More Cats

Well, those two little kittens just keep getting cuter. Meanwhile, their mum has become much more protective of them ... so no more photos of them at this stage.

Mum has also become quite restless. She's bored of being cooped up in our house and I know she just wants to go out to play. Instead she just waits for her man to come and visit her in prison.

Ahh, here he is.

He's a pretty dedicated prison-visitor. He comes every day, and if she doesn't come to the door to see him, he'll sing her a really loooong looooud song.

Update

Well, there's one thing I can update for you:

This cat, who's been hanging around our place for a while now, not discouraged by us and actually allowed to look all over our bedroom, in any draw that takes her fancy:

She's had her kittens! She had two. And even better, she had them at our place, not in a draw but in the box that we had prepared for her with old towels and flannelette sheets.

As I think I mentioned before, we were pretty sure that she was getting close last week, and on Friday when I came home from a meeting (at which I was given more writing work to do - yay!) she was waiting for me at the door. She beat me inside and went straight to her box and waited there very quietly.

I sat down at my computer, but soon decided that I needed to go out and buy some paper and/or get a takeaway coffee before I could get right down to work. I peeked into Kitty's box to tell her that I'd only be gone an hour or so, and I saw that she was having her babies.

Hayden and I are both so stoked that she chose to have her kittens at our place, after weeks and weeks of secret encouragement on our part. I was feeling slightly bad for Kitty's real owner, our neighbour across the road, until we phoned her on Friday and she said that seeing as it was raining she wouldn't come over and meet the new kittens until after work the next day. Eventually when she did come and meet the new kittens, she asked us if we could keep them here for at least a week.

We're really loving having them, and we weigh them on our kitchen scale every day (that's not something their owner asked us to do). It's amazing how they're putting on weight - like 10 - 15 g every day between morning and bedtime. That's 10%, like a person putting on 7kg between leaving for work in the morning and coming home at night!

February Waiting

February in Townsville is hot and hard and slow. There, I’ve said it. I think I’ve said that very sentence twice before. I didn’t want to have to say it this time, but I can't escape it. It’s true.

This year, like the last two years, I’ve been a bit underemployed during February while I wait for the year to get started. It seems like I’m waiting for so many things …

We WERE waiting for news about the job in Singapore, but it turned out that Hayden didn’t get that one. We’re still waiting to hear about a couple of other jobs he's applied for. I won’t say what they are (in case nothing comes of them) but now that Hayden’s decided that it’s time for him to move, I think he'll keep applying for jobs until he finds the right one. You may place a bet, if you like, as to which of these 79 locations that right job turns out to be in. I think Singapore’s still in with a chance, myself.

In the meantime, we’re waiting for it to be time to get married. Preparations for that big day are still ticking along, although nearly everything’s organised now. Recently we booked a photographer (check out her work – very arty and nice, I think) and as part of that we’ll go up to her place in Port Douglas to have an ‘engagement portrait’ shot. I might or might not show you that when it's done. I still haven’t found my second pair of shoes.

And finally, we’re waiting for this cat, our neighbour’s, to have her kittens. Our front balcony is a lovely breezy spot in the afternoons, so this little white cat with the enormous bulging belly quite often joins me there for an afternoon sit. Earlier today, she was resting on my lap and I could actually see the little kittens moving around inside her, underneath her skin. That was pretty cool.

Aussie Day

In between actual Australia Day on Saturday and its public holiday on Monday, I tuckered myself out completely on my first ever mountain-bike ride on a real mountain.

We drove up to the hills of Paluma (just an hour’s drive north from here) to check out what it’s like to go mountain-biking in a World Heritage Listed Wet Tropical Rainforest. And guess what? It was ace! And it was wet. Driving to our biking departure point, I noticed that the grey clouds were swirling dramatically above us; then Hayden began to wonder out loud why all the cars coming towards us were all fogged up inside? And why their windows looked so wet? Up ahead the tropical rain was thundering down in the forest and on the dirt roads, but we didn’t let it stop us. Of course it wasn’t cold, it was warm and muggy as anything, and we weren’t about to wuss out on our first ever expedition.

Once on my bike, I had the best time hurtling down the slippery muddy road and I was not deterred by the heavy rain or the mosquitoes. In my adrenaline-pumped mind I was spending about as much time speeding downhill as I was pushing my way uphill – but when we finally decided to turn around and go back, I realised that my previous perceptions had been seriously out of whack. It was a long way uphill to get back to the car.

