I Bought A Camera...

Regardless of what the title suggests, this post has nothing to do with a camera, except that  I will  now have no excuse for not including pictures in my posts. I am really rapt in the camera, so it is a bit of a skite as well I guess.

My Beloved is not working this week nor is he helping anyone so that means I have my minion man all to myself. To celebrate this wonderful feat we went into town to visit my sister and pick up her old dining table ( she wanted it gone in that crazy, nesting pregnant lady kind of way and I was happy to buy it off her). We also made crazy plans for the backyard kitchen we are starting on tomorrow and when I say we I actually mean he, I have a HELL of a lot of washing to fold and am running out of reasons why it has not been done, although I did see this picture on Facebook today and it totally made sense to me!

When we were driving to my sister house something caught my eye in the local tip.

'Inspiration!' I said to My beloved who must have curled up into a ball on the inside when he heard it, because that always means I have had an awesome idea, that is totally doable, if you KNOW what you are doing... sadly I don't have that many skills I am more the 'Ideas Man'.

'What?' he asked me, but he had already seen it and knew what was going to be said next.

'Pull in. Come on pull in!' I said frantically waving toward the gates of the tip.

'I will just see if it is available.' I said to him opening the car door before he had come to a full stop and did a kind  of running jump out of the car.

'Be careful' he said.

A few minutes later I came out grinning. 

'Ten bucks.' 

'Oh yeah, don't you actually want to look at it first to make sure it is worth getting? And where the hell are you putting it? And what are you going to do with it?'

'Oh I am getting it! It will be our outdoor table in the backyard, it is perfect, it even has a hole in the middle for the umbrella.' 

By the time we had had that conversation I had jumped back into the car and we had driven one hundred metres and I was out of the car again, this time with my camera. 

'I am taking a picture!' I said. And I did.

As you can tell by My Beloved's  face when it was decided that this cable wheel was coming home with us (tomorrow)  it involved the use of a tape measure and some positive comments on my behalf at how it would fit in the trailer,  'No problem'. That, and my brother, who is at the time of hitting publish blissfully unaware that he is going to help us get in on the trailer. That is until tomorrow when I harass him mercilessly until he agrees ask him nicely to give us a hand.

'It might be too high to be a table love, it is too high for chairs...'

'Yes! But NOT bar stools! I said and then patted his hand and added 'It will be fine, don't worry!'

Once we finally got to my sisters house we talked about the 'Twinnies' and how I could not wait until her little identical twin boys were born and that five weeks was too far away. Then My Beloved and I loaded our 'new' dining table ( yes I KNOW I just finished making a new top for my old one but I have a new 'use' for it now) on to the trailer and then we set off home.

Tying the table down. 

Littlest Miss was enjoying the drive home.

On the way, we stopped at some lights and I saw this sign hanging from the top of a pub and naturally HAD to take a photo. It made me laugh and My Beloved said he would like to start attending...

My Beloved informed me that Husband Day Care was somewhere he might like to go once every few months. But I told him I don't have a husband so I can pay someone else to look after him and he was not going. ;)

Once we were home it was dining table arranging time. Until things change this is what we have decided on.
But things will change. :)

The top needs sanding and varnishing, but we are not too worried about that!

The kids christened it with the first Uno game and of course argument! 

A Letter To A Child That Will Never Be Sent

Dear Son/Daughter

Sometimes mummy just wants you to pick up your toys and stuff without having to scream like a deranged lady. What is so hard about picking up your crap when you are finished with it?

Sometimes Mummy just wants you to have fun that does not involve running and screaming in delight. What is so wrong with having quiet fun, sitting in one spot, not making any noise?

Sometimes Mummy just wants you to eat the food she gives you with a closed mouth and to then silently smile and take your plate to the sink, wash it up and put it in the rack. It is OK if you don’t dry and put it away.

Sometimes Mummy just wants to go to the toilet in peace. She really does not want to solve a problem or decided who had that doll first, you see, the truth is mummy does not care who had it first, she just wants to ‘go potty’.

Sometimes Mummy does not need to hear every single thought you have about well, anything. You don’t always have to tell her about your dreams that you may or may not have had it is OK she does not need to know!

Sometimes Mummy does not care that your brother is looking at you in a way you do not like. Lots of people look at mummy in ways she does not like all the time but you do not see her screaming out ‘don’t looooooooooooook at meeeeeeeee’ even though she might like too.

Sometimes Mummy does not care about that tiny insignificant scratch that sent you inside screaming blue murder, demanding a band aid, you see, you don’t need one, you just need to harden up.

Sometimes Mummy does not want to be your friend any more either, but she does not tell you that.

