Touching base

Only four days into term and our mornings, like every other family’s, have become alarmingly busy. We have lists to streamline the mobilisation of our family unit to get out the door and off to our various activities and mostly we manage to all pile into the car and be backing out of the driveway on time but occasionally things go under the radar – like making sure shoes go on the right feet. Fortunately we spotted this little oversight before she stumbled into her very first kinder session. Perhaps if we had missed it, and I had also been sporting a wild hairdo with a pencil or a twig sticking out of it, and an inside out cardigan while forgetting my name and which child I was enrolling we would have looked on the outside exactly how I am feeling on the inside. I am guessing I will find the natural rhythm of all of this soon enough, but for now watch out for the wild woman with the fist full of hastily scribbled lists.

I will always love you, cumquat may.

cumquat01

cumquat02

8 years ago today we rocked the registry office… well, we said our vows and shed a few happy tears. It was only a few days after September 11 and the world still had that weird, tender feeling, but it was the day we had booked and planned for and we couldn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t go ahead and get married. It was a lovely day.

Five years earlier Phil and I had moved into a share house in Fitzroy together and he gave me a cumquat tree for our first Christmas. It was a delightful surprise when it turned up on our front verandah, delivered by the wonderful folk from the Fitzroy Nursery.

I have always had this kind of (overly imaginative) idea that our tree reflects the state of our relationship – it’s always been happy and fruitful except for a short time during our first year when I think I may have been feeling scared and paranoid having met the “One”, and worried that he might not stick around. It sat out on our balcony above the dusty Fitzroy street away from light and water, and shed its leaves. Shortly afterwards we moved into a little house without the flat mates and it came back to life with lots of leaves and fruit.

cumquat03

cumquat04

13 years later, with love and pruning, rain and sun, our little cumquat is as happy as larry and produces chubby little cumquats in its cheery little pocket of our late Winter garden. There is a pot of marmalade cooking on the stove at this very moment, filling the house with delicious citrusy smells.

And of course, the One did stick around, otherwise he wouldn’t have been the One, right? I don’t know why I ever doubted it – except I thought he was too good to be true. But good he is, and true too.

Happy anniversary Phil.

PS. do you like my pun in the title? My Mum will roll her eyes as there is nothing she despises more than bad puns.

PPS. Oh no, I just burnt the marmalade. Now it’s appropriately BRONZE.

cumquat05

Ketchup

lookinthere

starry04

umputer

mail

diggers02

My week in pictures. There were wild winds and sick kids.

Aah Friday… In exactly two minutes I am picking up the phone and ordering Mushroom Mutter, naan bread and some kind of crazy deep fried chicken (pakora?). I will also be encouraging the girls to turn off the tv and will be switching on the radio to listen to Classic Drive with Julia Lester because I like Julia and her music programmer. Tonight I am ducking around the corner for some classy drinks with the girls and then tomorrow I am leaping up to go to the market to buy my usuals (celeriac? feta? cos lettuce hearts? these things seem to make it into my bag every week).

this weekend I am also going to be

- making chicken pie for friends
- visiting the flea market
- painting some window frames
- trying not to think about gorgeous mid century furniture I spied with Kirsty in Fitzroy today
- pulling up weeds
- picking up a copy of Jane Eyre
- putting together a costume for a school performance
- starting a design for an embroidered cushion for Amelia’s birthday
- pulling out that old prickly pear pattern and making it into something that others might like to buy (hello 2005!)
- taking the girls to Ponyo
- and some more!

What are you up?

Skipping in the daisies

dontrunskip
Image via the wonderful Dinosaurs and Robots

Saturday afternoon and we’re wagging swimming lessons. Just another thing to not tick off the list this week.

So what have you been up to?

I’ve been in stalling mode. House needs cleaning, hair needs cutting, writing needs writing, softies need sewing (I need a little banana slug in my studio to get that done), books need reading, dinners need cooking, plans need planning, weeds need weeding. 

Things I have managed to get done lately (brace yourself, it’s been a killer week);

I gave myself a recession-era fringe cut which may have been a mistake.

I made Mum’s You’ve got Friends Chocolate Cake and it worked! I did the 1.5 size recipe and used a big bundt tin and it was a great success.

I twittered about a library book full of cat hair and a fish bone stuck in my throat.

I watched loads of telly… Season 3 of the Mighty Boosh (loved it), Starter for 10 (great), Oscar & Lucinda (lovely), Survivor (oh yes), Lost (to keep Phil company these days),  Flight of the Conchords (and bought Carol Brown so I can listen to it all the time), The Jane Austen Book Club (meh), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (still watchable). 

I heard myself tell someone that we don’t watch a lot of television. At that moment I actually believed it.

I had lots of coffees, at Bliss, at Snow Pony, at Laurent, at home from a packet of Jasper’s and then heard myself tell someone that we are not spending any money on unnecessary items in 2009.

I downloaded M Ward’s new album, Clementine by Melbourne’s (not Norway’s) Washington, The Lark Ascending (which reminds me so much of that wonderful movie ‘The Year my Voice Broke’) and listened to the Dodo’s a lot while I was pretending to write. 

I looked at loads of Oscars frocks and then looked at the NME awards photos and felt a bit relieved that the Brits are still so grungy. Clearly not a stylist in the house.

And in case you missed it, I listed a softie on Ebay for the Bushfire Appeal and it ends Monday!