Hi Mate

Geez Rory, I can't believe you did that to Caroline! What a jerk. I am so happy she moved on from you and now she is a Grand Slam winner and you're just some jerk that ditched your fiance a week after sending out invitations. You may be good at golf but I literally could not care less about that. But I've been having thoughts too, mate. Rational ones (and irrational of course but that's not I want to talk about now.)  Going back to your previous post though (soz I've been sitting on this post for a while), I have to say I totally feel like I have nothing to say. And when I do have something to say I don't know how to say it or feel like I don't have much to say about it. Or the time to think about it to make it into something blogworthy. Hence this floundering blog I guess.   But really that brings me to what I wanted to blog about today. Around the Christmas/New Year time I realised that one of the (so many) beauties of Miss Soft Crab is that it was ...

I’m watching the Australian Open Womens’ final. Caroline Wozniacki is playing. She’s a favourite of mine because when I was in Belfast, she and Golfer Rory McIlroy announced they were ending their engagement. That day in the office, people said things like “Have you heard about Rory and Caroline!?” and “Poor Caroline. How could Rory do that?”. I had no clue who Rory and Caroline were, and figured they were an office couple who had split so of course I wanted to hear more. Turns out Rory McIlroy is Belfast’s favourite son, because he grew up around there and is really good at golfing. (I guess Liam Neeson comes from another part of Northern Ireland.) Caroline was a tennis champ and his girlfriend and the people of Northern Ireland embraced her wholeheartedly. They became engaged and Belfast rejoiced. Then, a week after they sent out their wedding invitations, Rory called the whole thing off. What a total dick. How could he do that to her? I couldn’t help but care and I couldn’t but choo...

I feel like I have nothing to say all the time, but then I saw your post about Margot Robbie and Gorman and Obus  and of course I have thoughts about that.  Margot Robbie’s face looks very 1980s to me, which I guess is kind of bogan by default. I can totally see her on Baywatch, you know? That’s how she’s imprinted in my mind.  I totally agree about Gorman and Obus and their inability to combine a nice print with a good cut. This is not too much to ask, this is one of the basic things they have to do for their jobs. Do your jobs, guys. I also want to highlight that when we were in Sydney and going to the beach and stuff, I was highly amused to see lots of girls wearing Calvin Klein crop tops and shorts or jeans. The kids are crazy about the 90s and I’m crazy about them being crazy about the 90s!  So Mate, let’s go see this Hemsworth movie called 12 Strong for our next dinner and a movie date. 

Obviously I don't mind that whenever I look at this blog I'm welcomed by the picture of Chris Hemsworth I posted a month ago, and yet I think it would be good if we really got this blog going a bit more. It's effing hard though, isn't it? Just writing it for ourselves and with no real guide and no imaginary audience to please.  And it's annoying because I actually have a lot of things I've been thinking about it. But I don't know how to approach a blog post anymore. It's disturbing. Like, I used to think Margot Robbie was a total bogan face and I couldn't understand how she could become a Hollywood star. But look at her: Now I want to look like her and think about her hair all the time! Luckily while looking for pictures of her on the internet I see that she still kind of is a bogan face, but nothing is black and white I guess. Something else I've been thinking about lately is WTF is with Gorman. I went in their the other day and t...

Negotiating boyfriends' opinion is tough. On the one hand you are a strong independent woman who does what she wants. On the other your boyfriend has to look at you all the time and find you attractive. And although how attractive you are is largely dependent on things other than your hair colour you want them to like what you see. Of course you do.   I'm constantly negotiating this difficult situation. Here are a bunch of things LB doesn't like very much on me: when I dye my eyebrows (i think this is largely confined to the first day but he can't dissociate the beautiful after effect from day 1); when I get a fringe; short hair; any change to my appearance.   Sometimes when I think about going blonde I ask him what he thinks and he says something unsupportive and I ask him if he doesn't imagine himself with a blonde beach babe by even this doesn't work.   I just scrolled through a bunch of photos on the internet of 'dark brown hair with caramel highlight...

I thought it would be fun to just update this blog on the DL and then we can each be pleasantly surprised when we log on and find something. So darker brown with caramel highlights sounds fantastic. Anything caramel sounds pretty fantastic. Side note: how good does that recipe for middle eastern millionaire’s shortbread in Sweet sound? So good, that’s how good.  Back to hair. This do by Lucky Buster appeals to me. It’s kind of where I want to go. But then I showed Holloway and said “what do you think of this?”.  He said “I’m not sure you...” before getting cut off by the H bomb going off.  I don’t know whether he was going to say “I’m not sure you should show me these photos because I love them all and could never pick a favourite!!” Or  “I’m not sure you should go there” Or something in between.  The prospect of my boyfriend not liking my hair makes me not want to dye my hair. It’s not like I can’t think for myself or nothin. It’s just that I have no interest i...

