Last week I scored a magnificent bargain.

I was flicking around on Facebook, when one thing led to another, and before too long, I managed to procure what may (or may not) be the deal of the century. I found a woman on Bribie Island who was willing to sell me her deceased grandparents’ record collection for two pineapples. Or five lobsters, in the old measure. I couldn’t believe my luck. For not only did she want to sell for a song, Nathan and the kids just happened to be kind-of-almost-sort-of going past Bribie on Saturday. So I got a lifetime of someone’s music (or muzak as it should rightfully be called) without an ounce of effort.

That’s the kind of Christmas Sale transaction I like.

We (well, Nath) hefted that box of shiny black discs upstairs, and I spent the rest of the weekend sneezing, (old records really do have a distinctive smell) and singing along. Happy Days. (But not “Happy Days”, surprisingly there is no Happy Days soundtrack in the mix, although there are many, many more of that ilk)

As I flicked through the piles (I had them in piles so that I could immediately put them in alphabetical order- funny, I did this without even thinking) I silently wished I had this Modern Device:

Can you read the text? It’s a SPACE AGE device!

yet still, labour or not- shrieking as I uncovered each new gem. Ol’ Joy purchased some pearlers and some shockers in her time, and it seems she had a particular penchant for the compilation album. Ahh, compilations, my second favourite genre. (My favourite is duets, if you have to ask)

I was deliriously happy as I spun disk after disk, finding that by some freakish sorcery, the words to these songs were stored in the back recesses of my gyri, intact, after all these eons. Lyrics to songs that, if you asked me, I would say that I am only vaguely familiar with, came flooding back as soon as the first verses began.

Sometimes I was a bit behind- like when you do that thing with your friend, pretending to guess what the other will say, speaking the same words at the same time in a kind of slow motion- but often I was right on time, knowing the words as if they were my favourite songs, now playing on 3XY.

I found a surprising joy in this. In finding that my brain somehow knew some things that I don’t. It was like there was me, and then another me, both sitting on the couch with a beer, familiar together, yet not quite sure what the other one would do next.

My favourite was when I played this album:

I remember the cover distinctly- Mum had it when I was a kid- and I knew it contained the tracks Disco Duck and Cherry Bomb, but other than that, nothing. It turns out that Old Me has some bytes of information stored up, and she knew all of the words, to all of the songs, even ones that New Me doesn’t really like. What fun. And what else is stored up there? Do I secretly know how to play piano or speak German, two things I have been exposed to, but have no working memory of? And if there is more up there, how do I get it out?

In the end I guess it doesn’t really matter, it will all come out when I’m old(er) and nuts and asking my children as they change my Depend, for Choo Choo Bars because they were-are my favourite confection, circa 1978.

Nathan and the kids were vaguely interested in all of my nonsense, but by and by they grew tired of the crackling and the scratchings of the turntable, and decided to introduce my to the soundtrack of their Saturday drive: Uptown Fudgey Wudge.

My synapses hurtled through time and space, one moment dealing with the tricky intricacies of stuffing those thin black circles pressed with the voices of The Temptations from long ago, into those strange clingy bags, to the next, downloading the latest Mark Ronson track (which is actually called Uptown Funk, if  you wanna do yourself a favour and go listen) and having it almost immediately available to listen to with the caress of a screen.

So we jumped and funked and grooved around the dance-floor to something that some guy probably could have made in his bedroom, and beamed to my phone the second after he pressed the STOP button on his Garage Band app. It’s probably not how it happened, but it could have. And that’s the crazy bit of Uptown Fudgey Wudge vs Karma Chameleon. Both are hits in their time. And both are fantastic in their way. Both make your feet tap and your brain smile. Both know how to pick you up and shrug off some of the load.

Music eh?

Wow.

This morning as I write, I am looking up from time to time at the mountain of vinyl shoved in the corner, and I see I have inadvertently placed the early birthday pressie I procured for myself from Typo last week, on top of it.

Thanks Joy B. Thanks for taking the time to collect the songs of your life, carefully writing your name on their covers so that I can send you a cheers, whenever I take them for a spin. You made me Happy.

