Gonna Eat A Lotta Peaches...

Well it's been a ridiculously long time since I last blogged and an awful lot has happened. I will recap the events of the last couple of years, as briefly as possible...although given I am an A grade waffler, you might want to get cup of tea and sedate the children so you have an uninterrupted hour or so...Right then. 
1. Sold house in Auckland. This spawned a new term in our household "reno cramming". Reno Cramming is when you have to finish every single incomplete piece of reno work you have ever started over the last 16 years - all 427 of them - in three months. All whilst working full time and beating down the urge to smother your spouse in his sleep because, you know, he is helping with the 427 incomplete jobs.
2. Pack up said house once sold.  "House" is evil and hides copious amounts of tat in small dark cupboards. 
3. Pack up small country cottage on loan from family. Discover cottage is "House's" cousin, twice removed, and clearly has tardis in it's lineage.
4. Purchase decent sized house in rural northland thinking it will hold all of the contents of House and Tardis. Wrong. After 17th truck and trailer load is delivered and no end in sight, rock in the corner, chanting and swigging on a bottle of anything alcoholic.  Lather, rinse, repeat for several weeks. 
5.Settle in to life in the country.  There is no alarm clock but there are two staffy puppies and five angry ducks if not let out at the appropriate hour. 
6. Accept that we are crap at raising animals for food, sheep destined for Christmas dinner become pet lawn mowers and every living creature on this property will die of old age after having cost us a kings ransom in food bills over the course of it's life...and so we will indeed be eating a lot of peaches. 

So that kind of sums up the last few years. There are no trendy cafes or shops, Israeli couscous is akin to ground unicorn penis in these parts and grocery shopping must be planned with military precision if you are to have enough on hand to eat well between visits to the supermarket, which really IS a cut lunch trip. I'd be lying if I said it was all beer and skittles from the first day - it wasn't.  There was a slightly painful period (more rocking, chanting, alcohol, see item 4. above) of adjustment from busy corporate rat race contestant, to busy puppy trainer, duck wrangler, fencing, gardening, lawnmowing lifestyle blocker. I traded posh leather boots for redbands, any sort of hairstyle for a Himalayan yeti hat, and smart coats and jackets for AgFleece.  I knew for certain I had settled into my new life the day I was heard asking the dogs where my "good crocs" had gone. But as a lifestyle change, I can thoroughly recommend it.  Agfleece, Crocs and all.

Morning Glory

I have never been good in the mornings.  My children learnt at a very young age not to make any shrill noises or sudden movements between the hours of 5.30 and 8.30am and to this day, they tiptoe down to my room and approach with extreme caution should they happen to visit any time before 9.00am.  In spite of having been born and raised in humble surroundings, some small distant cell within me has always known that I am a princess and as such, should be left to sleep until noon before being gently woken by the “help” quietly placing the breakfast tray on the softly lit bedside table.  The reality is somewhat different.  I will explain. 

5.10am alarm goes off.  Desperate fumble in the dark to try and shut the damn thing off, usually resulting in last night’s glass of water being tipped over and pouring all over the bedside table…clock is still making shrill pipping noises at this point.  Switch for bedside lamp miraculously located in the dark – blinding light fills my side of the room. Clock is smashed located and alarm turned off.  Light is left on to stop myself going back off to sleep.  Eyes closed, brain desperately trying to A. wake up and B. cope with blinding light.  I must lie perfectly still for a few minutes and come to terms with being awake at this hour if I am not to start the day with a stabbing.  Sometimes, against all odds, I doze for a moment. It is at that point, when I am drifting peacefully between sleep and wakefulness, that Mertyl, my beautiful little tri coloured familiar, launches herself, projectile like, from the bedroom door onto my very full bladder. 

