Rainforest

Location: rainforest north west of Mosman, in tropical far north Queensland.

Weather conditions:  warm and dry.  A bit of tropical rain at night, but what could be nicer. 

Lazy act of self indulgence: being woken up at 6.45 every morning by shouty son, putting him in front of ABC Kids on TV and going back to bed.  

Assignment:  lots of swimming, eating and sleeping.  And standing on rocks.  And running up and down the grass rather pointlessly. 

Participants:  two small wet children, one happy husband, one very happy me. 

Local natives:  Beware of screeching tropical birds in the night. And green tree frogs hopping from pond to deck.  And feral pigs, although the gunshots we heard early most mornings I suspect may have put paid to those piggies.   And watch out for koalas and bright parrots.  Oh, and the large black spiders which crawled into our luggage whilst we were there.   Luckily most of the local crocodiles seem to be quickly caught and sent to the nearby croc farm.   I have had this question a lot though 'Can crocodiles eat people?  Why?  Will they eat me?  Why not?'.

(little bird at our house) 

(A koala doing what koalas do best: snoozing)

(this is the only breeding pair of jabirus in the world. They spent 2 years courting and another 2 looking for the right place to nest.  Just like human beings.) 

Sustenance:  I only have one rule about holidays, and that is, I do not want to cook breakfast lunch and dinner.  Much as I love cooking, that is just too much standing around in the kitchen for me.  For this holiday, we had lunch every day in Port Douglas (mostly here and here).   

Crazy self discipline idea:   do you go on holidays full of good intentions like exercising in inappropriate locations, or not drinking alcohol, or going fat free?  I do.  And that usually lasts about 3 days.   As I have spent most of the last 6 months feeling hungover from the lovely chemo side effects, drinking has not been high on the agenda.   How nice it was on this holiday to enjoy wine.    Oh, and should I mention we had dessert every single day for lunch? With no guilt, no regrets and no second thoughts.   Otherwise what is the point?

 (pistachio kulfi with silver leaf and watermelon salad) 

(dragonfruit ice cream (how amazing is the colour) and creme caramel. Very 1970's!)

(at our fourth meal at this restaurant they supplied the children's honeycomb ice cream in an ice and rose petal bowl instead of a 'normal' bowl. )

Outcome: for some reason it seems as if the children always take some great step on holidays. Is that just because I am paying more attention, or because they relax into it?  The guilty mother in me would say this is because I am around the whole time, not working and not distracted with life.  But I think it is more that they have time to work on things with lots of pushy parental encouragement.   This time round, our son became independent in the water (with a foam noodle of course) and our daughter finally got the hang of diving (as opposed to belly flopping).   


Now it's back to the real world. 

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Coconut Chicken Salad in the Sunshine and a Giveaway Winner

Everyone has their own personal stress demon.  That little something which is upsetting way beyond the bounds of proportionality.  Mine is the childcare catastrophe.   The most extreme version of that happened to me last Friday as follows.

Once I had done all the 5 million things which needed doing in order to leave the family at home alone for 3 days (lists, $5 for casual clothes day packaged up, appointments made, food in fridge, food defrosted and labelled, instructions set out on the bench, clothes washed, netball cancelled, children prepared, bags packed, training cancelled, work documents squeezed in, taxi organised) I found at 7.30 am on Friday morning that I had a window of 30 minutes after the temp child care lady arrived and before I caught a taxi to the airport to fly to the Sunshine Coast.   I even had time to double check my hairdryer was packed (for defrizzing hair purposes).

That's funny, I thought, she should be here by now.  At 7.45 am I was worried so I checked my emails and discovered to my horror that in fact I had failed to book her for the day I needed her. I had completely messed up my dates and booked her for the following week when I most certainly did not need her.   

A good 10 minutes of hyperventilating followed, where the fact I was about to get on a plane and had no childcare and no options for emergency childcare for a whole day with a husband who had work commitments to keep really hit home.   I have never confused my dates in such a way before.

(Noosa main beach viewed from Bistro C - 27 November 2010)

A solution was found.  It was one of those no choice solutions really. Husband ran his 7 hours of telephone conferences from home, and my son got to watch a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of television.  

And I arrived home to a happy little family who had had lots of daddy bonding, scootering and dungeon building time over the weekend (once the television was switched off).  Which made me feel warm after a weekend of worry...

  (coconut chicken salad from Bistro C via here)

Meanwhile, I had a long weekend of meetings and briefings.  And a wonderful lunch with a perfect Shaw & Smith chardonnay at this beachfront restaurant in Noosa, Bistro C.  

There is a reason Noosa is crawling with Melburnians.  It is a fantastic place...

Now, to my paw paw cream giveaway.   In the time honoured manner of this blog, I arranged for a small superhero (Superman this time) to select the winner.   I put you all in, even though some of you said you were already fully supplied with paw paw cream.  As I said, you can never have too much.

The winner comes from the US, from Seattle: Jessica from 24 Corners.

Dear Jessica - email me your address and I will have a lovely package to you before Santa arrives at your house. xoxo

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