Jeans.

Do you ever see pictures in the carpet pattern during yoga class or is it just me? Sometimes doing Toe Stand when I focus on the carpet and not on a blob of sweat on the stripe of red tape, I can. Today it was a strange looking snake/monkey face, last week it was a sheep and when I did my first class back from the Gold Coast Seminar it was Bikram himself. I wonder what it all means? Am consoling myself with Ben's saying: "Weird is normal and normal is weird". Or should I just be psychoanalysed and be done with?

Today I wore my new grey and white leopard print jeans (how badly do I need a new iphone that takes reverse photos):

Thank you Harriett for finding them! I must say that I did feel a tad conspicuous wearing them out publicly in downtown Hobart. The acid test was what Felix would think.Thumbs up or thumbs down. I have a pair of purple J Brand colour block jeans that he has asked me not to wear to school when I pick him up:

Should I be listening to the fashion advice of an eight year old boy? As I typed that last sentence I remembered that I took the advice of a four year old boy who recently talked me into a leopard print bikini. Anyway, Felix said yes to the new jeans but remains comitted to his thoughts about the purple.

Over the last week I have been working my way through this volume:

As you can see by the yellow sticker I bought it on sale at Fuller's Bookshop. It's been sitting on my bedside table for at least six months. On Saturday I finally opened it. Initially I wasn't sure whether it was the barking of a crazy loon or incredibly perceptive with a profound meaning for the modern world. Now I am thinking that it is the latter. I'm still struggling with understanding the theories behind natural  patterns and don't quite understand the symbolic importance of the ratio of the Golden Section or quite how a credit card and ipod conform to the measurements. I'll just have to keep chipping away at it. Yet I was convinced by his ideas about how far modern life operates in a highly mechanised way disconnected from nature. It is wrong. The most shocking example being how some animals reared for food are 'manufactured' through industrial processes.

I hereby solemnly vow to never knowingly eat a caged chicken or egg or a farmed fish ever again.

R

Italy.

I've been technologically thwarted. In six weeks two of our laptops have done time in the shop - one was terminal and I have everything crossed that the other will be resuscitated and make it out alive. And then there was the curious case of Kim's ipad which was never seen again after it was somehow left on the roof of my car one hectic evening last week.

So here I am making use of the somewhat limited resources available and borrowing Kim's computer that he has kindly brought home from work.

On Sunday our family went to Italy in North Hobart - the Festa Italia. As you can see, even though there were grown men dressed as gladiators it was not like being in Rome:

After all this was in the backyard of the Italian Club in Federal Street and not actually out the front of the Colosseum or the Pantheon. We summoned all of our powers of immaginitis yet it didn't work. Especially as they were all out of pizza by 1pm. I'm not joking. Do you think they ever run out of pizza....in Italy?

So we queued for fifteen minutes for spaghetti bolognaise:

This made our children very happy:

We have friends who recently moved from Rome to Hobart. They had a drinks party on Sunday evening after the Festa and they had pizza. Sadly, they are now moving from Hobart to Melbourne. Ciao Stephen and Moira. E buona fortuna.

R

Rush.

Things were a tad stressy in our household this morning. We were all late to bed last night the result being nobody wanted to get up today - including me. Then there was the usual hurly burly of morning teas, lunches, breakfast service, hair, teeth, school notices, bags packed etc etc etc all to be taken care of. Once those going to school/work had finally evacuated it was time to clean up, get the washing on, dress the baby, change her nappy, get myself dressed and try to get to 9.30am yoga class.

We were pushing the envelope timewise anyway and then the leg of Toby's lion fell off. He was distraught - tears rolled down his face. How could I not sew it back on?  So I brushed my teeth but not my hair.

Just as we were walking out the door I noticed out of the corner of my eye that I could only see one beagle when there are meant to be two. A frantic search of the far flung reaches of the garden and a trip back upstairs to see if he had managed to slope up to our bed proved that my worst fears were confirmed - Dougal was missing. Panic. And the sad  realisation that I was going to miss yoga. Almost tears. I committed myself to scouring the neighbourhood for our deaf, addled, almost fourteen year old beagle and started running down the driveway when miracle of miracles Dougal came barrelling around the corner. Hurrah. Two beagles in their baskets and I made it to yoga just in the nick of time.

R

Boycott.

So today I decided that I'm going to seize the control that I do have and do what I can to save the environment. Seeing that it's been preying on my mind and all.

Firstly, I'm going to start by boycotting the supermarket and shop locally. Until we can toilet train Milly I will still need to go there to buy these:

Eco nappies, made from natural material without plastic, perfume or chlorine. It's a shame that they have to come all the way from Sweden.

Luckily, I drive past the Hill Street Grocer on my way home from yoga:

Look at all of the fruit and veg which will have to supplement my veggie patch until it gets going:

And then I should be self sufficient in eggs and lettuce again.

R

Curious.

I've had a curious day. On the one hand I was feeling very virtuous as I completed my BAS (yucky quarterly tax reporting) and did three loads of washing. This high induced by hard labour was somewhat tempered by spending part of the day dwelling on the fact that the boy's school is next to a rather large electricity substation. This is a big issue for me - our family uses herbal toothpaste and shampoo from the health food shop and I would never dream of feeding my children a biscuit from a packet because of the dangers of trans fats. At after school pickup time I had this conversation with another mum and she showed me a YouTube clip of a group popping corn with their mobile phones. How in control of our lives are we really when we live in this modern world? It's an insurmountable question.

