Have you named your imaginary future pets? Excellent, then it’s not just me. I name my pets of the future that I may never actually have, but exist in a future-limbo-pet-world. I’ve had these pets for around six years now. So really, they’re an established part of the family.

Meet my beagles – Robert, Keith, William, Edward (Tedward for short or if he has done something he shouldn’t), Geoffrey and Graeme. The names aren’t THAT original. They’re my dad and his brothers names – apart from Tedward, Uncle Ed prefers Uncle Ed and I would never dare call him Tedward – he doesn’t have the look of a Tedward about him. And Dad doesn’t go by William either. However, given the importance of imaginary-future pet naming, I felt that I should go with the formal options. Nobody wants a beagle name Billy. Not that my dad is called Billy – not even close.

Don’t get me wrong, my imaginary family named beagles aren’t a sign of disrespect for my dad or my uncles – far from it. I love beagles. Snoopy was a beagle. If I had the fully fenced farm and digging station that would be needed for a pack of six beagles, and the sort of temperament that would ensure they were well trained and exercised for 20 out of every 24 hours, then I would definitely, maybe, have beagles.

In any case, I need to go and feed the imaginary future pets – maybe I’ll take them for a fox hunt around the neighborhood later – except we don’t have foxes here….I’ll get the horn anyway. Tally-ho!

I woke up early today. I think that’s the general problem. And I’ve only had one cup of coffee. JUST ONE PEOPLE! And it was instant. I had breakfast, but contrary to all advice about how important it is for brain function, it hasn’t done the trick today. Or maybe it has, and I would have been much, much, much worse without the scrambled eggs on toast. Or maybe I needed to have a high-fibre, low sugar, low GI cereal with fruit and LSA (linseed, soy and almond ground to a fine sawdust consistency); with an oily fish smoothie on the side, to both get my Omega 3s, and get the husband and offspring out of the house pretty quickly. That might be one I save for tomorrow. Or the day after. Or next time we have relatives to stay.

I am the first to admit that my blog topics border on the nothingness side of information dissemination. I have been known to write a page or three ruminating on the slightest of trivial details. I have even been known to whine on occasion. But I prefer to think of my nothingness in terms of the great nothing in the Neverending Story, rather than the annoying, whiny, grating nothingness of Jerry Seinfeld. I’m much happier to think that my actions are slowly sucking the life, imagination and joy out of the world, than what he does. He is the Luke Skywalker of modern(ish) television. He’s the Brady’s cousin Oliver, without the cuteness. He doesn’t even do whiny properly – Chris Rock does whiny. It’s like if whiny and yelling mated and had a developmentally delayed child. That is the area where I feel that Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy could be placed.

Perhaps it is because my two year old has developed an unnatural attachment to The Bee Movie, however I swear, if I have to listen to Jerry Seinfeld bumble his way through one more yelling-whiny-joke, I’ll scream. That’s not to say that I wish any malice towards Mr Seinfeld (hear that Mr Seinfeld’s powerful legal team). I wish you and your family no malice sir. In fact, I wish you every happiness. I wish you a future where you need never work, nor screen any of your back catalog on any television station, anywhere in the world, ever again. I wish you a future bereft of the fiscal need to appear in advertisements or promotional material. In fact, Mr Seinfeld – from what I read in Forbes recently, you may almost be there.

So, internet friends, I ask you this day, to say a small, but sincere prayer for little Jerry Seinfeld. According to Forbes, his income was limited to $85 million last year. It took $267 million to take Seinfeld off the air in 1998, so we’ve got a bit of work to do folks. A small prayer that little Jerry finds the cash to keep him away from our screens. Ready everyone, synchronize prayers……

A nickname (also spelled “nick name”) is a descriptive name given in place of or in addition to the official name of a person, place or thing. It can also be the familiar or truncated form of the proper name[1], which may sometimes be used simply for convenience (ex. “Bob”, “Bobby”, “Rob”, “Robbie”, “Hob”, and “Bert” for “Robert”), sometimes referred to as a short name….Okay, that was straight out of Wikipedia, and to be honest, I only read every third word because it was kind of boring, but I thought that I would start this blog with a rational(ish) definition of what I was about to start talking about. I’m talking about nicknames. And truncated names. And names that are based on your actual name.

