Green homework proves tricky

One of the core topics at B1s progressive science based public high school for this year has been Sustainable Futures. pretty self explanatory really; they cover all things Green from a multitude of perspectives. She's enjoyed it, especially their mock Earth Summit, run by the kids for a whole day, complete with world leaders, environmental advisers, water jugs on tables, UN chief and delegates and messenger runners between delegate tables. It was the highlight of her school year. On the downside was her major project on sustainable homes. The assumption behind this project was that your home was not set up or managed sustainably. B1 struggled constatntly... 'umm, excuse me sir, we have solar hot water heating, we already harvest our rain water into large water tanks, we do grow our own fruit and vegetables, we have composting and recycling systems, we have PV solar to generate power, we do use wind generated electricity when we need to, our house is passive solar designed, we dont have aircon and heating systems'...you get the picture. B1 was a complete headache for her teacher! Funniest part was he gave up and said well take your Grandmas house and use it to model your projections...

Hopefully one day its her whole class proving a headache...

In my inbox this morning

Dear All -


Today’s financial climate means we are all exposed to additional pressures that make conducting research, teaching and administrative duties even more difficult. This environment results in some staff feeling anxious about their work and all too often they feel they don’t have enough time to get the job done.

Email is the most commonly used software application in the world, and arguably the work based activity that consumes the most time. Many staff feel anxious about the size of their Inbox and that email is controlling them and their time.

The Take Control of Your Email course has been delivered to 300 staff from all corners of the University (Academic and Professional) and has achieved outstanding results. The average attendee (Academic or Professional) surveyed 5 weeks after attending the course, is saving over 40 minutes per day by applying the behaviours and skills taught in the course. Staff suffering extreme email anxiety has dropped 50% and staff are feeling less anxious about their daily tasks.

The University recommends all staff attend this course, new staff, staff who are time poor, staff who feel anxious about email or staff who would just like to spend less time using email and more time doing something else.

As managers why not give your staff the gift of additional time by sending them on the course before Christmas? The best results have been achieved by teams of staff attending the course together as they can determine agreed group behaviours that minimise email traffic.

Book now as places are limited

Now i do know that some staff are incredibly inundated with emails, particular higher up the food chain, but I did still find this quite amusing and honestly initially thought it was a joke mail. Its on my Christmas wish list!

blasts from the past

are all well and good but what if you cant remember them? Im in a bind and in need of advice. I recieved an email today courtesy of Friends Reunited ( who uses them anymore anyway? everyones on Facebook!) 'Hi Kel, hows things... think of you and your family often...signed X. Nice, love tracking people down myself and love being 'found'. Problem is, in this case i have absoloutely no idea who this person X is. Its embarrasing and a little worrying. Was i really as good a friend with this person as the tone of their mail implied? or just how fickle was I as a teen? Or, is it possible that they found more in me than I of them at the time and so remembered me more? I dunno. Its all a bit trippy. My problem is now, I have no idea of the best way to respond. Do i tell them straight up that I have absoloutely no remote idea who they are? that seems so cruel. So brutal. So, not me. But to send back a benign mail in the hope of garnering more information and therefore jog my memory, without referencing my dilemma seems dishonest. Anyone else had this problem? How would you handle it? Sheesh. This is such a farking new age, social networking, techie problem.

window farming

I found this on city farmers news (another great blog jam packed with great info) but im not sure how much of this is designer dreams but it appears to be viable for small size herbs and vegetables and a cool way to use some plastic bottles. Not totally into hydroponics either but worm wee is good! Could be a winter soloution for herb access and those cherry tomatoes...

If anyone gives it a go, let me know.

oh no, pesto!

Its that time of the year again when the rocket is shooting away and I start looking at it like its a green manure crop and not something to be ingested. For me, feeling guilty at letting it all go to waste is a great motivator, so i put in the hours required to cut, trim and wash the rocket and the usual real killer of my best laid plans, shelling all the walnuts required for the pesto. All up i managed to use about a twentieth of the rocket and about a tenth of our walnut stash from last seasons crop,
a head of our garlic and a chunk of local parmesan and olive oil. viola. pesto! or as B1 said 'looks like something out of Harry Potter' i tend to agree.
But its so fresh and fragrant and flavoursome, the three F's! that it will definitely get devoured in a myriad of ways.