I resign myself to the fact I may be a princess, but there is NO help arriving with the breakfast tray, and if I don’t get up shortly, Mertyl will re-launch.  I get out of bed, try desperately to get my legs to work in anything other than a drunk spastic fashion, bump my way to the bathroom before attacking the stairs (if there is to be enough momentum gathered to actually stay upright AND make it up the stairs, everything must be done at pace,  in an assertive fashion at this point  ) to organise MY OWN breakfast. A very risky business indeed given ones hands and brain have not yet co-ordinated.  At least one item is spilt or dropped during the process. The dropped item will triple in volume as soon as it hits the floor.  The spilt item will usually be scalding hot and land on the coldest part of my body causing a nausea inducing spike in adrenalin. Breakfast is eventually assembled at which point I limp take it back to bed to eat at a leisurely pace whilst catching up on the events of the world on my iPad.

At NO POINT during the time between the alarm going off and the pouring of the tea (towards the end of the breakfast eating/iPad surfing ritual) should there be talking or questions.  Scott is aware of this rule. Once, a very long time ago, there was an ugly incident where he tried to engage in conversation, including questions, before the tea was poured.  Although he seems to be able to function perfectly well without the tip of his right ear, he is not keen to repeat the experience and has very conveniently arranged all of his exercise sessions to take place at the crack of dawn (madness - and a WHOLE other blog for another day...) 

Although this means I have to get my own breakfast (dangerous -  per above) the upside is there is no risk of having to converse with anyone other than the cat, although after the early morning bladder stomp, I'm not sure I am speaking to her at all...

Bad Hair & Buttons

It all started with the very rash decision to pop round the corner for a fringe trim. With a whole four weeks to wait for my next appointment with my fabulous hairdresser, and my fringe resembling bad jelly the witch's, it desperately needed a bit of a tidy up. In my defence, I did have some concerns about going to somewhere new, but I foolishly smothered the earworm screaming "don't do it!!" and in my desperation to look less like a mop, overrode it with “hey, it’s a fringe trim, how much harm can they do”…OH. MY. CHRIST.  This guy here:

We could be twins right now. I’m not quite sure how it could all go so horribly wrong in such a short space of time.  She didn’t SEEM to be pissed. I didn't detect any alcohol on her  breath.  Both her eyes APPEARED to be in good working order…I suppose it is possible that I nodded off and she whipped the pudding bowl out and placed it on my head BEFORE I woke myself with my own snoring, but I feel sure I would have noticed something as heavy as that being placed on my head…whatever the case may be, and whatever she did, she did it quickly, badly and with long reaching consequences. I’ve had a bit of a crack at fixing it as best I can but that has only made it slightly less horrendous. Thank goodness we are retreating to the farm where there are only cows and the odd duck to frighten...still, it's only for two days and it's going to take a LOT longer than that for this to repair itself. 

It's ironic that being part french, my OTHER facial hair seems to grow at a rapid rate, and that a brilliantly cut fringe grows out in what feels like five minutes whilst a badly hacked bowl cut seems to stop growing altogether for weeks on end. 

In an attempt to console myself, I hit the Wendy’s drive through and then proceeded to stuff my face with hot soothing chips.  Then went to the op shop and found some FABULOUS packets of old buttons.  Buttons are very high up on the treasure scale of 1 to 10, 1 being soot and poo and 10 being a rare and expensive piece of crown lynn…or a skull of some sort. Actually, skulls are 11, but  never mind.  Buttons are about an 8. 

The chips and the buttons have made me feel slightly better, so long as I avoid mirrors I can almost forget I look like Blackadder the fourth.  Suffice to say I have three alcoholic ginger beers chilling in the fridge for the ride between work and home…it’s only a 20 min car ride but you can never be too careful. Would hate to run out. I am a princess afterall...

Fresh is Best

As a keen vege gardener, earth/kitchen witch, foodie And of course Princess,  it's fair to say I have fairly strong opinions on the freshness of food, what goes into our food and whether or not it passes the all important taste test. 

