The Muffin Incident

Muffins waiting to be baked

Yesterday's Melbourne Cup was a good excuse as any to try out some recipes I've had hanging about...and while I did get that chance, these turned out to be the most expensive muffins I've ever baked.

We'd planned to watch the horse race over at The Neighbour's house and the official brief was to "bring whatever." I'd recently bought some polenta (mmmm...polenta! Love that stuff) and it had a recipe on the back for some savoury muffins. Seemed like the perfect sporting snack for a sunny afternoon. They were delicious, but by the time we eventually left for The Neighbours, only six were left. These things were YUM. Not recommended by the heart association, but totally divine and delish and easy for kids to help make.

Stupid me sent DS out to the car to take a picture of the muffins we had, before they all got eaten. Said muffins were in the car because we were preparing to take them over...and I figured it was my last chance to take a picture before they got hoovered up by small children. This is the picture he took:


....and then something happened (nobody knows what exactly, because they are all busy covering their own asses and those of their siblings) but my (expensive, shiny, mostly new) digital camera took a nose dive onto the concrete. I think it can be saved as it's mostly in working order other than a shutter which will not close due to being dinged out of shape and falling off. (Can you hear the false optimism in that sentence?!)

To say I was pissed off would be an understatement - but not pissed off at THEM, mind - pissed off at myself for leaving 3 kids and a digital camera on a concerete driveway with no supervision. Really, I only started to feel better once I saw the other pictures that got taken...


Damn kids. Right as you want to scream and rage against them, they do something hilariously funny like take a picture of one another's nostrils. Little buggers.

Polenta, Cheese & Bacon* Muffins
1/2 cup polenta
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
100 g butter, melted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 rindless bacon rashers, chopped* (* We used all beef kosher pepperoni)
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup tasty cheese (I just used 1 1/2 cups tasty and no cheddar as we had none.)

Preheat oven to 180C
Grease (a lot!) a 12 hole mffin tin.
Mix polenta and milk into a bowl and leave to sit for 25 minutes.
Put flour into a large bowl. Add melted butter, eggs, polenta mix to get a heavy batter.
Stir in bacon/jewish alternative, onion and cheese. Mix well.
Drop 2T worth of mixture into each muffin hole, bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Best served warm.

Ice Cream O'Clock

Since the weather has turned warmer, DH and I have found plenty of opportunities to celebrate Ice Cream O'Clock. Ice Cream O'Clock, for those who don't know, is the hour of the day when the kids are in bed (and hence can't beg to share), the dishes are all done, the emails are answered, and it's just you and him and peace and quiet (and maybe some Top Chef or Project Runway on the telly.)

Funnily enough I posted on facebook that it seems like I've been enjoying Ice Cream O'Clock a bit too much lately...and a friend of mine posted back that somehow "Fruit and Vegetable O'Clock" just doesn't seem to have the same ring to it. I'm afraid I have to agree with her on that one!

Our usual O'clock poison is cookies and cream, choc chip, or if DH is very lucky, some Homer Hudson Choc Rock. This particular day saw us sadly devoid of anything, as (in DH's words) I "flagrantly offered" the kids to have some of our secret stash. A quick trip to the local 7-11 fixed that, and we had two new things to try - Maxibon Honeycomb and the new Maxibon Bits.

The original Maxibon is one of my favourites - inside it's a chocolate chip-ish ice cream in a rectangular shape. One half of it is dipped in Chocolate with crunchy bits, and the other half is sandwiched between two soft chocolate cookies. The Honeycomb version just replaces the normal ice cream with Honeycomb, and the bits are supposedly pieces of honeycomb. I didn't think it was possible, but the good people of Peter's managed to actually produce a nearly flavourless ice cream. It wasn't inedible, but neither was it remarkable. I didn't really taste much honeycomb-ish flavour in there. Basically I ate my part of it and felt kinda ripped off. It's one of the few times where I truly felt like I'd wasted calories on ice cream.

