Minor Annoyances

More from the Ill-fated Cooking Chronicles. Wednesday night is my night for making a bit of an effort, cooking wise. I teach Monday, Tuesday and Thursdays, and Fixit generally has beer night on Fridays so Wednesday is the night where theoretically we could sit down, enjoy the meal with a glass of wine and no rush.

This Wednesday's menu plan was based on some rather fine looking steaks, (possibly New York fillet? but lacking a real cook's eye for detail, I can't be sure of that) to be served with raw carrot matchsticks, oven-roasted potatoes with garlic and rosemary and a red wine and mustard jus.

It's all going quite well. Like I say, I do try with my cooking. But Fixit is much later than usual. So what with the boys' bedtime looming, I leave it all sitting on the benchtop ready to serve when the kids are down.

Anyway. There I am reading Climber the Secret Garden when Fixit finally gets home. So he assumes that I've eaten and as the boys are in control, he goes off to look at the dinner situation. There's a few pots and pans scattered everywhere, so as the chief dish-doer in the household he rinses and stacks a few of these. Bam, good-bye red wine jus, down the sink. When he sees 2 steaks sitting there he doesn't click that I'm still unfed. He assumes there's a spare for his lunch tomorrow, so he packs it away in a lunch container with some of the potatoes. Then he cuts into his steak and finds it too rare for his liking so he sloshes a liberal amount of oil back in the frying pan and and re-cooks, achieving a medium-rare interior but a greasy, slightly burnt exterior. And then proceeds to knock off all the carrot matchsticks. I of course ruin my steak the same way when I return to the scene of the crimes.

But at least I had a glass of wine.

**************************

Yesterday the Climber's school was closed for industrial action. I considered doing the "Fill the 'G" - I love a protest rally as much as the next person - but I didn't fancy being in a large venue full of stairs and Jimmy Barnes with 2 little 'uns. Call me crazy.


We had a great time at Scienceworks instead, it is a fantastic museum; very hands-on and lots of fun activities.

****************************

On our way there, we passed a car where I noticed a youngish looking mum talking and cooing and adoring her baby in the back seat. Isn't that nice I thought. I used to do that when I had only one child.

A bit further on, I am stopped at the red light. I glance in the rear view mirror and realise its the same mother approaching us, and she is still so busy cooing backwards at her baby that she is going to run up the arse of me. I just have time to get my foot off the brake when biff!!

We jump out to inspect the damage. Letting go the brake has minimised the impact. I am just thinking of something soothing and nice to say, like aren't kids distracting? because I wasn't angry, although I was a little bit jumpy, when we noticed a scrape of her paint on my bumper so I leaned closer to look, as did she. Which resulted in her head-butting me. Which hurt. So instead of saying something soothing and nice as intended, what actually came out of my mouth was:

Oh, fucking hell!

So this poor chick thinks I'm being aggro now, and says I didn't mean to do that you know which of course I knew and I say I'm sorry I'm jumpy you've just hit my car and now you've head-butted me.

I was thoroughly unnerved by the whole thing and the lights had changed so I said I wasn't going to pursue anything because there was no damage and I jumped in and drove off.

And so did she, but I know that she would have had to pull over again almost immediately because she's got a lovely delicious baby in the back and all she was doing was loving it and it all went horribly wrong because of the grumpy bitch in the white car, and she would have felt guilty and unnerved and jumpy and wronged and she would have burst into tears.

So I feel good about myself.

The Cherub's Day

The Cherub was at creche today. We're driving home, and I'm asking his big brother the Climber about school when a little voice pipes up.

Cherub: Max hit Timberley in the face
SG: Max hit Kimberley* in the face?
Cherub: Yeah. And Timberley drumpy wis him.
SG: Kimberley was grumpy with him? Did she say No Hitting Max
Cherub: Yeah. And Max cried.

Fast forward to later tonight. Both boys have been in bed for 30 minutes.Climber has crashed out immediately (school is very tiring). Cherub is taking his sweet time about falling asleep. He calls me. He needs a drinky watter. Fixit comes in too because he loves this time when Cherub is placid and adorable.

SG: You tell Fixit. What did Max do to Kimberley at creche?
Cherub: Max hit Timberley in the head wis a spade.
SG: Was Kimberley cross?
Cherub: Yeah. And she say No Hitting Max (pointing his own little fat finger, emphasising each word)
SG: And what did Max do?
Cherub : He have to say sorry to Timberley. Max cried. And Max sit.
SG: And were you grumpy today Cherub?
Cherub: Yeah. I sad.
Fixit: Were you grumpy?
Cherub: (points to his eyebrow) Yeah. And dis go down. (pushes eyebrow down to show us)
Fixit & SG : (exchange doting glances with each other)
Cherub: (by this time standing up in his cot and feeling pretty pleased with himself for keeping us in there, embellishes the "grumpy" face by frowning the eyebrows , closing his eyes and smiling his widest cheeky grin)
Fixit & SG : Good night Cherub.

