Uncool: I realised I have forgotten my 7 times table.

Cool: I have a calculator on my laptop and one on my phone. Plus ten fingers to count on if I really get stuck.

Uncool: At a meetup of moms in the park, Mom1 started yelling at the Mom2, in front of all the other moms and our children, for a decision she had made, one which didn’t actually affect her at all, using words like “you can’t do that!” and “that’s disgusting!”. (For the record, disgusting didn’t actually have anything to do with the issue).

Uncool: Although I thought Mom1’s behavior was atrocious and her stance ridiculous,  and I totally sided with Mom2, I didn’t speak up in public. I didn’t do this because I had just been through a 10 minute grilling by Mom2 which involved phrases like “if he doesn’t go back to school now he will fall so far behind he will never be able to go back” and “he should be getting specialist help”. I was feeling rather bitter and unhelpful.

Uncool: Mom3 managed to add her voice wherever it would be the most unconstructive. As in helping criticize Mom 2 and me.

Cool: All this made me take stock of my situation and have some constructive talks with The Daddy, and I emerged from the process realizing that I am totally satisfied with the decisions we have made and the way we live our life, and am in fact the happiest and most fulfilled I have ever been. So there is absolutely no reason to look outside the family for any guidance.

Cool: It might be fun to find myself some new friends.

Cool: On Friday afternoon The Daddy came home early and I managed to get to the hairdressers.

Uncool: I think she gave me a Rachel.

Cool: At least I don’t have so much hair now. And it will eventually grow out.

Cool: I went to a friend’s art exhibition on Friday and saw lots of awesome new canvases.

Uncool: I met a friend of a friend who is no longer a friend because she is so apparently so appalled by homeschooling. She was desperate to get away and used the excuse “I just have to …um… see the paintings in the other room”.

Cool: I then found lots of very interesting people to talk to while she seemed to be drifting around the room alone. (Insert very immature raspberry here and maybe a casual flip of the bird, or as we Antipodeans would do, The Fingers.)

Uncool: On Sunday the T-Bot’s Sunday sport was cancelled and nobody bothered to tell us.  We were the only ones to turn up with 60lbs of gear to find the field empty.

Cool: So we went as a family to the park instead. We took the bikes and the T-Bot finally mastered the art of 2 wheeled cycling (I know, I know, it has taken a while. We are not big on cycling). He was so determined to do it and so proud of himself afterward.

Cool: Then we went for a walk and found frogspawn. The children were captivated by our stories of raising tadpoles when we were little.

Uncool: The frogspawn disappeared and we realized it was probably just bubbles of pollution.

Cool: We went to get ice cream and sat in the sun and everybody was happy.

Here is a little word to the wise:

Let’s just say you move into a new (to you) house and you love it except that the paint colors are all wrong (and half the major appliances old and about to stop working but let’s skip that part for now).

Now let’s imagine that you can’t wait to start repainting so you indulge in a little DIY. If you do this, DO NOT, whatever you do, decide to paint the dining room a bright, cheery yellow. Especially don’t do this if the dining room is open to every other room in the house.

Because if you do, when the time comes to repaint the rest of your open plan house, you will find that you have to match EVERY OTHER PAINT COLOR downstairs to BRIGHT YELLOW.

I promise, you will. And puh-please do not try and tell me that yellow matches everything, because it doesn’t. At least, it might do if you have a modern house, where anything you slap up on the walls will look highly funky and probably end up (sob sob) in the pages of Dwell. But those of us with mock-georgian piles complete with crown moldings and details everywhere have to pay a little more attention, especially if we chose the house partially for those details in the first place.

Next, when your husband, who you love very much, tells you he wants ALL BRIGHT COLORS, do not spend two precious days trying to oblige him. You will - I repeat - WILL find yourself rocking and babbling over the fan deck while holding great fistfuls of your own hair.

(Just believe me when I say that our chosen bright colors put next to each other make the whole house look like a nursery. Which, in effect, it is, but let us pretend a little, OK?)

Another thing: do NOT, under any circumstances, hold a last minute group consultation with your friends who all live in beautifully curated houses that look like they stole them out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Unless, of course, you are willing to paint over your bright yellow, forgo your bright green, and settle for living in a Pottery Barn Catalog.

A look, which, by the way, I LOVE. It’s just not us.

