How To Rock A Road Trip

Hello dear people! Welcome to another marvellous Monday! Or perhaps I should say mind-blowing Monday. You see, I have some astonishing information and wisdom to impart.

Did you know that it's exactly one year since the 28th of September 2014???!!! Or am I the only one who spotted that? I am known for my genius like abilities after all.


Furthermore, it's approximately one year since I brought to you some ground breaking life hacks in this post. Well, technically one year and six days, but details!

No doubt this advice has been utterly life-changing for you. Therefore I feel it is only fair to share with you some more of my sage advice and insights.

In no particular order here are some random life hacks/thoughts and advice- Ness style pertaining to road trips. I've just come back from one so I'm an expert! 

Be sure to read until the end for my FREE BONUS TIP!!!! This is an exclusive offer and will expire in approximately eleven billionty days!! Or actually never, but details. Besides, my blog is always free because as outrageous as it seems no one will actually pay me to write drivel on the internet. I know, right? So rude!

Anyway, here is the moment you've been waiting for.

Road Trip Life Hacks - Ness Style

• Packing is stupid. You will always forget stuff and/or over pack. The only thing to do is to take a fuck it attitude and decide that there will probably be shops wherever you are headed, so you can buy whatever you forget. Unless you holiday in some remote area of the world, in which case you're probably crazy anyway so I can't help you. Oh yeah, and make lists in the first place. List do help. Sort of. Unless you have the uncanny ability to lose lists and panic and agonise over what should go on it and... Yeah,whatever. Stick with the shops thing.  

• You will not actually explode and die if you are ever, for instance, in a motel in Wagga Wagga with dodgy Wi-Fi and consequently cannot get internet access. This will be a good thing. It will force you to go outside into the sunshine and socialise with people and read books. Actual books. Remember those? Speaking of books, you simply must go on a book shopping spree! At Vinnies (or similar op shop). They have ones the size of football fields in these country towns and everything is so cheap and nasty you can buy enough to fill a truck. In fact, you may need an actual truck to transport it all home, but like I say - DETAILS! 

• While on holidays you must avoid whatever makes you fat. See above. You will eat all the food. ALL. THE. FOOD. And drink all the scotch/wine/gin/vodka/whatever you fancy. This is why elastic waisted clothes were invented. No amount of walking will eradicate this damage. By all means walk, just don't expect any reward for it other than fresh air and/or sunshine.

• Sleeping in the car during a long road trip isn't very refreshing. You just wake up all dazed and confused and in the twilight zone with a dodgy neck into the bargain. But do it anyway. It's better than being the driver. Ahem.

• Children will never get sick of eating Maccas. Meanwhile you will feel nauseous at the sight or mere thought of those golden arches. Children will delight in these holidays as an opportunity to thrive on a steady junk food diet. I suppose you can't blame them. After all there is not much else to keep them entertained. See above point re dodgy WiFi. There is nothing you can do about this either. Just go with it and enjoy not cooking for a while.

• If you're like me and that glamorous modelling career you dreamt of didn't exactly pan out, there's probably a reason for that. Don't bother packing make-up and hair straighteners and co-ordinated outfits. Just go for comfort and practicality. And warmth. Especially if you're in Wagga Wagga. Jumpers and coats are your friend. Those crazy people walking around in shorts and t-shirts are exactly that. Batshit crazy.

If this miracle never occurs at home, it certainly won't occur
on holidays. Give up.

Congratulations! You're now infinitely wiser with my help. You're welcome. And now, just because I'm so generous here is my promised free bonus tip:

• When you arrive home you will inevitably have shit tonnes of unpacking and washing to do and have to get back into domesticity pronto. So my advise is:  Listen to podcasts or music while you pretend you're doing housework/washing to make it less tedious. I'm positive you would never have thought of this avant garde and mysterious tip without me. Shut up. Done.

Stay tuned until this time next year for more of my wisdom and life hacks. I'm heading into my 45th year and becoming more and more wise each day. Or is that wide? Oh well. Whatever. See you on the road!

Linking up with Kirsty, Alicia and Eva.

Have you been on any road trips lately?

Do you have any road trip life hacks?  

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I Thought This Bogan Would Be Better At Stuff By Now

I am 42. And I thought I'd be better at this thing called Life by now. Which reminds me of that meme I've seen floating around Facebook, which says something like: I miss being the age when I thought I'd have my shit together by the time I was the age I am now. Yeah, THAT.