On an aside, the kid is thriving but i had forgotten just how enthusiastic about helping one year olds can be. Murphys Law about kids helping; when theyre old enough to do a good job they no longer want to do it. Everytime i get out the broom and start to sweep the floor, he rushes off to the laundry to grab the dustpan and brush, whizzes back and redistributes the pile I've made in a blustering effort to complete the task. Life is definitely taking more than twice as long these days...

Dancing Fingers at Jari Menari

Thats how the promo reads ,

dancing fingers, massage sessions by our all male team that offer strong, firm, consistent pressure.

We had booked a yoga massage session from Australia, my friend and I and really had no idea what to expect. Regular massage with a twist? We walked off the busy crazy street full of bikes and people into a calm white and wooden space. The obligatory piped music relaxed us and the fragrant oil for our session chosen from a selection of glass vials wafted under our noses. Amber. A nice start. We changed into the sarongs provided, quietly and with some discussion with each other as to what 'take your clothes off' meant...bra and undies or just bra? We opted for keeping the knickers on and in hindsight, Im glad we did.

We walked out into an open corridor paved in the Balinese way' stepping blocks amidst stones and made our way to the two smiling men who were each waiting at a different part of the garden. We followed the pathways that each led to 'our' man and our rooms. We entered clean simple spaces hidden behind shoji screens, a communal corridor of flowing water connecting all the rooms which were open to the skies; typical Bali "'Namaste' please lie down and remove your sarong". Thats not the impression i got from the website! They showed massage in sarongs! Okkk, no problem, as he was holding another sarong up with extended arms and proceeded to place it upon me as I lay face down.

I felt him pick up one leg, pull it sideways and lay it down on a soft firm pad, then the other. I'm now splayed face down , albeit covered in a thin filmy sarong, in front of man Ive never met. I can deal with this I think, it just feels a little exposing. Then he washes my feet. One long sweep of a textured pad on each foot. Surprisingly now i feel clean. Then he lays both hands on my lower back and I just know from this simple move that I'm in for a beauty. He radiated strength and knowledge. Wow!

I gave myself over to his very capable hands as he pulled and pushed and manipulated my back and shoulders and arms and legs and feet "Please turn over". No problem, I'm enjoying myself and feel quite comfortable. Then he starts to fold the top of the the sarong down, deftly replacing it with what feels like a bandaid over my breasts. Hmm OK, that could slip off at any moment but I'm sure that's quite common and nothing they haven't dealt with before, so again I tell myself to relax and enjoy it. He keeps folding the sarong , down and in, so I end up with a vertical strip of cloth between my legs. Double hmm, this could get interesting...breathe Kel, you've still got your knickers on. At this point am thankful Ive worn some respectable and sensible ones.

He starts to massage again. The tops of my feet, long sweeping strokes. I relax then he moves up my legs until hes sliding up and down their full length, using hands, elbows, wrists, up my thighs and under my knickers! Whoohoo. This is getting interesting. He whisps past my very inner thigh around to my bum and back again, and again. Boy, this is interesting and before my brain goes too far with the 'did he mean to do that?' he's back on my calves with depth and I'm feeling the professionalism again.

Im relaxing like never before, thinking that yoga massage contains all the elements of vigor that every other massage has lacked. Im loving it. Then he whips one leg over the other, twisting my torso to the side. He steps between my legs, standing in between my inner thighs and reaches over my body lying over me to reach up and around my back and neck' and begins a firm digging pressure at the base of my head. Im trying hard not to visualise the karma sutra at this point. Im also very avoiding opening my eyes; i dont think i could handle some eye contact at this point. I hear giggling from my friend in the next room. This is completely trippy. Water gurgles, roosters crow and i can hear the faint rumble of a jackhammer.