I don’t know if you have ever seen mountain bikers on the road, when you’re speeding past on a Sunday drive through the countryside? You wiz by a couple of bikers painfully inching their way uphill and you think “You poor bastards.” Well, I just want to let you know that it’s all completely worth it. All that adrenaline, and all that hardcore exercise makes you feel so tough – but only until the moment you get home, and then you fall to sleep like a baby.

Cool Change

It’s a beautiful day today. Warm, but the humidity’s gone and there is a lovely fresh breeze instead. You have no idea how nice that is, I’m sorry but you really don’t. It’s civilised. It’s such a relief. It’s like the best summer you can imagine, all you people who live in places where you look forward to summer coming each year.

The good thing is that I don’t have much to do today, no work at the café and I’ve heard not a peep out of the guy who was supposed to ring me about some extra writing work, so nothing for me to do but fill my new ipod up with songs, pay my poor potplants some attention, and wait for the Big News that might come later this afternoon.

But what to do in the meantime? Why not make myself an elaborate lunch? When it’s hot and humid, it’s hard enough to eat anything (quite often I just have a chocolate Breaka from the shop across the road and call that lunch) so today I took quite a lot of pleasure in cooking myself up a little something:


Fried up slices of eggplant and mushrooms, later add slices of tomato, and serve the whole lot up on toast with a dash of leftover nachos topping. Delish.


The Big News I mentioned is Hayden’s news – but it affects me, naturally. I might have told you that he applied for a job in Singapore a month or so ago. Finally this week he had an interview, and the word was that they’d get back to him today.

I’m waiting calmly, because my hopes are sort of down about this job. Not that I don’t want to go and live in Singapore, or even that I don’t think that Hayden is up to the job – of course he is! It’s just that we heard a rumour that if they say they’re going to get back to you within a couple of days of the interview, it’s a pretty good indication that they already had someone else lined up for the job.

So what if it’s not to be this time? The good part about that is that we won’t have to move away and then fly back for our wedding in April.

Plenty more jobs in the sea.

Caution: Wedding details discussion ahead

OK girls (boys this is optional for you), I need your help. It’s about shoes. I’m sitting here in my wedding dress - yes, I did find a dress to wear to our wedding, shopping in Brisbane on Christmas Eve, but no you can’t see a picture because we’re doing that thing where the wedding dress is a SECRET. And no it can’t just be a secret from Hayden, it has to be a secret from everyone, because my flippy floaty brain cannot handle any more duplicity than that. A secret that's secret sometimes and not other times? That would be way beyond my information-handling abilities. You know when you’re on the phone to someone, and one of you can talk freely because they’re alone but the other person has to talk in ‘code’ because they might be overheard? Well, in the midst of those kinds of conversations, I always forget which one I am. Am I the one who can talk freely or do I have to talk in code? I just can’t keep that stuff up. But anyway, know this: my secret dress is beautiful, demure, and even better, so much better, it’s not all that uncomfortable.

So what I'm trying to do now is find some shoes that fit the same bill: beautiful, demure, but must must must be comfortable. With a heel. We decided that I would need to wear heels because my bridesmaid, my sister Louisa, is at least 15cm taller than me. When we stood in the dress shop, side by side reflected in the mirror, we looked to be the same height but I had the dress on plus some extremely tall shoes that the sales assistant lent me and in addition I was standing on a box. So it was decided then that I would wear heels and she would wear flats.

I have found a pair of beautiful, comfortable and relatively demure shoes in a shop here in Townsville. They have a smallish heel, just three inches, but that’s enough, don’t you think, for someone who has never in her life spent a whole day wearing heels? But the problem with them is that they don’t really match the dress perfectly. They are comfortable, and beautiful. AND, and here’s the clever part, if I leave the dress floor length and don’t take it up as I had planned, then it will cover up the not-quite-perfect shoes PLUS I’d be relieved of the odious task of finding a dressmaker I can trust. This thing could be double-done, right now, and that would be brilliant for me.

But what do you think? Do you think I should keep searching for the absolute perfect pair of shoes? Or should I be happy with my pretty-good shoes, and get on with more important things like deciding what I'm going to do with my hair?

Do you think done is better than perfect?

Big Wet 08

There's a fair amount of water here in Townsville at the moment. Not as much as Airlie Beach and Proserpine, two towns to the south of us which have been featured on the news but still, it most definitely counts as a Big Wet.

