What did you talk about this week?

It’s that time of the week when I share some of the wide variety of topics of conversation that came up through work or play (I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which) in the course of life in a pink fibro.

Chickens, worms, compost, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Wire, Anzac Day, irritable bowel syndrome, guitar practice, sustainable schools, property investment, Avon, Enjo, sustainable schools, times tables, Stringer Bell, working mothers, books, rewriting, proposals, Little Ninjas, gymnastics, writing, blogging, KRudd, chair sniffing, leisurewear, bills, The Great Gatsby, roofing, plumbing, brainstorming, why Dinosaurs became extinct (I still prefer the Gary Larsen theory), shower curtains, an extra day at preschool, theories of marketing, party plan vs direct selling, Mr6's Attitoood…and how Mr3 grew up so fast.

What came up at your house this week?

{image: Renata Osinka}

Writing on empty

If I had a petrol tank, it would be showing Empty tonight. We would be sitting in the middle lane of three lanes of traffic, needle in the red, wondering if we’ll make it to the next petrol station, wondering where the next petrol station is. There would be three children in the back, whinging that they’re hungry/thirsty/being hit over the head by their younger brother.

In other words, not pretty.

I’ve never been a good sleeper. You can ask my mum, who reckons I was awake for the first four years of my life. Awake and screaming, if I recall her exact words. She loves to tell people how she took me to see the doctor when I was about 12 months old, certain there was something wrong with me. Either that or I was possessed. The doctor reached over, patted her hand, and gave her a prescription for valium.

There are nights when I could use a doctor like that. Nights when I waft around the Fibro, wandering from room to room like a ghost, searching for sleep where there’s none to be found. These are the nights that have allowed me to maintain a writing career and be a mum at home with my kids. Insomnia is a very good friend to the work-at-home mother.

Then there are the other nights, when the computer screen seems to be emitting 1000 watts of light, hurting my eyes, adding to the lines under my eyes when I squint. When the words don’t come out right. When I have to concede defeat at 10pm and go to bed. Those nights tend to come after a long run of productive nights. They also tend to occur at the most inopportune moments. The nights when a solid post-midnight performance would make all the difference to the clamouring deadlines.

You can’t fight these nights, though.

Tonight is of the latter variety. No wafting for me tonight. No writing for me tonight. Just bed. All I can do is write my To Do list and give in.

Never underestimate the power of a To Do list for an insomniac. If you write it down before you go to bed, you won’t lie awake for hours reminding yourself of the things you need to do. Awake and screaming.

Sometimes I wonder if this is what was going on with me as a child. Was I lying there, desperately trying to remember what I needed to do the next day? Eat. Breathe, Cry. Excrete. Begin again.

When people use the phrase 'sleeping like a baby', they really have no idea, do they?

{image: Galina Barskaya}

What's really cool this season?

It looks as though Autumn decided it would come to the ball this year after all. Only two months late, but who's counting? I read in the paper on the weekend that Sydneysiders are taking lack of punctuality to whole new heights, so clearly the seasons can't be held accountable for following the trend.

Personally, I'm glad that the cooler weather has finally made an entrance. Indian summers are all well and good, but they're hot. Six months of hot is enough. Two extra months just gets irritating.

Plus, lower temperatures mean the season of the Flannelette Pyjama (note the singular, a leftover from my heady days at Vogue in the 90s), proper, is now upon us. I admit to having been in my Flannos for some time now. Hoping. Even sweating a little. But no more. Now I'm just sublimely comfortable.

There is nothing better than coming home from a long, hard day and slipping into an elasticised waist and soft, brushed cotton. I don't know where you stand on the Cartoon Print when it comes to Flannos, but personally I'm not a fan. I like an Old Skool stripe or spot. Probably because I'm a Old Skool kind of girl. Or just old.

Admittedly, I do start getting into my Flannos earlier and earlier as autumn turns into winter. Until it gets to the point where I'm getting back into them almost before I get out of them in the morning. But I'm okay with that. In my ideal world, we'd all wear Flannos all the time. There'd be no body image issues because we'd all look like TeleTubbies. There'd be no road rage, supermarket rage or walking-behind-slow-people rage because we'd all be so comfortable and relaxed we wouldn't care. We could even look cool, as the gorgeous Parisian in the pic (by The Sartorialist) shows (yes, those are pyjama pants).

I suspect my championing of pyjamas as all-day wear began with my freelancing career around 10 years ago. When freelancers joke about working from home in their pyjamas, they're not actually joking. I had a friend drop in at 1pm one day and dissolve into hysterics because I was still wandering about in my night attire. I think he was more amused by my complete embarrassment at having been sprung... Or possibly my attempt to explain to him that it was 'leisure wear'. Yep, that might have been it.

Speaking of leisure wear, I tried, just days ago, to tell Sister B that pink-spotted pyjama pants and a t-shirt constituted a fashion statement due to the 'leisure wear' being so 'on trend' this year. She informed me that getting in to one's pyjamas while people were still attending one's lunchtime barbecue could in no way be regarded as leisure wear. In my defence, there were only family members present, it was cold and I ate too much to cope with the button on my jeans. And my t-shirt was very cool.

What's not leisurely about that?

{image: A Cup of Jo}

Scritch, scritch, scritch...and a cold, prickly feeling

It’s incredible how quickly a night can go downhill. One minute I’m in my study, diligently working on a grant application for the school (yes, they put ‘sucker’ on my name badge at P&F functions these days), the next I’m standing by the fridge hoovering down Cherry Ripe chocolates (if The Builder is reading this, just one, and I left the Turkish Delights), not working, just waiting.

