Swish

There are many, many reasons why I love my mum. She is warm and loving, buys nice clothes in the wrong size which end up in my wardrobe, cleans my fridge whenever she visits and, much to my brother's delight, has stopped putting sultanas in savoury dishes.

But most of all, I love that when I emailed her a couple of months ago and asked her if she would come up to Sydney from Melbourne and mind the kids for four nights, she didn't hesitate to swap all golfing and other retirement-related activities for toddler-wrangling and school runs.

You see, John and I had devised a madcap scheme to shirk all work and parental duties for a four night getaway to Thredbo where we planned to ski, eat, drink, sleep and apres-ski our irresponsible butts off, something we never could have done without Mum agreeing to shoulder the burden.

What? You think just because she had three kids before the age of twenty-one and worked her fingers to the bone supporting us for 25 years that she should be having a rest and enjoying her retirement? Don't be ridiculous. Looking after my kids is her REWARD after all those years. Just ask her.

Mum? . . . . .

Oh, she's probably at the golf club showing her friends the adorable videos she took of the kids while she was here and telling them all how SELFLESS I am for allowing her to spend such a chunk of quality time with her grandchildren.

Anyhoo, moving on!

A gazillion thank yous darling mother - our little snowy getaway was heavenly.

You can't even begin to imagine how liberating it was to spend six hours in a car without a single "are we there yet?" or "can we stop for Maccas?" or suffering a sustained whiplash from passing endless food options to a toddler.

Last year when we drove to Crescent Head, we spent five hours listening to the world's loudest toddler crying and whinging, only to have her fall asleep within 15 minutes of home. We felt like we'd been trapped in a war zone, finally escaping the car with ashen faces and the glazed-over look of the undead. The deaf undead.

Giddy with excitement about our alpine adventure, we literally leaped out of bed at 5.30am, shrugged on the clothes we'd laid out the night before, and without so much as dragging a toothbrush through our mouth or kissing the kids goodbye, we tiptoed out to the car, which was all packed up, and made our getaway.

Leaving the coast and the sunrise behind us

Next stop - Goulburn for brekkie!

We stopped for breakfast at the historic Paragon Cafe in Goulburn, where the waitress, bless her, didn't even blink at my request for gluten free toast (no) or decaf coffee (yes). In fact, she must have been used to city slickers like me, with our silly new age food requests and ridiculous caffeine-free notions, because she said they really should start providing gluten-free items. Or perhaps she was just being lovely and wanting to make me feel less silly and ridiculous. Namaste nice Paragon waitress.

Now one thing that you always hope for when you go to the snow is . . . well . . . snow. The whole week leading up to our trip, the snow cams at Thredbo showed a distinct lack of snow and a disturbing amount of dirt and rocks. So you can imagine our joy, just outside Canberra, when we spied the white powdery stuff on the hills. Coming through Cooma, we practically cried tears of joy as the cars lumbering past us on their way back from the mountains had giant white snowy mattresses on their roofs. 

A welcome sight on our way to Jindabyne

Our four nights at the Thredbo Alpine Hotel and five days swishing down the slopes were everything we hoped for. We skiied from 9am until last lifts most days, ate goulash and soup and cake at every cafe on the mountain, scoffed mini Snickers bars on chairlifts, listened to live music every night before dinner, dined on whole river trout and Brazilian barbeque fare, slept in till 8am each morning and generally just enjoyed every last second.

The Thredbo Alpine Hotel likes to offer its guests a swim in the hot Swedish pool and a hot cider after a hard day's skiing. Guess which one I went for?!?

So I didn't choose 'pool'. Surprised?

John declared that the Tuesday was quite possibly the best day out of 15 years together. I'm assuming he's not counting our wedding day or the days we welcomed two new babies into the world, or the day we picked up the Golf GTI (his dream car for years apparently).

