Here are the hits:

1. This little beauty. I’m doing these for All Hallows this year, instead of those thirty-five buck carving pumpkins the supermarkets are trying to sell me. And they come with the added bonus of providing ingredients for all the Pina Coladas I shall be making to survive the trick or treating. (I’m only doing it to get rid of the fruit you know)  Anyway, with pineapple and coconut, a Pina is practically a health drink!

2.  This tasty little morsel.

Sorry. I ripped it open before photographing.
What happened to ‘Tweet it before you eat it’?

I know it’s October, and I know I shouldn’t encourage the Mulit-National Money Sucking Machines by buying seasonal promotional items when the season is nowhere to be seen, but they are only ONE DOLLAR. And they say “Merryteaser” on them (what does that even mean?). Nobody knows, but how can I refuse when they beckon me from the counter with their cheery red packaging and their enticing and cooling snow graphics? And when they are only ONE DOLLAR? So, in a moment of weakness I purchased two, one for me and one for the love of my life. I popped them high up in the fridge, away from prying little eyes ‘for later’. Well, later was much, much later, say around 11pm when Nath had fallen to slumber, and I snuck out to the kitchen and ate mine. And then Nath’s. Sorry Nath.

But never fear, a patient gave the “kids” a giant chocolate Freddo each today. I’ve hidden them in the fridge. For the “kids”. Of course.

3. The Spring Spectacular at school tonight. I managed to sit through it all, even though there were TWO count them TWO renditions of ‘Let It Go’, and not a one Monkey Wrench cover. And my ears aren’t even bleeding. For serious.

So, well played kid’s school, well played.

As you can tell, Coco is a very talented musician.
Liam was also there, clarinetting along, but we didn’t get a pic that didn’t feature other kids.
So just imagine you can see him too. For balance, like.

4.  Did  you see Harry Potter on Jimmy Fallon? I’m not sure if I like Daniel rapping, or Jimmy grooving along and trying to keep up, the best. Something about that man just makes me laugh (Jimmy, not Daniel). Check it out, and watch it through to the end. It’s fun. I shared on FB my version of ‘The Black Widow’ for Edenland’s lip sync competition, but I’m thinking I might have to pop the real thing up here. Or maybe “Ice, Ice Baby”. Nath does a killer version of “Bust a Move”, so the possibilities are very exciting.

5.  Getting some of your feedback on the blog this week. I love your comments, shares and retweets. You might not realise it, but when I’m sitting here, being the little keyboard warrior, it’s hard to imagine that anyone else even reads this drivel.

I can, of course look up Google analytics and see how many of you play along, but it’s much nicer to actually get some feedback. So thanks to all of you who do comment, and then share the love around. It makes a difference to me.

I’ve got a few little writing plans for next year (see, I am following Matthew’s rules from the book I mentioned this week, and telling you about some of my goals) and this blog was created to see if anyone would like to read my stuff. It seems some of you do, and that, quite frankly, is BLOODY AWESOME. Writing stuff has always been a little secret and fragile thing that I’ve held in my heart, too frightened to let it see the light of day, lest it wither and turn to so much dust. Giving it some air, here on my little space on the internet has been both confronting and freeing in equal measure.

So thanks you lot. You make an old bird’s heart zing.

So how was your week? What were your hits?

Did you have any big wins?

…From The Ashers

When I was a kid, dinner was served up at the table at 6pm. Mum would set the table herself (after asking us seventeen billion times to do it for her), every night. We always had a table cloth, correct cutlery and crockery and glasses of milk. The milk was her downfall of course, because we would fill up on that before even starting. It’s amazing how easily the lactation of cows, made for their calves, can sustain the stomachs of human children.

My brothers and I would sit at the table, and it was as if some silent starter yelled, “LET THE GAMES BEGIN!” For that is what befell my mother for the next two hours. Every.single.night. And they weren’t fun games.

I look back, and I wonder how she did it. A single Mum, on meagre wages, working all day, then coming home to prepare something nourishing for her children, who never, ever ate it. Or even attempted most of it. The rule in our house was that we had to eat everything on our plates. I suspect that ‘the rule’ was never adhered to. Not even once. Every night we were bribed, threatened and cajoled. It almost always ended in tears, and that was just Mum.

Skip forward a score and ten, to where I am the person in the Mother Seat. Where I am the person thinking of the food, shopping for the food and cooking the food. So much carry on about food. Only to have the vermin cherubim screw up their gaping maws cute little faces and say, “I don’t like that.”

