Not the root of all evil but the root of the root. Love finds a root then roots find love then make love, then give birth to love and eventually love to root again.
Can’t remember where I was going with this but I do love my children and I missed them a little bit but it was only a few days, so I loved the wine as well. And honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to do this
or look at this
or merely walk here
rather than running and screaming.
Just to clarify.
I won’t say it’s a rare opportunity because I’ve done it in consecutive years, and sometimes more than once in the same year, but compared to Husband fucking off everywhere for work, it is an opportunity afforded to me not very often, that I can be the one fucking off for a while by myself.
My Nanna turned 80 and Husband suggested I fuck off over there and spend time with my peeps- besides the ones I made myself – so that is what I did.
I hung out in the airport by myself and decided that if push came to shove, I could very easily take up residence in the nice new restroom in the new concourse near the 60s gates at SFO, because it’s that nice and I have standards.
I went and had lunch with my peeps at the beach and the peeps that they had made themselves. I gorged myself on the first real meal of unnecessary carbs and fats in weeks, and washed it all down with some earl grey and a glass of I’m on holidays.
Had an emotional lunch with my Nanna who is losing some of her marbles which is sad to witness, especially if you haven’t seen her for years and she was mostly fine before you packed your ass and family to move overseas. The upside was watching my other peeps and the peeps that they had made, run around like adorable cherubs and get in trouble with their parents who weren’t me. We also had some serious aussie tucker.
I saw some weekend cricket,
had some aussie bevvies,
a childhood throwback for breakfast,
finally made it to the footy club of my childhood,
kicked back under some gum trees,
caught the train over the Harbour Bridge,
thumbed my nose at the old office where I used to work with a few nice people and a few assholes as well,
went window shopping in expensive malls with breakables everywhere,
and generally waltzed through town taking in the sights until I ended up with a nice cup with scones etc at the delightful Queen Victoria Building.
The hotel was another chapter in a story of child-free adventures. Mum and I demolished a bottle of wine (and I thought we would have to take it upstairs if we didn’t finish it, who was I kidding) which was served to us in a super tall ice bucket by wait staff in suits with nary a child in sight. I introduced her to the Outlander tv show and she knows all about men in kilts because she’s read the books, and she confirmed that she does have a few books which I thought I gave her a while back which she denies, and I knew it all along.
Breakfast was a lot of things but also
Hot Cross buns.
eating the destruction of your lord and saviour in delicious cinnamon and raisin form.
Home again, home again jiggedy jog.
What a great weekend! What did I miss out on doing while I was back in oz? I can’t think of a thing! Wait until 2am and I might think of something, but I did plenty of drinking
Love this
and saw most of my peeps, ahem Nicole, got a bit of aussie sunburn (bbq chicken wings, anyone?) and saw some Kookaburras, parakeets and magpies. It was great, but also red wine and slippers are cool, too.
Am I even listening? Am I remotely paying attention? No, no and no. Fuck.
I’m on a flight by myself and I have a trilogy of awesome books to read. I packed the first one in my usable carry-on bag and the other two in my stowable carry-on bag. But then the announcement at the boarding area about oversized carry-on items made me feel guilty because I have 2 gorgeous vintage luggage pieces
about the same size, so, one of them is really too big. Business pro Husband assured me I could take them both and I’ve seen that ep of seinfeld where that guy takes on all of his luggage rather than checking them, even the big ones because, well, @united, that’s why. But I checked the case through to my final at the last minute because I always want to do the right thing, and then I boarded with everyone else and stowed my pretty hatcase up top and pulled out my book in preparedness for flying and reading and quiet time because there appears to be no children on this flight, but I didn’t double check and now I have book two instead of book one. OH NO! OH NO! OH NO! Fuckety fuck fuck fuck. FUCK!
