STARBUCKS ANNOYS ME, BUT HAPPY THANKSGIVING ANYWAY.

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving, my very favourite of the American holidays.

We held the occasion at my youngest brother’s apartment, very nicely situated on the ground floor of a building that backs onto the harbour, with a salt water pool and evidently full of really boring tenants as not a single other person ventured out on such a magnificent day.

Lets also remember that we’ve just had a week of torrential rain and back-in-your-winter-woollies weather, which had Q (and therefore her mother) losing her mind.

What’s wrong with people? You couldn’t have dragged us inside even if you’d bribed us with food.

Speaking of...we celebrated Thanksgiving by showing solidarity with the 50-odd million illegal immigrants to the US and had Mexican.

Photography by our friend Blair.

All homemade by my chef husband, and followed with a number one cake that was made with love, if not expertise by Q’s doting mother. Moi.

Blair did not take this picture. I did.
I tried people, really I did.

I don’t have to do another number ‘one’ for another 9 years. 

I love Thanksgiving, it’s such a great holiday. No gifts, no pressure, just a great meal with your favourite people.

Although people did bring gifts, because it also coincided with Q’s first birthday and she got spoilt rotten. I’m going to hide a bunch of them and stagger their introduction, claiming credit for them as we go.

She also got given oodles of second-hand clothes.

In 12 months I have bought her two things – a dress to wear to her uncle’s wedding and a swimming nappy.

When people first gave me clothes, I meticulously re-washed and folded them all. Now? Bugger it.

What kind of friend would give you dirty clothes?

If the Yanks do one thing well, it’s holidays. They really throw their backs into it. We were in the states just recently in time for Halloween and I really wished Q had been old enough to want to dress up as a Munchkin from The Wizard of OZ, and make her father dress up as a lion and me a wicked witch, and parade from house to house seeking treats in the chilly dark air, passing ghosts and supermen and fairies and stopping at places lit with candles, jack-o-lanterns and spooky looking ghouls.

 Back in 2002 when I’d moved to the states, it had been about the same time of year, and I remember watching in delight as people strung Christmas lights out their New York apartments, dragged Christmas trees down snowy streets and up 3 flights of stairs and the incessant ringing of the Salvation Army Bell on every street corner, calling for donations.

I remember pumpkin spiced lattes at Starbucks, which just sound outright disgusting to me.

Hot pumpkin flavoured coffee mixed with milk?

Gross.

I don’t care for Starbucks as a rule, their coffee is notoriously terrible. But they’re open late, don’t care how long you sit at their tables, and are guaranteed to have a public toilet. Many a time I’ve ducked into one on my way from dance class to work, desperately ripping leotard and tights aside to avoid a total catastrophe.

So thank you Starbucks for your latrines, but please stop calling your cups tall, grande and venti.

You are not Italian.

And neither are your customers.

The terms small, medium and large will do just nicely thank you very much.

You can almost redeem a cup of bad Starbucks coffee with another great American invention – half and half. The half cream-half milk you can buy to try to overcome the acidic taste of burnt percolated coffee, made at 5am and still festering on the hot plate at 10pm that night.

 Wheat thins are another gem we Aussies are missing out on. Delicious wheaty, salty goodness. They’re a mid-priced cracker, but as all food in the US is a 9^th of the price we’re charged down under, you can actually afford to buy them.

 The Duggars are another American favourite. Or they used to be. At first I thought they were funny and weird.

Now, with their 20^th child on the way, I think they’re just weird.

All their children play a musical instrument.

20 kids.

That’s an orchestra people.

But there’s never a show of artistic histrionics in their family, they’re all always so calm.

I imagine they avoid caffeine. Even seasonally inspired pumpkin spiced lattes.

It seems they avoid Halloween too, though for religious, not glucose related hyperactivity purposes.

