365 days of what?

I'm looking for some inspiration loyal followers. Since returning from my holiday I have been feeling somewhat flat. A little low on ideas. Underwhelmed.

I have decided that I would like to follow in the footsteps of (seemingly) everyone else on the planet and do something interesting on my blog for 365 days. Everybody's doing it...Look at Julie and Julia - cracking movie, loved it. And Julie was inspired from toenail to eyebrow with her 365 days of recipe blogging.

Then there's the Tupperware lady who (possibly a little less creatively than I'm hoping for) made 365 Tupperware recipes. Bless her - I'm sure it was still bloody hard work but I'd like to move away from the J&J theme.

I can't remember who's doing this but someone famous (for something other than photography I think) is uploading a new photo of their kids everyday to their blog. Maybe that was the crazy ex-footballers wife. The carlton guy. I think she was on Dancing with Stars? Mental blank. Anyway - it could've been her or it could've been someone way more famous. I forget.

Then I read about some guy who's writing micro-fiction every day for a year on his blog. Can't remember much about him either but still. He's doing it. And if he can, I certainly can!

So, if you've got any ideas - drop a comment below. I don't want anything to do with recipes. I need an original idea, the likes of which I am incapable of coming up with myself at the moment!

Thanks in advance for your inspired ideas.

Until tomorrow xx

Ah bumper stickers - a truly noble industry

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Milk and cabbage anyone?

Deviating once again from the holiday tidbits I have something to share with you that may be considered too much information. Nevertheless...

Since Sunday I have been weaning the little fella off the liquid gold that is my breastmilk. This is for several reasons, one of which is that he started going to childcare on Monday. Just one day a week but still time away from home. A little quiet work-time for me and a little interaction for him. So I needed him to be able to take a bottle or some other form of liquid in my absence, hence the weaning.

Unfortunately I didn't do it very cleverly and have pretty much gone cold turkey. The little guy has gone gang-busters on the bottle and seems as happy as Larry. I, on the other hand, am struggling. And that is a whopping understatement.

My boobs are the size of basketballs and equally as hard. They've been throbbing with pain and leaking so much that no breast pad is adequate. The only relief I get is in the shower where I massage a bit of the milk out but it's a reasonably insignificant bit and I'm back at capacity shortly after. Last night I got in the shower and started my massage routine, only to have the hot water run out after a few minutes. So I sat down and cried. Boo-freakin-hoo.

I read from several sources that clean cabbage leaves popped on swollen mammaries can help alleviate the pain. Was I that desperate? Indeed I was. I bought a cabbage, washed the leaves, used a rolling pin (as instructed) to flatten them a bit and then filled my bra with them. I could hardly stand the smell of myself as I rested on the couch yesterday trying not to move. Truthfully though, whether or not the cabbage did anything, it was so nice and cold that it felt like it helped.

I put some fresh leaves in after my non-shower and went to bed. My poor husband must have an impenetrable nose because he slept beside my milky cabbage leaves unfazed.

I felt a bit better this morning but as the day has worn on things have gotten rather uncomfortable again. Looks like I'll have to make a mercy dash to the supermarket for some more healing cabbage.

Until tomorrow xx

Malaysia truly Asia

Sometimes things just seem to be done wrong. Or organised poorly. You know? For example, after the piss pillow incident, my family and I arrived in Malaysia and were transferred to out hotel. No problems. We were soon told though, that our pool was undergoing maintenance and wasn't available for use. Never fear though - because all the hotel guests were able to utilise the 'surf beach' area of the water theme park attached to the hotel. Cool! Way better than a hotel pool anyway, we thought.

And it was. The surf beach was huge and had lots of little slides and play areas for kiddies and was generally just a haven of excitement for the young. We had just set ourselves up in the pool after spending God-knows how long preparing Noam with sunscreen, water-proof nappies, a blow-up floatie seat etc etc when we heard the sharp trill of a whistle.

A handful of lifeguards were walking around the edge of the man-made beach with a rope, calling everyone out of the water and sending them back behind the barricade. Had a tsunami warning been issued? Perhaps Malaysian sharks are able to find their way from the sea to swimming pools somehow? Clever little things.

We did what we were told and went and sat behind the rope, leaving the enormous pool completely empty, save for a few rebels that refused to get out. A siren sounded and I thought that was to get the attention of the anarchists still swimming but no, a huge cheer went up from the roped-off crowd and then a wave materialised out in the deep part. So it was a wave pool. Wonderful. I thought it was slightly excessive to rope the pool off completely but whatever. I figured 15 minutes and we'd be back in splashing around.

Not quite. The first wave came and went and then nothing. For probably 10 minutes. Then another siren, a cheer, another wave, then nothing. After the third wave I went to ask a lifeguard how long this was going to go on for. Another half an hour he said. Really? An hour of nothingness for basically hundreds of people, while about 6 people who'd paid I don't know how much, waited for 6 waves to boogie board or body surf on.

What an incredibly dumb arrangement. Why not 6 waves in 15 minutes and then bang - everyone back in the pool? It was all so boring we just decided to head back to the hotel, despite the fact it was a thousand degrees and perfect pool weather.

