Milestones and Asterisks

Sometime very soon this blog will get its 10,000th visitor. That's going by my most conservative sitemeter (I have quite a collection if you've ever adventured waaaaaaaaaay down to the bottom of the screen here)... other jazzier and possibly virus-bearing sitemeters set that target way earlier.

But I trust the old conservative one. It reminds me of me.

Wonder who number 10,000 will be?

A friendly face? Or that banker from Saudi who wants ladieswithgiantboobs?

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Ah, the joy of the asterisk post. A bit of this, a bit of that.

It's like a salad at the end of summer, when you have a fridge full of barbecued meats and lots of veg and probably a container of cous cous or pasta just begging to be used. So what do you do? Chuck 'em all together and call it yet another lunch to eat at work, if you ask me...

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So. I feel I haven't quite captured the spirit of our summer. And that would be a shame.

This was a P.A.R.TAY summer. We entertained until our collective arses were about to collectively drop off.

I'm not big on party pics. All those bright flashed faces and redeyes needing repair. I'm more of a before and after gal.

Before:


Some kind of quiche. Seeing as how I'm not a real man, I'm big on quiche as a filler. It's never the star, but it looks nice on a white tablecloth.

And before:



Is it wrong to use a box of cherries given as a gift at one party we hosted to serve to guests at another party we hosted?

I think not. We did take off the ribbon.


and evidence of After:



we saw a lot of this, and also a lot of this:



and a lot, lot, lot of this:


... waiting for the next free dishwasher space. Any glasses we have that can't go in the dishwasher? They're politely told they're not required for parties...

The next morning is always fun for lively, well-rested kids, who do stuff like this:


and this:


to their hungover parents...

... fortunately there's always the beach as an antidote (to the hangover, not the kids)


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It was our 10th wedding anniversary on February 15th. We did not do anything then but are about to have our first night away, withOUT children for about eight years, this Saturday, as the kids are going to stay the night with an uncle and his gorgeous, gorgeous girlfriend (oh yes, for serious ladieslounge readers, this was the other thing that happened this summer) . If you've bothered to read this far, you might want to make suggestions as to how to celebrate a 10th anniversary when a couple has three children and a lot of miles showing for it...

Staying: Crowne Plaza Terrigal
Time Away From Children: 18, maybe 20 hours, if we're lucky
Aims: Does wedded bliss sound too corny?


mtc
Bec

Six Weird Things Meme - or, um, I guess I'm 'it' then.

I've always admired in others the ability to run.

(No, that's not a weird thing, we're getting to that, enjoy the ride).

(Ok, maybe it will turn out to be a weird thing but I don't know yet - I haven't written that part).

Not to run like the wind, not to win races, but to be at least competitive and not trail along at the end like an idiot who's lost his village.

I was not (can you tell?) a runner at school. I loved the swimming carnival, hated the athletics carnival. Didn't mind netball, loathed softball. Coped with tennis (other than a pathologically poor serve) but dreaded most minutes of the many hours I spent on a hockey field.

And in primary school? Once tagged, I often stayed 'it' for the rest of the chasies game. For defence, I developed a superior attitude.

"You don't still play chasies do you?" the 10 year old me might say.

I developed assorted injuries.

"I can't play, sorry, my horse trod on my foot when I was cleaning his hooves this morning." (this, by the way, may have been true: horse-riding was another excellent way to avoid running)

I flaunted my brain.

"No, I'm not playing today, I have to finish this Dostoyevsky before little lunch."

Ok. It probably wasn't Dostoyevsky, at least not until Year 9, but these are my childhood memories and I will fashion them as I see fit.

You see, there was no reason for my state.

I wasn't the fat kid. Nor was I the sickly, skinny kid.

I.Just.Couldn't.Run.

In the earlier days I would start out the race full of enthusiasm and keep up with the pack for - oh - a good five or six paces before suddenly everyone including the fat kid was ahead of me, and only the sickly, skinny kid was beside me, and then he would suck a big breathe into his possibly-tubercular lungs and lurch in front and then...

You get the picture. I can't relive every painful moment here.

Eventually my mother took pity and just wrote excuse notes for every athletics event at school. She didn't let me off hockey though, because she needed me to be busy on Saturday mornings so she could drive my two brothers to every soccer field in this wide brown land and watch them play not me and THAT is why my children STILL don't do any organised sport because I'm buggered if I'm going to be forced to choose which ones I will actually see on the field and which ones I neglect and leave unloved with a soggy tomato sandwich and a bottle of cordial in the back of some other mother's station wagon...

Ouch. Maybe I am going to relive every painful moment.

My ex-jock/could play anything/naturally-gifted-sportsman husband says anyone can run, they just need to be taught. He said that about throwing, too, until he tried to teach me. After a decade or so he has largely given up on me and concentrates on saving the next generation with impromptu running (turn in your toes) and throwing (don't blink) lessons for the kids.