Do you still have a record player (yes, I know it’s now called a turntable)?

What songs are on the soundtrack of your life?

…From The Ashers

By all reports, things have officially gone nuts “out there”, so I have retired to what I like to call THE COMPOUND. I do it every year around this time. All you extraverts can have the shops to yourselves. I’m IN for the Season.

Once school breaks up I try not to go out in the world if I can at all help it. To get to the beach I go out my back gate and cross the road, so I include that as my compound. I may occasionally be spotted in public places when the lure of fancy champagne gets too great, but I keep my appearances fleeting.

Working from home has compounded my compound lifestyle, and one holiday season I only drove the car twice in three weeks, (which is my personal record). It was an amazing feeling once I jumped back behind the wheel- I felt like a P-Plater again, and if it wasn’t for the babyseats in the back, I reckon Nath might have found out the full benefits of the modern split-seat configurations.

It appears the children have inherited the hermit gene, as they have not asked once to go out into the world. I suggested we pop to the shops today, for I am in desperate need of some Pearl Cous Cous, and they wrinkled up their freckled little noses and said, “Can’t Dad get it on the way home?”

Yes, my little troglodytes, he can. Rest easy, you can stay in your pjs this day.

So, as I have no news from the outside world, I thought I would share with you some of the Christmassy things from The Compound. It turns out, that not only am I a recluse, I am a crazy one. No, it’s not cats I collect (One #shitcat is enough thanks). My collectables are all things Christmas. (Oh, and Pez dispensers, but that’s a story for another day).

So here are a couple of things from my collection of christmascrap:

The “Elf Truck”.
My biggest festive success and failure in one handy truck.
Success: the kids go NUTS over the fact that the elves deliver two tiny presents into the corresponding drawer every.single.night.
Failure: See ‘success’ above. EVERY.SINGLE.FRIGGING.NIGHT!

This is the “non-crap” corner of the house.
A clever craftmaster friend made these cushions. Coupled with DH’s ridiculous standards of Christmas styling… This is the daydream area of The Compound.

And yes, I can crapify even a lovely Chrissy sanctuary (above) with this shit christmas mug. I drink the brown life-elixir from it every day from the 1st of December….

We try this every year. The results are always craptacular, and nothing like the DH version above.

The kids call these the NutNut animals (I know: weird) they are from Bali, and all I can assume is that the Balinese have no idea what Christmas is, but they do know that idiots from Australia really will buy anything if it’s cheap enough. QED.

Necessary to set the mood, no? This is a small selection of my stuff. (Yes, there is MORE on the ipod… Happy Days)

A few years back I was the fundraising organiser for kindy, so I needed to boost the numbers. Hence: my very own stylish picture plate.

Of course there’s napery. SO MUCH NAPERY. For, who can resist it??

Test tubes. With red Christmas lights. Made in our initials by the talented Ben from Infinity Eco Furniture. I suppose you can guess what kinds of “experiments” occur when these babies come out to play… Let’s just say that what happens on the iDeck, stays on the iDeck (I’m looking at YOU Christmas 2013)

Oh yes, I will be subjecting people to Christmas games…

My Christmas earrings. There is more (oh so much more) where this came from, but I thought I’d just show you the classy shit.

Christmas crockery.
There is SO much more than this, including (of course) an entire set of gold-rimmed crockery and glassware (minus one, as smashed by someone who WAS smashed back in the great Christmas debacle of ’09.)

An assortment of crappy christmas tableware. A must for every tragic family..

NOT crap!
My gorgeous chrissy handbag. It’s hand-crafted from a kimono, and was given to me a few years ago by the owner of “Kimono Collections” who understands and encourages my addictions.
I LOVE THIS BAG.

So there you have it, the tip of the Asher Christmas iceberg. Whew, I think I need a good lie down now….

What about you? Any Chrissy Crap to share?

…From The Ashers

Here are the hits of the week:

1. The last day of school. Yay!! How good is the thought of long hot, Summer days stretching out in front of you? Man, I love this time of the year.

These dudes had a great year, finishing on a high.