So I kind of stopped checking to see if you'd updated this blog after 8 days. Or maybe I checked once or twice more but just saw the heading 'RE: Tuesday thoughts' and didn't realise it wasn't 'Tuesday thoughts'. Anyway, I guess that's one reason it has taken me a week to respond. I have tried dying clothes a few times but it's never been successful. I look forward to hearing more about your experience. What colour?! (I'm sure this makes a different.) How did you do it?! (One time I broke my washing machine doing it.) Did you get an even dye? (I never have.)  You seemed please so I guess you did. This is also exciting about dying your hair. I'd like to do it to. I was thinking about going darker but getting caramel highlights. Obvs I want to go full blonde but the cost and effort is beyond me. In truth the cost of dark hair with caramel highlights is beyond me too but it feels like something that could be achievable in the foreseeable fut...

Finding time for stuff. It's a dilemma as old as time. LOL! But seriously.  Mate, I don't have anywhere near the claims on my time that you've got and yet I feel like have no time for stuff. No time at all. The other day Holloway organized an dinner with a relative of his, of his Dad's generation, who he saw at a funeral recently. It was a perfectly pleasant evening but leading up to it I kept thinking I don't have time to see my actual friends, why the fudge am I doing this?   I'm writing this on the Wednesday that came eight days after the Thursday you wrote your last post. I've thought about writing so many times over those eight days but I've felt like I don't have the time. It's only now, with the little H bomb in bed, Holloway out for the night, dinner consumed and dishes cleaned that I feel like I've got the time to sit in front of a screen and type. And those are the circumstances I feel I need to write something. But they're so i...

Over the school holidays I was feeling pretty stressed out. I had lots of work and no time and also no money and everything seemed to be weighing on me heavily. But I knew some money would come in and some time would come too and I decided I could put off a few bits of work until this week. I could put off writing here for a few days and  I could put off the launch of my Open Letter blog till this week or next. It made me feel a bit more at peace but the time mate! There is no time. Last night A. told me "I want to be a singer or an actor or a (something else I can't remember because there is also no brain space)" I said, "I always wanted to be a singer." He asked me "Why aren't you a singer? You could be. Maybe you will be one day." It was so goddamn sweet. When am I ever going to have the time to write down all the adorable things the kids do? It's very upsetting. This morning when J. was looking at a picture of F. on my phone I said, "T...

Whoa! I have so much to say! First, when you told me JFo had a Gwyneth look at the Emma's I really imagined her dress to be pastel pink but you're right. Even with that fuchsia she still looks GOOPy. Shit, a 70-year-old woman can look how she wants.  Any woman can. Even Leigh Sales.  I enjoy a cup of tea and a price of chocolate before bed sometimes too. Though sometimes I prefer milk to tea.  Makes the treat a little richer. And healthy cause of the calcium.  Speaking of sweet treats I tried your day-old orange polenta cake.  After a day it was a little dry and I guess my feeling was that the polenta doesn't really doing a cake any favours but perhaps I'd feel differently if I'd eaten it fresh. I look forward to hearing what you have to say about it. I can't believe the icing got that colour from blood orange juice! Fantastic! But mostly I was interested to hear what you had to say about the Ostro woman. Of course I know her. Of her. I don't ...

So Mate, I thought I'd respond to the above text here, rather than there as I guess I have more to say than thumbs up emoji, though I do want to say that too.  How exciting that you bought Sweet and how exciting that soon you will have it and soon you will bake from it! I wonder what the first cab off the rank will be.  I am fully intending to buy it, but I bought this other book recently and have been cooking lots of things from it.  Do you know this woman, Mate? She is part of that Melbourne food/design scene I guess. She's friends with Gemma. She lives in Brunswick and I follow her on instagram so I feel like I know her in the way one does in these weird times we live in. So when it came to handing over cash for Ottolenghi or Julia, I felt like I should buy Julia first.  I've made a couple of savory and a couple of sweet numbers from her book and so far they've all been simple and pretty darn delicious. I've been trying to put my finger on what's good about ...

Gosh, I know how Freddie feels. I usually have a couple of pieces of chocolate with my cup of tea before bed. Sometimes I fall asleep on the couch well before it's a reasonable time for tea and then wake up with a start and wonder what's going on. I know I should just get up off the couch and get into bed. But I usually stay up so I can have my chocolate and tea. I just don't want to give up that little slice of pleasure, even though it's fleeting and being asleep in bed is longer lasting. I guess Freddie is the same . I'm afraid I have no up to date knowledge of Alberici and Sales' wardrobes. But here is a picture of Jane Fonda at the Emmys last week...see what I mean about the GOOPyness of this look?  There's a couple behind me on the train debating whether Tim Curry had a stroke but is still acting, or whether he's dead. They're two very specific options amongst so many. 

