Birthday Week.

GUYS I am so terribly guilty and apologetic that I have been so quiet on the blog front! I mean I know that you are all just constantly hanging out on the edge of your seats for regular updates from me.  Who wouldn't? I mean this stuff is RIVETING!


WARNING - This post contains ENDLESS REALLY BAD, LIKE REALLY, REALLY BAD IPHONE PHOTOS. OMG WHEN WILL I LEARN AND START USING A PROPER CAMERA!!!???

First things first. If you would be so kind as to look to your right you will see a button  "Vote for me now". If you feel so moved, I would be eternally grateful if you could hop over there and vote for me in the People's Choice Awards. I mean, there's only like 1000 entries or something so I AM A SHOE IN OBVIOUSLY! 

Please and thank you.

Anyway as you all know it was my birthday this week, and in case you missed it I drew the winners of the Mollie Day prizes!  Check it out if you want.

I got pressies.

I done got me some nice perfume from the kids and an attractive nightie and set of jarmies from the husband which were both very nice.

But I have to say the best loot came from my dear old parentals who are traditionally generous beyond measure with this stuff and didn't fail to impress.

Dad gave me money to buy - wait for it - MY VERY OWN LAPTOP COMPUTER! I KNOW! OMG!

So I done bought one.

It's an Asus something something. I like it. Downside is that it is running Windows 8.  WTF? Windows 8 you are freaking me out beyond WORDS and making me feel ANCIENT AND HOPELESS! WHY SO WEIRD WINDOWS 8? Didn't the success of Apple teach you ANYTHING MICROSOFT? EVER HEARD OF USER FRIENDLINESS INTUITIVE SHIT BLAH BLAH?

I've been raging at it.

Here's hoping I come to grips with it STAT or someone will suffer.  I might just write a VERY STRONGLY WORDED letter to a certain Mr Bill Gates outlining my displeasure.

Be afraid Bill.

Anyway, the other present of awesomeness was from my mum - money for a big ole fancy pants, trendy, the whole works hair cut.

Guys. Don't get freaked out (I mean I know I am a 33 year old, generously proportioned mother of two, respectable public servant and erstwhile librarian), but CHECK THIS OUT!

 

I got an UNDERCUT BABY! Just call me Rhianna. You can share my umbrella, ella, ella, any time you need to, any one of you.


My bloggie friend Kim from Falling Face First has written about her blossoming early-mid life crisis and its resulting pink hair action. I too am starting to rage against the dying of the light and saying HELL NO I WON'T GO gently into that good night.

Look it's a pretty small one but we all have to start somewhere. Maybe next time I will get some lopsided geometric hairstyle action too but first things first.

Another friend K has a group on FB called "F**K Yeah Girls with Short Hair - Oz" for fierce chicks like us who rock a short haircut. You should totes look her up and join.

So we came up to the Sunshine Coast to stay at the Slapdash Family Compound for Easter and I write to you from said Compound as we speak.  This meant we had some built in babysitting and this subsequently facilitated a DATE NIGHT for M and I to celebrate my birthday.  So we went to one of our favorite restaurants ever - The Spirit House, in Yandina. It's a Thai restaurant. A super dooper one.

We've been a few times for lunch but hadn't been there during the night before - just so gorgeous! I cannot rave enough!

Here's some random bad photography so you can feel like you were THERE TOO!

It's set around a little pond like thing and you walk along a path to get there, all lit with lanterns and "spirit houses".

As we walked along I remarked perceptively, "It really reminds me of THAILAND!". Who'd have thought, eh?

We had a cocktail.

And some champagne.

We ate spicy delights.  The end.

I hope that little rundown was as good for you as it was for me.

 Anyway it's been a nice week. We've even been to the beach. We met my friend K there with her two little children today.  As we were playing on the grass near the sand a TV reporter and camerman came up to us. They walked right past me and zoomed in on olive skinned, beach touseled hair K and asked her probing questions like "What do you think people like to DO AT THE BEACH ON GOOD FRIDAY?" and so forth. I'm not sure what they were hoping she'd say.  Perhaps they were angling for something like "Oh, we like to REENACT THE PASSION OF CHRIST FOR THE BEACHGOERS" or "We enjoy the beach at Easter because the sand in our jocks reminds us of CHRIST'S SUFFERING ON THE CROSS!". What they got was a lot of close ups of her baby A eating a hot cross bun covered in sand and grass.

