Happiness is ...

Happiness is a steaming hot bowl of scrumptious soup on a cold night.

Add a loaf of fresh crusty bread and you have a match made in heaven!

I’ve been making this soup a lot lately. Lots of vegies, beans and pearl barley, so it’s healthy as well as delicious. Great to come home to after standing around in the cold at netball training!

Easy to make, too:

3 carrots, 2 zucchini, 1 onion, half bunch celery, some green beans, all chopped small
10 cups vegie stock and/or water (I use a mix)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can mixed beans
1½ cups pearl barley
1 tub tomato paste
Herbs (I use basil, oregano, salt, Tuscan seasoning)

Saute the vegies in a big pot for 3-5 minutes, then throw in everything else, bring it to the boil and simmer (with lid on) for an hour.

YUM.

Elsewhere, on the glorious internet ...

Have you noticed my little revision progress bar on the right? I’ve actually been working, albeit slowly, which probably explains why there are fewer links this week. Not so much time spent surfing!

Kristine Katherine Rusch talks about the problem of self-discipline, when you are writing with no external deadlines. I could really relate – she said she could spend her entire life reading, and would rather do that than anything else. “No amount of ‘forcing’ myself got me to change my habits. I had to figure out where the problem started, and nip it in the bud.”  

Michael Hicks has good advice on using Twitter effectively for authors (though it’s time-consuming) 

Hugh Howey recounts his amazing two-year ride from unknown self-publisher to bestsellerdom: 

In non-writing news, would you like a flat stomach? Of course you would! Who doesn't? “If you want a flat stomach, the best advice – in conjunction with a sensible diet and regular exercise (of course) – is to get a good night’s sleep.” And then de-stress your life, according to Michelle Bridges.  

And something that the smallest member of our household finds intensely interesting: Who will play the new Doctor Who? The BBC is announcing it tonight (or some time tomorrow, I guess, from an Aussie perspective, seeing as how we’re living in the future compared to just about everyone else).  

Cheeky beggars!

On holidays recently, the Carnivore was cooking bacon for breakfast on the balcony when a whole host of interested parties turned up to supervise the process and loudly demand a share. Who could blame them? Nothing beats the smell of bacon cooking!

Naturally the Carnivore refused to part with any of his breakfast – this man takes meat seriously. That didn’t stop the raucous squawking. There must have been thirty of them. Believe me, thirty rainbow lorikeets make a lot of noise.

 

Pretty little beggars, aren’t they? We shooed them away repeatedly, but they kept coming back, at least till the bacon was gone. Clearly this was a regular gig for them.

 

Some people do encourage them, feeding them bread and other things that are bad for them. We were good and hardened our hearts, except for one member of our party, who offered a single piece of bread to see if he could get one of them to feed from his hand.

 

No problem! If he’d had a bigger hand, there would have been even more willing to oblige. They were fighting for landing space.

And the views from that balcony?

 Spectacular!

 Lucky rainbow lorikeets, that get to live there all the time!

And now I shall put on my English nerd hat: While writing this post it occurred to me how strange it is that “beggar” is spelled with an “ar”. The verb is to beg, and the person (or, in this case, bird) who does it is a beggar. But every other word constructed like this that I can think of ends in “er”: rider, runner, walker, keeper, scorer, chaser, drinker, shooter, killer, knitter, builder, etc, etc.

Damn, but the English language is a squirrelly beast. Can anyone think of any other words that use the “ar” construction?

Elsewhere, on the glorious internet: Netball Barbie!!

OMG! Barbie’s a netball star! You’re all going to think I’m obsessed with dolls after ranting about Disney’s Princess Merida doll in my last linktastic round-up, but it’s not true, honest.

However, I freely admit to being obsessed with netball! One of these dolls may already have made its way into my house … what can I say? She comes with a netball! And a drink bottle! And a sports bag – and even A TROPHY!! How awesome is that? Plus she’s a Goal Attack. Shooters rule!

It’s nice to see a doll that encourages little girls (and the odd big one) to focus on their love of a great sport, instead of continually pushing the beautiful helpless princess ideal.
 

