Everything Old is New Again.

The timeless choccie crackle! They were the hit of any party when I was a girl. All that sugary chocolate yumminess and even though some loons have tried to fiddle with the recipe, a good crackle remains the same.

4cups of Rice Bubbles
250gm of melted Copha
1 cup of icing sugar
1 cup of coconut
5 big spoons full of cocoa powder

Mix it all up and scoop it into paper patty cups and chuck into the fridge. And then exercise some restraint as they set hard.

Some recipes call for hundreds and thousands, but that has always been for fairy bread, and some call for nuts, but in today's Epi-pen society, even if I thought it a good addition, which I don't, who would dare add it?

Zig, never one to toe the line, asked for a glossy cherry to be popped on top and that I was happy to do.

Bell and I delivered the goodies to school today and met Zig's class and his teacher. They all sang 'Happy Birthday' and then gobbled up their treats. It was a fun few minutes and definitely worth the time to make 'em and the 2 hours driving there and back to deliver 'em. I love watching him be the King of the Castle.

The whole ceremony is the same as it ever was, except that I had to announce that there was coconut in 'em and then the teacher announced it again, but as they are in yr5, she figured they were old enough to know if they were OK to eat 'em. As she didn't immediately go into Health and Safety Police mode, I liked her even more.

Zig was happy to get a cuddle and a kiss from Ma and was still Ok with, 'My Darling Boy' even though Bell had warned me that it might not be good, cos she is now living with an ever growing list of what she is not allowed to say.

We are set for tomorrow with more traditional fare, even though the party is an escape from history.
We are hoping that the kids who are jumping about tomorrow, don't throw up, or at least if they do, they do it at the centre, not in the backs of our cars....oooh YUK.

We are presuming that they can all swim, otherwise Southbank Beach might prove a nuisance, cos at the moment we plan to sit like ladies on a rug and chat the afternoon away. I guess we will see.

Kids have changed very little, neither have birthdays or food or the dive for all things sweet.

Ah predictability.

10 - it's a mile stone!

I wonder how old the little fella is gonna be when he tells me that I just can't call him 'My Darling Boy' anymore. I do not look forward to hearing that, but I expect that it will be all apart of us growing up. Bugger!

I have had a sore neck for sometime which is completely irrelevant to this post, except that the woman I saw for a remedial massage and more than a little acupuncture - ouchie menouchie! was waxing lyrical about her new grandie who lives in Townsville, so visits are few and a bit too far in between. She was using some sort of hocus pockus subliminal way of getting the baby to remember her, by wearing the same perfume all the time and calling him 'gorgeous' or something. Anyway as I lay there with all the needles 'doing their thing' I hoped that the kid liked the perfume or else she was in trouble from the get go, and I was aware that I have called Zig My Darling Boy for almost 10 years, so I reckon he must be well and truly used to it by now.

It's quite the big deal turning 10. There is no logical rational reason for this being a BIG one but it certainly seems so to me.

For his whole life Zig has been waiting to be 10 so that he is allowed to have a fizzy drink. Yeh his father has allowed all manner of shit since forever, but Mum's rule has been you've got to be 10 to have a fizz, and as that's Mum's rule, it's been the rule here too. Not that we always agree on the rules. There is far more sugar here at the Big House than is ever allowed at home, but I still reckon that's just me doing my job as Ma and besides I don't hold with the evils of sugar hoo har.

Steve wondered about the arbitrary nature of the 10 / fizz rule. And I guess that's fair enough. It doesn't make any sense. It's probably a number Bell pulled out of her bum when Zig was little and driving her nuts for a lemonade. 'Not until your 10!' and that's how the rule was born.

It's the same as parents' rules about dating or staying up late, or watching M rated movies. Once an age has been set down then that becomes the RULE. Kids never forget the age that was part of the edict, even if they push the boundaries years ahead of time.

I am glad that parents have rules. Kids are too I reckon.

So no party in the park for the BIG 10. We are off to SkyZone for some bouncing madness and then to Southbank for a picnic and a swim. Just 6 kids so not the usual mayhem of 30 dubious souls running amuck, but driving and timetabling instead to make sure there is still enough stress to go around.

Yippee to number 10.

Car servicing - finally we agree

I hate taking my car in for a service. It seems like mechanical blackmail to me. 'If tho donst gettith thy car serviced asif we declarith, thenith your warranty is voidith.'

