Words and Pictures - Tucked up in Bed

We have just got some great new fluffy doonas in our house, and now that it is getting colder it is getting much, much harder to get out of bed in the mornings. One thing that I do love however is that first cup of coffee in the morning that Skip Shopper brings to me while I am still tucked up in bed!

Thanks Pip for hosting one of my favourite themes!

words & pictures - remember

I remember, I remember, I remember that beautiful strapless cobalt blue taffeta frock that I designed myself that I wore to my year 11 formal. I remember the hair that I curled to go with it that stuck out way too far...and the white court shoes & white stockings....the blue and pink eyeshadow and pink lippy. Precious. I was with my best friend. She had a dress in the same colour and permed hair. She had white court shoes. We were like twins. Our dates were not. Our nights did not end the same. Mine had really bad garlic breath and I couldn't bear to go near him. He just annoyed me in the end. Hers was really nice. They were best friends too.

I remember the 1920's style cream dress I designed and made for the year 11 deb ball. I thought I was going to marry that boy. You have no idea when you are 15, but you think you know everything. I remember how much my heart was broken the next year.

I remember the dress I designed and made for the year 12 formal with the red and black lame fabric and red and black tulle with the daring split and all of the diamantes I glued and sewed onto it with all of its angles. I remember the big hair and Michael confessing his love for me completely out of the blue, and someone else slashing themselves later in the night in the bushes.

Dresses have all of their memories that are entrenched in their seams and they tell their stories for all their years to come, whispering them out of the closet for people to hear. They help the stories to keep coming out. They keep the remembering....the laughter, the tears, the sadness, the dances, the goodtimes.

Thanks Pip for a lovely theme of remembering!

Words and Pictures - Fragant

I love waking up on Sunday morning to the fragrant smell of coffee and waffles. Coffee is one of my favourite smells in all time, and the smell of waffles cooking in the morning is just precious. The fragrance fills the house until every corner has been saturated with waffle. Then we gobble them up covered in maple syrup, tomatoes, bacon, lemon & sugar, yogurt, or whatever we feel like, and sip our coffee. Yum.

Egg-Free Waffles:

2 Cups of flour

1&1/2 tsp baking soda

2 cups milk

1 tbsp sunflower oil

Whizz this all together & then put a few tablespoons onto your waffle iron & cook until golden. Enjoy!

Thanks Pip for a great theme again this week.

Words and Pictures - Rainy Days

Out the Window
Originally uploaded by derok7

I love waking to the sound of the rain drops falling on the tin roof. Plip, plop. I know that I will be able to warm inside and watch the rain through my window as I try to sew. Somehow I find it more inspiring working inside when it is raining and cold. Heater on, tea and coffee flowing, CD stories talking to keep me company, I feel nice and cosy as I look out the rain now blasting on the window. The plants seem to grow as I look out at them in the rain and the green takes on a different shade with the changing light. My fingers find it hard to keep warm on these rainy cold days no matter how many clothes I put on and I can't really wear gloves while I am working as I need the dexterity. Swoosh go the cars to break the concentration. I love the warmth and dryness that I feel now as I work from my home studio. I hear the school bell. Time for the onslaught. I open the door to the cold, wet blasts. Two minutes tops before they come flying through. Here they are, heard before seen, running feet on wet pavement. No raincoats on, of course. "Hey, shoes off please", and in they run. "It's so hot in here, Mum!", it's time for afternoon tea.

Thanks Pip for the theme for this weeks words and pictures! Join in & play along.

cold feet

The phone call had come out of the blue. Veronica recognised the voice immediately. It was from such a long time ago that she could have blown the cobwebs off it. As soon as she heard it she was reminded of the time that they used to spend together at the clubs down in King St, Melbourne so many years ago. Short skirts, teased hair, lippy, earrings, tight tops and high heels, music, drink, men and everything else. What a wild time they had. What different time that seemed to be from now. Veronica had closed that whole part of her memory as though it did not exist and here she was being woken from 20 years sleep.

Suddenly she was gasping for air. Her suburban life was sucking her dry. Veronica could hear Simone sucking on a fag and the longing came back, even after all of those years. Veronica yearned for a life that had a buzz again. Her heart was leaping with fear and excitement at the idea. This was just what she needed right now. Something to get the hell out of here.