Still in the land of toys, an interesting review of Minecraft, a computer game that is Baby Duck’s latest obsession. Him and umpteen billion other small boys around the world! We have a rule in our house that “the M word” is not to be mentioned at the dinner table, otherwise the Minecraft chatter would be non-stop.  Despite that, it’s a good game, just like playing with Lego onscreen, with the odd monster thrown in to make things exciting. You build during the day and defend yourself at night – “it makes clear the ancient ties between creativity and survival”.
 

Teeth-grinding stuff on “the lack of books for boys” in the YA section: It’s ironic that people complaining about this can’t see “that YA is so female-centric because coming-of-age stories for young men have already been staples in the ‘real books’ section for decades. Because being a young straight white man is universal, see, while being a girl is something that’s impossible to care about unless you’re both a girl and stupid.”

Hey, maybe all these boys who aren’t reading are too busy playing Minecraft.
 

On to writing advice:
 

An interesting take on the old "show, don't tell" maxim: “Think of your book as a movie. Telling is anything you write that the camera does not see.”

Fantasy writer David Farland is wise on "being prolific". There’s no magic to it. Work hard, focus, find little bits of time between other things and use them. Don’t fritter your life on Facebook or watching television.

Which brings me to indie publishing, which is a field where the successful writers seem to know all about being productive. The question is not “write a series or stand-alones?” with them, it’s "one series or more?". Writing fast is no longer the problem it was when a writer had to wait on a big publisher’s schedule. Now it seems to be the key to success.

It’s an exciting time to be an author. As Kristine Kathryn Rusch explains, “indie writers, indie books, indie publishers now have the same access to bookstores that traditional publishers do. The playing field has just leveled.”

Which means that a lot of authors are leaving traditional publishing, or at least combining it with indie publishing. An interesting story from Elisabeth Naughton explains how traditional publishing wasn’t as great as it seemed from the outside, and how self-publishing came to the rescue. “I even hit the USA Today bestsellers list! But what no one saw was the hard reality: I wasn’t making any money. I was working my ass off for a couple thousand dollars, which I was then spending on promotional materials, conference travel and expenses to write MORE books. In fact, I was spending more money than I was making.”

Did you guess I’ve been spending a lot of writing time reading about indie publishing instead? Bad Marina. No biscuit.

One last link, from Lindsay Buroker: on establishing a fan base before you have a book out. 

Colour vomit

So, last month I finished my crochet ripple blanket. I’m so happy with it. It’s a glorious riot of random and beautiful colour combinations. I think the randomness is a feature; others in the household disagree.

I proudly displayed it to my beloved (also known, not coincidentally, as He Who Sits on His Taste Buds). His remarks were barely luke warm.

“You don’t like it, do you?”

“Too many colours,” he said. “It looks like you just vomited colour all over it.”

Fortunately, knowing his taste in clothes, his opinion did nothing to dent my happy feelings of achievement. A finished blanket! Warm and cuddly and beautiful! (Did I mention I actually managed to finish a whole big blanket-sized project? Go, me!)

Even better, I loved the whole process, from the picking out of wool:

and the first joyful colour combinations:

to seeing it grow:

 

And trying out new arrangements of colours:

  Adding in a new colour was my favourite part. It was hard to picture, just from holding a ball of wool against the blanket, exactly how that colour would look when it was stitched on. It was always exciting to see the new combination taking shape.

It was such a relaxing project. Whenever I needed to do something completely mindless, I could pick it up and do another row or two, and though I sometimes went months without touching it, it continued to grow steadily, till at last I decided it was long enough.

I loved how it looked with its ripply ends:

and I wasn’t sure whether I should add a border or not. In the end I decided to give it a go, as part of the learning experience. If I didn’t like it I could always undo it.

 First I added red up the long straight sides, so it had a border of red all around (I started and finished my regular ripple rows with red). This looked so good I almost stopped there.

But I’d chosen some other colours, so I added a gold border which straightened out the ripply ends. This also looked so good I almost stopped there! In fact, every time I added a new colour to the border it got better and better. Hello, my name is Marina and I’m addicted to colour.

