Woolly Mammoth

"Hi, My name is Mike Carmichael and I live in Alexandria, Indiana with my wife Glenda. I'd like to tell you about Alexandria's only ROADSIDE ATTRACTION...the Worlds Largest Ball of Paint. Imagine an ordinary baseball... Now imagine that same baseball with over 19,100 coats of paint on it. Getting the picture? Good, because that's exactly what my wife, Glenda and I have done for the past 28 1/2 years. Now that ordinary baseball that once weighed less than one pound now weighs in around 1,700 pounds!"

Hmmmm, looks more like a deformed Malteser to me, or did Mike's surgeon save the testicle he removed during the cancer scare? This patient and determined couple's story can be found on their website: http://ballofpaint.freehosting.net/ because I wish you to know that I truly did not make the story up.

To be honest, I wish I had made it all up because it is so incomprehensible that an apparently normal-looking couple were prepared to do this for nearly 30 years and that they're proud of it. It doesn't say much for the town either, if this lumpy lovesack is the town's only attraction..... To be fair though, I'm not exactly covering myself in glory because you could also quite rightly ask just what in the hell I was doing that was so important and noble that let me to this item in the first place.

I don't know what 2009 is the Official year of (Twitter? Parsnips? Ugly animals people never visit at the zoo? The Ped Egg?) - but how about we put in a bid for the Year of Useful Hobbies. Ones that have a point and can be discussed with strangers at dinner parties without receiving pitying and bored looks.

My guilt is probably as strong as the paintball people because my unofficial hobby is knitting. No, nothing fanc - all I can do is the basic loopy, crinkled stitch (the name of which escapes me) that my grandmother taught me when I was nine and even then, have only ever been able to knit rows. Scarves aplenty, but thanks to the stitches I dropped the end product was vastly tapered at one end so that it resembled a triangle that had been on the rack and then peppered with bullet holes.

These days I'm trying to put my sheltered-workshop knitting skills to some good use by knitting long scarves that have seven individually coloured segments that are 45 stitches wide and 40 rows long. Mum then gathers seven of these Tom Bakers, sews them up and gives them to the mens' homeless shelter for use in their hostels and as 'sorry, the inn is full, here's some bedding consolation prizes.

I've been bidding for and buying balls of wool on e-bay. Yeah, I know: it's hardly as scintillating as Beatles memorabilia, signed first editions of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy or toast shaped like Elvis, but it's a way of getting cheap, cast-off yarn in dark, manly colours that hide all kinds of grass, beer, chewing gum and boot stains.

It also means that it's easy enough to do it in front of the telly and convince myself that no, just because I'm wearing elasticated tracksuit pants, ugg boots and am slouching on the lounge sucking squares of chocolate in front of 'The Big Bang Theory' I'm not a sloth; far from it. I'm knitting for charity. The sad thing is, my dinner party companion I'm regaling this to has normally sculled their third glass of sauv blanc by then and is nodding inanely, not realising that it takes me until Spring to knit enough scarves for one measly blanket.....

The shame of my remedial recreational abilities doesn't stop there. I also like to read through home design, food and womens' magazines, soaking up every glossy page and earmarking those take my fancy - recipes, home renovation ideas, decor, photos etc. Some I've used for home-made greeting cards that, quite frankly, haven't sold all that well, not even to the reception kids with snot trails leading to their lips at the school fete. It would probably make the local childcare centre really happy if I just dumped my crummy cuttings in their playroom with some curved-end scissors and pots of library paste and got the toddlers to go for it. Chances are their cards would be more successful too.....

Participators of other less-than-scintillating hobbies include my father who was an amateur beekeeper for many years. Every two months, he'd receive a copy of what might possibly be the world's least exciting magazine, The Australasian Beekeeper. "Whoo Hoo Dad, it's here, it's here!" I'd tease, waving the copy and running towards him like a lunatic. "Oh and look - it's got TWO pages of black and white photos instead of just the one!"

He proudly tells me that the highlight of his beekeeping career was having his jars of honey photographed (in black and white, naturally) for the front cover. Kate Moss hasn't achieved that.

A friend's boyfriend was into the adventures of Ivanhoe, King Arthur and related dark ages and mediaeval pursuits. There were apparently enough fellow fans of this time in history to have a Mediaeval society that met every fourth Sunday for a picnic and get-together. They'd gather to eat huge roast chickens and lamb legs (not sure who had to put them in the wheelie bin after the bones had been thrown over their shoulders), scull down mead (there's a reason we don't drink it anymore) and hold a jousting tournament. Each member was dressed as authentically as imagination and budget would allow - chain mail, coats of arms on jerkins (tops folks, tops), leggings (the blokes), ankle boots (yep, ditto), pointy hats (the gals, or add bells for some of the slightly more outgoing boys) and weaponry. The national parks and wildlife authority did not allow them to have horses at the events, and the mind boggles at what the jousting tournaments must have been like on foot.

My musical husband Love Chunks spent many years during school and in his early twenties playing the trumpet and the guitar. He proudly marched in Port Augusta's town band, played for a jazz group and tootled and strummed for many a local function. When he and I got together, both instruments had long been abandoned. No matter how many times I asked him to play something for me he refused.