And the skiing? We were lucky, lucky, lucky. There was snow and no lift queues which meant no crowds which meant the likelihood of me careening into someone or having them crash into me was minimized. This is a good thing. I am not the world's most proficient skiier. I'm a blue run gal all the way. I love the rush I get from skiing down a perfectly groomed, powdery slope, and in my head I look incredibly stylish and elegant whilst doing so. The reality is that I look like a red and white teddy bear with knock knees. Check it out . . .

But really, for me, the goals are to get down that mountain in one piece, stay as warm as possible and unwrap mini-Snickers bars on chairlifts without losing a glove or pole, all of which I managed to achieve. Huzzah!

I also managed a fabulous bed-in on the third day. Leaving John on the slopes, I took to the king size bed for the rest of the day, snoozing and reading and a little more snoozing. Exactly the kind of battery-recharge session I needed.

Did I miss the children? Oh most definitely. There were many occasions when we'd say things like "Oh Jack would love this" (but interestingly not as many occasions when we'd wish a curious, loud, opinionated toddler was with us - go figure!) However, while it felt like a little part of us was missing, we also kept coming back to the happy fact of our coupledom. To forget about the washing up and whose turn it was to get up with the kids and what to cook for dinner. To leave the petty gripes and parental guilt at home with the piles of washing. How good it felt to spend this time together - to remember 'us' and each other and ourselves as individuals too.

Whether it's the snow or a hotel in the city or sending the kids around to your mums for a night, I highly recommend, if it's at all possible under your circumstances, that you go on an extended date with your partner. You might even find out you still like each other.

And whatever you do and wherever you go, schnapps shots are compulsory. Prost!

At least I look the part (thank you Aldi & your affordable ski gear)

Coffee-in-the-sun o'clock!

No ski boots allowed in the main hotel so this was my footwear solution for trips to and from the boot room. Nice huh?

* Music is Strauss's Blue Danube - courtesy EMI

Red Hippo

The Other Byron

You know how sometimes you get back from holidays and you need a holiday after the holiday? Usually because the original holiday involved small children and having sand flung in your face and in your ear and in other places that sand should never normally go (except when you're seventeen and the dunes behind the caravan park at Torquay are the only place you and your boyfriend can . . . oh wait . . . my mum reads this. Hi Mum! I drank two West Coast Coolers there too. Phew! Okay, that's THAT off my chest!)

I love those holidays, I really do (even the sand, because you can wash it off in the ocean and who doesn't love to wash sand off themselves forty seven times in a two hour beach session?!), but they can be exhausting.

And then there are the holidays that, for whatever reason, just feel easier. The days amble along slowly, full of long book reading sessions, delicious food, easy choices and simple pleasures. Even with kids. They seem to just fall into line with your holiday rhythm and put their best barefoot forward.

Our spontaneous January jaunt to the Byron region was just such a holiday. Notice how I said 'region'? That's because we did something we've never done in fourteen years of visiting Byron and booked three days at a cottage in the Byron hinterland.

The lush green chequerboard of verdant farm lands, avenues of macadamia crops and pockets of rainforest that stretches west of Byron Bay has always appealed to me since we attended a wedding there several years ago. So I convinced my surfer husband to spend a few days soaking up some mountain air before heading back down to the briny blue and hairy armpits of Byron Bay.

We're so glad we did. We all fell in love with it. From the adorable cottage we rented, to the roadside stalls where we picked up a tub of macadamia honey for $2 and bunches of flowers for $1, to the sneaky secret local's swimming hole where we whiled away hot hinterland afternoons under shady gums, we felt like we could stay forever.

Don't you just want to eat a scone piled with cream under this tree?

On our first afternoon, the clouds rolled in and it was magnificent!

One of the many avenues winding through the hinterland. I was hooked on the tree canopies overhead and the dappled sunlight . . .

Another avenue. More dappling . . .

Ah . . . a dappled avenue. Dappled, dappled, dappled!

Whoever invented the squatter's chair deserves a scone and a cuppa!

Daddy adoration

Because rustic French doors need fat patchwork chickens hanging from them . . .

