STUFT

Camryn only gets tummy aches on school days.

Chris is still toying with the idea that she’s lactose intolerant but if she is, it’s environmentally induced lactose intolerance because she can suck back milkshakes in under two minutes on the weekend without a worry in the world.

Ever since a little boy in her class was diagnosed diabetic, resulting in his frequent trips to the sick bay, she and her friends have discovered this magical and all too available space for chillin’out at school.  Unfortunately the gate keepers of the sick bay are a little timid when it comes to sending kids back to class because some nimrod ruined it for everyone by complaining that they weren’t properly notified when their poor darling was taken to sick bay once with the sniffles.

So it’s policy to call every parent whose child fronts at sick bay so we know that the little fakers are being properly cared for blah, blah, blah.

Having been called by the school three times this year to collect a perfectly healthy child, which is a 24 kilometre round trip I will have to repeat if the other child stays at school, I am drawing the line.  The conditions were firmly laid out for both our children and the sick bay ladies this morning.  

“You don’t go to the sick bay unless you can produce visual evidence of bleeding, vomiting or parasites.  Got it?”

“What if I’ve got a tummy ache?”

“Go sit on the toilet.”

“What if I’ve got a fever?”

“Not good enough.”

“Well what if I’ve fallen over and broken my leg or something?”

“Then I’ll meet you at the hospital.  It’s only 2 ks up the road and a short stroll to shopping.”

Alright. I’m back again. I know I’ve said this before but check out the name of the blog, “STUFT”, it’s called that for a reason.  

Can’t be STUFT; Get STUFT; This is STUFT; There’s STUFT all over the place; STUFT if I know; Who the STUFT do you think you are?; STUFT it up your arse…You get the idea…anyway I am putting flesh to keyboard again and releasing a stream of consciousness on the internet again so strap yourself in and make sure you raise your expectations to a level that will leave you suitably disappointed…I aim to fall well below expectations.  It’s safer there.

In the months that have past I have mastered the art of unemployment and with that the art of taking both rejection and complete ignorance in my stride. If I were an 80 year-old war veteran I’d say it has been character building, but as I am a 34 year-old mother and wife I’ll call it depressing.

It hasn’t all been resume writing and watching Oprah with a packet of Tim Tams though as I did whip up a little association that seeks to promote and advance photojournalism in Australia, curate an exhibition of work from 20 photojournalists, incorporate said association and am in the process of producing a magazine to feature the amazing photographers in our association.  While this is all very nice and I’m meeting fantasitic people in the process, I still don’t make any money.  I seem to be very attached to this concept.

I’ve continued with my exercise regime, dragged my mother in on the act, gained weight while dropping a dress size (how does that work) and can actually perform a set of very respectable looking push-ups a feat I never thought possible with the twig like limbs I’ve got.

I’ve gone back to casual teaching but at my children’s school this time, the best school on the planet, which means behaviour management is simply a non issue and the children actually like being there…freakish isn’t it.  This has meant that the sinking feeling I used to have before a day in the classroom is replaced by a uplifted sense of contribution and joy.  Who’d have thought teaching could actually be a fulfulling exercise.  

Rhys and Camryn have turned the corner from being supple wonderous little creatures of imagination and playfulness to critically thinking autonomous human beings who manipulate their unsuspecting parents at will.  A degree in political science and campaign strategies is needed to negotiate their taking the rubbish out and if they ever stop fighting long enough to create an alliance we will have to bring in artillery to maintain our crumbling oligarchy.

So while still not reaching my goal of a staff job as a photojournalist I have been up to stuff and with a little more clarity I may even find the time to regather my scattered sense of humour and start looking at life a little less seriously than I have been in the past few months.  Hopefully I’ll again find the space to step back and wonder at the total futility of our existance and get back to living life like the game it is.

I think it’s important that I share with you the turning point that lead me to my new committment to exercise and physical transformation.  Perhaps there’s something in it for you, particularly if you have children.

Lazing by the pool while watching the kids and Chris take a swim, I was feeling pretty good about myself and my form as I usually do in this position.  Gravity is working in my favour after all.  My stomach almost looks flat when I’m horizontal and my DD cup boobs blend into the surrounding tissue leaving me with an idyllic B cup illusion.

