Author: Isolde

We had two good lunches and an impressive dinner this month. The first lunch was in regional Victoria: a restaurant called Brae, which featured fresh produce grown on site, seasonal by its nature. The second was an autumn lunch with some friends at home. And the dinner? Read on, and I’ll tell you about that too. In one of my favourite podcasts, Leigh Sales describes how she booked a New York seasonal restaurant, securing tickets for herself and friends by booking the tickets as soon as they became available a certain period before the lunch itself. I had the same…

The mood is changing around the country, and following on from the international and national Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, what has been acceptable or hidden now is not acceptable or hidden, and people are prepared to stand up and speak out. Sexism and violence against women are being brought out into the light. And now, for the first time, they are being heard. I attended the rally for women’s rights at Parliament House two weeks ago, and walked among the diverse range of people there, including many men. It was a satisfying experience being part of such…

Summer is ending. This weekend there was a burst of warmth, perhaps the last one. The girls and I had brunch with Helen and Sophia, now aged two with beautiful orange hair and a memory that goes back a quarter of her eventful life, which has spanned bushfires, weeks of smoke and COVID. After the iced chocolate with cheese toasties for the girls and Sophia, and my smashed Avo – Helen had a brekky burger – the girls timed themselves racing across the climbing walls and ropes at the nearby playground. Back in our own suburb, I stocked up at…

I like sleeping with one of the smaller humans. One sleeps in a big room with a fluffy rug and a tunnel in it on top of my pink chair, the other sleeps in a smaller room with string on the blind, it swings and is good to chew. I’ve lived here almost as long as I can remember, since I was little. I like to run around really fast, usually at night. I have snoozes during the day, and there’s always some company. I like sitting on one of the big humans at night time. The other one feeds…

A quick look back as we head down the home straight of the year. Despite my weariness, I only took one day off during these recent school holidays, but we made good use of it with another camping trip, this time to Mystery Bay just outside of Narooma, recommended by friends. We borrowed a lot of the gear from these same friends, including a two-gas cooker which felt decadent after my university camping trip days travelling with one lightweight one. There was also a self-inflating double mattress, how standards have increased! Our campsite overlooked the beach through some spotted gum…

I’m not sure what prompted me to ask my friend if I could borrow her book, Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor, about taking control over your household budget, but I did. I read it, and then I read its companion book about good money habits for children, The Barefoot Investor for Families, and then I started applying the advice. It is transforming not just my spending, but hopefully having a wider impact as well. Investments and money management, who wants to think about it? I haven’t in the past. Who wants to shop around for insurance, or compare interest rates,…

Lucky us, we managed to get away for a couple of days – weekdays! – to the snow. We stayed at a lovely freestanding ‘eco lodge’ just outside of Thredbo’, which was cosy with solar-powered under floor heating and a fuel-lit fireplace, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking snow gums and yellow, parched-looking spinifex. It cost as much as a week in any normal place, being high season for skiing and including all those costs, as well as bonus ones like a new pair of warm gloves for the girls ($120 each pair). Just as well we’re not going anywhere else. On…

Holidays. As Leigh Sales also mentioned that she was feeling in her latest podcast, I was really hanging out for them. We had planned our decompression in three chapters: a short one with the girls having a sleepover with Maggie on the Saturday afternoon and night, so we were able to sneak out for dinner. Then a week in Jervis Bay, and the last one near Kiama, which I had never been to. I brought some relaxing holiday reading: Poster Boy, a well-written, self-reflective and thoughtful account by Peter Drew of being an activist artist producing enormous posters that he…

The month of the girls’ tenth birthday is drawing to a close, and with it the weeks of its celebration, like an Indian wedding. Rhea was thoughtful about the milestone, not greeting her double digit status with enthusiasm. They received three avalanches of presents, covering every possible aspect: entertainment (games, roller blades, a remote control car and a slime and jelly kit); hobby (cameras and one that takes videos during action sport for them to share, and lego); warm jackets; books; and shiny new lunchboxes and a pencil case containing fold out pens, textas, pencils, eraser, and a sharpener and…

It was an unusual Mothers’ Day this year. We usually go out for lunch with all of my siblings who are around and our parents and children. There was none of that, and instead we had mum and dad over for some live music and cake: Lara and I playing the piano and Rhea the violin. We had just that weekend been allowed to have small numbers of visitors, which was thoughtful of the authorities, and we all appreciated it. My cousin’s son, who after reconnecting with me a few years ago, we see a few times a year, rang…