Leave me alone kids unless you are bringing me a beer!

Why is it that on the very day we celebrate Motherhood is the very day that we do not actually want to be a Mother?

I have often thought of this and this year me and a group of gal pals made it happen. After a morning sleep in and the obligatory gushing of mushy thankyou's for crappy bits of scribbled paper posing as Mothers day cards I had a leisurely shower put on my glad rags, ditched the kids and met the girls for Brunch and Bubbles. What a hoot, we were the most rowdy table there pausing only to go to the toilet so much because we were giggling so much we nearly literally pissed ourselves laughing(bloody pelvic floor!) After we were kicked out of there, and we were asked to move along! Some of us hit the Quilt show(yes all my earlier blog fears confirmed) and then I went home, kissed and cuddled my children and went to bed for the afternoon to read a book undisturbed and got up only to eat a large portion of my favourite pudding, 'Sticky Date Pudding', loving made by CH.

What a lucky girl, I had a most wonderful day and I am and I fully encouraging all of you yummy Mummy's out there to do the same with your next Mothers Day.

Got a hankering for some moulied meat in gravy with a side of false teeth?

It has been happening for awhile now, creeping on slowly like the weight. Really it started long before children. I should have realized when that day five years ago that I no longer enjoyed wearing G strings and was going for a fuller brief that I was slowly turning into a Nana! The signs were there, suddenly enjoying watching 'simply quilts', scrapbooking, pickling or making anything into Jams or relish, learning to crochet, cake decorating, sewing, embroidery, for the love of god I NOW COLLECT TEA CUPS!!!!!!! and even more disturbing..............have bought a china cabinet to display them in! It is not ended there all you gal pals out there........Last Thursday night we went to a CHARTER CLUB! Yee gods I simply cannot believe it, if you had told me last year that I would seriously consider joining a charter club this year all you would have got in reply would have been a distasteful look.

I have long phoo phooed these places. Gummy grannies ordering their roast pork and supping on their sherry. Meat pack raffles aplenty, meals come served in a basket or a slab of meat covered in a packet sauce hidden under a mountain of chips. Formica low tables and the racing channel on the TV and a whole room of poker Machines. Sounds absolutely horrific. BUT, they have a kids room! You can go there, order and meal and a drink and let the kids go wild in their own room. It was the type of place that when all the drooling kids congregated around a lolly slot machine that one of the local patrons came over and shook it to try and robs sweets for them. Oh bless.

It was really great, I felt a little like James T kirk, boldly going where no young cool person has ever been before! We met five families there, all the kids sat at a huge table and all the adults sat at another, girls up one end, blokes at the other and had a great catch up. The food came out really fast, and was really good and not to mention cheap. We fed a family of four and all had a couple of drinks and all for $60. We have now decided that once a month we will do this as a group as we are finding life so busy of late that we cannot catch up often enough.

So there we have it, meta morph to Nana hood nearing completion. What can be next?

Not long now and my studies will be over and I can return to life normality. I have been so busy of late I barely have had time to keep up with the housework let alone actually be creative in any way. Once again I have reached the absolute pinnacle of my lardarseness and finally think I have the stength to do something about it. I have been doing exercise for three weeks now and I still hate it, completely not natural or enjoyable by any stretch of the imagination. However the one cool thing is that I finally think I have found a possible silver lining and that is THINKING TIME. Real quality thinking time, not the vacant thinking time that fills your head when you are doing chores and the days little foibles or the latest things that piss you off just replay in your head. But creative thinking time and ideas for stories and poems are just popping up randomly when once I thought them gone forever.

However good quality fabulous food is still top of mind and I think I have finally cracked the best choc chunk biccie recipie ever

Jody Choc Chunks

Ingredients:
1 cup of butter
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups plain white flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups of CHOCOLATE, roughly chopped I use three types Very dark, milk and white. Make sure there is a full selection of sizes of chunks as there biccies are great in the microwave to make the big chunks melt.....yummy.


Directions:1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease an oven tray.2. Cream the butter , white and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs into the mix one at a time, and then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt, then stir into creamed mixture.3. Fold in the chocolate chips. Place rounded spoonfuls onto the prepared baking tray.4. Bake until light brown, approximately 8 to 10 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes and then transfer to rack to cool.

