ANXIETY, PIRATES & FORTUNE COOKIES

Yesterday we went to a four year-old’s pirate birthday party.

It was a bit hectic getting there, what with the bridge being closed, me getting muddled on directions, and G urging me to go to the gym for 20 minutes before we should have left in order to get there on time, because I was rather anxious about this restaurant we’re planning to open…without having all the money we need yet to open it.

Details.

Who needs them?

So, after I’d thrown a few weights about the gym, done a couple of squats and managed to suppress my anxiety to a socially acceptable level at least, we were on our way, Q dressed in her party best. (A very groovy second-hand dress given to us by the owners of said 4 year-old).

My friend opened the door and when she did I wondered why she was wearing a gypsy skirt and a bandana, and then it occurred to me that she was a pirate of sorts and I felt bad because I hadn’t interpreted the invite as a dress-up too.

Lame.

So, in we went, late and un-costumed. The losers on the invite list.

I find kid’s parties exhausting.

Come on, admit it, don’t you?

Typically you haven’t had an adequate enough breakfast to see you through the experience, and unless you’re willing to overdose on fairy bread and cupcakes, (thereby giving yourself a massive sugar high and equally massive headache) that is unlikely to change.

And so you spend the hours having fractured conversations with the adults while you run after your small human as they head straight for the edge of the deck, the climbing frame or the fairy bread.

If there’s one thing Q doesn’t need, it’s more energy.

No sugar for her.

Two hours later, after you've refereed countless fights between two 14 month olds who don’t understand or care for the word ‘share’, you’re on your way, stuffing the banana in your mouth that you stole from the hosts’ fruit bowl, telling them it was for Q.

1 year-old birthday parties typically don’t include a lolly bag, because their most favoured treat is their mother’s milk and that would just be weird, but 4 year-old parties do.

By then our hunger was starting to win out, so before we were even out of the drive, G and I were at our pirate best, greedily devouring Q’s collection of freckles, milk bottles and fortune cookies.

Every pirate party has fortune cookies.

Everyone knows that.

What’s funny is that mine said ‘resist the urge to change your plans.’

Sometimes you find providence in the oddest of places.

 Happy Monday everyone, have a fabulous week.

PUTTING YOUR C*#K ON THE BLOCK. METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING OF COURSE.

My ghetto bandage, because at $140,
he didn't even offer me a bandaid.

I am typing with a slightly gammy thumb, because I just had an injection in it because I have trigger thumb.

From all the pistols I shoot.

That is honestly what the doctor called it.

Apparently a lot of new mums get it from picking up their children 9000 times a day.

Why wouldn’t you call it new-mum thumb then?

In unrelated news, it’s a day of angsty nerves, worrying and decision tossing here at team Llewellyn/Hart.

We walk through the restaurant space again today with the builder and planning consultant, which is exciting and making it seem real, but we’re also continually trying to shave costs from our friendly little opening budget and that is not exciting but still making it seem real.

Let’s face it.

Starting a small business is always going to be a risk.

At some point the trigger thumb doctor opened his own practice. (Still, at $140 every 15 minutes I’d say he’s doing ok).

The architect we’re planning to use, she’s in small business too.

So is the wine dude, the builder, the coffee supplier, the plumber, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker.

They all made the decision to go out on their own.

And thus far, they’ve all survived to tell the tale.

So what’s got us all nervy?

All this talk of a second GFC that’s what.

Will it hit?

Will it miss?

Will Australia cruise through like last time or will people stop their discretionary spending and eat bread and dripping instead?

I dunno, but at some point, as one brother says, you’ve just got to put your cock on the block.

(He’s known around town for his rhetoric and grandiloquence).

So, metaphorically speaking, am I ready for possible castration?

Or will the public embrace my metaphoric manhood with joy, fervour and an extra round of after dinner drinks?

Only time - and a few other key factors - will tell.

Happy Friday folks, have a fabulous weekend.

RED BACK SPIDERS CAN KILL YOU, YOU KNOW.

Last week my friend got bitten by a red-back spider.

Yeah you know the one, the one that can kill you.

When I asked her why she hadn’t mentioned her near death experience, she reminded me that it wasn’t about us anymore, it was about the humans we had made, and that while a near death experience would ordinarily have been considered a newsworthy topic, it now faded into insignificance when compared with more weighty issues such as teething, nap boycotts and vegetable refusals.

My friend could have died of her spider bite and I would never have known because I was too busy making stuffed cannelloni, reading the same book for the ninety-six thousandth time and working my biceps at the slippery dip in the park.

Such is the life I lead.

Other newsworthy items that have gone un-newsed are as follows;

·               We have made an offer on a restaurant and it has been accepted.

Is there really any need for me to write anything else?

Oh sorry, gotta go. Q needs her nappy changed.

Kids. 

They have the darndest way of putting things in perspective.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, THE TOUGH GET A MASSAGE

Do you ever put things off, things that by doing them you know would make life easier, but you can’t be bothered to exert the energy required, and so instead, you expend unnecessary energy each time you perform the task/use the object that is not functioning correctly, the sum total of wasted energy far exceeding the energy it would take to rectify the problem in the first place, and yet still you can’t be arsed?

I do.

Things like not mounting the dryer to the wall, and so having it sit on the bathroom floor, taking up valuable floor space, making it impossible to clean and even more impossible to use because the vibrating on the tiled floor causes the person living below to start to hate you. (Not that I use the dryer because I am a tree-hugging energy saver and the dryer is for that criminal Martha Stewart decoration purposes only).

Or mending the hems on four pairs of pants and so you just don’t wear them, which means you have to wash continually because your child destroys at least 2 of your outfits a day and you just don’t own that many pairs of comfy jeans.