There are so many things I thought I'd be better at by now. Such as:

Talking/Communicating

Growing up I always believed that I would magically 'come out of my shell' one day, just like everybody kept telling me I SHOULD. I MUST. I felt certain  there was a bubbly, outgoing chatterbox inside me just busting to get out. Eventually it would happen and I'd suddenly find myself sprouting verbal diarrhoea with the best of them. I was going to be extremely witty, droll and just plain LOUD. The anti-thesis of this mute, shy, introverted girl. I would shine. Stand out in a crowd for once, instead of being instantly forgettable. More than twenty years later, it hasn't happened. I am still the quietest person in the room, wherever I am. People still say things like "You're the quietest person I've ever known." Worse still, they will sometimes even talk about me as if I'm not even there. It's true. I still rarely speak. People forget that I'm there. I fade into the furniture. That bubbly, witty person is figment of my imagination.


Organisation/Remembering Stuff

As a child I was a total off with the pixies space cadet with my head permanently 'up the Faraway Tree'. Nothing has changed as an adult. This is not extremely helpful when you are meant to the person in charge of running a house including three small people. My attention span is worse than the average two year old. Knowing that this is something to do with having Aspergers means I now understand why. However, the problem does not go away. For example, one of the  boys may ask me for some two minute noodles. Dutifully, I go the monumental effort of pouring sachets and boiling water on them, then walk away to wait for the allotted two minutes. Half an hour later, a ravenous child whines:"Where's my noodles?" Oops.

Driving

While I do have a license, I didn't get it until I was 36. At 42 I am still on my P Plates. I am one of those pathetic people who actually drives around for 15 minutes or so, looking for another, easier parking space so I don't have to parallel park. In fact, I haven't done it once since I passed my driving test. I also avoid driving to unfamiliar places, at night and in heavy traffic. In other words, I might as well have never bothered getting a licence. But least I now have photographic ID for those times when we go to an extremely classy RSL club. We are dedicated bogans, after all.

Parenting

When Mr 11 (soon to be Mr 12) was born in 2001, I became I relatively good parent. Surprisingly, since I was a 30 year old person who had zero experience being around babies and children. In fact I had possibly only ever held a baby once or twice for a total of ten minutes. Still, I managed to puree home made food, read bed time stories every night and generally do an okay job. Naturally, in my naivete, I believed this meant that I could only be a better parent to any subsequent children. After all, I now had experience. HA! It turns out that it actually gets harder with more children. Who knew? Second time around I had to factor in that now I not only had a squalling infant, but a demanding toddler as well. My standards dropped. I didn't manage to puree baby food quite so often. I fed Mr9 so much mashed banana and yoghurt as a baby that I think I have permanently turned him off those foods. By the time Mr 4 arrived we slowly but surely progressed to the wonderfully varied diet we now enjoy as a family these days. It consists of two minute noodles, sausages, fish fingers and lumpy mashed potato. Yum.

Medical Stuff

Basically I'm a big scaredy cat about anything of a medical nature. I thought I'd be well and truly over this phobia by now. Wrong. A routine blood test still has me shaking. Even entering a hospital for any reason at all, makes me feel wobbly. I could never have been a nurse. The thing is, as you get older there is a more pressing need to have all sorts of medical stuff attended to. Considering that I'm lucky enough to be in relative good health I should be able to just get over myself and get on with it.

Technology/Blogging

After a year of this blogging  business, I thought I'd most likely become better at it. Sorry folks. Hasn't happened. I continue to clock in a spectacularly underwhelming performance just like a typical lazy 'she'll be right' bogan. I don't have a niche. Or understand anything about RSS or SEO. I thought they were possibly LOL text type talk. Are they? Meh, whatever. I briefly attempted to raise the bar the other day when I noticed a Blogs and PR concern on Twitter on the lookout for Lifestyle Bloggers. I tweeted back that I do, indeed, blog about my bogan lifestyle. No response. Can't think why.

My photography skills are non-existent. I've still never taken a selfie. Instagram is complete mystery to me and likely to remain so. There is no point in even bothering when I am such an abysmal technophobe.  Who wants to see my woeful attempts at photography. On that note, I'm not even going to bother adding images to this post. There is no point.

So basically what I'm saying is, I thought I'd be better at EVERYTHING by now.


I'm very excited to be linking up for the first time ever with The Lounge which is being hosted this week by Tegan from Musings Of The Misguided.  If there is one thing I'm certainly good at, it's lounging around. And I'm getting better at it all the time.

What did you think you would be better at by now?

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A Very Bogan Christmas Part One

Yesterday the bogan festivities began with a lunch with the out laws. They had wanted to take us out to a Leagues Club and shout us lunch.

The fun started when we were getting ready to go. I was my usual well organised self. I couldn't even find a bra to put on. I do hate the things with a passion.