Conversation at the coffee shop where I work has turned from the usual "Hot enough for ya?" to how much water, and where, has come inside your house. So that's a nice change. And, thankfully, I don't have much to contribute to that conversation. So far so good. Now that we're into our third wet season I know just where to check for signs of leakage - especially in that corner of my office where I now know not to keep our passports, birth certificates, attempts at stories, precious old diaries and photos. With any luck we will not be flooded twice!

Surf Sup

You know all those photos I show you of palm trees blue sky and perfect flat calm ocean? Well it really is like that for about ten months of the year here.

But for the other two months, it can get grey and windy and a little bit wild. Cyclone season. Time to be battening down our hatches.

Yesterday I woke up wondering: "What's that crashing sound? Hang on, is it ... surf?". It was strange to think that if it was a surf beach we lived near, we would be hearing that crashing noise all day long.

Later, on our after-dinner stroll, we saw little kids swimming at the beach getting full-on dumped in the waves. Poor little tykes, they didn't have a clue what to do.

The Little Corolla Goes Into the Forest

On the last day of last year (happy new year by the way) I got to go somewhere that I’d been wanting to go for ages.

On the morning of the 31st we were already in Port Douglas (just above Cairns) after spending a couple of days in Ravenshoe on Wedding Business. We knew that at the very least that night we were in for a good fireworks display and a delicious dinner the likes of which Townsville’s best restaurants um… strive for. Plus, we had a whole day to play before that, and I got really excited when I looked at the map and realised that we were not that far from the Daintree. We could cross the river and go up to Cape Tribulation.

Crossing the Daintree River to see the rainforest on the other side was one of those things that I’d been wanting to do ever since we first came to North Queensland. It was such an old wish that it had sort of got dusty, and to take it out again and realise that it was possible was just so good. The wet season has started early in a big way this year, so when we crossed the river it was looking good and wide and brown.

True, I love a wide brown slow-moving river. Just ask the Mekong.

When we got to the other side we were instantly in jungle paradise, and I was sort of glad that I had waited so long for this particular trip because I have had a chance to become all enthusiastic about rainforest plants.
Usually we see these plants all scraggly and sun-damaged in Townsville gardens, and I wonder what the person was thinking who planted them there. It was so amazing to see them all flourishing in their proper habitat, under a proper damp grey rainforest sky. The fan palms are my favourite. So retro.

Even though activities were kind of plant-centred, Hayden had a good day too. His favourite part was when we had to test our little ’94 Corolla in 200ml of water across the road. The couple in the car ahead of us, which was similarly low to the ground, decided to turn around at that point because it was, as they so rightly pointed out, a terrible place and a terrible time (what, 5pm on New Year's Eve?) to try and get help if they got into trouble. But they were not as adventurous as we.

She made it! But we each sighed a sigh of relief.

Hayden felt so much relief that he drove back and across again to allow me to get some better photos.

We’re thinking we might fit a snorkel to her before we take her up that way again.

After a week of staying indoors to keep cool and working extra at the coffee shop between irksome stints in the shopping mall, by Sunday morning I was really ready to do something fun; to go somewhere scenic; to go for a drive somewhere pretty and to breathe some fresh cool air.










Sadly we didn’t have all day – we had a massage booked for 3pm – so we couldn’t go up to Paluma to swim in Crystal Creek. Instead we drove out to the beach at Pallarenda. It’s much quieter there and – to be honest – a lot more beautiful than the beaches in town, and it’s surrounded by bushland on the hills behind the beach. Perfect.

When we got there we found it was a still day, so no kite surfers to sit and watch. Instead we went for a little walk out to the even more secluded beach further around the headland. Shelly Beach.

Longer-term residents of Townsville (Marny? Tanya?) might know where this is going … but we didn’t. We just clambered around the headland in the mid-morning heat (it was a bit idiot to be out in the sun, really) and enjoyed the views of calm aqua.
We even saw something – a croc? A dugong? Most probably a turtle – poke its head out of the water. Hayden as always tried to capture it on camera. He didn’t succeed.



While we were walking, we kept getting overtaken by single men, each walking alone but with purpose across the beach and around the next headland out of sight (if you click to enlarge the photo to the left you might be able to spot one or three).

We couldn’t work out why there were so many of them, but when we rested in the shade of an old gun placement (left over from WWII I suppose), we saw some graffiti which provided a clue: "Come one come all, come on down to the nude beach and have a Happy Nude Year."

Yep. Turns out that Shelley Beach is Townsville’s unofficial gay nude beach. We must have been the last to know. When I mentioned it to our masseuse in the afternoon, he replied breezily, “Oh yeah, Shelley Beach, it’s beautiful, I used to go there all the time with my,” and then he paused, “er… with my girlfriend.”