NOW DO NOT PANIC IF MIXTURE IS SLOPPY, YOU CAN ADD A LITTLE MORE FLOUR IF YOU DOUBT MUST BUT IT IS NORMAL. ENSURE YOU PLACE A GENEROUS BLOB(TECHNICAL TERM) OF MIXTURE ON THE TRAY AND IT WILL SPREAD OUT TO MAKE THE PERFECT BICCIE. ENSURE LOTS OF SPACE BETWEEN BICCIES.

I tend to make really large biccies as I do not piss around with the anorexic size, so I do only have 6-7 to a tray. Takes longer but more impresive.

I wonder what the suicide rates are in low income families?

Today was horrible. Death in the family of an extremely well loved object. The Telly.
Luckily we have a second television.
Unluckily the power spike that killed our precious telly also screwed our sky box and as a result we had to watch poor people television. Christ, half an hour of this visual runny arse and I swear I lost the will to live. Absolute bullocks on the box how am I supposed to achieve total sensory deprivation while watching Marc Ellis force feed lemons to idiots? I even thought of having a conversation with CH, that is how bad it was!

I suppose there is one silver lining, our second TV does not have a remote and as it is really hard to channel surf on three choices and getting up and down spices up the degree of difficulty not to mention the obvious physical benefits.

Speaking of things physical I have reached 'extreme lardarse' stage again and the little changes I have made in my life do not seem to be making an impact.

• I am walking to where I want to go.
• The fridge is in another room so I have to walk to it.
• The Clothes dryer is way down in the spider ridden garage so I am hanging out the washing
• The freezer is also in the garage so I have to haul arse to get anything.

Ok so they are only small changes and it has only been two weeks and I have been eating some extemely good food of late and large portions. Damn my superior cooking skills.

Ok, I am also not going to bake anymore, or add sauces to a meal. No more bernaise, hollandaise or creamy carmelised onion and blue cheese............................whimper.

I still have a bit of a stash left over from easter, I will deal to that tonight and start tomorrow on the right foot...................................................yes I will add no more gorging to the list.....later...much later...........................Cake, I also have mud cake to take care of. This could be a long night.

Fuck off, you're oooooooooooooooout!

Thats it!, done and dusted! It is a beautiful day, I have been to the movies with my eldest, walked for an hour and a half and giggled all the way home as I have finished all of my online training and it has just sunk in! I am just so rapt. Yesterday started my first 7am until 7pm day shift and what a fabulous day. I learned so much and actually got to inject someone yesterday as well as drive priority one, lights, sirens and air horn to a town half an hour away. I came home absolutely buzzing and confident in my decision to put the girls in care all day so I can do this.

It has been a hard few weeks and the most unfortunate part was self doubt. We have these two horrid women where I work and they teach by belittling and chronic bitchyness. I have never seen the like. At what age do we become bitter and twisted?

I am yet to work out what to do with horrid busted old hags. As you all know I am not a bad person a generally get along with anybody and do not put up with people being unreasonable. With these two wenches I am stumped. They have got me so worked up because I am truly torn, on the one hand I am naturally so respectable of my elders and want to hold them with high regard and absorb their knowledge but the other side of me is so angry at them for treating people the way they do. Honestly it makes me so upset and I just cannot put my big gal pants on and talk to them about it as these days I am so emotional and would end up in a snotty crying mess and that would just not do. I cry in front of no one!

I was talking to a friend of mine who prefers women over men and simply asked how she could do it? ........It was about there I put a stop to that conversation before I heard some information I did not want to hear but simply gave her the following advice, under no circumstances date anyone over forty, start cruising for a new and much younger lady love well before their 39th birthday.

This need further investagation, as although I am 33 I can feel a new bitchyness creeping into my otherwise wonderful personality......cough cough. Be aware team and report all incidents of unsheathed bitchyness, chronic crankyness, sadistic sarcasm and I will look into your diet and increase your sugar, spice and all things nice!

Blimey, you guessed it I have been immersed in the books again and finding little time to do anything else except MOVE. Christ words cannot describe how absolutely shit the last three weeks have been. It is completely unending. DO NOT EVEN consider moving with children UNLESS you donate 80% of their crap first. Then when you done throw out anything opened(except booze as you will be needing that to full up pump bottles and sipper cups) then kick at least six boxes of the back of the truck.....................you wont miss em and trust me you will be thankful later. Ensure you do not move on a public holiday as every bastard has a legitimate excuse.....fancy that Jesus dying on the cross and rising again to give ye all a reason fuck off and not help.