Because, of course, they don’t like anything.

And they don’t have the tools at their disposal that we did. We had a pet Labrador (they eat anything, yes, even Corned Beef with white sauce), we had overalls from Just Jeans (so many pockets) and we had milk (did you know you can hide one stalk of broccoli and nine peas in every glass?). The only thing they have at their disposal is whinging. And they use it well.

When they were little, I tried and tried to think of delicious and healthy things the children would like to eat for dinner. I stopped short of making food art, but I did attempt to make their plates contain ‘the colours of the rainbow’ every night. It made no difference. They still hated it.

So these days I have taken to simply pleasing myself and drinking wine. In fact, I delight in lovingly placing their plates in front of them, and hearing them say how much the despise the menu plan of the day. I see their displeasure as a personal success. So you can imagine how I laughed when I saw this on my instagram today:

Sorry family. If this is true, then my love for you is a bit shit.

(Who am I kidding, I’m not sorry. You’ll get over it.)

Are your kids good eaters? What are your failsafe recipes?

…From The Ashers

Vinyl.
Apparently U2’s free album is on vinyl. And it’s in the Top 5.
Even though we already all have it. For free.
What??

I don’t really like U2 that much.

I mean they’re okay, I have a couple of their albums from another life ago, but I haven’t really thought of them much since the 80s. I like the 2Cellos version of ‘With or Without You’ and that song Bono wrote for his Missus on their anniversary ‘The Sweetest Thing’ is easy on the ear, but that’s about the extent of the notice I’ve taken of them since screaming out the words to ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ with my friends on the way home from softball carnivals, drunk on dust and sweat and victory.

I noticed them when Apple dropped some of their songs from the clouds and into my devices at little while ago. That was weird, wasn’t it? I got strangely grumpy for a minute or two, but mainly because I have no idea how technology works, and I didn’t like the idea of some brainy kid in Cupertino messing with my stuff. Then I realised if they wanted to, they could mess with my stuff any time they like, and hey, it’s free music. I tried to listen to the music from someplace else, but it felt just like that, songs that were meant for someone else’s soundtrack, someone who was having a different life to me.

So that was that. I’m sure those U2 fellas are okay with my ambivalence. Other people seem to like them just fine.

This week U2 were on the Graeme Norton Show. They played a song, and they were good I suppose, but most of my attention was directed towards Stephen Fry and Ironman and the stories that Robert Duvall had to tell about Brando, from the Godfather days. After a while U2 came and sat on the couch with the people from the movies, and everyone dutifully shuffled over, because the dude from the iTunes logo was in the house, and he’s pretty famous, right? Everyone deferred to the U2 boys and they seemed genuinely nice, and perhaps Robert Duvall looked a little confused, but hey, he can’t even remember the names of all the movies he’s been in, so that wasn’t much of an issue.

Eventually they mentioned that the junk-mail album is quite a pared-back sound, not full of digitised mixing, but something that sounds just as good acoustically. Cheeky Graeme jumped right onto that, and asked Bono if they could play songs from it with just acoustic guitars. He said they could, and, as if from the clouds, acoustic instruments appeared.

OH.

MY.

I think I said that I didn’t really care much for U2. Well that was a statement from before.

They played ‘Song for Someone’, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so exquisite in my life. I’m not sure if it was watching those four men becoming boys in front of my eyes to work it all together like some piece of precise machinery, whether it was the emotion thrumming and coming off Bono’s whole being, or whether it was the unexpected the sounds that he can make with his voice, and nothing more.

The show finished, Graeme waved goodbye, and the credits rolled, and I just sat on the couch, staring at the blank screen, wondering what had just happened.

How did U2 know to make a song just for me?

I think I like to believe that each one of us has a purpose in this life. Not necessarily something God-given or anything like that, but that we each have something meaningful to contribute to our own lives, and if we are lucky, to the lives of the people we love. I like to think that we all have some special thing that is just us. Just for us, and something that is uniquely ours. I suspect that is why in our quietest moments we can feel a yearning, a feeling that we have something, some spark, some distinctive thing, that separates us from the person next to us, even though we share almost the exact same genetic make-up. I think it’s the reason we strive. We want someone to notice our thing. Maybe even love us for our thing.

Sitting there on my couch, late on a Sunday evening, I felt privileged to share in Bono’s thing.

It was a bloody good thing. The sweetest thing.

Do you know what your thing is?

