My Baby love

Meet my new baby - Bela.
And if one more person asks "who's Bela Lugosi?" I will cry. Apparently it's correctly pronounced Bay-la (I have this on good authority from the crazy Hungarian mortuary manager at work), but we are sticking with the western version. This of course, means everybody thinks his name is Bella and that he is a girl. We figure once he's a fully grown 85kg fuck off satanic looking rotty he will not be mistaken for a female. His Dad is very scary looking, we're hoping Bela takes after him. So we now own the two most dangerous breeds of dogs.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1058122/posts
Although Rose is a Staffy, it's a fine line and most people consider Staffys "pit bulls" anyway. So our member of the most dangerous breed in the world currently has chunks of skin missing from her face as the puppy latches onto her cheeks and hangs there, running after her. She won't tell him off. We explain to her that she should be tough and not let him hurt her, but she just looks at us with a pained expression as Bela launches himself and lands on her head.
As with all small animals and children, he has perfected the look of "me?? Never!!" Last night the two of them were snuggled in the lounge room asleep. We have been locking them in the laundry (dog door to outside) to save the carpet from puddles and our stuff from destruction. But last night they looked so cute and had been so good I decided to let them stay in the lounge. I turned off the lights and left the room. 4 seconds later there was a puddle in the hallway and Bela was racing around with my slipper in his mouth.
He's not quite the toy poodle the girl wanted, but he's soft and floppy and has ridiculous paws. We love him.
Read more!

Applause

Oh dear, V1 is having a '82 night. Oh the nostalgia! They just played Flock of Seagulls. I find myself sitting here thinking "their hair isn't that bad!". Oh dear! Indeed! Last night I sat with two very dear girlfriends and we watched Barbarella then The Party. Funnily enough, as I type this "Hungry like the wolf" is playing on the telly. Duran Duran - mad scientist or bunch of pretty boys playing music? Barbarella - aw, I just can't summarise or comment. It just is.
It was a nice night. Unfortunately, as what usually happens when I have been separated from the child for 24 hours - my tiredness overwhelmed and I crashed out early. I wanted to, and needed to sit up late and drink too much and talk silly, girly shit, but I fell asleep. C'est la vie.
The next day I went to a party, that I had helped arrange, for my Grandmother. She turned 85 in March and I was upset no-one had made a fuss. She's got six kids for fuck's sake - could one of them organise something? Anyway, her brother and I got together and put together something of a party. He invited a bunch of people from the "other side" of the family - meaning her other brother's kids. Her other brother died in the early '70's. I remember him vaugly, remember his grandkids as spoilt shits I didn't like. Anyway, I re-met a couple of them today. Yeah, they're boguns, but nice enough.
A couple of my first cousins were there too. One I had a bonding evening with a few of years ago, not too long after I split with my girl's father. Her and her sister and I had dinner at my house, drank several bottles of wine between us, then decided to hurl the empty bottles at X's house. This was relatively easy as he was living in the house across the road. Bottles hit the house, landed in the yard and on the roof. Unfortunately he wasn't home and all we did was freak out his house mates.
Regardless, the display of solidarity warmed my heart and I have had a particular fondness for my cousins ever since.
In my family we have a tradition: at birthdays we clap out the birthday person's age. I have never met anyone else who does this. It's weird, but it's something that seems to be OURS. My cousin and I laughed about how we love this tradition. She's still young enough to not fully comprehend the humiliation of having your age clapped out and it takes so long the kids get bored.
I have really bad wog envy: I've got so many friends who have rich, cultural family backgrounds. Italians who tell stories of proscuitto making, Greeks who have red egg breaking contests at Easter, Indians who have a family recipe for garam masala and then there's us - we clap at birthdays. It's not much, but it's OURS.
We clapped 85 times for my Grandmother, we clapped 62 times for my mother and we clapped 40 times for me. And I was happy.
We are emotionally bankrupt, boguns and strangers to each other, but we clap. Read more!

