The Secret Life of Bebe

Well, alrighty then! We are doing the summary thing again, if that’s okay with you.

May 2009-April 2010: The highlights

May was a good month. Stephen and I met in March, and by May we were firmly ensconced in coupledom and loving every minute of it. He was officially living with Mum and Dad, but spent most of his nights at my place.

June, well that was an even better month! Stephen, Bronwen, Megan and I all moved into our place together.

July in which we went to Auckland to visit my brother, got a load of free firewood (wootwoot) and the phone technician stole Stephen’s playstation games *sadface*.

August was a month of snuggling in front of the fire on our new two-person beanbag and lots of watching Star Trek: Enterprise.

September is springtime! Unfortunately it was also the month of the road trip to Dunedin for Megan, Antony, Grace, Wyatt and I to say goodbye to Simon who died on the 10th.

October Bronwen’s birthday! She turned 9, the party was epic.

November, oh well now, speaking of epic parties…this was the month that Antony turned 21. There was a yard glass, and many family and friends, a great night. Also, Wyatt turned one and Stephen and I turned a year older. I got Rockband for my birthday, heck yeah!

December merry xmas everyone! Celebrated in style at Paul and Angeline’s with all the Frayles. Really awesome.

January is the month that my little girl turned 18. Here I am, in 2010, with two adult children and a one-year-old grandchild. Life doesn’t get any better than this. Also, Stephen, Bronwen and I went to Nelson for a holiday.

February Megan started polytech, I was officially promoted off the front desk at work. We christened Paul and Angeline’s deck to celebrate her birthday. It was the month of graveyards…dead-relative-tracking.

March just when I thought life couldn’t get any better, Stephen asked me to marry him! I got a diamond ring! Planning ensued.

April see Day 27 – This month, in great detail

Omgosh, what a whirlwind! My life has changed so much in the last year – I’ve gone from being a single girl living alone to an engaged woman with a gaggle of children. And I love it.

Oh boy, this could be an epic! But really, I do the same thing week in and week out, so if you read the previous post (Day 27 – This week, in great detail) you’ve got the gist of it.

Highlights from the month of April:

• Went to Armaggedon in Wellington with the Frompson’s (so much fun!)
• Signed up for the women’s ice hockey league and played my first game, including scoring a goal (GO MOWGLIES!!)
• Signed up for a social futsal team and played my first game (GO BEBE GUNS!!)
• Started running in the mornings with Stephen (so impressed with my Mister!)
• Nailed backwards c-sculling at skate school
• Had lovely social times with friends: Jo, Kerry, Carol, Jen and Baxter, Michelle and Tim to mention a few
• Had some wonderful family times with Meagle, Bronwen, Antony, Grace, Wyatt, Stephen and the beanbag
• Watched my beautiful grandson grow another month older, new tricks all the time
• Found out my new grandchild is a girl
• Paid off my student loan
• Started the 30-day challenge
• Went to the Wedding Expo with Meagle and Grace
• Found a caterer for the wedding
• Found a celebrant to marry us

Alright, let’s see if we can do great detail with writing a novel! I’m going to write about Sunday to Saturday, since yesterday’s post starred the Sunday I just had…

Sunday 25th April

This was ANZAC Day in New Zealand – a public holiday. I usually start my day with a run, but this day I wanted to take Wyatt to see our friends Jen and Baxter (who is almost 2). I collected Wyatt at about 9:30am and Megan, Wyatt and I headed for Jen’s. She lives by the beach, so we went for a wander down to the local cafe (which is attached to a public library on the beach front, very cool). We had an excellent coffee, the kids made a glorious mess, and then we wandered home again. Along the way, we saw several buses, each one requiring vigorous waving by Wyatt. He rather likes public transportation.

That was the main event of Sunday. The rest of the day involved a meeting, a coffee date with my beloved, grocery shopping, and bean-bag-TV snuggling. Just the usual.

Monday 26th April

Up at 6:40am, out on the road for a run by 7am. Work work work, and then I picked Megan up from her boyfriend’s house and dashed home for a quick meal before heading out again to my hockey game at 8pm. We won 5-1, GO MOWGLIES!