The second one we tried is being hugely promoted at the moment, with the tag line, "Same same. Only different." I can use this same tag line to describe it, too - same, same crap ... only different to how it appears on the box. These things are NOTHING like a Maxibon. They're just a little blot of vanilla icecream covered in a thin chocolate shell. On the box they look all big and luscious but in real life they are actually kinda flat - a bit like a Hershey's Kiss that somebody sat on. While they taste okay, they're also really disappointing! This product would have been WAY better if it had some of the original biscuit pieces in it - or just, something to lift it from being so boring.

If nothing else it's taught me that if I am going to continue to enjoy Ice Cream O'Clock, I'd best be enjoying something good for those calories! Anyone else want to recommend something delish for us to try?

Finished!

I finished my first quilt, and I couldn't be more proud - YAY ME! This really was a very simple project to do for a beginner, as it's essentially just sewing a whole lot of straight lines. I had a few technical issues with it - namely that I got quite a lot of puckering, and that as it grew it started to get a bit unwieldy! The kids got to help with this as well, so I like to think that I'm passing some knowledge onto the next generation.

I actually bought enough flannel to make two of these - the other flannel is a soft purple and a soft blue. Having learned a lot of lessons in doing this (namely that if you cut the squares wonky, the finished product will be wonky) I'm keen to give this another shot. Ultimately I'm not all that happy that the squares did not line up well, but as DH says it gives it "a homemade air" about it, and the damn thing is just so cute that I forgive myself.

For those who care about these sorts of thigs, I used a bamboo batting inside - more expensive than wool, etc but also environmentally friendly and a lighter weight. Washing it to get the 'rag' effect on the egdes was a major undertaking...I think we'll bge pulling pink fluff out of things for quite a while! In the picture above you can see the ragged side - in the picture below the non-ragged side. It also seemed to shrink quite a bit in the wash ... but it's still the perfect size for two little girls to have a cuddle, so that's okay by me!

If you give a fly a cupcake

One of the unfortunate side effects of a beautiful Australian summer is the flies. The damn things are just everywhere, and you can't get away from them. The running joke is that flapping one's hand across their face to shoo the flies is the Australian greeting for hello. It's not uncommon so see runners and walkers with a twig of gum tree in their hands, swishing it about their head and face as they exercise. It doesn't actually bother the flies, but it makes the walker feel like they are doing something about the problem.

When I first came here I went on a bus tour to the middle of the country - Uluru, Katherine, and so on. The one rule of the bus trip was that as the person ahead of you got on, you had to brush the flies off their back - a most effective technique to keep the damn things out of the bus. Most travellers complain about them, but most locals just get used to them. While I personally find the little flies annoying, Australia is also home to the MOTHER of all flies - the blow flies.

Blow flies, for those who don't know, are these MASSSIVE bloody flies which are not only ugly but also make an annoying buzzing noise. They drive people crazy - and when I say they are big I mean big - like a giant yellow-jacket size. They're also kinda gross, you know?

Last week I had to deliver some cupcakes to a wedding venue on the other side of town. As I was setting them up, this big blow fly decided to keep me company. I wasn't surprised, given the heat of the day and the sweet smell of the cupcakes. I finished my set up and mentioned to the venue manager that she might want to swat him. Much to my dismay, she went running for a massive aerosol can of fly spray. She chased the bugger around the room, spraying a 'whoosh' of chemical at him at various intervals. He was tenacious, though, and wouldn't die...until, of course, he decided he was hungry and wanted to nibble on a cupcake. (Well, can you blame him? All that buzzing around!)

She approached the tiers of cupcakes, fly spray in hand...and I cirnged, knowing where this was going to lead. She shooed him off a cupcake, using her hand as a fan. She waited until he was a couple of inches above the display and then she sprayed the shit out of that guy....not really noticing the fine but concentrated mist of fly spray which was now landing ALL OVER my cupcakes.

Oh great! Just fabulous! Anyone interested in chocolate cupcakes with butter cream icing and a fine sprinkling of Mortein? Uuuggghhhh...

So this is what happens if you give a fly a cupcake. It's the cupcake which gets it in the end.

The fly? He just kept on buzzing.

I left before she decided to smoke the place out.