So we have shifted and I will be soon walking everywhere I need to go and I will be finished my course come the end of May and believe you me I am looking forward to having a moment to write on here every now and then.

Until my next moment of work avoiding............................xxxxx

Here we are the very first batch of Volunteers to go through the new National Diploma of Ambulance Practice and tomorrow starts the last third of my study. It has been fairly tough and this last one will be the hardest I expect. I am actually pretty nervous as although I have only had two weeks off study the memory of how little time I had previously is pretty fresh. I will really have to manage my time more effectively and doing that and staying sane is fairly hard.

Last Monday started my new healthy outlook on life and I managed to do exercise on three days and ate in a sensible and healthy manner. ????????I KNOW!!!! This week I am intending to do the same and am now even more inspired to do well as I phoned up about a womens social hockey league last week and put my name down! This could be humiliating as I have not picked up a stick since I was 12 and even then I was always shoved in goal! I have no idea why this appeals but the idea feel right so why not try and add yet another thing into my life. Thank you god for that extra hour sleep coming up with daylight saving ending, I think I will need it!

Dont you just love the uniform and the hands on our thigh action.................can you pick which one is me? Not a flash piccie but one I shall send to my mum!

Ella-raine's Birthday cake

Although we were camping for the event there was absolutely no need for mediocrity in the birthday cake department and since Miss Four had been banging on about it for the last 11 months I simply could not bung a candle on a bowl of porridge and sing Happy Birthday. It came out quite well all things considered as my normal cakes take many hours to decorate this was done and dusted in under ten minutes. Of course there was much prep to begin with like legs to be wrenched of Barbie, dressing her in more fitting attire to match the cake a making a necklace..............every gal has to have sparkles!

The party was great, all ballons and party napkins and plates but I forgot the blasted party hats but never fear my friends assured me, she would not even notice.

WRONG......... after having the most perfect camping birthday surrounded by all her mates when asked later in the day about how much fun she had..........................she promptly replied 'no hats or pass the parcel' then she got up and left. Ungrateful shit!

I came, I saw, I camped!

It rained. Grounds got flooded. We all got moved into a hall. Seven Children, six adults sleeping in a room, three of those children with a tummy virus and all adults stupidly tired. Brilliant!

Fricken camping, who in their right mind(except homeless people) would do it. Now I can see the challenge in camping as a couple, the two of you at one with nature, trying to wildly shake the stench of the concrete jungle. It almost sounds romantic.

With children, no power and more importantly NO TV. Son of Mary, you gotta be full blown do lally!

Not only do you spend weeks of planning, every meal, snack, scenario and whim you are completely shafted by the camping grounds. The price per night was amazing and was a hare’s breath away from the price of a cheap hotel. Not only that, as they were “powered” tent sites one would foolishly assume you could plug and extension cord into sockets and be blessed with the comforts of home. WRONG, apparently it is common knowledge around the camping types to get a “special” cord with a different plug to have power. I of course only found this out after I played around with the outdoor plug socket and severly pissed off the neighbours by turning off their power, I went to give my apology and was promptly told that “Well YOU are not the only one who now has to re-programme DVD player!” SLAM! A DVD player! Christ that’s not camping! (as I load all of my now non useable comforts of home) As luck would have it they sold those special cords at the camping ground shop for $150!! Blimey not a chance. Then just to add insult to injury you have to pay for the showers on top.

But with all my moans and gripes(and believe you me, I got many stashed) I would do it all again in a heart beat as the Children had the most amazing time and grinned from ear to ear the whole time, I kid you not I have never seen such a bunch of happy souls, except that time I toured the Cadbury factory! This was the stuff of childhood memories held dear, I wish you had been there!

But NO, we are not camping people, I want a caravan!

Happy bithday to moi

Tis true, yesterday was my 33rd birthday. What a fabulous day, I awoke to have an early brekkie with friends, dropped BOTH kids into care and went to have a girly coffee and shopping session with one of my favourite gal pals then off to the salon with my eldest daughter then off out to dinner and a movie with CH. All this and I got an amazing present from CH.

