Boxing Day

EARLIER in the week I was walking around the supermarket in a trance, looking for inspiration for a dish to take to yet another festive gathering.
Spotted by a friend, I admitted I had run out of ideas. ``Me, too," she confessed.
We workshopped the dilemma in the biscuit aisle. She reached for the Marie biscuits to make some golf balls. I opted for a Chocolate Ripple cake. Problem solved.
If only all the anxiety wrapped up with Christmas could be so easily resolved.
Roll on Boxing Day, I thought to myself as the week progressed.
True, Christmas is a magical time of year.
But after weeks of emotional kinder and creche farewells, carol singing and social gatherings, not to mention trying to pick a little something for everyone from the Lollipop man to the choirmaster, my brain's in overdrive.
Then there's Christmas Day with its simmering tensions. Omissions that would be overlooked 364 days of the year take on mammoth proportions.
People arriving late and holding up the proceedings. Strained relations and overtired kids. And that's before the champagne corks start popping.
While Boxing Day might owe its origins to a time when servants got a day off, armed with boxes of goodies courtesy of their rich bosses, there'll be little respite for most of us.
I might be on holiday for the next few weeks but there's going to be days when I feel like I have knocked off work to carry bricks.
There are five whole weeks of school holidays stretching before us and no plans for an extended break.
While it's great not to be running against the clock all day and ferrying kids to out-of-school activities, I love packing school lunches.
I am not around so I don't hear them whinging about what's on offer. If they are hungry enough they will eat it.
But during the holidays, feeding the kids healthy food is one of the greatest challenges.
After weeks of sausage sizzles we've had our fill of snags. While there has been plenty of lovely seasonal fruit, nary a vegetable has passed their lips. Unless you count tomato sauce, that is, and it's technically a fruit.
Those without children, will say we should enjoy them while they are happy to be seen within a metre of us.
But many of us noughties parents have created a rod for our own backs. We get out and about with our kids too much. They can't play on the streets like we did.
Most mornings we are met with a chorus of ``what are we going to do today?''
It doesn't have to cost a lot of money, but it means we are on the go the whole time.
The upside is that they are not sitting in front of a computer or a TV all holidays.
Us multi-tasking Mums, who claim to have pulled off the whole Christmas extravaganza without any assistance from our husbands, will be looking for a break to chew on our burnt chops.
The menfolk will be desperate to get to the MCG today for the Boxing Day Test.
My husband spent the first three days of the school holidays child wrangling, taking them to movies, the pool and Christmas shopping. Only a man could think you could get anything done at a crowded shopping centre with three kids in tow. But that's another story.
In a moment of weakness I suggested he might like to go to the cricket.
He was hesitant because he knows that for the duration of the holidays, whenever things go pear-shaped, I will be reminding him that he went to the cricket while I finished off the Christmas visits.
Many of us, employing the skills of a high level diplomat so we didn't have to traipse around the country to see all our family and friends yesterday, will be piling into the car and heading off to sit down in front of another heaving Christmas spread. Another round of turkey, pork, pud and trifle to keep the family peace, but what about my waistline?
While the doorbuster Boxing Day sales of recent years have been scaled back, there will be some of us who feel we didn't give our credit card a good enough workout in the lead-up to Christmas. Too many bargains is never enough. And it doesn't matter that the present cupboard is already bulging.
Then there will be tears. The faulty toys that don't work and have to be brought back and snaking return queues that will make Mum and Dad feel like crying.
Worse still will be the recognition that you have to fork out $15 in batteries to get the $10 Tinkerbell walkie talkies given to the five-year-old to work.
Then there are hours spent wrestling with the instructions for a toy that have apparently been written by a nuclear scientist.
Having painfully constructed a scale-model replica of the Statue of Liberty, you find the torch is missing.
Or, as a friend learned, the money gifted to her in a card was thrown out with the wrapping paper. At least that's what her famously tight-wad aunt claimed must have happened.
Then there are the plain bad taste presents. Best not to even give them a home. Box them up and send them off to the op shop.
A friend reminded me of the set of awful towels she received which included a lovely note - to the intended recipient who had then given them to her.
Re-gifting is great if its going to a charity or a school fundraiser.
By tomorrow we'll have put a big dent in the turkey, ham and pudding leftovers. But then we'll turn out attention to New Year's Eve.
Oh, and another dish to think about preparing.
And then there's the New Year's resolutions.
Learning to say ``no'' might be a good one.
``No'' to a second slice of Chocolate Ripple cake. ``No'' to another glass of wine.
And, importantly, NOwhere when the kids ask where they are going today.

It's all down hill from here ....

Claire Heaney
THE other night as I lay in bed I felt old age creeping up on me.
As I was ruminating about the advance of middle age, my husband rolled over and began to snore.
Yeah, I know all that stuff about age just being a number but there's been a whole heap of little things that have all added up to make me feel, well, old.
Like deciding how we would mark my husband's looming half century when he insisted there was to be no party.
The kids and I hatched a plan to spend his birthday at Australia Zoo, on the Sunshine Coast, last week.
While some 50-year-olds might be quaffing Penfolds Grange, I figured with three kids aged 5, 8 and 10, he can do that for his 70th.
Luckily, Terri Irwin was having a bash for young Bob's 6th birthday which meant, among other things, free entry for kids and a chance for all of us to get in touch with our inner-child.
That organised, I headed to the letterbox to find there was a letter addressed to him from Australian Pensioners' Insurance Agency inviting him to ring and get a quote now that he was approaching that magic age.
Then, I was doing some online quotes for travel insurance for a holiday next year. When all travellers were 49 years or under the quote was $344. But when I adjusted it to reflect my husband's new age the quote jumped to $463.
Along the way, there have been the Facebook updates from a friend who has just returned from Bangkok where she underwent a face and neck lift.
We had a farewell lunch for her, feeling a bit queasy as she outlined her chosen path to eternal youth.
Weeks after the cut-price procedure she sent me a picture with the caption ``still cooking''. Given I can't even chop up meat, her entertaining but vivid descriptions scared the heck out of me.
I was talking to another friend about it and she did remind me that at a certain age a woman has to decide whether she is going to save her face or her body.
Sadly, as I caught sight of myself under what I regard as extremely unforgiving lights at a public toilet I was pretty sure I was losing the battle on that front. Then the next day at my all too infrequent fitness sessions my niggling hammy started playing up so I had to adjourn for coffee and cake.
When my youngest turned five last week I had mixed emotions. At 45 I feel far too old to have a little one about to start school. But, I am reminding myself that there are some upsides.
These kids will keep me young. And, I don't care if I never eat at a top notch restaurant or drink a bottle of wine that costs more than $15 again.
And while my dressing style is on the conservative side, I am not wearing the Osti-style dresses my mum was getting around in at my age.
But, just quietly, I have been talked into an information session outlining the benefits of non-invasive skin product, promising to iron out some of those emerging lines.
In the meantime, my husband's too busy playing with his new toy, an iPod, and organising golf lessons he's been putting off for 18 years that I know of.
So, just maybe, life does begin at 50.