Liam’s teacher got me aside and asked if I knew that he was “really smart”? Yeah, we kinda guessed after the time when he was almost four and he asked me how a rainbow was made, and after I gave a (might I say) grouse story about rainbow fairies painting the sky, he looked at me, deadpan and said, “Now what is it really?” I explained the Dispersion Effect and he said, “Why didn’t you just tell me that? That is way cooler than some dumb paint fairies.” I guess he has a point.

And Coco? Well she showed us all a thing or two about tenacity. The kid is currently hanging out for blood (we are trying to tough it out for another week or so: Tantrums R Us) and has a haemoglobin of around 65 (For reference: you are probably thrumming along with about 130 or so right now) and she had her swimming carnival this week. She has never swum 25 metres before, but in the carnival she did. Powered along. For about ten metres. Then somehow swam the rest of the lap. Came second last. Had to be lifted out of the pool sobbing with exhaustion like a limp little yellow jellyfish, amidst cheers from the other kids. Eric the Eel, you’ve got nuthin’ on Coco Ricki Asher.

2. Oh yeah. Nath (legend) got me one o’ these babies.

Imma be filling THAT thing out today.. After I gaze at its empty magnificence, full of potential, for a few minutes. Sorting the new calendar is one of my favourite end of year rituals.

3.  Talking of rituals, I started a new one this year. Got us a little jar and some tags, and instructed everyone to jot down things during the year. The jar is called “Cool Stuff that has happened.”

As you can see, the contents are a little meagre. I suspect that I may be the only one with any entries. I intended to open in on New Year’s Eve, but we will be ON HOLIDAYS IN AMERICA then, so I think we might do it in the next week. My plan was to string them up in a sort of garland thingy. Seems it’s gonna be a little shorter than I thought. Hopefully it will be so much fun that the other lazy bastards in this house will be more excited to do it next year. We shall see.

4.  Check out our teacher gifts. Made by me. Okay, not made by me. Paid by me. Made by Sprinkles, which is a better result for everyone concerned I think. It’s always good if the edible gift is, actually edible, I find. They looked so amazing I almost felt like keeping them for myself, just to admire them for a bit longer. If you need something impressive looking for your service providers, or those friends who appreciate the finer things, get yourself over to their Facey account right now.

**Not sponsored, but Clare and Fi HAVE given me free cupcakes before, well they gave them to the children, and I slipped and fell, and they somehow ended up in MY belly.**

5. Christmas STUFF. I’m going to write you a post about some of our Christmas Rituals, coming up soon (I know, we tackle the big issues over here at The Asher’s), but it appears I have come to be known as something of a ‘Christmas Tragic’, a phrase coined by our babysitter. I happily adopt that moniker, and with it comes some perks, one of them being that people now give me Christmas Crap. I cannot tell you how awesome this is! Not only do I get pressies (This week I have ALREADY been given some brain teasing puzzles, mini-fruit cakes and the motherlode of all shortbread) but I also get fantastic STUFF.

Check this out:

IT’S A HANDMADE LAMP. Made by the people who gave it to me. Have you ever seen anything so cute? The kids adore it. Liam, because he appreciates the work that has gone into it, and Coco because it has tiny people and her chubby little fingers can walk up and down the stairs. (Sorry the pic is a bit dark- I wanted to show you it all lit up.)

And from the same people, this:

The top part rotates around and PLAYS A BLOODY TUNE. Perfect for the Grisashers.

I may have mentioned we are GOING TO AMERICA, and we have to wear an Ugly Christmas Sweater. Which don’t exist in Australia, as far as I can tell. So this week another patient gave me the worst jumper ever. I promise I will model it for you shortly.

How SHIT am I gonna look, with my tiny head poking out of the top of this bugger? It’s PERFECT. Yet, how rude: when Suze gave it to me she said, “It’ll be so funny, with your little pinhead. You’ll look like a shit little elf.” So yeah, it’s great that my people treat me with such respect and deference. Nothing like professional boundaries.

So that’s it from me: Your turn now. What have you been Hitting on this week?

