List making

Believe it or not

Look at what's happened to me,

I can't believe it myself.

Suddenly I'm up on top of the world,

It should've been somebody else.

Believe it or not,

I'm walking on air.

I never thought I could feel so free-.

Flying away on a wing and a prayer.

Who could it be?

Believe it or not it's just me.

It's like a light of a new day-,

It came from out of the blue.

Breaking me out of the spell I was in,

Making all of my wishes come true-.

Believe it or not,

I'm walking on air.

I never thought I could feel so free-.

Flying away on a wing and a prayer.

Who could it be?

Believe it or not it's just me.

Charly's Year 4 classes sang this at assembly last week and we have been humming and warbling it around the house ever since.  It's one of those catchy tunes that gets stuck in your head.  I hear it in a continuous loop in my mind at work, as I'm driving, in the shower, when I'm cooking and just wandering around.  Just as well it's a punchy, feel good mantra, otherwise it would drive me mad.  Nothing like belting it out with three kids in the kitchen and performing acompanying dance moves.  Especially when it's the first day of Spring.

Pinch and a punch for the first of the month.  Deadlock.  No returns. A punch and a kick for being so quick. 

 Believe it or not, I'm ....

Lyrics: Greatest American Hero (Believe it or Not) by Mike Post and Stephen Geyer

Photos by me.  Little birdie on my window sill and new buds in the garden.

Work, rest and play

Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

In a week I start a new job in the same big, fat department but a different area.  I'm slightly apprehensive about the change and how to retain, or gain, some semblance work-life balance.  I'm not looking to forward to being the new kid on the block, learning the ropes and merging into the new workplace culture. Finding the stationary cupboard.  Familiarising myself with an electronic filing system.  Making new contacts.  Getting off at the right floor.  Still, I think it is a good move.  Best to keep learning and dreaming rather than get stuck in a rut.  Create the illusion of some ambition.  Seize the opportunities when they present and all that :)

No chance to keep my feet up. 

Poem by Langston Hughes
Photo by me, of me, feet up and lolling about at the Smiggins Holes Bar and Bistro. 

Sunday Pancakes

Mix a pancake,

Stir a pancake,

Pop it in the pan.

Fry the pancake,

Toss the pancake,

Catch it if you can!

Sunday ritual in the Silver Gull's nest.  I use the recipe from the Marie Claire cookbook, Food Fast, by the seemingly ever-present, one-woman empire, Donna Hay.  It's a fabulous, miracle adaptation of a basic batter recipe.  The toppings of choice round here are either 100 per cent Canadian maple syrup or lemon sugar.  We roll 'em up and eat with our fingers, or if we are feeling more refined, use a knife and fork. 

Favourite parts of this ritual, apart from eating, are cracking the eggs into the bowl and flipping the pancakes over.  There are queues and some tense bargaining for these tasks.

Messy Rooms

Messy Room

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!

His underwear is hanging on the lamp.

His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,

And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.

His workbook is wedged in the window,

His sweater's been thrown on the floor.

His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,

And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.

His books are all jammed in the closet,

His vest has been left in the hall.

A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,

And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!

Donald or Robert or Willie or--

Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,

I knew it looked familiar!

Poem by Shel Silverstein

Photo by me: Little Wanna's doll's house the morning after the tooth fairy visited and the toys had a party.

Oh boy, the housework involved with maintaining a family of five.  For someone who likes things to be orderly, it is an endless task picking up, wiping up and putting away.  Such a vast array of small bits are accumulated by three children and they invariably end up in extraordinary places far from where they ought to be.  We don't quite have the space to disguise the clutter artfully.  Hardly enough storage for the essentials.   I'm yearning for a custom-built house with an abundance of cupboards and flat surfaces for work and play.  Meantime the doll's house looks spookily like ours in miniature...and I'm starting to resemble the exhausted figure in pink slumped in the foreground.

