Today, when I woke up, I got to go to the post office to collect this platter:

Here it is keeping my drac company.

Now my grainy Iphone photography does not do it justice, you can see a far better photo here.

Kim of Frogpondsrock tried to tell me that it might not be as lovely as I had imagined from her post. It is people, it is.

I even love the underside of it. I should have taken a photo but basically, it’s gorgeous.

There is actually no way that you can capture it’s beauty in a photo anyway, it is gloriously textural. It is a piece that needs to be held and touched and stroked.

I’m a little bit shocked that Kim gave it to me. She is extraordinarily talented and I can’t help feeling a tad unworthy of something that she has made.

Thank you Kim. I love it very, very much. I have put it in the hallway just outside my bedroom so that I may caress and admire it each time I walk past.

I received  a note home from Poss’ school yesterday.

A note about a super spectacular “Flight of Fantasy” art show to be held at the school.

“Fantastic “, you say, “how wonderful that the school is fostering the students’ creative abilities, it must be a very fine school indeed”.

Indeed it is a fine school.

When I first read the note this is just what I thought. I thought, “how nice”, as I glanced at the note, stuck it to the fridge and herded the children out the door for school. I really didn’t give it another thought until Beefcake asked me if I had read it.

Me: “Um, yeah, I’ve seen it, it’s an art show or something”

Beefcake: “Yes, but did you actually read the note, Ali?”

Me: “Um, kind of, it’s an art show?”

Beefcake “Yeah, it’s an art show for students. They say here that you don’t have to pay for entry”

Me: “Oh, okay, that’s nice, they usually make you pay for that sort of thing”

Beefcake: “Yeah, there’s no entry fee but you will be able to purchase your own child’s art for the very reasonable price of just $20″

Me: “What the #*%&????” (children were present)

Seriously people.

The note advertises an art show that is-

“to primarily be a celebration of the children’s art and a chance to come together for a fun afternoon with our community, with music food and refreshments”

Now, first of all, that is their run-on grammar-deficient sentence, not mine. I don’t need their help in that area. Second, I am sure that refreshments will be offered for a fairly extortionate reasonable price. It will be a delighful afternoon.

I am sure.

They are also looking for parents to assist with setup, picking up supplies (they have requested a small truck, if someone should have one spare) and framing the “artworks”.

So, just to clarify.

The school would like us to come along to an event, free of charge (picture the underlined portion in flashing neon lights, I do!) , pay three times the going rate for a can of warm lemonade and a stale cupcake, pay $20 for our child’s masterpiece, which we have both helped to frame and facilitate the exhibition of and give up a Sunday afternoon for the privilege.

Yeah.

The fundraising committee at Poss’ school need a little reality check. I knew that a fair few parents at the school had their heads up their own arses, but seriously??!!

They finish off by saying they will be offering a convenient pre-purchasing system to “avoid the rush on the day”. So we should also purchase the art just for the love of our children or something, without even sighting it first?

Somehow I don’t think there will be a rush on the day.

Does anyone else think that this is absolutely nuts??

Tell me I’m not alone here people. Poss’ school is crazy, no?

It turns out that being pain-free has it’s pros and cons. I am much less sore and swollen today than I have been in weeks, thanks to large doses of anti-inflammatory yesterday. However,  it would appear that nasties in my system also muck around with my ability to sleep, which I obviously need, not at all. Also, just, well, last night sucked. Let’s just run through my evening for those of you who are interested (which I assume is everyone because really, who wouldn’t be).

5.45pm (just before dinner time for us): Power goes off. Power company website says it will remain this way until at least 8pm.

6.10 pm: Dinner will now be chicken and chips from the chicken shop around the corner.

6.30pm: Beefcake arrives home with dinner, narrowly avoiding mad run on chicken shop as all residents of surrounding neighbourhoods rush to feed themselves in absence of electricity.

6.45pm: We finish eating. Power comes back on. We feel foolish.

7.00pm: Grub loudly protesting getting out of bath as she is cutting four teeth at once and in desperate need of comfort any way she can get it. She hates us. Frustrating blur of child wrangling and noise. Breastfeed.

