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So. It’s Saturday afternoon, I have had approx. 4 hours sleep (3.5 the night before and a 30min nanna nap), I’m seriously dehydrated and I know that there’s a huge family gathering about to occur at which will be more of Mike’s family than I’m ever likely to see in the one place again! Oh, and a Bluegrass band - BLUEGRASS!!!! I reluctantly pull my stockings and hot pants on and wonder should I really bother with the knee-high boots or just go in my slippers??

Luckily I come to my senses and go the actual footwear… but I can’t be bothered with eyemakeup…

So I scrape myself together and inbetween yawns tell Mike’s cousin and his partner that I’ll come good - I always do… I promise I won’t pike! PROMISE!

We go to this amazing house in Sandy Bay on a hill with a view I would happily kill for and we’re pretty much the first to arrive. The prawns are still thawing and the gas heater is just starting to fire up.

I get started on a light beer. Mistake number one. A few hours into the party and all the over 50’s are getting quite merry and the under 50’s are spastic and I’m still sober and yawning and thinking about calling a cab to go home to bed…. I feel I’m letting the team down. They were expecting fireworks and I’ve delivered a bic lighter that’s just run out of butane.

So, I bite the bullet and dive headlong into a Cascade Draught - and then another, and another… and before I know it I’m dancing to the bluegrass band, following Uncle Robert’s wife around coz she seems to know where all the secret bottles of champagne are and begging Stef’s partner (soon to be wifey!!!) Sharnee to come and find a kareoke bar with me!!!

Mike had to drag me away from the place to go home (much to the dismay of a large group of leering men old enough to be my father!!) kicking and screaming! “NOOOOOO!! I’m not ready to go home! I’ll just stay here - you guys go! I’ll be FIIIIIIIIIINE!!!!”

Sure. I would have been fine. Until the key-swapping started….

So we all came home and the night ended in us all applying rockstar eyemakeup to each other, Stef playing guitar like a pro and me playing banjo like the banjo-pickin whore I am and then going to bed!

Awesome fun!

BUT - I really outta make some kind of public apology to my liver… although if it wasn’t so good at processing the toxins…. well….

Mike went to Melbourne so he could go on a bar tour with his cousin and his cousin’s partner who had recently arrived from teaching in Japan. I was invited but due to my status as mother and the distinct lack of child minding services that operate overnight and on a weekend I had to stay home.

I thought hmmmmm…. home alone…. how lovely! Some time to myself! I can sit on the couch and watch crappy tv and eat Tim Tams for tea… and that’s pretty much what I did the first night of husband-less-ness! I put Felix to bed as soon as I could, stuck some oven-bake chips in to heat up and made instant gravy from a sachet. That’s right. From a sachet.

It was GREAT!

And then I started watching the Footy Show, got tired and lay down on the couch and went to sleep!

And when I woke up there was a cat on me and a plate of smeared gravy next to my head - like I said - it was GREAT!!!

So the next night I decided I’d had enough of being alone and sensible and called a Girl’s Night In.

Started quite sensibly too… until everyone went home except Jules and then her partner Pedro turned up!

Let’s just say the night ended with us drinking everything I had in the house, smoking rollies and attempting to straighten Pedro’s hair - which let me tell you - is the curliest hair I have ever seen!!

I got up the next morning when Felix started chirping having had roughly 3.5 hours sleep and was immediatley greeted by an entire house of empty bottles and pizza boxes and a comb completely clogged with a large amount of Pedro’s curly locks in the bathroom sink… gah!

So I cleaned up while my head throbbed and I wondered if I could drive to the airport to pick Mike, Stef and Sharnee up without being pulled over by the cops…

I made it - although we did need to stop at Mcdonald’s on the way home so I could get some grease to ease the hangover. Now this all would be just fine if i didn’t have the mother of all family events to attend that night - Uncle Robert’s 60th - and also a reputaion to uphold… I began to wonder if I was really going to be able to keep my crown as the Family Drunkard - or would I just go to sleep in my light beer?