Or staring at the running pram you were given that is securely locked to the front pillar, unable to be stolen and unable to be used at all because your husband lost the only key to the padlock and is refusing to buy a set of bolt cutters. Which means I use the other buggy, which doesn’t handle as well and costs me 35 bucks each time I blow a tire.

I could go on…

Dentist appointments

Wedding book

The tear in the leather couch we were given

The Tupperware drawer

Cleaning the oven

My hair..

As my husband always tells me ‘when the pain gets great enough you’ll do something about it.’

And the pain is great people, the pain is very great.

So this morning I booked in for a spa treatment with a voucher I won in my gym’s Christmas hamper. (I suspect it was rigged, as our family has given them a dozen members, but I don’t care. That voucher is mine, damn it, all mine).

The burning of the proverbial candle has only just begun, of that I am well aware, but if I can soothe my singed soul every now and again with a bit of sheer decadence I reckon I just might make it through.

Happy Tuesday people, may it be full of unexpected indulgence. 

$9 A PHOTOCOPY. HIGHWAY ROBBERY ME THINKS.

Yesterday I had to pay a $42 administration fee to the council for them to open a drawer and pull out a plan.

Then they charged me $9 to photocopy it.

This is not me. I wish.

When we left, (quickly, lest they charge us a wear and tear fee for standing in the queue) we took Q to a free council provided water park, which entertained her for quite some time. Perhaps our $42 administration fee helped pay for one of the sprinklers.

The biggest thing I am discovering about opening a small business is that there are fees and costs, lodging payments and bureaucratic charges wherever you turn.

If it weren’t for a very dear friend of mine being one, I’d be developing a fairly extreme aversion to Town Planners.

But I’ve reframed my thought processes. Actually I should kiss their feet, because it’s not a job I could do.

I start to read the forms and immediately my eyes glaze, my mind softens and before I know it, I’m making a cup of decaf tea and looking up the page entitled ‘fines for not filing correct documentation.’

Or writing a blog…

Better get back to it.

xx

LEARNING FROM A BABY - IF THEY CAN DO IT, WHY CAN'T I?

There are lots of things Q can do that I can’t.

·               Go from a sitting position, to an open-hipped squat, to standing, in one fluid motion without grunting, dislocating her hips or having to rock back and forth to get enough momentum to execute the move in the first place.

·               Cover herself in plum so that she looks like she’s been punched in the face and carry on as if nothing is awry.

·               Whinge incessantly if things aren’t going her way. G may argue that she inherited this trait from her mother, but I don't think so. I prefer to yell.

·               Find my nipples in a nuclear blackout. This trait she most definitely inherited from her father.

·               Freakishly manage to double the mass of food she inhaled by the time it comes out the other end. Particularly corn.

·               Say countless words including bath, baby, bye-bye, apple, banana, several animal noises and Dada, but still not Mamma to any degree of understanding.

·               Limitless determination to try, try and try again until she can do it.

 It is this surety of her own invincibility that I am trying to emulate as we go forward with this opening your own restaurant gig.

When do humans learn – or concede - that they might not be able to do everything?

When do we stop trying new things?

What makes us doubt our own abilities?

Q doesn’t. If there’s something she wants, someone she needs, she works, works, works until that thing or person is hers.

To be fair, some of her success is due to the capitulation of her parents, but for the most part she works towards her goal until she’s got it in her firm baby grasp.

It’s admirable.

And daunting.

And time for her mother to stop pussyfooting around and set her a good example.

Excuse me please, I have a business to run.

SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS HAVE BIG BALLS

Small business owners have big balls.

Metaphorically speaking.

Anatomically speaking too I suppose, but that’s not a research project I’m interested in pursuing at the moment.

This startling revelation is one of many I’ve made this year, and it’s only January 10^th.

I don’t know what animal it is in Chinese tradition, but for me it is year of the owl. By year’s end I shall be wise beyond my quickly advancing years.

Small business owners have big balls metaphorically speaking because…well, because, quite frankly, they have a lot of shit to do.

G and I are eyeball deep in opening budgets and 12 month projection plans and all I keep wanting to project is a long holiday on the beach.

And we haven’t even opened yet.

There is a lot to consider.

And a lot you don’t want to consider but you have to because it’s the law.

And still more that you do want to consider but you can’t because your budget has been eaten up considering things because they are the law.

It is a very tricky business this small business gig.

And people thought being a performer was hard.

Let's be honest, I got paid to pretend to be someone else. I wandered about a stage, every now and then I sang a song about my imaginary circumstances and just to round the whole thing off, I might have done a bit of a tap dance usually dressed in sequins and somebody else’s hair.

Comparatively speaking, that was as easy as a kick-ball-change.

Further revelations as they have come to me this year include but are not limited to:

·               People in business dealings pretend to be nice but really they just want what they want and bugger the rest of you.

·               It is very obvious to these people that I am naïve and destructively honest.

·               Restaurants are very expensive things to set up.

·               It is much easier to spend money than it is to make it.

·               Outsource what you don’t know and pay the professionals to deal with it. This is particularly valuable regarding legal matters where you did a dud photocopy and are missing key pages.

·               Chefs are creators. Living with one is like living with Picasso, but hopefully you’re his only wife.

·               Butcher’s paper and to-do lists will save you. They will always save you.

·               Ask your friends if they know people in the fields you need. You’d be surprised how many Kevin Bacons you actually know.

For these tips on small business and many more, stay tuned.

I may not have one yet, but that is a mere technicality.

As Jonathon Swift said, ‘vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others’.

Welcome to 2012 people. As Sydney City Council told us on New Year's Eve, 

DARE TO DREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!