May 5. Day 126. Animal Farm

Those who don't think you should work with children or animals obviously don't have a love for either.
Yeah okay, they are difficult to stage manage. Yeah, they do wild and unpredictable things but surely a big bucket of cute makes up for that.
Sadly my own son has never really enjoyed getting up close and personal with all creatures great and small. I've never let that stop me. Why should the kids have all the fun?
It is exactly that type of thinking that inspired Brisbane blogger Girl Clumsy to decide to hire an animal farm and invite her city friends - with or without kids - to come along.
Brilliant idea.
The adults were having just as much fun as the kids but for me it was the wonder on the faces of the little ones as they got to touch and feed the animals that was really special. The way this little kid is patting that little kid. Priceless.

April 28. Day 119. Democracy in action

The Returning Officer looked at me like I was insane but agreed that it was my prerogative to vote that way if I so desired. Even my mother told me I was mad but that didn't stop me.
As a voter in the South Brisbane electorate, today I had to vote twice - once in the council elections and once in the by-election for the seat vacated by Anna Bligh after the State election.
Now normal people would have done this at the same polling booth. I went to two seperate booths and this photo of democracy in action was taken at State High where I voted for the second time.
There was no good reason for this behaviour. In fact, given that I don't accept "just because" as a reason from my teenager you could argue that there wasn't even a bad reason.
Perhaps I just wanted to test the system.
Perhaps I just wanted to see where the best sausage sizzle was.
Perhaps I just like seeing deomcracy in action so I decided to drag out the process.
I even told myself it was to because I needed to get a decent walk in and visiting more than one booth would ensure I didn't chicken out in the dreadful weather today.
But in the end it probably comes down to a favourite saying of my late father: "Why does a dog lick its balls? Because it can."

April 27. Day 118. You'd have to be kidding me

For most of my life I was convinced that people who said they enjoyed exercise were
a) Mad
b) Lying or
c) Both of the above
People who exercised always seemed to be in pain, or injured or hideously hot and sweaty. There could no possible joy in any of that.
Quite honestly I blame the education system for entrenching my anti-exercise beliefs.
I'm sure it wasn't their intent, but school sport had everything to do with winning and nothing to do with participation. If you were slow and uncoordinated (yep, hands up that was me); if you were always selected last when fellow students had to choose their teams; if you were never in the running for representative sport, the system fully supported the idea that really you were hopeless and should be leaving it to the experts.
And so I did.
Until I was 29, February 14, 1994, to be exact. That's the day I got engaged and at that moment I decided I did not want to be looking at multiple chins in wedding photos for the rest of my life. So that meant diet and that dreaded exercise business.
So I started to walk and I started to swim. Eventually I added the gym and aerobic classes to that. I exercised every day and I still exercise every day.
At some point, and I don't know exactly when that was, I realised I wasn't just exercising because I had to but because I wanted to.
Those fitness fanatics weren't lying after all.
My husband and son still don't get it. They think that the need for daily exercise is just another pressure I put on myself.
In fact, it's quite the opposite. It takes the pressure off. It's me time. The only time when I'm not someone's mother, or wife, or employee, or teacher. I'm just me and I'm alone with my thoughts.
Which isn't to say that there aren't times that I still question the sanity of all this. Like this morning. It was dark when I got up. It was cold and by the time I got home it was raining.
But it's a bit like hitting your head against a brick wall, it's great when it stops.
And let's face it the vision of people swimming at South Bank before the sun had come up was unusually beautiful. You wouldn't be doing that if you didn't love it.

April 26. Day 117. The real story of the Easter Bunny

My younger sister Lisa is, and always has been, an emotional being.
In 1977, she found herself getting very upset and annoyed that our new neighbours John and Clare wouldn't be visited by the Easter Bunny because they didn't have any children.
So she decided to do something about it. She hand made a card and signed it "from the Easter Bunny" and secretly delivered it to their home on Easter Sunday.
The neighbours were thrilled. So the next year, another card was made. And the next year another one.
Cards have been made every year since and Clare has every one of them. There have been collages, paint, pencil and crayon. There have been decorated eggs, cut out bunny footprints up the stairs and hand made baskets.

Lisa hasn't made all the cards. Over the years many family members have had a go and the cards have become more elaborate.
 The cards are a potted history of our family. Cards made by my late Dad, cards made boyfriends and girlfriends long gone are all part of the collection. And now the next generation is involved with our kids now making the cards. And every year, one of the kids will ponder whether John and Clare have worked out it is us not the Easter Bunny making the cards. (I do hope Clare isn't reading this because I would hate to ruin the secret)

Every year the complete card collection comes out. And every year they pored over and there's much debate about who made which card and much hilarity as we look at some of the early examples (especially the first one. Even now, we still think the eggs scattered on the ground behind the bunny look like rabbit poo).