After they'd got her comments and their 5 minute baby close up, they wandered off to find another attractive family to film.

Completely ignoring me and my offspring.

WTF!!?? The bloody cheek. DON'T THEY KNOW MY BABY IS THE CUTEST BABY EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD????  I MEAN LOOK AT HIM!!!!

OK so maybe my outfit du jour wasn't screaming BEACH BEACH BEACH, what with my voluminous sun smart coverall, unshaven, pasty legs and Mum's old beach hat, but the kid has star potential at LEAST!.

How very dare they.  I almost shouted out after them "I say there! You with the camera! HAVEN'T YOU FORGOTTEN SOMEONE!!!???".

Anyway Happy Easter readers! Hope you never have to suffer the indignity of being ignored by a regional television station's camera crew. How ever will we live it down?

Until next time!

Ringing in the New Year. Getting back my BloJo. Also, f****n magnets! How does that work??

Sounds rude doesn't it? But yes, you heard right,  I've gone and coined another term. I'm sure the Oxford Dictionary boffins will be on the phone to me any minute.

So "BloJo" ain't what you think it is. BloJo is the term used to describe the enthusiasm or feeling of motivation needed to write crap on your blog. That is, your Blog Mojo. See what I've done there? I've just shoved two words together to make a new one, in the manner of, say, " Boho" or "Bennifer" or "Brangelina", or even "sangry".

Anyway my BloJo had gone walkabout over the festive season, but I'm trying to get it back. I've been so sangry and loserish for the last month but the New Year is here and with it the psychological boost I need to pull myself together and get ENERGETIC! I'm feeling positively, er, positive! Woo! Come owwwwnnn 2013 hit me with your best shot!

P wearing her New Year outfit and contemplating the future.

How did youse ring in the New Year? We went and stayed at my SIL and BIL's place. The whole evening was a great success because...

a) The kids only stayed up til 8pm.  They had a sort of miniature discotheque that involved them giving a small performance of Queen's "Another one bites the dust" which P very amusingly calls "Buster Dust". Hee hee. They were then treated to a sparkler each and promptly wrangled, without too much drama, into bed. Amazeballs.

Aaaaaaaaaaah...Freak out!!!

b) The grown ups were then able to eat a nice meal, have a few drinkies including some bubbly, and proceed to usher in the new year huddled round the computer sniggering at You Tube clips such as this one....



Tee hee hee.

And this one.. .
It's a MEEEERRACLE! Fucken magnets?! How does that work??!

(There's also a very amusing SNL takeoff of this clip but it is mega hard to find.)


...followed by indulging in a Steve Coogan Live DVD, until lo and behold midnight was upon us! We all had another glass of fancy plonk and then hit the hay. And the kids slept all night long including Baby B. And then everyone let me sleep in til like 8.30am. I'm a lucky one.

I know how this looks, but we were actually having a lovely time.  And the plastic cups were for the kids I swear.  We used the posh glasses an' all. Innit.

But it didn't stop there people. We drove home and pottered about a bit before packing up AGAIN and driving to Kirra beach which is practically in another state, to meet up with some dear friends J and F and their sprogs, and other dear friends M and T. If you haven't been to Kirra for a while (like I hadn't) then OMG you are in for a surprise, the SAND! There is so MUCH. It was like undertaking a trek over the Sahara desert just to get to the water.  Anyway we did finally reach the sea even without a camel to assist us, and we all (yes, even me!) had a bracing dip in the rather wild ocean. Apparently someone drowned there today! Gah. How brave am I!!!?? Super brave, thank you very much.

Then we ate fish and chips.

Best. New Year. EVER!!

We are, however paying the price tonight for such an eventful few days, having just had the most hardcore bedtime battle times 2. Urghggf.

Cheerio chaps.

Weekend. Beach bogan biffo. Darecember.