I suppose it must still be a bit scandalous to be gay in macho redneck Townsville.

Crocs

Those are my new red crocs. I bought them last Friday and now I wear them everywhere. It’s terrible. It’s worse than when I bought those enormous unflattering baggy jeans last winter, which I had to do just to stop myself from wearing my trackie dacks to the shops. It seems that I just cannot choose form over comfort when it comes to what I wear.

This does not bode well for my wedding dress shopping which, some of you will be very pleased to note, is the Next Big Thing on my list to do for our wedding. The dress shopping is not going well so far. The shops in Townsville all cater to what the local girls (yes, girls – the average age for a bride in Townsville is about 21) are into which … how to put this? …is something that attempts to span the gulf between trashy and traditional. I was never in the market for the big creampuff of a dress with the astonishing cleavage. I was never going to choose a dress that I’d have to tape myself into.

But as I stand here at our front step, I’m thinking that my chances of finding a dress that is beautiful, classy and not too too uncomfortable are pretty hopeless. At least as far as shopping in Townsville goes. These are all the shoes we wear these days (note that Hayden has the one pair in a neutral tone, and I have six different pairs of thongs to match with different outfits). It’s not as if we had much motivation to wear anything other than thongs. In Townsville the dress code is either daggy shorts or a diamante ball gown. There’s nothing in between.

It's Started

Christmas at our place was officially begun on Saturday. (In previous years, Hayden has tried to keep a lid on my pre-Christmas excitement by decreeing that There Is To Be No Mention of Christmas Prior To The Beginning Of The Month Of December. I think he's now realised that that just focusses my energies even more, to start proceedings with a bang and a flourish on the 1st of the month.) Hayden opened the first window on his (home made, with love, by me) advent calendar; I doused the Christmas Cake in brandy and, of course, we put up the Christmas Tree.

Why yes, it is a Real Pineapple Bush Christmas Tree this year.

Its baby pineapple isn't ready yet, but it's got 21 more days to get itself in order. I'm counting.

Gawn

In mining-speak, "gawn" means permanently gone, and not coming back, so don't even talk about it anymore.

(If you want to talk about something that's gone only temporarily, you'd say that it's "f*cked off", for example, like one guy said when he got accidentally left behind at the bus-stop: "The f*ckers have f*cked off, f*ck'em!" ... but if you mean that something's really gone forever? It's gawn, eg, "have you seen my stapler? I think it's f*cked off somewhere." "Nah mate, she's gawn. You'll have to get a new one.")

That John Howard, he gawn. Finally.

What a relief.

My Birthday

It was my birthday last weekend. And while you might be expecting (if those chick lit books are any kind of guide) for me to be all sad about the marching on of time and the accumulation of years and wrinkles, I’ll have to disappoint you. I decided two years ago that my thirties were going to be awesome, and so far they have been. Completely.

Hayden took me up to the Atherton Tablelands for the weekend, to stay at our favourite B&B in Ravenshoe (pronounced Ravens-Hoe not Raven-Shoe). We spent Saturday hooning around the Tablelands, tasting the local cheeses and visiting the bogan-infested Tinaroo Dam to watch them race each other on waterskis and jetskis. Hilarious. Later in the afternoon we met the charmingly kooky celebrant who is going to marry us in April next year. That is, if she turns up on the right day.

On Sunday morning we weren’t feeling ready to go home just yet, so we decided to visit the markets at Archer Creek – just down the road from where we were staying.

There were a couple of stalls that really caught my attention. I loved this one selling watermelons:


Unfortunately I was a bit perplexed by this one: the guy just seemed to be selling things out of his campervan. Things he might possibly be needing later – like the spare tyre? And how long has he been hoarding that thigh-master for?






















Since we had never been down that road before, we decided (I can’t remember who’s idea it was) to drive home on the inland route. And it got pretty outbacky pretty quickly. This is the view from the truckstop where we had lunch:


Please note: I did not request to have lunch at a truck stop in the final hours of my special birthday weekend. It was just that it was the last place to get fuel or food for the next 256km. (And yes they did have a sign out the front that said just that.)

Before getting back in the car I went to the loo and I saw this sign advertising showers for $3. That’s per person, just to be clear.

Do you want to see what a $3 shower looks like in inland North Queensland?

Ewwww.

