anyresemblance

Mission Impossible

I'm no super hero.  I'm pretty resilient,  don't get sick often, am adaptable to change but I'm heartily glad to be home for a bit.

In the first 7 weeks of this year, I have been on 14 flights (5 of those overnight flights) and had three weekends away from home.   My kid has started college for the first time and my other kid has entered her final semester.  Thank god, the dog still loves me.

I'm thankful that the work is rewarding but when I got home on Saturday morning, I was determined the rest of the weekend was going to be all for home life.  My oldest picked me up from the airport with dog in tow and we headed straight to Silo.  They've done a beautiful refurbishment.  No major changes but some good rearrangement of the front portion so there is more room for customers at the front waiting for takeaway and a nice bench arrangement along the wall to make seating cleaner.  I went in for croissants.  I said "shall I get coffee or will you make it when we get home?".  The eye roll told me she had done a hundred coffees at work and was glad to have someone else make it for us.  We ate the pastries and take away coffees at home and I set to imprinting myself on the house after she set off for her afternoon shift.

When I was married and my husband travelled, it would drive me nuts when he came home and started wielding a cloth wiping surfaces in the kitchen.  Now I do it myself, and I realise I did him a disservice as it was not so much a judgement on my housekeeping as a way of connecting back with the household.  Having said that, I definitely have different standards to my offspring.  Plus, I was aiming for that level of cleanliness we had when we were selling the house and had troops of people inspecting my housekeeping standards.

I wiped the blades of all the ceiling fangs, wiped down the plantation shutters, wiped the skirting boards, lifted the sofa cushions and vacuumed, took the rugs out and hung them over the deck railings and beat them (somewhat ineffectively) with a big stick, vacuumed the entire house, steam cleaned the floors and cleaned the stove.  I did not clean the oven despite it being on my list for months.  I am counting on high heat burning off any residual deposits and frankly cook anything high fat on the bbq anyway.

I took the dog for two walks, talked to my youngest for 30 minutes, went to Coles, restocked the fridge, roasted a chicken with tarragon and garlic while I had a bath and ate dinner on the sofa with a glass of wine.  I went to bed at 9pm and was glad to be home.

S had another early shift this morning so I got up when she left at 7.15 and took Charlie up Red Hill for a good long walk.  When we got home I had another bath, ate poached eggs, bacon and spinach for breakfast and messed around on the internet.  

For dinner we ate slow roasted pork, home made tortillas (the joy of my tortilla press) avocado smash and tomato salsa and then ate mini chocolate eggs while watching Say Yes to the Dress, Atlanta.  I also started reading Elizabeth is Missing which is very good.  I'm now in bed again before 10 and wondering if there is anything nicer than clean sheets, an early night and a good read.

Pluses and minuses

On the minus side I can't get connectivity to my work email. Which is probably really a plus.

On the plus side, Toowoomba is lovely, the rental house is amaze balls wonderful, the bride is super chilled and it's going to be a great weekend.

Sunday

My kid bought me this chocolate from Mexico. It was vile.

Sunday. It rained and rained last night. The cat was annoyingly meowing and trying to get comfy. Her version of getting comfy is lying on top of me. Everyone was restless. I guess we're all settling in under the same roof again.

We got up late and I took Charlie for a walk. It was still a fine rain so deserted. He chased a few rabbits with no success and lost his ball in the long grass.

The oldest and I took a whole slew of cardboard packaging to the tip along with the results of my enthusiastic shredding (the rest topped up the compost bins which I've been allowing to get soggy in the rain.)

We came home and dismantled the Christmas tree,did 90 zillion loads of washing and watched say yes to the dress and dance moms. Perfect rainy afternoon tv.

I went to the supermarket to buy a few odds and ends and then made a baked chocolate tart, roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, broccoli and pumpkin. I had a Hendricks and tonic, curtesy of my duty free. We watched the Great British Bakeoff and decided this would be our new Sunday evening Telly.

The youngest cat had slept on some sheets I forgot to put away and they were filthy. She's never really got the hang of washing herself so I took her outside and brushed her vigorously to her patent disgust. She is now hiding in the garage but is much cleaner.

It sounds the dullest day ever but it was perfect.

