right up my alley

Last weekend we went to a couple of barbeques despite the chill. The park on saturday was in autumn leaf glory so we drank enough to keep warm and farewelled a mate who's off east.


On sunday we went to a friend's place in Freo that has the best back laneway i've seen in town. There are artsy types in the houses that back onto that alley so there are all sorts of wondrous things to see including a whole row of skateboard masks hung on a fence and many other curiosities. Oh Freo - i love you.

(i don't know what happened to that picture when i uploaded it - the colours have inversed, you can click on the image to see what they really look like).

a bit prickly

I've just been reading a post by Christi Nielsen at I'm Just About to Get Skinny (wow i made a link) and i, like her am agog at what has become the latest exercise craze. Pole dancing has become mainstream - our local free rag carries ads and runs articles about it, 'studios' are opening up all over town and i for one am embarrassed for women. I can't see how striving to be a sex object or a male fantasy is liberating. How is it 'empowering' or let's face it, even dignified, to pretend to have sex with a pole?
And don't get me started on g-strings, holy christ!
Sheesh, back to the garden. It's Autum!

the garden's drowning in leaves
- and the cactuses are flowering.

arty farty party

I've just been posting over at my other blog about some of the thrillingly cheap pictures we have on our walls and it reminded me of a party we went to a few years ago where everybody had to turn up with a piece of 'art' that they'd made, which was duly hung and exhibited for the night. It was a great idea and there was some really funny stuff - no one was what you'd call an artist, mainly scientists and engineers. My 'piece' was inspired by my nut and shell souvenirs that i like so much and was made out of boab nuts, carob and eucalypt pods, sea sponges and pipecleaners and mounted on a mat that i'd woven from a flax which had died in the garden. A flurry of pompoms and voila. And....it lit up!
Mr M produced a very elegant work consisting of little numbers that he'd pulled off lamp posts at a redundant lamp post depot. Who'd have known there was such a thing.
I think my favourite of the night though, was Ice Stallion which consisted of a small picture of a rearing horse carved out of ice standing next to a bowl of melting ice blocks.

new stuff

Here is the latest addition to the stuffs family. This one was for my older nephew who after seeing his brother's asked if i could make him one based on one of his drawings. I think they like the idea of designing their own toys and have big plans for a huge collection of them. Ehem, not sure what i've started here.

more green goodness

It's a gorgeous sunny autum sunday but the girls don't want to get out of their pyjamas so we won't be going anywhere. I'm just spending a lazy day wandering around the garden.

tin mule

I've long admired those little metal plaques that people used to put on the front of their houses in the 50s and 60s of say a mexican asleep under a palm tree or a donkey wearing a sombrero (i know, i need help) but when we moved into our own 60s cream brick monster i decided we needed one too. I knew i'd never turn anything up at a garage sale so when i noticed a nice example on a nearby house i snapped a little pic. With a bit of photoshop and illustrator i scaled up a template which i drew onto a piece of tin and then spent three days tinsnipping out and painting. It's now screwed to the front wall of the house, not noticed by anyone but me. Ahhh the things you do.

hippy birdy to you

Between us this weekend Romany and i racked up 48 years. Her party was a raucous affair with wild dancing, revelry and broken heirlooms (a tasteful boab nut and shell ensemble), and mine was a gentle soiree at the river with champagne, stacks of kids, ball games, dolphins passing at sunset and sadly, no wild dancing.

down to dunny

We've just spent the last week in Dunsborough in one of the last remaining original beach shacks. Every time we go down, there are more 3 storey glass and steel resort villas along the beach which are embarrassingly ostentatious and charmless but probably a feck of a lot more comfortable than where we stayed. I was smitten with the 1950s kitchen decor and gorgeous green bathroom but not so crazy about the 1950s sheet of lead covering the bathroom floor and the fact that there were no sofas! Call me old but on holiday i like to have a bit of a lounge on a lounge.





