Tuckshop – there’s a reason it’s called “duty”

By Thursday, August 11, 2011 30 Family No tags Permalink 0

I’ve just arrived home after doing my monthly tuckshop duty at my son’s school. And by monthly, I mean those months when I can’t manufacture a plausible excuse for wagging. (BTW, being school-related, wagging is a totally appropriate term for getting out of tuckshop.)

Still, instead of looking at it as 6 hours I’ll never get back, I have decided to make productive use of today’s tuckshop duty.  For those who are new to it, I have prepared the definitive guide to doing tuckshop.

A couple of notes first:

  1. I live in Brisbane. We call it tuckshop here, which abbreviates nicely to tucky. You may call it canteen. Canteen has no acceptable abbreviation. Canty is stupid.
  2. Most tuckshop volunteers are mothers. I will be using the term “tuckshop mums’. Please look away if you are a Tuckshop dad/aunt/grandmother/gestational carrier…

So, here we go:

  1. There is a reason it’s called “duty”. Notice how it is referred to as “doing tuckshop” or “being on tuckshop”. It’s no coincidence that the same terminology is applied to “doing time”, “being on parole”…
  2. You will be filled with eager anticipation the first time you do tuckshop duty. You will be filled with dread every month thereafter.
  3. There are two kinds of tuckshop convenors. The first (and most common) is called Colleen or similar, and is scary as shit. Colleen has been there for 18 years, and anyone who suggests changes to the way things are done is, as my Grandpa used to say, suffering from stupidity. Colleen directs proceedings from a vinyl stool next to the pie warmer. Colleen will give a clip over the ear to any boy who doesn’t remove his hat when he enters the tuckshop.

    "Colleen"

  4. The other type of convenor is called Felicity or similar, and volunteered to take over  when Colleen retired. Felicity will name the tuckshop “the Classroom Cafe” and have a logo designed. Felicity will have the enthusiasm of a Masterchef judge – “Come on girls, let’s shake up this school!” As a result of replacing sausage rolls with quinoia wraps, Felicity will last one term.

    "Felicity"

  5. There will be one tucky mum who will drive you mental because she won’t shut up.
  6. Even though you totally support the Red/Orange/Green food system, you will be desperately disappointed that tuckshops no longer sell Space Bars, Boston Buns or Sunny Boy Glugs.
  7. Your child will appear at the counter 13 times for food for himself and his friends. This will come to approximately $79 by the end of the day.
  8. You will spend another $13 making up the deficit for kids who are 10c short for their lunch.
  9. You will be stupidly excited that you get to use the teacher’s toilet.
  10. You will spend an inordinate amount of time perving at the hot Year 6 teacher. He will have been born in the 90s.
  11. No-one will buy the homebaked stuff.
  12. At least 3 kids will bring in their orders after you’ve finished bagging them up.
  13. 1 order will have no money in it. Colleen will say “Bad luck. He has to learn.” Felicity will pay for it herself.
  14. 2 orders will have no names on them.
  15. You will have a hotdog for lunch.
  16. One smartarse kid will pay for a 50c ice block with a $100 note. Obviously you will give him his change in 5c pieces.
  17. The kids will call you “Miss”, and you will feel about 100.
  18. The money from the kids will be sticky.
  19. You will sell an apple Popper 200 times, but you will not remember the price.
  20. You will need a calculator to add up $1.70 and 90c.
  21. You will come away with important intelligence on teachers and other parents. And therein lies the reason for doing tuckshop.

What can you add to the list?

 

Would you like a puppy with that?

By Thursday, August 4, 2011 20 Dogs, Family, The Councillor No tags Permalink 0

So a couple of months ago I went to do the groceries, and I accidentally bought a puppy.

Can you blame me?

It’s fair to say that I am occasionally guilty of the odd impulse purchase. Maybe a bit more than occasionally. But I will admit I outdid myself this time.

Especially because there were a truckload of reasons why it wasn’t a good idea to come home with a puppy instead of the groceries.

1. There was bugger-all food in the house – breakfast the next day was looking like 2-minute noodles.

2. You know how there are dog people? I am not dog people. That’d be the Councillor (which was kind of what I was counting on…)

3. We already had a dog – Maxie, the world’s most annoying dog.

Maxie

4. Maxie was the result of the Councillor and Joe going to the movies 3 years ago, and coming home with a dog. For which I still haven’t forgiven him. I know, right? And here’s me doing the same thing.

5. He cost… umm… a bit.  More than the groceries. But he was a labrador (ok, allegedly a labrador) with a teeny bit of cattle dog in him. So he was a bargain. Right?

So in the true spirit of the impulse purchase I reminded myself of all the reasons we totally needed another dog.

1. Maxie needed a friend.

2. Nope, I’ve got nothing else.

So I arrived home with a black labrador. The kids googled “dog names”, and we named him Leo.

As it turns out, now that Leo is with us, he’s provided us with a truckload of additional reasons for not getting another dog.