Going to admit to something a little naive and gullible, a litle childish and may-be a little embarrassing, but screw you. I believe in magic, in the possibility of maybe and what if and also in sort of everything. So when I met this guy and found out that he was born in Ireland and his parents still had raging irish accents, I was hooked, even as an aside to the fact that he was sort of the hottest guy around and looked like the guy I had thought for my entire previous twenty-five years I would marry, even though I had not been dreaming of getting married my whole life like that fucking stupid episode of friends and any other stupid bullshit movie about girls dreaming about a wedding their whole lives. Wait, what was the question?
Right. Husband is irish, born in Dublin, looks like a heart throb. He moved to Australia when he was 5 so he doesn’t have the accent (but I don’t buy his stories that he gets no lady attention when he’s away because the aussie accent still gets ’em everytime and yes, I’m speaking from experience) but he does a hilarious irish accent for stories and jokes, of course, and sounds like his dad when he does. But where is the magic? Where are the stories of the fae people and a bit of shamrock glamour sprinkled here, there and maybe just a little bit so I can see it with my own eyes? That’s the magic that I’m talking about. That’s the 1% of me that has been waiting for something these past ten plus years. He’s hiding it from me.
I read this the other night, it was so good! And brings back the 1% of disappointment I’ve been harbouring because there’s not been the other kind of magic I was expecting from marrying someone born in the emerald isle.
Now, I’m not saying I want to run off through some standing stones and roger a hot guy in a kilt (and nothing else) from hundreds of years ago, because hello, that was Scotland, and when I suggested to my boys that we all try it together, I was assuming that we would all go through together and be back before Husband woke up from his nap. But, we did go looking for fairies in the forest and of course found none, so I assume that they’re all in Ireland. We did find some bones, though, so, maybe. But yes, we went looking for fairies and fairy mounds and then husband poo-pooed our efforts when he finally dragged his ass out of bed. Maybe he communes with his kith and kin in his sleep…? Again, not sharing the magic. Maybe it skips a generation and I will have to keep an eye on the boys for other types of playful bullshit that become mysterious and too coincidental to be coincidences. Not sure that we’ll be putting out thimbles of sweetened milk or anything to attract them, but we do have a fairy garden at the back door. If we try to attract the good ones, what will stop the bad ones? I don’t want to get into fairy runes or anything, that would be a step too far because what if I have the wrong one and there’s a conjunction of ley lines or something and then I have to get a permit for the portal in my backyard and our house is out of the city limits. It sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare, so no runes. You get the picture. If Husband would just make with the glamour, everything would be a whole lot easier. And I’m not saying that Husband doesn’t bring the magic, because he does, but all of those books about irish fairy princes and etc, that’s a world of hello right here, and I could get down with that. So yeah, Husband, bring it.
So there’s a function coming up in a few weeks and I’ve known about it for a few months. I’ve been working out for 2 and a bit years but my love of foodstuffs in general has been working in opposition to this rigorous routine for probably the entire 2 and a bit years. Sigh. Anyhoo, I bought a new pair of sneakers and they aren’t my favourite because my feet hurt like bastards on father’s day (read that the other day and laughed and laughed. Sorry, bastards) and as a consequence I haven’t been to the gym all week. Add that to not lifting anything heavier than my ass out of bed every day and the weight I had worked so damn hard to lose has returned and guess what, they brought friends, so yeah.
What I plan to wear to this glamorous spit roast is my second wedding dress, but the zip was not happy about that today, so hello eating habits.
What’s the point of having 3 different wedding dresses if you can’t fit back into even one of them?
Sure, the first one won’t fit because of babies and ribcages etc, and I never got on board the waist training bandwagon, aka corsets. FFS people, corsets, really? Yes I am forlorn over my (misspent youth) misplaced smaller waistline but corsets I am not.
Anyhoo, going to try (to put the fork down) the keto diet, basically eating butter and bacon until my clothes are too big. Sounds counterintuitive but if I drop the excess carbs, then maybe i will trick my body into burning fat for energy like I never could with the whole balanced diet and moderate exercise adage, then I can bloody well try the opposite.
Tiday. I started w bread for breakfast and that's a no-no
Wish me luck.
