Showing You.

Hey - thank you. For coming here, reading along and wishing me well. I suck so hard at replying back and emailing and tweeting you and showing my thanks. Blogging is an incredibly odd thing ... especially in this "personal memoir" genre that I seem to find myself in. Strange. Sometimes, I get the feeling that people come and think, oh man - what's that crazy bitch gone and done now? I sense PR's and media people come here and think - this? This is what we have to work with?

Why yes, yes it is. I'm not a brand, or a conglomerate, or even a business. I'm just a dickhead.

Truth is, emails like the one I got last week make me understand why I do this. A beautiful woman sent me the most GORGEOUS email about what my cowboy boots mean to her and her mum. It was just so nice, and blew me away.

Computer, you blow me away.

What even is blogging? When you get all self-conscious about it, it just feels SO DUMB. Which is why I pretend that only ten people are reading. Ten close friends, who only wish the best for me. I think, the biggest reason I blog is for a kind of show and tell. Like, being at the beach and turning over stones and bits of debris and beautiful shells ... and running here to show you all. And then, in your posts and your words and love, you show me stuff back.

Thanks for having some kind of strange faith in me. Thanks for giving a shit. Thanks for your encouraging words and kindness. It all goes straight to my heart, like a kind of reward. I appreciate it much much more than you'll ever know. Definitely more than I'll ever know.

::

Today we went to the beach for the first time in a long time. I bought helmets and we rustled up enough bikes. The kids groaned when I made them wear them ... then Dave turns to me and says, "Oh no hon, I'm not going to wear one." Oh yes he was. And he did. And after Rocco shouted the whole place down, he realised he loved his new bike seat after all.

Hon! We are just a normal helmet family right now in this moment!

I even packed a paw paw and lime and a knife and spoons and we took turns eating the flesh. I told Dave the very first time I tried it was when he made it for me on our honeymoon, in our hotel room after days of eating crap. He smiled a smile that I know means he's pleased that I remembered. I looked into his beautifully aging eyes and told him he was a good Spirit, sent straight to me.

                 The only thing I have stabbed during PMS week.

I cuddled Dave and watched them all play beach cricket and I had the biggest lump in my throat. Just from being alive, in the moment.

That's all. That's enough.

::

And I plucked this season's first shell from the sand .. like the beach version of the first blossom of spring.

And I knew I had to show you.

I am going to have a good time if it kills me. Period.

We are at a beach house, which is ours. It sounds very exotic - however the previous occupant was a hydroponics expert who left behind a tangle of electrical leads, his security camera, holes in the wall ... and the smell of a thousand cones. It. Stinks. There's cockroaches, greasy carpet, and one very fragile toilet. But it is ours, courtesy of my very savvy builder husband. He is going to do amazing things and renovate and make it dreamy. He turns to me and tells me *exactly* what he is going to do. Then sees my face and asks me, oh - what do you think hon? We both know it does not matter what I think. (Kind of incredibly irritating, but a lucky thing to be irritated about.)

In the meantime, we've told the kids we are "camping!"

They love it. The backyard backs onto bushland, and there's a massive ropeswing. We all have bikes, and will be riding to the beach every morning as soon as the torrential rain stops.

Unfortunately, I have the worst PMS of all time. It's so hard, not to stab everybody. I know I'm being bitchy and horrible and dark for no goddamn good reason. So I keep it all contained inside. Like, awesome spotfires.

No amount of Evening Primrose Oil takes away the fact my husband talks too .... talky.

I made everybody watch Little House on the Prairie yesterday ... grand plans of watching the entire show on series were dashed when there was laughing and awkward silence during the first episode. When the credits rolled, I said there was a next one and Max turned to me in shock. "There's MORE?"

So we watched the 2010 DVD of the Tropfest finalists instead, and it was great. I have The Sound of Music ready to put on tonight - if I have to squish down my irrational anger and bile at every turn, these kids can watch Julie Andrews making clothes from curtains GODDAMIT IT TO HELL.

Helen from next door came over this morning with six eggs from her chickens. She has been living here for thirty-five years. She is a retired doctor and very lovely, but I SUCK at smalltalk. It's exruciating. I can't remember what I said - something about knocking a wall down. I *really* wanted to ask her what's the worst things she's ever done and how does she get through life when it's so tricky. Maybe next time.

