With less than a week left of October, I’m putting it out there: I hate November. It has become the new December, where life’s usual frenzied pace is dialled up a whole new notch to helter skelter on steroids.
November is the month where weariness from nearly a year’s worth of the day job collides head on with the kids’ malaise over school, a flurry of school break-up concerts and award ceremonies and a disturbing increasing in the number of work-related Christmas parties because everybody thinks December is too busy!
What concerns me is that I don’t think our family has much of a margin to go any faster. We’re already living at break-neck speed. Last week, hubby and I had to arrange a drive-by near the kids’ high school so he could spring me $40 because I didn’t have time to divert to an ATM. We literally slowed as we drove past each other and did a “boyz-in-the-hood” type exchange out our windows. All that was missing was my hoodie and doof-doof.
Mothers seem to feel this early onset of the silly season more than fathers. Perhaps because we’re at the coalface of the school notes about classroom parties and end-of-year drama performances, while also negotiating with the various family off-shoots about whose turn it is to host Christmas and – as in the case of our blended-family – who will have the kids and when. The co-ordination needs its own gant chart and spreadsheet. Heck, it needs its own project office!
Meanwhile, most of the men I know are browsing circa 1970 magazines to see which style of facial hair they’ll be sprouting for Movember. While I applaud the fact proceeds go towards research for prostate cancer and depression – and I’ll be sponsoring friends and family this year – I can’t help but think husbands, fathers, brothers and sons are the only ones with sufficient time and headspace to consider fundraising at this time of year.
Perhaps I’ll start my own charity, Moanvember, and ask people to donate to send worn-out working mothers on a month-long holiday to a tropical paradise. You can all sponsor my under-arm growth because, heavens knows, there’s no time to take care of that right now!
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Sunday, 7 October 2012
If only Aldi carried Shapes...
Each week, like so many of us, I toss a burgeoning bundle of catalogues into the recycling bin, all except one – from the good people at Aldi. I love the Aldi catalogue, namely because – and perhaps a tad embarrassingly – it’s one of the most serendipitous experiences of my week.
Where else do you find cycling duds, complete with “ergonomically formed” arse padding, in the same realm as solar-powered welding masks, baby cos lettuce, and assorted supplies for scrap-booking (a craze that has long overstayed its welcome)?
I confess I don’t frequent Aldi as much as my joy over their catalogue may lead you to think. Grocery shopping is a task I relish as much as scrubbing the loo. It’s generally relegated to the eleventh hour of the weekend, with less than an hour to spare before closing time. And, as much as I do like some Aldi products (their Australian olive oil, tinned tuna slices and creamy raspberry yoghurt, to name a few) they don’t carry all of the household faves, among them Arnott’s Shapes. At any given time you can open my pantry to find no less than half a dozen varieties of these assorted “baked-not-fried” snacks, because no two of our children like the same flavour. Not only do I think our brood single-handedly keeps the cogs turning at the Shapes factory, I marvel at the ingenuity of Arnott’s to keep coming up with umpteen new variations of the flavour, BBQ. But I digress…
The fact that Aldi doesn’t carry everything on our shopping list means it becomes a supplementary supplier when we can find the time. But that doesn’t deplete my enjoyment of flicking through their assorted weekly wares, which, much to my delight, regularly include random and amusing-sounding German foods in honour of the supermarket chain’s origins. Take pfeffernüsse (pronounced, I think, Fef-fer-nooser), delicious little gingerbread biscuits, or lachs-schinken, which, from the picture, looks a bit like pastrami, but could for all I know be slices of smoked eel.
Perhaps there’s a lesson there for other retailers in the lead-up to Christmas, as more and more face liquidation in the face of online competition. Surprise and delight us with your catalogues, and throw in the odd Spritzgebäck for good measure!
Where else do you find cycling duds, complete with “ergonomically formed” arse padding, in the same realm as solar-powered welding masks, baby cos lettuce, and assorted supplies for scrap-booking (a craze that has long overstayed its welcome)?
I confess I don’t frequent Aldi as much as my joy over their catalogue may lead you to think. Grocery shopping is a task I relish as much as scrubbing the loo. It’s generally relegated to the eleventh hour of the weekend, with less than an hour to spare before closing time. And, as much as I do like some Aldi products (their Australian olive oil, tinned tuna slices and creamy raspberry yoghurt, to name a few) they don’t carry all of the household faves, among them Arnott’s Shapes. At any given time you can open my pantry to find no less than half a dozen varieties of these assorted “baked-not-fried” snacks, because no two of our children like the same flavour. Not only do I think our brood single-handedly keeps the cogs turning at the Shapes factory, I marvel at the ingenuity of Arnott’s to keep coming up with umpteen new variations of the flavour, BBQ. But I digress…
The fact that Aldi doesn’t carry everything on our shopping list means it becomes a supplementary supplier when we can find the time. But that doesn’t deplete my enjoyment of flicking through their assorted weekly wares, which, much to my delight, regularly include random and amusing-sounding German foods in honour of the supermarket chain’s origins. Take pfeffernüsse (pronounced, I think, Fef-fer-nooser), delicious little gingerbread biscuits, or lachs-schinken, which, from the picture, looks a bit like pastrami, but could for all I know be slices of smoked eel.
Perhaps there’s a lesson there for other retailers in the lead-up to Christmas, as more and more face liquidation in the face of online competition. Surprise and delight us with your catalogues, and throw in the odd Spritzgebäck for good measure!
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