Category: Life as a Wife

Role reversals

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When it comes to most things, Hubs and I have a fairly typical boy/girl relationship. I don’t mean to stereotype, but Hubs looks after all the technical gadgets in our possession, he takes out the rubbish, and opens tight jar lids, whereas I do most of the cooking and washing etc. There are a couple of things, however, where we have taken on each other’s roles.

The first of which is watching sport.

I can’t get enough of it!! (“sport sport sport sport sport sport sport sport”) whereas Hubs can take or leave it. There is nothing more exciting to me (well, sometimes!) than sitting at home on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon to watch a game of AFL, Rugby League, Rugby Union, cricket, hockey…. hell I’ll even watch golf!! (well, I would if we had a TV.) I love a good game of footy – a close match that’s battled out into the dying seconds, and as long as “my” team plays well, I don’t even mind if we lose.

Hubs is not like this. He does not have much inclination to sit down and watch a game of footy, and he finds it very stressful when “his” team is involved in a close game. He would much rather watch a game where he’s not particularly going for either team, or one that he already knows the result of. We’re just different like that, and I often exclaim that my love of all things sports is wasted on him! 🙂

The other role-reversal is when it comes to our sleeping habits. Many of my female friends complain about how their partner keeps them awake at night with their snoring, and how their men go to sleep straight away so there’s no chance of them getting to sleep once that chainsaw starts up. I’m sad to say that I’m the snorer in our relationship (though, I prefer to use the term “heavy breather”). I’ve even been known to wake myself up from a little afternoon nanna nap with my own snoring. Hee hee.

But that’s not the only thing that keeps Hubs up at night. I’m a restless sleeper – when I’m not snoring my little heart out, I’m tossing and turning and waking Hubs up a few times a night in the process. I know that Hubs always sleeps better when I’m not in bed with him – like if he’s away for uni – but I can’t sleep very well at all if he’s not there beside me. And unfortunately being pregnant has only made things worse. I’m not sure we’ll ever get a good night sleep again!!

The only saving grace is that Hubs is a fairly deep sleeper so I’m sure I don’t wake him up nearly as much as he’d wake me up if it was the other way around. Aaaaaaah. The things we do put up with for love 🙂

Pop culture in our marriage

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Hubs and I have many running jokes that we just don’t get sick of, and I’m sure people think we’re quite strange when we start one of our “runs”. And I’m sad (and happy at the same time) to say that Beached As Bru changed our lives. We can’t get enough of it. And we refer to it almost daily, even if it’s just an “Aw noo” here and there.
Have I lost you? Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well clearly you need to spend some time on youtube 🙂

Here are some other pop culture references that we throw around on a regular basis:
– Beached as bru – “Want a chup bru?” “Can’t chew bru!” “Aw shut.” “I noo.”
– Withnail and I – “Ching ching”
– Boston Legal – “Denny Crane” and “Lock and load”
– Hercules Returns “eh eh eh eh”, “I love classy lines like that.” “Ooooh you could pick the bones outta that one.”
– Rowan Atkinson LIVE – too many references to choose from!!
– Scrubs – see above
– Eddie Izzard – “Cake or Death” “uuuh cake please” “Well we’re OUTTA CAKE”
– Eddie Izzard – Death Star Canteen – “You’ll need a tray” “Do you know who I am?”

I may have lost y’all very early on in this piece, but I’ve been wanting to blog about this for months now, so that in 20 years time, Hubs and I can look back and go “Aw noo!” and remember these silly things that always make us smile.

You can’t catch me…

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… I’m the GINGERBREAD MAN!!!

I didn’t think I liked gingerbread bikkies. I don’t really know why to be honest – maybe the bought ones are a bit too gingery for my taste. For this reason, I’ve never ventured into baking Gingerbread Men, but being married to Hubs means I often broaden my culinary horizons. Oh, and I had just bought a Gingerbread Man cookie cutter, so clearly I had to bake some!

What I didn’t realise, was the the cookie cutter I had bought was actually quite large!

And that I much prefer 3-step-recipes (mix, bake, eat). This was more an 8-step recipe – mix, stand in fridge, roll, cut, (and repeat 3 times) bake, cool, decorate, eat – which took just over 2 hours! It did however, also give me another opportunity to use my piping set that was given to me by the lovely Liza and family and any opportunity to use this set is warmly welcomed!

