The day I discovered my best clothes went to the Op Shop...

...which is today. Wonderful. I'm just super, thanks for asking.

Oh! I was being sarcastic. Yes really! And I still am, and it's annoying me so let's keep it real.

I am soooo pissed off. Well I was, I'm better now because there is no way I would have been able to turn on the laptop, let alone write anything when I was in the middle of it. My tantrum, I mean. My tantrum I let myself have with my three month old bawling from the bedroom. Oh, I feel so guilty but I just couldn't stop...bawling myself, that is.

It's amazing how everything can change in a matter of minutes, or maybe it was even a minute, singular.

Soooo, up until the discovery, everything was going swimmingly. I've stayed in the house all day (apart from a very short walk with Sweeney and Tilly the dog, cut short due to rain), tidied up, sorted out dinner and even got a nap in earlier. I've got a beautiful blend of essential oils burning (frankincense, cedarwood, geranium and lavender for relaxing). I also have a nice cup of chai ready, along with a big bowl of tiny teddies, to tuck into as I open the laptop. All of a sudden I'm thinking about a bag of clothes a friend of mine returned a week or two ago. Right now I'm thinking hard but I cannae remember the trigger for this thought. This green coles bag contained two of my best dresses I have for weddings and stuff and an expensive blazer. My friend had borrowed them for a wedding and I suggested she take the lot.

it's just the kind of gal I am.

Anyway - back to today, sitting at my laptop, one second the slack jawed yokel staring into the distance then the next the crazy mo fo getting all het up and angsty before she's even searched the place. You see, when I'm like this there is no point in looking. I 'm positive that Asa has taken that green coles back full of my most valuable clothes and, without even looking, thrown them in an opshop bin. I mean it's so typical, him and his constant need to purge. I was fuming and bawling, doing a half arsed search from room to room, meanwhile my psycho harridan vibes have reached sleeping Sweeney who awakens and starts bawling. You get the picture?

Yay!

By the way I'm only admitting this because I'm talking to no-one.

Sweeney joins me in my aimless pacing (one of us has stopped crying) as I call Asa's mobile phone about fifty times (ok, about ten) and leaving the occasional blubbering message or two (actually there were two). It was the only way I could calm myself down. I had to just do something.

After about twenty minutes I finally realise I am over it. I finally admit to myself that one of those designer dresses was $60 on sale (but $300 full price, ok!) and has never really suited me and that I haven't worn the blazer for at least 2 years since the matching pants went AWOL. And...

...Asa will probably find them.

TIRED!

Right now I'm sitting up in bed. It's cold and dark at 6:14pm though I feel cocooned, warm and snug with my warm bedside lamp, hearing the sounds of the 6pm News and Asa and Pascal playing Shrek Monopoly (Pascal with a slightly polite British inflection: "I am not breaking the rules") . Sweeney is lying beside me asleep with that startle reflex going off every now and then.

I don't know what I was going to post but felt I had to keep this thing moving. *BUMP* *BUMP*

I just read my previous post and I'm doing it again. This indecision thing. I haven't given Genies a second thought since my last post and now find myself talking about a picture book starring Sweeney the littlest hero (Sweeney is an Irish name meaning Little Hero) about snot (or boogy) requesting aliens. Will I end up a crazy woman of eighty still trying to work out which idea to go ahead with? I'm sounding frustrated but I'm not....yet.

So lets be honest for a minute and stop railroading myself into this person who whines about procrastinating and indecision. Someone in there is telling me to shut up, you are indeed speaking shit. You know you are going to go with the Genies. Every time you see a picture of that gorgeous vampire Edward you think it. Every time you hear TV on the Radio it reminds you. The ads for the Half Blood Prince give you a jolt.

Jean Genie let yourself go.

It's funny when you remember something or in this case read something written previously and let out a great big 'DER' (or I guess 'Duh' if you are American or born after 1990)

I am talking about my Genie protoganist's situation being incredibly similar not just to the Ugly Duckling's....

Ok so my story will be a cross between Twilight and Harry Potter. I can live with that.

OMG! Two posts in one day!

Well I had to talk about Genies, didn't I?