Here is an exerpt from an email I received from a friend, it gorgeously describes the agony of being a parent. We had a heart-breaker this morning. J was 1st reserve for the school excursion to Jamberoo Water Park. He'd been looking forward to this for so long. The fact that we’d missed a definite booking had been beyond our control. If someone didn’t show, were they going to call us? We didn’t know. So I said to him you wake me in the morning. He sets his alarm – but forgets to turn it on. At 6.50am I wake up, then he and I are racing. Me in my pyjamas and he tossing ‘last minutes’ into his bag. I didn’t curse any drivers out loud, but in my head they got called a lot of things. We arrived just as the busses were pulling out the end of the street. “2 seats free”, his friend texts back. Were they stopping in Goulbourn on the way? No. So what now? Do I drive to Wollongong in my pyjamas? Run the bus off the side of the highway?

But alas, as the lone tear rolled from my son’s cheek in the car on the way home, there was only the thought that there was a hard lesson to be learnt. If he’d been cranky, it would have been easier for me to justify that it wasn’t meant to have happened for him today. But he had his emotions in check and the false words of “Its okay mum” even though it clearly wasn’t.

What to do for the rest of the day? Go into work late for starters. Eat pancakes at the mall and enjoy our iced chocolate/coffees. We went to play ‘nerds’ with the electronics people in three shops. Hopefully one of the surround-sounds will work this evening. He got his first real adult size winter jacket (someone will appreciate my kidney I’m sure) and then arrive at work..

I read this with tears in my eyes. Fuck this gig!! It never gets any easier! The problems just take on a different twist. How do you comfort your child when they have been ripped off? Pancakes can work in the very short term, but ultimately the damage is done.

Our instinct is to protect our children from all the horrors and pain in the world, of course we can't, but we do our best to delay their introduction to the harsh realities of life. But are we helping or hurting with our insistence on fairies and easter bunnies?
The first job I had when I left Uni was with a company that underpaid their workers and had such bad safety protocols that our health was compromised. I organised to bring the Unions and WorkSafe in. Everybody else got a pay rise and back pay, I got sacked. One person (from about 60) thanked me. I did manage to sue the company for unfair dissmissal and got my back pay and a small compensation. It bought me a very nice, top of the range, mountain bike.
My next job was with Australia's top research organisation (critically stuffed and irreversibly rooted organisation). I made the "mistake" of giving my opinion when asked for it. I was very politely informed I should perhaps leave (no pressure, we're not sacking you, but if you stay your life will be shit).
At the end of all this my biggest source of rage wasn't with the bastards who had shafted me, who had valued their profit over my sinuses (which still give me hell 15 years later), who had supported a grossly incompetent manager over their staff - it was with my mother. Of all the lies I had believed: Santa, Easter Bunny, Fairies etc, the worst one and the hardest one to come to terms with was "work hard, do a good job and you will be rewarded". The realisation that this is complete crap shook me to the core. It destroyed my work ethic and any desire I may have to be loyal to an employer.
So back to my previous point - do I protect my girl? Do I shield her from all the pain and crap we have to deal with as adults? Or do I grab her, shake her and (to quote Long Kiss Goodnight) yell "life is pain!".
No, I can't do it. To destroy the clear and beautiful innocence of a child is truly one of the greatest crimes. She is my first child and she will be my only child, she is the recipient of all my parenting mistakes - there will be no redemption with the second. So, I shall insist to my gorgeous girl: believe in fairies, believe in true love and believe in justice. You have an adulthood of hurt ahead of you, but for now - be a child, remain innocent for as long as you can. I'm here to help pick up the pieces when reality crashes in; I hope she starts liking pancakes.
Read more!

Sticky Date Pudding

Here is the world's ultimate sticky date pudding recipe
This recipe is from Andrew Blake, of the now defunct Blake's resaurant at Southbank in Melbourne. He attributed it to someone called Poonie.
Poonie, you are incredible. Andrew, the best meal I have ever had in my life was at you restaurant. I love you both.

