This is it.... !!!

At the end of every year at Kindergarten Transition, I stand behind the microphone and address the school hall, full to the brim with new and upcoming Kindy students' parents and I say in my speech:

"...in the first days and weeks of big school, your child will call upon everything that you have ever taught them..."

Now I find myself remonstrating over my own words. Eating them, actually - thinking, I have precisely 4 days to squeeze in every useful and useless piece of information that I always intended to cover, but never quite got around to! Where did those years go?!

Calmly and professionally I stand there and talk sense to frightened parents about leaving their tears at the gate (after their child has settled). How different it is sending off one of your own little lambs.

All set for a new year - just don't open the Tupperware cupboard or think about how I will get to work on time.

For the first couple of weeks of the holidays, after hosting Christmas Day, I was a dead loss. I reclined on the lounge and read - intermittendly eating, swimming at the beach, drinking, reading, snoozing, reading, eating, swimming, snoozing - ad infinitum...

Bone tired from the year behind us, I needed the rest and had no qualms about taking it. The three of us all pottered about doing our own thing and re-charged our batteries, usually within a 5 metre radius of one another. I have a feeling that regardless of the size of our house, we would all be under foot.

In the last week of the holidays, however, I have bustled about our house like the Chatelaine of a castle! - albeit, a small castle. I have fastidiously cleaned out every conceivable cupboard space, bowl or receptacle hiding years' worth of crud. Anything that was not bolted down - went. Paul was concerned about his own tenure at one point.

My mood whilst cleaning was...well perhaps I should ask Paul and Lily because at the end of my rampage, when red-faced and puffing like a billy, I announced that I had finished the overhaul, Paul and Lily eyeballed each other and made comments to suggest that they were very pleased that in fact " The Mummy had come back!!!"

As a result I am now looking at sparkling, clean surfaces...I am subdued and surrounded by clean air and fresh focus!

"The quality of daily life is what matters, the taste of the food on the table, the light in the room, the peace and wholeness of the moment".
- Germaine Greer

Mind you, I couldn't come at the Tupperware cupboard. Nor could I encourage Paul or the wee one to assist with the plastic avalanche that greets us daily upon opening the cupboard door. I am talking about our Tupperware cupboard that is full to capacity but houses not one matching lid+container combo.

Now all I have to worry about is gearing up for the school runs in the morning and getting myself and Lily to school on time! Orchestrating school lunches, having the school casual phone and dropping my big school babe at her room each morning without invoking separation anxiety are the next issues on my agenda...

Any advice from Mums or Dads who already have little folk at big school?

My Book Club

Yesterday evening I met with my Book Club at the Observatory Hotel in Sydney. Books & Nooks booked out the presidential suite on the top floor and sat in a circle on gilded, antique chairs, drinking French Martinis and eating canapes, whilst beauty therapists from the Observatory Hotel manicured and polished our nails - (I chose a shiny, cherry red and I keep looking at it on my nails as I type)!

Oh, we also discussed the text, that we had read this month. An English lecturer convened the discussion and at times our opinions varied greatly. One lady and I(she a psychologist, who no doubt psychoanalysed me) - did not share the same opinion about one particular character in the book. Things got a bit heated, which was great - it was so good to really get into the text with someone.

Afterwards, I met my date - Paul, in the bar. At the bar, I got quite a taste for the French Martinis that had been brought around to us on silver trays at our book club meeting - so I continued drinking them throughout the evening. Note: Ask for for your French Martini shaken with fresh pineapple pieces and garnished with a big, chunk of fresh pineapple, it gives a taste of ....Bermuda? Hawaii? The Maldives? At least that's where I thought I was last night...

In the restaurant I then ordered a clear Pipi soup infused with lemongrass, ginger and God only knows what else, but it was so good, so refreshing that it tasted like the very 'broth of life' itself and I made it my business to tell the chef this exact thing. I don't, however, quite know that Yomo knew exactly where I was coming from. Yomo's broth was so nourishing - it could bring back the dead. It felt like it had cleansed my body and my soul. This man - the head chef can seriously cook. I think of my batches of blueberry muffins and Smoked Salmon Pasta and they are lame and ordinary suburban concoctions in comparison.

The rack of lamb that we ate next did not disappoint. It was encrusted in garlic and shinju mushrooms and the crust was black. Seriously if Yomo told me it were derived from boot polish, which is what it looked like, I would have continued to eat it after I took my first bite - the flavour was phenomenal and cutting the lamb was like slicing a hot knife through butter. Chewing was optional.

Paul and I returned to our room for the night to find that someone had been in our quarters! Paul initially thought it was a 'robber', however, on closer inspection the 'robber' had a fetish for classical music as well as an obsessive compulsive disorder. Classical music was playing. The quilt on our bed had been pulled down and our bed sheet neatly folded back and tucked in. They, he or she had put a bottle of water in a weird, sleeping-bag-type-holder on each of our bedside tables. They had also cleaned up my makeup that had been strewn about the marble vanity and they had also folded my nightie and placed it on the wing backed chair! The staff at the Observatory could not have been more attentive and left no stone unturned. Get thyself there!

We also had a spa before I went to my Book Club meeting and we looked at the stars on the 'ceiling' of the pool. Paul was in his element- it being a Hotel that promotes the whole Observatory/Science/Astronomy theme. Over dinner in the 'Galileo' Restaurant, Paul enlightened me on all that Galileo actually did for us in our modern age! Fascinating really...

Fashioning the wedding bouquet

Well I have just breathed in a fresh gust of wedding preparation fever! It comes and goes.

This morning as we cooled ourselves on the slip and slide in the back yard, I pottered about cutting clippings of berries and other textured greenery from our garden, fashioning my wedding bouquet.

I am not responsible for the wedding bouquet above, my florist is and she creates, rustic, just thrown together, old fashioned, freshly-picked-from-the-garden bouquets, that appear effortless but are indeed exquisite, wired, natural works of art!

Mark my words, there will be pale, apple green berries in my bouquet and lots of white, ruffled flowers intermingled with greenery.

My first wedding bouquet was a heavy and contrived orb of rose buds that lacked that simple 'posie' look and looked stilted and well...contrived.

I am confident that all will be natural and right second time round - and that includes the flowers.