The card collection made its way to my house this week and I was able to check out the latest offering made by my niece Scarlett.

They will be carefully packed up and returned to Clare on the weekend.There they they will wait until Easter 2013 to see if the bunny again decides to visit and wish John and Clare a Happy Easter.

April 23. Day 114. Fog

 

The Boomtown Rats used to sing "Tell me why I don't like Mondays". How is that even a question?

Mondays suck because we have to go back to work. 

It's not that I don't like my job. I do. It's not that I don't do work on weekends. I do, just about every weekend, quite often for many hours.

It just that on weekends the routine goes out the window. Things happen in Susan time not according to the clock.

And weekends take away the big family stress points - getting out the door on time and getting homework done.

Mondays represent the first one five days of those stresses before it lets up.

So the weather this morning was unbelievably Monday, a deep fog over the start of the working week. 

Now the sun has burned off the morning gloom and Brisbane is back to her beautiful self again I realise life is good. The public holiday on Wednesday might just have something to do with that.

April 21. Day 112. Well overdue

I hate video shops. There I've said it and that probably makes me a bad mother.
They drive me crazy and not just because they still call themselves things like Blockbuster Video or VideoEzy when they haven't hired out a video in about a decade. It's all DVDs, BluRay and games, obviously. But I digress.
I hate the process of borrowing movies because it takes so bloody long. Honestly how hard can it be to select a DVD? Very hard it would seem.
But that's only half the story.
The real reason I hate video shops is that we never seem to return our borrowings before the due date.
Over the years I am sure we have accumulated fines equivalent to the gross national product of many small African countries. Perhaps I exaggerate just a bit but I am sure that a lot of the time we would end up well ahead if we bought rather than rented the movies.
Despite this I had my arm twisted and agreed to visit the video shop today. Naturally I was greeted with $15 in fines for late returns.
While the hideously long title selection process happened, I roamed the store and took photos. This one of the posters was my favourite.
Now, if someone would care to remind me next Saturday to return the borrowings from the Weekly section I would be most grateful. Thanks

April 15. Day 106. The Logies

Life is what happens when you're making other plans.
I never planned to be a university lecturer (but a friend of a friend invited me to tutor when I was on maternity leave. Next thing I knew I was full time and the Masters on Children and TV News was being submitted).
I never planned to be the editor of a parenting magazine (but an internal transfer came up and the job was closer to home and more convenient than being a chief of staff).
I never planned to be a radio regular taking about all things family (but one guest spot led to another, led to a 10- year association with the ABC in Brisbane).
And all of these things I didn't plan have led to tonight, an event I would never have dreamed I could plan.
This year I am a Logies expert judge in the children's TV category and that means I was at the awards ceremony tonight.
How good is that? Phoneswere banned. No-one cared.
Here's what I saw.

April 14. Day 105. Bowled over

To say I am not very sporting would be like saying Usain Bolt is quite a good runner. Frankly, if there was a gold medal for slow and uncoordinated I would be on that medal podium. This made choosing a sport at school a challenge but rather generously the school included offerings such as ten pin bowling and ice skating for those who find concepts such as catch and throw just a bit tricky.So I signed up for bowling most terms and despite this I never actually progressed past the level of completely useless. But it was fun. It is still fun and best of all when you have children you are able to request the bumpers thus eliminating the gutter ball. Now that I think if it, bumpers at 10 pin bowling might actually be the very best thing about being a mother (ok, I lie - but only a bit).Anyway, it's family games night and we are at 10 pin bowling. I'm still useless and shoes are still ugly. But really a sport that allows you to eat hot chips and drink beer while you play, what can be better than that?

April 13. Day 104. Best foot forward

The self help manuals would have us believe that pampering yourself is good for you (at least I believe that's what they say because I have never actually helped myself to a self help manual).
Perhaps if I'd read the books and not relied on the Who Weekly condensed version gleaned in the hairdressers or doctors surgery I might be a bit better at remembering to attend to all the bits and pieces we females are meant to attend to.
Anyway, from time to time I do indulge in a pedicure. I find the whole thing quite surreal. It is really a very intimate procedure to have someone fiddle with your feet, scrubbing, massaging and taking what appears to be a cheese grater to your heels.
It tickles and I giggle. Conversation with the technician/beautician/therapist (take your choice, I have no idea) is almost always out of the question as very few speak English. We all get by with a series of smiles and hand gestures. This works just fine.
I love the feeling of having my feet massaged. I love coming out with brightly coloured toes. I promise myself I will do it more often and then I don't. There's probably a book written about why women like myself deny ourselves this little luxury. I will probably never read it.