My Mazda 2 is a clever little thing, it can carry all manner of stuff, tardis like, constantly surprising Steve and I enjoy driving her around. She is nifty and economical, the air con really blasts out the chill on hot days and the radio / CD player is loud enough to make me look like some head banging grannie. She is the second one I've had since new, the first now lives at Bell's. So for 7 years I have phaffed around and smiled a lot, until it comes time for the compulsory service days.

I have argued that the degree of over servicing was just money raking and as the warranty was  contingent on following these ridiculous rules, really it was just extortion.

So when I needed to book the old girl in for a service which was overdue by a month and a half, even though I had only driven 13000 km ( not quite 4000 km since the last time I threw money at 'em ) instead of 20000 km, which was the name of this service, which made it a major one! I was not best pleased.

I hate going there and I hate the fact that you play degrees of separation from mechanic, spear headed by the front of house staff who as mechanics would make rather adequate up-sellers at a call centre.

So with migraine head and a belly full of bile I arrived today. I whinged about the unnecessary cost and effort and then it dawned on the girlie, that in deed it was NOW deemed unnecessary.

For all this time I have fronted as demanded, every 6 months or 10000 km, which ever came first. But finally Mazda has decided that that really is just taking the piss, so she told me to come back in June,- 300 bucks saved. Yippee! I can only imagine that at some meeting somewhere important a bunch of folk sat around laughing and agreeing that they had taken the piss for quite long enough and that they would now arbitrarily choose a one year timetable to replace the six months, unless of course the car is driven for lots and lots of miles. Yippee again!

Except that then I remember that I have paid and paid for this girlie ride, and the last one. It seems remarkable to me that no-one is wanting to chat about refunding some of the extorted cash. But as that is never gonna happen and if I chased it, it would be a hiding to nothing, I am perhaps uncharacteristically gonna let it go. Yeh, I am just gonna be pleased that I only need to go in once a year. YippeeKaiYai! 

EASY CLEAN OVENS AND BBQs - YIPPEE!

 

 

There is just nothing at all that I find entertaining or simulating or satisfying about it - no I am not talking about that colourful semi soft porn pic doing the rounds, I am talking about anything at all to do with 'keeping house' It all just gives me the shits and if I had a proper job, the first thing I would do is employ someone to do all the shit I hate, but as my job is housekeeper to the Steve, I would be out of work if I paid someone to do, what I do, so I do it, not always with a smile, well truthfully rarely with a smile, but  do it I do.

 

Except for one thing. I don't do OVENS. Every Sunday for more than a decade Steve has thrown a lump of well butchered meat into the oven. The type of meat makes little difference, except that I believe that pork might really spew the fat more so than lamb or beef. Anyway, he does this because I just wont. I reckon Sunday nights are for cheesey toast but as his Pommie tradition insists it's a roast for him, he has to cook it himself. Yeh I do help him eat it.

 

So 2 hours of fat splatter every weekend makes for a particularly filthy oven. It gets very quickly to the point where making a Pav or even some biscuits is not possible unless of course you fancy them being meat flavoured, which oddly enough, I do not.

 

 

 

I rang the lovely Janelle, at EASY CLEAN OVENS AND BBQs and booked Giles in. It's their own business and they work like stink at it and the results are truly amazing. My oven looks like a new one and this happens every time that Giles come on in with his heavy duty water stuff and a mountain of elbow grease. He is not happy if the oven does not look new.

 

 

 

I wasn't going to mention it but the oven was in such dire need of a good seeing to, that it burst into flames while I was trying to cook some Veal parmies on Saturday. The cheese was melted but not as bubbly as we like it when all of a sudden the layers of grease on the element had had enough. I quickly pulled out the parmies and closed the oven door and hoped for the best.

 

I was pleased that I had made arrangements prior to the fire THIS time. Giles believed me, I think, but I rather imagine he uses our oven as the barometer of filth. I suppose it's good to be noted for something huh? 

 

If you are on the Goldie and your oven or BBQ is a fright, and you just bloody hate scrubbing the shit out of 'em then why not give EASY CLEAN OVENS AND BBQs a call. 1300788685.

 

No discounts / money or offers of cheap work in the future have been made. Just a happy happy girl with a spanking - there's that movie again....clean oven. 

 



Cyclone Marcia vs Media Hype

I am pleased to say that friends who were chased down by bloody Marcia have come out the other side relatively unscathed. Yes there has been significant damage and I very much doubt that there is any insurance payout for hours and hours of hard yakka in the garden or the years of silent growing, but the folk I know are physically unharmed even if it might take some time to get over the nightmare of it all.