Am so exhausted. Will make this brief. I always have a million things to write but am always too knackered.
Spent the weekend at the parentals again, this time M came too. It was dad's birthday.

Saturday M, P, baby B and I, and unusually, both of my parents, went to the beach (I know, I know) in the afternoon for fish and chips. Now although I spent a recent post holding forth like a madwoman on a streetcorner about my fear and loathing of the beach, I actually do enjoy consuming heavily salted battery crumby fish with equally heavily salted and fat laden chippies, in the vicinity of said beach. I was looking forward to it.

We set up camp at a likely looking picnic table and M and Grandpa George went down to the beach with P, Mum went to get the salty consumables, and I minded the possie with the baby. I had already noticed a group of dubious types occupying the adjacent tables and BBQs. In fact monopolizing them would perhaps be a better description. I was sort of half annoyed and half intrigued as I played with baby B and watched the middle aged parents downing a few (ahem) cans of ye olde Jim Beam and coke or similar, while a gaggle of high spirited teenage scamps ran squealing around spraying each other with humongous water pistols. Oh the hilarity.

A while later I saw a guy in maybe his 60s stalk past my table and the classy table next to me. I thought to myself, "Self," I thought, "self, I reckon he looks familiar. Hmm...".

Moments later, the darling little sprites with their sweet little water pistols and their just adorable scanty bikini arrangements came shrieking back to their adoring parents, saying " Oh my GAWD oh my GAWD, that was Mr S______. Muum, Daaad, it was Mr S_____, from Schhooooll!! Oh my GAWD!!"
The adoring mother laughed delicately, paused momentarily from her dinner preparations and said "Awww, youse guys, youse better RUN, gawwwwn, get runnin'!!!".
The youthful dears skipped off again singing hymns and playing The Glad Game a la Pollyanna.

"Aha!" I realised. The older gent had been one of my former teachers, and one of my Dad's comrades from their days in the teaching equivalent of trench warfare, my old high school. Think Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, only with Aussie accents and negligible street cred.

Seconds after the teens scampered off, Mr S returned back our way again, calling out " How are you people doing?" to my tablemates. As he strode purposefully off and crossed the road, I saw the be-singletted father and his equally well turned out son bolt like greased lightning across the road, whereupon the father proceeded to shout abuse at, shove, grab the collar of and generally roughly manhandle poor old Mr S. Naturally I did what any good citizen and concerned onlooker would do and sat on my fat arse watching unmoving from a safe distance, with my jaw hanging open in what I like to call Full Gawker Mode. I couldn't hear what was being yelled but Mr S is no pushover so was able to cool the nutter down,  and the son eventually held his father's flailing arms a back so Mr S could make a getaway. If there's one thing that spending 30 years at a rough state high school does for you it's give you mad skillz when dealing with lunatic parents.
RESPECT. Brother got game.

I've got no real idea what led to this bit of argy bargy and can only speculate that maybe Mr S had felt compelled to give a bit of a scolding to the junior bogans and that consequently the senior bogans got all " Noone fuckin tells my fuckin kids off except fuckin ME fuck em!". Or somesuch.

Needless to say I lost no time in gathering up our belongings and waving my returning family over to a table farther away from those lunatics. What with my own father being a 60 something former teacher I couldn't risk another similar confrontation particularly with Dad's gammy knee. I mean when dad was deputy principal back in the day he once kicked the school assembly hall door in on QCS morning when the cleaner had lost the keys or was drunk or whatever. It quite gave the watching Home Economics ladies the vapours.
He's a firy one. So best keep him out of harm's way is my motto.

I've got shitloads to say but I can't get the computer to work so am blogging from my phone which.frankly is giving me the hardcore shits and is tiresome and also labour intensive.

Before I go, as a way of brightening up my life I'm doing the Fox in Flats Darecember thing. Can't link, too hard. Google it. Here's the first two days.
Day one - hot pink lippy and trout pout.
Day two - denim. Pink jeans discarded on floor.

Too.tired to fix typos and.grammar problems ahahagrjdjdjd. Damm you phone fat fingers blarghhh.