I tried to decorate the first tray a bit manly-like since Hubs would be eating most of them (or so I thought):

I got a bit more creative with the second tray, adding a Charlie Brown zig-zag shirt, a Superman logo (use your imagination dammit!), a muumuu and an “I(heart)U” Gingerbread Man.

We had one with a cup of tea for afternoon tea and I discovered just how much I actually LOVE home-made Gingerbread Men! Which is a shame, cos they really are a lot of effort!

Not as much effort, however, as macaroons, which I will blog about next.

The Swap Meet

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Ever been to one? Even know what one is? Any interest in attending one? Before Sunday the 12th September 2010, my answers to these 3 questions were “no”, “not really”, “not overly, but Hubs is excited so that’s good enough for me.” Hubs has been working very hard for the last few weeks to get the kombi up and running, and his hard work was rewarded on Thursday night when he had completed all the jobs he thought would fix it, and the beast started. And it hasn’t stopped since!

Over the preceding days we had been talking about buying another car – something a little more “family-friendly”, and one that… you know… was working. But as we were taking the kombi for a test-drive around town on the Thursday night, Hubs with a big grin on his face, I turned to him and said “We’re not going to be getting another car now, are we?…” His response? “HELL NO WOMAN.” And seeing that smile was all the convincing I needed. We were due to head down to Melbourne over the weekend and come back through Shepparton on the Sunday to attend the Annual Goulburn Valley Swap Meet. We still need a few parts for the car (including a centre seat) and thought it might be a fun way to spend a Sunday.

Up until Thursday night, we were thinking we’d have to hire a car, but thankfully I have a brilliant Hubsband who fixes stuff, so we jumped in the kombi on a sunny Friday afternoon and headed down the Hume towards Melbourne. We caught up with friends on Friday night and the Saturday, and loaded up the kombi with all sorts of marvelous baby furniture and paraphernalia, thanks to our wonderful friends the Baileys and the Bakers. We then caught up with Hubs’ uni friends for dinner on Saturday night and watched the end of the Bulldogs vs Swans game – a great night was had by all, and it was so lovely to see all our wonderful friends.

Sunday morning was an early start with the alarm going off at 5:30am. “We” (Hubs) wanted to be at Shep by 8am ish, but ended up getting there closer to 9am. (I slept half the drive.) I was quite intrigued about this whole “swap meet” thing and Hubs was telling me that it was a “Classic Cars Swap Meet” so I was looking forward to seeing lots of restored vehicles and, well you know, Classic Cars!

I was to be frightfully disappointed.

The reality was more like this: Every August, wives of Goulburn Valley start pestering their husbands to “clean out all the junk in the garage” to which the husbands respond “it’s not junk! This stuff has a lot of value!” The wives say something along the lines of “I don’t care what you do with it, just get rid of it!” So the husbands cleverly think to themselves “I know – the annual swap meet us coming up! I’m sure I’ll be able to sell my junk there.” And that’s 80% of what we saw. Junk from people’s garages. The “classic cars” were few and far between, and it became evident VERY early on that we weren’t going to find what we were looking for.

Add in some soft rock playing on a loop in the background (80s and 90s baby – I was in heaven!), some sausages on bread, the odd mullet or 2, more than enough ugg boots, and 1 lone kombi (a 1977 model – one year younger than ours*) and you’re pretty much looking at 3 hours of Wifey being very good at not complaining but wishing she was lounging around somewhere else. Anywhere else!!

Here are some examples of what we saw:

Now to be fair, there were SOME classic cars. They seemed to be either looking like this:

(believe it or not, this one had a “SOLD” sign on it)

…or this…
…or this! (NOW we’re talking!)

(For more fab photos, visit Hubs’ flickr page here.)

So we arrived with the desire to buy a couple of carburetors, a center seat, and a new engine :-). We left with a “new” saucepan ($10), 5 lemons ($1), 2kg of nuts ($20), 2 cook books ($2) and some snow chains ($5). I was excited with my little treasures, but Hubs was annoyed he didn’t get to buy anything manly. The snow chains were a bit of a “I want to BUY SOMETHING” purchase, but hopefully they’ll come in handy.

Hubs has since heard through the grapevine that there is a VW Only Swap Meet in Melbourne in a couple of weeks time, so we’re heading down for that one too, and will hopefully find what we’re looking for. Although, if the last one was anything to go buy, it might just be a whole lot of non-car-related junk from VW owners’ garages. Only time will tell…

*technically the kombi we drive still belongs to Hubs’ family, but Hubs adopted it 10 years ago and has never left it’s side.