The masseuse starts to rotate my top leg holding my ankle and rotating my hip, holding my knee, opening out the muscles of my hip. At this point Im starting to freak out about farting, letting rip after all the stomach circling he has performed; my guts have been activated and now hes encouraging it in a dangerous fashion. Relaaaax Kel, dont tense your body. So im quietly doing pelvic floor clenches while relaxing, 'letting go', of my leg and butt muscles. I can multi task! Ive long forgotten my now minor concern about 'the bandaid' falling off the breasts, Ive got bigger things to worry about! Like, 'what is his view from there'? Still i refuse to open my eyes. i dont wanna know! He continues with the other leg. Im resigned to my fate by this stage and really do relax and enjoy it, only minor pelvic floor action required.

He ends the session with a gentle face massage and stroking of the scalp. I know the session is over when he waves a humming bell in circle over my limp body. 90 minutes of sheer heaven has just ended. I breathe out long and slow and smile to myself.
My body has been pushed, pulled, prodded and it feels great. My discarded sarong gets wound back around my body and I float back to the change room where i greet my friend .We exchange a myriad of laughs and mutterings of disbelief. Yoga massage Jari Menari style is not for the faint at heart, nor for anyone with the slightest hint of body selfconsciousness, but so worth the challenge!

a moment of fancy [or something]

Im not sure what i was thinking when i decided to bypass the normal approach of just picking a tiny bunch for a tiny vase for the kitchen windowsill to be enjoyed when doing the dishes. A moment of whimsy perhaps? a fanciful idea of high tea and snooty minds? I saw these in bloom around the garden yesterday while 'taking' a walk with the boybean and immediately related these delicate faces to the stomach. It flabbergasted the husband that's for sure, that I took the gastronomique approach. Sugared violets... why not? I should really have asked myself 'why? , but there you go, Taurean by nature.


Certainly after i had finished dusting /embedding /burying them under the rather unrefined organic sugar, which had resisted the most full strength industrial kitchen whizzer (by this stage damned if i was gonna let some crunchy sugar get the better o me) they looked more than a little pedestrian, in fact rather agricultural. More like the sugared peanut at Christmas than the refined end product Mrs Beeton would have preferred. I think i failed. Big time. First time and never again. But the nearly- teen -bean verdict was very enthusiatic upon consumption of a morsel from the fridge 'OMG, they taste AWESOME!' So there ya go.

Chalk that one up to expereince to never be repeated. Sheesh. What do i even cook that needs a sugared violet? What to do with leftover violets which have no stem that you just couldnt bear to entomb? Chuck them in the Okonomiyaki of course!

MasterChef love

Its reassuring when youre just about to hop online for your daily confession and you happen upon others sins before you fess up. I fessed up a while back about my Biggest Loser addiction but somehow this one doesnt feel quite so bad. Maybe because its about creativity and ingenuity and a little bit of art not puffing, panting, tears and 'does my bum look big in this' and contestants get taken to task for using foods not in season. Reading Progressive Dinner Party had me thumping the table "yes, oh yes'!

We have taken to 'plating up' dinner around Chez Pan; we did the major wet yourselves in the kitchen moment when that first slipped out of the mouth of babes and find ourselves taking extra effort to make sure a sauce is served, to 'take it to another level and add some acid'. Dinner is eaten in front of the tele so we dont miss a moment (i thought id rather die before that ever happenned in our household) or else we dash in and out from the retakes to caramelise our onions and keep an eye on the souffle. Best bit was the moment when i realised that it wasnt just me who wakes on a saturday and thinks 'Damn, no master chef! I figured that was the sad product of having no life with a small baby and PhD to complete...

Definitely too many cooks in our kitchen now... we have barely avoided some MasterChef induced domestics over the finer points of pasta with cheese.

chicken lady

Over the last few weeks Ive spent a bit of time thinking about Simons pre-selection for the Greens and his 'green' credentials. As a political scientist by my original training, I have always harboured my own secret political ambitions but was always held back by a belief that I never owned the required traits to be successful due to lack of flair with spin-doctoring and thinking on the hop. Im not an actor at heart and need approval too much to put myself in the firing line.

On the other hand, Simon is a born politician, I do believe he has found his calling. He's an actor at heart, loves an audience and has an incredible green network and an amazing history of green activism and volunteering. When we met we realised that we actually had a previous and unrecognised-at-the-time encounter with each other that was auspicious, significant, meaningful and green. I was the mum of two caught on camera outside my local stupor-market, signing the Greenpeace petition to ban GE feed stock in Australias biggest chicken processing company and he was the larger than life chicken pawing the ground and pecking around me in a very broody manner. I recalled thinking that this guy had the 'chicken thing'; the scratching, the tilt of the head, the feather fluffing, down pat...this guy was goood.