To Be Continued……….

I’ve decided I’m a Ladette.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, let me explain… A Ladette is basically the female equivelant of a Lad. A Lout. She behaves in an uncooth fashion and rivals most men in the drinking stakes. So essentially, a ladette as far as I can tell just likes a bloody good time!

I came to this realisation on the weekend. It was my cousin’s son’s 1st birthday party - now I can only imagine what you’re thinking: “Hmmmm, 1st birthday party, how could you play up at a 1st birthday party?”

Answer: EASY!

Kids went to sleep about 7pm, I noticed the boys were doing shots at the kitchen sink and was over there in a flash!

Now one thing you should know before I go on, is that my family are commonly known as human sponges. As in: they soak up liquor like nobody’s business. This is largely because they’re not small people. There’s a whole lotta body to soak up the alcohol! But I guess I must still have the genes for it because I’m not a large lass - on the contrary I’m a bit on the light side… but drink with the Big Boys I did!

Shots of port my cousin had had since his 21st birthday, liqourice flavoured Sambuka, aged whiskey from my grandfather’s bar (I have a slight suspicion that someone had actually replaced it with drain-cleaner… ouch!), something that we can only assume was Tequila but couldn’t read the label, and some other shit I can’t remember!

Anyway, my point here is, that I shouldn’t drink with the boys. It’s unattractive.

Or is it?

Maybe it’s just unattractive to people too afraid to do it themselves. Maybe, if everyone felt they were on an equal footing, and just let their hair down and had a good time without feeling that they had to uphold some archaic, glorified ideal of what it is to exist as their respective sex, we’d all have a lot more fun.

I am a mother. That makes things a little more complicated of course. But I still commit myself fully to that role. I got up at 7:30am with the biggest fucking hangover I’ve had in two years and proceeded to make breakfast for husband and child and play boisterously with the kiddies despite my churning tummy and pounding head.

So, yeah, I play hard, way harder than most people, but I work hard too. I’m a ladette for sure - but I’m a mother and a wife first… lucky for me I think all three seem to go together pretty nicely

xxx

PS

Doing shots with my cousin and his wife was awesome - love you guys! If that makes me a bad person in the eyes of some then so-be-it! I don’t care! I wouldn’t trade that night for anything!

I’m feeling sentimental. I always do at Easter. About 5 years ago our friends and us went to stay at my Pop’s shack at The Great Lake. It was a fabulous time. We each took turns in cooking dinner and started drinking beer at 11 o’clock in the morning and finished drinking at 1am every night. We all put on weight and ate bacon and sausages like they were the last food on the planet

The days were crisp and clear and we’d play cricket on the blue-metal driveway in our pyjamas.. some days we wouldn’t even get out of them!

And then in the evening Kylie and I would stay and drink beer on the deck while the boys went and tried to catch fish (a fruitless excercise just for the record!).

We’d eat bacon for breakfast, do jigsaws, buy takeaway beer from the pub that nearly sent us broke and watch football on the tiny tv.

We played cards - crib, hearts (we called it Hunt The Cunt!), 500, UNO.

And we just sat in the mustiness of someone else’s shack and enjoyed it.

The smell of wood fires, old carpet, folded linen, barbequed chops, cold air and laughter are still there if I close my eyes.

I remember getting up one morning and I was the first awake, it was about 7am and I went outside into the morning and it was the most beautiful day I’ve ever seen. The lake was literally glass and the sky was the deepest, purest blue nature has ever made and somewhere on the horizon the two met. It was perfection. My head was throbbing and my mouth was dry from our mammoth drinking session but behind me my favourite people slept and the future stretched on in front of me like the deeep, clean, blue of the sky.
Flannelette pyjamas, a dodgy booze fridge in the freezing cold of the laundry, the wood heater cranked up so hot that we all started feeling dozy, and Kylie and I sneaking out for a fag on the deck in the freezing quiet of night while the boys looked on in good humour.