NaBloPoMo

Hello Everyone and welcome to the first post for NaBloPoMo - National Blog Posting Month! I signed up to take part in this event, which means I need to blog every day for the thirty days of November. Since my September and October blogging was pretty dismal, this is my chance to redeem myself. I also means I can amuse my Mom for an entire month, which is sure to get me some brownie points. I'm hoping this month to broaden my blogging horizons, with a couple of book reviews, food reviews and as usual rants about my fabulous-but-crazy clientele and fabulous-but-crazy children.

First up a review of a book I read this month (pic 'borrowed' from Amazon):

The Age of Shiva - Manil Suri

Lately I've been trying to get away from the endless tomes of chick lit that I seem to be drawn to. Picking this book off of the library shelf was an attempt at broadening my reading horizons - and while I'm not sorry for doing it, it wasn't perhaps one of my better choices.

The book follows the life of Meera, an Indian woman who lives through the war with Pakistan and the various poltical upheavals of the time. The story follows her from young adulthood, through to her marriage with the alcoholic Dev, to the birth of her son and her son's eventual young adulthood. Books about India and India's history often capture my attention because they tend to have such beautiful narrative - in a culture as rich as India's it's hard not to find what to describe. While there are some parts of this novel which are truly beautiful to read, it suffers from an excrutiatingly slow pace and a main character who you want to reach into the book and smack.

Ostensibly Meera is a strong, independant woman - from the beginning she 'engineers' her marriage to Dev, is clearly quite intelligent, and has dreams and aspirations. It doesn't take long, though, before everything goes awry - Dev isn't the man she had hoped, her brother in law has designs on her, and her life seems to be plagued by poor decisions and a complete lack of strength of character. She just...submits, and somehow keeps hoping that things will improve. She is a victim of the males in her life - from her father to her husband to her son, and while she recognises that, it never seems to affect her in any profound way. The story only really held my interest because I kept hoping in vain that something might actually happen - but I got to the end realising that there was actually very little in the way of storyline. The whole novel felt a bit flat - the charachters never really jump off the page, the descriptions of places and events are fairly bland, and in the end you just sort of feel a bit let down. From the female perspective, I found myself thinking that Meera was more annoying than she was endearing.

Reading various on-line reviews about this author's first book (The Death of Vishnu) makes me wonder if he didn't suffer a bit from second book blues. Given the exemplary reviews of his first book, I'm going to see if I can't find it and review that one as well. Here's hoping!

End result is - Age of Shiva: Entirely forgettable.

Cake Love

More cake fun from the kitchen of Three Sweeties...

I'm getting confused with the stuff I'm posting on the web, on facebook, and here, so forgive me if some of these are repeats. Enjoy!

Hand made fondant lady bugs and flowers...these had a matching big ladybug cake as well as mini cupcakes. Hard to see in the photo but these little guys had eyes as well.

Made for a first birthday of a little girl with the nicknames of "Chicken" and "Bubbles." Everything on this cake is edible except the little Easter chicks and the wires.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar! I hand painted this to look as though it was really painted - exactly as the book shows it. The picture is a bit dark - it was a lot brighter in real life.

I love this cake. It was for a mother's group where 7 kids were sharing a 1st birthday. NN made it to my design and I love the colours she used. The brief was that it had to be "unisex and funky."

A simple yet elegant christening cake. All edible bar the ribbon and the wire.

A cupcake tower I adore, although dealing with those camellia leaves was painful. Each of these has a fresh orchid on top.

Have you voted yet?

Part of an Art Deco/Shabby Chic themed morning tea, with cupcakes to match the invitations. The fondant disks are all embossed with a floral theme and then pearl dusted so that in real life they shimmered.

This one is for a repeat customer whose son is allergic to nuts, dairy, sesame and a whole bunch of other stuff. This cake is totally vegan...but still tasted fab (of course!) I love the dolphin at the bow of the ship. The cannon on the back and the cannonballs at the feet of the pirates are all edible. There was even a fuse on the cannon!