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week (a few weeks ago!). A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. SouleMama

Photo: Special purple helmet heading for the Friday Flat chairlift, Thredbo NSW, August 2010

Miss Piggy meets Yogi Bear

It's been the wardrobe department at central casting round here lately. What with Charly's fabulous Movie Star party on the week-end and the Book Week parade this week. In dress rehearsals last week we had a ball trying on different outfits, racing to the mirror or looking at our reflections in the windows or the oven door, anywhere!  For the creatively challenged, I recommend the two dollar pack of animal snouts with hat elastic straps from The Reject Shop.  Best fun ever.

Book Week

Television

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let

Them near your television set --

Or better still, just don't install

The idiotic thing at all.

In almost every house we've been,

We've watched them gaping at the screen.

They loll and slop and lounge about,

And stare until their eyes pop out.

(Last week in someone's place we saw

A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)

They sit and stare and stare and sit

Until they're hypnotised by it,

Until they're absolutely drunk

With all that shocking ghastly junk.

Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,

They don't climb out the window sill,

They never fight or kick or punch,

They leave you free to cook the lunch

And wash the dishes in the sink --

But did you ever stop to think,

To wonder just exactly what

This does to your beloved tot?

IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!

IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!

IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!

IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND

HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND

A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!

HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!

HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!

HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!

'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,

'But if we take the set away,

What shall we do to entertain

Our darling children? Please explain!'

We'll answer this by asking you,

'What used the darling ones to do?

'How used they keep themselves contented

Before this monster was invented?'

Have you forgotten? Don't you know?

We'll say it very loud and slow:

THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,

AND READ and READ, and then proceed

To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!

One half their lives was reading books!

The nursery shelves held books galore!

Books cluttered up the nursery floor!

And in the bedroom, by the bed,

More books were waiting to be read!

Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales

Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales

And treasure isles, and distant shores

Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,

And pirates wearing purple pants,

And sailing ships and elephants,

And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,

Stirring away at something hot.

(It smells so good, what can it be?

Good gracious, it's Penelope.)

The younger ones had Beatrix Potter

With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,

And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,

And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-

Just How The Camel Got His Hump,

And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,

And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,

There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-

Oh, books, what books they used to know,

Those children living long ago!

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,

Go throw your TV set away,

And in its place you can install

A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Then fill the shelves with lots of books,

Ignoring all the dirty looks,

The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,

And children hitting you with sticks-

Fear not, because we promise you

That, in about a week or two

Of having nothing else to do,

They'll now begin to feel the need

Of having something to read.

And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!

You watch the slowly growing joy

That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen

They'll wonder what they'd ever seen

In that ridiculous machine,

That nauseating, foul, unclean,

Repulsive television screen!

And later, each and every kid

Will love you more for what you did.

Poem by Roald Dahl

Illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith

This week is Book Week- the longest running children's festival in Australia, celebrating its 65th birthday in 2010.  There's a costume parade at school tomorrow.  Little Wanna wants to go as Amelia Bedelia and Charly as Molly Moon.  Both impossible costumes to devise with my limited skill and materials.  We do have Groucho Marx glasses and plenty of fairy outfits plus an auburn wig and Chinese pajamas.  Mmm ... I'm thinking the cast of Pink Panther or Scooby Doo. 

Snow at last!

Our first family experience of snow.  Day one, after hiring and buying the gear in a chaotic, typically disorganised fashion, saw us off to Smiggins Holes for ski lessons.  What a treat the children looked in their puffy outfits, helmets, goggles and mittens.  They took to it like naturals.  Up the Magic Carpet and snow ploughing down tentatively at first but rapidly growing in confidence.

We also had an opportunity to build snow men at Perisher in the midst of a small snow flurry with limited visibility.  This was one of the major conquests of the entire trip.  Skiing was anticipated with wide-eyed, innocent interest, but making a snowman - now that was huge!  Next time we must bring a carrot, a top hat, buttons and two pieces of coal.

Snow
by Walter de la Mare

No breath of wind,

No gleam of sun -

Still the white snow

Whirls softly down

Twig and bough

And blade and thorn

All in an icy

Quiet, forlorn.

Whispering, rustling,

Through the air

On still and stone,

Roof, - everywhere,

It heaps its powdery

Crystal flakes,

Of every tree

A mountain makes;

'Til pale and faint

At shut of day

Stoops from the West

One wint'ry ray,

And, feathered in fire

Where ghosts the moon,

A robin shrills

His lonely tune.