1.  Leo is a Labrador. Leo eats like a Labrador. That is, his whole reason for being is to eat. Anything. In a nano-second. This includes Maxie’s food.  Maxie is a mini-foxie.  He’s all “meh” about eating.  We will put food in his bowl, and he will treat the bowl like a 7-11, swinging by when he needs a quick snack, knowing it’ll be open all hours. With Leo here, that system isn’t working so well for Maxie. He is learning it’s the quick or the dead when it comes to food.

2.  Leo will, literally, eat anything. Last weekend, he ate so much of the cane outdoor furniture that he vomited cane.

3.  Leo ate Maxie’s kennel.

Dinner

4.  Leo eats the washing.  And washing baskets. Pegs not so much – by then he’s probably full.

As the owner of a mini-foxie, it never occurred to me that I would one day need a strategy when it came to hanging out the washing.

As the owner of a Labrador, I now know that only a FOOL would hang a towel vertically. And that only a moron would let shirt sleeves hang down. But despite learning (quickly) to double-peg a sleeve, evidently labradors have super powers that enable them to leap to unimaginable heights to secure a tasty singlet. I know we’re supposed to avoid using the clothes dryer for the sake of the freaking planet, but at this rate The Councillor will be going to official functions in crop tops that were formerly business shirts.

5.  Leo and Max are outside dogs. Despite what they think. Unfortunately for the garden-proud Councillor, this means that “outside” now looks like a lunar landscape.

6.  Leo and Max like to play. Like toddlers however, it pretty much always ends in tears. Yesterday they were fighting over a stick, and I actually said to them “stop it or one of you will lose an eye’.

7.  Notwithstanding the outside dog thing, we appear to have created a routine wherein we allow the dogs to join the family in the living room for a short time in the evening. Because we are idiots.  When the dogs enter the house, it sounds like the Charge of the Light Brigade is coming across the timber floors. They run at the speed of light and literally – I’m serious – FLY OVER the coffee table onto the sofa. They are like canine F18 jets. Anyone unlucky enough to be sitting where a dog lands will pay the price. Especially if it’s Leo launching himself towards you. Because as The Councillor discovered to his considerable detriment, 18kg of excited black labrador puppy is NOT what you want hurtling into your lap at warp speed.

Leo was an impulse buy, yes. Were we ready for him? No. Did we need another dog? A hundred times no.

But is he a much-loved family member? Absolutely. And I haven’t had a single moment of buyer’s remorse. Except for maybe the cane vomit.

What was your most spectacular impulse purchase?

I am sooooo not an outside dog.

* I totally understand the arguments against buying animals from pet shops. Really, I do. But I honestly don’t believe that *not* giving pet shop animals a home is the solution to puppy and kitten farms. Whatever the solution, it can’t be leaving animals in glass boxes in shopping centres. We have always had rescue dogs, and I hope we will again. 

 

My drug of choice – Ikea

By Tuesday, August 2, 2011 16 Uncategorized No tags Permalink 0

Essential Reading

Once, in an Ikea checkout queue, I stood behind a girl buying a coffee mug.

One coffee mug. Clearly, she didn’t get it. And by “it”, I mean the imperative to buy 35 things you don’t need. And obviously the one thing you do actually need. Which won’t be in stock.

But I digress.  One coffee mug just isn’t doing justice to the phenomenon of Ikea Insanity – a sickness that must surely be recognised by the medical fraternity soon.

Who hasn’t found the Ikea catalogue in the letterbox and skipped inside singing “Happy Days Are Here Again!”, made a coffee/tea/alcoholic beverage, instructed the kids to keep outside a 10 metre exclusion zone, and meticulously worked their way through The. Best. Catalogue. Ever.  Ok, that may just have been me.

Still. Who hasn’t walked into what we in Brisbane know as “Sweden of the South” (Ikea being located in a suburb south of the CBD) and not known the inexplicable but inevitable urge to buy

  • storage boxes in a variety of sizes (hello, it’s Ikea. Obviously you’ll buy storage boxes)
  • kitchen utensils (that you already own but that aren’t as pretty)
  • cushions with Nordic prints embroidered onto them (because how good do they look in that display!)
  • bags of straws (they’re Swedish so derr, they’re better)
  • a selection of photo frames (because a wall of family photos in random frames is so now)
  • a set of file trays (because that will get you started on setting up a home office)

The fact that you specifically journeyed to Ikea to buy an Expedit Shelving Unit is inconsequential.  You will need a Färgrik Mellan plate and set of Chosigt funnels every bit as much. Only you didn’t know it.

I felt like tapping One Mug Girl on the shoulder and asking her where the rest of her stuff was. Was she just barring a place in the checkout queue (which is a whole ‘nother issue…) waiting for her boyfriend to arrive with a trolley full of Galej tealight holders and a bulk load of Punktlig napkins (because they’re just so freaking cheap!). But no, it appeared she truly had just taken the two-hour (at least), one-way (and only one-way, people!) journey through the suburb-sized structure that is Ikea. For a mug. Amateur.

Ikea isn’t my only retail crack. I am the same with Officeworks, Kikki-K, Aldi, and chemists.  And I have the 23 different sizes of post-it notes, half a dozen stylish journals, a pantry full of German mini-meringues and animal crackers, and a drawer full of eyeliner and $1.99 nail polish to prove it.

Which retailers draw you in, cult-like?