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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

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

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.

This morning I woke up with a car in my bed.

A yellow, toy car.

I had slept the whole night with it in the bed and I didn’t notice. It’s a new low. Next I’ll be forgetting where I live, slopping beetroot down the front of myself and drinking port and lemonade… oh it’s a slippery slope…

Toy cars aside - my husband has gone to play lawn bowls. I know. LAWN BOWLS!! He assures me it’s ‘cool’. My only thought was surely the beer is still 1972-cheap but apparently not. So why is he there? What could possibly be the attraction?!  Why would you go somewhere filled with a disproportionate amount of senior citizens to physically exert yourself (albeit it minimally) and pay full price for your drinks? There’s a place you can go to where you don’t have to lift a finger except to indicate that you would like another pot - it’s called a PUB!

I’m bitter. He’s left me with no beer. I have 3 Cascade Stouts that have been in the fridge for a year and I’m drinking them - but I’m not happy about it. I like stout in winter. In summer it’s just wrong!

I’m going to go stick that toy car under his pillow now.  I should staple it to the mattress - that’d teach him to leave me with no beer!

Hmmmfff!

Lately I have taken to drinking beer warm. Body temperature warm.

Not by choice, but just because that’s the only way I can manage to consume an entire can. It’s kinda for the same reason that I can’t seem to drink a cup of coffee while it’s still hot and not starting to resemble cooling tarmac… because I can’t seem to get to either of them in time.

I have taken on a new project which is to sew handbags and cushions for a funky new homewares store that is due to open at the end of November. I’m really exited about it because it’s a huge oppertunity for me. And it sounds so perfect doesn’t it? Being creative, working from home where I can tend to my delightful family, keep house, and generally be domestically goddess-like…

uh, right…

this is what my house looks like at the moment:

the living room looks like an illegal sweat-shop - except there are more breaches of OH&S, on top of the carpet there is another carpet made entirely of cotton threads, the bathroom is so fluffy it has now become an intricately woven mohair jumper, something smells like it has died in my kitchen (it probably has), Felix’s sheets actually stripped themselves and hopped into the washing machine in disgust and there appears to be a small family of badgers living in the pile of clothes next to my bed…

Also at this time when everything dangerous in the house has to be out at once - ie scissors, needles, pins, sewing machine, prozac - Felix has decided to wholly become his alter ego: Accident Man.

So, in between sewing my creations and attempting to keep everyone from coming down with scurvy, I find I am also losing a little bit more of my sanity every time I hear a crash and the inevitable pain-scream.

I have started just scooping Accident Man up and automatically putting a towel over my shoulder because inevitably there is blood and I’m sick of having a permanent shoulder pad made of blood, tears and booger.

After the screaming has died down and I have restored some semblance of order to the house, this is about when i realise I had made myself a coffee 2 hours ago. And, now, this is truly indicative of how my standards have plummetted since beoming a parent, I just think - Oh! A coffee! It’s stone cold, but at least i don’t have to make one now!

And I drink it.

Cold.

And I don’t care.

So, it’s the same with my beloved beer. When once i would have turned up my nose at anything less than freezing in temperature, now my first thought is - I KNEW I’d left a beer around here somewhere - WOO-HOO!!!

Just between you and me, I’ve been scouting about the place this morning - looking beneath the cotton thread carpet, in between the illegal sweat-shop workers and the family of badgers - just in case I did leave a half drunk beer somewhere around… coz I could really go a beer now.

Even if it is warm and starting to ferment into something else…

I usually have something sarcastic to say. But not tonight. Tonight I just want to say how wonderful summer bbqs are. They are the epitomy of peace. Meat burning on the searing plate. Beer going warm in your hand.

Tonight we had a summer bbq. It’s only spring, but it was a summer evening, the three of us sat and ate our fatty, gristly meat together, grinning through charcoal crusted teeth, squinting into the setting sun.

It was great. It was just how I imagined parenthood would be. Before I actually had a kid and then realised I would never eat a hot and/or complete meal again without a serious case of indigestion and a nervous twitch in one or both my eyes.

Anyway. It was lovely.

A moment to be treasured.

I’m just grateful I’d only had one beer so I can actually remember it…

There haven’t been many posts lately. Sorry. It’s Facebook’s fault. I think I’m developing a problem… there’s probably a medical term for it already…

The thing with facebook is that it’s all fine and dandy to send a keg to 12 of your top friends or give a cask of wine to a special classy laydee, but ultimately it’s not actually a keg you’re sending them is it? It’s a picture of one. It’s not real. Facebook is a fantasy world where admittedly it’s fun and fluffy and everyone is your friend, but people are rated as being heavyweight drinkers because their friends have sent them 50 million fake drinks. That’s just wrong. You’re only a heavyweight drinker if you can drink an entire slab and still remember to urinate in the toilet and not in your pants. And that’s a real slab and a real piss I’m talking about here!

Don’t get me wrong - I love facebook and I love to send drinks to people but let’s keep it real guys. Take a night off facebook. Actually buy a friend a drink. A real drink. At a real pub…

you can take photos of it and post it on your facebook page…

Last night I tried Bitburger for the first time. It was a lovely dry little drop. Quite hoppy and flavoursome. The reason I tried it was because our local bottleshop is having a competition to win a BeerMate but you have to buy Bitburger or Heineken to enter.

Aha! What’s a BeerMate I hear you ask? I know you’re probably thinking that you already have several BeerMates chilling nicely in the back of your fridge but this BeerMate is different…

We’ve always fantasised about having our beer on tap and enjoying a freshly poured 10 oz each evening. The thought of it makes me tingle. But the logistics are frightening. I can see why pubs are still operational because it would take an act of military precision to install a beer tap in the standard kitchen and keeping the keg cold creates a problem that would fry the brain of a quantum physicist.

Well, ok it IS possible but so much trouble that no respectable beer drinker could be bothered.

So the Sunbeam BeerMate is the answer to the age old problem of how to get a fresh icy cold beer poured straight from the keg in you own kitchen without having to turn your house into a pub and employ bar staff. It’s ingenious. And, in our society of the gadget-guzzling-consumer I guess it was only a matter of time before someone invented it and someone decided they needed to buy it.

Basically it’s a household appliance designed to hold a 5 lt keg and to chill - that’s right CHILL!!! - the beer at the same time. It’s about the size of a domestic coffee machine from what I gather and seems to be infinitely more useful! (Says she who nearly went spare without her coffee machine when it spent a week in the shop being fixed - some might say due to a problem caused by overuse…)

My addiction to all things stimulant aside… I think I would like to give this BeerMate thing a try. But at $600 a pop I won’t be buying one on a whim - think I might have to win one. Which means a lot more Bitburger!

Oh well - there are worse things a person might die of… like lack of caffeine…or a perfectly installed tap and no way of refrigerating the keg…