Recorded for posterity because I just want to remember these moments when he's a surly, smelly teenager.

*Creche carer. Lovely girl. Cherub adores her.

Stompin'

Happy me, Stomper Girl. As opposed to happy mother of gorgeous children or contented in my personal life. Because I did something quite cool today and it went well and I'm quite excited. Me, in my professional capacity. A guest artist.

I am not above grumbling its not what you know but who you know when I think someone undeserving has got a gig that I might have done. But I am also quite happy to benefit from the same system, believe you me. Having my cake and eating it too. That was me today.

I was a bit nervous but they were all so nice. Took a few takes. Completely dried up on the first one!

But I think it sounds good!
*pleased wriggle and happy smile*

Shopping

This is the little haul of books I got from the election day fete thing at the school down the road. They wanted to charge me $2 for the lot, but I talked them up to $5. My friend Nell says I don't understand how haggling works.

Today Nell and I went into the city for my first stab at Christmas shopping this year. We had one of those letters giving families and friends of Myer an extra discount on top of the big sale already on. Not that I fall into that category but I know someone who knows someone who does if you see what I mean. I wish I'd taken my camera, it was such a good Melbourne experience. Could have had a visual record of the lovely hologrammatic stars they've decorated the tram lines with this year, the Myer Christmas windows and the nice little laneway cafe where we had lunch for a start. Anyway, you'll be pleased to hear that I saved a lot of money today with all that shopping! And Nell and I had a nice time, we shop well together.

I find this part of Christmas weird and stressful. Having to do this mad amount of shopping, making, feeding, partying and consuming. And this huge emphasis our society places on "stuff" - get the latest, get the designer version, get it with bonus features. We already have a mountain of stuff in our house. I can't keep up with it all from a housewifely point of view. But in a month's time we'll have even more. Madness. And trying to do it on a shoestring budget gives me a tension headache.

I'm trying to make sense of all this blatant commercialism and consumerism by:

• imagining the pleasure on the faces of people when they open the gift I chose specially for them. (Fingers crossed!)
  
• giving people charity presents (like a year of school supplies for a Bangladeshi child) along with their Myer-sale booty.
  
• trying to do a little making/baking of some presents to make them personal.
• explaining the story of Christmas to the kids (even though we are not a religious household).

The part of Christmas I love is the creating of the Christmas atmosphere in our house. I like making my own Christmas cards, and last year we decorated our own wrapping paper. I love putting up the tree (a real one so the house is full of that gorgeous pine smell). I love wrapping the presents and putting them under the tree. I even loved making the kids personalised Christmas stocking which involved sewing. I love helping the kids do a letter to Santa. I love leaving beer and carrots out for Santa and the reindeers. I'm just a big kid.

There's so much more to do. It's not even December.

But at least I've started.

Angelina Angelina please bring down your concertina

If I could afford it I would be a regular purchaser of trashy mags. This is frowned upon by several people like for example Fixit, but I say how can I be expected to perform well at Trivia Nights if I'm not well-versed in popular culture? Anyway, when I have spare cash or if the cover story grabs me, I will slip one in the grocery shop. My last one

(NW featuring Britney Spears:
how she dumped loser Kev by SMS and lost 25KG)

came with a free tote bag - my choice of "I lost my boyfriend in Paris" (tacky) or "Angelina Stole My Husband" which I thought was quite funny, so sucked in, I bought the mag.

***************

The Climber has been doing school swimming lessons. And I'm very underwhelmed by them. Climber does weekly swim classes at another pool and he's getting very good. He has a fantastic teacher Simon (and I don't mind perving on one of his colleagues, a spunky peroxided tattooed Adonis who is so cool he looks attractive in the budgie-smugglers and yes, I've caught myself trying to check them out but the water level is too high)... Anyway. Where was I?

Oh yes. So. I've been a parent-helper, coming on the bus and assisting in the changerooms on Cherub's creche days and on the days when I have Cherub at home we tend to turn up anyway, bring the car and lend a hand so I can watch the class. The school told us all about the benefits of 2 weeks of classes for the preps and I suppose most of the kids have really improved, particularly those who have never done any swimming. But I feel like its been the worst $85 I've spent recently. This is why:

• Climber's teacher (lets call him S) clearly dislikes young kids and looks tired and frustrated when they chat, play or muck around. Hello, what does he think 5 and 6 year-olds do in the water?
  