The only time he got his trumpet out (ooooooherr, that sounds a bit suggestive) it terrorised the dog who shot outside and frantically started digging a tunnel to Mecca. LC has since strummed his guitar for Sapphire a few times, but clams up whenever I've inadvertently lumbered into the room. Pretty useless having two instruments you don't use, isn't it, but perhaps my mocking singing of "Kum bah yah, my lord, Kum bah yah...." isn't too encouraging. I'll make that a resolution to work on - Don't Mock; Encourage.

An old work colleague - who I detested - used to insist that we have the Christmas function at her place. This was presumably so that she could get outrageously pissed and fall off her high-heeled mules with her bed only several metres away but also so that we could see - and be dazzled - by her various collections and taste in decor. She lived in a mock-tudor Mc Mansion with a tiny garden filled with an above ground pool, two fat dogs and three shy cats. The blue plastic sides of the pool were artfully disguised with strategically placed potplants in which she'd placed some fake budgies.

Inside was the real horror - her duck collection. Pot holders, tea towels, boot scrapers, cross stitched pillow covers, paintings, coffee cups, storage tins, wooden trays and figurines. Lots of figurines, stored on flimsy lacquered telephone tables and inside twee kitchen cabinets that engulfed the house. They were made of china, clay, wood, brass, pewter and crystal with the piece-de-resistance being a stuffed one she'd found in an antiques shop. It left me with not only nausea but a secret prayer that someday that little duck army would rise up and find the collective strength to carry out her not so slight frame to the caravan park and de-tox centre where she belonged.

Love Chunks and I are also guilty of saving the back issues of Gourmet Traveller and Delicious Magazines. They hog up space in our cupboards and not once in ten years have either of us sorted through them or referred to an old recipe within them. Why do we save them? Sapphire has a collection of stones and gumnuts she'd gathered two years ago. The stupid little footy-shaped money box she stores them in gets tipped over at least once a week, spilling out the annoying little pellets. Why does she still keep them?

My mother insists on washing out every single yoghurt and margarine container and keeping them in her already over-burdened tupperware drawer so that when it is opened, they fly out like angry frisbees. Why - when will that mythical group of 79 people visit Mum and insist on taking leftovers home at the same time?

These are all unexplainable mysteries, but do point to most of us having collections and hobbies that are our own personal Submarine Screendoors in terms of usefulness in our lives. But maybe that's not such a bad thing. If no-one dies of stress or boredom then who's it going to hurt?

Maybe Sapphire, who looks to be inheriting a truckload of wool, greeting cards and margarine containers....

Puckle Street Palaver

We were sitting in a bakery in Moonee Ponds, tucking into our chicken salad rolls and coffee when yelling was heard outside.

I looked up and saw a swarthy man in a black overcoat striding past and automatically made eye contact. I smiled, thinking he was calling out to friends further ahead, and my grin was supposed to convey a vague but community-spirited, "Lovely Sunday day, innit?"

He got the wrong idea and stood in the doorway, yelling, "Robert Walters pharked up my life! Robert did! Yes, he did! I am Lebanese and he pharked it all up! Robert Walters!"

I. couldn't. look. away. Love Chunks and Sapphire had their backs to him, both cowering deeper into their food, shoulders hunched in shame. "He did! He ruined my life, me a Lebanese! Robert Walters pharked it up. LISTEN TO MY STORY!"

My stupid smile was still pasted on, the roll still raised halfway to my face as I nodded in dumb agreement.

Love Chunks kicked my ankle. "Stop making eye contact you idiot," he hissed. Trying to look regretful and as though I had places to go, things to do, people to see but best of luck with your crusade, good sir; I looked down at my limp roll. Loopy Lebanese man legged it further up Puckle Street, still furiously spewing out his life story to other eaters and shoppers.

"Why did you encourage him, Mum?" Sapphire was horrified and a bit shaken. For all her intelligence and humour, her scared face reminded me that she is only ten years old after all and the only baddies or weirdies she usually sees are in the movies or books or sitting sozzled out of their minds at the corner of the train station under the bridge. The owner of the bakery scuttled out, grabbed our plates and hastily wiped the table with a dribbly Chux that disallowed us to rest our elbows on the top: a clear sign she wanted us mental magnets out of there.

Puffing up my chest with the breath of only someone who is embarrassed but also indignant about it can do, I tried to explain to Sapphire that no-one is born wishing they'll be the stark raving crazy who yells at people in the street or wants to resort to snaffling up used cigarette butts outside the TAB or yearns to spend their days drinking long-necked beers out of shabby paper bags on the bus stop seats. "It is very sad, and it makes you wonder just what kind of life they led for it to end up like that," I concluded, feeling my chest relax as the warmth of my understanding, right-on empathy and mature life-lessons for my daughter flowed through.

"Yeah right, and you're halfway there yourself."

The roll plopped onto the soggy table. "Excuse me?"

"You heard. You pick me up from school with those embarrassingly long litter-collecting tongs and a plastic bag in your hand; you pat the dogs of the tough guys with tattoos on their necks who hang outside the pub and you said you were going to - --" this is where Sapphire puffed out her own chest in self-righteous indignance "----STEAL SOME LEMONS from the house across the street."