Here it is after the third round:

Finally I had five colours on my border and decided that was enough (colours are a little weird here -- I've been waiting ages for a nice sunny day to photograph it but sadly the weather hasn't been cooperating!):

Ta-dah! I love it. Can’t wait to start another one! Just got to get that vomit ready …

The long and the short of titles

Over on Magical Words, Will McIntosh raises an interesting point about story titles: that you have a lot more leeway in naming short stories than novels, because a short story is usually part of a collection (either magazine or anthology) that people are reading, and most will try each story regardless of whether the title grabs them.

With a novel, however, the title is one of the holy marketing trinity that makes a browser pick up a book in a bookstore, or click on it on a website (the other two are the cover and familiarity with the author’s name). A good title is a selling tool that hints at what the reader can expect to find in the novel while making it sound enticing. A lot to expect from a handful of words, no?

Some writers don’t worry too much about finding the perfect title, knowing that their editor will probably want to change it anyway to suit what the marketing gurus think will sell. Many publishing contracts specifically say that while the author may be consulted on the title, final say lies with the publisher.

Other writers obsess over their titles, feeling that their knowledge of the book makes them the best person to find a title that perfectly encapsulates it – and who wants to get stuck with an awful title? Better at least to have some suggestions ready when the publisher starts to talk titles.

But what makes a good title?

Till last November I always thought I had a knack for titles. The “perfect” title usually leapt into my brain along with the story, usually something drawn from the writing itself. Easy peasy. (I say “perfect” since very few of my stories have been exposed to the rigours of the outside world, so they could be atrocious titles in reality, but at least I haven’t had to strain my brain too much to think of them.)

Then I started last year’s Nano novel. Step one: open new file. Check. Step two: name and save new file. Er …

*crickets*

Despite being unusually prepared story-wise, nothing leapt to mind. Oh well. “Nano novel.doc”. Brilliant, I know.

Never mind, something will occur to me as I write the story.

Nope.

I’ll think of a title when I finish writing it, then.

Nuh-uh.

I’ve now been working on the revision for two months, and it’s still called “Dragon novel”. It’s like having a six-month-old baby called “Hey You”, because nothing better’s occurred to you yet. Very frustrating.

So. Back to the elements of a good title, courtesy of another post on Magical Words:

You want something punchy, and short enough to fit on the spine of a book and still be legible (a very practical consideration that I hadn’t considered!). It should raise a question in the reader’s mind, so avoid common words – uncommon words, or unusual combinations of words are intriguing, like A Game of Thrones, or Fahrenheit 451. And make sure you don’t have to read the story for the title to make sense.

All of which are good tips, though sadly not helping with “Dragon novel”. There are a couple of huge secrets at the heart of this novel, and every title I’ve thought of is too spoilery. I guess I’ll just have to keep plugging away at the revision and hope that something brilliant comes to me eventually.

In the meantime, have you come across any intriguing titles lately?

Elsewhere, on the glorious internet ...

A fascinating article on a concept called “survivorship bias”, exploring the misconception that to be successful you need to study others who’ve been successful. In fact, the truth is that “when failure becomes invisible, the difference between failure and success may also become invisible”: Survivorship bias

Author Kameron Hurley takes the idea into the world of writing and marketing books: Survivorship bias and writing better books with bonus marketing chat : “The more we focus on ‘success’ the more we focus on the one-offs, the quirks, the outliers. It’s focusing on failures and middle-of-the road pieces that teaches me how to improve.”

Still on the topic of writing, a helpful post on the NaNoWriMo blog on turning those cardboard characters into living, breathing people: Occupy Steve: how to flesh out your characters

Disney “pretties up” their new Princess Merida doll. Sigh. What’s the world coming to when even a Disney-created princess, all tiny waist and huge eyes, isn’t considered appropriately princessy? Merida, from the movie Brave, had messy hair and freckles to go with her independent I-don’t-need-a-prince-I’ll-do-it-myself attitude. At last! An imperfect princess who didn’t wait to be rescued for real little girls to admire.

