Tell me your secrets

Admittedly, what I don't know about parenting is a lot. For example, how to make veggies more enticing to a 2-year-old. Or what is the best method of discipline. And, of course, when to step in and rescue and when to let him resolve the situation himself.

But beyond that, what I've become obsessed with lately is why y'all are holding out on me with some obviously key information. 

How do you juggle it all? What does everyone else know that I don't?

I work with three people who also have 2-year-olds. Two of them have 6-year-olds as well and the other has a newborn. And they're all doing great. They look good, they go to the gym, they talk about the books they are reading, the TV shows they are watching, the movies they see, the places they go, their weekend adventures ... you know, normal stuff people do. They make everything from scratch ... all organic and sustainable and perfect (which, in Australia, requires shopping at multiple stores because the regular markets don't swing that way). And I marvel. 

People think I'm anti-TV because I don't know any of the shows they talk about. I'm not. I love TV. I miss TV. I used to let reality drift away with hours spent binge watching old Law & Order episodes or Book TV on CSPAN.

My workouts now consist of 10-15 minutes of yoga in the morning and 100 crunches, and doing three sets of 40 squats while making dinner (fewer if I do these while holding M, because, whoa, he's getting heavy). I try to sneak away at lunch to get some treadmill time, but rarely do this more than twice a week.

I stream NPR, ABC (the Australian one, not the American one) and Ted Talks while I work to try and keep informed (the news) and inspired (the Ted Talks - this also counters the depressive nature of the news). But if it's not there, I most likely don't know about it.

I've met people in Oz I think could be friends, but when does one manage to sit down and have an uninterrupted conversation with someone to be able to get to know them? 

I feel like every day is a race. And every day I start it farther and farther behind. No one is getting the best of me ... not M, or B, or my employer, or me. I keep thinking, I'm so much better than this.

Writing this post has taken me almost three months now.

But you ... you look amazing and seem to have it all figured out. 

What. Is. Your. Secret? 

Seriously.

Zed isn't dead

The first time M sang the Alphabet Song, I rejoiced when he sang zee and not zed for the letter Z. 

I worked hard to imprint the zee in his little baby brain for a couple reasons. One, every time I hear someone say zed, I immediately think "Zed's dead, baby." And two, I wanted to win. My alphabet, my accent, my Americanisms. Which is wrong and silly and selfish, I know. He is, after all, a citizen of both countries.

But I was winning.

Then last Saturday, M said "Ta" (for the Americans, ta is a common Australianism for thank you and it rhymes with saw/ha/paw/pshaw).
I paused.
"What did you say?"
"Ta, mommy."
The hubs grins. "He said 'ta'."

I immediately started keeping a mental list of all the Australianisms M uses instead of Americanisms.

• bikkie (cookie)
• wee (pee)
• nappie (diaper)
• trolly (cart or shopping cart)
• jumper (sweater or sweatshirt ... actually, I'm not really sure about jumper, it seems to get used for a lot from pullover to coat and everything in between)
• sand pit (sand box)
• bin (garbage can or trash)
• morning tea (a snack in the morning)
• afternoon tea (a snack in the afternoon)
• cuddle (hug)

Clearly his vocabulary is limited to that of a toddler and what fills a toddler's day, but sheesh, the Australianism seemed to be taking over.

But I still had zee.

Then Thursday, when M sang the Alphabet Song, he sang zed. And I knew I had lost.

Zed isn't dead, baby. Zed isn't dead.

Right or liked?

I'm far from being a bastion of grammatical perfection, but I do try to put forth well-crafted sentences. For the past 10 years, my go to resource for all things writing has been the AP Style Guide (one space, not two after a period? If it's in the AP Style Guide it must be true). When I started work in Australia, I knew I needed help navigating the unique cultural mores of their written word. The Australian Associated Press Style Guide seemed the logical place to look.

I visited the AAP's website. No style guide listed.

I emailed them to ask about it. The reply was "we do not make our style guide available to the general public." 

WHA?!? Oh no. What to do? What to do? 

I wrote back, pleading my case as an ignorant American in a communications role with an Australian company. Could they recommend a grammar guide for me? "Yes."

Link clicked, ordered, shipped, received. Exhale.

It's a decent enough guide. Not as expansive as the AP version I treasure so, but solid and reliable. It even has a section called "Americanism - do not use".

