The Useless Piano That Might Spark Joy

It’s been so long since I’ve blogged. I’ve been putting it off because it’s been a long time, thereby making it even longer since I’ve blogged. I keep doing this. And then I have to keep beginning my posts like someone going to confession. Forgive me, readers ,for I have not written a post for five months.

I’ve had a novel published. This one here, called How To Be Second Best. Just thought I’d get that out there. It was released in Australia a month ago. It’ll come out in Canada some time this year. The rights to publish in the UK, USA and rest of the world are up for grabs so get on it, foreign publishers! There is a paperback, an ebook and an audiobook. People seem to have liked it. I’ve had lots of nice emails from readers, some of whom aren’t even my friends. That’s a bit mind-blowing. It seems to appeal mostly to people around my age, who have children, although my Dad’s friend James, who is in his seventies and has no children, said he laughed out loud at parts and was very pleased when I wrote that the protagonist’s house had two rooms on each side of the hall, not two rooms on either side of the hall. Apparently the second one is incorrect and a particular bugbear of his. I’d like to say I knew this and very deliberately wrote that sentence but that would be untrue. It was luck. But I’m glad James liked it.

Because it is January and I have another book to write, I have been doing a lot of decluttering. I know this is very fashionable because of Marie Kondo and that Netflix show about tidying up and only keeping things that ‘spark joy’, but I only watched a few minutes of the show before I was so bored I decided to tackle the odd sock box. Maybe that’s how it’s meant to work.

Anyway, I prefer the alternative decluttering guru, whom H and I invented. He’s called Murray from Condobolin. This Murray Condo backs a ute up to your house and you throw in everything you hate. Murray then assures you he will dispose of it thoughtfully and recycle everything but deep down you know he drives to the next suburb and dumps it all on the verge.

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In The End, It Was The Odd Socks That Finished Her Off

Garnet searching for his socks.

We’ve been on a holiday. A driving holiday, and while I’ll try to write about that soon, and tell you all about the long car trip to Melbourne and the long car trip back and all the in-between parts that involved snow, alpacas, honey prawns and a new tyre, today I can only write about socks.

Because I have realised that it’s not the pram in the hall that is the enemy of creativity. It’s the fact that as designated Chief of Socks in this family, 98 per cent of my Random Access Memory is occupied with being a geolocater for hundreds of tiny fucking socks.

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Roll With It

This week I reached what is probably the pinnacle of laziness* and had toilet paper home delivered.

When we stayed in Perth last Christmas, housesitting for friends,  I noticed a box in the laundry that had ‘Who Gives A Crap’ printed on it. I looked it up online and discovered it’s a company that sells only home-delivered bog roll. I like having things home delivered and I love swear words and not running out of toilet paper, so this seemed like a good fit for us.

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File It Under ‘F’.

Later this morning I am going to a one-hour organisation workshop. I made the booking on a whim when I was in a fancy stationary shop a few weeks ago considering all their overpriced but prettily designed notepads and books, which promise to make your life free from chaos and clutter.

Of course when I made the booking I didn’t write down the time or date anywhere, so a few days ago I remembered about it, in a panic, and had to call the shop to ask when it was and whether I had missed it. They laughed at me.

Such incidents of domestic hopelessness have been on the rise lately. In January I forgot to register the car. That wouldn’t have been half as bad had my parents not been driving the car, with my kids in it, when the police pulled them over for driving an unregistered, uninsured vehicle. They were on their way out of town for the weekend – our kids’ first weekend away from us – and so H and I were two margaritas deep when we got the call that they had been ordered to sit in the car by the side of the road until we went home, found our paperwork, registered and insured the car. It was with great shame and much swearing that we did so, but they got back on the road eventually and have been remarkably kind to us about it.

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Probably For The Best

Must dust cat.

To our dear friends whose hen’s and buck’s nights we failed to attend last night, the following conversation is what we were doing instead. Probably for the best we didn’t come, eh?

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Blog It Out

May Blossom playing ‘Caesarean Sections’ with her play-doh.

Earlier this evening I was in the bath, eating a piece of toast with peanut butter and a melted Freddo frog on it. That is quite a snack, my friends, and it raises your blood sugar to the exact level that gives you crazy ideas.

My idea was this: Apparently there is a thing that exists in blogdom called NaBloPoMo, which stands for National Blog Post Month. As you might guess, it is a month in which bloggers who commit to NaBloPoMo write on their blogs every single day. This year, NaBloPoMo started on the first of November. Because I am slow and lumbering like a great big elephant, I only stumbled across this fact just now. Furthermore, I am led to believe my What To Expect When You Are Expecting iPhone app that November 1 is in the past. According to various sources, it is now November 12, so I’m declaring today the official beginning of my very own BloUntTheBabIsBo (Blog Until The Baby Is Born). Pretty catchy, if I do say so myself.

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How To Feel Better

Are things getting you down? Is your shared backyard full of dead plants, in a metaphorical or real sense? Mine is. Here are three things that make me laugh when I think of them, no matter how awful I’m feeling.

1. When she walks down steps, May Blossom has taken to sometimes refusing the proffered hand of her father or me and instead holds her own hand. Independent much? Lacking understanding of the concept of the stabilising force an adult hand can offer? Very, very funny to watch? All of these things.

2. When she wants to warn anyone of anything — that the heater is on; that there is a flight of steps approaching; that the cat is nearing dinner time and could remove the next digit or limb that gets waved near her — May Blossom says ‘Careful, mate’ in the most splendid approximation of H’s voice.

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Out Of Control

The house. It is out of control. It really started to sink in for me when H suggested the other day that we at least try to keep a clear path from the front to the back of the flat. You know, for safety. Yeah. That’s too messy, even for me.

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Lunch Of The Week: Mushroom Barley Soup With Grilled Feta Toast

Better a terrible photo than none at all, that’s what I always say. I couldn’t put my spoon down long enough to take a photo with two hands. That’s all you need to know about this meal.

I know, it’s a big call declaring a Lunch of The Week on Monday, but I’m feeling quietly confident that this will be the one to beat. It’s not a good-looking lunch, but it has hidden depths of deliciousness and you will find yourself a bit in love with it. It is the Stephen Fry of lunch.

This morning May Blossom and I donned aprons and scrubbed out the inside of the oven, which was, to paraphrase Neil from The Young Ones after he sticks his head in their oven to gas himself, dirtier than ovens at the bottom of swamps. It was a thoroughly dispiriting job, and one not made any easier by my insistence on using only bicarbonate of soda and vinegar (and child labour). With every scrub my brain screamed ‘Go buy a can of Mr Muscle, hippie!’, like Rik would have if they had ever actually gotten round to cleaning the oven on the show.

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Smells Like Too Many Spirits

Booze Management is an ongoing situation in this apartment. Mostly it involves H ordering bottles of wine by the dozen and beer by the case and me shoehorning them into any space we can find. Then we invite my relatives over and pour it down their necks. And repeat.

This week I moved all our wine from the hall cupboard into wine racks on top of the spare room wardrobe, relocating the spirits to the cupboard above the fridge, and in doing so I realised that for a household of non vodka drinkers, we have rather a lot of vodka. Not good vodka, either. Cheap, nasty vodka. One bottle was only a quarter full, so I poured it down the sink. I did it dramatically, like an alcoholic in a telemovie.

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