“The freckles had been erased and the fabulous tangled hair was pageant coiffed. She looked like a titian-hued Cinderella. Even the dress is blue. Fierce, awesome Merida had joined all the other Stepfords on the shelf.” Where have the brave girls gone?  

On to something more cheerful: Full of colour and quilting delights, Kathy Doughty’s always-inspiring blog here features, among outrageous chooks and beautiful medallion quilts, a shot of me contemplating a wall full of pink and orange triangles as I ponder the layout of a new quilt: The creative bug

And for pretty crochet goodness, Lucy from Attic 24 has some lovely mandala flowers. I’ll have to give these a go!

New Zealand through a quilter's eyes (Part 2)

New Zealand is a beautiful country, and I took scads of touristy photos of all the gorgeous places we visited, but as I mentioned in my previous post on New Zealand through a quilter’s eyes, I also took some that appealed to the quilter in me and left my family scratching their heads.

At the Waitangi Treaty Grounds we saw a 35m waka or war canoe, built in 1940 for the centenary of the signing of the treaty between the British and the Maori. Its name was almost as long – Ngatokimatawhaorua. Old skills had to be relearned to construct the canoe in the traditional way, including intricate carving like this:

Such gorgeous texture and pattern.
 

More texture caught my eye in Waipoua Forest. The mighty kauri trees had such interesting bark, almost like dinosaur skin. 

You can’t see the effect so well on this one, but I loved the contrast of the fluffy, almost velvety green moss against the red whorls of the trunk.

More colour delight at Huka Falls:

 

Can you believe that fabulous clean blue-green water??

For a different shade of blue, here’s a shot across Lake Taupo, the biggest freshwater lake in Australasia, formed in the crater of an old volcano, which must have been truly enormous.

 You can see the peaks of active volcanoes in the background. When Taupo itself last erupted, about 2000 years ago, it buried the country for miles around in 200 metres of ash. The red light of it in the sky was seen as far away as Rome and China. I sure wouldn’t like to be around if it ever went up again!

In the town of Taupo itself I embarrassed my children enormously by taking photos of the garbage bins. I have to admit, even I felt a little peculiar about it, but look – they were so gorgeous! – how could I resist?

 
In Hamilton, there was lots to admire in the very pretty Hamilton Gardens.

Gorgeous repeating patterns:

 

and an absolute riot of colour:

How eye-popping is that colour combination? Wouldn’t it look sensational in a quilt?

Then there was this café at the glow worm cave at Waitomo. It made me think of quilting too, with the diamonds formed by the lovely arching lines of the overhead shelter very reminiscent of a quilting pattern.

 

Really, there’s quilting inspiration everywhere. If only there were enough time to make all the quilts I can imagine!

In which Turnip Brain does her best impression of a mummy

No calamities have befallen anyone here at Duckling Central, touch wood! My recent silence was due to nothing more serious than a prolonged case of holiday brain and general laziness. I have read a lot of books lately, including rereading some old favourites, and even finished a most beautiful crochet blanket, which I’ll show you soon, I promise. But every time I even contemplated posting on my blog, my brain cells dribbled straight out my ears and lay weeping on the floor.

The Carnivore swears he was hoping for some calamity to befall poor Two Planks, mind you. You may remember she went under the knife just before Easter to remove a few metres of ribbon from her insides. The Carnivore often talks big, about how much he loathes this dog – and yet, whenever you hear her barking hysterically, you can be sure it’s because he’s playing some crazy game with her.

He used to talk like that about our old dog too – yet who was in tears when the dog finally died? He’s not fooling anybody.

The fluffiest member of the household in fact made a miraculous recovery from her latest ordeal. She came home on Easter Saturday (after the operation on the Thursday), a little sore and slow, all bandaged up like a furry mummy. Next day the little turkey was bounding around the back yard full of beans again. And you should have seen the scar when we finally unwrapped her – it was a good foot long, held together with a million staples. This dog bounces back so fast she could be made of rubber.

In fact with this many lives she’d make a great cat.

Happiness is ...

Happiness is curling up with a good book.

