It was 8am on a crisp and clear Melbourne morning. I was standing next to a “security” escort (quotation marks intentional) in the car park of the Docklands Studios; a vast plot of land in the shadow of the Bolte bridge that’s home to five soundstages, movie making and broken dreams.

I was holding two changes of clothes, wearing a warm “please-like-me” smile and snapping Insta-worthy photos of the sky as I waited for others to join the escort to take us over to Stage 5 where Channel 9 film Millionaire Hotseat.

This was the day I was going to correctly answer 30 trivia questions in a row and become a millionaire. How hard could it be? I’m quite the armchair expert at wine-o’clock when I’m not only yelling the correct answers at the television but am also cheerleading my 4-year-old to eat her dinner while simultaneously making an adult version of the same meal, emptying the dishwasher, folding laundry, cleaning up the latest cat mess, adding ‘parmesan cheese’ to the shopping list and constantly refreshing the email on my phone waiting for a client to approve a job we need to start tomorrow. I had nothing else to focus on today except those 30 questions. Walk in the park. Walk. In. The. Park. Continue reading →

I went out to lunch yesterday with a group of my girlfriends. We’ve known each other for close to 20 years and we make an effort to do ladies lunch once or twice a year so we can catch up away from Facebook statuses and generally talk shit.

And yesterday along with a few bottles of Pinot Grigio we talked a lot of shit and discovered that we all have the same amount of shit and pile it up in roughly the same place in our homes. In a place we dubbed the ‘shit bowl’.

The ‘shit bowl’ is the dumping ground where everything life admin goes to get lost. And we all have that place. You probably have that place. Thanks to a recent house move my shit bowl is actually a shit station gloriously spread over an entire kitchen bench. It irks me every time I look at it because I’m an everything-in-its-place kinda gal.

Here’s a photo of my current shit station. Continue reading →

Let’s get one thing straight. I am not a cutesy type of gal. I don’t respond well to baby talk, pandering or unnecessary subtleties. Life is short and people often have things far more important to do with their time than decode your quirky take on the English language. Say what you mean and don’t dilly dally. Or use words like “dilly dally” for fuck’s sake!

As someone who likes to use words a lot (and, let’s face it has her own way with words and applies her own rules of grammar), I find I have developed quite the list of words and phrases that just rub me up the wrong way. Here’s some, that when I hear them, make me throw up in my mouth a little: Continue reading →

With a four-and-a-half year old I’m a still novice at this parenting gig but as someone who is prone to reminiscing I reflect often on the past 54 months. Parenting is a steep learning curve that comes with a library of complimentary …I mean CONTRADICTORY…self-help books none of which you have time to absorb or care about because you’re usually too busy planning meals or nursing toddler tantrums or trying to keep some semblance of your pre-parent self alive all the while just hoping for a few extra hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Before I became a mother there were a slew of things that I thought I knew. A plan I thought I’d follow. And a life I thought I’d lead. But when you’re given the job and your new boss is screaming at you for a clean bottom, warm milk or a never-ending cuddle you pretty soon realise that things are never going to be the same again.

And that you should never say never. So here’s seven things that, as a new mother, I was never going to do. Continue reading →