Our swimming hole. I could tell you where it is, but the locals would kill me and throw me in it. Which wouldn't be pleasant for anyone.

A little apprehensive about the whole 'swimming in a river' thing . . .

. . . but soon got the hang of it!

Lunch at Harvest in Newrybar with our good mates, the divine Susie & Taffy. They were the ones whose wedding inspired me to explore the Byron hinterland. Did I say wedding? It was more like a fabulous three day love-fest and eating frenzy.

'Ladies who lunch' - there were adorable, irresistible photographic tableaux all over the cottage

My 95 year old grandma Elaine still uses one of these pretty weighted covers over her water glass. An underrated & sorely missed domestic apparatus!

There are roadside stalls like this dotted all over the lanes and byways of the hinterland and they are nigh on impossible to resist! They operate on an honesty system. I'm thinking of putting one out the front of our house selling single socks and textas without lids but I'm not sure it'll take off . . .

After leading a dappled mountain lifestyle for three days, we headed 25 minutes down the highway to Byron Bay for our beach fix, leaving behind the shady glades (dappled as they were) and quaint shopfronts of Bangalow. 

We stayed at one of those good ol' fashioned resorts where the married couple owner/operators can be seen doing everything from greeting guests at reception to skimming leaves from the pool. It had two tennis courts, a few barbeques and even a games room with a table tennis table which took me right back to family holidays at the army barracks in freezing winter-time Queenscliff when I was a kid, my cousins and I inventing ever more complicated rules for long drawn out battles over the table tennis table.

We drank coffee and ate giant bacon and egg rolls at Top Shop, brought the tone down at fancy-schmancy Wategos with our anatomically correct sand men sculptures, sat in the long rippling shallows at The Pass, and dobbed on The Rudest Waitress In The World who refused to ask the barman to make me a Cosmopolitan, even though it said on the menu "Ask our barman to whip up your favourite cocktail"!

When Byron insisted on getting all tropical on us and raining one morning, we dropped into the local bead shop for some serious hippy time, making groovy bracelets man, and giving our skin a breather from all that zinc cream!

Flying baby - her favourite game, when the muscly fellas in the family are up to it

So many beads, so little arm space!

Jack spent nearly 2 hours making the most elaborate bracelet. Which broke. Luckily we were still in the shop and the friendly staff at Bongo Beads helped us put it all back together again in no time.

Wategos - the classy Byron beach

Our anatomically correct sand man - and so the Barras bring a little less class to Wategos!

What did you get up to over the holidays? Catch some rays? Delve into a good novel or two? Dob in a rude waiter? Do share!

Holiday hugs xo

Through The Golden Door

Waiting for the Golden Door Glow . . . (head in the clouds already on Day One though)

When John asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year, I couldn’t really think of a single material thing I needed, apart from some new moisturizer (and a villa in Tuscany, but that goes without saying!)

But when he pressed me to think of an idea of something I might really like, it suddenly came to me. The thing I really wanted was time. Time to think, time to write, time to be alone. To go to bed when I felt like it (which still seems to be 9pm despite physically holding my eyelids open and telling my brain to channel its inner naughty, midnight-feast-eating Enid Blyton schoolgirl) and get up when I felt like it (which happens to still be the crack of dawn, despite scrunching my eyes closed and telling my brain to channel a 16 year old and sleep till noon!)

With a house full of people, including two adult kids living at home, there is rarely a shortage of someone to chat to, someone to help with the kidlets and a totem tennis partner is always at hand. However, getting extended periods of bona fide, toddler-free time alone is hard to come by. As much as I adore my little Cesca-Belle, she is, like most 2 year olds, a high maintenance rock star diva who believes the people surrounding her have been provided simply to entertain her and cater to her every demand. Mostly John and I. But of course she is non-discriminatory; if you enter her orbit for more than five minutes, you too will be put to work in the manner of court jester, lady-in-waiting or lackey.