This cake is not only about 28 inches long, it also was taken from my kitchen to an 80th birthday celebration 450 kilometres away. I got an email from the client to say that miraculously it survived the journey almost perfectly - they had to just fix one small panel (to the side of the keyboard) which was loose. All here is edible except for the songbook and the wire propping up the lid.

...and as is obvious from these photos, I'm no good at food photography - which I think is a real detriment to my creations. Tips, hints and helpful advice all welcome (and desperately needed!)

OMG Oreos

Because I read a lot of food, baking and cupcake blogs, it's come to my attention that Americans are really good at the whole 'interesting flavours' thing. Seems like everyone is clamouring to make basil cupcakes, salted caramel cupcakes, almond and lavender cupcakes, and so on. None of this really happens in Australia, where people are much happier with the basic chocolate and vanilla. Those who are brave are going for...ooooohhh...lemon! I'd like to reintroduce some more interesting flavours to the Three Sweeties repetoire, but they've got to a) be something people will actually try and b) something which doesn't require different recipes. Basically, if I can take my key recipes and tweak them, I'm onto a winner.

Several recent blog posts have given me Oreos on the brain, and so last week I thought I'd play around with them a bit. An obliging client, a keen helper in NN, and a synagogue dinner for which I needed dessert set the scene.

I'm not posting a recipe for this, primarily because I didn't do anything spectacular ... and yet, the results were hugely popular, and really, really freakin' delicious. Using my standard chocolate cake recipe, my standard buttercream recipe, and some mad torting skills, I made an Oreo Layer Cake.

Simple, really - chuck a sleeve of Oreos into a bag, bash the shit out of them with a rolling pin (cackling all the while) and stir into vanilla frosting. Bake a decadent chocolate cake, torte into three layers, and slather with Oreo frosting inside and out. Layer it up, put some cut up Oreos on top and that's it. Next up, courtesy of a moment of NN genius - Tim Tam Cake. Same principal, just using Australia's favourite chocolate cookie rather than America's. I'm also planning on adopting the Baking Bites version, which is a vanilla cake swirled with pieces of Oreo and then topped with Oreo icing.

None of these are particularly original ideas, but all of them show how easy it is to take something boring and making it something fabulous...which is pretty much my baking philosophy anyway.

Not Quite Maria

DD1 has taken a keen interest in this whole sewing lark, as it means she now has someone to make clothing for her menagerie of stuffed and plastic animal friends. First cab off the rank was an outfit for the strangely named Mr. Bun. I'm not sure WHY Mr. Bun is called that, considering he is a pink teddy bear - surely Mrs. Bun would have suited better? In any case the request was for "pants and a vest" for dear Mr. Bun and I was more than happy to comply.

Here is where it all started to fall apart at the seams (pun intended.) I had no idea how to make clothes. Literally NO idea. I vaguely considered using a pattern, but DD1 was very insistent that I get this thing done, and done NOW. Hmmm. I had 2 squares of rainbow flannel left over from my quilting endeavours. I had a pair of scissors, and more importantly I had some ingenuity.

Hence, I present, Mr. Bun in all his gay pride clothing glory:
(note the string sticking out is from his leg, not his outfit.)


Keen eyed readers, please note that not only are his pants hemmed, they are also elasticised at the waist, have a snib to close them (so it fits over his tail but then tightens around his waist). His vest also has a snib closure, and the lapels have been hand sewn into place.

If I do say so myself, Mr Bun looks pretty dapper. I don't quite think I'm ready for Project Runway, but at least I'm keeping my kid happy.

Sew Good

After my coaster success, I decided it was time to tackle something a little bigger. Me being me, nothing is ever hard enough unless I am within inches of tearing my hair out. Someone pointed me to this easy quilt project - a Flannel Rag Quilt. WHY I chose to make something out of flannel as we head into summer is beyond me, but then I never claimed to be particularly sensible anyway.

Once I started this project, I realised two things. Firstly, that I had woeful sewing skills. Secondly, that sewing is in fact almost exactly like cooking.