I'd struck a new low: having my ten year old daughter liken me to a mentally-deranged man in a stained overcoat who wanders the streets swearing and yelling his life story at people.

And no, I didn't steal the lemons. At least, not yet.

Litter Ninja















I have become something that all reasonable sane and aspiring-to-be-cool teenagers everywhere dread and despise - no, not a social studies teacher, a public litter collecter. Or is it picker-upperer? Socially-aware Scavenger? Trash Tracker?

.....Loser? Well, I prefer the term 'Litter Ninja'. Whatever the title, my mother is proud that her genes actually have started to make themselves known in my own mix of cells and synapses as she's been a regular power-walking litter-picking mini-skip at the picnic reserve near her house for many years.

Mum's habit finally awoke in me after too long trying to resolutely ignore the rubbish everywhere I went, saying 'I didn't do it, so I'm not taking care of it,' and pretending that the pathway leading into the kiddie's playground was lined with barkchips instead of cigarette butts and the twinkles in the hedges were fairy lights and not the ring-top pulls from beer cans.

Every single home we've owned - even after moving cities four different times - have always found us within walking distance of a McDonalds. Under-utilised Physics undergrads could be invited to determine the factors that influence the distance from a take-away establishment and the time taken to eat the food whilst walking drunkenly home and dumping the bag, wrappers and soft drink bucket-with-lid directly in front of our gate.

In Adelaide we only had the local Maccas to deal with but being sandwiched here in Melbourne with Red Rooster and Pizza Hut on Mt Alexander Road and Subway, KFC and the Golden Arches on Racecourse Road, our little street resembles the inner-city equivalent of a waving field of Edelweiss if cruelly replaced by half-squished sauce packets, straws and paper napkins. Throw in at least two kidnapped trolleys from Safeway, abandoned sofa cushions wet by rain and beer cans dumped by late night punters walking back to the drying out centre and you'll get some idea of the lovely urban ambience we've been enjoying in our little corner of the world.

It was high time to take a stand, be a member of my community and take some pride in my surroundings. Unlike my mother, my de-littering occurs under the cover of darkness (oh OK close to tea time because it's dark by 6pm) or on the weekends when the school yard is deserted.















Sometimes Sapphire - who at ten is beyond her teens in terms of insight but is still mostly willing to hang around with her mum - will accompany me, but usually it's just Milly the dog; in mad passionate love with anyone holding her lead and saying 'Wanna go for a walk?'

Cold Sunday afternoons/evenings just before tea sees Sapph zooming around the bitumen triangle on her scooter or trying her hardest to throw an adult-sized basketball through the adult-sized basket at our local high school. Milly gleefully trots around sniffing the bushes, finding ancient sandwiches wedged into the gaps of the plank seats or rolling in the sticky patches left from crushed Red Bull cans lingering only two metres away from empty rubbish bins.

Another father arrives with his young sons and he throws a basketball to them and involves Sapphire in their game. The 'dong-dong-dong' sound of duelling basketballs reassures me that she's happy and I can continue my embarassing quest for cleanliness.

I'm a pitiable sight - bent over like an old crone with a plastic shopping bag in one hand and an old pair of BBQ tongs in the other with my snot green eyes focussed solely on the ground, quadrangle, indigenous garden and canteen queue-space for anything like chewie wrappers, fruit boxes, clear plastic straw covers, egg sandwiches, styrofoam coffee cups, coke bottles, chip bags and meusli bars half-eaten and rejected for Mars Bars.....

....and sneakily-squashed cigarette butts, broken lighters, socks, ripped-up assignments, Chinese take-away containers, alfoil balls, clingwrap strands, shoelaces, condom wrappers* and mandarin peels.

An hour later, my work is done. During that time, a group of bored teens walk past, with one who looks like a chubby Zac Efron calling out, "Hey you missed a can over there," as the others snigger; Milly takes offence at the friendly overtures made by a Spaniel puppy ("Sorry about that, she loves people but considers her fellow species as slobbering evil incarnate"); get hit in the back of the scone by one of Sapphire's stray basketball shots and, for some reason, a bloke in a commodore yells out, "GET A JOB" as he's idling at the Mt Alexander Road traffic lights.

As I clip Milly's lead back on and signal to Sapph that it's time to leave, the father smiles and says, "It's a nice thing you're doing."

My back cracks as I stand up and accept the compliment gratefully. "Thanks. Well, it's our neighbourhood and it's going to be the high school that our kids will end up at isn't it?"

"Oh no," he shoots back instantly, pursing his lips in distaste. "No way." He turns his back towards his children and their game again, instantly dismissing me. I guess they'll have paid ground staff to do this kind of dirty work at the college he'll be sending his kids to.



















* I suspect that even in these groovy times, most teens use condoms to inflate like obscene party balloons at school than the slightly-more-fun and adult purpose they were originally intended for.

Fanning the flames

It would be safe to say that for most successful relationships and marriages, your beloved partner gets to see you at your absolute worst, yet still stays around and puts up with it. Right?