7.45pm: Pudding in bed. Poss decides she must print out 11 pages of ‘art’ she has made for school on the computer. I say ‘no’. I am evil.

8.45pm: Poss in bed, Grub asleep in my arms. I start to drift off on the couch.

9.00pm: I tell Beefcake I might just have a wee lie down in bed with Grub. Breastfeed, breastfeed, breastfeed again.

12.30am: Grub wakes up, I need to wee. Stagger in to lounge room. Beefcake still working. Grub will not return to sleep once I have relieved myself. I browse the internet while she plays.

1.30am: Pudding up. Needs to sleep in our bed. Scared. Needs torch. Put him back to bed with torch.

1.45am: Pudding cold, needs jumper. Threaten removal of bed curtains if he doesn’t stay in bed. Grub still awake.

2.20am: Annoying rant from Beefcake about my inability to sleep and/or stay in bed. Bicker for a short while. Make sarcastic response about acquiring his permission next time I wish to be up at odd hours. Breastfeed. Grub drifts off.

3.00am: Head to bed with Beefcake. Chat briefly. He falls asleep. Lie awake and stare at wall.

3.35am: Breastfeed.

4.15am: Lie awake and stare at wall planning witty and clever blog post now long forgotten.

4.30am: Worry that some food was not put away in kitchen. Get up to check. Food had been put away.

5.00am: Drift off to sleep. Breastfeed.

5.45am: Awoken by garbage truck emptying our bins.

6.00am: Breastfeed.

7.00am: Alarm goes off. Tell Beefcake to stay in bed. Breastfeed. Get up to make breakfasts/lunches/drive people to school.

Despite it all, I felt quite chipper this morning then, during Pudding’s swimming lesson, Grub killed my phone. You see, last time she killed it, Beefcake was able to take it apart and fix it so that I didn’t get to have to buy a new one (bastard). Thanks to my quick thinking, I was able to avoid a repeat performance of Beefcake as Mr Fixit this morning and score myself one of these (seeing as we were walking right past the phone shop and everything).

I am thrilled. It is shiny and I can do fun things with it.

I am in lurve.

Beefcake is jealous. He won’t admit it but I can tell.

So, on to pictures – taken using my new toy. Which is actually quite hard to hold still and take photos with. I do not have a steady hand.

Badness, who incidentally is clever and artistic and creative, has asked to see what I did, as has Magic Marker Mom, so you can blame them. Anyway, this is Grub’s blankie. I have shaped it so that she can hold each of the pointy bits for her to grip in her chubby little fist……..

And here is the other side, with the strokable satin side, which she already loves to touch and hold to her face….

I haven’t shown it but I have sewn around the edges of some of the birds so that it holds together, instead of having the two layers pull apart.

Finally, the bed curtains, these are definetely not a sewing masterpiece. We picked up some cheap fabric from Ikea. Pudding’s bed sits partly underneath Poss’ loft bed, which makes it easy for us to create a “bed tent” for him.

So, there you have it, really. Photographic proof that I have put needle to fabric.

Aren’t you glad I showed you?

The hilarity continued late into the night last night. It took Beefcake and I several hours to find the bolts that were needed to put the cot together. In the end, they were somewhere we had already looked. We were a bit confused. It took us until around 3 am to finish putting it together. We are both night owls but lately we seem to be egging each other on to stay up later and later. Not a good idea when you have young children and there is no chance of sleeping in.

Also, Poss insisted that she was far too hot and couldn’t possibly sleep in her bed. To be fair she has a loft bed and being that much closer to the ceiling does mean it’s a lot hotter for her, so Beefcake moved her mattress. When I went in to talk to her this morning we had a chat about the fact that she no longer seems to play with any of the large array of girly toys (think Barbie horsedrawn carriage etc) cluttering up her bedroom. All of the things she does use have nowhere to go and lurk around the room in small piles. We agreed it was time for a cleanout.