In sewing, it's the preparation which determines the final outcome. How accurately you cut your material, how well maintained your machine is, how much time management you do, what kind of material you purchase, and so on. Cooking, too, requires excellent mise-en-place (preparation) if you're going to turn out a decent meal. It's also all about choosing the right ingredients, giving yourself enough time, having good knife skills, and being patient with your ingredients. Like sewing it also requires to be resourceful. No pickles on hand? Use cucumbers. No batting on hand? Use pieces of flannel instead. It doesn't take a genius to work out why my new found crafting love affair appeals to me enormously.

And so I embarked upon this "easy" project with some trepidation. I'm now about 2/3 the way there, and I must say I am loving every minute of it. The kids are well sick of it - "MUM! That thing is so NOISY!" and DH is just glad that while I am sewing, my mouth is shut and I am content. The fact that my quilt is not exactly, shall we say...lined up properly...well, as DH says, it all adds to the homemade charm of it all.

Stay tuned - I'll post some pics when it's done. In the meantime, I'd best step away from the machine for a bit...

Slap Some Gingham On Me

You know when something totally obvious dawns on you, and you waste time thinking how completely stupid you are for not realising it earlier? This very thing happened to me about a week ago.

When I first moved to Australia, I went to loads of job interviews. At every interview I would say the same thing, which was that I could care less what I did as long as a) I didn't have to dress corporate, b) I could work with young(ish) people and c) I could have loads of small attainable goals and then enjoy the fruits of my labour.

Okay, so it took a good 7 years or so before I realised that the place I wanted to be was not the office environment I had set myself up in. It's taken a further 3-4 years to work out that the reason I enjoy my job so much is that a) I don't have to dress corporate, b) I work with younger people and c) I work with my hands and hence the goals are both achievable and immediately gratifying.

For a while now I've been thinking about getting a new hobby - something which is not food related and yet could be both fun and useful. Knitting was out as my various attempts left me with a tangled mess and a sore neck. Painting also out as I was useless at it. Various forays into mosaic work, creative writing, tie-dying and pottery were all mildly amusing, but that's about where it ended. Sewing is something which has appealed to me for quite a while now, but I've never really had the chance to try it properly. I'm surrounded by ridiculously crafty and clever sewing friends - The Baker's Wife, and Matching Pegs to name just two.

I mentioned this interest in sewing to a friend of mine who is a proficient sewer - a woman of my IL's generation for whom sewing was part of their school curriculum. She offered to give me a few lessons, and since then I've been having a grand time sewing straight lines on scraps of material. Some weeks into this venture and I happened upon a bargain sewing machine (50% off!) which I dutifully lugged home, wondering if this was yet another foray into a useless craft.

This purchase brought me into the realm of, well, being someone who knows how to sew. I had the machine, I had vague ideas of what a bobbin does, and I had the desire to suddenly go all Problem Like Maria on my kids and make them matching clothes out of curtains and let them hang from trees.

Much to my delight I've discovered that I adore this new skill of mine, and can see how it would quickly become both addicting and overwhelming. This week I found myself needing to ration my sewing, as I was doing it to the exclusion of all else. "You want a cake? No, sorry, can't do it. Maybe next week when my quilt is done?"

So here is where I had the "Well, DUH!" moment. Sewing is something that a) you can do if you're not wearing a power suit, b) you can do and young people think you are uber-cool, and c) you can see immediate, attainable results which give you instant moments of "Oh well aren't *I* the bloody clever one!"

Project One was a set of coasters, which I'm gifting to my sewing teacher as a way of saying thanks:

Front of the coasters

Back of the coasters

I originally made 6. One died a painful and knotted death, and one came out, well, a wee bit smaller than the others. Overall, though, I'm feeling ridiculously proud of these five little fabric coasters. Clearly, what the world needs now is not love, but more fabric coasters.

June Cleaver, eat ya' damn heart out. Emzee Cleaver is in town, and she rode in on a bobbin.

Bad Karma

There I was, poised to write a blog post all about seriously cool cakes, totally amazing things I've been sewing lately (because, you know, now I'm all crafty) and about the various projects which have sucked up my time but paid me back in happiness.

Until.