Is it any wonder then that Hollywood marriages only last the standard time that intrigue and passion does - about twelve months. Is it then that these overly-cossetted celebrities realise that the daily indignities of morning breath, smelly shoes and farting is not at all acceptable within their unrealistically sanitised concept of long-lasting love?

Even a mathematical numbnut like me could figure out that the average length of a stars' marriage is miniscule compared to ours in the real world. My own relationship is going on for sixteen years, thirteen of 'em married. Whilst Love Chunks and I are proud of this achievement, we also accept that there is very little of the intrigue and romance of our first twelve months together. But would we have it any other way?

My foggy brain thinks back to my dating days: when we thought River Phoenix was a drug-free vegan, Seinfeld was new and those crazy Branch Davidians were a bit over-zealous with their pop guns. The pre-date preparation always involved a shower, cleanly shaven legs, nice perfume, a hint of make-up and a new outfit.

And today? LC leaves for work by 7am and sees me in my once-white towelling robe, ugg boots, matted hair, dragon breath and a face not yet unfolded from the shape of the pillow. He's still willing to kiss me goodbye and is even kind enough to say "See you tonight."

Alas for him, in the first fourteen years of our together, my effort was mostly shovelled into enhancing the work persona long after he had departed for work - styled hair, subtle mascara and lipstick, snappy suit and the latest boots. When I got home, that gear was immediately thrown aside and replaced with tracksuit pants, the ubiquitous ugg boots and a shapeless windcheater that was able to hide the bralessness. Now that I'm a work-from-homer who drives a desk in the spare room, this is get up is my work uniform all the time and is what the lucky LC comes home to every night.

Bedtime in the heady first days? Too x-rated, fun and exuberant to mention with no concerns for the lateness of the hour, comparing our states of exhaustion or having to keep an ear out for the baby.

Today it seems as though I'm doing everything I possibly can to appear as unattractive and as 'nocturnally unavailable' as possible, but not intentionally so. After cleaning and flossing the teeth, locking all doors and switching off the lights, I drag my now aching body into the Marital Magic room. LC's already in bed, reading. I hang up the dressing gown, kick off the uggs and slather lavender cream over my cracked hands (soaking stained school uniforms in napisan will do that to you) whilst my wheat bag is being nuked in the microwave. This hot bag now smells like an over-used horse trough and is draped around my neck which seems to be permanently cricked.

I give my snozz one last full-throttled HONK into a tissue and spray two squirts of Rhinocort up each nostril. I then pop in a valerian tablet to help me sleep and slip on my mouthguard. This infernal contraption makes me lisp, so dear old LC is treated to a slurpy "Goodnight Ssshweetie, Sssshleep well," as he turns out the light.

To be fair, there is a bit of surreptitious fumbling in the darkness: I can't find my bedsocks and it's freezing in here!

But wait - there's more. Even in our unconscious states, we 'treat' each other to aspects of our physical selves that don't exactly leave us smelling of roses. Dutch ovens, for a start. I can't help it - if that's what my digestive plumbing needs to do, then so be it.

Love Chunks gets his own back via his snoring; so sonorous our blinds rattle. Many's the time I've lain there in sheer wonder at the incredible noises his throat makes and him such a quiet person during the day....

If our marriage was a movie, we'd wake up attractively entwined in each other's arms - his manly torso on display, my chest discreetly hidden under the sheets. We'd gaze adoringly into each other's eyes, kiss passionately and get right down to business. Yeah right: how could you contemplate doing any of that before going to the toilet or rinsing out your mouth for gods' sake? What about those cornflakey boogers that have formed around your eyes? The dried white drool marks on your chin?

At least the morning shower gives me a chance to clean up, wake up and tidy up. Not that any of this is a mystery to LC. In our one-bathroom house, he's busy cleaning his teeth and scraping away his whiskers whilst I'm surreptitiously trying to blow my nose in the shower and shave my armpits.

Then our darling daughter bursts in, has a giggle at my soapy backside and pokes me with the ornamental back scrubber: "Hey Mum, remember you said I could order my lunch from the canteen today!"

In the movie High Fidelity, the Rob character (played by the gorgeous John Cusack) bemoans that his live-in girlfriend only wears sensible underwear and not the sexy, lacy stuff he'd see when they were just dating. LC laughed at that scene, commenting, "I should be so lucky." On fat days or full-laundry basket days, the old maternity knickers get dragged out - purely to flatten the tummy, mind. The dag in me likes to put on my socks before my trousers, so LC's had many conversations with me only clad in nanna pants and those knee-high tights that make the tops of my legs look like a mini mushroom cloud. Yet still he says, "See you tonight."

He's been kind and helpful to me too, at times when I've been less than my best. "Pssst - you've got one of those dangly boogies in your nose," as I gratefully fumble around for the cafe's napkin to wipe it away. Or, less quietly, in a fluorescent-lit chemist, "Hey, here's the thrush cream you want!" He's emptied my sick buckets during migraines and tactfully told me that "Um, there's a couple of friends that you haven't flushed properly."

What mystery? We have NO mystery in our marriage, and it goes both ways. I've politely pointed out that his nose hairs were long enough to hang beads on; have plucked out some scary Robert Menzies-like long eyebrow hairs (you do not want to have eyebrows that will join up with your fringe); and nearly fallen to the ground in airless agony after visiting the loo too soon after he's been. Yet I too, say, "Yes, I'll see you tonight. Have a great day at work!"