Max said, wow, that's so cool she brought us eggs. We'll have to bring her something. I wonder what the protocol is? Do we just keep giving each other shit forever? Rocco carefully put the eggs in the fridge. When I opened it later, they were gone. I asked him where they were, and he told me they were in the trees because they were dinosaur eggs and they need to hatch baby T-Rexs.

I looked everywhere but can't find them.

I hope Helen doesn't find the egg stash just yet. Need to keep the pretence of normalcy going for as long as I possibly can.

New Eyes

The most painful thing in the last couple of weeks has been reconnecting with my children ... when I didn't even realise I had been so far away from them.

I was so far away from them.

At first, Rocco was confused with my outpouring of love and attention and energy. His behaviour had gotten out of control and it was up to me to fix it. I stroked his hair and looked him in the eyes. Read him books ... cleaned up his bedroom and re-arranged it and made his bed "so nice mum!"

During one big, long, uninterrupted cuddle at nightime he looked up at me in the darkness and simply said, "Best friends." I cried hard, later. Because we are not best friends, we are mother and son and I have been distracted and struggling for his entire life.

                                          "It's bwoken."

The way I can describe it is, the more Dave went along in remission from his cancer, the less well I got. I started blogging to document building my family ... I built it, and then I crumbled. Oh, Life ... darn you and your cheeky surprises!

Every single time I ever hear a baby cry I twitch and want to run over to the baby and say STOP CRYING BABY. Maybe one day, a baby crying won't make me feel like this. That day is not today. But in the meantime, I can be the mother I really want to be ... instead of a distracted, anxious woman just going through the motions and doing the bare minimum for her children.

(I'm still never having a craft box and nobody can make me.)

Max kept asking me am I ok? I said of course I am mate. I promise. He developed conjunctivitis and walked around with the reddest eyes in the world. He woke up every morning and came straight to me, sensing something that he couldn't name. I couldn't name it either, I just reassured him that I was ok. He is nine - for the first six years of his life I was an awesome mother. I want to get back to that.

I am getting back to that.

Yesterday I took him and his friend Zac down to Sydney for the opening of the revamped Sydney Tower Eye. If Centrepoint can revamp itself? So can I.

We watched Australia's first ever 4D movie, complete with a fine water mist spray during the ocean scenes. The views were spectacular. Especially this one:

                                                        Melt.

                        I just spent my time looking at him looking.

The boys ran off .. I finally found them in the gift shop. Thrusting furry bottle openers in their hands, I told them they were holding actual kangaroo scrotums. The shopkeeper laughed. The boys spied a klassy stubbie and moaned, "Ohhhh yuck that's disgusting!"

               And kept looking at it to make sure it was still disgusting.

I marvelled at the energy of two young boys, cruising the big smoke. They had a ball ... at one point, climbing up onto this thing and I thought, wow, how great to have a climbing wall right in the middle of Sydney. Until I stepped back.

                             It wasn't a climbing wall. It was Prada.

They ran and hopped and jumped down the street. Annoying the hell out of all the city slickers: hell with you, city slickers. You have no idea what it's taken to get to this point.

We drove home and picked Rocco up. I said yes to lollies, movies, a school-night sleepover, and ice cream.

It was only annoying a few times.

I'm getting better.

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Politics is boring.

Sometimes I'm smart. Sometimes I'm dumb. Somehow, I've always remained a person who asks questions when I don't know something.

Do you believe in climate change? It's like asking if you believe in Santa Claus. I'm usually way too busy lost in my head to bother with political stuff but I think this one is a no-brainer. Yes I believe in climate change .. I think it has something to do with industrialism? How we have completely stuffed the planet up but let's let our great-grandchildren worry about it? Linda and Leigh are you asleep yet? Heh.

Anyway, I designed a poster. Hopefully it gets chosen to be put on the Parliament House lawn this Saturday.

                               Make your own poster HERE

I took a side. (Did you? What is it? Am I wrong? ) Down here in Australia there's huge debate about whether we should have a carbon tax. This site explains it better than I can ... I'm too worried about saying it the wrong way and looking stupid.

For many years I used to think, "Earth is doomed! I may as well drink myself stupid and not care!"

I changed my mind.