April 12. Day 103. The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow

It was December 2004. I was in a jet in a holding pattern over London waiting to land. It was bleak, horrible London day raining and obviously cold.
As we circled high above the city I could clearly see the city's famous landmarks through the hideous London drizzle but I was in no mood for sight seeing. On my lap was my then six-year-old son passed out after having suffered a seizure half an hour earlier. Later he was diagnosed as having epilepsy but the first terrifying evidence was on that flight.
It seemed like forever before the flight arrived at the front of the queue at Heathrow and we were allowed to land and were greeted by an ambulance waiting on the ground. Through tears, I was screaming "just land this f***ing thing" to myself.
Bizarrely, one of my clearest memories of that wait was that the whole time a song from the musical Annie was playing in my head:

"The Sun will come out tomorrow so you gotta hang on till tomorrow, come what may. 

Tomorrow, tomorrow I love ya tomorrow. You're always a day away."

I'm pretty sure I'd never even seen Annie on stage at that point but now that song always takes me back to that very, very frightening moment. It was a song of hope that things would get better.
Like Annie, that story does have an happy ending. Eight years later and it appears Mr O may have outgrown his epilepsy and is currently being weaned off medication, touch wood, fingers crossed and all that.
And perhaps because of that I can now see Annie on stage without breaking out in a nervous sweat or feeling like vomiting.
So it is that Mr O and I were in the opening night audience of Annie in Brisbane tonight dressed, as the invitation demanded, in glamorous attire with a splash of red.
Those who don't think you can work with children and animals really should see Annie. It's a delight. And because we live in beautiful Brisbane there is every chance that the sun will, indeed, come out tomorrow. It's just that it's not always easy to believe that.

April 11. Day 102. There's always one

There's always one. One who is braver or stupider than the rest.
Today we have to head home after a lovely Coast break but there was time for just one last walk on the beach. The wind was howling and the whole scene rather reflected my mood at having to go back to the real world. The beach, which for much of the stay has resembled Grand Central Station in the mornings, was almost deserted this morning but was eerily beautiful.
But even before the sun had risen this man decided to go in for a dip. He lasted but a few seconds and this is him retreating.

April 10. Day 101. Building sand castles

There was empire building a plenty on the beach this morning.
Everywhere you looked families were constructing forts, castles and moats. Whole towns and villages were being created by many eager little hands.
And then the tide changed. Some let the approaching enemy of the sea do its business. Some built up a levy bank and tried to hold their position. Some took great glee in getting in first and jumping on their creations.
It was a great spectacle to watch and proof once again that you don't need a screen to have a good time (although it often helps)!
Of course I will be discovering sand in just about every body cavity for some time yet.

April 9. Day 100. She sells sea shells

I have totally failed as a parent. Again.
When I walk along the beach in the morning on holidays I like to collect shells.
On one of the ventures I returned with a mollusk shell which had opened but both sides were attached to each other.
My son, AGED 14, says "hey that looks like the sort of thing some small sea creature might have lived in".
What? On all his time on earth I have never told him what a shell is?  And he's never asked?
Good grief. Anyway, I have no idea what I will do with my shell collection once the holiday ends but for now they make a great addition to the coffee table.

April 7. Day 98. The early bird catches the worm

I was never a morning person. I was the type of person you had to shake to life at 11am but who would still be reading or watching TV into the early hours of the morning. If I was to see a sunrise it was because I hadn't gone to bed yet. Then about 15 years ago I realised that I really had to exercise and if that was to happen it had to be before work. If I had all day to think about it I would come up with a reason I couldn't. So I started setting the alarm. Now I wake up early of my own accord. It would be a lie to say I spring yet of bed but I get up and get at it but deep inside I think the night owl is still there. In any case, I don't agree with those who think the day is wasted if you sleep in. You get the same out if he day just at the other end. However, there are advantages to rising with the sun. It was bloody marvelous at sunrise at Broadbeach this morning.

April 6. Day 97. Confessions of a lapsed Catholic

Hot Cross Buns,

Hot Cross Buns.

One a penny, two a penny

Hot Cross Buns

If you have no daughters give them to your sons

One a penny, two a penny

Hot Cross Buns

I was born and raised Catholic but there's not much left of the Catholic school girl (except the guilt thing obviously).
Still there are some traditions that I hang on to religiously (pun intended).
Good Friday traditions lead the pack. Hot Cross Buns must be consumed on Good Friday and only Good Friday. To eat them before then would be unthinkable. To eat them after Good Friday would be impossible as there won't be any left. And it must be a traditional bun. None of these choc chip things if you don't mind.
And then there's meat (or more specifically no meat).
I still won't eat meat on Good Friday, ever, and quite honestly I can't explain why. I just don't, okay?
And in case you are wondering, those eggs are for display purposes only. It would be wrong, quite wrong, to eat Easter Eggs before Easter Sunday.