All these things make me feel sentimental. Such a great time. How can I explain to you the smell of hot walls as the fire got too hot or the laughter as we try to clean up the impossibly excessive pile of empties?!

It was my happiest time - which is not meant to diminish any other happy times I’ve had since, I just mean that if i was about to die - they are the times I would think of.

And when Easter comes each year - that’s what I think of.

And that’s what I’m thinking of now.

Happy Easter xxx

I just took Felix to Melbourne. On my own. Yes, I am a glutton for punishment! (those of you who know me will know I’m also a beacon for all kinds of trouble and chaos too!)

It was great tho. He loved it! On the plane as it was taking off most of the kiddies were wailing - not my kid tho… my little man was yelling “FASTER! FASTER!” at the top of his lungs!!!!

So we hung out with my bro out in the suburbs and then I got gloriously pissed with him and his partner back in my hotel room. Holy crap. We had a bottle of bubbles between the two of us and then I drank 12 middies.

Yes. That’s right - I said 12. Admittadly they were only middies but still - TWELVE! Gah! So I got to bed about 2ish and Felix dutifully woke me at around 6:30 I ignored him reasonably successfully for another hour but then I had to get up and face the inevitable hangover…

and not only that but my bro had left his car at my hotel (he was in NO condition to drive!) so I had to drive his car in the outer suburbs of Melbourne… now I only learnt to drive a couple of years ago and I’ve only been driving properly for about the last 3 months so you can see what a big thing that was for me! I had to drive on the Princes Hwy for God’s sake! And just quietly, I’m fairly confident that I was still a bit pissed I’m not proud of that and I don’t advocate drink driving, but you know, it’s not like I had a small child improperly restrained in a booster seat instead of an actual car seat in the back… no wait…. wow… I really am a bad mother!

Oh well - at least Felix will have had a fun upbringing… I hope he looks back and thinks that his mummy was always laughing (and possibly driving on the wrong side of the road) and happy and having fun…

On Friday night I told Amanda to come to our office for a glass of bubbles to celebrate her new job… but I didn’t tell her i’d invited a few other people to help her celebrate as well :-X

It was a sweet night… just a total impromptu gathering of random people in our office with kids running wild and booze running out.

The pub next door (yep bit of a recurring theme there i know!) even offered us a tab!!! We drank everything we had stashed in the fridge and then went to get more… and more… and then some fish and chips….

it was so much fun but the only thing was that we had our offspring with us… not a huge hassle coz we have a port-a-cot there so we stuck him in there when he got tired BUT, we still had to get him home when all the frivolity dwindled down to a dull headache…hmmmmm…

So we staggered home at about 11:30 pm thru the city - pissed as nits - with our kid on my back in one of those pack-things, staggering, with open stubbies in our hands, child in daddy’s jumper because naturally we hadn’t brought any warm clothes for him 

We chatted to drunks along the way, slurred to each other, and secretly hoped the police didn’t take our child off us!!!

Aaaahhh, it’s so wrong isn’t it?! But he had a great time - and so did we. It’s a beautiful thing to be able to piss it up with your mates and have the kids entertaining themselves - I LOVE MY LIFE!!!!

Oh yeah - just a little addendum: the cleanup was awful. Rancidly-off fish and chips and champagne festering in the heat or our office - yum! Let’s just say that the plates were STUCK to the table!!!

Still, it was totally worth it!

xxx

Ok, so slight backdown on my part. I have ranted and raved in the past about how abhorrant middies are and that they have no right to be drunk and that I would publicly ridicule anyone who partook of them in my presence… right well…. it seems I MAY have changed my mind

Thanks to - of all things - VB! Their midstrength beer not only tastes great but doesn’t bloat me at all. Normally I don’t see the point in drink anything other than full strength beer but here’s my quandry: I drink so much and have such a ridiculous tolerance to it that I have been getting spastic every night and becuase there’s no hangover the next day - I just keep doing it! I’ve decided that since I’m actually losing large chunks of each evening that I need to cut down.

So I tried… and failed miserably….