Mia Creek Homestead

Last week, we ventured forth to the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales for our first-ever family skiing holiday.  We stayed on a terrific rural property with a loft apartment attached to the main homestead.  It was bliss.  Equidistant between all the main ski resorts of Perisher and Thredbo, and near the central town of Jindabyne.  Entirely private and self-contained - with an open fireplace. We got a dose of country air as well as a taste of the snow.

On our first night we went for an evening stroll accompanied by Skye the Golden Retriever who raced ahead and bounded into hollows after rabbits.  We patted the horses outside the Wild Brumby Distillery and book-marked that establishment as one worth returning to for some schnapps at a later stage. 

We let the Girl Guide practice her fire lighting skills and nestled down for the night in keen anticipation of our first day on the slopes.  It was hard to believe there was snow on them there 'ills as it was so dry down below.   But we were to have such fun in an abundance of the white stuff as I will reveal in subsequent posts.     

Somewhere... Over the Rainbow

Look what blogging led me to.  So entranced was I by the magnificent rainbow cake posted by Meredy that I had to give it a whirl for Charly's tenth birthday last weekend.  It was a challenge to say the least despite the detailed instructions.  There were tears.  Birthday cake making is my ritual torture.

First hurdle was to find the recommended gel colouring in this old town of limited shopping opportunity.  It required a lunchtime dash to a specialist kitchen store, and then, they didn't have the recomended Lemon Yellow.  Grrr.  Anyway, that weekend while everyone was out at soccer and I had unfettered run of the kitchen, I got out the Sunbeam hand beaters, the heart-shaped cake pans and the left-over liquid food colouring in the pantry and set to work.  

The trick is to fill the pan with the same amount of cake mixture.  Meredy did specify one and a half cups and, I confess to skimping on this detail (yep, never skimp the detail) and subsequently ended up with wonky layers.  The colours weren't the same shade either as I'd used half gel and half liquid colours (Meredy was right again). The cream cheese frosting slicked on beautifully but, alas, the children didn't entirely enjoy the taste.  So I will have to experiment with the butter icing or ganache frosting next time.  

Thankfully the overall effect was stupendous.  A miraculously high, heart shaped ensemble with ten little candles glowing in front of beaming faces.  Charly is having a Movie Party next weekend and I plan to do a modified four-layer version with equal layers and uniform colours.  

Meantime, the Strong, Silent One wryly notes that it would be far simpler to go to The Cheesecake Shop - a reliable, local purveyor of large and impressive cakes - rather than go through the self-flagellation a second time.

"There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't and that's a wife who can't cook and will." Robert Frost (1847-1963)

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. SouleMama

Morning Mist

Mist

Low-anchored cloud,
Newfoundland air,
Fountain head and source of rivers,
Dew-cloth, dream drapery,
And napkin spread by fays;
Drifting meadow of the air,
Where bloom the daisied banks and violets,
And in whose fenny labyrinth
The bittern booms and heron wades;
Spirit of the lake and seas and rivers,
Bear only perfumes and the scent
Of healing herbs to just men's fields!

Henry David Thoreau

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

William Wordsworth

Well, no daffodils. (I wonder whatever happened to the pre-school fund raising bulbs we planted last year?  Buried never to be seen again.)  Anyway, this was the morning view as I wearily trudged out to make school lunches.   Part of my seasonal landscape series "Views from the back deck".  :-)

Ro-Ro took a few ornithological photographs of a frost-bitten rosella on the telegraph wires. No herons here either, but the birdlife in Canberra is quite spectacular just the same.  Pity that can't be said of the overhead wires.  Looks like a Melbourne tram crossing up there.

Learning Rummy-O

 

Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of "déjà vu," when you are used to existence, you become an adult.

Eugene Ionesco, Present Past / Past Present

Charly taught Little Wanna how to play Rummy-O on the weekend.  It was delightful to see her thinking the rules through, deep in concentration, building confidence, trying a bit of cheating and hoarding the jokers.  It was also amusing to see Charly deploy her masterful strategies and relish her win.  Do we ever tire of board games and hot chocolate on a blustery Winter's day?