Rhys (sweetest 11 year old boy on the planet) hops out of the pool snuggles up beside me in a towel and kisses my hand in a display of gallant adoration for his mummy.  He pushes his slightly oversized head into my tummy and then squeezes a little with one of his hands.

“Love you Mummy”

“Love you too Baby” I reply.

“Hey Mum?” he asks.

I reply “Yes darling” as he looks up at me with all the hope in the world in his eyes.

“You know, your pretty much fat enough to go on The Biggest Loser”.

I think it was the way he said this, so positive and filled with excitement, that got me the most.   It was like he saw an opportunity for our family to become reality TV celebrities through my over-sized gut and was trying to inspire me into applying for the next show.

At 63kg’s I don’t consider myself a Biggest Loser candidate, so I said to Rhys,

“You don’t think maybe I’m not quite fat enough, like I might make the other Biggest Losers a little upset or cross cause I’m not as big as them?”

“No.  Your fat enough”

So here I am.  Unable to squat low enough to sit on the loo as a result of another training session at boot camp because apparently I’m fat enough.

Inspiration isn’t always poetic.

Committed to the possibility of looking just a little bit more like a stealthy Jennifer Garner than a lumbering Elizabeth Taylor I have taken action towards getting serious about shaping up.

Perhaps not suprisingly my 40 minute rides on the bike with a basket and handbar tassles wasn’t moving the extra kilos quite like I had hoped.  Avoiding any activity that resulted in even a minor event of perspiration was not playing well into my plans of taking the Paris cat-walks by storm.

So I weighed up my options in relation to a structured exercise program and came up with two alternatives.

Curves (Ladies circuit gym where you get lots of hugs and positive reinforcement while sitting on machines that do the work for you) or Boot Camp (Agressive and sometimes violent physical torture played out in a public space).

Both options are within 2km of my home and both cost around the same amount so I set aside some time to visit foreign soil and check both locations out.  

I’m not sure whether it is was my tendancey for self-loathing and setting myself up for failure or just because the traffic lights were in my favour, but I ended up a boot camp first and am now committed to 12 weeks of arse kicking in full public view on a Gold Coast beach three times a week.  

But that’s not all…distracted by the instructors blue eyes (or was it his hard chest and Very GC tan?)  I ended up choosing a morning schedule of humiliation meaning I’m out of bed at 5:30am to drag my sorry, wobbly bum down to a barron and often cold beach for an hour of suffering.

Does it hurt?  My god yes.

Do I want to go? Never.

Do I feel better after I’ve finished?  I feel so much better after a morning of boot camp it’s actually disappointing.  Disappointing that I have left it this long to pull my apparently very long finger out of my bum to do something about my ever expanding waistline.

I’m a fucking inspiration to myself…but that’s probably just because I can’t see what I look like when I’m rolling in sand doing sit-ups or running down the beach with my pants falling off the back of my bum.

For those of you who don’t know us well it may have slipped by you that my husband and I are in a cult.  But don’t feel left out, you probably are too.  There are several places you can do your research online to find out if you currently belong to a cult and don’t be suprised if you discover that your frequent trips around the drive through at McDonald’s means you are a victim of a cult too.

It comes as a surprise to some people that they are participating in a group, headed by a charismatic, self-appointed leader with complete authority that exercises  totalitarian control over their lifestyle and time and who enlists them in withholding truth from non-members.  Viewers of the Seven Networks Sunrise program will be the hardest hit I expect.

Chris and I, however, knew that we were participating in the activities of a registered cult when we began attending Landmark Education Seminars and quite frankly we were dissappointed by the lack of  mind control and domination as was promised on various websites and blogs.  

Initially the total absence of ritual animal sacrifice was a warning that this may not be the heavyweight cult organisation we needed.  I mean we were fucked up.  Successful business, regular overseas holidays, investments, two beautiful children and good health – we needed help! And not from some nambi-pambi cult wannabes who got their name  in the cult watchlists and couldn’t deliver the goods when it mattered.

After all we are a family clearly suffering the impacts of another cult; Steiner education.  We risk our future and the lives of our children every day taking them to a school that encourages free thought, self-expression and academic excellence.  They teach children to solve problems and resolve conflicts using proven developmental education techniques, while managing to respect the individualism of every child and still manage to meet and exceed  Queensland education benchmarks and testing.  Never forget that Steiner education is also listed as a cult with many watchlists who regard it as dangerous to consider that a child is more than a bum on a seat in a classroom.