Ah well, lesson learnt. Wave pools in Malaysian water parks are not the most efficient or the most exciting attractions around.

Until next time xx

Play school or Repay School?

Ok - I was going to carry on with more interesting, amusing and disgusting tales from my voyage but my thoughts have been hijacked watching Play School with my son. Well actually, he's not even watching so it's just me.

Today the hosts are some guy with way too much facial hair - he looks like a face off the 'guess who' boardgame and the chick who used to play Anne off Neighbours. Billy Kennedy's girlfriend. In real life she had the unfortunate experience of going out with Matthew Newton. Anyhoo.

Guess Who and Anne just sang a song to the tune of 'Kung Fu Fighting' but it went a little sumpin like this - 'Everybody was exercising, starjumps as fast as lightning'...I'm not joking.

Yesterday when I was watching I saw Alex Papps was one of the hosts. You may remember him from such soaps as Home and Away where he played Frank - the rebellious, misunderstood boyfriend of Bobby. He was also at some point (not sure whether it was before, after or simultaneously) the boyfriend of 'Roo' Stewart, who was played by Justine Clarke. And guess what - Justine Clarke is also a host on Play School! Can you believe it?

Play school must be the place ex-soap stars go to repay their debt to the community. Bless 'em.

Until tomorrow xx

Piss pillow

Friends and faithful followers...Apologies for my absence the past month but I decided to forgo technology on my honeymoon and have some time off. It won't happen again I promise. The good news is I am full to bursting with tid-bits that I'll be sharing with you on a daily basis. No better place to start than the start so here we go.

I love to travel but I hate having to get to my destination. It's a well known fact the my fear of flying is extreme, to the point that I enlisted the help of a hypnotherapist before we left for Europe. I must admit that it was somewhat successful. I wasn't too nervous until we hit a bit of turbulence on the way to Malaysia, which is unheard of for me since I'm usually a nervous wreck at least 24 hours before the flight.

So there I was, relaxing as best I could on the plane when I experienced a phenomenon I'd only heard about but never witnessed. While watching a movie with Jennifer Anniston and Adam Sandler (the name of which I cannot recall) I heard hysterical laughing intruding through my headphones. I glanced behind me and saw two young men (obviously Australian) absolutely beside themselves with mirth. I went back to my movie.

Then they got up and tried to run into business class which happened to be right beside our seats (and all the seats of parents with infants who were sleeping soundly in their basinets). Of course they were quickly escorted out but not before they managed to bang into one of the basinets and wake the little mite who in turn screamed it's lungs out to wake the other little mites. Wonderful.

After coercing our baby back to sleep I got up to go to the toilet which was occupied. I stood beside the door and had a view on the 2 lunatics who were both as pissed as Karl Stefanovic at the Logies. Then one of them stood up, still laughing uncontrollably, took a pillow and placed it in front of his crotch where a stain was spreading down his pants. Oh goody, he'd pissed himself. He stumbled over and stood behind me waiting for the toilet but the temptation (of course) became too much and he just had to pitch the pillow at the back of his friend's head. He then ran off in search of another toilet. His friend however, not realising he'd departed threw the piss-pillow back from the direction in whence it had come and hit me squarely in the side of the head.

The pitcher was then on the verge of cardiac arrest such was his amusement and he tried desperately to tell his girlfreind (I am sad to say they both had women with them) but she wasn't interested and I think I lipread her correctly saying 'you're a dickhead'. My sentiments exactly. I thought the stewards would end up having to handcuff them or lock them in the toilet or shove them out the emergency door or something but sadly they seemed disinterested.

At least I was distracted from the turbulence for a while. That's something I think. You've got to look at the piss-pillow as half full don't you?

Until tomorrow xx

Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm way too cool to make my poem rhyme

Round two of the poem competition began yesterday. I was as eager as a kid at Christmas to pour over the next 12 poems I'd been sent to judge, convinced they would be an improvement on the last lot. Well, well, well. Waddayaknow? They were basically a load of stinking cat's piss as well.

To be fair, a lot of the death and misery along with the sappy romantic shite was gone but instead I got a bunch of the too cool for school 'I'm not going to rhyme because my words are so deep and random and clever that rhyming will only serve to dumb it down for the idiot masses' stuff.

Which is worse? I think I prefer the miserable cancer poems.

Forgive me but I like a good old fashioned rhyming poem. One that you can sort of sing along to. Imagine if dear Dorothea Mackellar had thought 'I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of rugged mountain ranges, of drought and floods and horses...' Doesn't quite have the same feel really.

So all the ones I selected as being in my top 4 rhyme. I make no apologies for that. Perhaps it's because I grew up with 'All right, Vegemite' and those sorts of books that I prefer the rhyming poem. Plus, let's get right down to it; it's harder to come up with something brilliant that rhymes. One of my all time favourites is Edgar Allan Poe's - The Raven - which is fantastically frightening AND it rhymes! How on earth did he do it? Who would know. And apparently many emerging poets aren't terribly concerned. (If you haven't read it check it out here: http://poestories.com/read/raven )

Sadly, the entrants are unaware whether their poem has proceeded to the next round so I have no details for you as to the success or otherwise of my own (rhyming) masterpiece. You will know as soon as I do.

Until tomorrow xx