• During the first week there was this ghastly incident involving Andrew, the weakest swimmer in that class, who was clearly being asked to do things outside his skill and confidence level and S started hounding him, barking in his face "get off the wall Andrew, we're not stopping this till you get it right" for almost half the class while the rest of them were virtually ignored. Andrew kind of took it on the chin at the time, being a nice little kid, but he was apparently in tears till 10.30 that night and adamant that he wouldn't go back to class.
• A few discussions took place (I ended up telling the school the next day after worrying about it all night) and things never got that bad again. But now Andrew's parents and I attend EVERY class.
• Because of the Andrew debacle, S started to teach by standing on the edge of the pool rather than getting in with the kids.
• This meant Climber stopped listening because he responds much better to face-to-face teaching as opposed to orders barked from on high.
• I think that S decided Climber was a troublemaker because of the not-listening thing so S started ignoring Climber. Well that's my theory. I know he never seemed to see the fact that Climber would be doing the wrong stroke up the pool or was 'cheating' by pulling himself along the wall.
• I had a talk with Climber saying this is not good and if you want to improve you need to listen and try hard.
• The next day he did and he swam the lap as asked, got to the end looked over at me and said "Did I do good?" and S barked at him "No you did NOT do good because you are not listening to me."

I'm just so unbelievably frustrated by this. I feel like bursting into tears when I watch it. And the crazy thing is that because Climber is exhausted from these daily classes, we haven't been able to attend his regular classes (despite still having to pay for them of course) where he gets quality tuition and is achieving like gangbusters. But there's only one more day to go and I can't be bothered, I'm not going to watch it and put myself through the stress. We'll be back with the lovely Simon on Monday. And the cute blondie.

On a nicer note, turns out Climber has a new girlfriend, made during the bus-rides to and from the pool. Her name is Angelina. They love to hug. They find each other in the crowd, smile and then ask "Cuddle?" and then wrap their arms around each other. It's just so nice. I looked at him today as he stood there tall and handsome, with his arm casually and affectionately round her shoulders and was staggered by how like his father he is!!

The class is at the end of the day, so when I have the car there is the option for him to come with me back to school rather than ride the bus. He said today that he wanted to come in the car, but then in the line-up, he and Angelina found each other. I said "are you coming in the car with me or do you want to cuddle Angelina on the bus?"

He chose the bus.

So Angelina stole my husband. And now she's after my son.

Hey Jude

Our boys have many good friends in their life.
Jude is one of them.

Jude is in the boys' extra-good books this month, because she was kind enough to send them a copy of the dvd of Cars. Jude quite often sends them cool presents like this, because not only is she a very kind and thoughtful person, she is also quite well connected in the relevant trade.

So lately we've been obsessed with all things racecar in our house. All the matchbox cars we own are on the floor or being clutched by a small pair of hands when we leave the house.

The artwork has changed.

(Guido)

(Mater)






The games have changed. There seems to be a constant hum of screeching tires or crash noises emanating from one or both of them. Somtimes they race each other on foot, or on the bikes outside. Other times they sprawl on the floor and let the matchboxes do the talking. Climber can quote quite large chunks of Cars dialogue verbatim.


It's been what you might call a smash ! Many, many thanks to Jude for making 2 little wheels-freaks very happy.

Burnt Bog Girl

Cartoon by Kaz Cooke
Her work has made me laugh many times in the last 20 years of my life.
(Good Lord has it really been that long?)

Burned the bloody dinner AGAIN last night. Well, the underneath of it anyway, ie the bit that got too hot at the bottom of the saucepan. When I say dinner, please note it was also the bulk batch of bolognese sauce for freezing. With which I'd taken some actual time and effort, using my Stephanie recipe and fresh herbs from the herb garden. Grrrr.

At an (apparently) critical moment I got called away to spend some quality one-on-one time with the Climber to help him build lego.

And when I came back there was a burnt, charred smell in the kitchen.

And yes, the whole batch has a distinctly smoky flavour now.

And the third thing Fixit said as he walked in the door (after Hello and What's for dinner?) was What have you been burning now?

And today apparently my new name is "Burnt Bog Girl"

*****************************************

So today I'm wondering why so many people actually enjoy cooking. All that work for what, 15 minutes pleasure? The way you HAVE to stay in one place to make sure you don't mess it up. No guarantee at the end of your slaving that the little fusspots you cater for will actually eat it. Likelihood of culinary efforts being met with an affronted look and a suspicious voice telling you they don't like it before they've even tried it. And going through the same grind almost every bloody night. Thank God for Take-Away Night. And my favourite, the very rare Eating Out At A Restaurant Night. (Take me out, someone, anyone...pleeeease!!)

signed (grumpily, refer cartoon above)

BBG