The cause of all this debauchery instead of duty? A cockroach.

The Fibro is a very quiet place at night. Very, very quiet. The kind of quiet where the hum of the fridge sounds like a plane taking off, and a car driving past after 10pm is cause for comment and, yes, curtain twitching.

The kind of quiet where the scritch, scritch, scritch of cockroach feet crawling across cardboard makes a girl sit up and take notice.

When I first heard it, I thought maybe it was a bat outside. They’re hanging around (boom tish) eating the fruit from our big tree (and excreting it all over the deck, pavers and outdoor furniture). That’s how loud that scritch, scritch, scritch was.

I opened the blinds. No bats. Scritch, scritch, scritch.

I looked up to the top of the bookshelf, where I keep my tasteful collection of cardboard storage boxes - you know, the ones that allow hoarders to hoard in peace and prettiness. There, attempting to haul its sorry thorax – or possibly its abdomen – from between two boxes, was the biggest, blackest, shiniest roach I’d ever seen.

I’m not sure how you are with roaches, but they make me retch. I get a cold, prickly feeling up the back of my neck and hold my breath. Automatically. Not ideal.

I also run straight for the environmentally heinous insect spray.

The worst part about those sprays – and there are many bad parts, I know – is the agonising dance of death that follows. I sprayed. It ran left. I sprayed. It ran right. I sprayed, long and hard (possibly overzealously, now that I think about it). It rolled over.

I left the room. I couldn’t bear to watch. I had a drink. I paced. I crept back to the door and put my head around the corner. The roach was back-stroking along the bookshelf.

I went back to the kitchen. It was at this point, 11.05pm, that the chocolate indiscretion occurred. I paced. I crept back to the door. The roach was now sliding behind a vintage Star Wars poster (long story), scritch, scritch, scratching along the paper.

I had to leave again.

I read three pages of The Great Gatsby (which I will need to re-read as I was not concentrating on West Egg, let me tell you). Surely, I reasoned, it would be quiet now?

It was. The roach was laid out in the middle of the floor. I sidled past, figuring I’d leave a post-it for The Builder (and possibly a Turkish Delight) requesting he remove its remains in the morning.

I sit here now, typing, working, happy with my little world once more. I turn to reassure myself that the roach is toast.

Uh-oh. The roach is gone.

Cue cold, prickly feeling…

{image: fionakate.com.au}

A post about The Last Post

Today was ANZAC Day. Day of Remembrance. Day of marching. Day of The Last Post.

The Last Post is one of the saddest pieces of music ever written. It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Particularly when played inexpertly at school assemblies. There is something about the random squeaks and blasts produced by a teenage bugler that conjures up for me the endless baby faces of young soldiers.

The bugle at Mr6’s school ANZAC Day service last Thursday (Friday was a dreaded Pupil-Free Day so we had to get in early) was played by a young man from the local high school. He had the windswept supermodel hair that defines his generation, an earnest expression and a bit of difficulty with the high notes. He reduced me to blinking back tears.

Beside me, on the asphalt, behind the colony of school hats carefully paying attention under the principal’s nose, was an elderly gentleman. Someone’s Grandfather. Who stood to attention through the entire service. Stiff, upright, proud.

He reduced me to tears proper.

Today we took the boys and some friends visiting from The Big Smoke over to my mum’s house to watch the march. Every parade of any description for the past 30 years has stomped past my parents’ house. Our friend C remarked that she’d never actually been to an ANZAC Day parade that went past someone’s house before. In the city, it requires two train changes and a packed lunch to attend the march. Here, we munched on homemade ANZAC biscuits in the driveway and waved to the veterans as they went past – many of them in taxis.

One of the reasons that I love ANZAC Day is those beaming faces in those taxis. It’s the one day of the year when our oldest citizens feel all the warmth our community can bestow. When we remember that they were young once. I know that the Day is about remembering fallen soldiers, but I love that it’s also about remembering (and acknowledging) the ones that survived.

Afterwards, we retired to the Fibro for a barbecue. We had a few drinks, ate some sausages, shared some stories and lots of laughs. The children rampaged around the garden like Wild Things. After a few wines, I found myself wondering if perhaps we shouldn’t be a little more… reverent.

But then I thought, no. What were all those young men fighting for if not for their children and their children’s children to enjoy the freedom of an afternoon just like the one we enjoyed today.

Lest we forget.

{image: Dawn}

What did you talk about this week?

It’s that time of the week when I share some of the wide variety of topics of conversation that came up through work or play (I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which) in the course of life in a pink fibro.

Moving out, skylights, formica tables, party plan businesses, superannuation, writing, Lisa Heidke, Easter eggs (and how I'm still eating them), Kylie Ladd, The Wire, headaches, daytime sleeps, expressive reading, how water makes the plants grow, how plants grow very slowly so it's not worth waiting around to watch, Avon, marketing, grant applications, Dick Smith, marriage, sustainable gardens, Twitter (mostly how it's a hugely enjoyable time suck), One Wise Owl, property investment, The Last Post (and how it always bring tears to my eyes), guitar lessons, Little Ninjas, gymnastics, Carl Williams, chequebook journalism, the NRL salary cap, footy tipping, press releases, dentistry, council campaigns, KRudd, weeding...

What came up at your house this week?

{image: Big W}