There was a period in my life, between husbands, when I became a runner. It was a glorious stage and deserves a post all its own but it was running alone and that's really not what I'm talking about here.

So, what the fuck am I talking about and what does any of this have to do with the Six Weird Things Meme?

And why haven't there been any pictures yet?

Ah. That's better. See how they run?

So.

Since December I have been tagged for this same meme by four different people, bless 'em. Tagged publicly in their blog posts. Tagged for all the world to see. I'm not talking about "do it if you feel like it" group tags. There was my name and links back to here*.

And now here it is, mid-February, and I'm still 'it'.

I am flattered, y'all, deeply flattered and not a littled freaked out that, of a relatively small pool of people, such a high proportion of you wanted to see what my Weird bits are.

Sickos.

Still, you asked for it and while I may not be a runner, I'm not a quitter either.

Six Weird Things about Me

1. If I push my finger hard in my bellybutton I get a sharp pain in my upper right arm, like a needle. I think I was about nine when I discovered this: I was probably trying to forget I couldn't run. **

2. Even when I really, really, really want to, I cannot follow a recipe exactly as it is written. This is why I don't like baking.

3. I can fly in my dreams.

4. Am I the ONLY person left in the fucking UNIVERSE who remembers how to punctuate properly for direct quotations? Yes: I have paranoid delusions about punctuation.

5. My eyes change from very green to mostly blue depending on what I wear.

6. I actually like using my Epilady.


No tagging, because anyone who was going to do this meme has already done it by now.

Even the skinny, sickly ones.

mtc
Bec

*I know blogiquette says I should return the links but I can't. It's too embarrassing. The taggers know who they are - if they haven't already forgotten about it - and being who they are, they know that I just haven't been posting all that often lately.

** Try it. See if it helps you forget about running too.

Weekend house and garden stuff - the art of finishing.

Two weekends ago we had a 'finisher' weekend. You know the kind? We'd had a number of projects on the go, for several weeks, and The.Time.Had.Come.

So on Saturday I dug out and replanted a large triangular garden bed while the Prof and the Gorgeous Boy finished this:



Being the first stage in our grand plan to Destroy the Neighbours via Greenery.

These trees are Flowering Ash, for the horticulturally minded, and will apparently grow to seven metres or so, given encouragement.

Yay! Go trees, go!

There, they already look taller.

On the Sunday, the Prof concreted and rendered the inside of aforementioned triangular garden bed (pics saved somewhere but too ugly to bother hunting down) in readiness for the fish pond of my dreams.

Meanwhile, indoors, I finished doing this - um - thing:


The notion of "something big for that really long wall" had been hoggling large sections of my brain and occasional slabs of dining table for three or four weeks while I worked out what on earth to do with these three bits of fabric that took my fancy back in the New Year Spotlight sale.

It was, shall we say, a learning experience. I now have all kinds of quilting fantasies that might or might not come true.

Fast forward to this weekend, when we finished another two projects (major reorganisation of Pea Princess' bedroom and the main living area) and when I, as usual, on Saturday morning wrote up the family menu for the week ahead.

Have I blogged on the family menu before? I don't recall, but I really should have. I do know that it is something I have in common with the lovely Emma of Hearth and Home.

I also know for an absolute fact that I am not the kind of person who can keep to a weekly menu plan. And, finally, I know for certain that, without The Menu, we would be eating takeaway three nights a week, serving four different meals on each of the four nights we did cook, and supporting a fridge jammed with food bought because it was in season or looked fab, but was destined to be thrown out by the bucketload when it went rotten or passed use-by.

I know all this because this is how life was working out in the House of the Ladies Lounge before I learned to lurve The Menu.

So, The Menu has been with us for over a year now and is probably deserving of a post all of its own. Let me just say that the interesting variation this week was that I grabbed a handful of cooking magazines (my porn collection) and handed them out to children and husband and told them each to pick something for the menu.

Here's what we ended up with:



And on Saturday night we kicked off with the Prof's choice, Moroccan Lamb Steaks with Yoghurt Dressing



Tonight was the Pea Princess' choice, Lime and Dill Ocean Trout


Tomorrow it's Gorgeous Boy's turn with Thai Beef Salad (he likes it for the tomatoes)


then on Tuesday it's back to Morocco (not the way I'd normally do it but good business management says you can't get people to contribute if you make the rules too prescriptive, and besides, I've already bought the Moroccan seasoning) with BBQ Pork Skewers with sweetened (?) Moroccan seasoning for Sparkle.


On Wednesday I get mychoice, Chicken with Lemon and Oregano


Thursday is usually "Cheese on Toast" on the menu board - which actually means Cheese on Toast some weeks but is more often a euphemism for leftovers from all this cooking. Friday is often takeaway but if we're not exhausted then the kids prefer making their own pizzas to having bought ones.

Of course, before we could get stuck into the menu this weekend there was another job that needed finishing so we could get to the dining table: - the number one, most important, cannot be avoided, weekend job for a family of five with both adults in full-time work - look familiar?



mtc

Bec