April 4. Day 95. Can you see what I see?

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.
Dear Weather Gods,
I am on the Gold Coast for a week and if you would keep the weather just like this I would be most grateful.
Regards,
Susan
Simon is from England and he lives right on the beach at Bognor Regis in West Sussex so this should make him feel right at home. Who am I kidding? Broadbeach and Bognor are both coastal towns that start with B but that's about where the similarity ends.
We thought it was about time Grandpa Simon got to see a proper Australian beach. Mr O was happy to show his Grandpa around.
Simon was impressed not least because the beachfront wasn't swarming with pensioners (his words not mine)

April 3. Day 94. Wallowing in the shallows

 

This will be me tomorrow - a  large mammal lapping up the sensational weather we are having at the moment. 

We are heading to the Gold Coast for an Easter break and the prospect of imitating a beached whale (yes I know this is a dugong) splashing around in the shallows seems very appealing indeed.

This photo was taken at Brisbane's beach at South Bank early this morning. I loved the light and the reflections but mostly I liked the feeling that there are other bloated-looking creatures not prepared to let a bit of blubber get in their way of having a good time at the beach.

April 1. Day 92. I'm an April Fool

 

Kermit said "It's not easy being green" well let me tell you something Froggy being born on April Fools Day has its challenges too. Yes, I'm an April Fool. Actually, I believe my mother was the fool because she was the one giving birth but anyway. And for the record I was born in the morning before the fooling deadline of noon. If only Mum had crossed her legs for another 30 minutes....

So I'm a Fool and that meant being the brunt of many a school yard joke. Naturally those nearest and dearest didn't let me off either. They'd tell me my presents were in the lounge and I'd run off excitedly only to hear "Fooled You". The presents were in the kitchen. I'll be sending them the counselling bill.

As I've grown older I've learned to embrace it. The fact is that one of the big advantages of being born on April 1 is that people remember your birthday. Every cloud does have a silver lining.

This year I was fooled again. The boys apologised that there was no present because of the bad Man Flu that had struck the house. I believed this as I had not left out any strategically marked catalogues or bought the gift and had it wrapped for them to give to me. But no. They laughed at me. They called me a Fool and presented me with a beautifully wrapped box with a silver bracelet and ear rings.

It's not so bad being a Fool

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE

It's my birthday and I'll post more than once if I want to. With my train spotting father-in-law in town we decided the Steam Train Sunday ride that travels out of Roma Street might be a nice family outing - and it was.
Now I admit that taking a train ride would not normally be my idea of a top thing to do on my birthday but we did have a very enjoyable hour steaming around the city.
But there was a complaint. About a decade ago we did the same train ride and the young man was fascinated by the hole in the ground toilet which dumped straight on to the tracks. The sign advising not to use the loo at while the train was at a station was most exciting. This time all the carriages had flushing toilets.
Yes, it's not every day a person complains about having to endure flushing toilets but I did rather like the journey back in time

March 31, Day 91. Decked out

When I grew up in Brisbane there was no such thing as a deck - verandas yes but decks no. But now the deck is often the best room in the house.
At our place, opening up the bi-fold doors and sitting on the deck overlooking the pool and the trees is about as good as life gets.
This morning we got to show off the house to my father-in-law Simon for the first time and naturally the first thing we did was go outside the house to the deck.
It's dead impressive when you've just come from an English winter.
What I love about this pic is the three generations of men just sitting and chewing the fat over a cuppa

March 20. Day 80. There's no place like home

Have you ever wondered what the job description of a mother would look like? Carer, cook, cleaner, counsellor, nurse, mediator, teacher and so it goes. You wear as many hats as there are hours (sometimes minutes) in a day.
Today my duty statement fell loosely into the category of costume creator. My brief: "I have to present a monologue given by Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. In costume."
I am not sure what surprised me more: that they present Shakespearean monologues in Year 9 or that I was told about this on Tuesday when the piece of assessment isn't until Thursday. I am sure many a parent will relate when I say such pieces of information are generally delivered the second the shops close on the night before the due date - if you are lucky.
I am a mother of many talents (she says with her tongue very firmly in her cheek) but my skill set does not include sewing (she says absolutely truthfully).
So off to the costume shop I go. Sometimes throwing money at the problem is the only way to preserve your sanity. Anyway, while I was there I was taken by row after row of ruby slippers. Apparently there are plenty of Wizard of Oz fans out there (or Wicked if you prefer and I do prefer). Hard to resist a pair of ruby slippers.
Now close your eyes and tap your heels together three times and think to yourself, "there's no place like home" - even if home is where the homework is.