Tonight as I was putting Freddie to bed he told me he really wanted to sleep in my bed so I told him he could but he couldn't have his bedtime booby if he did. He still has a bedtime boob which we are trying to phase out mainly by talking about phasing it out. He really agonised over it. Stay in his bed and have a feed or go to my bed with no feed. He put his finger to his lips and said "Mmmmm" really thinking about it and then asked something which I couldn't understand. It sounded like "What the dilemma is?" Which seemed apt but a little too advanced and then I realised he'd asked "What's the yummiest?" In other thoughts I've had I wonder who's in charge of ABC news wardrobe. Why does Emma Alberici always look so good while Leigh Sales just looks terrible?

Sometimes I wonder if it's unhealthy or unnatural how deeply I think about Ewan sometimes. But then I get distracted. You know like "Is it weird that I think about Ewan so deeply? Ewan..." Destination reached. Mate, we're definitely in the middle of the lives and changing direction is going to be hard. Like changing careers will be a bit hard. Changing other things will be harder. I wish I'd lived away from Melbourne more when I was younger. Now I have children to worry about, their schooling to worry about, money to worry about. It's not impossible to do this but the implications are much broader. So I probably won't do much to change my life. Not in bold movements anyway. Not for now at least. But you know I just think about Elena Greco. I know she's fictional, but lives are long and much can be done in them. Meanwhile my hair is greying a lot around my hairline. The unattractiveness of this coarse grey hair is exacerbated by the fact I also have...

I. I'm pretty sure I had a dream about Ewan after I read your last post, Mate. Or maybe I just thought about him, deeply, and so it felt like a dream. Either way, it's all pretty pleasant, though I agree that it's somehow weird that Ewan is hot and someone's dad. Weird, but true. Like the fact that Brad Pitt used to be married to Jennifer Aniston. That's weird, right? Anyway, I've been thinking about age a lot lately. How we're in the middle of our lives, so we're at a point where some things are too late, broadly speaking. I mean, it's not like it's too late to make changes that we really really want to make...to our careers or what have you. But we're at an age where changing the direction of the ship would be a bigger deal than before, and will become an increasingly bigger deal from now on. We're not quite technically middle aged, but we're definitely in the middle of our lives. Not young, and not old. Realistically, the landsca...

So this blog has been live for a couple of weeks now and I guess it's time we talked about Ewan. The other night I was just scrolling through Instagram and a picture that Ewan posted was credited to his daughter Clara and I thought I'd just take a look at her Insta account. It's basically exactly the same as the account of every other daughter of a famous person that grew up in LA. Selfies of her in a bikini or in jeans and a t-shirt and occasional photos of her just chilling with her buds. I'm sure you've seen this kind of account before. The only noticeable difference is that Ewan McFuckingGregor (AKA her dad) comments on a lot of the pics. One of the first pictures I looked at was a picture of Clara and underneath Ewan had commented "My beautiful girl. x" I have to say, it was kind of confronting. Like, I know that Ewan is a real person with a wife and kids and everything but it was really weird to see him just respond to his adult daughter's In...

Hi Mate,  I saw both of those Instagram posts too. I didn’t read the ZoFoBla one because it had far too many words! But I read the EHawk one and thought, yeah, that’s OK girl. In general, I have mixed feelings about her Instagram feed. On the face of it, she is aiming for a place in the pantheon of WAGs who have effortless style, and taste that is very…tasteful. They love textiles and homewares and relaxing at home with family. This is gross and I have not time for it, other than all the time I spend looking at it on the gram, which is heaps, obvs. But looking at EHawk’s photos, I get the impression that she’s not quite on top of the whole effortless style thing, and it makes me feel a bit sorry for her. Like, it’s  technically  effortless style, but it’s a bit munted. Poor little EHawk, I think. You’re not quite nailing it, are you? The whole thing makes me feel a little more fondly towards her.   And while we’re on the topic of feeling fondly, Deb from Smitten Kitc...

Are you there God - it's me Margaret. Just jokes, hi mate. I'm here. Weird. When I come to Blogger it automatically takes me to the Miss Soft Crab page. I have to navigate away to come here to Hi Mate. It is both quite sad but also fine. If I were to write Miss Soft Crab this week and had the time to write a decent post I would have written about two Instagram posts I saw last week which got me thinking. First ZoFoBla posted a picture of her sleeping baby and the caption was about her baby's reflux and how she's received some hot tips on how to combat it and one thing she did - and you should do to if your baby doesn't sleep - is buy this $300 bed thing which helps the baby sleep and burp I guess. "It's $300 dollars and you can only use it for 3-4 months, but what price sleep?" It really ground my gears. Like, I know $300 is not $1000 but not everyone has $300 lying around. For some people that is a lot of money but her comment really made it fee...