Shopping in general (while still a detested activity) is a lot more bearable in the US when you go to the outlet malls near my in-laws house and buy up a year’s supply of running shoes for the same amount as one pair here.

It is how my husband justifies his collection of Chucks sneakers. Every colour but maroon.

America has a lot to offer (if you can look past the jeans and white sneakers) and thanksgiving is one of the best.

So while we swapped green bean casserole for homemade guacamole, overcrowded buses at Port Authority for strolls in the burning sun, and snowball fights for cool swims in sparkling water, it was still a fabulous celebration.

Thank you America, for giving me thanksgiving, in an I-married-an-American kind of way, and welcome to the holidays people, let the festivities begin.

THE MEANING OF LIFE LA STYLE

I’ve been running for approximately twenty-six years.  Not continually, but regularly and wherever I seem to find myself.  Along the foreshores of Sydney, on the dried crusted sands of outback Australia, through a grey, dank park south of London, along the frozen Hudson River in New York.  Wherever I’ve lived I’ve run.  It’s very cathartic for me.  Without it I’d likely be medicated for anxiety.  At the very least I’d be rather difficult to live with. It also fits my budget…it’s free.  All I do is throw on a pair of old runners, fall out the back door and go for a trot. 

That’s the easy part.  It’s getting back again that I find difficult, for I perpetuate the feminine stereotype of having utterly appalling navigational skills.  Absolutely no sense of direction and a complete inability to read maps.  It shames my brothers, but if forced to use a map, I flip it to match any turns I make and therefore embraced that navigational masterpiece, the GPS, with more joy than I did my husband on our wedding night.  The points on a compass mean nothing to me and unless I waited until the sun set, I would never know where west is. I’m a navigational black hole.  Any relevant information enters my brain and if it comes out at all it’s warped.  Left seems right, up is down, and as for roundabouts, circling them until you’re dizzy is better than getting on a freeway you can’t escape and traveling for miles suspecting, correctly, that you’re going in the wrong direction. 

I think my father thought he could fix the problem by enrolling the four of us in an orienteering course when we were young.  We were put in pairs, given a compass and a map, and a series of targets to find somewhere in the bush.  The first team back won.  I was always put with a family friend who (if he’d been so inclined) could likely have represented Australia in the middle distance running events.  Off he would dash, disappearing amongst the gum trees and buggar following the map, my sole objective was to keep up with him and not spend the day lost in the wilderness.

New York spoiled me; its convenient grid meant that even when I was lost, I was still only one block in the wrong direction.  I’d forgotten how much that hid my disability when I was briefly back in Australia and working in Darwin, Northern Territory.  On my first night there, I stayed with my new boss and her husband and headed out for a jog.  Two and a half hours later, heels bleeding, mouth as dry as a popcorn fart, they found me pounding the pavement clear on the other side of town.

In those days I was a fashion workout puritan; old t-shirts with no labels, my midriff securely covered, shorts from my soccer days and definitely no music device.  I’ve graduated now - audibly anyway - and strap an ipod to my arm.  An excellent device that detracts those pesky talky-trotters from striking up a conversation with me when I cross their path.  It is an instrument I wish I’d had as a little girl when my father would drag me from bed for an early morning run.  In my entire running career I’ve never met a runner like Phil.  He doesn’t seem to find breathing a necessity thereby allowing him to run and talk at the same time.  “So Nome,” he’ll say, half way up a hill, “what do you think is the meaning of life?”

These days I sprint along the edge of the Pacific, the Santa Monica Pier in the distance, dodging seagulls, my feet pounding in time to the rhythm of the Venice drum circle, the theme from Chariots of Fire running through my head.  Usually I am accompanied by a pod of dolphins playing in the waves where the lifeguards are performing one of their many surf rescues.  I’m not sure why there are so many, though it may have something to do with the large number of people swimming fully clothed, which can’t help too much with their buoyancy.  