Sometimes Mummy just wants you to shut the hell up and go to bed. She does not care that you have only just gotten up.

Sometimes Mummy does not care about the boy or girl who is really cute and says funny things. You won’t remember their name in five weeks time so mummy does not want to bother learning it now.

Sometimes Mummy would love to scream ‘Get to the bloody point!’ when you tell a story. Because even though the names have changed the point is always going to be one of a small number of points that have always been the  same as it has for every kid, through out time memorial.


Sometimes Mummy does not want to watch you do that thing, because, well it is not really that good and she wants to keep doing what ever it is she is doing.



Sometimes Mummy just wants to leave you in the shopping centre/car park or vicinity that you are in when you decide to have a tantrum or get the sulks. But she does not. Aren’t you lucky?

But Mummy will ALWAYS love you no matter what you do or say.

LOVE MUMMY
 XXXX

Clean Your Room!

With Miss Independent and Little Miss home from camp ( where they had a fantastic time) and the fact that between them and Miss Thinker they had managed to COMPLETELY trash their room. I figured it was time to do some good old fashioned yelling. Even though My Beloved was asleep and I had a headache, I yelled.

'RIGHT! Get in this room and clean it up!'  The girls walked in to their room huffing and puffing as they went. I lowered my voice then to an inside one and reminded them that I wanted it clean. I wanted everything off the floor and everything put where it belonged. I then told them that if it was a mess when I came back in I would throw everything in the bin!

It was more of a threat than a possibility, at first at least, until for the fourth time in three hours I had to tell the girls to 'get in to it' the fourth time they had gone outside and Miss Independent had actually managed to climb a tree! Things had been done in the room, but not an awful lot and I realised it wasn't going to unless something serious occurred.

Switching off the mains would not work in this particular situation  but garbage bags would and i grabbed the whole roll of them and marched back into the girls room.

'I gave you ample time to do this.' I barked at them as I picked up shoes, books, toys, clothes, bed sheets and school bags of the floor and stuffed them in the bags.  Miss Independent sat on the edge of the toy box silently staring at everything that was going into the bags. Little Miss stood near her bed, thumbnail in between her teeth watching her school folders and uniform get shoved into the bag.

I felt like a bit of a bastard but I had a point to prove and it needed to be proven there and then. So I kept going grabbing at anything and everything touching the floor. Thankfully Miss Thinker was doing just that, thinking, and ran around the room grabbing everything that was hers and putting it up off the floor. I managed to fill three garbage bags. The pillow and doona filled one.

'Ash.' I called out to the Man Child who knew better than to keep a cranky mother waiting appeared pretty quickly.
'Put these bags in the trailer please.'I said and I winked he grabbed two, looked at me confused and walked out of the room. I followed him out and whispered, 'Put them in my room and shhhhh!'

'Why?' he asked

'So the girls get a fright.'

'Why?'

'Don't worry son.'  I sighed 'Just do it please.'

After listening to the girls cry for a few minutes I decided to save more heartache and let them know they had a chance to get their stuff back.  But it could not, under ANY circumstances seem like a backflip on the punishment. Luckily I remembered I had printed some 'clutter jail' cards out I found over at iMOM, a site a friend had shared with me on FB. I knew they would come in handy one day, and they did.

Putting on a brave face. Little Miss was a bit ripped off. The cards she picked to earn her stuff back
were pretty much the WORST cards that you could pick. Dishes for 3 days, Garbage man
for five days, fold four baskets of washing AND bail set at $5. Luckily for her I will consider
everything she does as $5 worth and she gets everything back before school starts... she lost her school stuff!

Miss Independent took it the hardest and was very happy to learn she could earn
her things back (she lost three pairs of shoes and her school bag in the 'round up').
Her cards were clean the bathroom, make your parents bed for four days, do two hours
 yard work and vacuum the carpet. She completed her chores except the yard work which I
will let her think I have forgotten about (shhhhh) so she gets out of it.

Miss Thinker lost very little but she REALLY wanted jobs too, so her pair of shoes and doll
have bail set at $3 and she had to clean the lounge room floor of toys. Her $3 was 'paid off by drying up.

It is true what they say. Parenthood, can be at times one hell of a bluff!  Lucky I have a great poker face!  ;)

Parenthood Are YOU Doing It Right?

I have to laugh at people who don’t have kids. They say the dumbest stuff when it comes to children and ‘ You know what you should do’,six words that can almost instantaneously make my eyes roll, is usually an indication that a dumb statement is about to be made.

