Category: Daily Life

My grandmother’s birthday today and to celebrate we had lunch at the local leagues club. Just the four of us – Nan, Mum, Jo and myself. I finally got to see Nan’s new place – just down the road from the house where I used to live about 12 years ago. I am kicking myself that it was so easy to find: when I was looking for the address on my own I thought it was in an entirely different part of the suburb. Why roadmaps were invented I guess.

Nan says it is a surprise to realise she is now 84 years old, she never thought she would reach that age. Looking around her flat, there are photos of her as a young woman and spread out on the walls are photos of her children, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I wonder what it feels like, to have all these descendants?

I made her some cookies, using Sapph’s Cafe Choc Chip Cookies recipe with crushed macadamia nuts and white chocolate instead of the choc bits. Strictly speaking I shouldn’t have, since Nan is diabetic and has to watch her diet. I figured she shouldn’t be deprived of yummy sweet things on her birthday, and I rather think she agreed!

Cafe Choc Chip Cookies

180 grams butter, softened
1/3 cup caster sugar
125 ml sweetened condensed milk
1 1/2 cups SR flour
250 grams choc bits

Preheat oven to 180 Celsius.

Place butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat until light and creamy. Beat in the condensed milk. Add the flour and mix on low speed until smooth. Stir in the choc bits until well combined.

Roll about 2 teaspoonfuls of the mixture into balls and place on baking paper-lined trays. Press each ball gently with a floured fork.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly golden. Remove from oven and allow to cool on trays. Store in airtight containers.

Makes about 30.

I wonder if our dog Sasha has an identity crisis? She gets all sorts of names – Sassy, Sass-rat, Floppy-ears, Teddy-bear Head, Princess Sasha, The Baby, The Rat, Muppet, Little-one, Bubby and Sassle to name a few…

Makes me wonder, why do we use nicknames? Often there is emotion tied to a nickname – whether it is love, or humour or ridicule. Quite often nicknames are also descriptive, but as a caricature of a particular aspect of appearance or behaviour.

Is it just a basic human trait, this ‘tagging’ of people, pets, even places with associative names, or is there some historical or cultural reason that we use nicknames?

On his genealogy blog, Dick Eastman suggests nicknames are used for practical reasons – for instance abbreviating long names.

Another blogger, barefeetallowed looks at the relationships between people who give each other nicknames – some good, some not so good!

To be continued…

Thinking about nicknames has made me quite sentimental about my own nicknames, past and present. My very first nickname was “Liss”. This came from my family, but only lately has transferred into wider use amongst friends and acquaintances.

My very first non-familial nickname emerged during sixth grade in primary school, during a strange sort of fad where everyone at school *had* to have a nickname. There was Bunno, Shoobs, Boong and Boydo to name a few. For a while we were stuck on a suitable nickname for me.. until Wicko came up with Mif – formed from my initials MF. This nickname stuck right through into highschool and beyond!

Enter working life and for a long time I was back to Melissa, or Meliss. Oneday, one of the guys started calling me Mel and soon it was what everyone was calling me. It stuck even after I switched careers, without any prompting from me.

I’m a bit tired of Mel. I think it is partly to do with wanting to move on from an aspect of the past and having found the real essence that is ‘me’, and she is *not* Mel – if that makes sense!

In my present part-time job I still go by Mel – although this is to allow customers to distinguish between me and the boss, who is another Melissa. So it is a convenience thing, which is a little bit annoying but I put up with it. (Not quite as bad as that period in my childhood at a new school where the teacher in her wisdom said I had to get used to “Melissa Jane” because of the other Melissa in my class!)

Otherwise, in my professional capacity I am Melissa. To my family, friends, and in my own mind I am Liss 🙂

7 book children’s fantasy series by C. S. Lewis.

Having enjoyed The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and some of the other Chronicles of Narnia books as a kid, I was recently delighted to discover a second-hand copy of the complete series at the local markets. I snapped it up and the following weekend buried myself in its pages.

As a kid the quasi-Christian theme went straight over my head but I found it pretty full on this time round. In fact with each book it seemed to get more intense, starting out as a harmless sort of fairytale in The Magician’s Nephew and culminating in the final judgement day of The Last Battle, with the representation by Aslan as Jesus.

The reunion of characters at the end (with the exception of poor Susan who ‘grew up’) seemed to me a rather trite conconction – just too neat and tidy for my liking, but it is a children’s story after all.

Lewis’ Chronicles have sometimes been compared to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. There is at least one important difference though – in Chronicles the main characters come from our world. The unfortunate effect of this is that aspects of the story become a bit dated over time (it is nearly 60 years since the stories were written) and Chronicles does not have the same timeless appeal of Rings.

An enjoyable revisitation of a fantasy classic for me nonetheless, and my first encounter of The Silver Chair, which was never available at the local library when I was a kid!

Some reviews:

• Review from Prayerfoundation.org
• By John J Miller on Nationalreview.com
• By Gina Covelli on Lakelandmirror.com

It was time for a new ‘do’. My hair was the longest it had ever been, almost down to my waist. It was getting very difficult to care for – brushing was the worst aspect, I have never known such huge tangles.

My hairdresser was a little worried about cutting so much off I think, I told her she would do a much better job than I would have if I had followed my impulse to hack it off myself!

She put some lovely layers throughout in what seems to be a popular style. My hair is thick but has a tendency to fall flat – the layers give it a bit of oomph.

Novel by Terry Pratchett.

This is my first taste of Pratchett and I must say, after initially flicking through the pages and wondering what the fuss is about, I am hooked!

Pratchett has a sublime sense of the ridiculous and in Monstrous Regiment, a tale of war, religion and the power of the press, he has plenty of material to work with.

We follow the story of Polly Perks, who disguises herself as a boy and runs away to join the war in hopes of finding her long lost brother. In her company of raw recruits she discovers she is not the only one with a secret.

Pratchett’s delightful writing style is interspersed with silly but clever lines which make you chuckle, such as his description of the recruits practising their marching until they were ‘almost as good as penguins’.

The suspense of the tale is maintained throughout, with lots of twists and turns and surprises right to the end!

More Monstrous Regiment reviews :

• Curled up with a good book by Stephanie Perry
• Pop matters by Matt Duvall
• The SF Site by Hank Luttrell

We have an old fridge on the back veranda, with a box of junk sitting on top. Hubby reached inside to rummage around for something and realised the coiled up thing he thought was rope was actually a live snake!

We’d encountered this little fellow a few weeks ago on our veranda, hunting a frog. Hubby thought he’d scared him away but we’ve been half expecting to meet him again.

The common reaction when you see a snake is “KILL IT!” but both of us wanted to avoid this if possible. Hubby managed to push the box of junk (with snake) into a doona cover. Zipped it up and felt a lot safer with the slithery one enclosed. Slung the whole swag into the back of the ute and went for a drive to a nature reserve about 20 kms away.

For all our efforts.. when we shook snakey out of the bag he decided to slither under the ute and wrap himself in the wheel hub.

I suppose it didn’t help matters when I noticed a stowaway frog had hopped out of the ute as well and I was running around trying to rescue it. Hubby didn’t think it was particularly smart of me to be doing this with an angry snake nearby.

Lots of nooks and crannies for the snake to hide under the ute, maybe the bumpy ride when we left shook him free we don’t know. There’s a good chance we’ve brought him back home with us! Ah well, always gotta keep an eye out for creepies and crawlies when you live in a rural area.

We are debating as to the variety of this snake. I reckon it is an Eastern Brown, hubby thinks it might be a Tiger Snake. Both deadly venomous!