A Green beginning and Green love in action! Pretty sexy huh?

the kid is broke

not broken, just flat broke, well according her her anyway and in desperate need of more cash. Her pocket money is just not meeting her needs. Apparently.

I came home last night to find B2 sitting in front of the computer with her head resting in her hands and as i walked through the door her body shuddered with a deep and guttural moan (yes, she is the only one in the family that belongs to a theatrical ensemble).

My eyes roll in my proverbial head. 'Oh crap' I hate arriving home to uberkidwoeismedrama and being asked to be judge and jury...ugh. I steele myself.

She looks up as i walk in, head rolling, "I neeeeeeeeeeeeeed a job"

Phew! no adjudicating step/parent role to negotiate, just some regular advice. We chat and brainstorm ideas about possible jobs for 11 year olds. We ponder the concepts around responsibility, school, insurance, reliability, wages and realistic expectations and interests.

She is excited, enthused and hops online to do some research.

'Fantastic'. Im feeling chuffed about her self direction, confidence and go-get attitude and just a little pleased with both my parenting skills and her Montessori education (B2 is of the 'fly off the handle at the slightest disruption to fantasy state' kinda of girl) so these momentary traits of maturity and level headedness are really rather appreciated.

Dinner comes and goes, job ideas chatted about, homework gets done and the kids retire to their bedrooms. I sit at the the pc where she had been working and I see that her open notebook has a page filled with columns, dot points and a heading.

Buying a Franchise and 5 year Business Plan

Managing employees makes baby sitting sooo 1990's.

fur coat fun

Si had an old fur in the cupboard, a leftover from european relatives long gone. I love the cool softness of fur so the coat got 'unpicked' and now lives on the couch as a warm throw. B2; the almost vegan (go figure) and i often 'wear' it as a blanket at the computer in cold weather; it still has arms! It reminds me of a very amusing product I saw on tv in the states, The Snuggie , that had me rolling about in fits of laughter. Thinking our recycled version is one up from the snuggie. We wear it inside out so the fur touches your skin. B1 wont touch it and gives it a very wide berth. The bean loves it.

he wasn't thinking about babies when...

he built a house with shoji screens

Haiku Friday

Kenny ,where are you?
superhero of the bog
a tardis this aint

reflections on pink spotty underwear

when i reflected further on todays shopping adventure in a big commercial centre in my search for something 'suitable' to wear to The Friday Function, it struck me that i'd overlooked a pretty extraordinary moment. Namely, while i had been popping in and out of my change booth seeking 'expert' advice, I had spent a good 20 minutes intermittently chatting to a sales woman who was also trying on clothes. Now this seems stange in and of itself... i mean arent they supposed to be working? What has really made me think twice is that she was doing all this with the change room door open and i was chatting to her whilst she stripped down to her very 'Betty Boop' pink, black and white spotty and very lacy knickers and bra whilst she tried on dress after dress, chatting to me and advising me on whatever i had tried on. is this normal???

Greenwashing

poof! time gone

B1 watching TV, newsbreak on
Me, in kitchen not listening

B1: "whaaat!, no way!"
Me: "whats up?"
B1: "they just said we have to put our clocks back 3 weeks earlier, that means my birthday is even further away"
Me: "huh?"
B1: "daylight saving, they said turn our clocks back 3 weeks earlier, my birthday's gonna be ages away"
Me: doubled up with laughter, i mean doubled and REALLY hard, so hard i mumma cass'd it and started choking on my sandwich
B1: ohhhh (lightbulb on) i get it mum , i see where i went wrong, it was logical, stop laughing at me"
Me: keeps going

Kids, theyre great blog fodder

living in the past

I was messing around with Yearbook tonight, wasting time but having a hoot. i havent posted the 1960's 'hot moochie afro with halter neck' me, but i was tempted; its really trippy. This one really frightened me when it uploaded...bloody hell, i look just like my mother in her 'before children and she had time to do her hair' shots!!! promptly emailed this one to her.

Too funny.