Politics may be boring, but a clean, green, and sustainable planet? That's not boring. And I don't think it's too late.

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Boatlift.

Beautifully shot ten-minute doco, narrated by Tom Hanks.

I had absolutely no idea this happened. Love how they are all heroes ... and they know it. And they know that anybody in their shoes that day would have done the same thing. It's called "shared humanity."

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The one where I cut off all my hair.

Sometimes in life, you just know you have to do something. For the first time ever, I felt so inexplicably different on the inside that I wanted my outside to match ....  it was time to cut my hair.

I love having long hair, and have had my current style for most of my adult life. I sat at my computer the other night and uploaded a picture into this, and saw what I'd look like as Jennifer Aniston, Paris Hilton, and Beyonce. (All ridiculous on me.) Then I tried Anna Wintour, and knew I was getting closer to what I needed.

Yeah. It is no longer. It is GONE.

Yesterday, my friend Mary and I drove down to the big shopping centre at the bottom of the mountain. Talking and laughing all the way, not once was there a quiet moment. She went off to get pedicured while I went in and showed my hairdresser this for inspiration:

                                                 Ketchup.


After chatting with my hairdresser for a while, she said, "So, I've been reading your blog."

                                                Hi Emma!


Hair holds energy. I needed to say goodbye to a lot of crap I've been carrying around for years.

                                                Goodbye, crap.


Emma cut and styled my hair. Mary walked in and almost cried. Mary had her own hair cut too - she gets a number two buzz cut. One day, I will do that. One day.

In the meantime, there's this.

It's much shorter than I thought I wanted. I love, love, love it. Naturally, Dave has taken full responsibility: "I've been wanting you to get a style like this for years hon!"

             He dresses himself, at the age of three. THREE. Am screwed.

                                                     Yes.

So just like that, I am a short-haired person. I still feel as feminine as I did before ... I definitely feel sexier. Much more powerful.

Who knew that having long hair isn't the be-all and end-all of being a woman!

Have you ever had a haircut to symbolise something? (Like, one of the biggest breakdowns of your adult life or something? *cough*)

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I am not a Wine Loving Mum.

I did kind of a twitter faux pas. One late night, I noticed @WineLovingMums had followed me on twitter. Their bio reads "A community for mums who love wine, food, family .. and fun!"

It annoyed the hell out of me. I like food, family and fun ... but alas, I do not drink wine. Anymore. I have had my share - it is done. Why would @WineLovingMums follow a recovering alcoholic? This will not do.

You know how, parenting is 'tricky.' So, there's often jokes about "Is it wine-o-clock yet?"  Heh heh - those funny mummybloggers!

I don't use wine to take any parenting edges off. I would use crack cocaine, but it doesn't really sound the same does it? "Hey guys - what a hard day. Hey is it cocaine-o-clock yet? *snigger*"

Or smack-o-clock. What about @cracklovingmums ... there is no account for them on twitter. Oversight?

Look what I just found:

@AmylSnortinMums
@PetrolSniffinMums
@HashCookieMums

All of these accounts are available on twitter. I don't understand!

So, as it was very late at night when I noticed Wine Loving Mums following me, I did what comes naturally. I knocked them mercilessly on twitter without checking to see if they were actual real people instead of just some faceless company.

Turns out, Wine Loving Mums are real people. And they seemed really nice, and I publicly shamed them with tweets about pooping my pants from alcohol. I felt that kind of uneasy feeling running up my spine. It's what Sister Louise would have called, "conscience."

GREAT.

Cecily wrote a great post on Mom Crunch the other day about the etiquette of twitter. She calls it, "How to use twitter without being a douchebag" ... I love her description of it as being a non-stop cocktail party. It is - and it appears that I had behaved like a tool to some guests. So, as I publicly shamed them, I publicly apologised to them to. Something about how sorry I am, for being such a tool.

They ignored me, and tweeted to other people gaily. So I hated them again and stewed on it - THEN they publicly accepted my public twitter apology. Phew! Social media is hard.

If you follow Wine Loving Mums, tell them Edenland sent you. I won't begrudge them their wine, if they don't begrudge me ridiculously inappropriate tweets at midnight.

No hard feelings, WLM, okay?

(But I'm still not following you.)

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Now I'm just being ironic.

