change of seasons

Woke up this morning suspecting the flu was coming on and sure enough, despite maintaining a sense of denial as long as I possibly could, it's now taken hold to the point that I can't make sense of anything at all through the fog. So this site and a number of half-written posts will probably lie fallow for the next few days. Apologies. Guess I should be grateful it's been about eight months since I was last sick in any way; oh, and lucky the little fella's health continues to be able to be described as "rude".

loaf affair

On our fridge is a postcard from my friend in Paris. Laid out on a white background are about thirty tiny photos of different kinds of bread. Loaf really is a many splendoured thing. There’s everything from the ‘baguette’ to the ‘pain de seigle noir’ (black rye). Some styles seem to be named after places or people and are probably regional specialties. Such as the ‘Tabatiere’ which is dusty and resembles a satchel and the golden ‘Courome’, eight balls fused into a ring. There’s the ‘Mauricette’ which looks like a zebra’s penis and the Cornetti which is shaped like a couple of sausages wrapped in a serviette, or maybe lovers under a doona.
Printed in small black type at the top of the postcard are the words "Le Pain".
"Le Pain in le cul, more like," I grumble as I start to mix up a new loaf. I am learning to make sourdough. There is no photo of sourdough on the postcard; maybe the French don’t make it? I mix the fifth loaf, my mind elsewhere. I forget salt and have to throw it in at stage two. The house is arctic and it has been raining, hard, for days. In the middle of an evening storm the icecream van jangles up our street, stopping for customers. What kind of person goes out in that kind of weather to buy icecream? I don’t expect the loaf to rise at all, but by the time I get up the next day, it has risen right to the edge of the tin and is starting to bubble its way over the sides. I preheat the oven but in the time it takes to get hot the cat has clawed open the kitchen door and let in a draft, and I watch as the loaf sinks down before my eyes. Damn, another demi-loaf. Still, I am quite happy with the taste and texture. It’s soft and springy and has a good, hard crust. Ah, le pleasure...

all i knead is loaf

I know why it's called sourdough. It's not so much the taste or the method, but the feeling it invokes in you when you wake in the morning and check the tin and find your loaf is still only about an inch high.
I've been taking lessons from my mother, the master. She's been baking sourdough for forty years. I'm onto my fourth loaf.
"Any idiot can make sourdough," my mother always says, though it must be noted that she guards her secret recipe with her life lest any said idiots get their hands on it. And it was a big moment some years ago when she finally allowed me to put her recipe down in writing. (Don't tell her I keep it on the side of the fridge.)
I thought I had nailed it with the very first one. It emerged from the oven late at night, and I promptly polished off half the loaf while it was still warm, smothered in butter and honey. I marvelled at my incredible natural talent. I nearly wrote home about it, but then when I tasted a slice cold the next morning, I realised with irritation that it had a faint, raw, doughy flavor. I consulted my teacher and she advised me to bake it hotter and longer.
The second loaf did not rise at all. I baked it anyway, hotter and longer, and despite the fact that it was only about three millimetres high, the taste was almost perfect. I mixed up the third loaf with renewed hope. It deigned to rise to halfway up the pan.
"My mother made bread every day of my life," I complained (sourly) to friends. "Shouldn't I have picked this up by osmosis or something?"
The fourth loaf was mixed with extreme care, taking instructions down the phone line from the parental advisory centre. That evening, as I walked past the tin and glanced over, I thought how oddly familiar the dough looked today. How it reminded me of...my mother's dough!
Ah.
This is the one, I thought. This. Is. The. One.
Well, I hate to spoil the tension, but it's still in the oven even as we speak, so we'll have to wait and see. But it sure looks promising.

happy birthday two you

Happy birthday to the love of my life, Harley, who turned two on Saturday. Best two years of my life so far, without doubt.

those three years

Yesterday marked the start of my fourth year of keeping this blog. Wow. Thanks to all my lovely readers, especially those who've been along for the ride from the start. Here's to the next three years.

