C is for Cock-a-doodle-doooo.

Over at the LoveCats blog a few weeks ago (Was it weeks?  I'm not sure.  We're back from holidays, it's raining, it's a cold, windy 18 degrees, the back-to-school malarkey is fierce and I feel like I'm revisiting last September.) I dropped in and said hello to two new members, farewelled two others and generally cracked jokes, rocked out to Elvis and stole cyber chocolate chip biscuits.

We were also asked to mention something about ourselves.  I mentioned our animals/children.  And Trevor.

Trevor is our rooster.  Specifically, he's a Bantam Partridge Wyandotte Cockerel (Hands up if you sniggered then.).  He's there to procreate (How about then?).  With the Bantam Partridge Wyandotte Hens.  I suspect he thinks he's above all that.  I mean, look at him.

He is a Very Noisy Creature.  Yes, "Cock-a-doodle-doooooo!".  And not just at the crack of dawn, either.  He will crow at four in the afternoon.  For fun.  He seems a little confused about his purpose in life.

As I said at LoveCats, our animals seem to end up with human names--Barney, Beryl, Esmae and Trevor.  I may have also mentioned that our kids are called Fluffy, Socks and Spot, but that, as you know, is a lie.  Turns out, Sharon Archer had a Bantam Rooster called Napoleon.  Very cool.  Wish we'd thought of that.

Poor Trevor is actually a bit of a dud in the procreation department.  All crow, no go.  Lucky for him he's pretty.

B is for Bonza! Happy Australia Day

Yes, it is that marvellous day in the oztraylian calendar when we don our flags over our boardies, slide on the thongs (ahem, not the underwear kind), cool the beers, roll the lamingtons in desiccated coconut and light the barbie to grill our lamb.

It's Australia Day!

We are sitting here by the beach, listening to the fabricky flap of our many flags tied to our verandah, and feeling the thump as some young twits play doof doof music down in the wharf's carpark, wearing nothing but their togs, sunglasses and the occasional Australian flag beach towel.

Tomorrow, there will be sunburn on hangovers on scorched feet soles.

But today, we celebrate!

I'm about to whip up a pav, and the kids are making their annual Australia Day Australian paper cup stack. (Faith, left, Love, right)








Check also, the Aussie flag temp tatts. We're completely awesome.

Every year on this day, I'm reminded of a poem. It's a piece of iconic national verse. Even though very few people know it all, EVERYONE over the age of fifteen knows the first line of the second verse:


My Country by Dorothea Mackellar - 1885-1968, written in 1904

'The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.


I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!


A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.


Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.


Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.


An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.'


So, wherever you may be, enjoy your Australia Day--it's BONZA!

Em. Xx

Hello, 2012! A is for amphibious...

Welcome to my first blog post for said year!

Lordy, 2012 ALREADY?! Say it isn't so. I haven't finished half the stuff I was going to do in '11 yet...

Speaking of bunions, I flicked back through to my first blog post of last year, looking for my goals. Turns out, I didn't post any (my first post for 2011 was actually a very somber one). Which is lucky, as it turns out. I found them written down elsewhere and I'm batting stuff-all as far as achievement goes.

While I hit a weight-loss target (*cough* three months late *cough*), I did not achieve too many of my writing targets. While this was in no small part due to my then-targeted publisher moving the goal posts, and me having a genre-related epiphany, I do cop to being a little slack. The last three months of the year were especially nuts.

I was thinking I would post my goals for this year, but given how badly I suck at them, I might just keep them to myself. Because, quite frankly, it's just embarrassing.

BUT, do not fret! GOALS HAVE BEEN SET!

One of them involves blogging regularly. I was thinking, maybe twice per week, using the handy-dandy write, set and forget function.

To that end, I am going to work my way through the alphabet, in order, and relate my post to something that begins with that letter. That should get me through to mid-year-ish. For example, a post (I am currently three weeks behind) might be titled something like 'A is for Apple'. Then I will proceed to wow you all with my vast and crunchy knowledge of apples.

Some weeks, the link between title and post may be very tenuous. But, a link there will be!

Speaking of amphibious, here is a picture of Anarchy I took on the beach today (we're on holidays, and I refuse to go back home until I can hear the school bell ringing for lesson one on the first day of term). He looks like a very short, cute frogman, and can traverse both land and sea.

With my usual Christmastime headless chook-edness, I am flying through to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and safe 2012.

I will leave you with some funnies to get you through the silly season:

I love this take on the Hallelujah Chorus on YouTube.

Ho, ho, ho!

