Maybe in Oz

My mom got a new pair of socks for Christmas.  They are red, the perfect color to celebrate the season in style.  She got them after surgery because she fell and broke her elbow.  Not such a Merry Christmas for her :(

'Twas the night before christmas;there wasn't a sound. Not a possum was stirring; no-one was around. We'd left on the table some tucker and beer, Hoping that Santa Claus soon would be here; We children were snuggled up safe in our beds, While dreams of pavlova danced 'round in our heads; And Mum in her nightie, and Dad in his shorts, Had just settled down to watch TV sports. When outside the house a mad ruckus arose; Loud squeaking and banging woke us from our doze. We ran to the screen door, peeked cautiously out, snuck onto the deck,then let out a shout. Guess what had woken us up from our snooze, But a rusty old ute pulled by eight mighty 'roos. The cheerful man driving was giggling with glee, And we both knew at once who this plump bloke must be. Now, I'm telling the truth it's all dinki-di, Those eight kangaroos fairly soared through the sky. Santa leaned out the window to pull at the reins, And encouraged the 'roos, by calling their names. 'Now...

Dear Santa, I have been very good this year (well, as good as I can possibly be considering it's still me). I have donated a lot of possessions to various friends and charities and a lot of money to the small electronics industry. I even let a friend borrow my car and another my cat. But now it is my turn to ask, I don't want much, but I'm hoping that you might have special privileges to sneak a few things in past the quarantine agents for me. For Christmas (aka Chrissy) can you please bring me: baby carrots a garbage disposal in the kitchen sink nice clothes that don't cost a fortune in sizes that actually fit peacock feathers some new friends brownie mix a swiffer a can of black California olives American bacon a bowl of clam chowder fish tacos from Rubio's a jar of celery seed a jar of that neon-looking nacho cheese sauce a money tree sunshine on a weekend and I supposed a bag full of cash is always nice

This holiday season has been really odd so far. It started with the lack of Thanksgiving, and when normally we would have bought our Christmas Tree on Black Friday, instead it was just a normal thank-goodness-it's Friday. No great sales, no over-eating, no definitive start to the Christmas season. I kept looking around wondering at what point Christmas would start in Australia, but besides some mundane mall decorations it still hasn't. Finally on December 1st I heard on the radio that it was the first day of summer (yeah, no kidding) and that it was ok to buy a tree. It's tough being the first holiday away from the usual American holiday traditions. No potlucks, ornament exchanges, everything I'm used to that makes the holiday season something to look forward to. We searched the stores for days before we finally found some egg nog only to discover that it wasn't anywhere near as good as the egg nog I was looking forward to drinking. We used to buy potted C...

As last week drew on, I would see everyone's facebook posts about Thanksgiving and think that they were all confused. Isn't it May? Thanksgiving is in November. It's definitely Spring, and Thanksgiving is definitely NOT in Spring. I would say it's in Fall, but around here if I use that F-word they give me funny looks - a pparently it's called Autumn. Thursday morning I woke up and went to work as if it were a regular Thursday - because it was. We had tacos for dinner (minus the refried beans - they can't seem to get those right in Australia). Friday morning I noticed that Phil was watching football and I thought it was really odd - why was he watching football on a Friday morning? Then I realized it was Thanksgiving in the US, and with Thanksgiving comes football. Yesterday we had dinner with the Ex-Pat American Meetup group - on the menu was turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and pumpkin pie for dessert. It was nice to hang out wit...

(and around here, that H is not silent!) I seem to have an issue with plants. I thought it would be nice to grow some herbs, tomatoes, etc, so I bought a little garden and carefully planted some seeds in neat little rows. I wasn't sure what would grow, so I planted about 6 full packages of seeds in two of the four spots. Then, the night we left for Fiji I asked Phil to plant the remaining seeds in the last two vacant spots so that they would have sprouted by the time we got back. Well, they did. And that was how we discovered that Phil had misunderstood me and planted seeds in all of the spots, including the ones I had already planted seeds in. Granted, he was probably right to do what he did, surely only crazy people plant everything so close together like I did. So now we have heaps of lettuce sprouts mixed in with the occasional zucchini plant. We also have mystery herbs (because I completely forgot what seeds I planted of course) mixed in with carrots. We had a goo...

In general, Aussies are incredibly nice people. I think they call it the Aussie Spirit - they go out of their way to help out and it has been a refreshing change of pace from the people of Southern California. Lately I've discovered that Aussies have one major, very annoying flaw. They are queue-cutters. Several times in the last few weeks I have been patiently waiting in line for something when the cashier says "next" and someone who was standing behind me decides they are next. I wouldn't be so surprised if it were an impatient teenager, but it's usually the unassuming-looking middle aged woman. Perhaps they are not used to large amounts of people standing in line. Maybe they really are oblivious. Whatever the reason, it's definitely a habit I could do without. Fortunately I'm not afraid to be the rude American who reminds them just exactly who was next in the queue.