Tuesday 27th April

No run this morning, so we got a bit of a sleep in. Work work work, and then a ballroom dance lesson at 5:30pm. We are trying to learn a whole bunch of new dance steps, so have decided to have private tuition for a while instead of learning in a class. After dancing we had a delicious meal at Ironside Thai and a walk in Hagley Park afterward. This was the setting/sequence of our second date and we like to relive it every now and again.

As usual, the evening finished with some beanbag-TV snuggles

Wednesday 28th April

This day started with a morning run again, followed by work work work. After work we meet at Pizza Hut for Grace’s 17th birthday party where Antony’s family vastly outnumbered Grace’s, funny! They ate pizza, I ate sushi. After dinner, Stephen, Megan and I went down to Cowles Stadium for our first game of Futsal (like indoor soccer, but much cooler). Megan sat the first game out, but promises to play next week. Bronwen would usually have been with us, but she was at camp in Woodend.

Having never played soccer before, it took me a while to get the hang of it, but the rest of the team played an awesome game and we came away with a 5-5 draw. GO BEBE GUNS!!

Thursday 29th April

No run this morning, just work work work. After work Stephen I met in Merivale at the home of Lizzie, our prospective caterer. I really like Lizzie, but she is a *little* manic. I swear she did not pause for breathe the whole time we were there. But we managed to hash out the main elements of our wedding menu, and I feel really good about how it will work out.

After Lizzie’s I was supposed to go to my regular 7pm meeting, but I was so tired we just headed straight home for a quick meal and some serious beanbag time.

Friday 30th April

Morning run, followed by work as usual. Today I finished at 2:30pm so I could meet my friend John for coffee and a catch up, and then pick Bronwen up from Grandma’s house. She was super tired from camp. I stopped at Grandma’s for a cuppa and a catch up, and then Bronwen and I zoomed across town to meet Stephen at the marriage celebrant’s place. I had met him at the wedding expo a few weeks ago, but wanted Stephen to meet him before we decided. I think we both really like him.

Glenn is a former minister who left the church recently (last month!) to pursue a career in weddings and funerals. He seemed a bit nervous, but very nice. He’ll be perfect.

Saturday 1st May

May Day! Workers of the word unite!

Up at 6:30am, on the ice by 8am for my skate lesson. As usual, Stephen and Bronwen came along as my cheering squad. I love that they come every week. It was a good session too – I’m learning how to skate backwards, and doing pretty well I think. After skating, we went and got Wyatt for our weekly fun, and went home to make pancakes. Wyatt managed to feed himself a whole pancake and half a banana with his own knife and fork. He’s growing up so fast!

To burn off the pancakes, we went for a wander down to the park (see Day 24 for more on these shenanigans). We were all in need of some down time when we got home, so we curled up on the ever-present beanbag together and watched Toy Story. Wyatt fell asleep snuggled up between us (so cute!) so we left him there and had some mousetraps for lunch. I snuck out at 1pm to go to see some friends and left them all there. When I got back about 3pm, Wyatt had been collected by his parents, and Megan and Bronwen were ready and eager to go Mother’s Day shopping.

Riccarton Mall was a mad place on Saturday afternoon, and we split up so they could shop without me. I went clothes shopping and found a cute tunic top that will be good for work. We reconvened and headed to the Warehouse to buy Futsal gear for Megan, whoop whoop! We dropped M back at her boyfriend’s place, and headed home for soup Saturday and movie night. It didn’t go as planned – we wanted to watch Coraline but Miss B was too freaked out, so we watched a bit of Grease instead (random selection from the harddrive).

Then it was bath, bed and story (Ramona Forever this week) for Miss B, and bed and sleep for us. It had been a busy week!

Sunday, in great detail.

My Sunday started with a sleep-in until 7:40am. That early in the morning may not seem like a sleep-in to some people, but since we get up at 6:30am six days a week, getting up after 7am seems luxurious to me. We had crashed at 10:30pm the night before too, so we were both well rested, a treat. We lay in bed listening to music for a while, until Bronwen pounded on the door demanding some company downstairs.

Our Sunday mornings are fairly well routined – Stephen plays EverQuest, I watch some TV on the computer (usually Survivor or Project Runway) then go for a morning run. This morning I spent some time doing other computery things as well as watching the penultimate episode of Project Runway.

Because I knew we would be having a busy afternoon, I went for a short run through the walkway around the lake by our house. The run was just enough to stretch my legs and blow the cobwebs out, and the setting was lovely.