Sometimes I skip the beach, bike ride to a steep set of stairs and run up and down them until my legs shake so badly I can barely ride home again.  It may seem like an odd thing to do, but I am never alone.  The stairs are always crowded with hundreds of sweating, panting, puffing Santa Monicans all working for the perfect body. 

Up and down the steps I pound, head down and eyes on the stairs, which is great for avoiding an embarrassing trip, but gives me no time to prepare for coming face to face – or face to bum as the case may be – with the person in front. 

Usually it’s a woman in Lycra pants and matching sports bra because here, a display of midriff is compulsory, regardless of its state.  The owner of said midriff may have just given birth to octuplets or placed first in a hamburger eating competition, but still their jiggling abdomens are revealed, shuddering like bacon on a factory convey belt.

And if it’s not the jigglers I run into, it’s the man with the weights, always dressed in a black fleece tracksuit and covered in a weight jacket.  The pungent odour of man-sweat trapped between metal and a synthetic fibre wafts behind him like a skunk under threat.  Though I do occasionally wonder if I’m not much better.  My typical morning involves getting dressed into the pajamas I didn’t wear to bed, (I find them restrictive for sleeping, but perfect for writing) writing for a few hours, then getting out in the sunshine for a bit of exercise.  Rationalising that there’s no point showering before a workout, or putting deodorant on either since I’ll only sweat it off so I may as well save the money, I head for the stairs as natural as nature intended.  The saying ‘ladies don’t sweat, they perspire’ does not apply to me and it has occurred to me that my natural pheromones may, in fact, be offensive to others. 

Now, while the stairs are being pounded by those with the extra pounds, they’re more likely to be lightly tapped by rawboned women, their glossy manes bouncing around their doctor-designed faces, their chopstick legs desperately balancing the weight of their surgically enhanced chests so they don’t topple forwards and land at the bottom of the stairs in a tiny bundle of plastic, collagen and spandex. 

LA is the kind of town where if you didn’t have an eating disorder when you got here, you’ll quickly acquire one.  They’re obligatory.  Like a valley accent, or air pollution, or a passive-aggressive attitude.  Here, pre-schoolers do yoga and ladies carry their complexes in their designer handbag.  Recently I overheard a woman ask her friend how she stayed so thin.  “I haven’t eaten anything that tastes good in years,” the friend replied.

I’ve only been here eight months and already I’ve developed the disturbing habit of reaching under my shirt and feeling my belly pooch every time I take a sip of tea with sugar in it or - heaven forbid - eat the bread my sandwich comes with.  Sometimes when I’m running the stairs I grab at it, as if I might be able to feel the fat dissolve with every step I climb.

So here we are, the fatties, the clones and me, all vying for space on the wooden stairs.  And just like I can sniff the weight man, I can also sniff the clones’ disdain when they glance at my outfit, my baseball cap hiding my unbrushed hair, the sun cream running milkily down my arms.

“What’s the time?” Clone One asks Clone Two, pointedly ignoring the watch on my wrist.  After taking her earphone out of one ear and telling the person on her iPhone to “hang on a minute,” Clone Two looks at Clone One and says; “twelve thirty.”  (No self respecting Hollywood-wannabe exercises before noon.  Probably because their waitressing shift didn’t finish until three and they also need the morning to blow dry their freshly washed hair).  But it’s not really the time Clone One cares about.  What she’s really saying is; “how did you convince your surgeon to do your breasts so big?  I tried, but mine refused.  I knew I should have spent the extra money for the surgeon on that reality show, all my friends did and he did exactly as they asked.”

One of my greatest runs was back in New York on the night of ‘blackout 2003’ (as the commemorative t-shirts said).  At first New Yorkers panicked (it seemed a little too much like that fateful September date) but after it was ascertained – and blamed on Canada – that it was just a huge power failure, it was a very pleasant evening indeed.  Spontaneous street parties erupted, stores gave away melting ice creams and candles were shared as people gathered together on the brownstone steps.  At dusk, not a single light but the fireflies in the trees and the sun setting over the west side apartments, I strode around the Jackie Onassis Resevoir and thought of Phil. 

