Chips and Strips

I got some canola oil yesterday 'cause I had a hankering for some hot chips.  I love to make them chunky like Mum used to make, not those little tiny straw chips.  So for lunch today I made me another batch and had them with salt and vinegar.  There were more before I took this photo.  We don't do deep fried often but it's handy to have the deep fryer from time to time.  We are appliance-heads, you name it we have it, and we're lucky in this house that the laundry and outside loo have lots of cupboard space.

Yeah well call me paranoid but after I saw that Dr Phil show (yes yes I watch Dr Phil, big whoop wanna fight about it?) where the girl found out that her school could hack into her webcam and watch her in the bedroom or something I got a bit worried.  That little built in camera lens on my laptop freaks me out.  The nose strips are doing f*ckall to stop Phill snoring so I thought I'd bung one on the lens.  The kids make fun of me but I don't care.  What if someone saw me sitting here in my pj bottoms and no bra?  (I have a top on!).  Ugh.  Wonder if anyone will recognise whose blog I was looking at?

I've been really lazy lately, the washing completely covers the three seater again.  I commented to Josh that I needed to get some housework done tomorrow and that I am a "lazy skank".  He said "No you're not Mum!"  Sweet boy.  Then he added "You're a fat lazy skank".  OMG if my mother could hear the jokes we have in this house she would have apoplexy.  I do draw the line, believe it or not, but our sense of humour is unique I guess to our family.  Josh is the nicest, most loving son but we all share a pretty off beat sense of humour and it works for us.

Incredibly, on day two of Spring 2010 the weather has warmed up and the sun actually came out this afternoon!  I had doors and windows open and we were shedding layers of clothes.

It was really nice to wander out into the yard and gather some fresh coriander and mint for an Asian salad and to just be outdoors.  The pea vines have little buds on them where the peas will grow.  We planted them for the kids, in Junee they would just go out and pick sugar snap, and snow peas off the vine and eat them and that was great.  Don't think I ever brought any of them inside.

The herbs are lush after all the rain, the mint that died off during the hot Summer has come back and the sage is flourishing again also.  I'm also pretty sure the tarragon has come back to life as well.

I'd love to buy a wattle tree seedling.  We have made a point to plant a Cootamundra Wattle tree in every house since our little Sarah was born.  She was an unsettled baby in the early days and she used to love it when I'd hold her upright by the big sliding doors at our townhouse in Liverpool while she'd gaze at the wattle tree I had planted in the tiny backyard.  We always take yellow flowers to her grave and then started the tradition of planting a wattle in whatever house we were renting.  Funny we ended up years later, living in Cootamundra.  The tree I planted in our first house here, over five years, ago is huge, we can see it from the street when we drive by.  Our lovely landlady in Northam, Western Australia actually brought us a seedling which we planted up the back of our big yard there.  I bet it's huge now too.  I don't even know if we'll be here for Christmas so I'm not so inclined to shell out for a tree but I reckon it's good karma.

It's so funny the way Noah stretches out in front of the heater at night, so different to how Harley is.  There really is a difference between boy cats and girl cats.  He's a real "He Cat".  He's still so little but he races out into the backyard and climbs right to the top of the bottlebrush tree, then pretends he can't get down but as soon as the dry food container is rattled he races back down again.  I got woken way too early today because Josh was up and let them into the hall from the loungeroom and they were barrelling up and down playing very loudly.  See the way Harley lays right against the heater?  Spoiled felines I say.

But cute.

And yes I'll be vacuuming my carpet tomorrow.