No, we are well practiced pagan’s and we needed hard core brain melting and total manipulation of reality that could only be provided by an organisation whose methods were described by one website as resembling “the process used by the Soviets in preparing confessions for their show trials or the first stage of the brainwashing process”.  Now that’s the kind of cult we were looking for!

What we have experienced after now completing the Landmark Forum, Advanced Course and Landmark in Action seminar series is a pale shadow of the mind control we had anticipated. The Soviets would have been disappointed had they used Landmark’s brainwashing methods for trail.  

Unfortunately we still have to think for ourselves, tie our own shoes and take responsibility for our own mistakes.  The charismatic forum leaders were completely relatable and easy going folk and we feel no compulsion to carry and effigy of their image in our wallet or even mention their names on a daily basis.  They presented not a single concept that was any more bizarre than mainstream philosophical insights presented in scientific or religious circles and they did it using totally secular curriculum that was well-structured and used all the principles of effective pedagogy administered in most state schools today.

While I am not going to go through the laundry list of benefits I got from my participation the Landmark Education Series, if you come over for dinner some night you’ll soon learn that, like a good little Amway sales team, we have a lot of great things to say about it and yes we will probably ask you do it too.  But don’t make that mean anything, OK?  You can always say no and we’ll still feed you and fill you full of liquor and laughs.

I’m back, but for how long I don’t know. 

This is a reply I wrote to a friend who shares my sentiments on missing children emails that are inevitably found to be hoaxes.  I received one this morning that I have recieved about 12 times over the past two years and I replied to everyone it had been sent to with a link to snopes.com so they know where to look in the future to find out what should be plainly obvious in the first place.  Bernice replied with a “you go girl” themed email saying she does the same thing when she get’s sent that kind of stuff and I, with way too much to do, saw an opportunity to procrastinate and sent her back the following.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Hey Bernice,

I really need your help….

I lost the keys to my house.  They’ve been missing now for two weeks.  Maybe if we pass this email on to everyone we can work together to find them.  Even if it goes overseas, who knows they may have been “keynapped” and taken as far away as Canada, India or Mesotaplioma.  With God on our side, they will be found.  I’m begging you please forward this to everyone in your address book if you do, your good deed will be payed back to you ten fold.  I don’t know how it works it just does. Trust me. Forward this email to all your friends and family and I guarantee they will return the favour by forwarding you all their crap email for the rest of your natural life.  

If you forward to >5 people, you will feel like you have lots of friends as they start forwarding you all their spam emails.  

Forward to >10 people and your love life will be enhanced by offers of penis enlargement therapy.

Forward to >20 people and I will personally come over to your house drink all your liquor and  tear your computer out of the wall so you can never forward this crap to anyone ever again.

No really.  Thanks for the back-up on the spam attack.  I spent way too long writing the above hoax – don’t know what possesses people to do in the first place.

xSam

I would apologise to all the spammers who read this and are offended but you’ve probably already activated your spam ring and are circulating a chain letter damming me to hell if they forward it to 10 or more people so I guess I’ll see you later anyway.

I think that’s enough procrastination for today.

You may not need my feeble excuses to realise that I’ve put the blog on the back burner lately while I deal with a few pressing issues relating to my immediate survival and future prosperity.

Christmas took a lot out of me this year as has planning for my new business and other projects which I hope to have up and running by February.  All this maniacal scheming can really leave an evil genius time strapped, particularly when you have the constant and demanding company of your tiny henchmen who are on school holidays at present.

So I’m just pressing the pause button until I get me head and my schedule around this new life I’m creating for myself.

Think of it as an extended toilet break and grab me a drink on your way back past the kitchen.

It’s not bush week but we will be spending the next week in the bush.

I’m being abducted by my in-laws and castaway to the west coast of New Zealand for a few days and will spend the longest time I have spent away from my darling internet in quite some time.

I wasn’t organised enough before we left OZ to put my phone on roaming either so I am without comms (not that I expected to have mobile coverage where we’re gong anyway).