Sometimes when the house is quiet I wander around and find all three ducklings lost in a book. It always gives me a thrill. I love that we’ve managed to pass on our love of reading to the offspring.

Of course, even more frequently I’ll find one or more of them glued to their ipod instead, which doesn’t make me feel quite such a success as a parent, but oh well. Can’t win ’em all.

The other thing that makes me happy about this picture? Look at that quilt Baby Duck is parked on. A finished quilt, actually on a bed, being used for its intended purpose! Something of a rare sighting around here.

I know I showed it to you while it was in progress, but I forgot to show the finished article (something I do a lot!), so here it is for your viewing pleasure, ladies and gentlemen – Baby Duck’s “bugs in bottles” quilt:

And a little close up:

Some cute fabrics in this one. Thank goodness I finished it before he outgrew the cuteness!

Genetics: a demonstration

A recent conversation in the car, after picking up Baby Duck and Demon Duck from their respective schools:

Demon Duck: Oh, Mum – I got my maths test back today. I got 100% again.

Baby Duck: Well, try harder next time. You’re a disgrace to the family name!

I’m not sure what the Carnivore would be prouder of: that his daughter inherited his maths ability, or that his son got his warped sense of humour!

Turnip Brain strikes again

Is this the world’s stupidest dog?

I’m starting to think so. Guess where she is today?

At the vet’s. Being operated on. Again.

Remember the chicken skewer disaster last year? Baby Duck dropped his chicken skewer, she pounced and swallowed it whole. Expensive vet bills ensued.

Just one of those things, you think. You can’t really expect a dog not to try and gobble manna from heaven, can you? Shame Baby Duck wasn’t fast enough to grab the skewer before she did, but what can you do? A once-in-a-lifetime freak accident.

Or not, as it turns out.

No, Baby Duck hasn’t dropped any more skewers. Two Planks just seems to have even fewer brain cells than we’d thought.

On Monday she vomited a couple of times. Nothing unusual there – till the Carnivore noticed weird streamer-like things in it. White, about 5 mm wide, made of some kind of light plastic or fabric. We wracked out brains but couldn’t imagine what she’d eaten, or where she’d found it. Could some packaging have blown over the fence from the building work next door? It seemed unlikely, but what else were we to think? She will occasionally chew on things she finds in the backyard, but she doesn’t eat things out of the house – not since her puppy days.

Except now she does, apparently.

Yesterday morning there was more vomit and she wouldn’t eat breakfast, so we took her to the vet. Still mystified, we showed the streamer thing to the vet. It wasn’t until Drama Duck came home that we identified it. It was ribbon. She’d left a spool of it on her bedroom floor after a friend wrapped a present on the weekend. The next day she’d noticed the spool was broken and empty, but just assumed her friend must have used more ribbon than she’d thought.

I’m still shaking my head over this one. The chicken skewer I could understand. That was food. But ribbon? What on earth possessed the stupid animal? Who sees a spool of ribbon and thinks hmmm, that looks tasty?

So today the vet has the delightful job of hunting through her innards for it. Who knows how much is in there? 10 m? 20? It was originally a 50 m spool, but we don’t know how much was left on it when she decided to chow down on it. Several metres has already been up-chucked all over our backyard, but there’s obviously still enough in there to block up the works.

The vet tells me he’s known dogs to eat padlocks, mobile phones, even remote controls. Ribbon seems almost tame by comparison, but unfortunately, being long and linear, it's a devil to get out again. Stupid bloody dog.

Has anybody else got any good stupid-things-my-pet-has-done stories? Please tell me I'm not the only one!

Depilated Demon Duck

Well, she’s done it. Determination and feverish fundraising have brought her total raised to $150.50. At this rate she may even top $200.

Her school is one of the biggest fundraisers in the state, with their combined total currently standing at over $36,000. Twenty-one girls shaved their hair off in the school hall this week, with many more colouring their hair red, blue or pink.

Today it was her turn. She went from this:

to this:

I’m surprised you didn’t all hear the squeals of glee from wherever you are. To say she was excited to see her new look doesn’t begin to cover it. She bounded off to the nearest mirror like Tigger on speed, and the shrieks of delight echoed through the house. She is not a child who believes in hiding her feelings. Thank goodness she was happy with it, or things could have got ugly!