What was the meaning of life?  Was it this?  A mad-paced city forced to stop and smell the dog pee evaporating from its sidewalks?  To recognise that for all their differences, the inhabitants could still be united by a single blown fuse.  Or did the clones have it right?  Was the meaning of life competitive uniformity?  Should we abandon individuality and strive instead for homogenous perfection? 

I decided to ask Clone Number Two…if only I could work out which one she was.

PLASTIC SURGERY VICTIMS AND HOMELESS MEN DANCING WITH ANTLERS. WHERE AM I?

I lived in the US for 8 years, six and a half of them in my little NYC, and eighteen months in LA, which I never had any interest in moving to, but did so because my husband got a great job offer there and since our next move was to my land on the other side of the world, I figured I owed him at least that.

 LA is a funny town. Owing to Gregory’s insane work hours (chefs do not understand work-life balance - an executive chef isn’t aware the concept even exists, and kitchens operate rather similarly to the military – ‘yes sir, no sir,’ and there is no time for discussion because your lavender infused béchamel sauce is about to boil over) we lived near where he worked, which meant we shacked up in a tiny seaside cottage in the tourist hotspot, Santa Monica.

It wasn’t a bad life. I took a break from performing so I could write (and be near my new husband) swam in the beach every morning, rode my bike to work in a nearby fancy restaurant, and earned a quid doing what I do unfortunately well – seating the people.

Gregory and I would meet at the end of the evening and wine and dine the night away with our other hospitality friends.

 It wasn’t a bad life because it is very easy to love that sort of life - you know someone at every joint you enter, there is a lot of fresh seafood and a stupid amount of gin.

It is fair to say I started to resemble a juniper berry.           

I drank so much of the stuff over those 18 months that I haven’t touched it since.

 I would argue this excessive intake was necessary because while the friends we made in LA were fabulous and are some of our dearest, the pervading culture of that town is more toxic than the plastic filling the chests of most women.

 Almost everyone who lives there is waiting to become someone. And if they’re not, it’s because they already think are someone, which comes with it a sense of entitlement so outrageous and misplaced, I was forced to fight fire with fire and between the hours of 6 and 11 in the evening I became a hostessing vigilante, informing people with just a look and a well raised eyebrow that they are, in fact, one of the most wretched people in the world, that it is just dinner they’re waiting for and that conventional manners suggest that if someone is in front of you, they will be addressed first.

 Still, I missed it when we left. The excellent weather, (I am sorry to say that it is superior even to Sydney’s) the Santa Monica farmers markets, well attended by locals, celebrities and the ever-following paparazzi, and the odd-bods who make the sands of Venice beach their home.

 Apparently if you are released from re-hab and have nowhere to go, you are issued a one-way bus ticket to Santa Monica and Venice.

 It’s very kind of them really. If I was going to be homeless I’d much rather do so under a palm tree than above a subway grate in NYC. Particularly in winter.

These delightful characters can be found sitting in a circle beating drums as the sun sets, chilling quietly on a grassy knoll, or (as I witnessed this time round) performing a bizarre sand-dance with arabesques and pirouettes, dressed in ragged shorts and bike helmets with antlers sticking out.

 You don’t get that sort of entertainment at Bondi.

 I ran a lot in LA. So I saw a lot while I was there.

And it inspired this piece about plastic surgery, Hollywood wannabes and the meaning of life.

I hope you enjoy it.

33 TODAY. WHAT A DECADE IT'S BEEN INDEED!

This time a decade ago I was sitting in a café on the upper west side of NYC, supping on coffee and cake with my new American friends, the adrenalin and excitement at having moved to the Big Apple keeping me warm in a city that was to become my home for the next 7 years and celebrating my 23^rd birthday. 