Anyone who has seen Super Troopers or Super Bad knows that cops have cool shenanigans going on at any time of the day or night… don’t they? Apparently not, because I signed up for a radical ride-along and after I made a short post about it to friends and sundry on facebook, people were totes surprised that it could even be done. It can be done, and it did get done by this woman, two days ago. I made copious notes during the day, but let me start by saying that it was so cool and exciting and at any given moment, in the back of my mind, there was a banner reading “I can NOT believe I am doing this” running over and over against the backdrop of everything else.
First things first (disclaimer: my notes are a shambles so this is probably the only thing that I can remember in order): my assigned officer gave me a thorough tour of the police station and it was so cool! I saw the detectives, the weapons, the traffic people (if you can believe it, there was a large poster of Eric Estrada on the wall – these are my people!), volunteer coordinators, and heaps of other things that I forgot as soon as we walked away because – according to Husband – I have a goldfish brain. So apologies to people and departments I don’t mention because of that reason. There were two officers being sworn in that morning, and they had the obligatory fast haircuts. I asked my officer about that later and there is a strict hair and facial hair policy, but it seems to vary between departments in different location, e.g. the policy people in different counties may have different personal preferences which they then use to make the policy. Then we went and found our ride for the day, and I heard the pros and cons of each vehicle and the reasoning behind them. Basically the cars are cool but less so when you have to get out on the same leg and twist the knee to get out properly, thereby screwing your running game for chasing down perps, or words to that effect. Something that I noticed was that the door was all scratched up where one of the guns is always rubbing against. I thought it was cool, like something that someone from CSI would put in their notes, ha, not. Anyhoo. (Can’t believe I am in this car!) My officer gave me his call number in case I needed to call in on the radio, as in, if he were to get taken down in a massive shoot-out and I just happened to be watching calmly from the passenger seat, ya-huh!
I went out for breakfast/brunch with my officer, and I basically interviewed him while we ate burritos, and then we went out on the beat. Dude!
Driving around town I asked a shit ton of questions – both dumb and less so – and found out that there are no holding cells in the police station, nor many others, and that most people get taken to the jail. I did go into an interview room with my and another officer and the guy under arrest, and there was a tiny room for making phone calls to worrying mothers and unsurprised attorneys, and the seat that the guy was on did seem to be adequate for handcuffing people to if necessary. It was during a drive through bumtown that my officer saw a driver acting a bit drunk, and so we followed him and eventually had him arrested for drunk driving. I asked about breath-testing and was surprised to hear that Oregon does not allow random breathalyser testing, and that the only machine that does it is called the Intoxilyzer and it sits in the interview room. I recall many a long weekend in Australia of watching the death-toll mount on the news because people were driving drunk and killing themselves or others, and so cops have small and portable breathalyser machines that they take probably everywhere, to catch unsuspecting fuckwits who drive drunk. It seems like a sensible thing to me, but let’s not go into that line of thinking. Anyway, so that was that.
Driving past the inmate work crews, those guys doing the gardening on the sides of the roads etc, I asked about them because a friend said that some bad guys get out on those, but he clarified and said that no way, it’s only people who have not committed person crimes, that get to out on the work crews. Occasionally, like once or twice a year, someone will “wander off” from a work crew, but basically they do the work and get their sentence reduced incrementally as a result. Also, if someone does piss off from working, then their home or that of their girlfriend/parents/known associates etc are staked out and they get caught in zero time.
We drove around downtown and my officer talked to a few people here and there that are involved in drugs occasionally, and he pointed out a handful of people here and there not so inconspicuously wander off, and that is apparently because they have warrants out against them. That is the big thing that my officer said has changed during his 26 years of service – the number of warrants have skyrocketed, and that it’s not such a deterrent anymore, specifically, that if someone is “only going to get 30 days” as in, 30 days in prison, then they’ll just do it and be done. I balked and talked about Shawshank Redemption, and yeah, those things still happen but yeah. Blew my mind.
It is a felony to be on the train tracks.
