Change No One But Yourself

Well, we've had Christmas and we're in that lull between then and Hogmanay, or New Year's Eve as most people here in Oz call it.

For the first time in ages I'm having holidays between the two celebration days, and its lovely. Usually when I have holidays I'm either traveling or in a show (and sometimes both). This time its just lovely to have days to do nothing, or do something if you feel like it. So far the house has suffered my extra energy and some massive tidying up and clearing out has been happening. Lots more needs to happen but its a start.

We resisted the manic aspect of Christmas and chose to have a quieter day of our own design. Funnily enough we managed to see most of both of our families between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, and in a much more satisfying one to one way than the usual wild-eyed panic way that often happens on the big day.

I've managed to find time to sit and stare, which is one of the most recuperatve exercises ever, I've finished a book I've had for ages (reading it, not writing it), written some standup for February, juggled the Teenager's Maccas work schedule chauffeuring requirements, drunk some lovely wine, eaten some great food and had plentiful time to hang out with my gorgeous husband.

New Year's Eve will be similarly and deliberately quiet with just a gentle thanks being felt for all the good things we have.

2011 is going to be an awesome year - I can feel it in my bones. With us Three Stuffed Mums just getting started, the learning curve is just getting steeper, but with two such excellent companions on the journey as Kate and Kehau its more like fun than work. Our backing tracks are almost complete thanks to Mike and we're practicing like crazy.

Its so difficult for women - especially women over 30 to see their lives reflected back in a positive way from the the media and that's the imbalance we want to help address.

Its ok be you, to enjoy your life and your age whatever that may be. If you're a mum, whatever you and your kid are going through, its probably pretty normal and a bunch of us have gone through it before.

If we can laugh about it, it ceases to hold power over us. If we can talk about it, maybe together we can solve it. Whatever it is that's bugging us, just getting together with a group of women to talk will unearth so much wisdom. The media and business world aren't too interested in that wisdom, but it's there for us and we just need to find our own ways to channel and distribute it. It used to be that there were grannies, mums,aunties and sisters about to create that support group but its not so prevalent now and so many women, especially new mums, can become isolated. And that's what Three Stuffed Mums is pretty much about. We live our lives, we bring up kids, we make mistakes, we learn from that and we have a laugh about it.

Anyway, we're heading towards the new year, so I'll just say this: I wish you the best of all that you wish for yourself in the coming year. To quote from someone else that I know;
"Keep close, spread love and change no one but yourself."

Happy New Year everyone.

The Man with the Van

There's an ice cream van that comes to our area every Saturday afternoon.

The guy driving it is obviously someone who is unclear on the concept of ice cream vans, given that the idea is to pick a good spot, play your tune through the speakers as you approach it, stop there and wait for your punters to rock up for a sugar hit.

The guy on our local Mr Whippy hasn't quite made that connection. You can hear him for the entire afternoon going around the area with an alternate selection of Home on the Range/Greensleeves playing, but he never freaking stops!

He's just raced up our street with a blast of Greensleeves, got to the turning point, done a 180 and raced back down again with Home on the Range going like the clappers.

I've lived here for ten years now, I've never seen him stop! He's too fast to try running out to hail down, and I can never hear Greensleeves or Home on the Range in my head without the doppler effect. Steven reckons the 'no stopping' thing is to get the fat kids moving, the reasoning being that if they catch him then they truly deserve an ice cream.

Not like when I was a kid (she said, adjusting her mature boobs like Les Dawson in drag). Back then in the 60s in Castlemilk the nightly visit of the ice cream van was the highlight of the day. Two bottles of ginger (Irn Bru and Ginger Beer, Barr's of course), an oyster for my dad and a cone for me, and two packets of crisps (always Golden Wonder cheese and onion).

It got to be that the sound of Pelosi's van chimes produced a Pavolvian response in me, such was the importance of his visit to our street. I'd grab the bag with the two empty ginger bottles in it for refund, grab the money from dad and run down the close stairs. God forbid I was slow and missed the van.

It all went well until one night when I was about ten. The van chimes went off when I was mid-pee and the pavlovian response kicked in. I was running down the lobby of our flat trying to hitch my knickers and grab the empties at the same time. I made it down most of the first flight of stairs then, horror! I tripped and fell and the bottles smashed around me.

My brother in law who was staying with us ran out to see if I was ok. According to his reports he saw me lying in the middle of a pool of smashed glass wailing "Ahm gonny miss the van, ahm gonny miss the van!"
Such is the power of the sugar hit!

Thankfully, the kids in my area will never have that problem. They'll live with that disappointment ingrained in them, as each week demonstrates they'll never catch Stirling Moss who drives our ice cream van. And forever, every time they hear Greensleeves or Home on the Range their hearts will remember that feeling of not being able to quite catch what they wanted.