Running everywhere at such a speed/Until they find there's no need

Gigglewick's festive season diary

Weekend One:

1 December

Drive to parents’ house. Pick up mother. Drive to Melbourne talking all the way. Stop so mother can buy mother greasy fast food from evil Empire. Receive text message from Indeed that she is unable to stay this weekend. Talk to Indeed. She is very sick. Worry about Indeed. Watch planes and browse through shops at airport, still talking. Pick up father from airport after his plane is delayed by an hour.

Father informs me that the hiking stick I bought him saved his life in Nepal. Control alarm over near-death of father just enough to gloat ever so slightly. Stop on way home for parents to obtain dinner. Drive parents back to their home. Assist father in puncturing my ten month old car’s windscreen with market umbrella. Assure father it is not his fault while forcing back tears.

Have following exchange with father:

Father: Hey, did you lose a hubcap?

Gigglewick: No, we did NOT LOSE A F-CKING HUBCAP!!!!

Father: Oh. There’s one gone though.

Gigglewick: (jumps up and down on gravel and shakes fist at sky, swearing profusely)

Go home and make five salads and clean house before collapsing on couch.

2 December

Drive to work to collect Christmas tree holder to hold Christmas tree that Mr Fix had bought “as a surprise” the day before. Continue to clean house while Mr Fix files down Christmas tree and snaps Christmas tree holder in half. Swear under breath while Mr Fix drives to convenience store buy another one. Grizzlewick in paroxysm of over-excitement.

Host barbecue of own devising for twenty people and seven kids. Curse hot northerly winds and call work colleague’s wife by wrong name. Start several conversations without finishing them. Sweat profusely. Worry constantly about food. Worry about children and sunburn. Become hero of children by serving up chocolate ice cream in cones. Manage to drink only one glass of wine as it keeps going missing. Engender in guests that I am possessed of a half-dazed persona that will follow me for some time, and may yet interfere in my professional life.

Two guests turn up an hour after conclusion of barbecue. They bring wine. Drop a stubby on the kitchen floor and flood it with beer and shards of glass. Later that day, step on small shard of glass which embeds in my foot and requires home surgery by a Stanley-knife wielding Mr Fix.

Collapse on couch.


Weekend Two:

8 December

Drive to Melbourne. Forget to pack Christmas gifts for L’s family. Go to L’s house and eat copious amounts of cheese while watching our children play together. Fail to buy meat for Indeed’s barbecue. Go to barbecue at Indeed’s house. Make L (who drove me there) walk two blocks because convinced parking would not be available. Notice spare car park outside Indeed’s house. Chop an entire jar of capers before realizing they are not peppercorns. Spend hours watching Grizzlewick and Lovely (son of L) run around in Indeed’s back yard. Eat several barbecue treats. Drive exhausted children home to L’s house.

9 December

Drive home, leaving Grizzlewick’s doona and pillow behind and failing to deliver CDs and DVDs borrowed some months before. Drive across four lanes of traffic in order to stop at Red Rooster. Puzzle over the current toy offering which appears to be a blue flea with teeth which has wheels and flips itself over. Grizzlewick delighted. Gigglewick exhausted. Completely disappointed by Sunday night television.


Weekend Three:

15 December

Drive to parents’ house, drop off lawn mower. Drive to Melbourne via donut stop at local bakery. Mr Fix almost humiliates me by referring to my sister’s classmate by his nickname rather than his actual name (luckily not his worst nickname). Return to friend L’s house after begging another night due to lack of familial hospitality. Remember their gifts, as well as the CDs and DVDs I have borrowed. Bring cheese. Discover L and I have bought the same dip. Congratulate ourselves on good taste. Discuss Hobbes and the limits of sovereignty*

Visit J (de facto extra grandmother) and eat crackers while Grizzlewick tears apart her toy box. She gives him binoculars for Christmas. He is delighted and informs her they “work very properly”. Go out for dinner with Indeed and spend most of that time taking Grizzlewick to the toilet. Waitron brings incorrect food. Return to L’s house and spend some hours discussing religion and science and drinking more wine.

16 December

Awake to the dulcet tones of Grizzlewick and Lovely stomping on the floorboards at 6:20am despite a VERY late night the night before. Get up and watch them play while idly reading the new Slash “autobiography”** and drinking three cups of coffee. After an enormous breakfast of fried food for all, Grizzlewick and Lovely depart to Lovely’s room to deposit pretty much his entire bedroom contents through the front window onto the garden. Discipline ensues. Grizzlewick kicks me. Grizzlewick is further disciplined.

Realise Mr Fix has not confirmed the status of present-giving with his family (e.g presents or cards only). Spend harried morning in Essendon, Fitzroy and Prahran finishing off Christmas shopping with no belt for my pants, which fall down enough that you can see not only the top of my undies, but in fact a glimpse of leg below undies. Buy belt in $2 Shop.

Arrive at yum cha exhausted, but get great car park across the road from restaurant. Grizzlewick tries a variety of foods including fried scallops (“I don’t think I like that mummy”) and spring rolls (“they taste like chips!”). Grizzlewick distributes gifts to family – “Here you go Uncle B! It’s WINE!!!!”. MiL is pleased (although incapacitated) by slate placemats purchased after much agonizing over personal taste vs. other people’s taste.

Receive text message half-way through lunch to let me know that I have left Grizzlewick’s blankets at L’s house. Again. Visit L to pick up blankets and change clothes before drive home. Informed by Grizzlewick after a short but clearly inadequate nap that he likes “nothing, not even lollies” and that he “isn’t being naughty, he’s just grumpy”.

Read Grizzlewick a story about a farting dog before collapsing on the couch, rising only to dust house and make 90 second porridge for dinner. Cry during Erin Brockovich.as a result of utter exhaustion.