I was talking to a really cool guy named Tony earlier this evening, and we got to talking about names, given that he had renamed himself online to Antonio. I’m not sure if his parents named him Antonio, or Anthony or even Tony, but it got me thinking about how cool it would be to have a variable name, that could be truncated or extended to other names. In fact, one of my favourite people, (who has now passed away, but that is another story) was named Toni. She’d renamed herself unofficially in the years before I was born, and it was always a great mystery to me how she made the leap from Caroline, her given name, to Toni.

I’m a Maree. You can’t abbreviate or extend Maree. When my mother was telling me off, she did it through tone…and well, the scary face. When my girlfriends at school called out to me, it wasn’t a Rebecca become Becky situation…it was Maree. When my boyfriends at uni/college/high school whispered into my ear, there wasn’t a familiar, abbreviated name…there was Maree. Which is really boring and sad now that I think about it. When my husband calls me, it’s Maree. And then I give him the evil eye. And he changes it to honey, or sweetie or something else that will subdue the evil eye.

Of course, I’ve been called lots of other names over time. None of which I am going to share here, because, really, if I had liked them, I would have renamed myself that years ago, just like my Nana, Toni, had. Names are tricky things – and nicknames were one of the things my husband and I talked about when were were naming our kids. The husband has a great name. I’m jealous. He’s officially a Nicholas, however says that he has always been known as Nick. I call him Nicholas when he’s ignoring me. He seems to think it is an okay name, and tried a few times to have our boys named Nicholas as well. There were annoying nicknames in primary school, some of which I found to be very creative. Another friend named Nick had been called You-Nick, which annoyed him, but did show an element of education on the side of his tormentors. Husband Nick had encountered Tin-Bum – which I needed explained to me (Nicholas, Nickel-Ass, Tin-Bum). Smart kids these Nicholas-es went to school with. Michael Buble (yes, I listen to him, OKAY), had mentioned on an Australian talk show that his nickname was related to mammaries and fornication – all from Buble (boob-lay lead to t*t-f*ck). Could have been either derogatory or bragging. Depends on what kind of school he went to really. Given his thing for Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra songs, that nickname was probably getting off lightly.

So back to me, because that’s what is really important here. Maree. It’s a funny name. It’s easy enough to write – no pesky i’s or j’s to dot. No t’s or f’s to cross. If I was a guy, and lived in a place that had snow, I’d be sweet for entertainment. Not too many letters, not so few it seems pointless (Em). It’s just an absolute. Maree the absolute. Nope, I don’t like that either. So, nicknames…it would be nice…but then it would have to be something I approve of. Hmmmm. Thoughts? Add your comments below.

Ever have a day when you just wanted to fast forward to another day but you didn’t want to waste a day on doing that? Yeah, me neither. But imagine it was like that today. And imagine that I was having that kind of day. The photo isn’t me by the way. It’s pilfered. From someone else who has having a blah day. I was too blah to take a photo. The camera would have slithered away under the couch and waited for a better day to come out. And then I would have become even more annoyed at it, and may have been forced to take stronger action, like pulling out the camera on the mobile phone; except because it’s a blah day, the battery would have been dead, and then I would have had to have drawn a picture, which would have involved finding crayons (because the best self portraits are done in water-soluble, non-toxic crayon) and paper, which may have involved drawing on the back of something that may or may not be important, which would result in an argument with the husband later on, because invariably it would be one of his documents, because I put my pieces of important paper away and then it would have been even more BLAH. And it would be his fault for not putting the paper away in the first place. Or for hiding the camera. Or not charging my phone.

I’m not sure if blah days start at the point of waking up, or sneak towards you, unsuspectingly leaping at you when you drop the soap for the fourth or fifth time in the shower. Of course, most blah days start off so chaotically that you don’t get to have a shower, so you don’t get a chance to drop the soap, which would suggest that the shower isn’t their starting point.

Maybe they are transferred in the morning coffee or orange juice. Of course, most blah days keep your coffee from you, because one of the kids had three cups of milk in the morning with their half a liter of milk on a cornflake, and the orange juice has either fermented into a bottle-bomb, ready to blow, or has gone on the other cornflake. So perhaps it’s not the coffee or oj.

Maybe there is an osmosis that occurs between the icy cold feet of the morning toddler and the small of your warm back, still in bed, pretending that it’s not morning. The semi-permeable-icicle-membrane-foot-alarm-clock of the youngest child provides a bridge for the blah to enter through the warmed and waiting mid-back portal. Of course, this can happen on days that aren’t blah – so maybe not.