He's the first person I clap eyes on in the morning, and he's the last person I touch, kiss, talk to and see at night. I wouldn't want it any other way. Although he could lose those pongy old slippers of his......

Lizzie's Long Weekend
























Despite a Pommy monarch literally living half a world away who actually had her real birthday in April and most of us wanting a Republic, we Aussies are still never going to knock back a day off.

Our three days were spent doing activities that avoided the rain but still:

• Allowed us to clean up the litter in our street, respond to some lip given by loitering teenagers (yes, to one boy - at least I think it was a boy - I actually curled my lip and said, "Pull UP your pants, fool") and give Milly the dog some nice walkies at the same time ("That's right sweetie, you can chase those friendly kids away, that's right....")
• Taught us that Footscray Markets are to avoided at all costs if such issues as the odouriferous fug of fermenting fruit, pre-WW2 prawn heads, overly-elastic hygiene guidelines and the beauty of decaying Soviet-era concrete design are of concern
• Showed that home-made pasta is fiddly and time-consuming but very delicious. Especially if done by Love Chunks and Sapphire whilst I am reading the paper and patting the rabbit.
• Proved to me that blowing on cooked and freshly served food is essential before greedily inhaling. Hot caramel sauce studded with chunks of banana with lava-like tendencies will steadfastly stick to the roof of my mouth and create a painful blister that protests against any food hotter than refrigerated chocolate for days afterwards if I don't blow.
• Allowed us to witness the Crows defeat Essendon in Melbourne. One Bombers bloke in a newsboy's cap saw my wild clapping further along his row and, in frustration, he yelled something about my having a 'Far Cough'. I feigned indifference and added to the maturity level of our shouted discussion by poking my tongue out and showing him my grandmother's gold ring on my middle finger. Sapphire was shocked, LC resigned.
  

However, in amongst our various activities, I was subtlely trying to get a photo of the three of us together; looking casual: an informal portrait, having fun, just being a contented family enjoying each others' company. I'd noticed that our photos tend to feature only one or two of us in them and a Lockett Triple was becoming rarer than a happy marriage in Hollywood.

I had been asked to submit a good quality, high-res picture for a magazine article I'd been interviewed for, but trying to take a photo in the evenings when we were all together meant that the flash and automatic timer thingy made me look whiter than usual, LC more tired and Sapphire more recalcitrant.

In addition, like the badly-timed and later-regretted re-telling of jokes at dinner parties, we three tend to be folk who are best viewed 'live', as in "You had to be there." The camera doesn't seem to flatter us much, let alone cast us in an optimistic light.

No, I'm not being overly harsh. These photos below were taken at the footy by a kind bloke who sat directly in front of me and even offered his M magazine (containing the essential TV guide for the week) to help me mop up the Diet Coke that I'd dropped and then opened only to have it fizz directly down the neck of his parka. They clearly illustrate how difficult it is to get the three of us photogenically acceptable:



I tend to resemble an elderly potato, Love Chunks is obviously sitting on something excruciating (or just did something excruciating) and Sapphire is at that oh-so-helpful 'let's make a funny face' stage. *Sigh*

I didn't feel like asking my soggy Diet Coke victim to take a seventh picture, especially when his three mates were standing impatiently nearby rocking on their heels kicking at crumpled beer tumblers and muttering, "Come on Trevor, this is our last bloody night before we fly back to Adelaide and our wives."

But how was I going to obtain a recent family portrait that exemplified the ideals of work/life balance and not the less attractive ideals of facial tics, self-abuse, uncomfortable stadium seating, disrespect and too much sugar?

Perhaps the Star Wars exhibit at Scienceworks would help?




















Hmmm. At least posing with a gender-reassigned Senator Palpatine and Luke 'This is my Warwick Capper hair' Skywalker made me feel a bit better about myself. There was a Princess Leia in her Planet Hoth (the icy place) outfit that made me wonder if she'd enjoyed too many hot toddies at the rebel base, an Obi Wan Kenobi who was channelling Marlon Brando rather than Sir Alec Guinness and the less said about Darth Vader and Leia as the bikini-clad slave the better...

A smaller and slimmer Darth was found in the gift shop, slumped forlornly against the wall. After an hour of queing to get into the musuem followed by another half hour queue at the cafe for lunch before the final half hour queue to get into the Star Wars exhibition, he was feeling as tired and emotional as I was.




















So the fabulous family foto will just have to wait for another day. A day of soft lighting, forgiving camera work, a malleable child and comfortable husband, a tan for me and a graduation course in Photoshop and Picasa. Cross your fingers and hope that the force will one day be with us.

Upsizing Time

He's never been one to chat away endlessly, demand a lot of attention or make any unnecessary fuss. Big-noting and bragging was never his style; he prefers to sit back, observe the scenery and wait for any interested parties to approach him.

His small size has never stopped him from being all the man he wanted to be - athletic, energetic, perpetually curious and the outdoorsy type with the uncanny ability to survive a variety of death-defying situations that would make mincemeat of many males twice his size - abandonment, starvation, deprivation and disease.

