Category Archives: Brownie

HH is being rested

While it’s not like me to liken this blog to the preparedness or otherwise of, say, an AFL footballer heading into finals season, nonetheless I’ve decided to give Hegemony Heights a rest for a while.

I have some busy months coming up, to the point that if I’m posting here it’ll mean I’m neglecting far more important things (probably including my children).

I keep thinking of Hegemony Heights as being a bit like Malcolm Turnbull: lovely to look at with something to say – and contribute, dammit – underneath all that other stuff, but not quite being able to ‘cut through’ the way he wanted. So I’m going to give HH a relevance check, a thematic review, and let it take a long hard look at itself. Perhaps Malcolm can do the same!

I’m well aware that a blog suffers from infrequent and inconsistent posts, and it’s for this very reason that it’s easier to completely stop at this stage. But when I come back, you’ll know about it!

Thanks to all those who have read along from time to time, and even come back occasionally.

JB

ps – okay, I’ll probably update Brownie/Blondie Talk and Bumper Edition every now and then because I can’t help myself, and they’re easy to do. Righto, then.

Fun with sugar

Well if that isn’t a blog post title reeking of Donna Hay, nothing is. Consider this my nod to food porn, flaccid though it may be.

On Tuesday afternoon the planets aligned for me and Brownie to finally put together the gingerbread house given to him at Christmas.  This is what we were aiming for:

Exhibit A:

As the resident engineer-in-training, he was in charge of ensuring that all the structural elements were intact and ready in order of assembly when the ‘glue’ – ie, melted sugar – was ready:

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Exhibit B:

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.All I had to do was melt the sugar. I’d forgotten how hot liquid sugar is, especially when you dip your finger in the spoon to have a quick lick (luckily it didn’t get to my mouth):

Exhibit C:

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It’s actually quite difficult to apply melted sugar as a wall binder when it’s just at the toffee stage. Especially when the engineer is now frightened of the sugar and doesn’t want to hold the walls together, let alone organise the roof to have eaves, having seen his mother yelling and stomping with a burnt finger, and applying said sugar haphazardly with one hand. But we got there, kind of.  And fortunately my, “this looks about right” icing recipe worked well, and the engineer and I had a great system going when it came to applying the M&Ms on the roof, sort of:

Exhibit D:

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Note the architecturally interesting roof line. Note the absence of chimneys, visible in Exhibits A and B (they succumbed to ‘taste testing’ prior to building). Note the carefully angled photo. That’s because the other side ended up like this:

Exhibit E:

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Not quite a cake wreck, but something to be proud of nonetheless, don’t you think?

The Lexicons of Blondie and Brownie

Being the only mother in the world to think her children are incredibly talented, insightful and amusing, I feel it’s my public duty to share some of their stuff, thereby ruining my determination to not be a mummy blog.  Just temporarily, mind you, and only when the genius of my loins produce the goods, like this:

Brownie: “Mummy, you need a new memory card for your brain so you can remember more things.”

You can visit the Brownie talk and Blondie talk tabs to get individual serves from both.

Blondie is 9 years old; Brownie is his 6 year old brother.

 

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The Hero’s Journey from a four-year-old’s perspective

Part 3 – Meeting with/mother as the goddess.

Four Year Old: “Mummy, why are your boobies so close to your tummy?”

The first 1539 days

It seems like the measure of our new leaders or governments these days is in terms of ‘the first 100 days’, but this clean decimal multiple – like New Year’s Eve or your own Quit Day, if you’ve ever had the misfortune to plan one, as I have – strikes me as as random a number or day on which to pronounce anything; after all, who can say what might happen on day 99 or 101 to counter the achievements or failures, or expectations, of day 100?

That thought crossed my mind tonight as I sat on the edge of Four Year Old’s bed while stroking his face and arm in an effort to send him off to Nod.

I realised that if there was one thing I knew absolutely about my son, as a human being, it’s that when he’s had a 45-minute nap in the car during a Sunday drive, plus had to go to bed an hour ‘early’ due to the introduction of daylight saving, bedtime will be a bastard. And so it was.

But it was strangely comforting among the sheer resigned frustration of it all, to realise I knew him so well. And I wondered how long he had been around for me to know that. So to pass the time while he resisted sleep, I started multiplying in my head.

I was kinda hoping it might have been a portentous 1000 days, or even 1500, but in the end I’m content with 1539. It makes me look forward with maternal anticipation to what immovable truth I will know about my 8 and a half year old at 3078.

Probably that he still hates mushrooms.

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