Forgive me this momentary lapse in good humour

Just when I think I have reached a rapprochement with the father of my children something happens to make me despair of ever being able to properly communicate. This is only a reprise of something that happens often but it's put me off my stride for most of the day. I learned in the course of the exchange of e-mails with my step-son that his father is going to China on Saturday. When I thought my girls were going there for the weekend and I had made various plans. I don't know how we get this on an even keel since every strategy seems to get undermined. We've tried writing down a calendar - I have the piece of paper that says he is in Melbourne this week (he's in Sydney) and that he leaves from Beijing on Sunday (now it's 7am on Saturday). I guess at the bottom of my frustration is a resentment that I am the one who is always so infinitely flexible and that if I push back it makes it seem like I don't want to spend time with my children. Plus, I had made grown-up plans for Friday night and I now have to pay a baby-sitter. Sigh.

Rainy days

The last time it rained was in February and the time before that I can't remember. It was threatening it all day yesterday and last night I woke up to the beautiful sound of rain on my tin roof. I already had Miss I in bed with since she had wet the bed earlier and although I had bundled her wet sheets into the washing machine I couldn't be bothered making it again so she slid into bed with me. Then around midnight Miss S came in - she must have a sleep sensor that tells her sister is getting a treat she's not. Since my bed is not king size I left them to it and slipped into Miss S's bed which I secretly like as she has a mattress that sorts of rolls you around like you're on a boat and a beautiful red velvet quilt which is snuggly. Every now and then I'd wake up and hear the rain. I spent all morning out at another office at a meeting and decided to spend the rest of the day working from home. ha. So far, I have folded the laundry, made chocolate brownies, peeled potatoes for dinner, labelled some videos. I did, however, consider a knotty business problem while undertaking these tasks so I don't entirely consider them slacking off. The rain is not forecast to last longer than today but it's been a good respite from the drought. It makes me homesick for London. The sloppiest kind of romanticism I know, but I think of wet pavement on city streets and the bustle of people on the move. I'm feeling very out of place these days in my comfortable, provincial town.

Princess Perfect

Last night the L Word was delayed by 15 minutes by an excrutiating documentary on Mary Donaldson, the soon-to-be Danish princess. It was quite bizarre to see this confident woman in her 30s talking such utter drivel with an odd hybrid Australian/Danish accent. I recall (faintly, of course) the stir in the late 60s/early 70s (?) when the first documentary on the British royal family was shown and I can't say the degree of insight has developed much since then. I kept thinking even her hair looked like Princess Anne's. Is there a standard back-combed bouffy hair do that one has to sport to be a successful royal? I can't get over how much she looks like Diana Rigg in her Avengers days. Now Mary D would look so much better in a black leather cat suit than the sensible tweeds she's been sporting recently. So my lovely, lovely Claire has got herself a paid job with Amnesty in Geneva. This girl is amazing, smart, hard-working, loving and it's great to see she's turned an internship into some paid work. I've promised the girls that we'll go to Europe next year and visiting Claire in Geneva, my sister in Spain and Claire's Accessories in London (curse you, Anne) are their top three priorities. Today when I got home from work I supervised two girls for shower/bath/hairwashing; cooked dinner - lasagne made earlier in the week, salad, roasted asparagus; emptied dishwasher; loaded dishwasher; did two loads of washing; ironed (while watching Charmed); cleaned the spare bathroom; went off at Miss I on the state of her bedroom; fed the cats; vacuumed the hallway. Ask a busy woman.... Read Lisa. She's so thoughtful about the world around her and her part in it and a fabulous washing line project. I'm in as soon as I get my camera back.