I finished The Paris Wife.  It was compellingly un-put-downable even though I knew it was going to end in tears. And it did - spectacularly - when Ernest left his first wife Hadley for her best friend. Sordid and sad. He then went on to repeat the same adulterous process three more times.

Half way into the book, I was surprised by the idea that Ernest and Hadley Hemingway thought that going to a bull fight while pregnant might have a positive influence on their unborn child. I went to a bullfight in Beziers when I was pregnant and was worried that it may have the opposite effect. Especially as I started uncontrollably sobbing as soon as the first poor, confused bull was shunted into the arena. Kim and I discussed it at length at the time and I considered keeping my eyes closed.

A week before, we had been reading aloud Roald Dahl's Boy while trying to drive around Cornwall in a motorhome. Here's Tobes at the wheel:

Apparently Roald's father took his pregnant wife on a tour of famed beauty spots so that she could gaze and gaze at beauty in the leadup to her confinement. While gestating I may have seen a bullfight yet I also saw Paris in the springtime, the snow capped Pyrenees and the azure blue Amalfi coast. That should have overcompensated...shouldn't it?
R

Surprise.

I had every good  intention of going to yoga today. Yet the sight that greeted my eyes when I opened them this morning was this:

A surprise Valentine's Day, two days early. How could I not succumb and join in the festivities. Milly, the French baby did, showing a proclivity for champagne at such a tender age:

So then I ate this delicious nutella crepe made by my husband for breakfast and washed it down with champagne and it was too late for yoga or anything other than hedonistic V Day behaviour :

I did wonder where all this was leading and was further surprised by the knock on the door at 12.30pm. Abracadabra it was a babysitter. So what happened next? I frocked up in this:

And was whisked off to an undisclosed location. As we were driving along the Brooker Highway I was momentarily worried that we were going to the Hobart Cup. Mercifully we kept driving......to MONA and the Source Restaurant:

It is one of my favourite restaurants. The food was fabulous. I ate this slow roasted duck with mango, palm heart, basil and olive licorice:

While Kim had the pork special with blood sausage:

We shared this curious combination of rhubarb and beetroot amalgamated as a salad - look how vibrantly pink it was:

How could we not have desert? Mine was Brioche Pain Perdu with eggnog and milk icecream:

Whike Kim predictably went the chocolate praline option:



Seeing we were there, and for once without children, we gave into temptation and went down into the bowels of the museum and finally ventured beyond the red curtains and into the red area with the content warning. I won't rush back, as compared to other parts of the museum I found it somewhat gratuitous and hollow.

And then we had a turn around the Wim Delvoye exhibition. Have you ever wondered what a tatooed adult pigs tatooed skin hung on the wall would look like? I hadn't yet now that I've seen I'm surprised by how faded and almost transparent the Disney images and Louis Vuitton patterns looked. And what were those lipstick marks framed on posh hotel letterhead?.........Yes, really.

The real show stopper was cloaca world - a display of numerous machines which when fed, food usually from the cafe upstairs, turn it into stools. Not convinced? Smell.

Back to reality tomorrow.

R

Matching.

Look at our girls:

Ten years between them and both in the same top. It helps that I picked them up yesterday on sale for $13 - 75% off. Bargain. Mimi of course insisted that we had to have an outing  into town with the girls sporting their new fashion so we went to the cafe at Fuller's Bookshop:

I had a restorative green tea while the children shared a honey milkshake:

The flavour must have prompted Tobes to keep us amused with his new favourite joke:

'What bees gives milk?' Anyone, anyone? 'Boobies'! This joke comes courtesy of Bikram Choudhury via the Advanced Seminar I went to on the Gold Coast. I'd totally forgotten that I'd passed it on to Tobes. Same sense of humour. Hmm.

I've finally finished my most recent Jilly Cooper obsession and have moved on to this which as you can see from the cover I borrowed from the library:

The Paris Wife is meant to be fiction yet draws very heavily of fact. It's about Ernest Hemingway's first marriage (he had four). I have had a bit of an ongoing Ernest Hemingway fixation so was keen to get my hands on this. I'm not sure at Chapter Six whether I love it or loathe it.

I find Ernest Hemingway, the man and his work, compelling. He was so incredibly talented and yet so tortured and ultimately tragic. I have been chipping away at his books for years and have yet to get through his oeuvre. So far have I've loved A Farewell to Arms, Across the River and Into the Trees, and the posthumous A Moveable Feast. I read The Garden of Eden while in France - we were living near Aigues Mortes where part of it was set. What better excuse. I'm ashamed to admit that I strugged with For Whom the Bell Tolls. Maybe I shouldn't have typed that.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of cooking date night dinner. It's a very casual affair - I'm wearing my bathrobe. Did you know that you can find most Gourmet Traveller recipes here on their website? I am in the process of tinkering with the delicious Cauliflower and Taleggio Risotto with Anchovy Pangrattato which I am going to make with pumpkin as pasta. Fingers crossed it works.

R