At the risk of sounding like a righteous purist foodie pratt, we seldom eat takeaways, much preferring to make delicious food from scratch, often using ingredients just picked from the garden, and I would rather eat raw goats testicles than a ready made, boxed frozen anything from the supermarket. But as much as I might wish it,  I don't have 100% control over the entire food production industry on the planet so there exists a multitude of ready made products masquerading as food. There have been times when we have ventured out of the safety of our own kitchen and been subjected to these imposters. I refer to those times as traumatic food experiences or TFE's (can also stand for "terrible fucking everything" if the outing is a complete disaster) And I have a rating system for them.  TFE's ranked between one and three are up there with puppy beating and mud running events. Here are just a few that make that grade:

TFEs 1-3

1. Ready made Cheese sauce from a plastic packet.  Is basically  genetically modified paint and I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be a skerrick of difference in flavour (and I use that term loosely) if you threw the plastic packaging in and heated that through at the same time...

2. Frozen ready made pizza, tasteless tenderised cardboard, you might as well be eating the box for all the flavour and goodness you get from it.

3. Frozen fish crumbed with flavoured partical board. An abomination.

4. Gravy powder. Salt and dirt.  An abomination

5. Margarine, two chemicals away from being hair removal cream. I swear I've accidentally swiped margarine across my upper lip area and haven't had to wax for three months in spite of my aggressive French facial hair gene.

6. Canned asparagus. Should be illegal. Looks (AND TASTES)  like the unwanted residue from a paper pulping operation.. And if you've never had fresh asparagus cut from the garden and in the pot in under ten minutes,  you have not lived.

So there you have it, some of the worst offenders.  I find I can generally avoid TFE's if I never visit a student flat, flats of teenage offspring, homes with a high ratio of doilies to table tops (nests of table is another give away) or food halls. I mean, I am a princess afterall...

Dolly

As is often the way in the Murray household, one word has multiple meanings. Today's word is "Dolly". It is my nickname for my husband and my dearest friends and it is also my own nickname. I make quirky soft dollies, zombies and monsters and the like, and I don't think they are in the least bit creepy. Today, "Dolly" took on a whole new meaning. Trawling through an online auction site in search of plastic or porcelain dolls to behead and turn into slightly macabre ornamentation, I made an alarming discovery...dolls with serious creepfactor - I'm talking "you are required to carry out some sort of manual labour" or "your mother in law is moving in for a month" creepfactor. I will explain... Below is a cross section of the dollies available on the website – I’m sure you will very quickly see my point…

Title: Gorgeous old doll

Clearly the seller is delusional or suffering from temporary blindness. Title SHOULD read, “slightly creepy dolly with uneven fake tan and man boobs”

Title: Little Princess Mould

 

Should perhaps read "Little mouldy princess"?? I'm not sure but people – I am a princess and I can assure you this bears no resemblance to me or any other royal entity except maybe the Queen Mother – three years after they buried her.

Title: Vogue Baby

 

Again – delusional. Ginger children with badly cut hair have never and WILL never be in vogue.

Title: Two old dolls

 

These two are so creepy they’ve scared the crap out of each other – either that or they are trying to run away from the small ginger child with the badly cut hair…

Title: Old Doll

 

No shit Sherlock. If she wasn’t old her title would have read “doll with flesh eating disease of the face and ugly green cardigan”. Perhaps a more fitting description but a little acidic as far as marketing slogans go...

I could go on but I don’t think I have to…like I said, major creepfactor  - you were warned. Now I am going to go and wash my eyes out with bleach and pretend I never saw some of these images.., and try NOT to shriek too loudly when someone next calls me Dolly...

Santa's Gift

The popular belief held by children the western world over, nurtured by their selectively honest parents, is that Santa visits after they have gone to sleep on Christmas Eve and drops all manner of wonderful presents down the chimney for them. I have recently discovered that what Santa ACTUALLY drops down the chimney on Christmas Eve is 5 extra kilos of trouser stretching fat for every adult in the house. I know this because Roger told me so (readers of earlier episodes will be familiar with Roger as our lying nasty bastard bathroom scales).

In an effort to shift these extra kilos, I have had to limit my daily ginger biscuit intake to zero (apparently my usual minimum of eight in one sitting is unacceptable) and I have taken to trialling new recipes written by those slightly more frugal with the calorie budget than me. Apparently “plenty of cream, butter, olive oil and sugar, not necessarily in that order” type recipes are also unacceptable unless you are only eating a thimble full at any one time.