You know you are becoming a tad tragic when you almost couldn't be bothered going out ever again, in your entire life, because you hate wearing bras.

Finally, I found one and shoved it on. Only problem was, it was white. I was wearing a black top with a lacy bit at the back through which you could clearly see the bra straps.

Oh well. Deciding that nobody on Earth ever even remotely notices or cares what I am wearing, I put it on. Then, I proceeded to tidy up my hair with a straightener thingy ma jig.

Meanwhile, Micky Blue Eyes started hollering that we were going to be late, in between his familiar refrain: "I'm trying to do WORK!!"

"Get your shoes on!" I screeched to the boys.

"Okaaaaaaaaay!" yelled back Mr 11

"I aaaaaam!" declared Mr 8.

I gave up on my hair and pointlessly applied lipstick. 

Some time later, we finally pile into the car, amid arguments about who should sit on the side with the dodgy seat belt. It's always Mr8, as he is smaller.

Then, my most dreaded event takes place.

Mick hands me a street directory and instructs me to look up the place where we have to go. I turn pale.

I had assumed he knew where it was and he hadn't mentioned that he didn't know.

Naturally, any 'normal' people might be expected to have a GPS device. Not these bogans. We still resort to the trusty (scary) UBD.

It is at this point that I have to let all woman kind down and openly admit I simply cannot read maps. At all.  Let alone in a moving car. The very thought makes me decidedly ill.

Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't already divorced over this. There were some rather unsettling arguments over this very thing on our honeymoon for God's sake.

After a nerve wracking trip, during which the boys refused to wind the windows up, we eventually made it there and went in to meet the outlaws. I exited the car with windblown hair, tousled and tangled,  a dishevelled wreck. So much for bothering with my appearance. Sigh.

Then came the dramas of ordering food which seemed to turn into covert operations as my out-laws had to procure whatever members only discounts they could for all our meals.

There had also been the promise of a 'Play Area' for the boys, but, disappointingly, it was shut and still under refurbishment, although my out-laws had apparently been promised it would be open.

Within five minutes all three boys were 'bored'. Luckily the food arrived quickly. Then, surprisingly the 'Little Nippers' bags they were given actually kept them entertained for quite a while and they coloured in and did the 'find-a-word' thingys.  During which, they only spilled their drinks two or three times. Not too bad.

We were considering whether we were brave enough to go and have a Santa photo taken afterwards, as we still hadn't gotten around to it. Seeing as though we were out and the boys were presentable, it seemed a good opportunity.

Leaving the club, we then drove off and drooled over all the beautiful houses we passed in this part of Sydney. I think we're not in Boganville anymore, Toto.

Passing a park, the boys exclaimed "Please! Can we go there!"

So we did.

The boys happily played away for a while. I turned my back for a split second, then I turned around, expecting to see Mr 4 still happily playing on the 'train'.

He was gone.

I called out, thinking he'd definitely crawl out from the tunnel thing on the train. He didn't.

Calling louder, I scanned the park, trying not to panic.

There he was.  Behind a tree and some bushes a few metres away.

I saw the look on his face and knew straight away.

The smell when I got closer, confirmed it.

 I was so happy to find him, I didn't mind as much as I normally would.

Naturally, there were no toilets anywhere to be seen, but the damage didn't appear to be too bad, so I decided we'd just get back into the car and go.

Although, the Santa photo option was now out of the question as I'd left Mr4's bag with a change of undies and clothes in it, at home. Handy.

However, Micky Blue Eyes decided that since we were headed that way to go home, he'd like to go to Rookwood Cemetery and look for his Grandparents graves. 

The boys groaned and grumbled, but we went anyway.

As we got out of the car, Mr 8 and 11 were slightly apprehensive about being in a grave yard.

"It's fine," I told them "dead people can't hurt you, they're dead." This is what my Mum had told me as a child and such common sense logic had seemed to work for me, as it did for the boys.

Thus, a lovely afternoon was spent roaming around the cemetery, fruitlessly searching for Mick's grandfather's grave. In the end, we gave up walking around and decided to drive up and down looking as Mick had somehow managed to find it previously with this method. No luck.

We did, however, find Mick's other Grandparents graves. His mother's parents. His grandmother had died in a motor cycle accident aged only 32 in 1945. We stood there, pondering it all.

Some people are gone from this Earth so young and others live until their 90's. Life is such a lottery, it seems.

The weather which had been visciously hot earlier, was now blowing up a strong gail. I spotted a grave of two young brothers, one had died at only 6 and the other 12. At first I assumed possibly from the same accident, until I realised their deaths were several years apart. So sad.

So many of the graves were obviously long forgotten and haven't been visited in a long time.