To be honest, I would have been happy to jump on the bus and head into town for a weekend of gallery hopping, scribbling blog notes over a latte in some trendy cafe and lolling about in a giant hotel bed with a bag of Maltesers and a good novel.

But my husband took my request for a little me-time and super-sized it into a 3 day retreat at the Golden Door Elysia in the Hunter Valley. Cue happy dance.

It was booked for January 6th and of course I spent some of the time between Christmas and January 6th worrying about leaving Francesca overnight for the first time in her life. And by ‘some of the time’ I mean AT LEAST thirty seconds. I am in the fortunate position of having a husband who is both willing and able to share the parenting load with me, as well as the two grown-up siblings, so separation anxiety is something Francesca has rarely experienced. She is surrounded by brainwashed adults falling over themselves to create a big love net for her to safely fall on.

So with kisses and squeezy hugs to all, I hopped in the Golf and set out for my big adventure in the Hunter Valley.

Two hours and a loud, long overdue reunion with Shania Twain later (let's go girls), I entered The Golden Door through . . . you’ll never guess what . . . . a GOLDEN DOOR!

The door itself, apart from being gold, is tall and thick and heavy. As it closes with a sigh behind you and you step into a cool stone atrium, you really do feel that you’re entering a sanctuary, encouraged, as you are at the gate, to leave your real life behind for a few days.

I don’t mind admitting that the first thing I did upon entering my villa was to check for a mini bar. Purely out of curiosity. I thought it might be full of cardboard tasting kale bars and cardboard crisps. And there is a mini bar. Sort of. It contains two kinds of loose leaf herbal tea and a tea pot. Perfect, if the only kind of party you’re after is a tea party, and a healthy one at that. Not a scone or sugar cube in sight.

My post-exercise spot in the villa - on the couch with Kindle & a cuppa

The good folk at Elysia tell you what to eat and when. Real tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar and alcohol are all banned, and mobile phone use is restricted to your villa only. But that’s where their preachiness ends. Everything else is optional and very un-preachy. The staff are beautiful, nurturing and funny and, while they encourage you to try new things and go outside your comfort zone, they also tell you to listen to your body; that this is your time and to do what you feel like.

There are a staggering number of activities available, from tai chi, yoga and pilates, to deep water running, bush walking and indoor hockey. If exercise doesn't float your boat, you can go get your eye bags attended to in the day spa with algae, minerals and all manner of goop. There are seminars on everything from nutrition to habit-breaking to art therapy. Or if you feel like lying by the pool wearing dark glasses and staggering from meal to villa in a fluffy robe you are more than welcome. But why would you want to do that when you can sweat, swim and spin and really feel that you’ve earned a bit of pool lounging.

The outdoor pool at Elysia

There is a risk of becoming what is known at the Door as a FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out. That was me on the first day. I did everything on the list. The poor white child from the boondocks wanted to get her money’s worth dammit. And if I wanted to workshop that with the Life Guidance Counsellor, then that was on the list too. And no, it wasn’t at all surprising that I fell into an established acronym category on Day One. I’m FOMO and proud!

But that was Day One. Day One is when you’re body is still operating on all that residual coffee, tea and sugar. Everything is just dandy on Day One. Then you wake up and it’s Day Two. Day Two is bad. Very, very bad.

You think because you only have one coffee, one tea and a smidge of sugar in your diet each day that you can easily live without them. Fine, you think. I don’t need any of those things, you proclaim. But then you spend 24 hours without those daily stimulants in your body and BAM, it’s like a hangover, only foggier. A real pea-souper. I spent Monday in a fug of sugar withdrawal. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, a headache thudding dully at the base of my skull.

This was it. Detox. They warned us it would come and come it did. In spades. But if you’re going to spontaneously detox, this is the place to do it, surrounded by fifty other poor sods in equal or worse degrees of pain. They also told us that by the end of our stay we would have come through detox and achieved the Golden Door Glow. That seemed about as likely as Lindsay Lohan keeping her driver's licence.