I have decided I am sick of our boring white flatware and now wanting mis matched, well choosen, pretty pieces of China and CH choose an absolute cracker from the 1930's. I would never have choosen it myself and he paid an absolute fortune for it, I could not believe it and had to bite my tongue but it is JUST lovely. Bless his cotton socks he was so worried it was not to my taste.

So as I am a very new collector, should you see a lovely tea cup set in an op shop think of me and I will lovingly add it to my collection. In fact that is a fabulous idea to have a dinner set made entirely of individual pieces choosen by your nearest and dearest!

Right off on yet another weekend away on my course, what a lucky girl I am!

Christmas 08

I feel a little sad you all missed out on my Christmas but you can be sure it was lavish, traditional with completely over the top decorations, but here is one of my cakes

Gotta love small communities

Yeaterday we finally thought we may have found a cheap rental place that we could make our own. The landlords were lovely, the street was nice and quiet and my work was just over the back fence and not to mention loads of room for a vege garden, sandpit for the cat to crap in and the landlords wanted to put new carpet and paint the place for us. We were rapt. I did however notice the neighbours. I enquired what they were like to the current tennants and she said they did not bother her. I should have got an inkling when looking through the place with the Adolf Hitler wall clock and various swords, guns and a crossbow or two in the wardrobe. In my mind we were living in the place already.

CH went back to work and said we had finally found a suitable place. He said the street and was was asked "What number" 20 CH replied. It was then that we found out that number 22 was the local tinny house. Thats not all, that night I went to work and told this same story and Sally turned to me and said "Not the big white place down the end?" Yes that was the one, as it turned out her friend used to live there and had dreadful problems with the neighbours just coming in and taking what they wanted!

Dodged a bullet there! Cursed recession, Whaaaaaaaaa I want to stay in plesantville.

Please Please Please all go out there and buy Fisher and Paykel because if they go down so does CH. I cannot believe how much their share price has dropped. I still remember the heady heights of before the company split from their healthcare division. Fingers crossed

World Poultry shortage.......investigations lead to Whakatane

Tis true, I not long ago polished off approximately 12 chickens worth of honey soy chicken nibbles and swiftly followed them with a rather large portion, almost all of a cream and jam filled family sized chocolate log. Christ, I am grotesque!

Why is it when we realise we have pilled on the pies that we suddenly think it is a grand idea to feed ourselves even more arse widening food. More of the ole, christ I have done it now, what is another 13 cream doughnuts gonna do. GONNA DO!!!!!!!!!, ITS GONNA MAKE YOU FATTER THATS WHAT, YOU THICK AND DUMB TWAT.

Why could I have not had that same conversation with myself two hours ago, oh perhaps it was the shock of watching two turn of the century lesbians rooting each other with a large leather strap on dildo at 11.45am on UK TV! I kid you not, I nearly choked on my chicken! It was supposed to be a comedy, there were boobs, blow jobs, girl on girl and tranvestites aplenty. Certainly something to spice up your lunch time veiwing! The programme was called "Tipping the velvet" and perhaps not for the faint of heart!

Nature V's Nurture

Well this just pisses all over my big belief that we come into the world with our god given attributes and leave it basically the same. For there is no acconting in this world that can possibly work out how I developed my taste in clothing with my upbringing so it must be nature.......................................If that were true, surely wee Ella-raine would have come up with a better ensemble to start the day in!

Somebody roasting some pork?

I am trying really hard not to dwell on the fires in Australia as I feel so bloody helpless and terrible and with the weather being the way it is, I feel it mist be connected in some way and that keeps the tragedy firmly placed front of mind.

My natural reaction is wanting to go and help which has brought a few other issues to mind. As being part of the Emergency services we are often put in situations where we would normally fear to tread, but with human nature being the way it is, we do not hesitate to help others where we can. This at times could lead to making fatal decisions, but hell actually putting your life ahead of someone elses is much harder than it should be. I do not know what it is but I really struggle with it. I don't know, religious upbringing? low self worth? overly frickin polite! I have no idea and truly hope that if one day faced with a choice to perhaps die treating another or leaving them to save my own skin, I hope I can have the strength to make latter as I need to take grand children to Africa!

