Going Native

Last weekend, we went out to dinner for J's birthday, along with some of his workmates and their partners. He was feeling carnivorous, and thought it would be hilarious if we ate at the Outback Steakhouse. Neither of us is a fan of chain restaurants - which seem so popular here - and I had my misgivings, but him being the birthday boy, I acquiesced.

I knew that once we were there, I'd be talking far too much to spend any time looking at the menu, so decided to look online and choose ahead of time. The only problem with that plan was that once I began reading it, I couldn't stop laughing.

For further giggles, I shared a link to the menu on Facebook and let the comments fly from friends and family back home. Some of the thoughts offered were:

- Toowoomba Pasta (with seafood)? The town after which this was named happens to be two hours inland from the coast. Hardly a place that's associated with seafood.

- Aussie Cheese Fries? Well, the Monterey Jack cheese which tops the fries is very much American. Still can't figure out the 'Aussie' element of this dish.

- Californian Chicken Salad? Perhaps this is for anyone who's outside their comfort zone when ordering 'foreign' or 'ethnic' food. Especially given the exotic nature of this particular restaurant.

- Tassie's Buffalo Strips? Because Tasmania is known for their buffalo wings - a fact which has escaped my attention all these years.

- Walkabout Soup of the Day? Sounds messy.

- Coconut Shrimp (with Creole marmalade)? Two thoughts here. The first: that nobody in Australia says 'shrimp'; the second: 'Creole'? Yeah, that's authentic Australian right there... via New Orleans.

- Bloomin' Onion? Never heard of this dish, and according to Wikipedia, it was created in the 1970s in - wait for it - New Jersey. The recipe was then acquired by the (American owned) Outback company and rebranded as an 'Aussie' dish. Turns out these are nothing more than glorified onion rings... but without the ring shape.

- Alice Springs Chicken Quesadillas? We all know quesadillas are actually Australian, and not Mexican. The sooner people acknowledge this truth, the better. Yo.

- New Zealand Rack of Lamb? Because New Zealand is part of the Australian outback. Didn't you know that?

- Chocolate Thunder from Down Under? Okay, I give them credit here for that dish's name. It sounds delicious, and is something I planned to order... but by that point, I was full after imbibing one too many sangria margaritas.

- The number of times that barbie was used in reference to barbecued food? Too many. I also hate to shatter illusions here, but nobody I know in Australia says 'barbie' unless they're talking about Mattel's plastic doll. We are a lazy bunch with language, and shorten many words, but we somehow manage to get out the three syllables required for 'barbecue'. Bar-be-cue. See? Easy.

I rang up to reserve a table for fifteen, and was laughing even harder by the time I got off the phone. There was an initial recording that I had to sit through, voiced by - I'm guessing - an out of work Australian actor, instructed to do his best Paul Hogan impersonation. When the recording was over, I was greeted by an American girl: "Gidday!..." The snob in me cringed.

* * *

The food itself was okay. Nothing amazing, but it wasn't bad. J was more than happy with his steak, so if the birthday boy enjoyed himself, then the objective was achieved, right?

After dinner, a handful of us continued on to a bar called The Bigfoot Lodge. Instead of American-dressed-up-as-Australian-themed, we got North American camping-themed. Much more of a novelty for me, then. The crowd of hipsters did their best to make me feel old, but I went ahead and had another cocktail - complete with toasted marshmallow on a stick. My sophistication astounds me at times.

Eventually, the cocktails caught up with me, and - in need of fresh air and water - I found myself standing outside the doors of a nearby petrol station. The large store was completely lit up, and an attendant was inside... but he'd locked the doors and refused to let me in. I had to go over to his window and the charade for a bottle of water was on. I had to pass the money through one of those security drawers, and felt ridiculous. He served me most grudgingly, and I'm not sure why he even bothered. Dude, you don't feel safe in there? I'm standing out here, freezing my tits off, purse open, with over $100 cash on me for the babysitter. 

My lesson for the night? I can't down cocktails the way I used to. My limit is lower, and the recovery time far longer - let's just say I'm grateful for a husband who makes good bacon and egg sandwiches the morning after.

Changes

What do you think?

For a while, I've been wanting to shake things up a bit with the way this blog looks - make it simpler, less fussy. I may tinker a little more (it's fun) but I'm happy with it for now.

This week seemed the perfect time to jump in and do it, because November 26 will mark a year since I started the blog. I won't be around to post or do a grand reveal on the day, as we'll be in Las Vegas (Vegas, baby... Vegas!) for a quick getaway, so I'm going to go right ahead and pat myself on the back now for sticking at this for a year.