I was quite surprised by her enthusiasm, actually. She usually likes to hoard every scrap of fluff she has ever found. She once (recently) brought home a knitted doll she found on the street and squirrelled it away in her bedroom until I stumbled across it. It was then that Rhubarb confessed he had been sworn to secrecy regarding the doll as it had initially smelled quite strongly of wee and she had secretly washed it in the bathroom basin to remove the smell. We didn’t keep it.

So, Beefcake and I took Pudding to swimming, leaving Rhubarb and Poss to their chores. When we arrived home, we were greeted by a bedroom kneedeep in toys and Poss’ excited yabbering about a new craft project. It seems that she read  about how to turn an old, torn box (when repaired with copious amounts of sticky tape) into the perfect dolls house. But no! A doll’s house would be far too cheerful. Poss has decided to create a cardboard box orphanage and could I please purchase some wooden pegs so that she may create bedraggled peg orphans to inhabit the place. You see, she has all of this extra space now!

I should have known that a clutter-free bedroom was unattainable. She has always formed particularly strong attachments to her clutter. She still sleeps with her very worn and rapidly disintegrating teddy from infancy. He recently came apart to such a point that there is actually no fabric left to sew him up. I can’t mend him. We tried suggesting a dolls hospital, where he could receive a new skin, thinking this would ease her pain. She became so hysterical, at the thought that we suffered three nights of inconsolable crying and nightmares about Jiffy having new skin. He now wears a newborn suit of Grub’s in order to keep his stuffing in. I’m afraid of what will happen if he becomes completely dismembered.

Think of me then as I trudge off to try and restore some order to the room of a burgeoning bag lady. It won’t be fun.

Poss has always been creative. She likes to draw and make things. Throughout her life she has consistently come up with ideas and songs and stories that boggle my mind. She just has a whole ‘other’ sense of reality to anyone I’ve ever met. I can’t describe it, in any concise and concrete way, only that she is either brilliant or teetering on the brink (not entirely sure that’s a thing a mother should say about her littlun, hehe).

It’s a running joke between Beefcake and I that she will be a bag lady or one of those crazy old ladies that fills their house with old newspapers and bottles and bits of fluff and dried flowers and buttons (you know, and they end up with rooms that they can’t go in and floors covered with a foot of detritus and cats). Mainly because, if you go into her room, that’s what you’ll find. Whenever she goes anywhere, even the back yard, she gathers things in her pockets to bring home for “making”. Has done ever since she was about 3 or 4. She once collected shoe boxes from all over the place (friends, family etc) and made a tower of shoe boxes in her room. There were about twenty. We were tolerant until some, ummm, unsavory things began to be stored in them. That’s a whole ‘nother story though!

The other day, she asked Beefcake to photograph some figures she had made to accompany a story. She fully intends to have this published. Being ten, she doesn’t grasp all that this would entail. When I asked her about it she said she thought it would be cool cos she could buy her own book in a shop.

When I tried to (gently) discuss, what I see as some potential plot and character development flaws with Poss, I received the response “You’re not a publisher, Mum”.

I’m not a publisher. This is just a sweet, innocent story by my sweet little girl, who has such a sarcastic mouth on her tweeny self, that I’m sure “my sweet little girl” will not oft be used in years to come to refer to her.

This is Poppy and Oliver too and they are friends to each other.

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Their favorite game is Hide and seek but Oliver always wins.

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“I’m not good at this game” said Poppy, “let’s play something else.”
“Don’t worry” said Oliver, “everyone has something they’re good at.”
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First they tried skipping, but it didn’t go so well.
“Remember, jump when the rope hits the ground” said Oliver
“I can’t do this” said Poppy, “but everyone else in the class can click their fingers”.
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When Poppy tried to click her fingers it was hard to get her spirits up.
“You put your middle finger and your thumb together and you click!”, said Oliver
“It’s hopeless,”, said Poppy “I give up.”
“Don’t quit now,” said Oliver “there is lots more things to try.”
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They tried lots of things but Poppy was good at none of them.
“You see” said Poppy, “I’m good at nothing.”
“There is one thing you’re good at.” said Oliver,
“What?!” said Poppy
“Being my friend!” said Oliver.
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