Luckily there were other attractions like beautiful bush and coastal walks, caves, lots of wine and the church op shop open on fridays where i was delighted to score six badmington bats and two shuttlecocks for three bucks.

flores

Here are some amazing flowers, that i've put under a piece of glass, that Mark picked off a bush last time he was in Exmouth. He thinks it was some kind of native and reckons the flowers looked just like little birds even when they were hanging on the plant. I've got no idea what the plant is but i'd love to find out. And on the same theme, here are a couple of things that are flowering in the garden at the moment.

sun, sea, surf and beached cattle

I had a surfing lesson yesterday. Something i wasn't too thrilled about especially since we had to head off to the beach at 8:30am and we'd been drinking merrily the night before bidding farewell to Mr Moon who's gone to live in Melbourne. Due to having to organise the girls and general bumbleheadedness we didn't take the camera so there's no proof that i did actually manage to get my feet underneath me a couple of times. The rest of the time my legs got tangled in a heap and i'd end up riding my board sidesaddle like i was the queen mum, until i was dumped face-first in 2cm of water. For some reason i never got the hang of jumping off the board before i bit the sand but it sure was fun - i'm ready to do it again.

Afterwards we wandered down to Cottesloe for the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition and ate lunch admiring three bleached, bloated cow carcasses which appeared to have washed up onto the beach from a passing livestock ship. Lots of fun there too, pity we didn't have the camera! In fact because there's no photographic evidence of any of these events here's a picture of a packet of prawn crackers. I love that box.

increases jeers around the street

Since my girls both started school full time six weeks ago i've been busier than i even was when i had them at home. I was expecting to be lazing around doing cryptic crosswords at my leisure but there's been no time for that. I've played tennis, been to my doctor, been to a wedding and put up at least eight shelves including these ones.


I ordered security screen doors which took weeks of organising, made an arm pouch to carry the ipod and noticed that our old lounge suite needed a revamp which, because i'm too miserly to pay anyone to do anything for me, i decided to do myself. Behold before and after.





Hopefully, once i'm over the novelty of being able to do what i want, i'll stop wanting to change and fix everything and just chill out (or do some housework... or get a job). Who knows?

the best mum in the whole university

Just so i remember to appreciate how lucky i am these days with my two beautiful girls here's something i found that i wrote down a couple of years ago when they were two and four.
"Today wasn't as bad as yesterday but it was pretty awful. I wonder if all this yelling and swearing is going to have any harmful long-term effect on me. Not to mention the girls.
Romany dropped a full bowl of weeties and milk all over the red shag rug (I didn't shout about that). They fought and yelled about who'd have the doll pram and Romany poured water all over the bench (a full kilo tub of honey yesterday). Bonny didn't want to eat what i made for lunch (french toast), so we went to King's Park in desperation to get out of the house. It was freezing but we stayed for two hours and a couple of times i lost Bonny and had to search around in a panic til i found her. When we got home i was exhausted and tried to read the paper while they went upstairs. I told Bon "let me know if Romany does anything naughty, i don't want her in the dressing room". After half an hour of blissful silence i found them covered in my moisturisers, mascara, makeup and lip balms with great chunks cut out of their hair and gunk smeared all over the walls, windows and Mark's clothes. All the teddies and dolls were wearing sanitary napkins. I was mad. They cried and complained until dinner and as i was making it Romany pulled a whole bowl of peas onto the kitchen floor."

greens are good for you

Some of the things i love in my garden

socks and stuffs

Just before christmas i ordered a copy of John Murphy's Stupid Sock Creatures from amazon and these guys are my first attempt. They are both, let's say, based on patterns in the book but the instructions were so detailed and lengthy and i'm so lazy that i found shortcuts and fudging was neccessary. I was surprised how tricky they were to make requiring lots of cursing so i think i'll be sticking to my own simple designs like these from now on.


This last critter is a toy i made for my nephew based on one of his drawings. Might do a whole series of these, i've got a great collection of beautiful kids' drawings stashed away.