(Photo source)

Wrong turns

There was this one time when I was in the Netherlands with a good friend, and we thought it would be fun to hire bicycles to get around one afternoon. We'd heard numerous stories about how the flatness of its countryside made it an ideal place for cycling.

We'd been backpacking, and found ourselves in a town called Arnhem, not far from the German border. We caught a bus from the train station to the local youth hostel and after dumping our bags, immediately rented a bike each.

They had no helmets for hire, so I should have realised right then that our mission was somewhat doomed. Having grown up with strict laws regarding helmets and bicycles, I was more than nervous. Courtesy of childhood 1980s campaigns, images of smashed eggs - representing the human skull - flashed before my eyes.

Trying to shake off my paranoia, we set off. The hostel was at the top of a large hill, and we had to ride down a long, steep road to reach the town. Until then, my experience of cars driving on the right hand side was limited to the perspective of a pedestrian. Riding a bike on the 'wrong' side of the road, no helmet, down a very steep hill... let's just say I rode very slowly.

Did I mention I was 23, and hadn't ridden since my mid-teens? I felt deeply embarrassed when an elderly man whizzed past and overtook me down that hill.

We survived our ride, and rewarded ourselves with tasty Dutch treats in the town. After checking out the local shops, and stocking up on food at a small supermarket, we thought we should head back to the hostel, so hopped on our bikes.

Somehow... we got lost. Despite having excellent map skills, we couldn't find our way (from memory, I think the hostel was far enough away from town that it was just off the map). We'd retraced our steps, but taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Followed by another wrong turn.

And another.

We found ourselves cycling on beautiful country roads, but very much lost. Oh, and we'd somehow chosen the one Dutch region that isn't flat, but filled with hills and forest. Clever, right?

Eventually, we saw another elderly man, so we stopped to ask directions. Of course, we'd picked the one Dutch person who didn't speak fluent English. He didn't speak any English, and had a slightly crazy glint in his eyes. We hurried on.

A bit further along, we saw a younger person, and stopped again to ask. It turned out we were only five minutes away from the hostel, and I cannot describe our relief.

The return journey on our bikes - from the town to the hostel - had taken three hours. Three hours of being lost and riding up and down hills, in what felt like the middle of nowhere.

Being so out of practice with cycling, I was in a world of pain for the next few days.

1999 - Somewhere outside Arnhem, and trying not to panic.

The reason why I've been thinking about this 'adventure' is because of all the cyclists I see around LA - with no helmets. It's something I don't understand... especially when I see how crazy some of the motorists are. Who wouldn't want to protect their skulls?

I recently saw a car knock a young man off his bike, throwing him onto the road. It happened right in front of us one day when I walking the Faery home from school. It was awful to witness, but he was lucky to pick himself up with barely a scratch. Of course, he'd been riding with earphones in, and straight in front of a car that was turning right from a side street. It could have been so easily avoided.

I'm guessing that Australia is one of the few countries to have such strict laws regarding helmets, but it's something I agree with and think people are better off erring on the side of caution - especially where children are concerned. Brain damage is tragic.

It's one thing for adults to decide what risks they take, but I can't help feeling angry when I see children riding around the streets without helmets. How can parents be okay with that?

This, in a state which makes it illegal to smoke anywhere in public: "Your children are safe from passive smoking in public places, but their skulls? Meh, not so important...."

Gags

"Gag! Gag! Gag!"

This is something I hear every time we go out in the car. Miss Pie is at that gorgeous age where her words are finally coming together, albeit not always sounding the way they should. Yesterday, I heard her first three-word sentence when her apple was all eaten: "Eat. More. Apple!" A proud mumma moment for me - compared to the Faery, Miss Pie's speech seemed to be coming along so much more slowly. In hindsight, her big sister was somewhat of a freak when to came to speech development (eighty words by fourteen months, I kid you not).

So much of what Mis Pie says can have several meanings, depending on the context. If she sees something round anywhere - even better if there are numbers on it - then she'll exclaim, "TWO! TWO! TWO!" Meaning? Clock. So I'll reply, "Yes, a clock" or "Yes, it looks like a clock", then she'll say "I-O-I-O-I-O". Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

When it comes to animals, she delights in making the sounds that they make. Don't all toddlers? But her latest one is baffling me. "Hort! Hort! Hort!" That part is easy enough: horse. Then the sound follows, "Haba haba haba", in a sing song voice, intonation going down. Almost like a little Arabic nursery rhyme's chorus.

I'd love to meet a horse that sounds like that, but I'm yet to encounter one.

Anyhow, back to "Gag!" Initially, I thought she was talking about bags, because that's also her word for bag. But, you know, there aren't really a lot of bags to be pointed at out of car windows, are there?