Social Media and mobile phones mean that updates were easy and I hope that all involved felt the love of being instantly connected even in the middle of a disaster.

What gave me the shits was that because there was so much warning, the tellie stations had time to send up 'reporters' and film crews and then schedule rolling coverage for hour after hour.

Coverage was designed to frighten and warn and make people do as they were told. Every time the Queensland Premier spoke she whipped up a bit more hysteria and only just pulled up short of telling people to do as they are told when they are told. It seemed to me as I watched that I could have been vaporised into a parallel universe where democracy was a myth. There was so much hyperbole and inflammatory language, and misinformation that even here, hundreds of kilometres out of harm's way, people were going into panic.

We went about our normal day and sadly that included doing the groceries and that's when some do gooder who had clearly watched more tellie than me - I didn't think that was possible, asked us if we were stocking up. Yeh if I was gonna be cut off from everything civilised my most important purchase would be loo cleaner and facial wipes, and the double length paper towels I am sure would have been extremely useful in mopping up a flooded house. Ha!

The Mayor down here continued the panic, such that the Arts Centre sent out a message on Facebook telling punters that if they didn't fancy fighting the floods they'd be able to get refunds for theatre tickets. This is pretty unheard of.

It was bad! The cyclone did very real damage and rightfully frightened people in its wake, but the media and politicians had other motives in flying into the affected areas. It wasn't about safety, or boosting local morale or getting on the useful end of a real shovel, it was so obviously self serving, all about ratings and votes. So inflammatory language and an authoritative tones and seconds of video on hour long loops were employed to get everyone worried and frantic and hopefully running around in a bit of blind panic, and certainly making sure that if they had any power, they'd have the tellie on all day boosting ratings and favour.

The old tale, 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' aught to be a warning to these media hounds. If you send people into a panic and nothing happens, they don't sit around thanking god for the warning. They get pissed off for moving shit inside and consequently having to mop the floor when they move it back. They wonder what the fuck they are gonna do with a dozen cans of spaghettios and all that long life milk. And after 2 or 3 scares in a season they stop listening. And that'll be a problem if there is ever a big problem.

Follow the Yellow Grass Road.

A part of living in the snow it is that you have a responsibility to clear your front path and the footpath outside, and if you are negligent in your duty and someone takes a dive and breaks a hip outside your place, then you can be sued. People are pretty careful to do the right thing, and the Councils seem to happily spread salt or whatever to keep the streets passable. How very civic minded !

The park next door how ever has fallen into disrepair. It used to be that the mower blokes / people would be around ALL the time, usually pissing me off at 6.30am playing boy racers with their tractors and whipper snippers. The grass was kept under control and the picnic tables and seats were kept clean and in good repair.

But that is no longer. I am not sure who is not responsible for the park. Maybe it's the Council, maybe they have contracted it out, but whoever it is they all seem to think it's someone else's job. The grass grows LONG LONG LONG until I reach tipping point and call 'em up. In typical bureaucratic fashion, it is necessary to ring at least twice before there is any action. Last time it was nearly a month between mows and that meant grass more than 2 foot tall.

This time it's been only 3 weeks, but as I have rung only once and it is expected to rain for the next few days, by the time it's done it'll be the mandatory month. During that time I will have mowed my grass 4 or 5 times.

Anyway today the allergic reaction up my legs hit the pits, and it's all because of the shitting long grass that has gone to seed in the park. Balls have gone missing along with a number of small dogs and I believe one Dad had to get out his machete to find his toddler and was lucky to not be arrested for being armed.

The scratching abated long enough for me to get out the mower and mow myself a walkway, much like people are doing with shovels all across the snowy northern hemisphere. It certainly looks a little odd but I am happy to think that when I pop over to the shops for some veg later on, I will not have to take an antihistamine when I get back to ward off the grass seed itchies.

I am only sorry that I didn't think about it before.

Sand Safari - Surfers Paradise

 

 

For just about 2 weeks there are these wonderful lumps of whimsy along the beach at Surfers Paradise. They are bloody marvellous even if they just set your brains to working out how the sand stays together - I think it has to do with the special sand they use, as unlikely as it sounds the grains are square so wedge together for better stickability. I could have made that up..

 

They are all Artists' takes on Disney films and some you will know and some you  might wonder about unless you have had the joy of taking littlies to the pictures recently. They were all beautifully created.

 

The first one and the last one here from 'Aladdin' looks to me, so much like a melancholy Robin Williams who did the voice work for the Genie, that it reminded me he is gone and that he is missed.