This page looks a bit clunky but I might eventually sort out this formatting lark.

un ojo

When i met my aunty Mary twenty years ago she told me about a dream she'd had that an old boyfriend had given her a kitten as a present which had three eyes. She said for her it was a very special present and that it was typical of that particular person to give her something so exotic and unusual. I thought at the time that if it had been my dream, a kitten with three eyes would have horrified me and not been the least bit enchanting. Almost ten years later i had my own version of the dream but the kittens had eyes all over their bodies. One had two rows down its belly like teats and there were spare eyes scattered all over the floor. In the chaotic frustration of my dream i even managed to tread on a couple on the kitchen floor. A few years later i was walking throught a food market in Madrid and i felt something dollop up against the side of my boot. I looked down and saw an enormous eyeball skittering across the floor. The look on my face sure gave the butcher a good laugh.

dream archive #1

I recently found this dream that i'd written down years ago -

Mum had opened a really expensive and exclusive restaurant and i went along one night to check it out. She was flitting around and talking to customers and i watch one guy order and entre that costs $800. When it arrives it's four boiled chicken drumsticks standing upright in a white cup. He starts eating and when he's not looking i pinch one to see if it's worth the money. It's stuffed with little bits of broccoli but just tastes like boiled chicken. When he's finished he complains about the size of the serving for the price. My (then) two year old is with me and she falls asleep on a bed that's there. I decide to leave her and go and see mum who's gone home to fix up a piece of furniture she wants to sell. She lives just down the street so i walk. She's stripping an old art deco cupboard so i leave her and go back to the restaurant. When i get back they're clearing up and talking about going for a drink and a smoke. I'm invited but my nephews have turned and i need to do something with them so i ask the staff if they have my sister's number and a girl says here i'll phone Wendy (not my sister) so i say what's the use of that, where's mum's or sister's numbers? I can't find them on a list by the phone, then Wendy answers but she cant hear me. They tell me i need a token but by the time i get one she's hung up. I'm starting to become furious and really start abusing them for being so disorganised. I take my daughter and the boys out into the street still yelling at the restaurant staff (gawd). We head over to my car but when i get there i notice my doors are open, the radio's gone, the battery's gone and there's an electrical cord running from the ignition into the house in front. Through the window i can see some girls and i pull out the cord. There's yelling from inside the house and someone comes to the door and starts threatening me. I run telling the kids to follow me but when i look back my baby's run the other way and gone inside the house. I turn back and run into the house to get her. As i pick her up a short guy with huge arms starts making gestures to hit me and is chasing me around the kitchen. The others in the house are laughing at me and how terrified i am and i wake up. It's a normal day

big pumpkin

Along with all the prickly things in the garden we sometimes manage to grow edible stuff. We picked this butternut yesterday and Bonny took it to school in the stroller for news.

about me

I'm 43 (what!?) and over the last 20 odd years I've:
lived in five different cities in four countries;
visited or travelled in around ten other countries;
graduated from three universities;
failed to start a career;
had at least twenty different jobs including graphic design, language teaching, chalkboard illustration, casino work, tutoring and fruit pickin’;
lived at about thirty addresses including around twenty shared households;
made most of my own clothes;
kept a diary of my long, lucid and vividly violent nightmares;
ridden a motorbike for two years;
hitched 3000km in three days;
learnt two new languages;
moved back to the place I grew up, settled down and had two gorgeous daughters.
So now I spend all my time:
debating with my partner in this latest adventure the best way to bring up a couple of civilised humans;
cutting bread into tiny triangles (or big squares depending on the latest preference);
refusing people nutella for breakfast;
feeling guilty for feeding people nutella for breakfast;
moderating my alcohol intake to the recommended number of 'units' per day;
realising I've consumed double the recommended number of alcohol units;
growing bromeliads;
jogging;
making my own clothes
and putting dinner on the table EVERY SINGLE NIGHT OF THE WEEK!