and the unfair aesthetic advantage puppies have over lobsters, why they hire postmen that can't read, I growled at my chickens about why they eat better than me and I threw a few loads of clothes at the clothes line (where they'd better freaking dry, no matter WHERE they landed!)

I thought i'd do a bit of cathartic online forum "opinion sharing", so I headed to one of my favourite parenting sites where they were having the eternal "natural birth Vs gimmie-loadsa-drugs birth" debate, where I offered my very informative, balanced and concise views on the subject:

"The term "natural childbirth" always makes me a tad puzzled. I don't really understand what is so "natural" about inviting and welcoming pain. If you want an epidural, do it, if you want a drug free birth do it, but please don't strut around like the guy at the gym with the big bulge under his towel trying to prove their manhood. Childbirth is not an egotistical competition about proving who has the biggest lady-balls. Birth how you want to, just don't do it on a soap box."

Feeling slightly better at being able to vent to something that didnt have feathers, pegs or had their eyes glued to ABC2 ignoring me anyway, I took the boys out for a walk.

I was fairly well behaved, except for that little moment when I gave the crazy eye to the woman standing in the middle of the footpath who was trying to pretend not to notice I was approaching with a pram. I looked her in the eye as I tried to maneuver the pram past her, and muttered "Odd!!" in a weird voice. Some day people will learn that women with prams are mental, and it's best just to move.
But. The biggest reason that I have unleashed the sack'o'cranky is that my computer's hard drive has died and I have to get it repaired. So not only do I have to be without my compy for the next few days, I can't accompany my blogs with my awesome dodgy photoshopping skills!
I'm lost!

Why is the biggest "man" in my life my 4 year old son?

My 4 year old has had gastro for the past 2 nights and I have had the pleasure of changing his bedclothes 876 times, washing 9874 loads of laundry, and soaking various towels covered in the most potently awful combinations of bodily fluids known to man (and child).
While my partner has done some conciliatory “man-upping”, I have still been the one to bear the bulk of the sick child load (as a mum does). So my sleep allotment has dwindled down to about 3 out of the past 76 hours. The night before that, my 2 year old had decided that sleep was so passé and had kept me awake all night, regaling me for hours with scintillating tales of his toe, and kindly reminding me constantly what my name was, just in case I had developed sudden amnesia.
Which brings us to today, Saturday, and I am in dire need of cleaning up my sick hovel. My wonderful MIL came over to help fold the Himalayan mountain range of laundry I have accrued over the past couple of days, but the rest of the house has been neglected owing to needy sick kid.
I asked my partner for help, but when ever I tried to find him to help me with anything, he was either off having a cigarette, having a coffee or listening to the horse racing (in the meantime, I’d re-heated my one cup of coffee 8 times already and didn’t even know it was Derby Day).
I was exhausted, so when he jumped in the shower I told him I was going for a nap. This was fine by him, so I settled into bed and closed my eyes. He then came in, got dressed and announced that he was going to his father’s house (he is his father’s carer and has to go there most days to look after him).
Why did he choose to go right then? Did he think that I could nap while I have one vomiting child and a crazy, not-sick-at-all 2 year old?
So, I got back out of bed, and as he backed down the driveway I exploded into tears.
I heard my sick son call to me then. I went into his room and smiled down at my beautiful, blonde, sunken eyed angel.
While I was unsuccessfully trying to hide my tears he asked, “What’s wrong Mummy?”
“Mummy’s just a bit tired honey, and I’m just trying to clean the house”.
“Don’t worry about me then Mummy. I’ll look after myself, and you just do the cleaning”, he told me through his pale cracked lips.
I hugged him tight before he could see me crying again, and only untangled myself because he needed to be sick again.
My sick, yet still gorgeous, 4 year old was selflessly offering me help.
I stroked his forehead, and told him that he was a beautiful boy with a wonderful soul, and that I would let the entire house rot and go mouldy before I would ever do housework before looking after him.
We then had a little giggle about living in a mouldy rotten house before I left his room and let him sleep again.

This is my boy.

I just know that he will grow up to be a wonderful man.

Fictitious characters of fiction.

On my trip to the Op Shop this week I purchased some brown corduroy pants, an orange and brown check shirt and a brown itchy woollen tie. I know, I know, I can just hear the seething of jealousy issuing forth from you all, as you marvel at my fashion forwardness!

But alas, this purchase wasn’t for me, it was for my 4 year old son, and it was to be his costume for the literature festival his kindergarten were to be involved with. He was going to go as Fantastic Mr Fox.

I assumed that since it was a literary festival, that the children would be dressed as a fictional character from a book. But after a week of planning, I woke up that morning to a very disagreeable 4 year old, that was now refusing to be fox-face painted, and demanding to be bedecked as Batman...Oh yes... Batman. Such a famous literary figure he was! Wasn’t he was a character in Dickens? A Tale of Two Cities if I remember rightly. A classic!

I sighed (dying a little inside, as I had had majestic visions of my son in all his brown-itchy-woollen-tie-splendour), got him into his trusty Batman costume, and set off for kinder.

As we got to his school, I was confronted by all the famous fictitious characters of fiction you’ve never met.

There was another two obvious Dickens fans, both who were dressed as Superman.I am happy to report that I did see a “Cleopatra” from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

There was also "Oscar", who I'm sure is from the Peter Carey classic Oscar and Lucinda.

But my favourite costume of the day was the greatest character from literary fiction ever, from Shakespeare’s:

It was great to see so many great characters from books in the one place!

I have been inspired as to what to dress the kids up as for the next festival we go to. I would like my son to go as that wonderful character from the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem:

“In Xanadu did Buzz Lightyear

A stately pleasure-dome decree”

Do you ever have grandiose ideas for your kids dress ups only for them to foil your plans?

Oops, I fell off the wwwagon.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to stutter, but over the weekend I fell off the Weight Watchers wagon that I had kind of hitched myself to.
I fell off the WW wagon and was hit by another wagon, one laden with hot jam donuts and pizza.

(Identikit image of wagon as described by victim)
 

I was sick and needed comfort food. I was seduced by the sugary, jammy, vixen of plump doughy delights. She called to me when my guard was down, I had a moment of weakness...I was held at gunpoint and made to eat it...My dog ate all my healthy food... I was hallucinating and thought it was an apple...
I can come up with all the excuses in the world, but in the end, my willpower was weak, and I succumbed to temptation.
I am definitely a comfort food eater, so when I’m not feeling well I tend to go for the worst things that are around me.
My dad came for a visit and bought my boys two big bags of jam donuts. While the boys were hopped up on jammy goodness I accidentally picked up a donut, and it made its way into my mouth somehow (do donuts have jet-packs too?)...another one following it a bit later. The next day pizza was mentioned at some point in time, and all hopes at getting back on track dissolved in daydreams of that wonderful land full of cheese and carbs.
So, today is Monday, a new day, a new week, and a chance to redeem myself. I wasn’t completely run over by that wagon. I’ll just have to pick myself up, dust myself off and start again.


Have you fallen off the wagon when dieting? Do you completely abandon the diet, or do you re-start it the next day (or next week)?