A decade ago.

Comparatively, this morning began at 3am with my nearly one-year-old daughter practicing her break-dance moves, which saw me leave the marital bed for the second time that week and move to the couch where I watched the dawn creep slowly in.

Where once I was taking 8 dance classes a week, buying ‘standing room only’ tickets to Broadway shows, drinking cheap wine at late night bars on the lower east side and living on Ketchup soup, I now get incidental exercise walking my daughter to the park, see a play at the STC and stress the whole time about my bottle-boycotting daughter, get drunk on a sniff of champagne and am never without food in my mouth.

 Time can be a fickle fiend. But she can also be considerate and accommodating.

Life is long my friends.

And life is good.

Very good.

Here’s to another fabulous decade.

HOMESCHOOLING, BAD PARENTING & WHY AIRPLANES ARE THE PERFECT LOCATION FOR SQUEEZING ZITS!

I don’t mind flying.  It’s like shopping – a necessary evil.  The best part of both being the overhead fluorescent lights found in airplane toilets and dressing room cubicles - perfect lighting for blackhead squeezing. 

I have passed many a shopping hour digging out those hard-to-see-under-ordinary-household-lighting-chin-heads.  I may not have a dress to wear to the wedding I was meant to be shopping for, but at least I know I’ll be going with clear skin. 

It’s a fabulous by-product of an otherwise expensive and rather boring activity, though you do cop a few stares from irritated passengers when you finally come out of the airplane toilet. 

Obviously, due to your time behind the locked door, they think you’ve been getting rid of some seriously hazardous material and they know they’ve got no choice but to head on in there and suffer the scent. 

But I don’t think anyone actually poos on an airplane on account of the bread rolls they serve.  It is like eating a block of mildly flavoured sandstone, guaranteed to wedge in your colon and halt the passing of any solid waste. 

I think it’s a deliberate ploy on the part of the airlines. 

I don’t care which celebrity chef does your airline’s food, every meal contains the sandstone roll to prevent in-flight toilet blockages, overly long queues and potential diarrhea. 

I have contemplated telling my fellow passengers what I’ve really been up to in there, but somehow I’m not sure they would consider my mini-facial worth the fifteen minutes I made them wait.

This time round however, I arrived in LA with the same clogged skin I had at take-off on account of my child only sleeping 3 out of 14 hours, and spending the other 11 hooning up and down the aisles, finding the long legs of only good-looking, single men to help her stand up when she wanted to.

She took a particular liking to a gent in 47A.

Seriously, it looked like a stitch-up. Like I’d deliberately sent her his way.

Luckily she didn’t stay put long enough for me to have to engage in embarrassing small talk. Although I must say, my girl has excellent taste.

What’s that phrase? An old bird like me can look at the menu, I just can’t order.

And so we landed in LA, my skin none the better for it, and the first leg of our journey to the Big Apple over.

It had been our thinking to give Q a chance to stretch her legs by breaking the trip in LA, but since she stretched them the whole way there, she was then ready for a little shut eye, and literally fell face forward into my lap on the cab ride to the hotel, where we were shortly meeting friends, thereby making it impossible for me to nap and leading to a 36 hour stretch of wakedness which seriously blew.

Wakedness is not a word as far as I can tell. Which should indicate to you just how tired I really was. Am.

There is a reason the Army uses sleep deprivation as a means of torture and punishment.

Two days later we boarded an American Airlines flight bound for my favourite town, NYC.

Typically, I am not a fan of AA, but I was a fan this time because I had used my points through Qantas to gain free flights and free makes me a fan of anything.

But it wasn’t just that. Someone in the marketing team, or perhaps is was customer relations, maybe HR, I don’t know, but someone had alerted the flight attendants to the notion that it is in fact their job to serve people, that a pleasant attitude is pretty much mandatory and that ironing your uniform has the dual purpose of making it look like you care a bit even if you don’t, and reassuring a nervous flyer that there is some sort of attention to detail within a company responsible for flying you through the air from one location to another.

