Here’s a tiny bit of book. My book. Yikes. Good grief, the last time I blogged was three months ago and I was ordering cheese for H’s exhibition. Well, the exhibition came and went and was a resounding success, and we have only just finished eating the thirteen kilograms of cheese that accompanied it. My book is now at page proof stage, which for those of you not indentured to the publishing industry means the editing is more or less finished and the words have been laid (lai

Like sorting Lego into colours, listing your worries makes you feel like you’re making progress. In both cases this is an illusion. I’m supposed to be revising my manuscript. I’m supposed to be making the characters appear at the right times and the jokes be funny and the poignant parts be more plentiful and the scenes that don’t carry the plot forward be gone. But I can’t because I have too much panicking to do. When I get like this, my first instinct is to panic at other pe

I’ve done a couple of these little three-day stints in the past few months, and until now they’ve been fantastic for getting a huge amount of work done in a really short time. There’s something about not having to get small people’s lunches made, clothes on, and delivered to school and preschool, then not having to plan dinner, shop for dinner, and do laundry and bath, dinner and bed that really helped me focus on the book. Lots of people, when I said I was going to the count

Seven year olds can make their own fairy bread. That’s dinner for the rest of the year sorted. I’m a long way through the writing of this first book but I’ve hit a little wall. It’s not a big or hard wall, and it’s nothing to do with the book (which will be great and excellent so my publisher who reads this need not freak out and go into labour or anything), it’s just a wall with a sign on it that says ‘nearly there: reduce speed now’. It’s to do with the fact that if I keep

Here’s my awful ugly new desk chair, rehearsing its look for next Book Week, when it plans to go as Doris the Desk Chair Fairy We’ve had Book Week, and now there doesn’t seem much else to look forward to until next Book Week. For my non-Australian readers (and WordPress would have me believe there are one or two of you in Papua New Guinea and Denmark), Book Week is a week when kids get to go to school dressed as their favourite book character. All through primary school it wa

Curious George is a movie that can penetrate even the most noise-cancelling of headphones. Writing a novel in the same room as a four-year-old watching Curious George is not in my top 10 productivity tips. It’s been a long time between posts here on Life With Gusto because I’ve been devoting my writing hours and, frankly, all my jokes, to this novel I’ve been working on. That seems to have paid off because a very nice fiction publisher at HarperCollins has acquired it, and it

It turns out this writing a book lark is harder than it looks and, like so many things in life, not made easier by having two small children about your person much of the time. Neither is it made easier by going on a demented health kick, which is what I am doing at the moment. I am exercising to the point of great agony and simultaneously reducing my brain fuel. I am pretty sure I am losing brain weight, which is not where I have it to spare. The exercising part is a combina

May Blossom’s in Year One now, which was easy to tell at drop-off this morning because seventy-five percent of the class had a hand in their mouth playing with their new wobbly teeth. Garnet’s started at new preschool, closer to home and he scootered himself down there this morning as happy as can be. It’s the same pre-school I went to. They appear to have all the same toys they did in 1983. The missing hat threw me a bit this morning, because I was determined to be Super Org

Me, making a to-d0 list. Sketch by H. Attend My 20th High School Reunion This weekend I’m going my 20th high school reunion, an event that simultaneously makes me very excited and want to fake a bad case of gastro. I’m curious about what the women I went to school with for six years have done with their lives, although a lot of it I already know because of the massive spoiler factory that is Facebook. For many people, the only revelations left will be what everyone looks like

Obviously this is not the beach we went to in this story. This is Waikiki beach, where I have also been grumpy in the recent past. I’m very grumpy these days. My wonderful mother suggested she could babysit while H and I went out last week, so we took her up on it, because I have this idea that maybe if I leave the house more I won’t be so crabby. The first thing I do after leaving the house for the evening is tell H I’m in a grumpy mood. Because what if he can’t tell? What’s

I have been exercising quite a lot. It turns out the trick to exercise is not trying too hard. Apparently I knew this when I was a child but had forgotten until now. A few weeks ago I came across an old homework book from when I was eight, in which I wrote the following sentence: ‘If it does not rain we are going to have our athletics carnival on Wednesday and I am going to get lots of energy so when the starter goes I am going to be champion of the novelties.’ Now that sente

So sweet, you’d never know they have tiny ear canals brimming with filth and germs. Nor that the one on the right is about to throw up in that car seat. My big brother emailed me today with two queries. ‘When you gonna blog again?’ and ‘How’s your wedding Adirondacks?’ The second question is easier to answer. The Adirondacks to which he refers so grammatically incorrectly are two chairs that he gave H and me for our wedding present. We got married in April 2009. He dropped of

May Blossom playing ‘Caesarean Sections’ with her play-doh. Earlier this evening I was in the bath, eating a piece of toast with peanut butter and a melted Freddo frog on it. That is quite a snack, my friends, and it raises your blood sugar to the exact level that gives you crazy ideas. My idea was this: Apparently there is a thing that exists in blogdom called NaBloPoMo, which stands for National Blog Post Month. As you might guess, it is a month in which bloggers who commit

Today I am like an angry toddler stuck between the sofa and the wall. Today I am like coffee grounds spilled on the kitchen counter. Today I am like cobwebs on dirty bars protecting a smeary window. Worst of all, today I am like a babushka doll, missing its top half, sitting on a dusty Soda Stream machine. How are you feeling today? #mood #photohraphy #grumpy #Home #Motherhood #Life #Parenthood #Children #Writing

Today I’d like to praise the graffiteur responsible for the mattress pictured above. I saw it in the back lane last cleanup night. Very nice flourishes. No prize for spelling. Oh well, we all have our strengths and our weaknesses. Recently someone commented on how similar my handwriting is to the handwriting of my longtime friend Jess. I finally admitted that I based my writing on hers, back in Year 7, when I was deciding what path to go down, handwritingwise. Printing? Found