POONIE'S ICKY STICKY DATE AND CHOCOLATE PUDDING WITH BUTTERSCOTCH SAUCE

430g brown sugar
240g unsalted butter
250g cream
175g dates
1 tsp bicarb
300ml boiling water
60g unsalted butter
extra 100g brown sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
230g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
150g dark chocolate

Line a 20cm sprinform tin with buttered foil - make sure there are no holes in the foil and the tin is lined completely - this is a leaky pudding!!
Boil the first 3 ingredients together for 5 min, or until the mixture starts to go brown and thicken slightly. Pour half of the sauce into the tin.
Preheat oven into 175C.
Pit the dates and place in a bowl with the bicarb, pour the boiling water over and allow to cool.
Combine the butter, extra sugar and vanilla extract and beat with an electric mixer until the mixture is creamed. Add the egg and then stir in the date mixture. Mix together the flour and baking soda and fold through until everything is evenly incorporated.
Roughly chop the chocolate and stir through. Pour into the tin and bake for 30 min, then decrease the temp to 160C and cook a further 60 min. Test by inserting a knife. Serve hot with the reserved sauce.
Read more!

From the mouths of babes

I drove for an hour, getting totally lost, to source a bell jar to display Mollie's skull in. The girl sat in the back chatting endlessly, as per usual, until I yelled "OK, you need to stop talking now because we are lost and I need to concentrate on where we are going". She sat, sullenly but quietly, until we reached out destination.Bell jar purchased, we headed off to a teddy bears picnic. Now, I had set the alarm to go early, so I could get organised for our big day. My husband had other ideas. So with only 45 minutes to get ready, a few things got overlooked. The day had a space theme, so girl had decided to go as Batman - yeah, I don't get it either. But anyway, she put her costume on and was happy. The things that got overlooked were money and food. Driving back from the-middle-of-nowhere-bell-jar-hunting we ran out of petrol - at a petrol station!! How good is that? Anyway, three of my brain cells were functioning enough to prompt me to buy drinks when I paid for the petrol. We got to the peninsula where the picnic was, queued up for 20 minutes to get into the car park and then nabbed a spot right out front. Also good!! It was probably the last hot day of summer, it was dusty, and it was crowded. The peninsula was teeming with people and small children clutching teddy bears. Lots of aluminium foil and many coke bottles had been used to make space outfits for teddies (except ours, which was a nudist space teddy) and one teddy had a clear, plastic teapot on its head (I was impressed). The girl found a market stall selling masks and demanded a pink mask with pink fluff on it. She did the pleeeeeeeeese thing and I pointed out the mask cost $5 and I had $6.40 so nothing else after the mask. She enthusiastically agreed. The teddy put the mask on, we checked out the Daleks,
then queued in the sun for half an hour so the girl could spend a few minutes on the jumping castle. Of course, after that she was hungry. I had nothing (potentially my nomination for mother of the year?) except $1.40 in change and all the food was $2 or more. I tried to talk her into going home, but she wouldn't be in it. We wandered about a bit more, she whinged about her hunger and we joined another queue so she could pat a sheep. The third queue, for face painting, was closed. Tears welling, tolerance levels reached, hunger overwhelming and tiredness setting in, the girl reluctantly agreed that we could go home. In the car the tears finally fell, she sat there mumbling about how crap it was, "all I got was a mask that won't stay on". I felt so sorry for her. It must be hard having me as a mum.
The next evening she showed me a dirty, old dog bone that she had found in the schoolyard. She had carefully wrapped it in the cling film from her cut apple. I was horrified "why are you collecting and bringing home dirty, yucky stuff like that?". My brother, who was staying with us, said "she's copying her mother". The girl put the dirty bone on the table next to Mollie's skull. I had to admit I had been trumped. It remains. My organisational skills are rubbish, my foresight is non-existent, but I am not a hypocrite.
Read more!