Cafe d'Artistica

 Sometimes when small people display a reluctance to eat the food prepared lovingly by their elders, one must enforce cunning measures to get it into them. Enter, the Fisher Price cash register! That stalwart of the F.P. aisle has not changed in years ands lasts forever although the money tends to disappear from the set. That must be the inherent F.P. life lesson.

"My would like one piece of apple please, shop lady."

 Sometimes a little role reversal is involved. The word spreads quickly when a decent food establishment opens. It attracts all types.

Note how the dome- headed rugby warbler is attracted by the food.

This cafe does not offer asparagus and honey sandwiches. Best not to confuse the staff.

Give me all of your money.....

 and I will give you a sandwich fit for an eleven year old food vortex.

The proprietors of food establishments must be ever watchful for marauding ninja types. They get hungry too you know.

Floating Shift

Here we are already on the other side of the steaming, mysterious thing called chemo! We arrived there at 11.15 am and left at 6pm. Yes, it was a long day. Annoyingly, having a needle in your right hand means you can't crochet or write much. You have to be very, very still like a person who is not me.

 I was the healthiest looking one there which made me feel like a big, infiltrating newbie. I'm sure next time I'll fit right in. It is a stangely pleasant place at HOCA. I don't know what it stands for either but it's apparently not this or this.

 The best bit was lying back in a big recliner with the warm afternoon sun streaming in through huge windows and dozing like a contented cat with a hefty dose of phenergan in the drip thingy. Isn't that what people give children to make them sleep on planes? Not so bad, I have to say. The most UNpleasant thing was the hefty dose of Days of our Lives on the flat screen opposite which was only operated by a remote that had been misplaced. Then the children's television started and there was a scary clown in a doctors' uniform giving me the ol' razzle dazzle. It served me right now I look at the shoes and socks. Maybe it was just the phenergan speaking to me...for the sake of all the innocents out there in tv land, I hope so!

 Oh, the post title! The Big Fella and the first lady from 'the Whitehouse' were in cahoots it seems and that lovely metaphor- on- a- chain is now mine. See, I pretended I didn't care what I got on Mothers' Day but I was quite spoilt. The 'floating shift' typewriter key pendant came along to the first Keeno session today and felt appropriate. I like things to be appropriate, like choosing the right coloured coffee cup to suit a friend's mood when they call in. So now this year will be known as the 'Year of Floating Shift'. Life will be a little bit limbo, a little bit floaty and a shift in pace for the rest of this year.
O

 More wonderful friends came to the fore on perhaps the dodgiest night of unknowns for us since the surgery. We got home to find children delivered home, bathed, fed with a delicious meat and vege home made pie, the dishwasher unpacked and five school lunches delivered packed for tomorrow- and those choc chip cookies! It's almost worth being sick to be able to witness first hand that the world is full of such burgeoning goodness. Thanks Mum, Dad, Deb, Rachel, Doug, Penny, Fiona and Iain for smoothing the way. It took a village but it worked!

PS Does anyone know what the 'floating shift' key did on a typewriter?

This Mother's Day

This Mother's Day is the first Mother's Day of the rest of my life. I didn't expect too much. We've been busy. However, it turned out to be up there with the Great Mother's Day of 2004 when I got up to a floral bath, music, mags, coffee and he took the wee-uns to the park for a couple of hours. Bliss!

Today was different as they were all there right from the start. I didn't want them anywhere else. 

 There may have been unflattering moments. Those are 'loser ' signs they are making over each others' heads. Breakfast in bed was quick as they wanted to unload their Mother's Day booty.

Lala found a chocolate bunny stashed in her undie drawer so they got choc chip pancakes/pizzas. 

Sitting out the front with a cup of tea, I ran my fingers over some of the booty including Lala's magic rocks and listened to them laughing and playing in the sun and considered it is really not about what you GET but rather what you have already GOT on Mother's Day.

 It is about how turquoise op shop beads pop against pink tutus,

how a little background music can be quite pleasant on a Sunday morning,

 how it is SO nice to have kindy art back in the house after so long (and only from one child at a time),

 how a sand pit is almost as good as a dog,

how a backyard that accommodates simultaneous rugby, sand baking and tree climbing is more than adequate,

how frangipani trees against a blue sky are a good enough reason on their own to buy an old farmhouse,

 how sand cake garnished with chook feather and a poufette of rhoeo leaves is best presented with the homemade ninja weaponry of choice,

how Maisy Mouse and the Big Fella will never get old,

 how High Tea at the local soccer club is like supper at Versailles when you are with good company,

 how little girls will always love Bananas in sleepwear even on an i-phone,

and how rice makes dinner for five become dinner for nine in a trice and watching them all eat it from outside as the husband patiently waits tables is possibly the best mothers' day gift of all...

 (except for maybe busting a possie of small fry watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua in the dark in our bed).

 

Finally I had a late tea with my funny, bossy, ever-loving mother who had nine children at the table EVERY night and giggled whilst she tossed chicken wings to us and put mislabelled Gravox in the chocolate pudding and always gave the boys the big Corelle plates and taught us to laugh at ourselves and with each other.

It just doesn't get much better than that.

Happy Mother's Day to all and to all a Good Night!