I have to admit, it does look good. Let’s hope it doesn’t wash out too quickly. The packaging refuses to be pinned down: “colour will last from three to thirty washes”. They couldn’t manage to be just a little more specific? There’s a bit of a difference between three and thirty! Might as well just say “we’ve got no idea how long this stuff lasts – probably not as long as you’d like it to, but we’re not giving you your money back if you’re not happy, so there!”

Fingers crossed she gets to enjoy the reward for all her hard work for at least a few weeks. Myself, I’m quite looking forward to my own reward – I get to stop making friendship bracelets. I’ll hardly know what to do with myself!

Might even have to do something radical like getting back to work on my Nano novel.

New Zealand through a quilter's eyes (Part 1)

Lines, patterns, colours. Sometimes a quilter’s holiday snaps focus on things that don’t interest the average tourist.

Take this wall down by the docks in Auckland, for instance. It looked like it had been made out of old weathered packing crates.

The Carnivore just shook his head. Why are you taking photos of this piece of junk? But I thought the soft aged colours were beautiful.

Then there was this building nearby. Patterns of lines and colours. Very cool.

At the aquarium the jellyfish looked like an abstract painting, softly glowing.

Or maybe some kind of alien life form? So pretty!

We took the ferry to Devonport quite unexpectedly, having to fill in a couple of hours before our harbour cruise one morning in Auckland. Imagine my delight in finding a whole row of poles along the street covered in crochet! Naturally I had to embarrass my family by taking scads of photos.

Aren’t those frogs just the cutest?? I just love that there are people out there who see a whole bunch of plain poles and think wouldn’t it be great to cover those suckers in crochet? So whimsically pointless, but why the hell not?

Further north I was taken by the light through foliage, particularly the marvellous umbrella-like spokes of the ferns.

Out on the beautiful Bay of Islands I loved this pop of bright orange against the blue water. This photo doesn’t do justice to the colour of the water there, though, which was a glorious deep blue, shading to a clear green in the shallows.

So much colour everywhere! And of course I’m all about the colour, so I loved it. I have lots more pretties to show you, but I’ll save them for another post lest you die of old age waiting for the page to load.

D is for Determined

Everything’s relative, isn’t it? If I’m starving to death and you offer me boiled potatoes, I will wolf them down and think them the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. But if I’m accustomed to eating at five star restaurants every night, your boiled potato offering might seem plain and uninteresting, even offensive. Same boiled potato, different circumstances.

Demon Duck has many fine qualities, but some of them are definitely boiled potatoes. Take her determination, for instance. It gives her drive, it makes her see projects through – it will probably take her far in life. A great quality to have, yes?

But the other face of determination is stubbornness, and the child will argue till her last breath when she’s set on something. When you are the parent of a determined child, that fine quality can seem like nothing more than a humungous pain in the butt. And when you add high intelligence to the determination, what do you get?

Rat cunning.

I tell you, this kid’s teenage years are going to give me more grey hairs than the other two combined.

She started asking me months ago about getting her hair dyed. I said no, and gave her all the reasons: bad for your hair, have to keep doing it once you start to cover the regrowth, too expensive. She accepted that and didn’t nag, but every now and then she’d mention how much she’d like to dye her hair that really bright fake red.

Meanwhile she pondered ways and means, never letting go of the idea.

Enter the World’s Greatest Shave, a fundraiser for the Leukaemia Foundation. Several girls at school were signing up to shave their heads, raising money for the foundation through sponsorships. But if you didn’t want to shave your head, you could still raise money by pledging to dye your hair a crazy colour, like … oh, I don’t know … bright red.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

I had to laugh, really, but I wasn’t going to be a pushover. No hitting on her grandparents for ten bucks and calling the job done. I said she could do it if she raised at least $100 (though only with a temporary dye that would wash out after a few washes).

Not being terribly outgoing, she was quietly horrified at the prospect of asking people for donations, so we came up with the idea of making friendship bracelets for her to sell to the girls at school.