I am definitely not as tough as I used to be when it comes to the places where I'd shower, you know, expecting to come out cleaner than when I went in.

I suppose that would be the old age catching up with me.

Meeting in Melbourne

The best part of our trip to Melbourne was catching up with friends and revisiting our old haunts, and in between times getting totally distracted by the beautiful Europeany-style gardens. This culminated, of course, in the wedding of Drue and Sarah where I got to see so many unexpected faces (Pip and Vesna, I don't know why I didn't expect to see you there - in retrospect I should have, but it was a great surprise to see you both and meet your delightful other halves), the reception was near our old neighbourhood just down the road from where Hayden used to work, and the last thing I did on the night was nick a beautiful white rose from the table decorations. I was not the only person to do that, and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have had the courage to start dismantling the beautiful arrangements if someone else hadn't shown me the way. But there it is.

We had expected that in the week before the wedding the bride and groom would be completely overrun with last-minute to-do's, so I felt pretty lucky to get a whole afternoon of Drue's time on Tuesday. It was just like the olden days, with Drue dragging us through some inky cobbled laneway up to the back entrance of this charming drawing room of a bar above Swanston Street. You know only the good bars in Melbourne are entered through a tiny old door squeezed between two massive industrial bins in a back ally that smells of cat piss and old oyster sauce.

As well as bars, Melbourne is famous for its cafes and bookshops, and we did make the most of our time in both. Actually, for all the build-up of getting to go to Borders after dinner, the first visit was a bit of a fizzer. I don't know if it was just that at that point in the trip I was always going to be overwhelmed - any time that I've had a drink or two in the afternoon, I'm definitely (these days at least) headed for an early night. We probably shouldn't have pushed on to what was one of our old favourites in the past: dinner at Trotters on Lygon Street followed by a good long browse in Borders. Now you know that we'd built up the Borders thing. Especially the after-dinner Borders thing. So arriving in Borders on an extremely full tummy and a fading afternoon-wine headache, I have to admit it: I got overwhelmed. Hayden did too. We just weren't used to seeing so many books. And so many people buying books. And walking up and down the aisles, talking on thier phones while buying books.

After a couple more visits to Borders and other massive bookshops during the week, I did finally manage to make a purchase on Sunday before we went home. I managed to come away with a small paperback about punctuation. Hm. OK, I did gain a few moments of timelessness leafing through a book of Thomas Hardy's poetry and another one of Yeats. But why undermine that by purchasing a small (but admittedly very helpful) book on commas and full stops?

Strange.

Anyone who's come here (Directed by Mikey?) looking for pictures from the wedding day, I'm afraid this is pretty much it from us:

Hayden did take some flashless ones in the church, but unfortunately they came out completely blurry. It was a beautiful ceremony and it even had a little *gasp* moment .. there are heaps more pictures on Claire's blog, and with any luck Drue and Sarah will write it up themselves too.

Going Away

Of all the potplants I am fussing over before we leave them alone in the house for a week while we go to Melbourne to witness the union of Drue and Sarah, it's this little mint plant I'm worried about most.

Its sole purpose in life is to sit on the window sill above the dishrack and provide me with a minty twist to every glass of lemon cordial. And now that we are up to 30 degrees with humidity of 66% (Hayden brought home a Prolonged Exposure to the Elements chart from work and I now realise that this is the equivalent of what 42 degrees feels like back in the temperate zone where there's less humidity. 42 degrees is hot!) there is a lot of icy lemon cordial to be had. I would miss this little plant terribly if it didn't make it through the week without us.

But the poor thing has been feeling the pinch of my fingernails every hour or so since it started warming up. Oh wait ... maybe it will fare better while we're away?

I hadn't thought of that.

Distractication

It's like procrastination, but it happens not before the assignment but after, while you're waiting to hear if everything went OK.

The writing work is finished for the moment. All the text and photos have been handed over to the graphic designer, and now the waiting begins. You would think that this is the time for me to rest? Unfortunately no; due to ever so slight anxiety about how it’s all going to turn out I’m hovering at the edge of my seat, refreshing my email inbox about 500 times a day and generally trying to occupy my agitated self. In some ways this is a very productive time: the house is cleaner and tidier than it’s been for ages, insurance has been renewed, old bills/bank statements/miscellaneous bits of paper have been filed away, and even my tax return has been lodged.