After I posted this morning I realised how very easy it is to not go ahead with things I vow I will do. Actually, It's embarrassing! I'm sure there are people out there, people I've met along the way, that would be surprised where I've ended up. I hasten to add that I am in a perfectly happy and contented place but I know I convinced quite a few of my fellow travellers through life I was going to be the next Gillian Armstrong or Jeanette Wintersson - or just someone famous.

This morning I realised that I don't even believe myself even as I type the words so the only way to get this belief back is to prove it!

Where was I? Genies, how could I forget...

So I mentioned Twilight back there two posts ago. I realised with a bit of a sinking feeling that the general premise for my Genie idea and Twilight were very similar - basically Girl from this world meets Boy from Otherworld and through him, we (as the audience) discover a whole new hidden (magical) landscape that is right under our noses. I never really thought further than this but I did have some kind of vague notion about Bad Genies who threaten my girl protagonist and the Good Genies defending her - yes, another major similarity to Twilight.

I still don't think these similarities mean that I can't go ahead with my idea. I mean, when I studied Screenwriting we were told over and over again that there are only 16 types of stories and all stories are versions of these. The story that I have described above has been told over and over again (interesting though, that I can't think of other examples right at the moment - then again, I am brain fried at 9:30pm and Sweeney still hasn't settled - I can hear him in the background and I know, any minute, Asa is going to ask me to help) but I still want to tweak it. I still want the protagonist to be a girl so at the moment the idea is that she is one of them but didn't realise it. It's actually pretty cool how I came to this idea. I was watching Classic Tales on ABC Kids with Pascal and it was the story of the Ugly Duckling. It made me think about how, not only did the Ugly Duckling find his family, but that they were more beautiful than any of the other birds that made fun of him along the way. Then immediately I thought there's my protagonist. All along she's been ridiculed and never belonged and in the end she's a Genie -much, much cooler than any of the biatches who made fun of her.

Ok, again, not the most original story line but it's the one for now.

Anyway, I told you Asa would ask me to help. Better go, I am indeed kernackered!

Family Life Interlude #1

That's right, Interlude! Because I say as I do and do as I say and this blog is going to be all about Genies and it's development yessiree!!

So we got right into Masterchef. Of course, it was pretty much a given with my predilection for reality TV and the fact it's beaten all the ratings records. I loved it because of the food and how everyone was just so nice to each other. There was not much voting off going on and when there was it was all tears, hugs, kisses and sorries (which looked and felt genuine). It was just a really heartwarming snuggly buggly show - I know I'm not saying anything new here as it's really the word on the street.

So the highlights! And how I wish I had the footage to embed (and knew how to embed it). You see, I grew up with the 'rewind moment' repetoire joke. This is when a moment on film strikes you as funny and you keep rewinding it and playing it again and again until it takes on a mad and hilarious life of it's own!

Ok, this tradition is not handed down by my parents. In fact, when my best friend from primary school Kylie and I first discovered The Rewind Moment (a scene where Shelley Winters falls down a lift shaft and her bouffant hairdo gets a jiggle in Towering Inferno ) they thought it was just really annoying and definitely NOT funny in the slightest.

I've found that people who generally share my sense of humour (including Asa, my partner) have appreciated the rewind moment and quite often had discovered it for themselves (and I realise I have gone on quite the tangent but you see where this is going don't you? Hint: George Calombaris Buttah).

Some other classic rewind moments through the ages: Cocoon II - The Return when Jack Gilford (and no I don't remember the names off the top of my head) who plays one of the old men is trying to hang himself but is interrupted by a knock on the door and he says 'Just a minute' at the same time he falls off the chair; Meet Joe Black where Brad Pitt is run over by a car. Oh anyway, you had to be there.

Back to Masterchef and life with a HDD recorder! We had lots of fun and I'm very proud to pass the rewind moment on to the next generation - Pascal laughs the loudest!
Ok, The Highlights!