When he's safe at home with us he always seems content enough with his lot but mostly remains utterly oblivious to the shabbiness surrounding him. Comfort is always more important than style. To the rest of us however, it was starting to become apparent that things weren't as good as they could have been.

He needed a pick-me-up; something to lift him out of the rut of the mundane, the dreary, the barely acceptable. A modest makeover, some updating, a series of subtle-but-effective renovations no matter what they cost. He was worth it, after all.

Put simply, Skipper's second-hand hutch was no longer cutting it. Besides, the floor was caving in and Milly was able to shove her snout between the smiling chasm and gleefully snort up his rock hard bunny beans.


Skipper is as soft as a kitten but completely silent. There's no purring or even audible yawning so when I cuddle him, I'm still not sure if he's enjoying being held or if he hates it with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns but is cruelly unable to verbalise it. Perhaps I should hold him a little less tightly and see if he scrabbles and scratches his way to freedom and the floor.


















Despite his audible indifference, I could see from his disapproving face that he too was starting to tire of his ancient home that was being shielded by a golf umbrella that was a gift for spending $600K on a house sold by our real estate agent.

Said house has a work shop, but our decision to deliberately downsize means that we didn't want to spend all of our free time on home maintenance or handy-man projects when there were more important things to do like sleeping in, shopping at the Queen Vic Markets with our nanna cart, driving Sapphire to various birthday parties and playdates and slumping in front of the telly with wine, chocolate and chips.

We decided that my first payment from The Age would go towards Skipper's new hutch. I just hoped the little bugger'd appreciate it because deep down I was hankering for a Sing Star instead.

D-Day (delivery day) arrived and thank god it was in a flat pack that could easily fit through our Gates of Hell. Love Chunks got out the allen key and set to work with mercifully less time and less swearing than usual.

Being the only person in our house who can pick up Skipper without suffering asphyxiation and total cardio-vascular breakdown due to allergies (LC) or having her arms shredded to bloody ribbons in panic for being too small (Sapphire), I gently placed him in his new home. On the top floor. Yessirree Bob, this little pest had moved into a real little Rabbit Townhouse. It was even written on the box and everything.

I'd like to think that he loved it, was ecstatic about it, clicked his furry little heels in glee as he clambered up and down his groovy little interior ramp, but who the hell knows?
















What I do know is that he prefers Saturday's 'Drive' section of the newspaper for sleeping on and the Sports pages for blasting out his butt beans.

'My Career' and 'A2' sections are nibbled for a day or two before being dragged out onto the inner ramp and pissed on. How that translates into the internal thoughts of a rabbit will forever remain a mystery but he is nice to look at and even nicer to hold. And unless he can tell me different, Sapphire and I will continue to do just that.

Blogging Beauty

My beautiful, kind, dear friend Catherine is elegant, stylish, clever and generous and it's no wonder that her home reflects all of these qualities. Why she puts up with my own total lack of interior decorating skills is beyond me and yet, I'll be honest: she's hurt my feelings.

I mean come ON, Catherine. Look at our baby-cack brown house and the magnificent magna out the front - that's got more innercity chic oozing out of it than inanities from the mouths of Australian idol judges. If you want eclectic, try coming over on wheelie bin day - our footpath is cram-packed full of bins from the flats next door and the breeze blows cascading coke bottle and maccas wrappers from the high school four doors up. Atmosphere aplenty and you've gotta love the tree fern stumps that got burned during the 46C heatwave a couple of weeks ago.

Despite knowing all this, she persisted in nominating *gulp* other bloggers to complete memes showing pictures of their homes. Frank photographs of where they relax, blog (I said 'blog' Dad, not 'bog'), cook, bathe, spend time with their loved ones etc. Clearly she automatically assumed that I:

1) wouldn't be interested; and/or

2) possess the aesthetic sensibilities of an over-caffeinated warthog.

OK, so there's a possibility that she could be correct but my wounded pride insists that I do the meme too, if only to educate the rest of you about the importance your design and style choices.

Granted, Catherine's photographs of her home are indeed stunning. What's the most amazing part is I've visited her many times and it always looks this good. It never looks dusty, cluttered or hiding a jarring clash of junk and mess despite having an active and lively seven year old son living there too. This is what her bedroom looks like all the time. No, I have no idea where she hides her ugg boots, trashy novels, mobile phone charger or old 1990s concert t-shirt-as-pyjamas either.

My boudoir on the other hand, might not be quite so stylish but there's one feature she'd have to be green about. My fan.

This plastic purveyer of coolness is an antique; a true modern classic to rival any Philippe Starcke frippery. Purchased at roughly the same time as my Abba Arrival record, it has lasted all through my school years, university, shared houses, marriage, parenthood and house moving. If you look closely you can see the layers of fluff and dust that are stubbornly clinging to every chrome piece. The lovely brown plastic perfectly complements the unvarnished K-Mart mirror I can't be bothered hanging on the wall and the basket of roll-on deodorants that I'm starting to suspect are breeding. See, I can do this too, Catherine!

Catherine has professed a love for quirky side tables.