…From The Ashers

My beach has many faces. From the crisp moment of stillness as the sun first nudges over the horizon, to the very last seconds of cosy light, when the sun from sets behind, picking out the last of the whitecaps of the day, and turning them golden.

My favourite visage is the late afternoon.

Our shadows lengthen, stretching out from our feet and making us like Daddy Long Legs, all gangly and strange. The bite has gone out of the sun, as if she too is slowing down, getting ready to be tucked up into bed. Yet my back still glows with warmth as I watch the children play in the washing-machine swirling of the whitewater, bashing themselves in the rips and ebbs of the rushing tide.

The surfers all run to the beach in the afternoon, desperate to wash off their workday and grab themselves a piece of a wave, something all for themselves, riding along with grins like watermelon slices, punching the air and whooping like children as they cover their skin with salty renewal, rinsing clean the salt of toil. There is a fervent energy to the afternoon surf, as all of nature tries to cram just one more thing into the day, before feeding time

This time of day places me back in all of the summers of my childhood. The crackly feeling of the salty sand on my arms, and the delicious afterglow of sunburn on my back that will last all night, warm and scratchy on my sheets, refusing to be washed off. Back to a time when a smear of white zinc cream on the nose to prevent freckles was the height of sun safety. Those days were longer than our shadows, and we spent entire days on the beach, digging ourselves into coolwet holes and making castles for urchins to live in.

The skin on our noses resisted the meagre protection from the zinc and the hard peeling skin sloughed off in scabs, leaving brown dots below, but the rest of our bodes were tan with all of the rays they absorbed, as we grew strong and resistant to the baking heat.

As our muscles grew stronger and we learned to read the changeable churning of the waves, our parents allowed us the freedom to swim out beyond the break, away from the screeches of the little kids and the noises of civilisation. We paddled through the waves, to where the water was calm and we could sit on our boards, looking out to sea for the biggest waves (always the second of the set, we said) and casually scanning the horizon for dorsal fins. Every now and then some wag would hum the eerie “Da Dum” of the dreaded theme song, and we would laugh with bravado to hide the shifting shiver of slick grey fear.

When the shadows started to grow, our parents would hold up their towels like flags, the semaphore of: time to come in, we’ve had enough, we want a beer and a charred sausage to cheer the day off.

We would all catch the same waves in, no jostling for position this time, just riding the surge all the way into shore until our skegs caught the sand, mooring us back on the land. Back to our lives.

May your Summer afternoons be golden and your shadows be long.

…From The Ashers

Here’s a fun thing to try with your kids:

I was saying goodnight to the Evil Genius Mark I, and the light must have been casting a strange glow on the side of my face. He started to giggle. “Your face looks really weird, Mum,” he said, a comment I did not take kindly to, “you look like this,” as he proceeded to pull a really ugly face.

Quick as lightening, I replied, “Oh no! You’ve seen me without my mask. You see, I’m not really your mother, I’m an alien. I killed her a while back, and now I’m here impersonating her, and gathering information about you Humans. I take my mask off every night when you all go to bed (it gets a bit itchy). It must have slipped a bit. Here, I’ll fix it.” I put my face in my hands an mooshed my features around a bit, then turned to face him in the full light. “See? fixed.”

His brown eyes were as big and wide as a saucepan of melted chocolate, and for a moment there was a wisp of something- fear, or maybe understanding of all the times when he thinks I’m a little off- and then he realised how ridiculous that was, and laughed.

At that moment Evil Genius Mark II walked in, and asked what we were talking about. I told her to pop into bed, and I’d be in a moment to share my darkest secret. She was away in a flash, gleefully tucked up, waiting for the dirt. There’s nothing that kid likes more than being in the know.

I was enjoying my story so much, that I added some embellishments. I made her swear, that if I shared this momentous secret she could not to tell another living soul. I told her of how I had been accidentally discovered, but now that her brother (if, in fact he WAS her brother) knew, then it was only fair that she be included.

I told my story and I told it well, giving a brief history of my alien self, and how I had killed The Mother Figure so I could live amongst the Humans undetected. And then, I revealed my hideously contorted countenance.

She screamed, and  buried her head in her pillow.