Here’s just a few of our creations. We’ve each made about 30, and Drama Duck made a handful too. I’ve spent so much time making friendship bracelets lately it would have been easier to just give her the money, and almost as cheap, considering how much I’ve spent on cotton and beads. But I think it’s a valuable experience for her, having to work to achieve her goal, and she’s certainly put in a lot of effort. So far she’s raised $66, and still going strong.

D is for Determined Demon Duck.

Happiness is ...

Happiness is being reminded what a great guy you married.

Being an old married couple, the Carnivore and I haven’t celebrated Valentines Day in years. It’s too commercial, we don’t need a special day to say “I love you” – the usual reasons. Occasionally we might give each other a card if we happen across one that’s insulting enough (I was tempted this year by one that said They say opposites attract. Happy Valentines Day from your intelligent, beautiful and amusing wife) but usually the day slips past with no acknowledgement.

But …

This year at the girls’ school they had a scheme whereby, for the princely sum of $2, you could buy a rose for a friend and have it delivered during roll call. There was much excitement and planning of who was buying roses for whom. All would have been well, except they underestimated the number of people wishing to buy roses.

Demon Duck came home devastated. She’d managed to order a rose for her new best friend, but they’d run out before the friend could get her one in return.

“I’m not going to get a rose on Valentines Day!” she wailed.

You might imagine this wouldn’t be too much of a problem, since she’s never received a rose on Valentines Day any other year either, and managed to live through the experience. But she was really quite disappointed. Briefly I toyed with the idea of buying her a rose myself, but a) roses are hideously expensive on Valentines Day and b) I’m a cheapskate, so that idea didn’t fly.

I decided to do something more in the original spirit of the day. I gave each family member four red paper hearts and told them to write a loving message for each other member of the family. We sealed each person’s messages in an envelope to be opened and read out at dinner on Valentines Day, so we could all hear the nice things we’d said to each other.

Satisified that Something Was Being Done about Valentines Day, I thought no more of it, and was taken completely by surprise when I came out for breakfast on the day and found this:

The Valentines Day fairy had been and left me a beautiful bunch of flowers, a single rose for each girl, and a beautifully wrapped present for Baby Duck (which of course turned out to be a box of lego).

Demon Duck was thrilled that she got her rose after all, and I was touched that her thoughtful daddy had taken in all the lamentations on the subject and decided to do something about it. It was such a sweet surprise. He’s so sneaky! And obviously not as much of a cheapskate as his wife. I think I shall keep him.

As for the messages we wrote each other, they were a lot of fun too. Some members of the family cough cough demon duck cough couldn’t quite get the hang of being unreservedly nice, and had to get their snark on. For example, her note to her dad began “I love how you think you’re so funny even when you’re not”. Others, like Drama Duck, crammed whole heartfelt essays on to their little paper hearts.

Baby Duck’s note to me said “You are the awesomest mum in the whole known galaxy”. Can’t do much better than that, can you!

Hope you enjoyed it too, if Valentines Day is your thing. And if saying it with flowers doesn’t appeal, maybe next year you could take a leaf out of the Carnivore's book and try saying it with lego instead. Guaranteed to make an impression on the small boys in your life.

Baby Duck's guide to Auckland

Hi there! We’ve just returned from a couple of weeks touring the north island of New Zealand. Very pretty place, lots to see – we didn’t even cover the whole north island, much less get a chance to see any of the south island.

I tortured the kids, as I did on our Japan trip last year, by making them keep travel diaries. There was much complaining, but I hope one day they’ll be glad to have them to look back on and help them remember. Baby Duck’s is often unintentionally entertaining, so I thought I’d share a few extracts.

Baby Duck’s Guide to Auckland

15/1/13
Today we went to some café. Then we left, walked, and went to a park. [Ed: I hope you weren’t expecting actual useful details] But it started raining, so we went back to the hotel. But on the way there we were stopped by a bridge we had walked over that had gone up like this.

But the bridge lowered a little while later and we decided to take the SHARK-BUS to the Aquarium and set off yet again.