Most of them are things you would expect. Avoid elevator (for lift), crib (for cot), color (for colour), center (for centre, and other such -er v. -re words), etc. However, one in particular surprised me. Change to the preferred Australian spelling, even when it's a proper noun. The example they gave was "Lincoln Center should be written as Lincoln Centre." I find this rule troubling, but moved on since I doubted my MarCom about aluminium (aluminum is another Americanism to avoid, don't 'cha know) would include the Lincoln Center/re.

Fast forward three weeks and I'm helping one of our brand managers write an eNewsletter. Our Intrack division designs, fabricates and installs flagpoles and sporting posts and Janelle wanted to include an article on flag protocol for Anzac Day. Perfectly sensible article choice. 

In the lead up to Anzac Day (today btw, which explains why I'm writing about writing and not at work actually writing), I'd seen it written as ANZAC and Anzac, with the former being by far the most common. As I reviewed Janelle's article, she had written ANZAC throughout and I was curious as to which was correct. Enter my new style guide. Flip, flip, flip, and ... "Anzac Day is written Anzac and not ANZAC." 

I corrected Janelle's copy to follow Anzac convention. However, I kept seeing eNewsletters, websites and other (not journalistic) writing that employed the ANZAC version. I asked Janelle about it.

Me: "I've looked it up and the correct way is Anzac, but everyone seems to write ANZAC. I want it to be correct, but I also don't want people unfamiliar with the rule to think we made an error."
Janelle: *long pause* "I think we need to go with what everyone else is doing."
Me: "Hmmm. It's a tough one, but you know your audience. Let's go with ANZAC. Hey, I've got another one for you. So, you know how you guys write your dates day/month/year and we write month/day/year?"
Janelle: "Yeah?"
Me: "Well, according to my style guide, it changes when the date is written out here. It's supposed to be month/day/year, like we do. So I would write 5/4/2013, but April 5, 2013. But I think if I do write it, people will think I'm just an ignorant American. But I want to do it correctly. What do you think."
Janelle: "Don't write April 5. People will instantly assume an American wrote it."
Me: "Doh."

I made peace with Anzac/ANZAC, but I'm really struggling with the date thing. I want to write it according to the guide, but then every time someone tries to correct it, I'll pull out the guide, launch into "according to my style guide" and correct their correction. Which will make me an annoying American.

Doh.

But why

A few odds and ends type questions about Australia(ns) that keep ping-ponging around in my brain ... 

1. Why do you call it "cotton wool"? There is no wool involved. It's a tightly spun ball of cotton ... which explains why we call it a "cotton ball".
2. Why are your power points/electrical outlets so few and far between and the cords on your electrical appliances so short? Reaching the whole house with the vacuum is quite a challenge and I routinely pull the cord out of the wall when trying to dry my hair.
3. Why the love for spray deodorant/antiperspirant? First and foremost, it doesn't work. And second, when I use it, it leaves a toxic cloud floating around the bathroom, I feel like I need to hold my breath or leave the room until the air clears.
4. Why are the showers so teeny-tiny? I barely have room to reach down and pumice my heels. Is it meant to encourage water conservation by keeping the shower as uninviting as possible? 
5. Roundabouts, the enemy of my daily commute. Why, why, why? No one seems to know what to do and they feel very wild, wild west.
6. Why are the apples so small? Do you have better control over the genetically modified fruit? Or is it a consequence of the different soil/water/sunlight from the Hood River apples I'm used to?
7. Why do you sing "a tissue a tissue" instead of "ashes ashes"?
8. Why don't you have pay at the pump for gas/petrol? I always thought pumping ones own gas/petrol had huge advantages in terms of time saved, however, all this is lost by forcing me to go inside to pay. I've got to get the baby out of his car seat, wait in line inside, pay, put the baby back in his car seat. Hugely inefficient use of time.
9. What is up with your Target? It is nothing like the store of awesomeness I knew in the US. Selection is low, prices are high and customer service does not exist.
10. Why don't your products have resealable/ziplock type bags? I actually wrote Mission Foods (hey, any tortilla is better than no tortilla) to find out why they didn't sell their tortillas with resealable ziplocks. The response was they were doing research to try and find a resealable option that maintained the quality of the product. Um, so you're telling me the quality of all your products sold in the US is compromised by their resealable ziplock?   

Just wondering.

Numbers game

Two stories are brewing in my brain at the moment.