The Bad Karma Bunny hopped into my life, in a BIG way. It started a couple of weeks ago, when I got some sort of weird gastric bacterial god knows oh-lord-I-need-a-toilet-quick thing. It lasted for longer than I care to admit, and was accompanied (in a fit of exceptionally good timing) a women's business from hell. Which is particularly amusing because I am spectacularly infertile, which means I get women's biz, oh, maybe once every year. Or so.

It got so bad that I even found myself going to the doctor. Something which I HATE doing. Not only did I go to a doctor, but my normal doc was busy so I had to see some totally random guy and tell him about my bowel dysfunction. Not fun.

So I kinda, sorta, was starting to get over that when I had some business dramas. Among other things a cake of mine (with handmade figurines which took me AGES to make) got left in front of some random person's house because my delivery guy couldn't be assed to call me and tell me he couldn't find the place. Then a very expensive cake stand got broken - and of course, the client claims she got it broken, the driver claims *I* gave it to him broken, and the end result is me with a big bill and an annoyed expression on my face.

The kids are home loads because of the various Jewish holidays, so it's like they've been home for a month now, whining "I'm boooooored!" "He hit me!" "You NEVER do what I want..." etc etc. We all know how much I love and adore whining children, right?

A whole host of crappy (pun intended) things happened. This week, I thought, was SURELY going to be a better week. On Monday I had lunch booked in with a friend I adore - a friend who I only see once a month at our lunches, a lunch I had already cancelled because I was stuck on the, ahem, little room for 10 days straight. On Tuesday I had some fun plans with the kids, on Thursday I was going to experiment with a few recipes and do some kitchen organisation. You know, I had plans.

In comes the biotch, Bad Karma Bunny. Freakin' thing hopped right in and I didn't even SEE her. Literally. I sat down on Monday norming to answer some business emails and realised I couldn't see the entire left half of the screen. Hmmmm...odd. I felt okay but couldn't see anything - and usually when that happens it means I've got or am getting a migraine.

Yes. Well. 30 minutes later and I was throwing up all over the place and moaning about "my head, my head." Two DAYS later and I still had a headache, but could (sorta) function. My lunch got cancelled, my work got cancelled, my Bollywood got cancelled. Only thing not cancelled was a four hourly date with drugs. Strong drugs and a dark room and oh please GOD will it go away!

Wednesday I felt vaguely human. We started the day at the US Consulate, sorting out the passport renewals for me and the kids. Over $500 later (including the pics) and hours of waiting and endless bullshit security procedures later, we found out had to come back again! Argh!!

Still, I was not going to be fazed by this minor karma hiccup. Onwards we went to the Melbourne Museum, where the kids had begged us to go. It took about six seconds for the freakin' bunny to trip my son up in the parking lot. Niiicceee. Giant chunk taken out of his knee, lots of crying and wet clothes from the puddle he landed in. We fixed him up (clever parenting tip: first aid kit in the car) and on we went. He loved riding in the wheelchair (look! wheelies!). He complained about it hurting but DH and I basically told him to suck it up.

Long story short (and one of those phone calls from school) and he was out at the doctor...and while I was worried about the gouge in his knee, SHE was worried about his knee looking like a billiard ball.

Lovely. First day of the (much anticipated) cricket season and my boy is out on the injured bench, ordered to spend at least a week with his knee being iced and the rest of us playing nursemaid.

...and we won't talk about the lady who called at noon begging for some cupcakes to be finished by 3 pm (nut free, dairy free, egg free, sesame free....etc.) (Yes, I did it in time.)

Oyy...PLEASE! Someone! Make it stop!

I wish I didn't believe in ghosts

According to Wikipedia, a ghost is:

"...the apparition of a deceased person, frequently similar in appearance to that person, and usually encountered in places she or he frequented, the place of his or her death, or in association with the person's former belongings."

I think Wikipedia has it mostly right, but I take argument with the whole "deceased/death" bit of the description. Sure, traditional BOO! ghosts are usually dead ones. Modern ghosts are not dead at all ... in fact they're very much alive.