Life was not what she had really planned. Here she was trudging through the humdrum of life and suburbia: meals, cleaning, lunches, washing. On and on it went. Veronica had been caught in Ground Hog day for too long and thought that she would never be free of it. She was sucked dry. She could hardly even remember who she was any more. Her name bore a vague resemblance to her. Other than that, there was little else. There didn't seem to be much point in throwing the lippy on anymore or doing the hair. It was just trackies & frumpiness for Veronica for years.

When it came to the day, it seemed all to easy to arrange. Make the lunches, wipe the benches, drop the kids at school, come home and pack the bags. This was the easy part. In fact, it was down right exciting and Veronica had to stop herself from shouting about it to everyone around her. Everything seemed to be done a little faster than usual and Veronica was shaking the whole way through. This was just the break that she needed. She deserved it after all of these years. It was all going to change from here. No note. She didn't feel like it. It didn't seem like that it would do any of it justice anyway. Maybe she might come back. She didn't know. The excitement was a little sickening.

Bags packed and clothes changed. Trackies folded onto the queen sized bed. Never to be worn again. Time to leave now. Heels on, mini skirt on, hair teased, lippy on. Walk out the door. Veronica paused at the hall mirror. Behind her was the family portrait. With that she turned and removed her heels from her cold, cold feet and put them into her warm ugg boots and got on with her day.

Thanks Pip for the theme for this weeks (creative!!) words and pictures!

a long drive

just one bag each

packed night before

yellow combi full to the gunnels

curtains drawn

tick tock goes the clock

footsteps in the night

bing goes the alarm

lights shining now

bleary eyed children

parents rushing here

quell tablets pushed down throats

one last stop at the loo

then slam go the doors

"hush! the neighbours sleep"

take seats quickly

pillows under head

teddies under arms

eyelids shut now

engine turns over

roll up the gravel drive

start the ardous journey

from templestowe

all the way to kurrajong

thanks to Pip at Meet me at Mikes for hosting words & pictures! Play along if you like - it's fun.

Little Things

This week's theme for the great words and pictures set up by Meet me at Mikes of Little Things and if you want to read some of the other great stories, then just have a look over here and settle down for a read.



The words "Anger Management For Mums" flashed at me on the brochure in the Maternal and Child Health Centre. I grabbed the brochure & stuffed it in my bag before anyone could see me. It was a red brochure. Why red? Was that so that everyone would be able to see the people who had picked it up in their mother's groups? Thank goodness I wasn't with anyone. I pushed the brochure further down into the bag just in case it surfaced when I went to the shops later.
"Come on, let's get out of here." I said to my youngest.

I knew that I wasn't that angry, but still was it all right to scream like a banshee between 4 and 6 pm to 3 boys aged between 3 & 7. I know that there were a lot worse things that could be happening out there, but I also knew that there were a lot better things that could be happening. I wanted to find a way to stop that fire that built up inside me until I felt like getting one of the kids, it didn't matter which & throttling them. I knew it wasn't pc to talk about, but that was how I felt. I knew I couldn't throttle. I even knew that hitting wasn't ok, so all that was left was to scream. Once the screaming was done, I was like a wet rag all rung out. Nothing left except sorrow and remorse. All I could do was apologise for my terrible behaviour. I justified it with the fact that they were learning the full spectrum of emotion and that they would not be emotional cripples. Great! I knew I was wrong deep down, that screaming at the top of my lungs at them was not really doing anything.

I timidly booked into the course (with free childcare - whoopee!) ready to be lectured about my abhorrent behaviour. I expected there to be a bunch of really angry women there. What do really angry women look like? Wow! They just look like me, and you, and every other woman around me that I always see. It was the most empowering day of my life. There was understanding. There was nodding. There was sadness. There was a richness and most of all there were strategies, real life strategies on how to get through the anger.

The most important thing that I learnt from this was some words from the lady running the course.

When things are getting out of control, and they won't listen to you, or you feel angry, just slip their hand into yours, and remember that they are only this small once and your anger will melt away. They are just Little Things.