Part of me was standing outside of myself that day, simply observing what was happening to my body, shaking my head incredulously. I don’t consider myself to be a sugar, alcohol or caffeine addict. However, my intake of those substances, whilst moderate, is regular. Without them in my diet for 24 hours, the effect on my body was truly interesting. Apart from the headache, lack of energy and inability to string a sentence together, I looked like a kid who’d got a hold of mum’s mascara with enormous black rings under my eyes, and when I closed my eyes for 5 minutes after the 9am stretch class, I woke up two hours later. (A nana nap! During the day!! Unheard of. Do pigs now fly? Are John and George back with the Beatles?!?)

It made me realise how much of a starring role sugar actually plays in my diet, mainly all that incidental sugar one isn’t aware one is ingesting. I have half a sugar in my tea and one sugar in my coffee each day. Doesn’t sound like much. But then, reading a few labels since I’ve been back reveals that so many of the other ‘healthy’ things in my diet actually contain sugar too. Muesli, yoghurt, even the humble lunch time cracker upon which I pile avocado and tomato.

Since I’ve returned from Elysia, l am flirting with the idea of quitting sugar for awhile. But flirting is one thing. I'm not sure if I'm ready to put a ring on it! Stay tuned.

By Tuesday I was back to feeling less like old, dying, wrinkly Episode 6 Yoda (“sugar addict you are”) and more like myself. I realized that in my delirium I had been confining myself to sleeping on “my” side of the bed. That night I threw off all the pillows and covers and made like a starfish across the full luxurious king size width! I also took full advantage of all the wonderful activities and treatments on offer, as well as spending lots of lovely quiet time in my villa reading, writing, watching movies and catching up on Richard Fiedler Conversations podcasts. It was heaven.

Elysia sits high on a hill with valleys and mountains surrounding it on all sides. It has been designed along curvy feng shui lines, with the main buildings and villas creating a skirt for Meditation Hill, a circular mount in the centre of the complex, covered in lavender with a stone plateau and running water feature at the top for meditation, tai chi or perfect, as I discovered, for sunset watching and daydreaming.

Every evening at around 8.30pm just as the sun was setting, I wandered up Meditation Hill to watch the twilight deepen and the stars blink on one by one.

I thought I would go into my cave a little and not feel like interacting with other people, but actually, come meal times, I looked forward to sitting down with the others and comparing notes. Some had been to Elysia before, others were newbies like me, but everyone was lovely and I had some stimulating, amusing conversations with people who’d come from all over Australia to be a part of the program.

Apart from the buckwheat pancakes served on Day Two for breakfast (I challenge the chefs of Australia to make buckwheat taste like anything other than tree bark) the food was, on the whole, very good. I also learned that the addition of beetroot to many dishes & drinks equals more regularity than one might normally be used to.

But it was always so bloody lovely to get back to my villa after dinner, to find the bed turned down, a candle lit next to the bath and the teapot set out with a calming herbal tea. There were so many little touches like this that made the experience a little bit spesh.

Was three days enough? At this time in my life, probably. I could easily have pushed it to five days, although I think I would have missed the family too much if I stayed for the seven day program. Did I leave with the Golden Door Glow? Definitely. I felt refreshed and rejuvenated, ready to start the year and hit 2013 with everything I’ve got.

My take-aways from the experience? Eat less sugar. Meditate. Kiss my husband in gratitude more often. Be grateful for my family's health every day. Belt out a Shania Twain number at least once every ten years. And never eat another buckwheat pancake.

The Golden Door Glow - I got there in the end (with thanks to the sunset on top of Meditation Hill!)

Bowling & Babycinos

I'm indulging in a bit of "alliterative title poaching" from my friend Mauz, whose blog Mauz & Sparky is hilarious and clever in the extreme (hers is one of those wine-worthy blogs - you know, the ones where you pour yourself a cheeky chardonnay, settle in for a good read and end up snorting said chardonnay through nostrils as you guffaw through each post). Mauz loves a bit of alliteration as her most recent post Bridges, Brides & Bucket Lists will attest. I daresay she is also partial to the occasional rhyming couplet (Manbags, Gypsy's Rags & Wet Stags anyone?)