first action hero

It's either a coincidence, or she has stumbled across my blog somehow: a friend gave Harley a Batman cape for Christmas. He liked the look of his new cape, even though he has never heard of or seen anything Batman-franchise related yet.
"You're Batman," I explained to my kid. "He goes"--I turned to my friend, helpless--"What does Batman do again?" I punched a fist in the air. "KAPOW!!!!...Wait, I think that's Superman."
My friend shrugged. "I don't think it matters much at this point."
My son doesn't yet know about action heroes with superpowers. His heroes are still the working class variety: bus drivers, crane operators, firies, bulldozer drivers. He is obsessed by cars and trucks, and while people love to explain this is because he is a boy, I have my suspicions that it's actually because we don't have a car ourselves, so that they have a special mystique.

update: I’m told posting photos on my main page slows things down so from now on I’m just going to add pictures to this separate page, and just link to that if I update it.

update2: I wanted to congratulate Ken and all the others at Troppo for having won Crikey!’s Blog of the Year award for 2005. Well deserved so good on 'em. (Hope they got a nice statuette of a naked blogger too). But since they have gone and redesigned their site, I am perplexingly unable to view it anymore. I know it’s the fault of my dodo computer, but until I can afford to upgrade (which may or may not occur next century)(hang on, let me go get my wee violin…) this update will have to suffice as congrats to all the Armadillos.

merry christmas from your resident pagan

Photo copyright: my dad.

Your blogger, Christmas circa mid-70s. They tell me that's chocolate. I hope that's chocolate.
Anyway, hope people are having a wonderful time with loves ones. Also can't help sparing a thought for the families of last year's tsunami victims for whom this must all still seem surreal. Yet for us, life has marched on. Can't believe another year has passed...Looking forward to getting back into a more regular blogging routine next year. Things got a bit chaotic towards the end of this year and I got a bit lazy/distracted. Would like to try and do some more original writing too, rather than just complain about what other people say or write or do all the time. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Imagine if everyone agreed on everything...ugh....
Anyway, I also bought a digital camera the other week (Kodak Easyshare, a measly 3.2 megapixles, but only ninety-eight bucks at Harvey Norman, so who's complaining?). So hope to put some more visuals to the story soon. Yes, if you can't beat Julia Baird, join her.

little fish

I was surprised to read just yesterday about the whole saga involving the two Sydney secretaries fired for breaching email policy by lawyers Allens. I happened to have worked beside one of the girls involved a few years ago (not at Allens). I think, man, that could so easily have been my embarrassing email exchanges with her, there for the whole world to see. Geez. But it could've just as easily been some partner's affair with a secretary being exposed instead. It's not as if secretaries are the only people who use office email for private purposes. Secretaries in these firms generally have access to their bosses' email accounts. They can have up to five bosses, often including two partners. So a secretary might figure that since it's okay for her boss have her endlessly deleting stupid forwarded jokes from his CEO buddies, emails that are sometimes borderline porn, then it's probably okay if she lets of steam through her workday by pinging emails around the girls.
Everyone knows the problem of wasted productivity through email/internet use is spread right up and down the hierarchy in these big firms, and they're only sacking secretaries rather than solicitors because they're cheaper to replace. (Longtime readers might remember I came close to getting sacked for blogging. My rationalisation was always that I worked twice as fast deliberately to allow myself down-time. But I could see their point in the end.)
Allens' HR could've called a private all-staff meeting instead; discussed the crisis, reiterated email policy, given out final warnings (don't they get three strikes anymore?) and let the whole thing die a natural death. Instead, they really have made a mountain out of a molehill, as well as humiliating two young women. They clearly decided to make an example out of them. And I'm sure it will get results. Office workers who have signed Draconian email policies as part of individual workplace agreements should be nicely paranoid now.
Maybe it's the beginning of the end of personal email use, or internet use generally, at work, at least for the worker bees? But won't employees go nuts if all they've got left on their desktops to play with is Solitaire?
Anyway, all of it reminds me once again how much I don't miss the city one little iota.

1.5

"Hey look, Mum, I've got a heart-shaped stain on my jumper. How about we say it's some kind of stigmata and auction it off on e-bay?"

chasing skirt

The posh resort across the road had a function the other night for travel writers. A friend went. He said by the end of the night, middle-aged women were pawing him, trying to get their hands up his kilt. I said women love men in skirts; I could've told you that for free.
What do other girls think? Are men sexy in skirts, or is it just me*?