IS ANYONE ELSE LOOKING FORWARD TO CHRISTMAS I KNOW I AM.

* have I not mentioned that I am a civics nerd?

** I could be wrong, but I would argue that if they left out the phrase "...who had incredible tits" from this book, it would be half its current length.

Find me in my field of grass

Oo-er, I am naughty. How long is it since I’ve blogged? So so long.

And I have some random thoughts and questions for anyone still out there:

Does two slices of rolled-up ham and a hot milo constitute a satisfactory afternoon tea? It certainly felt that way at the time. Ham is a decidedly Christmasy food, isn’t it?

Why can’t I commit to Cane? It’s got all the things I like (with Nestor Carbonell and Jimmy Smits being merely two) but for some reason, I find myself channel surfing while it is on.

Is it wrong that I am pleased that after this weekend I have no major trips to anywhere before the New Year?

Mr Fix has had glandular fever this year, although the doctors aren’t sure when. This is a relief to me, as it means that probably three out of the four months that I spent telling him to “soldier on” I was completely justified, while that fourth month leaves me with some apologies due (already tendered, I might add)*.

The other night while I was on the phone, Grizzlewick got up (as he is wont to do at the moment) to announce that he was “going back to bed to sleep VERY HARD”. I don’t know what this means, but I do know that his mission was not achieved (or so he told me the next morning when he overslept by more than an hour….and consequently so did I).

Mr Fix and I recently celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. Apparently this is a completely appropriate occasion for people’s jaws to drop to the floor and them to accuse both partners of being ridiculous in their relationship longevity. Or otherwise, we are just a supremely good match. I say it’s the latter, because Mr Fix and I are agreed that we are EVEN MORE AWESOME now than we were in 1997 (naturally).

We are having very exciting house guests next week. It’s quite the delight. Although I am now fretting that my house is commensurately neat, tidy and clean. Impending House Guests – look out, and please ignore any grottiness/spiders. Also, my mad phone skillz departed me. Let us not speak of it again.

My son sometimes says I am “not his friend”. One of our other friends’ sons tells her she is a “bad lady”. I’m not sure which I prefer, but suspect we are both at that end of the year that this is mostly hilarious, which I’m sure is not our respective childrens’ intention.

If you plan to buy seven years worth of underwear at a closing down sale and have a size 12 arse, it’s best not to leave it until the last week of the closing down sale. Just sayin’.



* This of course is a joke. It is just a relief to know that Mr F. doesn't have anything serious, which has been our concern for a while now.

Things I hate (redux)

I have had a week of swings and roundabouts, where one moment everything is plummeting into a brontosaurus-sized pile of poo, then the next minute exalting itself in a myriad of pleasures. At the weekend I managed to lose a hubcap from my car, crack my windscreen and break a Christmas tree holder. On the upside, we had a lovely barbecue with all our friends, our car dealer replaced the hubcap for free and the windscreen is covered on insurance. But let’s not allow these trivial successes to distract from the real issue – which is my increasing irritation.

Christmas decorations that act as de facto “starting lines” for Christmas idiocy

I don’t know how it is where you live, but the moment the Council put up the Christmas decorations in the streets here, everyone went feral. Less than 24 hours later the number of cars on the road had doubled, people were elbowing me out of the way in the fruit store and wandering the streets wide-eyed with terror* about the approaching festive season. To the best of my knowledge, December began a short four days ago, and people really need to get some perspective**.

People who send rude, career-damaging circulars and then don’t retract accusations when proved to be wrong

Ccing emails to people who have the potential to be my future work colleagues with stinging accusations about alleged performance issues = evil. Especially when the person responsible for this has now had to admit to my ultimate superior*** that in fact they were wrong/tired and emotional/completely out of line. It’s the wrong thing that bothers me most – if I had done half the things I was accused of, I’d expect a rude email to be sent at very least to me. But not only did this person fail to check their facts, they sent a blistering email to five other senior people. The person responsible is yet to send an email correcting the record to the long list of people to whom they sent the original email. This is not the first time this has happened to me, so I’m fully prepared for the notion that they will do nothing of the kind, leaving the accusations unchecked except by me, and clearly I have a vested interest. Luckily it appears that this person is being seen for the puce-faced, unbalanced, huffing hysteric that they are.

Toilet rolls

No, that’s not true. They’re a functional item to be sure. But I hate it when you’re trying to carefully “start” a new toilet roll and the paper rips into a thousand tiny strips, necessitating the tearing fifteen metres worth of paper to solve the problem and not look like you've had the kind of panicked toilet visit usually only experienced after your first meal of meet in six months****.

Stupid, thoughtless Christmas gifts

I’m going to assume that no members of my family are reading this blog, when I reveal that a member of my extended family once gave each and every male relative a pair of jocks and a nutcracker for Christmas*****. She did this with no sense of irony. In fact, she could not figure out why people were sniggering. The same year, she gave all the women in the family nylon lace teddies in a variety of hideous colours. Wrong wrong wrong. Most people can open their Christmas gifts without an impending sense of doom. Not in our family, you can’t.

Hot northerly winds

They can just get f-cked.

Forgetting my lunch (which is not the same as “losing my lunch”, although I hate that too)

This isn’t a regular occurrence, but it really does bother me when I go to all the trouble to make a lunch, and then leave it at home. I have no one to blame for this but myself. But that doesn’t make me any less cross about it.



* that could just be me.

** although I am in a position to be smug, as I have done most of my Christmas shopping. I may well stay home for the rest of the month.

*** Not God.

**** not that I'd know anything about that.

***** Did I blog about this last Christmas? I'm clearly not over it.