Extremely very unique

High stress day in the office with a sub-contractor trying to tell me they had a "very unique" methodology - either it's unique or it ain't, there is no modification there. Their mangling of language was only the last of a list of complaints I have about them. Then I was making tea for my best pal, P, who is even more stressed out with a proposal she is writing. First I knocked over my tea in the kitchen drenching the toasted sandwich maker that was on the counter. In clearing that up, I knocked over the second cup of tea all down the front of my skirt. Fortunately I was wearing knee length boots and did not scald my legs. Good things that happened: My boss reduced my quota for the year by $2m so I have a faint chance of making my target - and by extension, making some money - this year. I had cancelled my interview with the headhunter because I was too busy to go to Sydney tomorrow and she offered to fly to Canberra to meet me. I ate a yummy pecan pie at my desk. I got invited to a interesting looking conference in Melbourne next month. I got invited to meet a senior company executive. Now I suspect this latter meeting is less the "Anyresemblance, we in head office in northamericaland have been following your progress with interest and would like to invite you to take up well paid and fascinating job in our head office with many stock options, flexible work hours and immense public approbation" and be more like joining the crowd for the Pope's Easter mass. Or the time my dad got invited to the Queen's garden party at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. This, at a time when single daughters over the age of 18 were also on the invite list. We trooped off in our best frocks to rubber neck along with many hundreds of other good souls of Scotland while talent spotters roamed the crowds to pick out the very few who were allowed the other side of the rope fence to meet Queeny and her family. I digress. Dinner tonight was sausages, baked beans and mashed potatoes - and bloody delicious it was too on a cold night. It's cold but so bloody dry my skin is shrivelling up and my throat is all scratchy. No rain for eons and eons. I've been listening to Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey in a series of BBC radio dramatisations from the early 70s. I'm obsessed with clubland heroes at the moment but I adore Lord Peter Wimsey. I read one commentator sniffily observe that Dorothy L Sayers depiction of Lord Peter was a lesbian view of the perfect man. Well, that makes dykes of us all since I think Lord Peter epitomises that 30s glamour. Under normal circumstances I loathe biographies but have made exceptions for the Mitford sisters, Dorothy L Sayers and Elizabeth David which seems to indicate that my taste runs to eccentric, bossy, upper middle class English women. Like I aspire to be really.

Is it really only Tuesday?

I got a rejection letter about the job I applied for before Easter. I'm pretty irked since the person who is currently filling the role encouraged me to apply and vetted my application for me. But honestly, the ways of recruitment agencies are a mystery for me. I once applied for a job in the Guardian for a city law firm in London and after interview was told I was not technical enough. 6 weeks later a different head hunter firm approached for me for what turned out to be the same job which this time round I was offered. bizarre. On the other front, the head hunter who has been courting me revealed who the company is as a means of luring me to Sydney for an interview. I'm sworn to confidentiality but it's quite intriguing. The office is very low at the moment. A well liked member of staff was killed in a car crash on the weekend. I think it brings home the fragility of life. It was on a stretch of road I have driven a lot recently and will be on next weekend. At dusk and dawn there a lot of kangaroos so it's not a road to drive when you're tired or distracted. As an antidote to all this gloom I bought myself a pair of burgundy suede shoes. I dithered over the rose pink ones but practicality won out in the end. I had a credit note I had to spend so, of course, then spent way in excess on the chosen footwear. I then bought a groovy Trelise Cooper jacket. It was neither necessary nor inexpensive but since I adore clothes I rate value for money on a formula that includes amount of times I wear it x compliments received x how great it makes me feel as an index of its value. I received a video tape from a friend in the US with a selection of current season Soprano episodes on it (though the new series starts here tonight). It was posted 3 weeks ago and we had been moaning about the lack of reliability of the postal service. On its arrival I noted that my friend had failed to write my street address on it so I think instead I should be thanking Aussie Post (or more likely, the very nice local sub-postmaster come video shop proprietor) for their persistence in tracking me down amongs the other denizens of my suburb. And finally, when I came home there was a lovely chalk message on the path.

Dear Mummy. Welcome home. We love you. Signed I, S and Mary J******. Write back soon.

Good thing they wrote Mary's name in full else I never would have guessed who it was from.