*It might be just me. Remember; I like beards.

taking me literally

"Buh."
"Babe, can you say the whole word? You have to say the whole word or I won't know what you mean."
"Buh!"
"The whole word, Harley. Try and say the whole word."
Pause.
"Hoh wurd!"
Pause.
"Okay you win, kid. Here's your biscuit."

about a boy

(continued from)

The way he loves to admire himself in the mirror these days, how he looks at himself and gets the giggles.
The way new words are coming thick and fast now.
The way he impresses us both by pointing at everything and naming it.
The way he only says the first syllable of most words, figuring that I'll work out what he means from the context. Thus "buh" is expected to be understood to mean any of: banana, bus, bike, button, baby, balloon, biscuit. Maybe I should make it harder for him. I should pretend I don't have a clue what he means unless he at least tries to say the whole word--and just ignore all the furious indicating in the direction of the biscuit tin.
The way he can say certain two syllable words, like "tiger" and "tractor" and "apple" and "chicken" and "piggy", and of course "mama" and "papa".
The way he loves pointing out that I have a "hole" in my belly and how he likes to prove it with a finger. He won't accept that it's a belly "button". He knows what buttons look like and he's sorry, but it's definitely a hole.
The way he draws left-handed like me.
The way he loves informing me if there's "two" of something.
The way I can trick him into obedience if I say, "Show X how you can climb into your stroller all by yourself now," (haha! Got him!).
The way he likes watching the Top 50 on Rage on Saturday mornings; with favourites being songs by Ben Lee, Missy Higgins, Delta Goodrem, Destiny's Child, Eminem, Joel Turner and Foo Fighters. (I judge a "favorite" to be a song that gets him to stop what he's doing and glue his little face to the telly. But that's the problem with music video: you never know if it's the music or the video, do you?)

to be continued...

one good thing about music

People go into a bit of a trance when they play guitar, don't they? Reminds me of how a friend recently informed me of the fact that Jimi Hendrix once made actual love to his guitar, on stage. I did not know that. I wonder if it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me. There's something very fetishistic about the guitar.
Makes me think back to boyfriends from long, long ago, sitting enraptured on the edge of the bath tub, apparently half-delirious, strumming away furiously, murmuring and wailing and looking to the heavens (and--to my great annoyance--ignoring me).
I guess it's not isolated to guitarists. At least, I've seen entranced drummers, pianists, singers, even harpists (Harpo Marx springs to mind). I get it dancing, or singing along.
It's funny, though, innit? The power of music.

pick-up lines that don't work on me

"Yeah, I only have a forty per cent chance of even surviving the operation."
I mean, maybe if it had actually been true (and as I found out from mutual acquaintances, it is not), it might've got some kind of sympathy fuck vote.
My instincts are pretty trustworthy, though. As it turned out, this same person also eventually mentioned how he didn't like Jews.
"They're greedy; there's just something about them I don't like."
I was too flabbergasted to say anything, and later I felt guilty about that.
Next time I bump into him, though, watch out...

NB I don't plan on ridiculing him; I plan on re-educating him. That's a lot more constructive, I reckon.

riding in cars with babies

We went up to Brooms Head with some friends over the long weekend. It's a pretty little place with (wait for it) sweeping views, about five hours north of here. As usual, as we were driving along I pointed out all kinds of stuff to the baby: cows, trucks, cranes, Big Bananas; you name it, I named it.
So I felt pretty silly when, just as we were nearly home again, I happened to bend down to exactly his eye level and realised that the only thing he can ever see is the tops of trees and the sky. Oh.
He's a good sport though; plays along, looks out in the direction of whatever I am pointing at and appears to go, "Oh, yeah...so it is."
He probably thinks his mother is quite mad, seeing a whole bunch of invisible stuff floating by. Or maybe he sees it too, in his mind's eye? I hope so.