Last night I wrote and published a post called "My cruisy awesome week in Instagram pictures!" And then unpublished it after an hour. It did not contain any actual Instagram pictures, I was being ironic.

It was not a particularly bad or telling post ... no more then any other bad or telling post I've written here.

Did you hear the story of this chick who started a blog that got so big it almost ate her? It's a doozy.

When you read a blog, you are reading a filtered view of the world. The honesty and truth shown, the stories, the ache ... it's all relative and subjective. I could say the same thing in twenty different ways, each with a different slant and spin.

I am the protagonist of this blog. It is my life and my story that I choose to tell here. Why I do this, I am not exactly sure.

So here, while I work a few things out ... and to be doubly-ironic ... here really *is* my week in photos.

A wall in Glebe. Something that used to be there, but not any more. It looks vaguely familiar.

A scariest fucked up koala competition in some factory in China. Lerner, I'm posting it to you.

I'll never leave my mascara in the back seat again.

I have conquered these jonquils!

God is real. Just sayin'.

My burger from the Stuffed Beaver in Bondi was also real. Until I ate it.

Packin'.

My great-grandmother feeding me milk from a glass bottle in 1972. The sheen in my hair reminded me that there was once a day when I hadn't done anything wrong yet.

Cheers, Big Ears.

I call this photo "Human." Mochamomma loved it straight away and will be using it for her series on race.
So. There we go ... a nice, light post. Too easy!

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Unbreakable.

I wasn't going to post about this. There's already so many words out there. Until Max walked past the TV today and stopped in his tracks when he saw footage of the towers coming down.

"Whoa."

I was surprised that he knew it was real, straight away. I remember seeing the footage for the very first time live on TV, wondering why on earth had they put Die Hard on the Morning Show? Max was in my belly back then. I patted him all day, frozen to the couch.

In a few months he will be ten years old. His whole lifetime has been spent in a towerless world. He asked me today, but where did all the people actually go?

I explained the best I could. The reporter on TV started talking about body parts and I winced but I didn't change the channel. A ten-year-old American boy read a letter out to a father he never met. "Dear Dad ..... we just missed each other. Mum is doing a really great job raising me."

Max turned to me and said, wouldn't it be good if all the people that day were just unbreakable?

::

The focus should always be on recovery. You just have to keep your head together as best you can. Keep hope and faith in your heart when the whole world turns to shit in just one day.

An empty book.

This morning started like many other mornings in this house ... using shameless bribery to get children into the car. I promised Rocco a pink cupcakie! if he got into the car, come on sweetheart let's go find one!
After dropping off various other children, I took Rocco to the bakery for his promised pink cupcakie! and he chose this one:

                   To the Little Britain fans out there - "I want that one."

I laughed and quickly stopped when I realised he was serious and was about to have a meltdown in the bakery. I can out-meltdown any meltdown son, surely you must know this by now? The German lady asked "Can I help you?"  I was SO STONY FACED to her and said oh pardon me. I knelt down to Rocco and hissed. "Mate, if you want a pink cupcakie! you can have a pink cupcakie! Not a big cake like that that is RIDICULOUS. If you start a tantrum in here right now you will get noooothhhhiiinngggg."

Out of defiance, he chose a BWOWN CUPCAKIE and was not very happy about it at all.

                                           Meh. I've seen bigger.

Then we had to take a medicare receipt to get a $24 rebate, which is located in our local Social Security payment office. There was a box of toys there which Rocco ended up playing with for TWENTY MINUTES. I had to concentrate really hard to not picture the germs swirling over those toys. My business was done in five, so I resigned myself to watching Rocco play underneath the big TV that was showing Obama talking.

                               These are the best toys mum! GAG.

Obama referenced Abraham Lincoln - I like that. I know hardly anything about American politics, but I believe Obama to be a good man doing probably the hardest job in the world.

A guy plonked himself down next to me - and no shit, took his trousers off. And changed into a different pair. Unbelievable. He looked in disgust at the TV - I was avoiding eye contact at all cost at this point. And then he says, "America's just FUCKED."

I knew he expected a response from me - probably in agreement. I just said, "Well, I don't know much about it but I just hope that most people are doing the best they can. And I love how Obama talks with such passion."

"Nuh. America's FUCKED."

