Two Things About My Mum

As you know, I’ve been living away from home – Melbourne – for two and a half years. I’ve been working and living in Adelaide with my fiancé Grant, and I bought a house there because I was sick of paying other people’s mortgages (plus, the sooner you get into the property market the better). We have a wonderful life there in our little house, a ten minute walk from the beach, but we’re basically never there. I am happy enough there because I’m with Grant, but it’s just not home.

Since about October, though, I’ve been working up on the Murray River and being flown back to Adelaide once a month to see my Mister. All the other weekends have been spent in my childhood home in Melbourne, spending time with my family and friends, and it has made me realise how much I miss Melbourne, or, more to the point, them. I miss them so much that, in conjunction with the fact that I love the job I’m on and have actually found my long-lost passion for what I do, and feel like maybe I’m heading in the right direction, the very thought of going back to the drudgery of the office in Adelaide leaves me cold (too bad if someone from work is reading this!). If Grant were there all the time it would be tolerable, for a while, but he’s away most of the time, and I had no idea what I was missing back here until I had it again. I’m not sure how I’d go being in Adelaide on my own again.

Anyway, this weekend just gone I stayed with mum, helped her around the house and cooked up a storm (and, as per usual, forgot to photograph any of it. I will however give you the link to the Butterscotch Pecan Self-Saucing Pudding that I made on Sunday night). On Monday morning, she made me a packed lunch for my trip up, bless her! This reminded me of two things about my mum:

1)      She likes butter (or butter substitutes). In my packed lunch she gave me hot cross buns, which I requested she put a LITTLE bit of butter on (by which I meant a wee scrape). When I bit into it, there was quite a bit more than a wee scrape on it. It wasn’t quite as bad as, say, when you buy a buttered apple scroll from a country truck stop, bite into it and the butter squishes up between your teeth, but there was still enough to get the texture of it on my tongue. I have no idea what she would have given me if I hadn’t specified that I only wanted a little bit!

2)      She is a world-champion Glad-Wrapper. Everything she Glad Wraps is tight as a drum, completely airtight... and also completely inaccessible! Yes, mum’s Glad Wrapping is harder to get into than an RSL in a singlet and thongs*. Generally speaking it takes me in excess of a minute to even find where the Glad Wrap starts so that I can peel it off, and at times I’ve had to actually rip the Glad Wrap because there was no apparent starting point (much like when the newsagency wraps your morning paper in plastic). I am relieved to say that my own Wikkid Glad Wrapping Skillz are a hybrid of my mum’s and my dad’s – dad’s tends to be loose and... useless, at best... so you run the risk of your sandwiches falling out of their wrapping . I have acquired mum’s ability to make the wrapping tight, and dad’s ability to make it very un-wrappable. Yay for me!

I love my mum J

* for any non-Australians, RSL stands for the Returned & Serviceman’s League, and they run a club in most towns over a certain size where meals, drinks and sometimes pokies (= slot machines) and other entertainment (bingo, bands, trivia... you name it) are available to members. Non-members are generally also welcome and just have to sign in. An RSL is basically like a pub (and are occasionally attached to the local lawn bowls club) but a bit of a step up in the sense that you are expected to dress and behave more respectably than you would in a pub. The above reference to trying to get into an RSL in a singlet and thongs is related to the common policy “no shirt, no shoes, no service”