…From The Ashers

I AM READING THE BEST BOOK IN THE WORLD.

I know. Big statement.

And it might not actually be the best book in the world, but man oh man, it has gotten me fired up. I usually like to read fiction, with the occasional biography smattered in there for balance, yet over the years I have read my fair share of titles from the Personal Development and Financial sections of the bookshop. I won’t say I ever actually like these books, but I dutifully read them, because, well, you’re supposed to aren’t you? I think that’s what grown-ups do.

I went to a Problogger Seminar a few months ago, and one of the keynote speakers was a cool guy called Matthew Something-Foreign-Sounding.  I liked his presentation, in that it wasn’t so much about blogging itself, but about why we do the things we do. He talked a bit about motivation. He gave an example of asking some woman to do something she didn’t want to do, for money. And no, it wasn’t some shonky ‘Indecent Proposal’ moment, it was about seeing how much he would have to offer her to do something she was afraid of (I think the example was to jump off a tall building…or maybe eat spiders…my memory is hazy, but bear with me).  The important point was that she wouldn’t do it for ANY money. So then he said, “What if the lives of all of your family depended on it?”  And of course that was the kicker. She said she would do the scary/crazy thing.

So it seems we all have a price. We all have that something that will define what we will do, even be compelled to do, once all of the cards are laid bare.

I’ve been thinking a bit about that lately.

I have a whole bunch of things on my goal lists, to-do lists and inspiration lists. The trouble is, a lot of the things on my lists are a bit shite. I have them there because I think they should be there, not because I really care about them, at least not in the day to day running of my life. “Pay off the house” is on the list, but really, I don’t give it much thought. It will be paid off, one day, but I don’t really do much to try and speed up that process. Especially if making an extra repayment interferes with me buying a case of that Veuve that Uncle Dan’s has on sale right now for 53 bucks a bottle*. I also have other such uninspiring things as “Do BAS” and “Paint the skirting boards” on the lists.

See? Bleurgh.

So boring you probably stopped really reading back at my mention of Indecent Proposal, and started imagining either Demi or Paul (or both) nude.

Enter Matthew Michalewicz. At the seminar he gave us a FREE book. I nearly didn’t take one because 1. I don’t like books that look like they might include work and 2. Free book = Shit book, according to Alison’s Book Rule #476.

But I did take one, mainly because he seemed nice and mostly because I thought I might hand it on to someone. Someone who likes shitty, hard-work and probably-harder-to-read-and-most-likely-self-published-books. That someone is not me.

The book has resided on the top, then after a while in the middle, and most recently, at the bottom of my bedside-table book stack tower. Until last Sunday night when I decided enough was enough and the pile had to go. I was about to relegate THE BEST BOOK IN THE WORLD to the book graveyard: the drawers under my bed, where all books go to die. Or be eaten by cockroaches.

It was saved by the title, and maybe a little bit by the fact that the cover art reminded me of Days Of Our Lives, and it made me wonder what Marlana, Bo and Hope are up to after all these years. But it was mostly the title. I wondered what he was on about with all this “half a second” palaver, I mean, I’ve got forever. Haven’t I?

I was intending to save this post until I’m finished the book, and I was going to give you the good oil, the Cliff’s note of personal development books, to save you from reading the whole thing, but I’ve changed my mind. The thing is, you NEED to go and get yourself this book. And you need to read it. And you need do all of the things Matthew says to do. I’m about half-way through, and I promise you, these words have gotten me more excited about goal-setting and having a life by design than I have ever been. I’ve been to many seminars about this kind of thing, and at the crux I guess there isn’t much that is blindingly new, but the way he has put it all together…man. Just get it, and read it. You’ll see.

So here’s the book:

Best Book in the World

And here’s the website and the facebook.

As Molly would say, “Do yourself a favour.”

*FACT. This is not a sponsored post (worse luck) but this is the actual price at the time of writing. Get there right now, I say. Or pay off your home-loan. Both work.

**Oh, and Matthew didn’t sponsor me either, but you never know, maybe he’ll offer me some of that money-to-do-a-scary-thing. As long as it doesn’t involve being near birds. Alive birds I mean. Dead are fine.

Here are the hits of the week:

1.  A short school week, so I got to have a grouse day of bike-riding and chocolate-cafe-ing with these two dudes. The little one surprised me with her ability to ride and ride, and the big one surprised me with how supportive he was of his little sis, with cries of “Come on Coco, you can do it”, and “Just one more hill.”  Sometimes they can be quite nice.