The force is strong within me

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I don’t know what it is about being pregnant, but it increases the earth’s gravity both within me and around me. Things that used to stay in my hands are now spontaneously attracted to the floor at any given moment. (Especially pens, my hat, vegetables, pots and pans, tubs of yoghurt… you name it…) Getting up is becoming hilarious, with me giving signals to Hubs to give me a push every time I want to leave the couch. If we were still sleeping on the futon, I would never get out of bed. Bending over is becoming an Olympic sport for me, and often when I drop things, I just leave them on the floor and either ask Hubs (very nicely) to come and pick up after me, or do a big emu parade at the end.

Pregnancy has also increased my clumsiness, though I didn’t think this was possible. It’s gotten so bad that Hubs is actually noticing all the clanging and banging that goes on when I’m in the kitchen, whereas before, he would just tune it all out. Though, he may just be more concerned as he knows that these days, dropping a few carrots on the floor can reduce me to a puddle of tears, snot and incoherent babble.

Having said all this, I am absolutely loving being pregnant. I have had a seemingly very easy pregnancy, with no real unpleasant symptoms or side effects that I’ve read all about. I do still have 9 weeks to go (is that it??) so anything can happen, but while things are going so smoothly, I’m just going to enjoy it.

And be okay with constantly dropping things.

Rusky Business

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One of the things I was most looking forward to about having our own place was all the cooking and baking I was going to get to do. And it has been fabulous! I have been baking up a storm of pumpkin choc-chip muffin cookies, ANZAC bikkies, macaroons, and last weekend, rusks. Being married to a man with South African blood in him, rusks were always something that I wanted to learn how to make. So armed with a recipe from his uncle, and assistance from his Ma, I went to work.

On a side note, I had gone to a garage sale that morning and seen one of those huge ugly silver mixing bowls and thought “hmmmm…. might that come in handy? Naaaaaaaah…” As soon as I started mixing the ingredients (which included almost 2kg of dried ingredients) I was kicking myself for not buying it!!

Anyway, back to the baking. I had to mix the dry ingredients together, then the butter, sugar, eggs and buttermilk.

Note to self: need larger mixing bowl so as not to spray buttermilk mixture everywhere while mixing
Next I mixed the dry ingredients with the wet ones, using my hands and making a huge mess. FUN! Again, I had to mix in 2 bowls and then combine the 2 at the end. I lined 3 baking trays but only ended up needing the 2.
Then I pressed the raw mixture into the trays
The recipe says to bake for 50-60 minutes but after an hour I smelt the goodness and checked it out. I really should have swapped them over half-way through, cos one of them was VERY well cooked and the other wasn’t done in the middle so I had to put it back in.
Then you let them cool for an hour or so and cut them up. The next process dries them out to crunchy-goodness.
Pop them in the oven for 4 hours at 100 degrees with the oven door slightly ajar to let the moisture out (thanks Ma)
In the meantime, cook yourself an awesome omelette with your farm-fresh eggs you got for $3 a dozen from a lady at work who has her own chickens. (see the rusks cooking below?? The smell was heavenly.)
And bring them out, nice and dried, and wait impatiently for Hubs to get home and be mega-impressed!
Remember for next time: don’t have the oven open so much, to increase drying-out; use bigger bowls; buy a bigger tin (this one only fit half of them!); let them cool more before cutting them so they don’t all crumble on me; cut them into longer pieces.
I’m hoping these last us at least a couple of months, though, the way Hubs has been going through them I might be making the next batch before too long. The idea is, you make a whole bunch (I probably made about 100) so you don’t have to make them very often. It was lots of fun, but I’m not sure I’ll be lining up to make something like koeksisters any time soon. Not without the expertise of an experienced SA cook at least!! 🙂

From Newman to Wang

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So as they say, better late than never. I’ve finally gotten around to going through all the photos we have taken the last couple of months, so I’ll be able to fill you in on our big move. First of all, packing up our unit at Newman was a mammoth task that we put off mostly until the Wednesday/Thursday/Friday before we moved. The funny thing about having limited space and trying to move all in one go, is that you end up packing the stuff you hardly ever use first, and have to leave the stuff you use often because it can’t fit in! Ridiculous, no?