• George Calombaris' passionate enunciation of the word Butter. This happened on more than one occasion but we liked it best when he was making Roast chicken and BUTTAHED potatoes in an early masterclass episode. Now the whole family says BUTTAH instead of butter.
• Chris' evil little giggle when he won a challenge - I forget which one
• Matt Preston chuckling into his cravate after a particularly nice feed (can't remember what dish)
• Andre yelling out 'Go Poh' in the final challenge with Julie.

There were many more but I'm realising they don't pack the same punch without the footage on a loop. Must dash, real life with a 12 week old and five year old beckons!

*****!

Is it as hard for Heather B Armstrong to bang out a post? There's one all about my dance class fiasco in my drafts that's just not working out for me and I guess will sit there for a while. *Sigh* I don't know...

It's just that the blogs I read are so funny and well written and seem so effortless. My emails are like that, why can't I get to that place when I sit down and write this blog?

Anyway, enough of that. I've decided that this blog is going to become FUNCTIONAL. Seeing as I still don't have an audience then there's no-one to STEAL my wonderful idea for a book. A series of books for teenagers. I was just washing the dishes listening to the best radio station in the world RRR when the song California Soul came on. I have this song on a mixed CD entitled *****. Why was it called *****? Because this was the soundtrack for the film script I was going to write. All about a secret would of ***** or whatever you want to call them.

I made this mixed tape in 2006 and who knows, if I'd followed through maybe I'd be up there with J K Rowlings? Ok, that might sound a bit deluded but you just never know...

I'm sick of not following things through so this ***** idea has cropped up again. It's been showing itself recently. There's been the success of Twilight which has reminded me again of what can happen when an idea really takes off. **** are untapped. I have to go now as I don't want to get into that trap of running late again (so easy to do now with baby Sweeney).

Next post will be all about my vision! Oh, I'm so inspired!!

It must be the season of the MUSHROOM

There they are, the hideous things. From where I am typing at our dining table, I can see them, the nasty vile abominations! I am talking about mushrooms...or maybe toadstools. Anyway, the variety that I see before me don't take the form of a pretty little red topped, white spotted fairy chair dotted here and there*. Nooooo, we are talking about bunches, clusters of nicotine coloured bulbous growths that protrude and bulge out of the earth. Ten, twenty FORTY of them. There is something hemorrhoidish about them, like piles from the bumcheeks of mother earth.

As I said, I am looking at (or watching??) them now from the safety of indoors. There is one bunch of about eight or ten which has captured my attention. I know when I go out there to investigate, these will turn out to be the tip of the iceberg - to pick an obvious metaphor. This particular batch has appeared at the top of a hill of loose dirt which means this 'hill' is actually twenty more of the buggers in disguise.

By the way these, very literally, grow overnight which just adds so much more to the reasons why these horrors of nature gross me out so much. It makes me think that if I was to stay up overnight with a torch, I would actually see them grow. This and the proliferation. I only cleared the yard yesterday and I can see at least four different clusters around today.

What can be done? Nothing much, apparently. We removed a large tree when we moved in and apparently they are springing from the root which was left. To get rid of the toadstools, we would have to dig up the yard and get rid of the root. From my google study session and talking to a neighbourhood horticulturist friend, I've learnt that the toadstools are actually a sign of good things happening to our soil as they (or the underground mycellium which they grow from) break down the tree root. So we only have about fifty or so years to go, yay!

*I'm talking purely aesthetics here. I'm aware that I have probably just described the most poisonous variety of toadstool.

It's a....BOY!

Two boys. Oh my God.

Sweeney Lucas is absolutely divine and it's amazing, now after a little over two weeks of life with him I would have it no other way...BUT...

I have to say I've had the odd moment where I've had to address the fact I was really hoping for a girl. There were moments where I regretted not finding out earlier whereby I would have 'come to terms' with the fact I will most likely never have a daughter long before Sweeney was born. There were actual secret tears in the hospital where I thought about never being able to use the name Greta for my daughter. Especially gazing at Sweeney's fine features and pretty little face.

I'm ok with it all now. As I said I would have it no other way and I think the thoughts were more to do with the fact that I've had my last child. I only ever wanted two kids and now I've had them..that's it. So I think it's more than likely that if I did have my Greta I would be mourning a little for my lost Sweeney.

TWO BOYS, Who would have thunk it!