Another NOT GOOD IDEA: In a fit of pique caused by said friends agreeing that there is no solution but to paint your double-height entrance way CREAM (the color of a decades worth of rental houses - a color you swore you would never grace your walls again), you should not waste an afternoon trying to find exactly the right shade of GRAY. Because at this point your significant other will arrive home, shrug and say “you mean all gray like the inside of a dungeon?”. And you will suddenly realize that he is right.

Oh, and another word to the wise : do all this color research BEFORE you call in the painters and agree on a starting date IN FOUR DAYS TIME.

I am sure nobody noticed that I was away. But that is where I have been. Oh, and my final color scheme?

Some bright colors. And CREAM.

Job done. The painters arrive tomorrow. I am off to pack for the asylum.

It used to be that when it came to dinnertime I would wait until The Daddy returned from his hard day at work and ask him what he was cooking tonight.

And then things changed, and I found myself in control of the kitchen. Actually, more like out of control in the kitchen, for as many of you will know I am a terrible cook.

Still, there I was, muddling along and not receiving anything in the way of compliments for all my efforts. I was starting to get a bit huffy about the whole thing really. I mean there are only so many times a person can hear words such as “burnt”, “bland”,  “tough” and “inedible” applied to her cooking before starting to feel, oh I don’t know, a little bit miffed?

Then came the fateful day when the moon and stars must have been aligned and the gods smiling and my lucky day, all rolled into one. The day I stumbled upon THE SOLUTION.

It did not start out well. I had bought a nice piece of beef which would have to be put in to roast early and was very proud of myself for remembering to take it out of the fridge on time. But when I looked at it, it turned out that I had accidentally not bought a nice piece of beef, but just a piece of beef, which would have to be put in to stew early. At this point I almost abandoned my abandonment of Twitter to tweet “Help! How do I make a beef stew with no ingredients?”

Then I remembered Mark. Mark is an old friend of ours from way back, when The Daddy and I used to have time to watch TV, and would watch his New York Times podcasts on simple cooking. Despite my well-documented hatred of the culinary arts, somehow I never minded watching his podcasts. He seems kind of … nice. It was Mark who taught The Daddy how to cook Paella and it was on his recommendation that I stopped buying those expensive kitchen knives and instead bought myself two restaurant knives for $16 from Costco. They have plastic handles but still I have received compliments.

I am not sure how I came to have Mark’s book, “How To Cook Everything“. I know that it came via Amazon, probably ordered by me in a fit of optimism after seeing a random ad. I also know that the moment it arrived I looked at the cover, thought “this might come in useful one day” and put it straight onto the shelf.

So there we were, several months later. I opened the book and discovered it contains tons and tons of simple recipes for simple people like me. Who don’t have 20 exotic ingredients in their pantry and really don’t feel like rushing out to buy them. Who very possibly don’t even have the most basic of ingredients. That night Mark didn’t try to make me feel guilty for not throwing three tired kids in the car and rushing them to the crowded supermarket to buy beef stock. He gave me permission to cook with water.

Imagine that! Needless to say, How to Cook Everything no longer lives on the living room shelf. It now has a permanent home on the kitchen counter. In fact, it is probably stuck there. With gravy.

And this is why Mark will always have a special place in my heart:  I spend less time cooking. I can usually find a recipe to accommodate my gruesome lack of fancy ingredients. Oh, and here is a real and honest quote from 5 minutes ago as The Daddy finished eating yet another of Mark’s 20 minute meals:

“It used to be depressing eating your dinners. Some days I almost wanted to kill myself. But that was great.”

No kidding.

(PS: Yet again this is an unpaid review. What can I say, I am a mug.)

Wow, it’s been a long time.

So long that I had to read back in time to find out exactly which photos I had promised you. There has been a lot going on here, which I will be sure to blog about later. I know, always later…

In the meantime, I did promise you my 80’s hair. And I always keep my promises, although in this case I really really don’t want to. Had I partaken of the silly juice when I wrote that post? OK. Deep breath. Here goes:

Oops. Looks like my hair got a little flat on top. Maybe I forgot to backcomb it that morning.

The scanner cable hasn’t turned up yet but that’s probably because I haven’t had time to sort through the boxes and boxes of cables and find it. Luckily (why didn’t I think of this before?) I haven’t managed to lose my camera yet. And I see that I also promised pictures of us. At different times. Together. Well, won’t this be a trip down memory lane? And an interesting exercise for my last remaining non-family reader!

Hmm. My parents sent me a bunch of early scanned photos from their archives and dared me to put them online. This, believe it or not, is the best one they could dredge up. The others are CENSORED. This one really should be too. But, you know, they dared me.