Consequently my virtual self will be experiencing nothing more than white noise in the days to come.  It will be like visiting a virtual ashram but without all the peaceful contemplation and opportunities for silent prayer. 

On the contrary, we will have seven children under eleven and thirteen adults bound by blood and marriage sharing dormitory style accommodation in countryside that resembles the Blair Witch forest.

I am taking my GPS under the guise of doing a couple of family geocaches but really it’s for the likely eventuality that I need to escape unaided from the compound and have to navigate myself to a bus stop or train station and return to civilisation.

Wish us luck.

Due to my ongoing arm wrestle with the spirit of Christmas the traditional Jefferson Family Christmas letter is late and going on line for all the world to see (or at least the 12 people not related to me who are regular STUFT readers).

 

What can I say?  It’s been a year. 

 

Yes there is a distinct absence of adjectives in that summary of the past twelve months and not without good reason.

Aside from my recent lack of creativity, indicated by my non-existent posts of late, I am less than enthusiastic to discuss the past year. 

 

(Now if that’s not a riveting lead to a good read I don’t know what is…What’s that, not even the author cares about what she’s writing, I can’t wait to read on!)

 

The highs have been more than leveled out by the lows and the short version is that we all survived and lived to see another Christmas.

 

Here’s the breakdown of the activities of each warm body in the clan.

 

Chris

“Expansion and contraction” summarises Chris’ year in business and personally.

Hopes of expanding the business hit a wall of opposition in the form of staffing which lead to a contraction of ideas, while dreams of transformation in his personal life have been met with the great wall of suffering otherwise known as living with me.

Business has been solid, although he has learned enough about debt recovery this year to open his own consulting agency.

He was transformed in September at the Landmark forum and slammed back down to earth in October thanks to the heavy hand of Samantha.

Effervescing and optimistic as usual he continues to get up, dust himself off and bounce away again like a grey kangaroo, struck by a car on the highway but only stunned by the impact of the roo bar.

I almost convinced him to buy me an island in Vanuatu and he actually considered life beyond the Gold Coast if only for a few weeks.

He continues to attend the National College of Business to give him entrepreneurial inspiration and spends little time on the tools these days as a result of his expert management skills. 

When once I was married to a simple carpenter I am now wife to a man of business and grand ideas.  How did that happen?

 

Sam

I graduated, applied for jobs, got a job, quit a job, applied for more jobs and am now committing my own version of hari kari by lining up to work for myself 2010.

I continue to hound Chris about buying property in Vanuatu and building a city of yurts for us to live in, but to no avail.

I am developing a new marketing strategy and plan an advertising campaign to blitz him into action in early May next year.

Aside from this my usual daily chores of scarring the children and torturing Chris are becoming tiresome and I am committed to my own version of transformation in the new year which I hope will not involve weight gain, a 12 step program or prescription medication.

 

Rhys

None of us EVER listen to him, we are ALWAYS blaming him for EVERYTHING and he is NEVER allowed to do ANYTHING.

Despite this he is pushing on with life in spite of his family’s constant interference and mind games.

Rhys is searching for autonomy in all the wrong places.  He has not yet realized that the key to his independence will not be gained more quickly by killing his sister or me.

He is however, generally happy when he is not burdened with his family and left to his own devices at school or at home.

His grades are average and his hair is long but he’s a good looking kid and looks, despite all the clichés to the contrary, can get you long way in this world…but only so far.

His journey into the land of love began this year with an extended and somewhat confusing relationship with a little girl at school who played him like a harp.

He’s still hanging on to some degree of hope despite quite clear signs that it’s over. 

Bless his cotton socks…but if there is one thing our Rhys has coming to him in this life, it’s heartache.  If you dangle your heart out there like he does it’s bound to get dropped and walked all over from time to time.

Rhys did pull off the most outstanding performance in the class play this year, remembering all his lines and sticking to the pesky Fafnir the dragon.  Need a dragon slayer…Rhys is your man – and he looked good doing it.  Gushing with pride we were.

We gave baseball the flick this year, but hope to return to the diamond next season and have been spending long hours in the pool and hanging out at the beach this summer.  He is becoming a bit of a bodyboarder and with the hair is really looking like a proper little GC grommit. God help us all!