These conversations are what I call ‘Humouring Conversations’ they usually start just after a child (yours or someone else's) has done ‘something’ be it a tantrum, failed at something or said something not particularly ideal. Out of social convention more than embarrassment or even care factor at what the other person has seen ( though sometimes it is pure embarrassment) the parent of the child makes a remark like. ‘He/she is so lovely when asleep.’ or a sarcastic ‘That’s my boy/girl.’ perhaps even a heartfelt ‘I don’t know what to do with that child’
That is usually when you hear it…

‘You know what you should do…’

What you would like to say is ‘Please, enlighten me. EVERYBODY knows someone with no children KNOWS everything!’ Instead you say something like, ‘Yes?’ or ‘What?’

The ‘Enlightened One’ then rattles off some crap that you have already tried (99% of the time) or you have not and will not due to the pure stupidity of the suggestion (1% of the time) and really is, of no help what so ever but you always say something nice and gentle in response. They usually go away thinking they have either helped you in your dilemma or believing themselves to be fantastic future parents and you, a ‘poor thing’ that just doesn’t DO it right.

We parents, however laugh a little dismissively to ourselves thinking ‘What a tosser!’ or if we are kind ‘They don’t understand yet, but they will, one day.’ (though more and more often lately, for me at least, it does tend to err on the side of ‘Tosser!’

That is not to say that we as parents ‘know it all’ there are many different ideas and ways of doing things with kids to change behaviours (what works for one child may have absolutely no effect on another) but the chances of a random childless person knowing what those things are, are very slim.

My personal favourite is when your infant/toddler starts a bad habit be it ‘fake crying’ a precursor to the good old fashioned tantrum, because they are starting to learn that if they make the appropriate noises (what ever they happen to be) the chances of getting what they want are greatly increased or a biting/hitting/slapping/pushing etc, etc, etc habit.

‘You should explain to them that they can not do that!’

‘Oh, really? That simple? I cant believe I have never explained that to them! Huzzar!! Problem solved!’ Some one always refers to that child as a brat. They also make these kinds of statements.

‘My child will never do that!’ (Yes. Your child will.  You will think it is ‘cute’ to begin with and it is, to start off with, everything your little bundle of joy does is cute but you need to have actually had a child before to realise it will escalate into not so bloody cute at a later date.)

‘Oh! I would never put up with that!’ ( Yes. You will. Maybe not forever, but you will for some amount of time until they are no longer ‘cute’ or you realise being a good mum does not mean letting your child get everything he or she wants when ever they want. Again, you need to have actually had a child before to know these things.)

‘When we have children they will… ’ (No. They wont. Not unless what ever it is you think they will be doing is still important to you once the child is here and you have got the energy to teach them to do the ‘thing’ in the first place. Of course you need to have actually had a child before to know this.)

‘I will still have time for me/us.’ (Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaha OF COURSE YOU WILL! )

A Week Away

Today was hot. Very hot. I complained most of the morning. I was sorting Miss Independent and Little Misses bags for their five day school camp trip. The girls all tried to help, but all they were really doing was getting me muddled up. I like to be left alone to concentrate I don’t NEED to be left alone, but it certainly does make it easier and quicker if I am!

The List

Toiletries – Tooth paste, tooth brush, soap,sun screen, insect repellent

Day Bag for outings

Sun Hat

Sleeping Bag & Pillow

Old shoes, good shoes and thongs

Socks

Water bottle

Raincoat

2 1Tea Towels

Swimming outfit

2Towels

Fishing Gear

7 Sets of day clothes

Jumper

Jeans

P.J’s

(I added plate,bowl, cup and cutlery to the list just to be sure.)

It seemed simple enough. Until I realised that I did not have a raincoat for either of the girls and decided to just ignore that bit of the list. ( I do hope it was for rain and not to ensure they do not get wet from the spray of the ocean…) I also decided that 2 tea towels was just asking too much and only packed 1 each… surely they can hang the things up to dry over the course of the day/night???

After asking the girls to get their shoes and socks and P.J’s I started grabbing clothes out of the washing basket that had been washed and dried the day before but not put away, and if I was to be really truthful, they wont be put away until tomorrow, at the earliest, my money is on Tuesday however. I decided after a lot of hassle that I was just going to stick a top, a bottom and a pair of undies in piles then roll them up, one for each day, and add a couple of extra undies for ‘just in case’ emergencies.

I managed to pack their school bags with everything they needed. The sleeping bag and pillow were placed in the ‘day bag’ and I threw in some plastic bags for wet stuff, I figure if they actually need that raincoat, they will need the bags.

With the bags packed and My Beloved awake, we decided a trip to the pool was in order and spent the rest of the day swimming and after we were ‘pruney’, eating fish and chips on the foreshore at Tin Can Bay we came home and had a B.B.Q dinner ‘Ala My Beloved’. While it was cooking I unpacked and repacked the bags, just to be sure I had not forgotten anything. I didn’t. 