I hadn't really been taking any of this End Of The World stuff very seriously or I may have been even more reflective of what it's all about and what really happens when you die.

Later that night, at home, the boys saw something on TV about the supposed end of the world and completely freaked. I managed to reassure them that such predictions had happened time and again and so far have never came true.

Anyway, I hope not, because next month I am turning 42.

Apparently this is the answer to the Meaning of Life. So, hopefully, all going well, World not ending and all that, I will suddenly possess the wisdom of the ages and know what it all means on January 15th.

That, or I'll just eat cake, as always.

More about our Very Bogan Christmas, coming soon.

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Driving And Other Tragedies

Linking up an earlier post with My Home Truths for I Must Confess. A little late, but better late than never as they say.

I  Must Confess: I am a 41 year old P-Plater.


As I am now the mature (ie over the hill)  age of 41, you could be forgiven for assuming I am an experienced driver.  Wrong.  Embarrassingly, I am in fact, still a P-Plater. 

At age 16, when most adolescents are clamouring for independence and consequently a driver's licence as a means to that independence, it simply never even occurred to me.  Then again, it never occurred to me to have a crush on Jon Bon Jovi, like most girls my age either, so I guess I really was an odd one.

At age 21, it did somewhat belatedly dawn on me that perhaps I ought to get moving on it.  So I dutifully procrastinated for another two years before finally obtaining my learner's licence at age 23.  Then I began driving lessons.

Nervously, I approached the car in trepidation on my first lesson.  There she was.  The Instructor From Hell.  This woman would have scared Satan.  A miserable, hard faced bitch who proceeded to chain smoke throughout my lesson.

She would occasionally remove the cancer stick to snort with derision at my (lack of) driving skills. I turned left when she said right.  Right when she said left.  Went too fast.  Then, too slow.  Got muddled at roundabouts.  Terrified, changing lanes.

 Let's not even talk about reverse parking.  Even the most competent drivers struggle with this one.  Try doing it as a novice driver under Satan's supervision.  I lost count of how many times I hit the curb while she sat scornfully puffing cigarette smoke in my face.  I couldn't say anything.  I was too shy.  She was too scary.

Mrs Satan had no mercy however, and promptly booked my test, before I was ready, eager to be rid of me and my nervous driving. 

Fail.

Uncaring, she booked it again.  Fail again.

"You're hopeless," she informed me bitterly, echoing the nagging voice in my head,  "you'll never pass."   At this stage, getting a driver's licence was the equivalent of sprouting wings from my back and flying.  Impossible. In my mind anyway. 

Third time.  With these helpful thoughts swirling in my head, it was just as Mrs Satan predicted. 

Epic Fail.

So humiliated was I by my hatrick of failures  I gave up and put it all firmly in the too hard basket, never to be spoken of again.  There it remained for a good 12 years.

Then, I started  seeing a counsellor during a particularly stressful period for our family, when Micky Blue Eyes had cancer (that's a whole other story).  She prodded me into action and I finally got my learner's licence again.

Micky Blue Eyes, obviously deciding that once you've beaten cancer, nothing is scary anymore, happily took me out for some lessons.  The 'happily' part was rather short lived.   After several arguments, nearly leading to divorce and an alarming incident where I hit the accelerator instead of the brake nearly smashing into our front gate and into the back of the old 1961 EK Holden that had been in Mick's family since it was brand new (sadly, now departed),  I once again booked an instructor.

Fortunately this one wasn't scary, even managing to smile and be encouraging.  I plodded along to lessons getting closer to sprouting my wings.  Then, I was also Up The Duff again.  Another tragedy struck.   I lost the baby at 19 weeks.  Suddenly,  driving didn't seem that important to me.(That's a whole other story).

Some months later, I managed to pull myself from an abyss of grief, and attempted my driving test.

 Fail.

Second try. I did it!  I finally sprouted wings!

 The first time I drove the car by myself, it nearly felt like it.  It was only a short trip to the local shops, but I came home, triumphant, beaming.  I pulled up and flew to the front door, exhilarated.  Then abruptly, I stopped, deflated, like a popped balloon. People your age have been driving for years, the nasty voice in my head informed me.  What a fool!  I felt small and pitiful.

I shouldn't have though.  Now  that I know I have Aspergers, it has caused me to re-assess lots of things.  Driving is one of them.  No wonder I struggled with it.  Lots of Aspie people do apparently.  It just took me longer to grasp it.  But I did.  Now I have officially sprouted wings and flown.  Something I need to remind myself whenever I am facing things I think I can't do or cope with.

Just don't ever ask me to reverse park however.  Despite finally acing it in my test I've never attempted it again since.

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