Once home, we all got on with finishing our Sunday chores – I cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen, Stephen vacuumed and tidied, and Bronwen tidied her room and dusted. That all finished, we had cheese toasties for lunch and then headed out to Tower Junction to inspect the shops. The clothing shops I was aiming at were depressingly uninspiring.

Our next stop was the ice rink for the 2-4pm public session. A long line of birthday party children greeted us upon arrival. After a long wait in the queue, we got on the ice. Stephen was feeling a bit blah, so he sat this session out. Bronwen was meeting her coach and classmates for a lesson in how to figure skate in hockey skates. She took a few minutes to find her ice feet, but was soon spinning and twirling as usual. I had a bit of a swish around, and then retired to the cafe to keep Stephen company and wait for the crowds to thin a little. It’s lovely to watch all the kids getting their feet on the ice, but doesn’t make for much of a good time if you are trying to do laps at speed.

After a very average latte and some delicious (brought from home) brownie, I had another crack at skating, and stayed out until the session ended at 4pm. Skates off, we were back in the car to drop Bronwen off to Mummy’s until Wednesday.

Next stop grocery shopping at Wainoni Pak n Save. Riveting stuff!

I dropped Stephen and the groceries off at home and headed off for a 5:30pm meeting on the other side of town. After the meeting, I picked Megan up from her boyfriend’s place and we trooped back across town to drop Wyatt’s car seat off at Antony and Grace’s, and then home for a wonderful meal cooked by Stephen.

We had a lovely post-dinner beanbag-TV-snuggle, I got some work finished, and then went out to drop Megan off at her friend’s place before retiring for the night.

Just an average Sunday really.

An observation today.
Me and Stephen and Bronwen took Wyatt to the local park for a play. He was initially happy to play, but then seemed to get a bit worried about how high up the play equipment was.
So then we decided to give him a swing instead. They had the baby swings that have straps to hold the child in. As soon as we lifted him up he started getting upset, and then when we put him in the swing seat, he started out-and-out crying. He was even puffing and wimpering. He was actually scared.
It probably didn’t help that for some reason I found this reaction to be both cute and funny, so was giggling so hard that I had trouble getting him untangled and out of the swing.
So he got out and down and wandered off across the park lawn by himself, and lay down in the grass to recover.
He’s a strange boy sometimes, my dear wee Wyatt.
And I find Wyatt’s reaction especially startling because his father was a total daredevil. He was a climber before he could walk, and never seemed to fear anything. The child gave me many heart stopping moments over the years, but I got used to it.
Father and son might be alike in a lot of ways, but I don’t think thrillseeking behaviour is one of them.

This one is a no brainer. I have a few videos that I just love to watch, so here is a selection. Some I made, some from others.

The weird

Salad Fingers. It’s very strange, but compelling. If you like it, there is a whole series:

The geeky

A demo of the first Apple Macintosh by Steve Jobs, January 1984, in front of 3000 people. It makes me smile:

The cool

The very first example of Lipdub I saw online (Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger). It is just so well done.

The awesome

I really like the song, and the singer – my friend Mshel. Who knew she could sing and play the ukulele!

The cute

Where Wyatt and I goof around at Drexel’s on Megan’s 18th birthday:

And finally, the wacky

Me and Meagle duke it out on the top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris during our trip around Europe:

I thought I’d break this one down a bit…

My most visited website: Facebook. Hands down. Can’t stay away. Sometimes amuses me, sometimes like a train wreck that I can’t look away from, always a useful distraction.

My favourite website design: I like the way my friend Mshel‘s blog page looks. Sometimes I go there just to look at the pretty pattern and the groovy banner pic. That’s not creepy is it?

My favourite website for interesting content: PostSecret, weird and interesting. Sometimes it brings tears to my eyes.

My most useful website: has to be Wikipedia. I visit this site every time I want to know anything about anything. The 17 Laws of Futsal? Wikipedia will tell you! All the movies Jason Isaacs has ever appears in? Wikipedia! Hurrah for Wikipedia for making me look smarter than I am.

My favourite new discovery: RunKeeper. How awesome is this! It tracks all my runs, I can see how far and fast I’m going, it tells me how many calories I burned AND it’s an iPhone app. Very cool.