Anyway, blah days aren’t about attributing blame, no matter how innocent the husband says he is. Blah days are about making it through without quitting your job, leaving home or joining a circus. Though I’d be a bit too blah to audition. So maybe blah days are about making it through without falling into a cheese snack induced coma in front of Dr Phil episodes. Because no matter how bad it gets, it should never come to Dr. Phil.

The Café Chocolate Cake

175g unsalted butter 1 ½ cups castor sugar
2 eggs 2 Tbsp golden syrup
1 ½ cups self rising flour ¼ cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda 1 ½ cups milk

Beat the butter and sugar together until the mixture is very light and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition. Beat in the golden syrup. Sift together the flour, baking soda and cocoa and fold into the creamed mixture alternately with the milk. Turn the mixture into a well-greased and lined 23cm or 25cm round cake tin. Bake at 160`C for 1 ¼ – 1 ½ hours or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cake rack to cool completely.
When cold, ice with Chocolate Butter icing (frosting) or decorate with whipped cream.

Chocolate Butter Icing

Ingredients
4 Tbsp cocoa
3 Tbsp warm milk
100g softened butter
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sifted
few drops vanilla essence

Dissolve the cocoa in the warm milk and allow to cool. Beat the butter until it is pale and fluffy. Sift the icing sugar and beat into the creamed butter with the vanilla essence and cooled cocoa mixture.

I’ve read that younger people hear noises at frequencies that those of us of a certain age no longer have audible access to. Maybe there’s a secret young person loud speaker that is broadcasting a Ma’am warning whenever I approach a counter.

The last time I was asked for ID when buying booze, the guy who looked at my license apologized. That was bad, but it was a one-off. It wasn’t like a daily ma’aming. And he was from another country – it could have been a cultural thing – he was being extra polite and all white girls look the same.

The first few Ma’am incidents floated by without any real increase in my awareness. I thought, okay, that’s fine, there’s a new drive for increased customer service. I’ll go with that. Now, I’m becoming attuned to the fact that NOT EVERYONE IS A MA’AM….I’ve listened in on conversations at the checkout, and there seems to be a magic mid-twenties cut off point from smiley chat about school, uni, college, Miley Cyrus and ‘So how’s your day Ma’am’.

I’m disturbed by this. I’m sure it’s the start of something I won’t like. Next thing you know, people will be thinking that I’m dying my hair blue or black or red or green to hide the grey instead of being ‘cutting edge and hip’. Hell, I think I’ve even just put myself in the Ma’am category by using the phrase ‘cutting edge and hip’.

I’d complain some more, but it’s my bed time now…need to get the Zzzz’s before the kids wake us up. Dammit! I am a Ma’am.

When you walk into this room, to the left (on the toilet sharing wall) is an alcove, a recess, where the wall is deeper than the rest. Conveniently, it’s the same width as my husband’s desk. Inconveniently, it means that when he is occupying his desk, he is no more than four feet away from whomever is sitting on the toilet. He doesn’t seem to care about this. I on the other hand, abhor the fact that we could, but for the wall, hold hands while I am using the toilet. He’s even facing it, using his super-human x-ray vision to peer through the wall, and worst of all, his attuned selective hearing ears to listen to the noises being made in there.

I am not a public toilets person. I’m no where near as bad as that guy in American Pie that had to race home to use a toilet, but I’m also not one for the sharing of toilet noises. Any toilet noises. I’ll put a tap on and waste water to mask the sound of any noises I may be making, given the chance. Because he (the husband) doesn’t care, he gets annoyed every time I need to use the toilet and kick him out to the lounge, or outside, or anywhere that isn’t sitting at his desk. He’s told me that he can’t hear anything, anyway, but I know he’s not telling the truth. If I can sit on the toilet and hear him breathing, coughing, singing along to Kylie Minogue songs, then he can hear whatever unmentionable sounds are coming from my side of the wall. Which then leads me to hop about the place, trying not to need to use the lavatory, which makes me feel uncomfortable, which is of course his fault.

He’s trying to make me unwell. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he just go further away or put his desk somewhere else? Well, yes, technically I could just use the other toilet by the laundry, but this isn’t about me. It’s about him. Geesh.

…that saw the Canadian guy copying these guys, however this is the original Capella group tribute to John Williams. Enjoy. I’ll stop trawling through YouTube and write some real content for the blog. Geesh.