Something that is plentiful, though, are flags. The good old stars and stripes. Maybe it's just our area in LA, but we'd be hard pressed to go more than two blocks without seeing the US flag. Some blocks will have many US flags on show.

Compared to Australians, Americans love their flag.

There may be eucalyptus trees in abundance here, but there's no forgetting what country I'm in.

When Faeries and Pies attack

Beware the sleeping daddies...

Having two little girls is every bit as sweet as I'd imagined it would be.

A thousand feelings

When it comes to the old adage a picture is worth a thousand words I often wonder what the number is for feelings that an image can elicit.

The spare time I've had these last few days have been spent organising a stack of photos I finally had printed back in May, into newly-purchased photo albums. Because I can be pedantic about dates and correct sequences, I had to check every single one of these photos with the information on iPhotos.

Somehow - between May and now - this large stack of photos had been rifled through and mixed up. Badly. Did I mention that some of these photos date as far back as early 2008? That's a shite load of photos to be sorting, and each day ended with a headache.

That's at least three and a half years of photos.

Three and a half years of my life, captured, in images.

The oldest photos in the stack were, in some ways, the hardest to look at. That year was all kinds of fucked up for us.

We moved house. A close family member attempted suicide, and of course there was fall out from that. We also had to urgently find day care for the Faery (in an area with long waiting lists), while trying not to miss out on badly needed days of work. Our computer died. Then, J was made redundant (without a payout). I had to switch to working full time while he looked for a job, knowing that my salary would never be able to cover all we needed.

All kinds of fucked up.

Looking through the photos from that period, I had strong physical reactions. Seeing the faded hallway carpet patterns, I could smell the rising damp and mouldy ceilings of our first winter - in what turned out to be a hideously drafty house that we'd moved into.

Seeing the golden sunset glow on the bricks of the back of the house, and the large frangipani tree in the back corner of the yard, I can taste the wine we sipped at once we'd put the Faery to bed. An end of working-week treat.

Seeing the front door open, I'm reminded of the strong winds that barrelled through it and also down the side passage of the house - winds that came up one side of the hill that this house was perched on, bitter in winter but blowing my washing dry in no time.

Seeing photos of the Faery playing on the painted kitchen floorboards, I felt the urge to scrape the white flecks of paint that stuck to the soles of my feet in those first few weeks there - a result of the landlord's cheap DIY before we moved in.

Seeing the light green kitchen walls, I can smell the cooking I did. I also feel the walls' stickiness - from lack of adequate ventilation (no extraction fan above the stove). I can also taste the distinct worry that comes with not having enough money. Not knowing when things would improve. A tight feeling in the pit of my stomach. All. The. Time.

This period was only three years ago, and I can feel it so clearly... but it also feels further back in time. We got through it, and so much else has happened - starting with another move, then another baby, a fantastic job for J (after several false starts with some shitty companies), and that job being the reason for our biggest move of all.

The photos from the newer chapter have a shiny glow to them in comparison, even though everything was printed at the same time. It's purely my perception.

Moving to a new city, a new country... things tend to have a shine for a while. The shine of newness. Adventure. Plus, the feeling of relief that we aren't in the position we were only a few years ago. We didn't run away, but anyone who knows us well understands that we needed a fresh start, and a chance to maybe even get ahead one day. With the industry that J had been employed in, if we'd stayed in Sydney, I'm pretty sure we'd still be stuck on Struggle Street today.

Things are a little less shiny now, but it's still good. There's hope, and one day we'll return to Sydney - winners, not losers.

This has been my headspace over the last few days. Reflective, and grateful that the stomach-churning anxiety of that time is gone (mostly, because I'll always find something to fret about).

I'll never underestimate the impact a photo can have.

Tinted

Most days here are still bright and sunny, so I wear my sunglasses regularly when driving.

There's a beautiful street near the Faery's school that I usually park on. It's lined with large sycamores and maples that form leafy archways over the street, and every time I turn into that street, I think Wow, the leaves are finally turning!

Then I park the car, remove my sunglasses, and realise the leaves haven't really turned after all - it's just the tinting on my sunnies. Those trees are in fact just a dry shade of green.

This is now my second autumn in LA, so I'm well aware that we won't be getting the full 'fall' effect that other parts of the US experience.

Instead, there's a mysterious process at play - green leaves on trees, brown leaves on the ground beneath. It's hard to catch the transition, and the leaves seem to drop without turning magnificent shades first.

A walk around my neighbourhood yesterday revealed the odd glimpse of leaves changing, but if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't be aware that the seasons were changing. For the most part, it's sunny business as usual in LA.

Linking up with Mama Kat's Losin' It.