The butler-tray tables by her sofas are indeed gorgeous, but I reckon that my table also scores a few points on the style scale:

Cool, right? It's my grandfather's pot plant stand that he made in the 1930s that was languishing in his sunroom just after he moved into an aged care facility in 2003. He let me have it and I slapped (sorry: lovingly dressed) some leftover white skirting board paint on the little guy and voila - instant sophistication and just the right amount of space for the telly guide and remotes! See, I'm kicking creative arse in this meme.

Now kitchens are a regular feature of Home Beautiful, Better Homes and Gardens and Catherine's blog and fair enough when they look like this:

White, clean, bright and inviting. But where's the fridge hiding? How come the chux isn't hanging off the tap to dry and why is it shameful to have pesky little things like kettles and toasters on display?

Well, I'm proud to note that our kitchen bench tops are the same caesar-stone stuff that's so beloved of kitchens like the one above, but I'm not afraid to take a snap with the real life clutter still on it.

You've got the tea towel proudly dangling from the oven door, the cheapie white kettle, coveted coffee machine, grinder, leftover wine (only if it's red), iPod dock, school notices yet to be stuck on the fridge via a series of magnets, chicken mince defrosting, junk mail, shopping lists, various keys, pens and individual water glasses that we try and keep using continuously throughout the day so that there's only three to wash instead of twenty.

Oh and the mega packet of lolly snakes - the true kitchen essential.

I'm mean you're loving this, aren't you? Busy drafting your rapturous letters to Home Beautiful, begging them to contact Blurb from the Burbs for a refreshing visit to a house of style, substance and ..... stuff.

To the living room and the absolute essential: the pet bed.

I hope you all take note that the red bean bag cover has been specifically sewn by my talented mother at my request so that it matches our rug.

Unfortunately (and every good design story in magazines has a 'however if we could do one thing differently it would be to move the butler's pantry to the north side nearer the infinity edged pool'), having an orange dog who sheds more hairs than a nervous lamington does coconut means that said rug is often more orange than red and tends to form balls of mouse-sized pet fur when criss-crossed with too much traffic through the room.

In addition I have yet to devise a more attractive drinking dish for Milly than the old tupperware job that is surreptitiously hidden in front of the bookcase.

Finally, the bathroom. Actually I should emphasise first that we now have a bath. In Adelaide we only had a shower, so the bath is a luxury not for soaking in but for plugging up and then using the buckets to scoop up the water and fling out onto our almost-dead garden.

As I'm now getting used to having a shower standing in a pool of my own soap suds and filth I also use the water to give my thongs (that's flip flops to you Poms) a clean as well.

.... and look at the handy shelf that allows my footwear to dry, keep the buckets in line and Sapphire's shower cap to drain off?

Oh I have style, Catherine. Arse loads of it baby!

Wheelie bin Dealings

There are many times in your life when you realise that a) you're no longer young and b) you no longer care, but there are also other times when you realise that the things that genuinely get you excited these days are a) are mundane, and b) embarrassingly tragic.

It is time to share one of them with you: Wednesday Wheelie Bin Night. This weekly evening experience is as eagerly anticipated as sitting down to watch Spicks and Specks on the telly with a lapful of Lindt balls or when we buy a fresh clutch of Farmers Union Iced Coffee Cartons from Safeway. Yep, it's that good.




















And why is WWBN so important? Well, moving house means a lot of boxes. Boxes mean cardboard, which in turn equates to recycling. All good so far, except that the wheelie bins we've been allocated by the Moonee Valley Council are about a third the size of the ones we owned in Adelaide. Ooompah Loompahs could perhaps be satisfied with their dimensions but only if flotsam and jetsam such as dog food cans, deadly wrinkled glad wrap, junk mail and coffee grounds form part of their staple diets.

We've squashed down most of the boxes and taken them to the $20-per-car tip at Heidelberg along with dozens of empty paint tins (thoughtfully left behind by the previous owners so that we'd 'know what colours we used on and inside the house'), floor rugs, suitcases and white foam packaging that I'm convinced mates and breeds even bigger and more plentiful versions of itself.




















With the delivery of the treadmill, the Super-Size-Me BBQ, Love Chunks' funky new fandangled bike and a few other annoyingly over-packaged new house incidentals, the cardboard still lingers like an unwanted cousin houseguest three days after nanna's funeral. The trouble is, it's been over three weeks for some of our stuff and the last thing we want to do on our Saturdays is cut and flatten boxes, cram them into the back of the wagon and drive to a faraway dump and then pay cash for the experience. Trust me: having our car idling behind a bloke in a ute trying to haggle with the dump manager about only having to pay $18 to dump one mattress instead of the two he had - "But they're for SINGLE beds mate, come on!" - on a 39C day inhaling the aroma of mulch, manure and prawn heads was most un-fun.

Next door to us on one side is a three-storey block of twelve units. I've decided to use the term 'units' because they're from the 1960s-era and look like 'flats' to me but apparently this is NOT the word to use and betrays my country-bumpkin origins, era and uncoolness. Fine, but I refuse to call them 'apartments' when they're older than I am and are all squished in together.