America, this guy thinks you're FUCKED:

                                          

I told Rocco we were leaving right NOW - to better toys I promise! And took him to the Salvation Army. The cheaper and nastier toys the BETTER, as far as he is concerned. Heaven. He had his heart set on a skateboard dude, for the princely sum of $1.50.

                                              Best. Toy. Ever.

I bought a bunch of things that I obviously really needed, including a lonely orange seventies serving fork, a plastic platter with all twelve astrological signs, and a Sleeping Beauty book. I pay the guy $10.50 for fourteen items. And then for some unknown reason, I draw everybody's attention to one of my purchases.

"Ok, you know what I love? This Sleeping Beauty book." And I opened it up to show them:

Nothing. Empty - no pages. The guy felt so bad and tried to give me back my fifty cents - I'm all, mate! No way - I'm going to write my OWN Sleeping Beauty story in there! A lady asked, what kind?

And I replied, a dark and twisted kind! She and I both looked at each other thinking, wow. That's really strange.

And you know what the guy behind the counter said?

"Well, I'd like to read that. You should put it up on a computer or something."

I loved him in that moment. He knew EXACTLY why I bought it.

Pretty Ugly.

So this is how ugly I was this morning:

                Oh my god it's just so shocking - I still feel 25, yannow?

And don't say I wasn't ugly, because I WAS. Besides the transparent fricken red eyelashes and unkempt eyebrow hair ... was an ugly ball of yuck sitting in the pit of my heart. Everything sucked. Everything was ugly, in the whole world. Most of all ME.

So, as I was lugging four heavy stupid bags of stupid groceries to the car to put the stupid dinner on and do the stupid clothes washing, I passed a beautician to see if she could fit me in.

I really, really wished I had done this before I went to Thailand last week, because yesterday, I plucked THREE LONG HAIRS FROM A MOLE ON MY FACE. The only way they could have been more obvious was if I had plaited them, and tied the end with a quaint, teeny ribbon.

The beautician fitted me straight in then and there, with all my stupid shopping bags. I quickly took the photo above, because I wanted to compare and contrast when I had finished. She was in the room as I took it - "Just taking a pic of how ugly I am!" She laughed in that bemused way that strangers often laugh at me. I'm used to it.

So she dyed my eyelashes and waxed my eyebrows. And just like that, I felt like a million bucks. So much better!

I waltzed those bags to my car, and saw a shop with a sale on. Thought I would buy, just, a teeny trinket for ten bucks or something.

Oh no no. Know what I found? A DRESS. Usually I'm too lazy to try things on and just guess but I thought I'd better try this on. It fit perfectly. I would not have tried this dress on if I didn't get my eyelashes dyed which in turn gave me my strut back.

I asked the lady to please take a photo of me in it and she did. Told her my friend Nikki is determined to get me in a dress - I am a jeans and tee girl. That's it. If it aint broke, why fix it?

THIS is why:

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                         It likes me! It really, really likes me!

It's over a hundred bucks so I had to lay-by it. But that baby is mine - well, it will be in a month. And I only went into that shop because my eyes felt so pretty:

                                                     After Ugly.

I'm laughing because out of all the rooms in my whole house, I could only get a decent shot of myself in the dunny. The torlet. The can. The shitter.

Not sure what that symbolises. Probably something very fitting.

IN CONCLUSION: Be kind to yourself. Your Ugly will thank you ... and you may just find a KILLER dress. Now, I wear it with cowboy boots, right?

Cry without weeping .. talk without speaking.

.. scream without raising your voice.

Not so great, today. How do you get through the hard ones - the days where there are no fresh horses to be found so your horse just gallops along so thirsty and just REALLY pissed at being so thirsty?

Everything all comes crashing down in my head, sometimes. Everything. Mrs Woog looked at me one day and said, "I can't believe you're not more fucked up than you are!" And I thought to myself - I am, oh I SO am more fucked up than what I lead people to believe.

So there you go. Will this post wreck my brand? HA.

This is what saved me today, in a roundabout way. And if what Bono is doing disturbs you? You are lucky for not knowing darker shit. Just think of it as performance art. I think of it as "memories."