Honourable mention: Twitter. It’s just there, twittering away. Always on, always interesting.

Oy vey.

If you know me, you know I don’t cook. Our oven has been broken for about six months now, and I can’t say I especially miss it. I am simply not inspired by cooking. I started cooking for the family at a young age (about 7-8 years old) so it has always felt like a chore.

As an adult, cooking for a vegetarian and two picky children didn’t help much. And now I have to cook for a picky child, a picky adult and a slightly fussy teenager. Cooking is what I do so that I don’t starve. If I didn’t have to, I never would. This means that most of my meals are as easy and convenient as possible (rice and veges in the cooker, chicken on the barby).

The whole lack of enthusiasm is not helped by the fact that I have to eat a low-fat, low-sugar diet, so I can’t eat most of the food from recipe books.

But there are a couple of recipes I use occasionally, so here is one:

Lemonade Scones

4 cups self-raising flour
300ml milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 can lemonade (355ml)
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 220ºC. Cover an oven tray with a sheet of baking paper or spray well with non stick baking spray.

Mix all ingredients in a bowl to a smooth dough. Tip out onto a well-floured bench and cut into squares or press out with a round cookie cutter. Place the scones, just touching each other, on the prepared baking tray. Bake for about 15 – 20 minutes until starting to colour pale golden. Check they are cooked through and cool on a wire rack, covered with a clean teatowel (this keeps the scones lovely and soft).

Cut in half and spread with jam or honey when cool enough to eat.

Variations:

• Add some dried fruit to the mixture for example – 1 cup chopped dates or 1 cup sultanas or raisins or 1 cup dried cranberries.
• Add 1 cup of chocolate chips to the mixture.

To make savory scones, replace the lemonade with soda water and any of these optional extras –

• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1 cup grated tasty cheese
• 6 rashers lean rindless bacon, chopped
• 3 tablespoons chopped parsley or fresh herbs

To make a cinnamon pinwheel scone:

Mix 2 teaspoons cinnamon with 3/4 cup caster sugar. Lay the dough mixture out flat on a well floured bench. Pat out to be a rectangle approximately 30 x 20 cm. Sprinkle the cinnamon mixture over the surface. Roll up from the long side into a sausage shape then cut into slices. Lay the slices on a prepared tray so they just touch each other, cook and cool as above. The lovely sticky cinnamon filling can be quite hot so remember to cool them down before biting in.

What is a ‘hobby’ exactly? I have a lot of different things that I do for enjoyment, but I’m not sure if they would be classed as hobbies. Is running a hobby? It’s one of my favourite things. My most favourite thing is cuddling my future husband but I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t be classed as a hobby in the strictest sense of the word.

I love chillaxing in front of the telly with whatever series we are watching at the time (Survivor, Project Runway, Top Chef, Star Trek, Sarah Connor Chronicles, FlashForward, etc…). TV is not really a hobby, though, is it?

Dancing is probably my favourite hobby (other than hockey of course, but I have bored you enough with tales from the rink). Stephen and I started ballroom dancing classes about six weeks after we first met, and we both really enjoy it. It’s a challenge to learn and master each new step, and now after a year we can dance a basic waltz, quickstep, foxtrot (rhythm and slow), tango, samba, rumba, cha-cha and jive. It’s a great feeling to take a new move that seems impossibly hard and then learn how to dance through the steps seamlessly. And I think we are actually quite good at it.

The thing that makes this hobby a real challenge for me is that I am totally tone deaf. I can’t hear the beat of the music at all. I just step out and trust that Stephen will guide me around the dance floor in time to the music. And he does, impeccably.

And dancing brings out the best and worst in us. We bicker over where his feet are, why I’m not in time, whose arms aren’t in the right place (spaghetti arms!). But we also laugh and canoodle, and gossip about our classmates, and have a really great time together.

We are never going to be the next Fred and Ginger, but that’s not really the point of a hobby, is it?

I’m not sure I can claim any special talents. I asked Stephen what he thought my main talent is…but I won’t repeat his answer.

I’m good at a lot of things, but I wouldn’t call them talents. I’m great at organising people and things, I’m a pretty good writer, I’m good at being friendly and outgoing, I pick new things up fairly quickly. But I don’t think these things are all that special.

I’m stumped.