A Life Less Duckey?

Okay, I admit it. I’m useless. I haven’t posted here for ages. The shame is killing me. No, really, it is. I know some of you need a dose of GirlTalk every now and then, if for no other reason than to remind you that your life is so much more sane than it could be. Because, let’s face it, my life is worse. It’s full of cringe-factor moments, weirder-than-fiction moments, so-stupid-she-doesn’t-deserve-to-live moments. I don’t know how, I don’t know why – it just is.

Which makes me wonder – is this my lot in life? Am I really going to go through life making blooper after laughable blooper, year in year out, until I drop dead with the exhaustion (or Read More…

Heroine Envy

I love movies. They’re all about escapism and, let’s face it, we all want to escape every now and then. (If you don’t want to escape – ie you love everything about your sweet little life just the way it is – then you’re an anomaly. You shouldn’t be reading this. And BTW, don’t even THINK about e-mailing me how sweet your life is, because I might be tempted to send hate mail.)

The best thing about seeing a movie is that I get to escape “me” for a while. No kids, no mortgage, no messy chaotic frenetic life, no panda eyes because I fell into bed without Read More…

The Hazards Of Spring

It’s spring and I’m grumpy. Why? Because it’s warm and, much as I love warmth, it’s more stifling than warm when one only has merino woollies on hand. See, all my short-sleeved tops and non-merino clothes are up in the loft.

The loft. (Theme-music from Jaws.) Enter who dares.

Well, I’m going to have to dare, because I don’t fancy spending the next six months feeling like a sauna-on-feet. I did enough of that when I was pregnant. Read More…

QuakeZone

On Saturday 4th September 2010, at 4.36am, my partner and I woke to the biggest earthquake we’ve ever experienced. The pre-quake rumble was terrifying. Freight-train-through-your-lounge volume. Then the quake hit. Apparently it lasted forty seconds. To both of us it felt much, much longer. How to get to the kids in time? How to calm their terror, keep them safe? How to stay on our feet until we reached them?

Magnitude: 7.1 on the Richter scale. Depth: 10km (that’s shallow!). Epicentre: 40km west of Christchurch. Effect on our beautiful city: devastation.
Read More…

My Lifeline With Sanity

On the odd occasion – you know, like 90% of the time – when things seem as if they’re going from bad to worse, or from worse to desperate, it’s good to know I’ve got friends who’ll help get me through.

Take this week, for example. It wasn’t enough that my Beloved was working out of town. Little Miss 13-month-old (aka The Destroyer) decided this was a good week to come down with Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease.

No, our ancestry does not include any cloven-hooved beasts. (Though I do have a devilish Read More…