[Perhaps you can guess from the excited capital letters that the shark bus was pretty impressive to a certain nine-year-old tourist.]

When we got there the Aquarium looked really small but the person driving the SHARK-BUS told us the actual Aquarium was underground. [It was Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World, and well worth a visit if you’re ever in Auckland.] There were rays, sharks, a giant squid that’s head was coming off so you could see its brians [very nasty, being able to see a creature’s brians, you know. Probably goes without saying that it was a dead giant squid], fish, jelly fish, shrimps, sea horses and a octopus and also some penguins.

Don’t eat the yellow snow, penguins!

There was also a little stall that had water in it with a sign above saying “Arctic water see if you can put your hand in for thirty seconds”. My sisters touched the water, said it was too cold, but I put my hand in for thirty seconds.

[I shall spare you the regular descriptions of what he had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He hasn’t quite got the hang yet of only including the salient points. Or maybe food is very important when you’re nine.]


16/1/13
One Tree Hill – long drive up the hill, no tree. Should be called “no tree hill, instead of tree, big monument”. Boring.

Dad’s office: extremely boring!

After One Tree Hill we went to a museum. It was boring.

[Are you sensing a pattern here? Yes, sadly, dear readers, Baby Duck has little appreciation for cultural experiences. Or sightseeing. Or shopping. Or pretty much anything you do when visiting a foreign country other than checking out its amusement parks.]

Then for dinner we had Mongolian [one of those restaurants where you select your own ingredients and they cook it in front of you on a big drum]. I liked how you could serve yourself.


17/1/13
After breakfast we went on a ferry to Devonport. Then we went on a harbour tour. The captain was very funny “Please don’t fall overboard because it creates lots of paperwork wether I find you or not”.

When we stopped at an island the captain said “If you hear this sound (HOONK) you’ll know to start walking back to the boat. But if you hear this sound (honk honk honk) you should have been running because you just missed the last boat back.” Since there were no houses at all nobody would want to sleep there. Dad got off the boat but got back at the last minute. [His timing gave me a few anxious moments …]

But when we got to dry land nobody started kissing the ground. (Well at least I didn’t see anyone doing it.) Then we went to Lord Nelson’s for dinner. [He didn’t mention the shopping that came in between, but I can assure you he found it boring.] When we got out we saw two girls get on the bungy ride across the road. I think it looked really fun, but mum and dad said “NO”. So that was decided.

Happiness is ...

Happiness is a pretty rainbow of threads making a bright spot in your day.

I took this photo in the midst of the renovation horrors of last year. I was sitting on my bed in the middle of the kitchen, sewing little birds and resolutely ignoring the chaos all around.

It looks so pretty and serene, doesn’t it? – almost like something out of a magazine. But just out of shot the debris of our lives was piled up in huge, depressing, tottering stacks. I can still see it when I look at this photo.

Sometimes sewing is a real sanity-saver.

The cat crept into the crypt ...

… crapped, and crept out.

Possibly my dad’s favourite tongue-twister, judging by the number of times it got mentioned through my childhood – though for a long time I didn’t know what the cat did when it crept into the crypt, because my mum always shot Dad That Look, and he would just laugh instead of finishing the sentence.

It’s so annoying when you’re a kid and all the grown-ups are laughing at a joke they refuse to explain! Almost as annoying as opening your front door and finding the next door neighbour’s cat really has crapped on your doormat. Or thrown up on it, as our neighbour’s cat occasionally does.

Cats and their unsavoury habits came up over Christmas. I went to a social evening at the local church with a friend to make gingerbread houses. I was very pleased with my effort when I brought it home.

They provided a generous supply of lollies, so I went to town. Like my row of spearmint trees? And the cute little icicles?

I was quite proud of my candy-striped front door too, complete with door handle made with the top of a chocolate bullet. Only next morning I discovered my little brown door handle had fallen off and was lying forlorn on the doorstep. See it there? A suspicious brown lump, looking just like the next-door neighbour’s gingerbread cat had crept in during the night and crapped on the doormat.

Stupid gingerbread cat.