Bits and Bobs

G’day a post coming to you live from my SECOND virus this winter, yay! After a whole year of not getting sick, including avoiding the megaflu from last year that knocked everyone out, I’m apparently making up for lost time by getting the same virus a fortnight apart. If I sneeze one more time, I may scream.

There’s no rest for the wicked (although I did spend the entire day on the couch yesterday reading the Nordic Cook Book, which if you’ve ever seen it you’ll know it takes an entire day to read), and we’ve been pretty full-on with the happenings around here.

MUCH food, as usual. Lemon self-saucing pudding, bread, bread and butter pudding, pikelets, pancakes, jam drops, cornflake biscuits, TWO chocolate cakes (one the Claire Ptak/Violet Bakery Devil’s Food Cake, one a regular, standby lunchbox type), curries, mac and cheese, welsh rarebit, Friday night pizza, the usual dinners, and tons of eggs on toast.

The girls have been in and out with school and playdates and sleepovers, but also cruised through the second week of the holidays happily playing together. Fortunately they just get along and never seem to get sick of each other, despite spending their entire waking hours together. It’s a mystery to me. Growing up, if my sister had ever tried to exist within even ten feet of me I’d have whacked her and told her to get lost. MUM SHE’S LOOKING AT MEEEEE omgggg. And of course my youngest sister I didn’t grow up with at all, so we’ve never had a fight. I have nothing to base healthy sister relationships on. Perhaps it’s normal this synergy, but I was of the understanding you were supposed to go around with bits of your sister’s skin under your nails at all times.

I took the girls up to my parents’ house in Ballarat for the night the weekend before last so I could hit every single op shop within a 10k radius before heading back to Melbs. I scored BIG TIME at the very last shop I went to, so will have to keep an eye on it next time I go. Pyrex! Carlton Ware! 1994 Barbie! Royal jigsaws! The jackpot. We also, of course, went to Beechworth Bakery where I inhaled a pastie drowned in tomato sauce and a cup of tea and was never more pleased in all my life.

The weekend just gone we spent some of Saturday filming a little something for Bupa, helping my cousin move house (bless him, he had two suitcases, two mugs, an iron and a stack of books), and this week coming up I’ve got the online chat for this month’s book club, a playroom rearrange, some chicken housekeeping, avoiding getting bitten by our new rabbit, a volunteer induction at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, and a bit of a spring clean in order for when I’m feeling better – standards have slipped while I’ve been laid up and its already getting on my nerves!

I’m still plugging away at the book, working on a couple of commissioned bits and pieces, and being knocked back for the fifth job in a row I’ve applied for. Things are looking fairly dire in that regard, which is a worry. I feel a bit like I’m starting from scratch trying to find a job now that the kids have gone to school, even though I’ve worked the whole 8 years I’ve been home with them. I feel the skills I worked so hard to hone across those years were perhaps for a dying industry and don’t translate to current working conditions. I feel like at 38 I’m too old to apply for the ground-level jobs, but am not qualified (or experienced enough) for the other jobs that are available at the moment. It’s rather a quandary. Perhaps I’m just not looking in the right areas.

Anyway, the washing machine is beeping, there’s another load to go on, the dishes won’t wash themselves, and I’ve some other things to chase up, so I’ll be off – I hope it’s a cracking Monday for the lot of you, and I’ll leave you with Lee Lin Chin’s tweet from Saturday night, which gave me a good giggle ahead of her final bulletin last night. What a legend.

Tonight I will read @SBSNews for the second last time. Watch it or miss the 2nd most important night of your life.

— Lee Lin Chin (@LeeLinChinSBS) July 28, 2018