Why so anxious? It's not like it matters that much. I've done my bit, I've tried my best and I'm told the cheque is in the mail. But whatever comes out, it will be the result of a collaboration, and everyone who is involved - from the people I interviewed and profiled to the faraway bosses who sign off on it all - has his or her slant. Everyone has their own angle. My angle, of course, is to do with the writing: whole sentences not fragments; active voice not passive; and a nice crisp rhythm instead of drawn-out strands of bureaucratic gobbledigook. I have been messing with other peoples' sentences and I'm sure it drives them as nuts as it drives me when they mess with mine. So I'm anxiously waiting to see how much of my stuff makes the final cut.

What to do next I wonder? eat something?

Pictures of my Ex

Slightly pathetiquely, I have been gazing at photos from my old job today. Well, you know it wasn’t even a proper job, just a temp assignment. But it was a really good one.

(I always loved this photo the best. It was taken by Hayden on the weekend that he came to visit me at work. He's in the plane, looking out a window to starboard, coming down to land at the mine's airport; that big plume of dust is coming from the back of a truck as it hurtles down the road to the airport to meet the plane. I can feel the excitement of the people in that truck; the plane that Hayden's on is going to turn around soon and take them HOME. Going home is a BIG deal after two straight weeks at work in the middle of nowhere.)

(This is the middle of nowhere, right here)
(This one is of what's outside the camp in the middle of nowhere)

Not that I didn't find anything to complain about with that job (long days, waking up in the dark, being away from Hayden, filing before the sun came up on a Sunday) there is always something, isn’t there?) but what I am remembering today is what an amazing experience it was. How much I learned – about mining, about working away from home (some people do it for years), about the dry middle of Australia, about our indigenous culture, so many things.

Honestly, I’m not really loving my current job - the one at the café. Too many hours in a hot dingy kitchen, and the camaradarie is definitely missing. What I’m learning there, apart from how to make coffee (did I really want to learn how to do that? I can’t remember) is how lucky I was with the other two jobs I’ve had since we came to Townsville. Do you remember the first one, at the building site? And of course the second one, at Century mine where these photos are from.
I’m not breaking up with the cafe just yet … not until something nicer comes along. But I wonder if I could get it to dump me first?

Work Station

Recently I’ve been complaining a lot about work (have I been complaining to you? I’m sorry. You see, the problem with work is that I’m just not used to it.)

But just now I think that the tide is beginning to turn. I’ve taken leave from the café for the rest of this week (everyone who works there has got other stuff on the boil, and our boss Paul is extremely kind about letting us work around it) and I’m settling down to get stuck in to the writing.

And look where I work. It’s not so bad, is it? I’ve got natural light and natural breezes, and a bunch of yellow flowers I bought from Bilo for $8. I’ve got a fridge full of snacks and best of all, I’m working in my pyjamas (and you know how much I love to do that).

Plus I've got all those blogs down the sidebar to keep me entertained when I'm 'on a break'. Do you ever click on other peoples' links? I often do. Recently I was a bit taken aback when one of my favourite bloggers, Yarnstorm, reduced her list of blog links from about twenty to just eight. I was kind of miffed on behalf of all those whose blog links just got deleted (not mine, I don't think Yarnstorm knows I exist), but then I started clicking on the ones that she had left behind ... and I found Lobstersquad. It's brilliant. It's a cooking blog from Spain, and it's illustrated. Go on, have a look.

Ahh, the twin joys of the warmer weather: suddenly fruit can't survive in our fruitbowl, and big black ants invade our house.

At the end of last week I made a banana cake out of a couple of bananas that were getting a bit squishy. I was kind of proud of being so frugal and house-wifely; I have this secret Stephanie-inspired aspiration to eat fresh food all the time, to cook what's in season and to always be zinging with ideas of what to do with the delicious bits and bobs I keep in my pantry. I was pretty stoked with myself a) for even thinking of making a cake out of old bananas and b) having the rest of the ingredients on hand. I thought it was a big step in the right direction.

But I didn't get to taste the banana cake (I was a bit distracted helping to finish off Hayden's birthday cakes) before a herd of enormous black ants had smelled the cake from outside and marched inside in a big long line - up the outside wall, in through the kitchen window, along the window sill, down a bottle of wine and along the edge of the bench to where the cake sat on a plate.

Sometimes when the ants invade, you can brush them off quickly and the food is still ok (I find I get more and more cavalier about this throughout the summer). This time the ants had infiltrated the cake so completely that we just let them keep it. Over the weekend they nibbled the 22cm loaf down to this knobbly end:





Yes, well done ants. Very good effort.

But now what am I going to do with these?

Stephanie?? anyone?