I do have an interesting thought pattern though and do you know what really scares me?
You fricken arsonists, jacking yourself off to your flammed and charred remains buffet. It is going to take much to top this one and I bet you pricks are gonna try and god willing it is not some blooming kiwi trying to out do the bloody Aussies at something for a change!

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

It is amazingly hot and humid here. 21:10 and the air is like breathing in a steam room, yesterday morning I spent sitting on our back deck in my nightie in the pouring rain and all around me was low fog like cloud. It was one of those special moments were you are wearing a foolish grin and wanting to dance amongst the daisy's.

Today however I had had enough. CH and I had a date today, Eight hours with just each other for company. We decided to play golf together and luckily we know the golf pro so he gave us a golf cart to go aroung the course in. I loved the golf up until around the 12th hole when I completely had enough of smacking the hell out of the ball only to have it skim the surface of the grass and go about 40 meters. I even have blisters and a neck injury! The best bit was the golf cart................................I intend to never go around a course without one as they are the coolest ride, I was giggling my way around, trying to run over Jase, running into bushes on his side of the cart when he gave me shit, hooning over all terrain and realising my bra is not as supportive as I would have liked(CH quickly there with hands outstretched to help me out with that one, who says he is not supportive!)

We very rarely get time alone, so when we are faced with the prospect of it, it is fairly daunting. I reckon we need about three days together to fully enjoy each other as with our action packed morning and being two unfit fat bastards in tropical weather we both felt terrible and craved BK and then promptly went home and watched a DVD and fell asleep!What party animals! The DVD was great by the way, Charlie Wilson's War with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts

Poppy's Cake

Since you have missed out on so much of our life I thought I would update you now and then on what you missed out on and in this particular version it is my unashamed gloating of my cake prowess

I have just realise I have absolutely no proof of the fabulous summer we have had as I have no photo's! Here is my latest one of the girls(mine are the pink and blue fairy's) and this was taken before Christmas when they put on a show. Here is another one of me taken before Christmas and believe it or not but I was much slimmer then!

Yes the ole diet has not really taken off but the thought is there. I did not go walking yesterday as I was so knackered from my weekend away on my course(valid excuse I thought) today?....well it was the shock of how dark it was at half six this morn! Blimey it was a shock to the system as I have been sort of looking forward to having some cooler days and perhaps having more time indoors but the reality of this morning's darkness pushed all those thoughts away and now I really want to hold on to summer.

However I am not quite finished with summer yet as we are going camping.

CAMPING! I know! a bit shocking for me. I remember long long ago, in a land without children, we decided that every year we would get some camping gear..................we forgot about it and still only have that first purchase........ one torch(which we cannot find) and a airbed(with no pump) now the last weekend in feb will be interesting.

Blimey can you believe it is the month of Feb already?

Here I am fast approaching my 33rd birthday and completely chasing my arse.

My life is nothing short of hectic at the moment as I am smack in the middle of my Ambulance Diploma, finding it hard to find the time to do the course work and study as well as continue to do a shift at work and continue on life normality as a Domestic Goddess while trying to fit in time for my friends.

At least while I toil at the very minimum I look hot. Perhaps not Jennifer Anniston hot at 40, but a little more chic/rock chick as I am sporting a lesbian short, Macleans white spiky hair do. I decided to do something quite dramatic once I lost all that weight in October. In my usual fashion, Christmas hit halfway through November and now we are in Feb and I am back to the same weight. However I have a plan, just hatched it.......tonight instead of going to the fridge and grabing the container of wonderfully rich homemade fudge. I intend to leave the container in the fridge and only get one piece at a time, so I have to actually get off me arse in order to get another. For any further hints and tips on dieting and exercise, watch this space!

Now the answer to the question all you fitness guru's want to know, YES I will be posting my fudge recipie soon.

Work is fantastic, although doubting my abilities of late but that is almost a given. I attended an armed defenders call out last night. Very exciting, I cannot tell you anything about it but hell was enough to make a little south island white girl shut up and take inventory of my life and realise I could be the luckiest gal in the world, but apparently us 'white' people think differently, or so I was told last night. Yep different world up here.

It has been one year since I joined the service and this weekend I am away all weekend learning some more skills. I cannot wait!....................nothing to do with leaving the children and domestic duties for a whole two nights and three days........................yahooooo......yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!........................................No really, nothing at all mmmmmphhhhhhhh