Well done American Airlines. I will stop besmirching your name.

In an effort to tire Q out, we let her crawl madly about LAX (the most boring airport in the universe, which meant Q was interesting to all and forced me into more banal conversations about my daughter, parenting and whether or not we’ll try to manipulate the sex of our second child) until boarding time.

The flight wasn’t full, but bulkhead seats are the popular ones, so we had another family across the aisle with a daughter who looked to be about four, and a woman next to us who we immediately apologised to on Q’s behalf.

‘Oh don’t worry,’ she says, ‘I’ve flown with my sister’s two children, I understand. Do you breastfeed? My sister did. Does. Her children are four. She’s still breastfeeding. Oh no, I think it’s weird too, don’t worry. She’s into attachment parenting do you know what that is?’

Gregory was still looking horrified at the four comment, so I shook my head on our behalf.

‘It’s when you never say no to your children, you just give them other suggestions instead.’

‘Excuse me please Quinn, before you go crawling off that veranda there, might I suggest you read a book instead.’

Yeah right.

After we’d overcome our shock, we got ourselves comfortable and it occurred to me as I watched the woman with the daughter wipe down every surface with a sterile wipe, that Q was currently munching on snacks from hands I’d forgotten to wipe clean after crawling on the airport floor.

The fact that I forgot to wipe her hands makes me a bad parent.

The fact that she was eating organic kale puffs with dirty hands makes me a good parent.

They cancel each other out.

‘You have a little baby girl,’ says the woman’s daughter, immediately identifying herself as a genius for not thinking Q was a boy.

And so we begin to chat, I ask her about the toys she brought along, the bible colouring-in book she’s working on and her favourite thing to do at school.

‘Circle time,’ she says to me proudly.

‘What’s that?’ I ask, adding that I thought it was probably something like pass-the-parcel and that that sounded like fun to me.

‘Oh no,’ says the mother, ‘it’s word and picture recognition time. She loves it. She’s homeschooled.’

And then she gave me an ‘I feel sorry for you because it is clear you’re not going to offer your daughter the same opportunities smile’ and stopped talking to me.

Yeah?

Well I made Q a book of the alphabet and numbers. 

If that’s not word and picture recognition I don’t know what is.

Clearly this is a zig-zag & zucchini for the letter Z,
I know, I should be an artist.

QANTAS TRAVEL LEGEND. PS, SHE'S A GIRL.

We’re back.

And we survived.

And so did Qantas.

And so did all the passengers around us because Q was a TOTAL TRAVEL LEGEND.

Seriously. I had very low expectations for this trip.

For the eternal optimist, even I was perilously close to being pessimistic.

I had visions of Q yelling the entire time she had to sit in my lap with the seatbelt on because she doesn’t like to sit still ever and most definitely doesn’t like to sit still when someone else tells her to.

She’s a punk.

I know I’ll admire that individuality and spirit when she’s 30, but not when stuck in a floating tin can with no escape from the few hundred strangers who look at you with undisguised anguish the second you enter your seat.

Instead, she sat quietly and read the distraction book I made her, then the second the seatbelt light went off, she was down, bear crawling up and down the aisles, hooning about the galley and introducing herself to the rest of the plane.

The only drawback being that her mother had to engage in banal conversations with complete strangers:

‘No, she’s a girl. I thought the pink striped pants might give it away.’

‘Yes, she is an active thing.’

‘You’re right, it is a unique crawling style, but I’m sure she’ll manage to walk when she’s ready. Thank you for showing your concern though, despite a complete lack of knowledge on the subject.'

for eleven out of fourteen hours.

That’s right, she only slept for 3.

But she didn’t yell, so while I was so tired it physically hurt to keep my eyelids open, inside I was cheering because my child had exceeded expectations I hadn’t even dared to imagine.