In which I declaim on the weekend's minutae

The weekend has been good but rushed. Saturday was a blur of ferrying children from one place to another. The basketball was not a success: they lost 83:8. They had not played with each other before so they were just finding their way. Then I had to drive from Tuggeranong to Watson to deliver Miss S to a party. It wasn't too bad as we were listening to Zizou Corder's Lion Boy. Highly recommended. One character, a cat, was telling the lead character that his name was Serge. He explained that his father had loved music. Ah, Gainsbourg, declared my children. Alas, it was Rachmaninov. Because Miss S was partying and dislikes most fish, Miss I and I ate grilled salmon, peas and boiled potatoes for dinner. She loves "pink fish". Today I cooked. Pastry which went into a tarte tatin, lasagne, focaccia (I didn't think this worked - more like a pizza bread but nice to eat just the same), chocolate brownies and a moroccan orange cake. This latter is from a foolproof Sophie Grigson recipe. I have even made this, put it in the oven and then realised that I have forgotten the sugar, taken it out, stirred the sugar in and the cake has turned out ok. It's a measure and stir recipe. I helped the children with some homework. Miss S has to do a boardgame based on a book and she had the idea to do something based on the alethiometer in Northern Lights. An ambitious choice since now we are trying to construct questions around it (she was adamant she didn't want a snakes and ladders scenario). The father of my children returned from a trip to China today and came round to see the girls. He brought Miss S a Custo top which I coveted, Miss I an adorable set of tiny teapots and me a Kate Spade bag which was pretty nice of him. We also looked after our nearly one year old friend this afternoon while his parents went to the movies. He was an adorable little thing to have around. I parked him on the kitchen counter with some wooden spoons while I rolled pastry and he was very happy. The girls adored having him around. His parents came in having been to see Monster and looking a bit shell shocked so we made them roibus tea and sat them down and then they all stayed to dinner. We ate lasagne, salad and the failed focaccia and then had the tarte tatin with ice-cream. My friend, P, asked if I had made the pasta from scratch for the lasagne. Good grief, as if there isn't enough construction in it without that. I do make pasta and it's a great thing to do with the kids once they can crank the handle for the pasta machine but even I recognise that this would have been verged on insanity. It was an early dinner and our guests were gone by 6:30 so I made cocoa and we watched television for a bit. It has been cold this weekend. I got out my winter weight quilt. I read other blogs and think I should be quilting but how many unfinished projects can I cope with? And I don't get on with sewing machines. Early in my marriage, my MIL gave me a sewing machine but then took it back about a year later when I had no doubt commited some error she wasn't prepared to discuss with me. I only bought one of my own to make curtains for the beach house. I did knit Miss I a snowy white scarf this weekend. She fancies herself as a polar bear cub so this fits her self image well. I don't think it's quite long enough but she was nagging me so much to finish it and let her wear it that I gave in. Another hectic week ahead but I feel more in control.

Green with envy

I may have mentioned before that on 31 October 2003, in the great Yarralumla heist, I was relieved of all my jewellery. This ranged from the fabulous diamond earrings I received in the wake of an infidelity to the macaroni necklace my daughter made me when she was 4. My wedding ring, engagement ring and eternity ring were among the stolen items. As was my daughter's charm bracelet with a cute lobster in a lobster pot I brought her from Boston and a minature replica of the Mary Rose from Portsmouth. And my mother's gold watch bought for her by my father in Glasgow in 1973. And the amber and silver ring I bought her for her birthday from Liberty's; she chose it herself and I kept it after she died. And the charming necklace that I bought for myself in Liberty's with coloured glass and enamel hearts that every child wanted to play with whenever I wore it. And the sapphire and diamond earrings I bought in the gold souk in Tripoli; they were so heavy they hurt my ears but I would wear them every Christmas. The vile insurance company has finally settled. It's very odd to be spending your way through a large amount of money like this. There was no option to take cash and do something useful like pay a lump off my mortgage. So I've been spending it with a tinge of guilt. My engagement and eternity rings were diamonds and emeralds. I loved them. When I split up from my husband, a jeweller asked me if I'd like them remade into something else but I said no since I didn't want to erase the past and thought that one day I'd give them to my daughters. So I was sad that they were stolen. And I really love emeralds. Today I bought a new diamond and emerald ring. So this ring acknowledges the past but it was chosen all by me, and worn by me for me. All the women in my office have admired it greatly. I can't describe how beautiful it looks - and I do not have beautiful hands or a flawless manicure (or any manicure for that matter). My friend, P, said "oh my, that's a MegaCorp women exec ring" since we have a non-scientific survey going of senior women in our company and the size of the diamonds they wear. Except I have a stunning emerald ring. Nah, nah, nah. I didn't have to struggle up the corporate ladder to get this one. I was robbed.