I got food stuck in my teeth! omg
I had my eyes peeled for a stolen car that was allegedly from Nebraska, and I was still looking for it when I was driving my errands with 5yo in the car yesterday. No dice, so far.
I checked the most wanted list, and then we looked up people and car number plates; we went and checked out a couple of ratty RVs parked illegally, and my officer was involved in the arrest of someone at one of those times. During that occasion, there was a female driver and later a child inside, and that was a bit sad to see. Aside from the excitement of hanging out with a cop, I also could see that the bad guys are still just people, and that the people in their lives are also, just people, going through tough times and sure, making the wrong choices, but sometimes they have few other choices to make. And of course, the police involved are also just people, who move into new houses with their family and don’t go out as much as the cops on tv because they spend time with their family.
So, my officer was involved in the incident where the RV got taken apart and the guy inside was intent on killing himself and everyone around him, and so that was interesting; the gear they wear is about 25lbs worth, and a lot of equipment used is really old.
Aside from getting the inside word on everything that was going on around us and coming through on the police radio which was right beside me, I got to tell jokes with a police officer and tell him to floor it and ride his ass when he didn’t. I also got to discuss the plot of my book with him, and get his opinion on what was going on, and talk about police procedure for different scenes I’ve been thinking about, and that was the reason that I decided on a ride-along, not just so I could feel awesome riding around in a cop car for eight straight hours. He made suggestions, some of which I negated, but I’ve been googling some of the other things he said so I’m going to rename the cop character after him.
Tim Sims
But driving around talking plotlines with my officer was so rad! Bouncing ideas around the car, so, cool. Obviously he was taking the piss about my ideas, but honestly, he is not a fan of the entire Super Troopers movie, merely the first thirty minutes, so I don’t have to take everything he said seriously. He does like The New Guys with Will Ferrell and my boyf Marky Mark, so, maybe. He double-checked that it was okay to call someone a ‘dickhead’ and of course, it’s my insult of choice, and so old school. Not enough people call dickheads, dickheads these days. I may just start a campaign, #dickhead.
Later, we responded to a call and there was a guy who got arrested, and then put into the back of our car! What was I supposed to do? It was just me and him. So I asked a few questions and he gave me a few bullshit answers, but again, he’s just a person and I felt sorry for him. Because I’m a naive sucker, obviously, but I’m also a parent and I don’t want my kids – or any others – to go down those paths, and he was someone’s child as well.
This child had the best day ever, and I am so thankful that the cops had me along, and I did get my cop’s deets to run possible plotlines past him in the future. I recommend hanging with your local cops whenever you can, if childs are over 18. 
I, apparently, have a number of contingency plans, should the god-awful, worst-case scenario occur in a hypothetical, parallel world. Boyfriends. If Husband is taken from this world too soon – and let me be perfectly clear and say that any time would too soon, regardless of his occasional open mouth snoring and stealing the fucking blankets and not sorting out his GD washing – I have a lot of celebrity boyfriends who may or may not step in to fill the vacated position. Ryan Gosling was never really on my list, but if he calls me, then maybe I will reconsider.
I found this online. Maybe I'm on his list, too, if Eva ever kicks the bucket
Marky Mark was on the list early, and not because of his NKOTB bro Donny. Marky Mark kicks everyones collective asses in movies such as Date Night, The Departed and Four Brothers. I love the gritty shit.
I then thought that I might marry our house cleaner if Husband bought the farm, because she never judges and I like the way she rolls, the vacuum cleaner through the mess, like a scythe. Elaine is hardcore.
Christian Bale gets shit done in The Dark Knight trilogy, and who doesn’t love a man in a thick rubber suit of black armored draw your own conclusions, who talks dirty to people with a lisp?
And then came Kylo Ren, with his dark cloak. And sure, that mask is certainly creepy, but it’s also kind of maybe sexy as hell. Or was it his grasp of the midiclorians (sp?) that allowed him to stop the space time continuum for one or two individuals he was “questioning” whilst all hell was being broken loose upon a village of poor unsuspectings? I might have been a little hot under the cloak, myself.