Travelling with a small, mobile human is not an activity I’d recommend for your health or sanity, but miraculously I managed to keep the slim grip on both that I already had.

New York adventures to follow, right now my insatiable appetite needs to be addressed. Again. 

Q tends to go for the familiar when we travel and that would be the two boobs she’s had a love affair with since the second she turned up.

I AM STARVING. I have to go. There is not enough food in the house.

Qs' crawl. Knees don't touch the ground.  Life in the fast lane, just the way she likes it.

NEW YORK SNOWSTORM, SHUTTERS ON THE BEACH AND TEETHING. (Travel with a baby ain't for the faint of heart).

We flew into California and were greeted by this...

Then flew into New York and got involved in this...

Add jet lag, a few time differences, no sleeping on the plane, (and for the few days after) molars coming in, 9 cousins, 5 uncles, 4 aunts, 2 grandparents - all in the one house, several snotty noses and one freak snowstorm and Little Miss Q is rolling with it like a champ.

Roll on week two...

QANTAS, JOHN TRAVOLTA & ANZAC BISCUITS. NYC HERE WE COME!

In 5 sleeps time we will be boarding a plane bound for LA, then after a 2 day pit stop, will board another plane bound for that wonderful town, my old stomping ground, NYC.

With our 11 month-old daughter.

Our 11 month-old daughter who doesn’t even like to sit in the pram long enough for her mother to get her daily takeaway coffee. The daily coffee that helps her mother survive because by this time (7.30 in the morning) she has already been up for at least 2 hours.

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH HER FOR FOURTEEN HOURS IN A FLYING TIN CAN?????

Don’t worry. I’ve been getting prepared.

I’ve bought countless snacks and squeezy food. Pear and lentils anyone?

I’ve never bought her packaged food before. Not because I’m an ultra-organic granola mum, but because I’m a tight arse. I can boil and puree my own food thank you very much.

Not sure Q will even go for it though as her independent streak means she’s been feeding herself since she first started to eat.

It also means every meal requires a stack hat and a drop sheet. 

Neither of which is possible on a plane of course, so I shall just wear a poncho from here to LA to catch all her mess.

Distraction Quilt is ready. And no, those buttons will never come off. I’m not a good sewer - or a neat one for that matter – but those buttons are going nowhere.

Then my ambitions got far beyond my abilities and I made her a distraction book.

Clearly that is a lion. And a lollipop. Not that she has any idea what either of those things are.

No, that is not a black woman’s breast as my husband guessed. Obviously it is an ice cream. Although again, perhaps not a good choice as she doesn’t know what that is either.

That’s a nose, as if you can’t tell. And a nail.

Necklace and noodle and other easy things like that only just occurred to me.

That is cellophane stuck to the page in strips.

The book has a lot more pages than there are letters in the alphabet. So after I did the numbers I was really digging deep.

I’ve also got a couple of real books, made by professionals. Although they’re also ones that make noise, which could possibly royally piss off the people around us, and is why I’ve made them all disarm-them bags, to be given out as soon as we board. It’s hard to hate someone who gives you a gift.

They will be filled with chewing gum, lollies, earplugs and in the spirit of Australia, Anzac Biscuits.

I’ve got plenty of nappies, (no, we’re not taking the cloth ones. Can you imagine the stench of one of those babies by the time it gets to NYC. Talk about weapons of mass destruction) outfits, blankets, bibs, washcloths, and of course the requisite baby panadol. The adult version is a couple of stiff gin and tonics, my preferred in-flight beverage.

I’ve been tweeting with @QantasAirways who assure me no strikes are planned for Sunday, but have also probably red-flagged us to be moved up the back near the toilet.

Other than that, we’re just gonna wing it (ha ha) and hope for the best. 

As long as she’s allowed to crawl up and down the aisle ad infinitum we should be ok. 

I hope.

If only we had our own private jet…