And so she woke up
Woke up from where she was
Lying still
Said I gotta do something
About where we're going

Step on a steam train
Step out of the driving rain, maybe
Run from the darkness in the night
Singing ha, ah la la la de day
Ah la la la de day
Ah la la de day

Sweet the sin
Bitter taste in my mouth
I see seven towers
But I only see one way out

You got to cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice

You know I took the poison
From the poison stream
Then I floated out of here
Singing...ha la la la de day
Ha la la la de day
Ha la la de day

She runs through the streets
With her eyes painted red
Under black belly of cloud in the rain
In through a doorway she brings me
White gold and pearls stolen from the sea
She is raging
She is raging
And the storm blows up in her eyes
She will...

Suffer the needle chill
She's running to stand...

Still.

I stuck these letters in my old office about five years ago. Still not sure why.

Mr BabyMacBeth vs Mr Edenland

Back in June, we thought Dave's cancer was back but it wasn't, hooray, let's live another day and celebrate and then forget and then bitch and moan and take everything for granted again very quickly, ok?

So. During the week of Dave's dreadful stomach pains - like BAD PAINS, I told my friend Beth. Beth the BabyMac. One of the most coolest, sweetest chicks online. Actually, she guessed because she is very savvy and smart and I just told her the truth of,  HE'S GOING TO DIIIIEEEEEEE. I never over-react!

Beth supported me that week with texts and random tweets and funny ditties. She was worried and lovely and caring, and we compared stoking our fires.

One cold night, for some reason - I promised Dave sex in exchange for him making some origami for Max. He sat at this teeny table, cheesy grin, sore tummy, but ripe with expectation. I took a photo and put it up on Instagram:

                                        Oh, that expectant smile!

Beth saw said picture that night, and showed her husband Rob. Rob was *not* promised sex that night, and responded via Instagram with this:

                                          Wob haz a sad.

I showed Dave, who thought it was HILARIOUS. He responds - via my Instagram to Beths Instagram to Rob - with this:

                                        Cheeky bloody bugger!

Game on for Rob. Bear in mind, these guys have never met. They were just having a metaphorical pissing contest on their wives blogs. In the meantime, Beth and I are were frantically tweeting, hoping that maybe after all this crap they'll be too tired for sex anyway? Other people on twitter and Instagram could see it unfolding, and it was bloody hysterical.

So Rob does this pathetic paper airplane and a note to Dave:

Robs note reads: "Well, if you're going to think of me you should know .. for starters, I'm hung like a donkey and have the staying power of Phar Lap."

Ok, so here's where I mention that my husband Dave can be quite .... competitive. He turns to me - WINCING IN PAIN from possible cancer tumours, asking me where is that intricate green paper Japanese origami card we gave Max three years ago? I said I did not know. Dave spent twenty goddamn minutes looking for that infernal origami foldout piece.

You know when you just KNOW you won't be able to find something? Well, I knew. But Dave kept looking, man. I got bored and went to watch TV.

Dave was dejected. And possibly facing more chemo, or death, or some shit. I had a brainwave. "Look, hon, use Max's Lego Guggenheim Museum from New York and spread out on the bed like you're about to get lucky."

So he did.

I believe Dave's last words to Rob were "Maaaate. Game, set, and match."

::

It was all funny and frivolous and stupid. Much how blogging can be, sometimes. But you know what? For about half an hour, Dave stopped thinking about how scared he was about his cancer coming back and just had FUN. And that was from Beth and her great sport hubby Rob. (Sidenote - we still do not know what caused Dave's intense pain that week. I don't care - it wasn't cancer? All I need to know. Good luck with your ulcer or hernia or appendix hon. Stop terrifying me.)

Beth got quite a few nasty comments on her blog this week, which I believe were uncalled for. She even did a vlog addressing her hater. Which I think is GOLD. Everybody's blog is different - man, I can't even DESCRIBE my blog. Beth writes with humour and passion and she loves beautiful things and arranging her house. Her family made a HUGE move from Sydney to the bloody country recently. Takes balls to do that. Takes balls to write honestly on the internet. She takes cool photos and she dares to write that she hates the park and she once tweeted that "Honestly, the only place for egg sandwiches is at a wake."

Beth, if I die before you, can you PLEASE bring egg sangers to my wake? With old school parsley sprinkled on top, not continental? I'd be honoured.