embedded

We now cross live to our correspondent reporting directly from the front line--
crackle crackle--
Well, it's been a painful couple of weeks down here in the trenches. We have been in the wars, as they say. The troop is recovering from the following injuries sustained during episodes of fierce play: one black eye, one finger squished and almost severed in a door, and last night, one tooth straight through the lip. He's now confined to barracks and suffering from a head-cold on top of everything, but strangely enough, morale remains high.
This has been his completely freaked-out mother, also suffering a cold, reporting for she sells sanctuary...and now crawling back under the doona.
crackle crackle BLEEP
Hmmmmmmmmm, yes. Well, that's it from the newsroom for now. Coming up, brand-new episodes of Celibacy & the Country. Right after this break...

counting the ways

The way he sits in his bed in the mornings and chats to his teddy-bear until I get up.
The way he runs around with his purple Wiggles guitar announcing he has a “tuggar”.
The way he claps for himself when he has done something he is impressed with.
The way he kisses the cat by turning around and nuzzling it with the back of his head (he’s been acquainted with claws).
The way he runs headlong into the surf, no matter what the weather.
The way he insists on brushing my hair for me.
The way he runs everywhere instead of walking, as though afraid he’s going to miss out on something if he doesn’t.
The way he offers me bites of his food, particularly if it’s something he finds really yummy.
The way he gets so excited when his babysitter comes to play that he gets almost hysterical and laughs til he’s nearly hyperventilating.
The way his hair looks after he’s been sleeping.
The way he insists on brushing his teeth with my toothbrush and not his.
The way he thinks my friends have come around specifically to play with him.
The way he can only ride his firetruck backwards at the moment.
The way these days, when things have gone quiet and I start to suspect he’s up to something, I find him sitting by his bookcase, quietly leafing through a book.
The way he looks at me sometimes.
The way he loves to wander around sucking on half a lime.
The way he won’t sit in his high-chair but will sit in a regular chair at the dinner table.
The way he loves to make me chase him all around the house, especially nude.
The way he gives me a deliciously naughty grin when he does something he knows he shouldn’t.
The way he cries “more!” over and over when we are playing “Itsy-Bitsy Spider”, even though he can hardly bear the tickling.
The way he grins ecstatically and starts bobbing up and down, and lately doing wild jumps with both feet off the ground, whenever any kind of music comes on, even just a jingle on telly.
The way he puts up with his crazy mum.

to be continued...