I laughed as I had with Mark I, happy that she was playing along so well with the gig.

We are a family of imaginators and story tellers, we tell silly and scary stories all the time, often with the benefit of mood lighting (a torch under the chin), so I was pleased that she knew the correct fake fear to exhibit.

She started sobbing.

Proper, starting from your soles, and grabbing a piece of your heart on the way up, full body sobs.

“Coco, Coco, it’s just a joke honey, a funny story because Liam said my face was weird. It’s not real. I’m not an alien.”

She stopped sobbing long enough to gasp out, between hitching breaths, “But you’re so UGLY. I want my Mummy back. I don’t want a ‘poster.”

“I’m not an imposter, I AM your Mum, ” in my best Mum voice, calm and true.

“That’s exactly what a ‘poster would say!”

I allowed that this was true. So I told her to lay down and face me (careful to keep my prettiest countenance) whilst I told her three things that only her Real Mother would know about her.

This calmed her enough to stop sobbing and start to drift off to sleep. “Mummy, she murmured,” half in this world and half in the world behind the veil of sleep, “can you tickle my legs?” This was her soothing thing, (the thing she cons Nath into doing most nights), gently tickling the dry and irritated skin behind her knees where the eczema is worst. A thing that for some reason, I just can’t stand doing.

My hand went to her popliteal fossa, as if to lightly flutter over the angry skin, and help my little girl safely meander her way into the world of dreams, then a thought flashed into my head: she called me UGLY.

In a moment I was at the door, “I can’t. I never do that. And if I do it now you’ll KNOW I’m an imposter. Go to sleep.”

Teach that kid to call ME ugly.

I’m NOT ugly…. Am I?

Do you ever play tricks on your kids?

Do you wish you were an alien here some days, just collating information on the Humans, soon to return to your home planet Zoybidor (Okay, I think I’m liking this story a little too much now) ?

…From The Ashers

Here are the hits of the week:

1.  The crafty ladies of Al-Lani’s Angels (they don’t know they are called that- only one of them reads the blog, so I’m claiming the naming rights) who made this motherlode of softies for the Mirabel Foundation. What a bunch of sweethearts they are!! And thanks again to Alisa from Plump for the donation of material. A very kind gesture, which saved me a fortune.

Here’s a small sample of what they made. They have multiplied now, but I won’t post a pic until I have them all in my hot little hands.

…And here’s the one I’m making… Isn’t he, umm, special?
And no, he is NOT a cat. He’s a rabbit people.

2.  Meetings with my goal buddy every Wednesday. We are having such fun dreaming up new ideas and playing with our goals. If you haven’t read the book Life in Half a Second, may I suggest you do, and then join in on the video challenge. It’s so much fun. Who knew? Who even am I?

3.  Seeing how excited the kids were this week preparing for their Christmas Concert. It was called The Christ (x) Factor. Same songs, new format. Sounds like television really. There was even a special appearance by a dude who came third in the real X Factor back when Kyle was on the show. He crooned us a cool Christmas carol. The kids went nuts. (And maybe some of the Mums)  I was too busy rocking in the corner because the canteen had run out of wine.

4.  Getting all the Chrissy shopping done and sent. Thanks to Liquorland, Clare Hammond, Sprinkles and Green B. I couldn’t have done it without you. And talking of Liquorland, do you ever save those shop-a-dockets with the two for one grog deals? I don’t usually, but this week I got the Savvy. It was totally drinkable. I said TWO FOR ONE people. Hop to it.

Not bad for a sundowner on a hot night

5.  Playing hooky with the kids today. It was a late night last night on account of all singing and dancing, and it’s raining today, so I’ve called it: Jammie Day. I have to go downstairs to work for some of it, but mostly today will be about lazing around, writing letters to Santa and reading books I think. The calm before the storm. School holidays start next week, and I for one cannot wait, so today we are having a preview.

Happy weekend to you all. Have fun putting up the tree on Sunday.

Join in and share the love: what are your hits of the week?

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*Not a sponsored post. When o when is some grog or shoe shop going to contact me for sponsorship???

..From The Ashers