Anyhoo, don't go visiting Mauz just yet. I've got stuff to tell you!

As I mentioned in my last post, we decided to partake of a little Barraclough-style therapy and head up the coast for a week with our two youngest kids. It's been quite a year, with the death of my beloved mother in law in March being the lowest point, and some other issues that we will just put under the heading of "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger (and Drunker)".

We also discovered that there is a juvenile equivalent to the Fat, Forty & Fired mid-life crisis that some men go through. It's called Nine, Nervous & Not Quite Right and our Jack was the poster boy. But instead of solving it by getting him a younger wife and a Ferrari, we loaded up the car with fishing gear, surfboards and Minties and went to Crescent Head.

Apparently, this can be a tough time for boys. Who knew? But doing a bit of reading and talking to other mums of nine year old boys, there are some common themes. Transitioning into middle primary school, where the workload is ramped up, mixed with a little hormonal action and a whole lot of the chest-beating alpha male stuff that goes along with it left our fella with some very real physical symptoms that, after numerous trips to the doctor and various tests, can now be attributed to anxiety. Because when we took him out of school and up the coast, the symptoms - crippling stomach cramps and a persistent vocal tic (a sort of grunting hum littering his speech) that had both plagued him for six months - disappeared in 24 hours.

I'm now wondering if my crippling case of procrastination on 'work' days could potentially be solved by a trip to Florence. I'm thinking YES.

But I digress.

Crescent Head is one of those tiny coastal hamlets somewhere on the Australian coast, boasting a pub, a club, a butcher, a baker but, as far as I know, no candlestick makers. You can, however, get a decent Thai meal at the local motel and the chemist does a good line in buckets, spades and other colourful sand moving equipment. You can play tennis or barefoot bowls, and there's a fab little 6 hole golf course on the headland that will have you teeing off the edge of a crevasse while the rolling swell of the Pacific belts into the hard slate walls of the rocky inlet way below. Many a golf ball has been sacrificed to the briny below that crevasse and I can imagine whole cities built of bleached white golf balls by the sea creatures that live there.

The main attraction, however, is the beach. It has, so they tell me, a totally bodacious surf break, full of bangin' bad ass barrels and rad right-handers that go on forever. Man.

(Wow, see that? I totally channeled a Californian Rastafarian just then)

But what I really love about the beach is the lagoon. With its little pools and sandy edges, it's toddler heaven and protected by the fiercer easterlies. Then when the tide turns and the water rushes in from the ocean, everyone jumps into the middle of the swelling lagoon to be swept upstream to the upper reaches of Killick Creek - a great spot to hang out as the sun goes down and throw a line into the middle of a school of bream. We did that and Jack caught the first fish. I hunt! I am male! Hear me roar!

As far as your eye can see to the north, it's just miles of wild, uninterrupted beachscape - broad blonde sand dunes and scrubby trees against a backdrop of low-rise mountains. Classic Aussie coast.

We spent hours on the beach every day, ate flaky fresh vanilla slices at the bakery, drank G&Ts on the barefoot bowling green and dined out most nights. Nearly every day we all ended up in the spa together with Francesca playing baristas, making us 'chinos' at the tap by jooshing the 'milk' in a plastic jug. (Does our daughter spend too much time in cafes? Don't be silly. But while the other kids are making cups of tea, she does a fairly mean double macchiato. Just saying.)

John and I tag teamed on kid duty so we could get some time alone; he went for surfs and massages, I ran down the golf greens, did yoga every day and read three novels.

But the best thing of all was that Jack, our gorgeous blue eyed boy, found his mojo and we couldn't have asked for more.

Embarrassing Side Note:
As the only photographer on the holiday, there is only one picture of me. Somehow, and certainly not on purpose, I've managed to give my unflatteringly shaped shadow a fancy little bikini wax. That's what you get for trying to be arty!