And recently, Charlie Parker. He’s actually a fictional character created by John Connolly who rules the book-writing skies along with Stephen King and Joe Hill and a bunch of other amazeballs writers whose names will take up too much space to write. But yeah, Charlie Parker. Rugged, dangerous, capable as all get out, probably built like Noah’s Ark with eyes to cut you in half as you lose yourself in them. Or words to that effect. I started the new Charlie Parker novel recently, A Song of Shadows, and one of the praise quotes on the dust cover reads “The intensity of a madman and the subtley of a poet” and that’s it in a nutshell. I told Husband about Charlie Parker being my new boyfriend and he all but screamed out a resounding “noooooooo”, because he also wants Charlie Parker to be his boyfriend because of the above rad reasons. But honestly, he will probably be busy with his other boyfriend, Tom Hardy, and that’s fine with me.
Mmmm, celebrity boyfriends.
Everybody Get Dangerous – 7yo is obsessed with ninjas right now and is always asking crazy questions about ninjas and hummers and the like, and then these lyrics:
“What will we say when our kids come to us
And ask, with a smile on their face,
“Hey Dad, my friend’s got some new ninja swords!
Is it cool if we slash up his place?”
Sweater Song
Sweeny – totes relevant in the book I’m writing/procrastinating over
Lonely Girl – in my book
Cleopatra –
Eulogy for a rock band – RIP David Bowie
Foolish Father – applies to any and all parents
Island In The Sun – That was one of our wedding songs. We got married on Shark Island in the middle of Sydney Harbour. The only thing missing was being stoned as hell.
There are probably more but the boys are home from school now so I can’t just watch music clips all day anymore 😧
The new year starts in a couple of days and Husband brought up resolutions. As in, he wants help to recap and then refocus. I don’t think I made proper resolutions this time last year because I was dragging the other ones with me, but I also feel like it’s time to recap and refocus.
We need to take better care of our resolutions
So there is three years of resolutions for our family starting in 2012, ranging from toilet training to reading to finding fulfillment within; very zen. I’m going to take the initiative for Husband and make his resolution for the new year to be as physically capable as Gerard Butler’s character in Olympus Has Fallen:
This pic merely hints at his assassin’s biceps, and the pants don’t do justice to his murderous thighs; I’m going to stop before I go on. Anyhoo, Husband’s resolution is to get massively everything. Husband is of the opinion that all round fitness and flexibility are required, but he already cycles, so lifting houses is all he really needs to focus on, to be able to murder people with his body parts.
♡
I’m not sure how to narrow my resolutions down. I want to strip down a bit of my ass and I want to keep writing everyday. So I guess that’s habits and focus. Same old, same old.
7yo’s resolution will be to become a better reader; 5yo to hone his penmanship and to continue his work of previous years and try to be gentle, because he really does pound the shit out of whichever of his brothers are there. 8yo’s resolution is to work on his schoolwork. He seems to be going really well in class, but asking for help and expanding his ideas and a few things like that need attention. Also, apparently not reading in class when he’s meant to be doing actual schoolwork or listening to the teacher. However, super proud moment when that came up in the parent/teacher conference!
So another year of intangibles for our family. Cheers to that.
He just turned five. My sweet little baby is now not always so sweet but he still gives me big smackeroo puckered up kisses and submits to hugs and tickling. He changed his mind a few times but I eventually nailed him down on his birthday party theme and pulled it all off without too many changes of heart.
I outsourced the decorations
Rescue Bots have been his thing for a while, sons of Transformers or something. Anyhoo, I printed out some biggish ones and then some smaller ones for a craft, and then a mask to colour for “bot vision” to find the bots kidnapped by Dr Morocco, who, it turns out, is an evil genius who used to hang out with Jules Vern, of all people. This was lost on the boys – they haven’t read any of his books and they’ve only seen the first Back To The Future.
I made my own “disaster machine” with banana cake, icing and rice chex. The best way to destroy something is to eat it! Disasters averted.
All in all, he had a great day with his friends.
4 Princes and Me 