Words & Pictures - Cosy

picture courtesy: su-lin

When I grew up in Lower Templestowe, there was a big paddock between our house and our school. We did not have to walk very far to school, in fact the walk was very short. My brother, four years older than I, my sister, half way between us, and I walked together up the crunchy gravel driveway under the big gum trees and out onto the concrete pavement. We would then turn right past the tall brick fence of the Boggi's house and run past the giant gate with the barking German Sheppard to get to the corner house with the sagging paling fence that had teeth missing. I would sometimes run a stick along the fence until I got the short brick fence with the black brick topping that ran to the corner angles. At the corner, the three of us would hold hands and look both ways before we crossed over Hazel Drive. We would then climb up the little worn-in dirt path that was in the cliff that would take us into the over grown and neglected paddock. I loved walking through this paddock to school because it felt like we were going on an adventurous journey. We would talk about the mysteries of the glasshouse that was in the next paddock and why all of the windows had been smashed. I always wondered if there was anyone in there and if there any plants were growing in there. There was a very falling down old fence that would have been very easy to get through, however, none of us were brave enough to go through it.

When it rained, we had gumboots and bright yellow rain capes to wear that protected our bags as well & had tiny slits at the front for our hands to come out. What this meant was that we couldn't really move our arms at all and had to be really careful not to fall over. I remember one day my sister falling over on the way home and falling face first into a muddy puddle. My brother and I couldn't stop laughing because she couldn't get her hands out to get up & she was just rolling around like a yellow lump in the mud. When we got home, mum quickly got all of her clothes off and popped her in the bath and made her a delicious hot chocolate and hot cinnamon and sugar toast to warm her up.

I was a very quick learner, even at that young age, so whenever it rain (and take note you youngen's, it did seem to rain a lot more back in the 70's), I would make sure that I got as wet and muddy as possible in the paddock on the way home to make sure that I could get that bath, hot chocolate and cinnamon toast and be nice and cosy....

Words & Pictures

I love words...so much so that my kids have sacked me from picking up duty because I talk too much...but I love the written word and that is why this words & pictures blog appealed to me. I like a challenge, and now that I have fixed the glitch in the computer (HURRAH!), I can work on it without it screaming at me and having it threaten to die (thank you computer man xxx)

The theme given for this weeks assignment is "School lunches" which immediately sends shivers down my spine as I remember the sound of my carrot top and apple core rattling around in my blue lunch box as I ran around the playground trying to hold on to it whilst playing. I think that my family were the only family at our school in the north east of Melbourne to have lunch boxes. It seemed to me, at that delicate age, that everyone else had fantastic disposable bags... Oh how jealous I was of them.

My mum, bless her, made our bread which we named crumpet bread. It was stiff and brown. Delicious straight out of the oven with butter dripping through it, stiff as a board at lunch time. We were allowed to choose our own fillings for our sandwiches, as long as it was salad (lettuce from the garden, tomato). The extra choices were cheese (none of that processed stuff please), and left over meat if there was any. It was always a bonus when we had meatloaf left over because she made a mean meatloaf (and still does). Occasionally we had "meat pie" sandwich which consisted of tomato sauce - yep that's it, just sauce! I know it is weird, but it is kinda nice. We did also sometimes have promite, Vegemite, homemade jam or peanut butter (of course on the homemade bread). I do remember striking out during high school and insisting that I could no longer have tomato in my sandwich as it made my bread soggy and I couldn't bear it any more unless it went between the lettuce and the cheese.

The other standards in our lunch boxes were 1 tomato - whole, 1 carrot - whole and a piece of fruit of your choice. In winter we could take a thermos of soup as well if we wanted.

I think I did spend a great deal of my 13 schooling years hankering after a canteen lunch or a paper bag lunch, or a white bread with jam, or white bread with Vegemite and plastic cheese sandwich like my best friend Jenny had. In fact, we found out later in life that we were very jealous of each other's lunches. I wanted her so called normality and she wanted my nutrition.

I now find that I am inflicting about 50% of this on my kids .... without the crumpet bread! The good news for them is that they get to leave their lunch boxes in the classrooms nowadays.