Waiting for Keeno...

Another week of waiting. The 'site' is not healing fast enough internally. My friend, Natalie says it is crying. I prefer to think it is having a tanty. Fishy boy has enquired as to when when I start Keeno. That is, when is my Keeno therapy starting. Whenever I revert to sitting in a pub instead of sitting on the front patio eating cake and drinking cauldrons of tea, which could be soon. 

It's not all bad though. The company of the most beautiful set of friends has made it a memorable hiatus. After a month of catching up with everyone and eating a glorious selection of home delivered family meals I may need the chemo to drop some poundage. Last night we received a huge pot of slow cooked beef stew that warmed the cockles of our hearts and stomachs before they all went to discos. All of them! We were having an empty nest preview with the token only child/ self bedder asleep on the couch by seven 'clock! Time to review the good things in life this week.

There will always be crochet (the chemo rug has begun)....

and Natalie's most recent haircut, blunter and shorter than the last. I'm loving this one and may have to go back to it when the follicles come back from their holiday.

 There will always be op shopping. I expected more karma for the two big bags of toys I dropped off but we had to move fast as the shop assistant started to label them and put them on display before I could get Shorty out the door.

We did get some plastic jewels for 50c as opposed  to $17 at the W.A.C.

There were also aprons all cross stitched and immaculate, if a trifle politically incorrect.

 I don't wear them enough but they do make lovely gifts as well.

This little tablecloth has 'cushion' or 'chair upholstery' written all over it along with some Queensland hot spots.

                                              

                                               

 There will always be dear old friends who you see often or not and nothing ever changes except maybe our hair styles and fabulously youthful skin!

There will always be thoughtful friends coming up with clever gifts that I would never think of....

                                   
and patience- abundant patience laced heavily with love, understanding and hugs for the shorties and tallies of this old farmhouse.

                                   

We start on Tuesday....finally.

Close Encounters of the W.A.C.ky kind.

A benevolent friend took me for a drive to the Woolangabba Antique Centre on Monday. There we encountered many tempting and not so much tempting bits of the good, the bad and the crappola but thought you might enjoy a sweet peruse of the old stuff.
I had a pair of red 50's shoes once like this and don't know what became of them. There was quite a bit of stuff that was strangely familiar in the W.A.C.. Indeed I was feeling a bit 'wack' myself after the last lot of rather over- priced drugs the lovely Doctor J prescribed me. Imagine, if you will, spooky carnival music as you view the goodies. I fancied a typewriter key pendant with 'floating SHIFT' on it that seemed to underscore the feeling of limbo I am experiencing with this delayed treatment at the moment. Tempting...

                                         

There was the usual selection of old doors and enamel and glass, oh my!

Some people I know would be very enamoured of the Nefertiti dinnerware and other bits and bobs.

This little Betsy Ross meets Jasper Johns cushion would sit very nicely in Mr Urban Cottage's home and I did covet it but knew it would never survive the Vegemite and Milo urban warfare on our couch.

 I started getting the uncanny feeling that I had seen some of this stuff before. There was an unpainted mirror the same as this one in my bathroom that would benefit from a similar lick of yellow.

Now I KNOW my sister has this very lamp in her daughter's room! Look at the price, BB! $495!!

I also know that I gave this very print in a cream mother of pearl frame to my brother as we vied to outdo each other in ugly gifts back in the 90's. We dubbed her Lovely Leilani and here she is, worth (apparently) $270! What an investment! Get her out of the shed and onto e-bay, Mick! She should be languishing above a velvet bar not your tumble drier!

It gets spookier. These exact little Namatjira repros are stacked under my laundry sink waiting for me to clean them up. I bought them years ago at Ron and Brian's. The 50's frames and Namatjira prints appealed to me but they now have water damage. I may have left the plug in when soaking some football socks one or ten times. Here they were $45 each! Dang!

About this stage of the 'trip' I started wondering if the garage sale fairies had been under my house in the black hole. It was all a bit deja vu really! There is definitely one of these old school maps, much bigger and of the whole world- just with different, no longer existing countries.

Seriously! $220! I'm going downstairs for a rummage- later.

These guys are not under my house but their clubs might well be. I did spot some cobwebby ones down there recently. I wonder if I could move them onto a better home at the W.A.C.?

 Always up for a bit of tiny shadow box filler but not for $18!

Cue the Twilight Zone music... NOW! This beasty boy can stay right there up on the big, high, cupboard- ready to pounce and chew on somebody's ear at midnight if you ask me! Just saying.... (Creepy!) There is NOT one of these anywhere near my house. If there was one in the black hole it would be living on possum meat and cackling madly with its head spinning around (not unlike myself at the moment).

This exact bird vase has turned up at the W.A.C. and the Paddo equivalent with MMMC. I got mine for $2 at the always interesting Kawana Lifeline when I was pretending to buy bread on holidays. Can't help myself.

Oddly, I didn't buy or photograph the orange Bitossi at $30 or show the tiny things I did buy. Having restrained myself admirably, I returned home to find an old friend had dropped this little bit of birdy loveliness in anyway. I say it's op shop karma kitscherama. The Big Fella says nothing but is getting a twitch in his left eye.