And now, what about a wedding photo?

Those caterpillars crawling down the side of his face were all the rage in our circles at the time, for those not willing to go for the full-on goatee look. The Daddy did grow a goatee once but it scared me and I made him shave it off.

And those children? All grown up now.

Yes, it was a lo-o-o-o-ong time ago.

Many many years passed. Eight to be exact. And then we had a baby and traveled halfway around the world with him and here we are snapped pretending to be full of beans and not at all wishing we could just give the baby away to a random stranger and sleep for a thousand years.

Then the baby grew up a little. Here he is at 18 months. Oh, and us in the background, looking, again, faintly manic:

And now, three days before we set off on our great adventure. April 2005. Not sure what was wrong with the T-Bot.

And that, unbelievably, is where our photo story ends.

Want cute photos of my kids? Can oblige, 1000 times over.

Want photos of us together? Come visit! Take one!

I dare you.

In theory I don’t have time to post now, but I feel like I deserve 10 minutes me time.

This is yet another post about how cooking and me are just not compatible.

You know how some people just can’t grasp Math? I’m like that with cooking. Actually, not too hot on Math either, but you get the point.

You see, The Daddy wanted to introduce me to some cool people he knows. We were going to get a babysitter and go out to dinner.

Then, while I was distracted, that somehow turned into Sunday Lunch at Our Place.

Fine. For them, I will tidy my living room.

Still working on other things. Not really giving lunch my full attention, and then, when I do,  it has become lunch at our place, eating a dish that only I can cook. As in me. The non-cook. It is one of my repertoire of about 5 dishes I can cook reasonably well. As long as I concentrate.

I decide to get a head start. By Saturday lunchtime I have been to the supermarket and I am - triumphantly! - cooking up a storm. I have two ways of cooking: For us - sloppy and not very nice. For other people - so scared of getting it wrong that I go all OCD and start adding ingredients drop by drop for the perfect mix. Predictably, yesterday’s preparation of today’s lunch takes me most of the afternoon.

And then The Daddy opens wine, we have a quick dinner, put the kids to bed and I sit at my computer to do some work. I am sleepy, so I am in bed by 11.

And then I remember the lunch. It has been sitting on the bench to cool …

…since 5pm.

I start to rationalize. Chicken, yes, but people take chicken sandwiches on picnics all the time and don’t poison themselves. Remember, I am half asleep at this point. Then, all of a sudden, I am not. Because it dawns on me that the chicken is suspended in a cream sauce.

Chicken and cow juice. It’s a Bacteria Party!

So this morning, 7am, I had a date with a second cream sauce.

You know what happens next. For this, my second cream sauce, I am not so enthusiastic. Plus, The Daddy is not up yet so I am empty of my morning coffee.

I begin by burning the butter.

Start again. All going well. I turn away for no more, I swear, no more than 20 seconds and the whole concoction inexplicably curdles.

I am no good with curdle. Start again.

And now, friends, it is done. And as soon as I have my shower I will be off to the supermarket for another chicken. Silly me, I didn’t think to have one in reserve.

At this point I am thinking our mystery guests had better be Rock Star Cool.

We need more cool around here. Because I have lost mine.

Sometimes I cook. Sometimes The Daddy cooks.

But recently, we have been sharing the cooking. Which means The Daddy cooks the meat and I am responsible for the vegetables and starch.

Last night The Daddy complained that he was sick and tired of chewy rice, raw spinach and raw baby carrots. So I asked him somewhat irritably what he wanted then, and he said “Can’t you at least cook the vegetables?”.

So tonight I cooked the vegetables. Behold: cooked vegetables.

Sometimes I amaze even myself.

The first day of 2009 also marks the first anniversary of this blog.

I believe I might have really started blogging because I had such a depressing New Years Eve in 2007, watching Dick Clark’s Super Banging Rocking Old Time New Years Eve Jam or whatever they call it, while listening to fireworks. And then, at some point, I got online and came across a whole lot of bloggers who were planning awful  evenings also. A whole lot of other losers parents of young children who couldn’t easily get out of the house on the one day of the year you should be out partying. And that made me feel a whole lot better.

Now I have Twitter. So last night I knew I was far from being the only one. Also, I entered the Pioneer Woman’s competition for losers who were not out partying, and I was comment number over-10,000.

Last time we watched the Dick Clark thingy, and also a whole lot of other very very bad TV. But we did have champagne.

This time we downloaded the $1 movie on i-tunes.

