there is always a controversy that happens around our scrabble games

always!!! 

for a long time we played with  only a vague understanding of the rules

and we were happy in our ignorance though no strangers to trouble either.

then one Christmas my nephews wife  told us about the rule that gives the winner everyone elses points

ha ha we liked that  and looked at a few other rules.

 this christmas I lashed out and bought a brand new Collins friends and  family scrabble dictionary

that will end the arguments I thought.

 wrong very very wrong.

up until this we had been using our 1948 red chambers twentieth century dictionary with pictures in it

lovelly book that I picked up for nothing in a barrow outside the Goyder Street Community Library in Narrabundah

a great book full of archaic and obscure words 

most of which are no longer within our text speak.

one night Greg played  the word ska 

full of meaning to him 

something about a type of reggae music.

sorry, not in the chambers.

well he argued  for a while but chambers won and greg pouted. 

much muttering went on about the ancient book and a need to update,

for goodness sake it doesn’t even have internet. 

that’s kinda cool isn’t it ?

a world before this 

before I emailed and blogged

before I researched and downloaded.

 

it became that we courted  controversy

we wanted that arguement and hysterical laughter

we wanted to debate the disparity of old and new 

that shock of in or not.

so here I am thinking that this year I have silenced these altercations

and perhaps we might find our fun in stretching our word hoard 

wrong and wrong again.

 

suddenly we were thrown into the world of two letter words

that can hook a word to allow  parallel play

uh?

but what does gu  or mm or ee mean?

and isn’t ad , bi and op abbreviations? 

and ko   a kiwi traditional digging tool ie Maori language is that not foreign?

oh dear we moved into even deeper waters .

cries of ‘ I am not having these silly two letter words in the game’ ,

‘they are not words Mum’

they are abbreviations, foreign or plain ridiculous.

loud and clear.

 

 yesterday morning I walked into the kitchen to hear sedition talking

lets just get rid of ‘ that ‘dictionary 

and get a new Oxford 

revolution rising

a bucking against the rules. 

as if the dictionary is to blame but maybe it is,

because we havent even embraced the three-letter words yet,  

like biz for business , caz for casual and miz for misery

 no one will wear them without a blue.

 

so you see we have plenty of fun living without  television,

I mean it is not all scrabble you know,

sometimes we play perudo 

sometimes we read

sometimes we gaze into the fire and dream

but that is a whole other kettle of fish.

 

 

 

 

we had a laneway market  yesterday

in a little brick laneway in a little old village circa 1830’s

me Bec and Jess trooped into cobargo with our brand new card table , our boxes of culled books, my select range of crocheted Berets , some potted up loquats,and some of becs old stock of fimo earrings and her lacquered nursery rhyme character brooches.

how do you spell brooches? she asks.

two oos I say.

you’re kidding,  that is broooooch she says

I think it is only one or what about a u ?

we toss it around jess writing the spelling variations down until finally Veronica the knife at the next stall along yells out it is two oos.

bugger that says bec, I am going to write badges.

and so the morning continued with much laughter and squeals amongst us and with any marketers that wanted to play.

some people like to interact and yarn on and enter into a relationship of loving fun

others walk by, heads hardly daring to look  almost as if the intimacy is too confronting.

well I guess it can be.

but who are we if we deny the warmth of a fellow human being?

who are we if we shy away from eye contact?

who are we if we deny others the light of our smiles?

we did have a piece de resistance, a most magnificent tall glass jar with a sign fortune cookies $1.

they were chinese chews.

jess  made them.

Bec gathered together   I Ching messages writing them out on purple paper.

they cut the slice rolled each piece  in icing sugar then  wrapped  them individually  in brown paper with the   ‘fortune ‘ tucked inside.

the number of people who denied this experience  we lost count of.

and as jess was heard to remark it is only a dollar.

we were a gold coin stall, our books were gold coin, the loquat tree seedlings were gold coin,

only the badges and Berets had ‘prices’

the Berets had a price to suit your head and I did actually sell two

but to members of the family.

oh well perhaps not the money spinner  I thought.

bec says we need an edge. I say we are the edge.

the purpose was to have fun and cover the cost of the stall which we did.

and again Jess said for crying out loud it is only a dollar .

oh and our next market is going to be a free one.

how about that for an edge?

 

 

 

 

 

 

rain day after day

flooding

roads closed

drains overflowing

a leak discovered in the bathroom

John occupied himself bagging the walls in there

no not like yelling at them but  spraying them with water and then rubbing hessian over  to make it a smooth surface.

mud walls I am talking about.

what with the new cupboard looking so Milan John decided to take away the rough texture that he so admired 30 years ago.

they look great,

now he is thinking of painting them.

that is a omg story right there  because he swore he would not have anything to do with the process of painting the house he built.too much of that when he was a kid.

in deed the painted walls that have happened have been a combination of friends and me.

this wall  in the lounge room in front of the computer  is psychedelic art  done by my nephew when he was 18

brightly painted musical notes, guitar, a  faerie  a tree, the egg the eye rainbows;  you know the really trippy themes of the 70’s .

its great  and no he didn’t turn into an artist  but a musician.

but let’s think about this word artist for a bit

we have such a narrow view of what an artist is.

I like that in the way of the Toltec we are all artists

the word heart contains heART .

also heartheartheart  contains earth as earthearthearth gives heart

so within the earth is our heart and within our heart we carry the earth and from there we make our art.

language  is just mind spinning when you get down to it.

so in the broadest possible terms we are all artists living within the palette of creation .

making up our lives as we go.

the saga of the bathroom continues with a little cupboard being built now.

that’s the thing with heavy rain it forces us to take up indoor projects

cuts  a whole lotta options out right there under the too wet for that category.

I knit and I crochet and I cook  and I write and I play with Kingston.

we like chasing at the moment  giggling chasing  heaps of noise

and playing our ukeleles together.

but the big news is that I am knitting a mauve shawl for the next bubba.

Zoe arriving in the weekend brings the new baby  within her womb

and we are all over the moon for her for us but especially for the arrival of the next load of jellybean road brats.

And  more big news is Bec who has been all over the world flew home last night and she will be appearing soon.

and then next week  my dad is flying over from New Zealand to hang around with us all .

as John says the tide is coming in.