I don't think we should compare blogs. Especially if you've never read one before and you land on one and some white housewife is talking about her new BIN? OUTRAGEOUS!

Because, for all you know, that white housewife may have been up all night tending to her children. Sitting at the end of their beds while they go to sleep. Or had a fight with her best mate. Or had a dodgy pap smear. Or just struggled with life - because life is so hard and people are starving in the world and the planet could be doomed! THAT'S why we're all so bloody crazy!

A white housewife dares to make a warm and inviting space for her family and friends. That white housewife may have had a complete sobbing breakdown crouched down on her haunches in the middle of her kitchen and caught her reflection in the bin and thought, wow, I love this bin.

And blogged, simply, that she loved her bin.

There's always more to life than what we portray to the world. If you're nasty to somebody else, you're probably the nastiest to yourself. And that's pretty sad.

- Funniest sidenote in all the land: That night, laying in bed, Dave was still laughing at the pics going back and forth to Rob. And Dave asked me, "Hon, did ya text him the last one?" And in that moment I realised that he thought we'd been just texting the whole time, not - you know, uploading potentially embarrassing photos to the internet. I laughed so hard the bed shook, and Dave thought I was laughing from the "texts." I am evil.

Get rich or die Thai'in.

Every time I say I went to Thailand, Rocco screams out NO MUM YOU WENT TO IRELAND!!!!

It was completely indulgent and unbelievable. Guilt-ridden, amazing. I did not and will not ever ride an elephant, though. I mean, if I could ask him say dude, can I have a ride? And he'd say, sure jump on! I'm all for it. Until then, I'll admire from afar.

It was a jam-packed four days. So jam packed that I fell asleep on the couch yesterday while Dave cooked his own fathers day lunch and entertained our guests. He will be getting a LOT of mileage from that.

I'd never tried dragonfruit before - so bloody beautiful. Everything was - the tastes, the smells, the sounds. It was officially called the "Ambi Pur destinations inspired scents" trip. I was so stoked to be invited - kept wanting to ask the big wigs on the sly, "Why was I invited??" But I chickened out. I'm not allowed to say who else went until  the official launch in October. There is an utterly amazing facebook thing coming up soon, really wish I could enter! The other blogger there was Kelly from Be a Fun Mum. She is so annoyingly beautiful.

One of the days we all had to go on a four-hour cooking session. I SO did not want to go. I like cooking a lot, but when you have to do it day in, day out - relentlessly, for five hungry people? BORING. I tried thinking of lies to just leave. They weren't the boss of me. But, I thought I should stay. This is a self-portrait, capturing my annoyance and doubt at having to be there:

Oh, until all of our ingredients came out and we smashed things and broke them up and smelt crazy shiz and laughed and ate and sliced with really sharp knives - all barefoot! I love Ireland!

                   The American manicure I cannot say goodbye to!

WE ALL POUNDED THE HELL OUT OF EVERYTHING. And made four dishes, walking (barefoot) into the kitchen to our hot woks to cook it all up, quickly, with hot oil splattering. The sudden smell and smoke made us all cough and wheeze .. lucky the instructors had special surgical masks on!

Naturally, there are no photos of the finished products, I ate them all way quickly. At one point, I said to the room full of journos "Can't talk. Eating." (I believe I was the only one who got my Homer Simpson reference.)

I always wanted to be a journalist when I grew up. One day when I grow up, I just might. Or at least hang with them more. They're funny.

I love this pic - all those dreadful power leads, and the deity's just tryin' to be all holy.

This was the last few minutes there - I know, my skin looks AMARZING!



::

Lastly, of course I get back to a stinky toilet. It's the law. Went to the shops, and bought my usual smelly thing - it's bloody Ambi Pur! Have been buying it all these years and not knowing it. But look at that dunny - IT'S LAUGHING AT ME.

Like a scene from The Ring - half expected a weirdo Japanese girl with wet matted hair to climb out and try to kill me!

I am incredibly grateful. Dave is incredibly annoyed - he'll be all right. I'll make him a four course Thai/Irish dinner for placation purposes. Can't wait to tell you about this one guy I met. Don't forget the Ambi Pur ANZ Facebook page. I PROMISE it will have awesome stuff on there soon.

DISCLOSURE: I'm a lucky tool who fell into all this accidentally. Am now riding it like a pony.