Em  xx

Happy scary, fantastical, magical Halloween. The DarkSiders are turning one!

Do you know what day it it?

Duh.  It's HALLOWEEN!  MwahahahahahaHA!

Halloween means the eternal, "should we stock up on lollies just in case someone knocks?" argument, (Honestly, I think the 500m long driveway and the screaming kids scare them off.), and the very amusing pictures of drunk pumpkins on the internet.

But it also means THE DARKSIDE DOWNUNDER IS ONE YEAR OLD!  ON HALLOWEEN!  How lovely!  How FRIGHTENING!  How FANTASTIC!

AND THEY'RE HAVING A PARTAY!  There are PRIZES and FUN!

Get in there and be a part of it!

Finally:

Hehe.  That's gross.

Yours in scariness (and a bit of ickiness),

Em.  x

I thought I'd made it when Peter Combe followed me on Twitter..

Beauty and Lace, a very awesome online women's magazine, has Q&A'd me.  I got to answers questions about me, what I was writing, me, my journey as a writer, me, SARA, me, DSDU, me, competitions, me, and eBooks.  And me.  Great stuff.  I enjoyed it greatly.

Check it out at Beauty and Lace, feel free to come and say hello, or read about my stance on eBooks, or heckle me in a loving way.  :)

Or, you might just like to read the verbal exchange Sparky and I have every time I've been out shopping.

Also, I have promised you this:

Arrrgh!

Third and final offspring offering--Bring the Anarchy

So, now you know Faith & Love.

It's time for Anarchy.

Anarchy is four.  Tomorrow.  There will be a pirate cake.  I'll take pictures.

Truly speaking, he is the anti-anarchy.  He is sweet and cute and totally led astray by his sisters.  He has a little speech thingy that means he can't put two consonants together, which is adorable at this stage, but might need looking at if it's still around when he turns twenty-one.

He is eating the icing first and matchbox cars, warm hugs and raspberries on your face with little white teeth in them.  He is bats and balls, Spiderman and Lightning McQueen.

Anarchy is also our showboat (here's where you  insert, "Like his mother." if that's what you were thinking. And rightly so.).  He likes to dance like a lunatic so Faith & Love giggle.  He loves making 'gas bomb' noises on his own forearm.  He tells great jokes.

A:  "What do you call a peanut in space?"
Me: "I don't know, Anarchy, what do you call a peanut in space?"
A:  "An Astronut!"
Me:  *headslap*  "Oy."

OR

A:  "Knock Knock."
Me:  "Who's there?"
A:  "Moustache" (pronounced with a 'mooo')
Me:  "Ah, a moustache who?"
A:  "Ummmmm..."
Me:  "Would you like a banana?"
A:  "Yes, please."  (He's very polite.)

(Of course, the proper answer to that joke, as I tell it, is, 'I moustache you a question, but I'll shave it for later.'  Snort.)

This is Anarchy under the clothesline, pretending that the blue sheet is the ocean,

 and he's diving for treasure.  He is wearing his 'better pants', which are trackies, 

but they are 'better pants' than jeans.  

But he's not all sweetness.  Despite his propensity for girly items (Nail polish, handbags, hair product.  Sparky feels a little threatened at this point, but I tell him school will soon pound all those cute quirks out of our boy.), he knows the words to some very dubious songs. This is one of his favourites.  (Which might be my fault, but I'm not copping to anything.).

Polyester Girl - Regurgitator.  
all i want you to say is nothing at all
and all i want you to do is stare at the wall
i love your plastic hair and plastic eyes
marvel at your plastic breasts and plastic thighs

my polyestergirl
so shiny
polyestergirl
so shiny
polyestergirl
so shiny
polyestergirl
so shiny

you're the perfect guy's accessory
dangling from my arm for of the pretty people to see
boy's with sassy pouts and perky glee
great for backstage and entertainment award ceremonies
***
took you for a ride up in an aeroplane
but your body burst and left an ugly stain
had to take your pieces back to the factory
it took them several weeks to get you back to me***she's my polyestergirl
shiniest in all the world
she's my polyestergirl
shiniest in all the world
she's my polyestergirl
shiniest in all the world 


Yes, it's a song about a sex toy.  It's massively inappropriate and hilarious.  Sparky raises his eyebrows.  


Sparky's more of a rock dude, but does a mean falsetto of his own.  He also dances beautifully to Katy Perry on the Wii.  Something I have felt the need to video in the past.  I am keeping it for leverage, should the need ever arise.


So, those are the offspring.  In all their sassy, perky glee.  


Sparky and I would be completely lost without them.