Now any recipe downloaded from somewhere called “Healthy every bloody thing, put that chocolate bar down fatty” dot com is not going to set the culinary world on fire. Still, some are better than others. Some are actually edible. Some are not. Some call for ingredients such as borlotti beans. The can says “beans with slightly sweet nutty flavour”. Such lies. What it SHOULD have said was “beans with the consistency of earwax and tasting like arse”.

Another favourite ingredient in the recipes seems to be low fat, unsweetened yoghurt. The fact it looks like a giant bird poo in a pot should be reason enough not to include it in anything you intend to eat, but if that is not warning enough and you foolishly taste said product, you will soon find out that it is actually enamel paint watered down with food grade anti- freeze – or at least that is what it tastes like.

I could go on, but I won't - suffice to say, it seems everything delicious is banned and anything that is runny, watery and tasteless is used in abundance.

I was beginning to think there was next to nothing I could actually eat that didn't induce feelings of dire deprivation OR make me retch, or BOTH, when I discovered that Slingers (my fab made up cocktail recipe fit for a Princess)are not recorded in any of the calorie counting systems I have found thus far. I have taken this as a sign from the gods that Slingers are free of all calories and can therefore safely form the bottom of my food pyramid, whilst borlotti beans and low fat, unsweetened yoghurt can sit right at the tippy top next to dog poo, semi raw chicken and spreadable unicorn penis paste, and it will be "off with his head" for anyone who dares to suggests otherwise...

The Pitfalls of Travelling Light

I have proven beyond a shred of a doubt that travelling without at least 18 pieces of matched luggage, no matter where the destination or how short the duration of the trip, causes illness and vomiting. I will explain…

We recently trekked into deepest darkest Northland to deliver Christmas presents to our eldest daughter and her wee cherubs. It was a day trip and therefore required us to get up at the ungodly hour of 7am with the aim of being on the road by 8am. Therein lies the first problem. Just one hour to wake, eat breakfast, shower, arrange hair and make up into a state fit for public consumption AND get dressed. Yes, uncivilized I know, but I managed it. Only just. And I think it was in the mad rush to pick clothing in such stressful circumstances that the beginnings of “THE HEADACHE” took root.

Slightly traumatized by the early start, I felt candy floss was in order to settle the tummy and the head, so when we stopped for supplies at 10am I bought an industrial sized portion usually reserved for large gatherings of small children. It was practically morning tea time and therefore the PERFECT time for a pink sugar bomb guaranteed to induce a sugar coma later in the day, in my humble opinion.

We arrive at our destination and I have the beginnings of a real thumper. It was at this point that I realized I did not have bag number two which contained my dazzling array of meds, nor did I have bag number three which contains back up meds in case bag number two is running low. My sub bag in my handbag was empty of said meds and my knitting/craft bag had also been left at home. I had foolishly tried to travel with just ONE bag, and it was totally lacking in anything that resembled pharmaceutical relief.

We head off home after a few boisterous hours with our wee grandbebes, and by this time I am in a serious state. My feet were blocks of ice (I put that down to shock and lack of decent bathroom facilities anywhere enroute) and my head was about to pop. Throw in Scott trying to wrap me in a ghastly grey dog blanket to warm me up, and a winding Northland backblock goat track and BINGO. Instant large piles of bright red vomit. Most unbecoming for a Princess to be projectile vomiting on the side of the road, let me tell you. I can only be thankful we WERE in the backblocks of Northland and therefore the only person there to witness my misery was Scott.

He blames the whole episode entirely on the candy floss. I feel it was a combination of a multitude of traumas with the ugliness of the grey blanket and the scratchiness of it against my delicate skin being the final straw. We have agreed to disagree on the cause of the spectacularly large amount of red vomit, but whatever the cause, it has been a lesson well learnt. I will never travel with anything less than bags one, two and three, my knitting/craft bag, feather pillow with 600 thread count slip, small, soft and attractive travel blanket and a bag of emergency toiletries, just to be on the safe side. Anything less is just asking for trouble.