I think I just like a certain amount of beers, like 5 or 6 per evening… it’s just the habit I’m sure but 5 or 6 full strength beers coupled with the fact that I frequently forget to eat dinner equals mass brain-cell death!

BUT, if I drink middies I still FEEL like I’m drinking the same amount but I can still actually remember how I made it to bed and why I’m wearing a pair of my husband’s shoes…. (that’s a memory I’d really like to have back…)

So, I’ve been converted.

We’re all allowed to change! But I still wouldn’t touch xxxx Gold with someone else’s hand - just for the record

xxx

Our mates came over today to watch some cricket, drink some beer and just generally catch up. We’ve been friends for years - kind of a chance meeting through my old place of work - but we’ve been firm friends ever since. We all love a drink, love to have a good time and love each other!

So we lazed about on the couches watching the Indian innings and saw a couple of wickets fall, we downed a few stubbies and the kids played happily with one another in the background.

Then the boys buggered off to the pub and us laydees stayed behind to do our motherly duties. It was just great tho, watching the kids interact. Felix is just a little bit younger than his friend Mia, but he’s just getting to the age where he can start playing and actually comprehending simple instructions (yay!). So the pair of them tore around the place and giggled and screeched together and I felt happy and proud. It’s taken nearly two years, but i finally feel I know what it’s all about now.

When you see your child getting two biscuits out of the bowl and placing them both in his little friend’s hand… well, you know why you bred in the first place.

A gorgeous day - gorgoeous people and plenty of beer.

Perfection!

Last night I had to open a couple of Stellas in the dark… (never mind why!) and you’d think it should be easy but I assure you it isn’t! It made me think of all the times I’ve been caught without a bottle opener but still with the overwhelming desire to drink the import in front of me…

I remembered the time I was at my friend’s 30th and we had to use a dessert spoon to open our bottles… you kind of lever the spoon against the 3rd knuckle of your index finger and supposedly the top just pops of effortlessly.

Bollocks.

I tried it and although I did manage to open my beer, I damn well needed to skoll it as pain relief after I felt a divot come out of my metacarple bone! It hurt sooooooooooo much - I immediately bruised, swelled and had to pretend neither had happened just to save face infront of the boys.

Then there was the time we got stuck bottle-opener-less again and were pulling the bottles sharply down onto the table so the top just caught on the edge of the table and would hopefully fly off somewhere around the room… except my husband got too carried away and ended up smashing the top AND the neck of the bottle off. Nice one.

Oh yeah, and my cousin taught me to open a twist-top with the underside of my forearm… never mind that I could just have done it with my freaking hand and avoided the bottle top sized bruise on my wrist - I can open a bottle of beer with my skinny little forearm! Yeah! That’ll impress the men-folk!

Anyway - I got into the Stellas without too much trouble and was just thankful I was using an implement actually designed for opening bottles and not cutlery, a table or my own skeletal frame!

Cheers

Yesterday it snowed. It’s summer. And it snowed. I wanted to be mad about it - I really did… all that freaking cold air and the pointlessness of shaving one’s legs… but to be truthful I wasn’t mad…

I liked it. It was snug and warm inside and it made me think of the early darkness in winter and the smell of woodfires.   All of a sudden I WANTED it to be winter and for there to be a raging storm beating on the windows and to have footy on the tv and soup on the stove.

And stout. I wanted to be drinking stout.

Yesterday was a stout day. There’s only one thing I like better than a glass of sweet, figgy muscat by a roaring fire in winter and that’s a big dirty stout!

Bonox in a bottle. Liquid Marmite. A Meal in a Can.

It’s definitely not to everybody’s liking, in fact I know some people truly can’t stand it. But I want to plead with you - next time it’s winter and you’re reaching for the opened bottle of red - try a stout instead. You might surprise yourself…

or you might throw up a little in your mouth and tip it down the sink… but at least you’ll have given it a try!

It was warm again today - not stout weather any more.

Shaving legs weather.

Dammit.