along for the ride

Ray said the couple was breaking up, he said the girl was leaving the guy and that the guy was crying.
I looked out the window. They had leathers on and stood beside motorbikes. But when I looked at them, they seemed to be laughing.
No, Ray said, they’re breaking up. See? She just told him it’s over, and he’s shaking his head and pleading with her.
Nuh-uh, I said, after a while. They’ve been having an affair and he’s explaining how he just can’t wait til next time. The bikers put on their helmets and the girl burned off and the guy was still standing there, staring at the empty highway.
She’s gone, I teased Ray. And she ain’t coming back. He’s pining for her already, look at him, Ray, I said.
I wondered what the people looking in the window were thinking of us.
There was hardly anyone in the restaurant, but there were a few old folks sitting in cars in the lot facing us. They probably thought we were a family, I thought.
A waitress came. Ray got chicken and chips and I ordered a BLT for me and the baby. Ray handed the baby a paper tube of sugar to amuse him and I showed him how to make them go shake-shake-shake. I said hey look Harley, that guy’s motorbike is the same colour as Ray’s car.
We’d been at Ray’s farm. There, the baby had posed for photos on top of a miniature horse and a regular-size tractor. He'd fallen face-first into a bull-ant nest but somehow avoided being bitten; he'd been eyeballed by doleful steer through the electric fence.
The baby gave me a sickly, crushed-sugar-rimmed grin and I confiscated the sugar tubes. He’d pretty much had enough of the day, but there was still a bit further to go.
Our meals arrived at the table. Outside our window, a boy wearing a safety-orange jacket was emptying the restaurant’s rubbish bin. He came and did it several times, without enthusiasm. The baby watched him and ate chips and pieces of chicken, tomato, bacon and beetroot. Ray offered the child a chicken bone and the child took it eagerly. I fretted over whether it was safe. Ray pooh-poohed it.
He’s going to have a good chew on the marrow and it gives him something to hold, he said.
You don’t give chicken bones to cats and they’re about the same size, is all I’m saying, I said.
I impounded the bone.
We drank flat white coffees, and Ray noticed me looking at the blurry blue tattoo on his forearm.
Love to live,
live to love,
it said.
I wrote that when I was fifteen, Ray said.
I looked out the window at the guy still standing beside his bike, fidgeting with the chin-strap on his helmet.
We had to go meet a mate of Ray’s about some business or other. The mate pulled up in a yellow van and I fed the baby grapes and crisps as the two men got out and talked by the side of the road. Ray’s mate came over and leaned into our window and ignored me completely and smiled at the baby and asked the little fella how he was doing. I liked that.
The van’s sliding door scraped open and three kids got out; a boy and a girl in their early teens, and another boy a few years younger. The two older kids lit up cigarettes and after a while when his dad wasn’t looking I saw the younger boy taking a puff too. The kids scavenged in the tall grass beside the van and the truck and one of them ran up to show their dad something.
Look, we found a mull tin, Dad, the kid said.
Behind him, his sister grinned in a fake-logo teeshirt that said HORNY GIRL where it should say TOMMY GIRL. The dad proceeded to tell me about his kids, how they were clever, and found stuff all the time. How they’d found a safe with fifteen thousand dollars in it a while back and do you know what they did? They called the bloody cops! The cops had been dark with them, apparently, told ‘em off for being somewhere they shouldn’t.
I wouldnt’ve bloody said anything, the man laughed.
Later, in the car driving home, Ray said you should see his wife, that his wife was incredibly beautiful, and that they were a strange match for that.
I dunno, I said. I said, he was attractive, in his own way.
It had been his smile. And that probably had something to do with his unseen, beautiful wife.
I looked at Ray and wished that I wanted to kiss him, because he has such a sweet nature and a good heart. I already told him weeks ago I wasn’t looking for anything except friendship. We're just along with him today for company, and so the kid can meet Foxy, the little horse.
A song started playing on the radio in the car and I said this song used to be everywhere. I was about to add it was Sheryl Bird when the announcer said it was Sheryl Crow.
All I wanna do, is have some fun
until the sun comes up over
Santa Monica Boulevarde
Just as we were singing it we were nearly home, driving off the bridge between the twin towns, and the sunset was behind us so everything had a gaudy pink-orange glow and for a second it felt like it could’ve just passed for a Santa Monica Boulevarde. One with chicken take-aways and licensed real estates and icecream parlours and cheap shoe shops and the Salvos, and us driving through it in a big old American pick-up truck with my baby asleep between us.

grumpy

It's pouring and I'm waiting to hear back from a friend to see if we can get a lift into town as there's no food in the house. It's a newish friend of ours, Ray, a Polish former racing-car driver who now breeds miniature horses; they're only as big as dogs. Soon we're going to take Harley to Ray's farm to pet them and have a ride. Should be pretty cool.
We like getting lifts with Ray because he drives a metallic teal-colored vintage Chevy ute called Grumpy. It's funny how people ogle the car, but I just like it because it's so huge that I feel really safe in it. We strap Harley in the middle in his carseat and put Ray's cowboy hat on him and he looks way, way cool.
Come on Grumpy...I'm hungry!
Wish I could just pick up the phone and get home delivery...ah, nostalgia for the city life...

being an idiot

I was obsessing over whether having a personal blog and writing about myself meant that I was terrifically vain and self-absorbed. Yeah, that's meant to be funny. But sometimes I look back on two and a half years of blogging and really feel embarrassed by the inherent narcissism.
I was talking vaguely about this to a blogger mate today and he said, "but who gives a fuck, really?" I realised he was right. Nobody really gives a fuck.
Not family or friends who might sometimes read it out of polite curiosity; nor ex-boyfriends or former colleagues or any other people I know who I might have told or who somehow found out about my blog over the years.
Certainly not the total strangers who read me--they're the ones least likely to give a fuck. Though ironically it's often those people who you actually write for.
"So, have you Googled me yet," I couldn't resist asking a friend a few weeks after I'd mentioned to him that I had some kind of website. He said he didn't know what Googling even was ("I'd like to Google you sweetheart, you know that, heh heh!") and I was kind of relieved.
Nobody gives a fuck. It's a liberating thought.