 

Camryn

While she claims quite regularly in a loud and passionate scream to not be “part of this family”, Camryn still chooses to remain with us and at times even allows us to touch and hold her.

She outwits, outlasts and outplays Rhys in just about every instance and has Chris sorted out 50% of the time.

She lives in a glitter sprinkled utopia filled with mentos gum blasts and buttered toast. Wearing khaki camo pants and a pink singlet top, she rules the world from a throne build from ello, taking her counsel from picture books, stuffed animals and snippets of the cinema she can remember.

She is always right, she is never mistaken and if she can’t do it first time it is obviously not worth doing at all or is a “stupid boy thing to do anyway”.

Her hair is long, her spirit is great and she has a keen passion for writing which I respect no end. 

If she was 20 years older, and not my daughter I’d be green with envy.  Instead I just get to be proud and live vicariously through her.

 

Cosmo

We think Cosmo may be days away from gaining the power of speech. 

The expressions on his face are conversations of their own and we help him out at times by giving his actions a voice-over in our trademark ‘Cosmo’ voice, which is a cross between Barney Rubble and Tickle-me Elmo with an Australian accent.

He continues to serve us entirely with love and unwaivering loyalty. 

He and PussKat have achieved a breakthrough in their relationship this year and now greet each other with a gentle lick or butt-sniff in the hallway as they pass by.

His battle with Tourettes continues and his loud outbursts in the middle of the night are going to put me through the roof if I don’t send him through the wall first.

 

PussKat

PussKat is entering the twilight of her life and coming to realize that she needs the love and support of her family more and more.

She has ceased all legal action against us and is resigned to having to share the house with us despite her quite strong claim to property possession.

She is sleeping in close quarters to us these days and is almost happy when we pat her now.

Cunningly, she is luring us into loving her more so that her departure through old age will be felt all the more when the time comes.

 

 

Family highlights

Trip to Vanuatu (Oh Vanuatu…how we love you)

Diving on the President Coolidge wreck at Santo

Snorkelling at Million Dollar Point Santo

Standing at the rim of Mt Yasur Volcano, Tanna Island

Swimming in our beautiful new pool

Completing the deck around the pool

Landmark Forum (Sam and Chris)

Having family and friends stay in January and through September/October

Rhys’ leading role in the class play

Camryn’s one liners

Keeping the chidren alive for yet another 12 months – oh yeah, we can parent!

 

Merry Christmas and have a blinder for me because I can’t handle it anymore.

 

 

 

 

I just can’t do it.

 

Christmas I mean.

 

And Christmas doesn’t want to do me either.

 

It is as if Christmas spirit is giving me the bird from every store window and Christmas light display in a clear sign of it’s disgust with my indifference to the most commercial of holidays.

 

Well, I’m giving it the bird back now.  I’ve tried, God knows I’ve tried but quite frankly Christmas and I are estranged this year and I think it will be good for our relationship to have our own space for a while.

 

My children haven’t been good enough to get any presents from Santa this year anyway, despite numerous reminders that he is ever present and recording their acts of defiance and misbehaviour.  They’re complet ignorance of this behaviour management tactic only makes my cynacism that much easier to deploy.

 

I really don’t have the motivation (in a Stanislavskian sense) to play the part of Santa this year anyway.  I just want to set my naive children straight and tell them the truth.

“Your father and I buy the presents, wrap them in red paper and whack Santa’s name on them.  ALRIGHT!  Get over it.  It’s all a sham.  So it’s not him you have to impress, it’s us.   Now sit down, keep your hands to yourself, put your bloody seatbelts on and shut-up!”

 

But not even I am not mean, so I’ll let Chris do the over-acting and anticipation building this year and wait for some cruel little bugger at school to set them straight next year.

 

As for the rest of it, I feel very rebellious about the compulsory gift giving and mandatory feasting that goes along with whole expensive festival.

 

I don’t need anything and, as far as I know, no one else in the family has had to line up at the soup kitchen this year.  We all buy ourselves what we want pretty soon after we decide we want it so what’s left to buy?

 

If Christmas makes the first move towards reconciliation I’m willing to negotiate but I can’t see happening in time to salvage what is otherwise destined to be a day soaked in alcohol and self-loathing.

 

Merry STUFT Christmas!