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It's Friday night and the kids are in bed. The house is clean and tidy, stocked with food (after visiting both Coles and the co-op today) and the washing is more or less under control. I feel like our lives are pretty much back to normal after the whirlwind of Zac's birthday.

I am also glad that I have two nights at home this weekend. The last week has been enormous fun, with parties, get togethers and functions, but it has left me exhausted. And it's not even December yet!

I had grand plans to make an advent calendar like last year, except this time it would be patchwork. But my sewing machine died and I decided to give myself a break from the enforced fun. We will just have to muddle through December ad libbing fun this year.

Perhaps the Christmas tree will go up tomorrow and then we'll know it's the count down to the end of the year!

techy friends

This photo of Sir Zac jousting is courtesy of James, one of our trusty hula hoop holders who had not only the dexterity but the presence of mind to take a phone photo while the birthday boy ran at him with a pool noodle.

James then 'twittered' it from his phone to the 'net with words and everything. For some people media is in their blood.

happy birthday little man

Zac turned six today. He was inundated with presents and celebrated with a party in the park to which he invited almost everyone he knows. There were a lot of kids there. I was a bit stressed about whether it would all run smoothly, especially as we were nursing champagne hang overs from election parties, but Zac enjoyed himself immensely.

His theme was knights so we organised a 'joust' with pool noodles and hula hoops, run relay style. It was a lot of organisation for a 10 minute race. I thought long and hard about whether it was worth making such an effort for a little kids party but I know he will remember two things about his party: the castle cake and the fact that there was a joust.

My party stress was heavily alleviated by the knowledge that we are living in a Labor governed country, which made the grown up conversation around the cordial dispenser a lot more interesting than the usual school gossip.

grassy knoll

Until recently we had a dirty little secret in our backyard. Perhaps that's over-stating it a little. We had an extremely untidy little secret.

The bit of the backyard behind the shed, really just a tiny corner of the yard (although about the size of the courtyard in our first Newtown house), was totally overgrown with grass runners, weeds and plants gone wild.

The reason that corner was so neglected was because it sat about 20 cms higher than the rest of the yard, up a little hillock of grass. Not large enough to be called a 'hill', but large enough that we could not manoeuvre our push mower up to mow the grass and keep it tidy.

Soy finally got sick of it and listed the larger plants on ebay. The deal was someone had to come to our house to dig them up, take them away and pay us for the pleasure. The nice ebay people cleared the back corner of most of the plants, leaving us with a whole bunch of weeds and the annoying little slope.

Which is why last weekend was spent sawing railway sleepers, digging trenches, drilling, hammering and backfilling with blue metal. Now we have the world's smallest retaining wall. This photo really does no justice to our handiwork at all, the wall is way more gorgeous than it looks here. But mostly I am just happy that the grass will be kept at bay and I can start on my plan for vegetable beds between the palm trees and pavers under the clothes line.

modern poet

Nell is on a roll for cute comments lately. Today I was working in the yard when she came up with another corker.

We bought some used railway sleepers to build a small retaining wall in the back garden. I had to cut them down to size and decided to use a hand saw to do it. There is nothing quite like the squeal of a handsaw on hardwood and it was pretty tough going so I was less than amused by the noise.

Nell came over and said in her most dreamy tone:

"Oh Mummy, you are making such beautiful music with that saw, all the compost flies are dancing."

alternative consumers

Today I joined the local organic food co-op. I used to walk past and peer at the little baskets of veggies and think there wasn't enough choice so I wouldn't shop there. But I have slowly come to see those huge bins in Woolies full of homogeneous apples are an aberration from how food should be consumed. So I summoned up the courage to go into the co-op and find out how it operates.

Alfalfa House is really just one room, kind of cosy in its size but the shelves are stacked to the roof. There are giant drums of oil, huge tubs of exotic sounding flour and baskets of fruit and veggies refilled hourly. What looked a little meagre from the outside felt abundant and ordered once I was inside. I learned that you have to take all your own packaging (jars, containers or bags) and buy things by the scoop. This must have been what shopping was like before plastic.

I also liked the idea of buying shares in a co-operative. I was literally buying in to the concept of sustainable shopping. Now that I've seen that I can get everything from toilet paper to tomatoes to tea, I envisage taking the trip up Enmore Road a lot more often.

today in the car

Nell: "Mummy, in 'Winnie the Pooh' there is an owl called 'Owl'. That's so funny!"

Me: "What's funny?"

Nell: "The owl. It's called 'Owl'! You see? It's called 'Owl' and it's an owl! It's very hilarious!"

Me: "There's also a rabbit in 'Winnie the Pooh' and it's called 'Rabbit'"

Nell: [very seriously] "That's not funny at all"

mutton chops and mo

So it's national hairy month again. Everywhere I turn I see men with dirt on their faces .. no, wait ...  that's the beginnings of a moustache. The spread of Movember, facial hair for charity, is extraordinary not so much because of the altruism it produces, but because it's an excuse for men to play silly buggers with the razor.

Soy has joined this phenomenon, starting a mo of his own (and raising some funds along the way). But thankfully he has steered clear of the bad mo-fo mo a la Nick Cave (which seems to be the this-is-my-ironic-mo-for-charity-

so-please-don't-judge-me mo of choice this year) and decided to focus a bit more on his native sidies.

While researching this post, I discovered that the side burn gets its name from Ambrose Burnside (and a big hello to my dear friend Burnside who has no facial hair whatsoever) and this is exactly the facial hair-style Soy is after. It looks mighty silly having the moustache joining up to the sideburns, but at least he's got the balls to grow proper facial hair and not just opt for the safe bad-mo-fo mo. Even Nick has lopped his off to a more daring I've-come-to-clean-your-pool Magnum style tache.

yesterday I awoke with a migraine

Yesterday I awoke with a migraine to a telephone call from a parent at the school to tell me that two competing coffee vendors had turned up to the school fete. I threw on some clothes and drove through the sleepy Sunday suburbs to mediate a coffee dispute, a tray of home made banana bread balanced precariously on my arm.

If you say this sentence sound like an extract from the diary of Lucy Jordan I think I will cry.

I sorted out the legitimately booked coffee people from the pretenders, then apronned up to sell cakes all day. Soy sold sausage sandwiches to the folk wandering up to the Newtown festival. Zac competed in the air-guitar competition at the Battle of the Parent Bands competition in the school hall, Nell ate a lot of icing.

At one point my dear friends J&E rocked up, with their lovely baby M and co-parent in tow. We discussed how radical we used to be, while I sold them my hand made short bread and they talked about crocheting face cloths for the next fete.

We are grannies before our time.

another ride to the 'gong

Soy donned his riding gear and set off to the Gong yesterday morning. With a great deal less fanfare than last year. After the week we've had, I couldn't really drag myself out of bed to wish him well. Plus we knew that whatever nature threw at him, it couldn't be as bad as last year.

I drove the kids down to Wollongong, had lunch with my grandparents and then drove in to town to retrieve Soy from the finish line. It was so low-key that I didn't even take a photo.

The carnival at the end of the Gong ride is the only place I have ever been where fat blokes in lycra are de rigeur. I felt out of place because I was wearing no fluro, nor did I have any tubes extending from my clothing to keep me hydrated. Bike culture is a world I am only just entering...