Everyone is now asleep and I am starting to have second thoughts about this five day holiday they are having… it is on an Island and I am sure the staff would appreciate an extra ‘helper’, besides I am nervous about their first trip away from me. Five days is a long time and I don’t think I can take it!

Mapping Out My Dining Table ‘Make Over’

I was sitting down with a cuppa waiting for the rest of the undercoat to dry before I finally finished the outside wall, with my mind already on a few projects I wanted to do. One of them was the lay out in our living area. It is open plan and the lounge dining and kitchen all meld into one. I considered bringing the square 8 seater table back inside and taking my rectangular wooden table out. The idea to paint it all white was becoming hard to resist.

But then I found this post by Kristine over at The Painted Hive.  She had the brilliant idea to give an old coffee table a new look simply by using a map to cover the top. Her post explains it all so check it out if it intrigues you. I have an old pull down school map, the same map that hung on the walls of my class room growing up. I had the opportunity to buy it two years ago and I have been loving it but desperately trying to ‘find’ the right place for it ever since.

My Beloved and I do not share the same taste in decorating and a school map is definitely NOT on his list of interior must haves, it is, however on mine!

‘Just get rid of it.’ he’d say to me when ever I’d wonder aloud where it should go.

‘No, I’ll get rid of you first!’ I’d always say.

But looking at the post of a map covered coffee table had me ecstatic. YES!!! That is what I will do with it. I thought and dragged the rolled up map out from under my bed. It is perfect, I am looking for a new ‘top’ for the dining table as the current one is quite possibly the most grotesque top known to man kind! Stained and yucky MDF, basically.

I will paint the table top white, I will sand back and give the legs a clear varnish as the colour of the wood is not too light and I love the grain in it. Not only that, it would look awesome against the colours of the map. I have decided to ‘decoupage’ the map to the table top. I will do that with varnish. Clear, high gloss varnish ( the stuff they use for floorboards as it is a table top and I want it to last). I will ‘glue’ it down with varnish then just give the map and the table top coat after coat of varnish until I am satisfied that it is well and truly covered. I will then get a piece of glass to sit on top, for added protection.

Then, before you can say ‘Wallah!’ I will have a beautiful table with out costing too much, that is unique and definitely to my tastes with very little actually spent to get it! ( I am choosing to completely disregard the cost of the glass) and if the cost is ridiculous there are many different thicknesses of clear plastic that you can buy from well, somewhere. ;p

I am off in the morning to buy a tin a varnish… I can’t wait for this project to begin!

Switching Off The Mains

A very weird thing happened today. The Man Child's room was cleaned, by him, in about ten minutes. It has been very difficult of late, and when I say that I actually mean since he was about five, to get him to clean his room properly and to get him to clean it with out sounding as though I have asked him to cut off a limb has probably only ever happened once, maybe twice.

Because I set my self a task of painting and de cluttering the kitchen and giving all cupboards a thorough wash. I was in no mood to have to repeat my request and at some point storm into his room threatening some kind of evil if he did not get his butt into gear.  So I gave him three chances, well technically two. I called out from the kitchen the first time.

'Ash.'

'Yeah?'

'Clean your room mate.'

'Yeah in a sec.'

'No, now please.'

'Yeah.'

A few minutes later I could still hear a faint drone of the Xbox racing game he was playing. I grabbed a tea towel and dried my hands as I walked to his room. 

'Listen,' I said to him as I stood between him and the TV ' It will take you all of five minutes. Pick up this crap.' I asked as I pointed to a pile of clothes on the floor with my foot. 'Hang up that.' I added pointing to a pile of shirts and shorts. 'Then empty your bin. It isn't rocket science. Don't make me have to ask you again, right!'

'Yeah, OK I just have too...'

'No, you don't have to do anything. Clean your room.' I walked out of the room and shut the door behind me and went back to the washing up. I listened for signs of movement in the Man Child's room and I couldn't hear any. After a minute I opened the door slightly and caught sight of his arms and the control of the Xbox. Right I thought. I'll fix you! Without saying a word I turned around and walked out the door towards the power box. I opened the door and flicked the mains switch to off. I shut the door and walked back inside and continued to wash up.

'What?' I heard him mutter to himself after obviously realising the power point and leads were not the problem. 'Hey MUUUUUM.' he called to me.

'I switched the power off, it will be on when the things I want done have been done.'

'What?? Are you serious?' he whined

'As cancer.' I said

It was ten minutes later I walked into his room to check on his progress. He was not in it, but it was clean. The clothes were even hung up properly instead of quickly flopped over a hanger.

Good to know! Good to know! I thought as I walked out and shut the door behind me, I'll be doing that more often.