Recently I've been talking to friends and reading a fair bit about people who are going through a personal process of re-discovering, re-invention, and of rejuvenation. Without doubt, in all these cases, their biggest stumbling blocks are one thing: ghosts. Not the sort who wander around graveyard in the dead (ha!) of night, nor the sort who make doors slam and windows rattle in their frame. The kind of ghosts I'm talking about are those which follow us around, every day, living in our hearts and our minds.

The ghosts of failures past who keep you from taking a leap of faith into the future. The ghosts of broken reltionships, aborted attempts at business and failed school exams. The ghosts of your life experiences which now haunt you as you try to move forward into something new, something exciting, something different to what you already know. On a personal note, the ghost which haunts me the most is one of self-doubt. For most of my life I've been told that I'm smart. Clever. Motivated. Michelle, you are going to be the person to CHANGE THE WORLD.

Because the profession I chose is not of the life-changing, environment-helping, world-saving sort which everyone said it should be, I constantly find myself doubting it. I doubt the value or net worth (not financial) of my little business to the rest of the world at large. I doubt my innate ability to create works of edible art. I find myself thinking that my life is a bit of a sham and someday, someone is going to call me out on it. That self doubt is, by far, the biggest ghost I've got lurking in my head, in my house, in my life. It affects almost every part of who I am. I think it's fair to say it's a pretty sizeable ghost, as ghosts go.

Let's return to that Wiki definition, where a ghost is, "...frequently similar in appearance to that person, and usually encountered in places she or he frequented...in association with the person's former belongings." The people we were before - the ghosts of our previous experiences - look like us, live with us, and have the same stuff as us. Sadly, too, they often have the power over us because they can keep us from living a full, brave life. The ghost of fear. The ghost of disappointment. The ghost of self-esteem. For some people, perhaps, it's other people's ghosts which inhabit their heads. The, "What will my Dad think? What will my friends think?" ghost.

October brings with it thoughts of all things ghoulish and scary - ghosts of the actually dead variety, if you will. For me October is also the month of Yom Kippur - the Jewish Day of Atonement where we reconsider the past year, and look forward to a new one starting again. We get the equivalent of a spiritual "do over." Look at this month as an opportunity to bring into the light those ghosts which you CANNOT see, but which stop you all the same. Talk about what you're afraid of. Take a leap into something you've not tried before. Tell somebody something you've been keeping to yourself. Don't go quietly into the night, my friends - go loudly, and banish the ghosts within.
_________________

This post was written as an entry into the Scribbit October Write-Away Contest. It was also written in support of Karen, who is pursuing a life adventure requiring bravery and faith (both of which she has in abundance, even if she's not always sure she does.)

Truth in Icing

...but not as much as he loves eating Mum's icing!

Crikey!

This story is so completely unbelievable...I read it and my jaw slowly dropped to the floor. All I really have to say is, Rex Neindorf, you're my hero for that comment alone.


Boy feeds live zoo animals to crocodile
Fri Oct 3 2008

The parents of a seven-year-old boy who broke into an Outback zoo and fed a string of small animals to its resident crocodile are likely to be sued after police said the boy was too young to be held responsible.

A turtle, four western blue tongue lizards, two bearded dragons, two thorny devil lizards and a 1.8 metre adult female Spencer's goanna were fed or led into the jaws of a three-metre, 200kg saltwater crocodile named "Terry".

Security camera footage at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre showed the smiling youngster also bludgeoning to death a small blue tongue lizard and two more thorny devils during a half-hour of breakfast-time havoc last Wednesday.

"The fact a seven-year-old can wreak so much havoc in such a short time, it's unbelievable. In my day he'd get a big boot up the arse," centre director Rex Neindorf said.

"Police found him, but in the Northern Territory here he can't be accountable if he's under 10 years of age."

Neindorf said many of the animals fed to the croc were rare or mature and would be difficult to replace.

The boy was unknown at the centre and had "clammed up" when questioned by police on what sparked the rampage, he said.

Neindorf said he was now looking at suing the parents of the pint-sized terror, who could easily have been taken by Terry himself as he fed the croc from a small landing at his enclosure.

"We'll be looking at suing the parents, who were supposedly in control of him at the time," he said.