The first one came from a friend. She was using a personal shopper at Nordstrom and complained to her about being between dress sizes and not wanting to go up to the next dress size. She asked the shopper to find clothes that fit her, but were in the smaller size (ie, designers whose clothing lines tended to run slightly larger). The personal shopper responded with "it's just a number, it doesn't define who you are". My friend was not swayed. If she loved everything about a clothing item (color, style, fit), but it was the larger size, she would not buy it. Ever. Period.

The second one came from a gossip piece I read about Kirstie Alley during her Veronica's Closet days. Rumor had it, she required the wardrobe lady to remove clothing size labels from all her clothes for the show and sew in size 10 labels. I have no idea if it's true or not, but it sounds believable in a harmlessly crazy Kirstie Alley kind of way.

Why am I currently noodling these two notions you ask. Australian women's sizes run two sizes larger than American sizes. I went up two dress sizes literally overnight (and by overnight, I mean in an 18 hour flight).

Starting a new job meant rebuilding my work wardrobe and I have been loathe to buy things two sizes larger than my size. Shopping has left me feeling fat and depressed (my new bra size almost brought me to tears, but that's a whole other story), even though my measurements are exactly the same and my clothes from the US still fit the same.

I know, it's ridiculous and irrelevant and a fabricated construct, but I carry a lot of emotional baggage about my clothing size. 

In my experience, most women do. We have that mythical number branded on their brain of "when I am a size *, I will be happy with my body and love the way I look." That number represents success. That number will bring confidence. That number means we can stop fretting and start living.

While I may not have loved my body and still worked towards improvement, I did like my number. I do not like my new number. I'm actually ashamed of it and I found myself hesitating to tell the sales ladies when they came to help me. Which, as I said before, is ridiculous.

Fortunately, clothes are so outrageously priced here, I think I can order from Nordstrom and have everything shipped in my proper size for less. Because that's a much better solution than addressing my lifelong demons around body image.

Or, I may soon be in search of a seamstress who will tiptoe into my closet at night and secretly replace all the clothing size labels.

How do you do that laundry voodoo

A couple weeks ago, I marked the six month anniversary of our move to Australia and the launch of my Australian (mis)adventures. Six months gone and I still have a long list of things to figure out. A few at the top of the list include driving (my international license expires in June), the education system (just learned we have to register M for "4-year kindy" when he turns two in April), the lingo and the medical system (oi, don't get me started).

Also at the top of my laundry list of "to do" items is laundry.

I know how to do laundry. I've been sorting and folding for 30-some years and I have the gist of things. The problem is line drying.

Every Australian has a clothesline. Not every Australian has a clothes dryer. I've never liked line dried laundry. It always felt hard and crunchy and rough. Additionally, I never knew anyone who used line drying to the exclusion of a clothes dryer. Sure, people would hang up towels and swimsuits and such in the summer, but real laundry required a real dryer.

When we first moved, we stayed in a holiday house. It had a clothes washer, but no dryer. I muddled through and tried to soften the fabrics up as much as possible and kept reminding myself it was just temporary.

Once we settled on a permanent residence, my first purchases were a refrigerator  clothes washer and clothes dryer. The laundry room didn't have space for a dryer, so it sits a bit precariously on top of the washer, but I was determined to make it work.

My clothes dryer and I have hummed blissfully along for several months, but now it's summer. When the temperature tops 25 C (~78 F), it feels wrong and wasteful to use the clothes dryer. When it tips over 35 C, it feels downright immoral (wasteful, irresponsible, etc.).

So, I've been trying really really hard to fix the things I don't like about line dried laundry, but I'm struggling and need advice.

1. How do you keep the fabric from feeling rough and crunchy?
Seriously, using a bath towel feels like I'm exfoliating my skin. I've experimented with different fabric softeners. I've tried periodically shaking the fabrics and fluffing the clothes during the drying process. Nothing seems to help. Y'all must have some secret laundry voodoo for keeping your fabric soft. TELL ME WHAT IT IS.

2. How do you hang large items?
Bedding? How do you keep it from touching the ground? I've resorted to pinning them in multiple places, creating a sort of draping effect, but this takes up lots of lines and limits the ability to dry much else at the same time. Are their special large item hanging tricks? Do you resign yourself to not being able to wash anything else on days you wash the bedding?

3. Spiders?
How do you keep spiders from making webs all over the clothesline? Or, ickier yet, from making a spidie hidie hole inside your sock?