2.  Did I mention CHOCOLATE SHOP? How long has this been going on, and why haven’t I been informed? There is a chocolate shop in Noosa Junction, in plain view, and 1. It is not sold out of chocolate and 2. None of you have told me about it. (So now 1. will soon be a fallacy.)  Frankly, I’m shocked and dismayed at you all. I thought we were friends…

Anyway, I’ll give you all the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you, also, did not know about the CHOCOLATERIA. It is opposite Coles and it is delicious. They have some other pretend foods there as well, but don’t worry about that silly facade- it’s the chocolate you are here for. So here it is:

Enter quickly

You can eat ALL of these

They will serve your kids this kind of stuff..

..And then their faces will look like this. (And you will be the best parent in the world..Badluck Nath.)

Go there now.

3.  Grandparents Day at school today. I feel so lucky that we have a grandparent both living and living close enough to go and be with the kids. It is days like these that I miss my Dad acutely. I wish he was here to see these little champs grow and grow. I think he would be proud of the people they are. But HOW LUCKY are we that Mum is still as awesome as ever. The little lady is a dynamo.

4.  Hello boiling hot weather! It’s going to be in the 30s this weekend… YAY! Summer is here (at least in temperature). Bring it.

5.  Coco has just came in and gleefully delivered me some bad news: that little lady I was talking about ^^^ up there was playing a brain-teaser game we have on the iPad with the kids last night. I have been the long-reining family champion at 55.

Until last night.

She got 88. So much for being old, with slow reflexes and a cloudy mind. How annoying- now I have to waste the rest of my day playing it until I beat her score. Damn.   **This is NOT a hit.**

6.  So the REAL last hit is all the generosity people have shown for Liam’s Golden Garage Sale cause. I mentioned how he got a lovely letter and donation from Tiff, and since then he also got a donation from Sue and another from Michelle. Thank you so much you lovely ladies.

I was also blown away by some of the donations on the day, many from unlikely sources. We had a various lone young blokes pop in, lured by our excellent sign-waving on the street I suspect, and I will admit I groaned internally as they arrived in their hotted up cars and muscly-tattooed arms (yes, it seems I have become that kind of old lady). Every single one of them opened their wallets and made donations, even though we didn’t have anything they wanted to buy. Restored my faith in ‘the yoof of today’.

The money is going towards establishing a safe boarding house for Year 9 girls in Ethiopia who have to travel to school, and who usually just drop out because the travel is so dangerous. Apparently the girls are often harmed, and many end up pregnant, and so the cycle of low-education continues. We see this as a wonderful initiative that will make long term changes, breaking the old patterns. And as Liam said, “If they are getting pregnant at 14 then the need to stay at school and learn a little bit about human reproduction.”

Here endeth the Hits.

I showed you mine, what are yours?

…From The Ashers

If you are a RR you would know one of the Geniuses wasn’t quite so evil this weekend just gone, and he planned and presided over a Golden Garage Sale, to raise money for charity. He did well.

Then today, as a result of that, something wonderful happened.

Liam received something in the mail from a beautiful lady who knew about the garage sale via my Facebook Super-Spamming on Sunday. She took the time out of her day to write Liam a lovely letter, and to make a donation to his cause. When he read it, he did a little fist pump. When I read it, I got all teary.

I tend to get a bit emotional about lots of things these days. I blame The Menopause, rather than admitting that I could be going a bit soft. But this action really touched my heart.

And it got me to thinking about how it is relatively easy to perform and act of kindness, and to change someone’s day. Liam is taking what he calls “the full-on letter” to school tomorrow to show his teacher, and then he wants it put in his memory box. I can tell by the way he proudly read it out to me that he has started to see himself in the way she described him. He is considering himself to be the type of guy who does good, who makes the world better. Psychologists have a term for it: The Pygmalian Effect. I have a term for it: A Bloody Grouse Way To Build A Kid’s Self Esteem.

So this letter? It changed Liam’s day today. But who knows what it has done to change his perceptions of himself in all of the tomorrows.

BJ Palmer once said, “We never know how far reaching something we may think, say, or do today will affect the lives of millions tomorrow.” Who knows what these little charges we have inherited will become; pilots, plumbers, painters, publicans, politicians? Regardless of what, experiences like these will define who. And most likely how.

I appreciate you, lovely lady.

What can you do to change a kid’s life for the better?

Or an adult, for that matter?

…From The Ashers