I must say a very big thank you to everyone who offered to help and who did help, whether it was by manual labour, bringing over banoffee cakes, packing a trailor load of stuff to take up for us, and taking things off our hands (too many to mention). Oh, and to the cleaners at Newman for cleaning our flat for us on Monday!!! Something I thought I would have time and energy for, but Littlefoot decided to sap all my energy for the weekend so it didn’t get done.

As happened last time we packed the kombi, I just left Hubs to it and he did a great job. Even though it looked like this time we wouldn’t fit half our stuff in!

We were worried about pushing out the windows towards the end! I’m not sure we could have fit another thing in!!!

Deja vu anyone? I wanted a photo with the door open, but everything would have fallen out, so we had to make do. We were all packed by about 10am Saturday morning which was a pretty good effort if you ask me! Now Hubs, where do I fit??

This was a bit unacceptable for little ol’ preggo Wifey, so we dropped by our friend’s place who was already taking a trailor-load up for us, and left a few more things with him. This made for a much more pleasant trip. Victoria put on some glorious weather for us as we drove out of the Newman gates for the last time and onto the Hume.

The next chapter I already spoke about here, but here are some photos to go with our first couple of days in Wang.

Hubs trying to keep warm on our first night
Our lounge room and makeshift bedroom for the first few nights
Where oh where will it all go?

I’ll leave you with the “before” shots to ponder over, and let you get excited that I actually have some “after” shots to show you in the next few days!

We’re heeeeeeeeeeere!

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Hubs and I arrived in Wang on Saturday afternoon after a great trip up. We were packed and ready to go by around 10am and after a brief pit-stop at our friend’s place on the way, we were on the highway by 11. We arrived around 2 and as we drove in to our new place, the neighbours came out to say hello. It was really lovely. Charlie next door made an offer of a cup of tea which we took him up on once we unpacked. How is it that it took 2 days to pack the kombi and less than an hour to unpack!?? Hilarious.

Charlie invited us over for dinner but we mentioned we had something organised already. This didn’t stop him though! At 4:30pm there was a knock at the door and there was Charlie, telling us he’d cooked us dinner. Ha ha. It was very sweet. We had pork chops and veges and were home around 6 for some more unpacking.

After the rental debacle, everything worked out fine. We really like the unit we got and it’s in a great location. I also landed a casual job at the Council offices (just finished my interview and signed the contract to start next week) which is absolutely perfect! So you see? Everything worked out wonderfully.

Now Mum and I are off to do some much-needed shopping including buying FURNITURE!! And a fridge. Hopefully. I have a big long list and a whole week to check everything off! Hubs gets home Friday night and our friend is coming down for the weekend which will be great. That’s about all for now. I’ll be baaaaaack….

Cracking the funnies

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Setting the scene: Hubs and Wifey are at their first antenatal appointment at the hospital, answering endless questions from the midwife about conception, family histories, health etc etc. Hubs and Wifey are trying to act like mature, future parents. Well, Wifey is at least…

Midwife: “Did you need any help getting pregnant?”
Wifey: “No I didn’t.”
Hubs: “I helped!”

Wifey and Midwife look at each other, and are left unable to speak for some time…

Nuts about Peanuts

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I’ve mentioned my love of Peanuts before (here and here), and my desire to own the complete Peanuts series of comic books (they are still being released!!) and the fact that I am currently struggling through reading a biography about Charles Schulz (that I think I’m going to give up on to be honest). What was my point again? Oh yeah, I love Peanuts. So when we were in Minotaur the other day, and came across the Peanuts 60th Anniversary Book, I went, well, a little nuts 🙂

But I didn’t actually really consider buying it. It was a bit pricey, and such frivolousness at this point in time wasn’t on my mind. But it was on Hubs’ mind. He said something like “Go onnnnnnnn. Let’s just get it. If you REALLY want it, we can say it was a birthday present since I didn’t get you one.” This isn’t really true – Hubs made me a beautiful photo album that didn’t cost much, but that took him hours to put together. Still, who was I to argue?? And since I got to get a new comic book, so did Hubs! (Perhaps that was his plan all along! 🙂 He wanted Strange Girl and the whole series (5 books) was available at a very good price so it was a done deal.

I haven’t even opened it yet. I’m saving it til we move to Wang. The anticipation is kind of killing me, but in a really awesome way. It’s going to be SO goooooood….