Legally Blonde.

Also, instead of champagne we decided to go teetotal, then at the last minute changed our minds.

So we had to drink beer.

For New Years 2009, I don’t think we could sink any lower, unless we drink water and watch old silent Charlie Chaplin movies.

My first New Years Resolution: New Years Eve Party. My House. Be There.

PS:  Yes! This year I did get to see fireworks! At 12.30 when the neighbor started letting them off right in front of our house and woke up Baby Sister. Who was petrified and refused to let me leave her for the rest of the night. Her bed is very uncomfortable. But the fireworks were pretty. So maybe it was worth it.

Last night The Wictor didn’t want to go to sleep. So I lay down next to him and promptly fell asleep until 9. And it’s lucky I did, because this is how my schedule for the evening turned out:

12.30: Go to bed

1.00ish: Fall asleep

3.30 am: Woken up by a loud sound, like a toad croaking but inside the house. It woke up The Daddy too. We traced the noise to our en suite toilet. Blocked and booming, apparently because it was attempting to unblock itself. I know, weird, I have never experienced that either. When we flushed the toilet it overflowed, but it was clean water and the noise stopped so we went back to bed.

4amish: Woken by the sound of a child screaming in the distance. I went out into the lounge to listen but couldn’t hear anything. Realized it was actually The Daddy, snore-whistling. Went back to bed.

Sometime after 4: Woken by the the sound of running back and forth upstairs. Baby Sister is not supposed to come downstairs at night unless it is “something important” and it seems she kept changing her mind as to whether this was something important. In the end I went up and she decided she had had a bad dream. Lay down in her bed and fell asleep.

Sometime after sometime after 4: Woken by The Wictor patting my face. It was still dark. Took him back to bed, lay down next to him and fell asleep. Again.

Around 7: Baby Sister came in and woke us both up.  I was so tired I kept insisting it was still nighttime, but my children were wiser and soon had the light on and every battery-operated toy we own up and running.

I know what sleep deprivation is, I didn’t really sleep much for six years.

But it turns out it doesn’t take long to get out of the habit.

I hope I make it to midnight tonight. In case I don’t - Happy New Year!

The Daddy keeps sending me links to this.

He says it is the best use of Flash technology he has ever seen.

I am not sure what he means by that.

But of one thing I am sure: if I ever needed an excuse not to do hard exercise, I have found it there on the Shock Absorber site.

(Of course, if I actually owned one of those scary looking bras, I would be obliged to go out for a run around the block, wouldn’t I?  But I don’t.  So I will sit here and eat chocolate instead).

This is how sad we are right now. We are sitting at our desks, facing each other, typing on our respective computers.

“More wine”, I say, “Your turn.”

“No”, says The Daddy, “I’m good.”

“What are you doing?” I ask, “obviously not loving me.”

“You may have similar genetic makeup,” says The Daddy, “but you are not Dido. I am watching Dido. ”

(Here we go again)

Me: “Yes, but Dido’s soulless”.

Him: “If by soulless you mean perfect.”

I have a lot to live up to. My husband is in love with Dido, and he would totally marry her if he wasn’t already married to me. What? Of course she would have him. All women want him. After all, he once saw Linda Evangelista  as he walked past a photo shoot and she totally gave him the eye.

Me: “Are you sure she wasn’t posing?”

Him: “No, she wanted me”.

So, Dido. he is watching her in concert right now. She has no faults.

Him: “Dido wouldn’t leave loading the dishwasher until 4pm … Also Dido wouldn’t be in a bad mood when I got home from work. She would waft up to me wearing something light and floaty and rub my feet while crooning a love song”.

Me: “Yes but Dido has no children. Children, as you know, are a distraction. ”

Him: “Well, she just hasn’t found the right man yet. She would have lots of children with me.”

I resist the urge to remind him that he used to call Dido dildo. (Am I allowed to say that on public internet?). Until one day he saw this concert. And in the intervening years, he has shown this concert to every male friend who has ever expressed reservations about Dido’s (ahem) music. And I swear that every single one has been converted.

Him: “Those shorts? Make your backside look huge. Dido would never wear those. Well, you did ask me”.

And they say romance is dead.

Back to Dido. She does have one failing. She gets her hair cut (probably at £300 a time, but I digress…).

And The Daddy doesn’t find short(er) hair attractive.

Me: “Dido doesn’t have long hair…”

Him: “She’s allowed not to. But only because she is Dido“.

(Sigh)