The body corporate of these units has given them four massive recycling bins that are put out fortnightly and six bloody huge red normal-garbage bins that are out every week. Sapphire's bedroom could fit inside one of them and still have space for my treadmill and it was when I noted this fact that my excitement started to sprout. WWBN was going to be the answer to my prayers!















Whatever rubbish overload we have is now surreptitiously squeezed into any vacant space left in their bins. Naturally this complex and rather ingenious maneouvre is done under the cover of darkness so as not to create any ugly scenes or accusations. Instead, I wait until the final 'bonk bonk' sound of all of their bins have been dragged to the kerb and the last 'thwack' of the lids indicate that each and every tenant has shoved their weekly garbage inside.

Then, tiptoeing outside - a pretty delicate feat when wearing oversized thongs or sweaty Crocs - I oh-so-quietly ease open the gate, sneak a furtive glance to the left, the right and the left again - taking particular care to ensure that no-one is enjoying an evening drink, smoke or domestic on their overhanging balconies - and then make my ninja-like moves towards the red and yellow-topped answers to my cardboard conundrum. If it's not too hot I sometimes add a few commando rolls to add to the tension and to draw out the excitement factor.

At this rate, we'll have all of our cardboard packaging disposed of by, oh I don't know, Melbourne Cup Day. I know; it's pretty heady stuff..

Post-migraine Plugger without a Pumpkin = My own natural Halloween costume

Mr Migraine paid me his usual, all-too-regular visit; waking me up at 6am with a king hit to the head and a total loss of my morning. It's left me feeling groggy and hungover (but without the fun of the night before unfortunately) and, as such, in a good mood for a rant.

We blokes and sheilas here in Australia don't celebrate Halloween. Never have, and - if I had my way - never will.

Admittedly, thanks to a force-fed diet of Yank sitcoms from Bewitched, Happy Days, Family Ties, Home Improvement and Friends, most of us can name more US presidents than we can our own Prime Ministers (me included. No, not as a Prime Minister, but one of the telly-tards).

As such, we know rather a lot about Halloween and the tradition of little kids wandering around the neighbourhood trick-or-treating. Bless their sweet hearts: it's all fun when the candy is good, but if some psycho inserts razor blades or wipes the lollies on his arse an hour before handing them out then I'm sure some kiddies will regret not trying a 'trick' instead of the 'treat' they received.

We also know about Thanksgiving, and most of us are under the impression that Americans will virtually risk their savings, relationships, sanity and lives in order to make it home for turkey (surely the worst roast 'bird' in the civilised world) and some kind of pumpkin pie thing that doesn't sound too appetising to me. It seems to be more revered than Christmas which, as someone who is rather fond of presents I don't have to buy, wrap or pay for - seems rather odd.

Until a couple of years ago, our proudly Australian doorstep had never been darkened by any you-beaut ankle-biters asking us for free sweets or threatening to play a 'trick' on us. This has been a great relief considering that we may not yet have gone shopping that week or were on diets and could only offer them sun-dried mango slices or cucumber that wastarting to turn slimy at the bottom of the vege crisper.

Not so last year - about a dozen of the little beggars hammered away on the door and I was too taken aback to reply with 'Eat S**t and Die You Bastards,' but instead muttered something about seeing what we had and ventured out with the flavoured Chup-a-chups from old party bags in flavours that my daughter Sapphire clearly didn't enjoy. There the piss-weakly-clad mites stood, accompanied by their parents, who, being around my age, wouldn't have ever participated in such an American event during their own childhoods. The bloody nerve....

Sadly, my own daughter Sapphire was indoctrinated into the suckiest culture of them all as well, having been invited to a Halloween Party by one of her school mates last year. She went as 'Zelda the Zombie' courtesy of some bargain $2 eye liner and black lipstick that expertly complemented the white and red face paint I still had from my ill-fated (and tragic) efforts at face-painting at the kindy fete some years earlier.

I also took her to K-Mart and willingly shelled out cash to buy an oversized black t-shirt and shorts that we ripped up into shreds to support the concept of just having clambered out of a five year old gravesite. *Sigh*, who was I to pour my cynical lemon juice on her innocent anticipation? Yes, she even persuaded me to buy a few extra bags of lolly pops, fruit tingles and redskins for her fellow Halloweenie horrors who knocked on our door.

At her friend Simone's party tonight, she's settled for a witch's get up - much easier to do with my left-over 1990s-era black dresses and last year's make up not touched since, well, last year. I too have bought more blue-tongued zombie chews, Wizz Fizzers and sherbies in sad acceptance of our doorbell being frequently rung tonight.

Perhaps I should accept this newish trend as one which is overdue. No, not our celebration of everything American but that we've had our Guy Fawkes' Fireworks Night banned for nearly thirty years now, and desperately need a pointless, celebratory replacement. The subsequent declaration of 'Fireworks Night' as being illegal was thanks to scores of stupid Aussie bogans and boganelles who were drunk on Summerwine and Southwark tinnies and ended up blasting off their faces and fingertips as they flung Catherine Wheels and Roman Candles into the middle of their BBQ salad table or inside the rocking Sandman of their best mate.

At least Halloween is less dangerous - in a life-threatening sense, if not a calorific one.