4. Time, time, time
I am blessed to be home full time with M and even sans professional job, I struggle to make time to get done all I need to get done in a day. Adding hanging, fluffing and bringing in of the laundry to everyday feels overwhelming. And I do several loads of laundry everyday. For the days when the summer heat isn't full on, I cannot line dry more than one load a day. I can't figure the math on this one. If one doesn't use a dryer, how does one ever get caught up?

Yes, I know this is whiny. And a first world problem. I'm open to doing more line drying, I just need a little supportive advice on how to make it work.

These pretzels are making me thirsty

I'm learning to make junk food I can't find in Australia. My latest conquest? Chocolate covered pretzels.

Crazy right?! I think if Australians knew how awesomely delicious chocolate covered pretzels are, they'd demand them, but you can't miss something you've never had and, as far as I can tell, they've never had them here (I heard a rumor that Costco carried the peanut butter pretzels at one time, but no more).

So I made my own. I emailed a former coworker who would make them for the office every Christmas to get tips, looked up a few more tips online and, voila, I was on my way to dark chocolaty  salty, crunchy goodness.

While waiting for the chocolate to melt, I read the pretzel package (what can I say, I love words and I find content development on consumer packaging Riv-et-ing! For real.). And the copy on the Parker's Baked Wheat Mini Pretzels did not disappoint. They did a fantastic job tapping into Aussie sensibilities, in particular, the oft referred to/spoken of/blamed "tall poppy syndrome". It was explained to me that they want everyone to do/be well, but no one to rise above the crowd in terms of excellence or success. If someone does, the "tall poppy" risks being "cut down". (Of course Americans enjoy seeing someone come crashing to the ground in a hot mess of scandal and tragedy, but we also wholeheartedly believe in the American Dream and the ability of the every man/woman to reach the pinnacle of success through creativity and hard work.)

Make no mistake, Parker's Bakes Wheat Mini Pretzels are no tall poppy. They are a perfectly respectable pretzel ... and nothing more ... summed up gorgeously in one line:

"We've been doing it for over 15 years and by now we've really got the hang of it."

The first thing that caught my attention was they wrote "over" instead of the grammatically correct "more than", but once I set that aside, I pondered two things. One, that they've only been in business for 15 years (I think US pretzel companies lean more towards the century mark). And two, they're bragging about getting "the hang of it".

I know, it's contemporary and all "awe shucks-ie" and colloquial, but beyond that, it eludes the tall poppy police and communicates to the consumer, we're crunchy, we're salty, we're an entirely adequate snack food option ... if you're so inclined.

One other thing on the packaging drew me in and in four little words punctuated how totally different Australia is from the US. It was the "please don't little" message. I was so struck by it, I immediately took the chocolate off the steam and ran into the office where B was working to point it out to him.

Me: "Look at this. The stop litter message is 'help keep Australia tidy'. Tidy!! That's your inspirational, aspirational tagline? Help keep Australia tidy?"

B: Blank stare 

Me: "I mean, ours is 'keep American beautiful', it instills pride, it evokes emotion ... it, it ... it doesn't make you think of your mom telling you to tidy up your bedroom."

B: "No, it's good. It says, you know, if you can, keep things tidy, pick up after yourself, do your part. Besides, what about the parts of the US that aren't beautiful?"

Me: "Well, we can't help Texas. But the rest of us, we want to keep things beautiful, not merely tidy."

B: "Tidy is good. It's easy, it's simple, it's achievable. It isn't trying too hard; it's trying just enough."

Me: "And that's acceptable? Just enough?"

So, the US is Auntie Mame telling us to live robustly and fill up at life's banquet, while Australia is a mom telling us to always wear clean underwear in case we get in a car accident. 

And maybe they have a point. Maybe Australians are the tortoise to the American hare? Work/life balance is a real thing here. Antacids come in tiny little bottles (I used to buy the 500 tablet bulk pack) with only two brands on the shelf. Maternity leave is 12 months. People take vacations and don't work during them.They have universal healthcare and invest significantly in prevention and wellness (seen their cigarette packaging? Yowza). They never went into recession and their unemployment rate is hovering around 5 percent.

Maybe ... but my 40+ years as an American makes it hard for me to think anything other than work harder, work faster, do more, be more, accomplish more, help more. Fill up at life's banquet.

And all this from a bag of pretzels  which, by the way, evolved from entirely adequate to sublimely yummy when covered with dark chocolate.