Saturday, May 26, 2012

Mud, mud, glorious mud…


These lyrics, from the Hippopotamus Song, are clearly lost on me.  I fail to see anything glorious about wet, dirty, sloshy product unless it is in the form of a face pack.

Two thirds of this family unit enjoy the whole gardening experience, whilst it is largely lost on me. The end results of manicured lawns and flowering beds I am all for, but the actual arriving at that point is not my thing.

Now, I am no Don Burke (for those of you who remember the 90s and the cottage industry of visually impaired knitters), but I wouldn’t have thought that mowing the lawns and having a bit of a tidy up entailed water and dirt. Apparently though I am grossly mistaken. In order to knock up a batch of mud pies, one needs one vital ingredient...mud.



So with a plumbers’ in hand (or tracky dack as the case may be), one set off to engage in this all time childhood rite of passage, whilst I went in search of the napisan.


Friday, May 11, 2012

Choose your five

Unless you have been living under a rock lately – or in a media vacuum, you would be aware of the latest move in the war on groceries.

An unprecedented mail-out of loyalty cards started a couple of weeks ago, to purportedly every household throughout Australia. I don’t believe in giving this mob any free publicity so I will refrain from mentioning any names, but I am sure you know to whom I refer.

Alongside this marketing mayhem is the opportunity to choose your own 5 products, in order to attract an additional discount, creatively referred to as My5. No doubt shareholders paid some overpriced marketing genius to come up with that catchy name.

OK…I admit it, I fell victim to the marketing and have signed up for the loyalty scheme.  Choosing My5 was a little more challenging though…there were just too many to choose from.

So here goes…here are my top 5...

Number 1: Trolleys that generally head in the vaguest of directions in which the handler wrestles it.

Number 2: Fruit and veg bags that easily open without the need for a forensic examination.

Number 3: Checkout staff that can readily discriminate between cold and non-cold product and equally as readily identify a cold bag from a non-cold bag.

Number 4: Close parent supervision of any short people using those ankle-destroying learner trolleys.

Number 5: No standing signs throughout the aisles preventing long-lost family and friend reunions.

Look, in fact I think I could go on here…I mean, why stop at 5...

Number 6: Staff training in basic vegetable identification – Tip: if it is not pre-packaged with barcode and appears to be leafy, green or bulbous it is more than likely an item your mother spent your formative years trying to get you to eat.

Number 7: Staff training in job satisfaction, effusion and variants in greetings. “Hi, how are you?” could in fact be modified so that you sound a little less programmed. 

Number 8: Staff training in product fragility determination – such as eggs or bread which I can guarantee will be worse off under the 1kg sugar and tins of tomatoes that you have just thrown in.

Number 9: Staff training in poisons identification and potential cross-contamination. Here’s an idea – don’t pack the cockroach baits with the baby food.

And lastly... 
Number 10: Trolley airbags – my car lays testament to all that is the run away trolley. Airbags are to be deployed immediately upon any detection of a hand release yet motion remains in play.

Ahh, grocery shopping! You gotta love it or hate it. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t endure a financial haemorrhage at the end of each outing, just for the sake of keeping your family in nutritional value for the week…

Eating...it is so over-rated!

Names have been changed to protect the innocent


Friday, May 4, 2012

Inbuilt obsolescence


While toddlerhood presents with many varied challenges, I have taken solace in the fact that we have reached a point in time where many things have become obsolete. Bittersweet as it is, I have moved on to the next stage of motherhood with the removal of many baby relics.

I think it is safe to say that around three years into this gig, I can regain some real estate in my house.

My top five space savers:
  1. The pram - I no longer need the biceps of Xena to wrestle the German engineered contraption into the boot. I have just realised that the short one has two working legs - and it's about time she used them.
  2. The nappy sack- one of those baby accessories that you felt that you just couldn't live without. The one that you pained over when selecting, making sure it color coordinated with the nursery…only to find that a Huggies box was far more practical, stuff the colour scheme.
  3. The change table – that raised mobile platform dedicated to all that is waste product.
  4. The nappy bag - the one accessory that I was really glad to see the back of...regaining the handbag option was so liberating. I could be a big girl again! An over the shoulder accessory that contained grown up things, as opposed to nappies, wipes, nursing pads, nappy cream etc etc.
  5. The toddler bed - progression from bassinette to cot to toddler bed was mostly predicated by necessity and polite medical advice. A head injury, an ambulance trip and 6 hours of neuro obs tend to prompt some serious re-thinking in terms of sleeping arrangements. Who would have thought that toddlers don't bounce?


To be honest, it was hard at first...those early pangs of 'my baby has grown up'. But then came the overwhelming feelings of freedom, space, maneuverability, independence...

I do have to keep myself in check though - I have successfully managed to un-encumber myself so much now, that I run the risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water...so to speak.