Homeschooling is a bit like childbirth...
I realised this with some distress the other day. You get through it once, your memory fades, your glasses get rosy, and your recollection suggests that it wasn't so bad. In fact, it was pretty good. Fulfilling. Triumphal.And then someone suggests, seeing as you enjoyed it so much the first time, you should do it again. And just like those really big, somewhat forgotten contractions, the ones when you realise, 'Up until this point we have just been practicing, now we are going to produce a baby-in-the-world,' you start to remember what it was really like. And you start to realise that perhaps it wasn't as good as you recall. Here's how homeschool day one went for us: 9am - By some miracle all...
Freedom day and other furphies
I'll make you a promise. After this email I shall refrain from mentioning the words "freedom day" any more. In Sydney, we're 48 hours in, and already I'm irritated and fed up with the notion. Mostly because it is a notion that affects different sectors in society in vastly different ways.Hands up those homeschooling their junior recipe testers? And leave your hands up if your life looks vastly different this week to last week? Anyone??Unlike last week, on freedom Monday, the junior recipe testers presented the senior recipe tester and I with a large list. The list contained a vast array of items, including some of which I had never heard, they required for science day this week.We will need to procure these...
The problem with rules
Students have had a rough year. And so we think they need a survival pack: to assist study and power them up. Melbourne & Sydney meal delivery.
The very best of things
Photography by alexandermayesphotography This is not my story. This is a story that one of our lovely, long time customers shared with me the other day. Last Saturday, they ordered a cheese & antipasto box, along with a bunch of dinners, which we delivered to them. There was no particular occasion. They just decided to have a special night in.And so, this family dressed in their finery, listened to music, chatted, ate a delicious meal and enjoyed being together. It lifted their spirits, as they celebrated the near-end of the school term, and the joys that can be found in hanging out with the same group of people day after day.We know that occasions are not made by the food you...
Two eyebrows, health and hope. Happy New Year!
COVID19 taught us many things. But there are hidden horrors of lockdown of which we rarely speak.
Special home delivery: A different Mother's Day
We're three mums coming together to help you care for your mum. And we're changing the daily lives of mums with intellectual disability at the same time.
My career change to security hacker
I hadn't particularly been contemplating a career change. I certainly hadn't considered my skills as a security hacker. At the time I was only interested in taking the junior recipe testers to the Easter Show. Turns out I have a hidden talent...
Australia's Biggest (and most beautiful!) Morning Tea
Sydney catering company Dinner on the Table hosted an Australia's Biggest (and most beautiful!) Morning Tea event last Thursday in collaboration with the Hills Super Centre. We raised money for cancer research, delivered ready made meals for families living with disability, and ate a beautiful morning tea together.
Pinterest girl wannabe
I am not a natural Pinterest girl. I am a Pinterest girl wannabe. I do like a good hair-brained scheme, and I am learning that Pinterest is a veritable treasure trove of creative ideas. And, some years after I created a Pinterest profile I can now reliably pin something and find it again later.
This weekend we hosted a sleepover birthday party for a newly 9 year old junior recipe tester. Quite late in the planning I thought it would be fun to turn our lounge room, into which 7 juniors were sardined, into a tent. Turns out that tent pegs and carpet aren't a thing, and so I settled for the creation of a canopy instead.
How hard could it be?
The five stages of exiting
In 1969, pre-eminent psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published her model of grief, popularly known as the five stages of grief. The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Recently, it has occurred to me that this model not only applies to the experience of illness and dying. It is equally descriptive when considering the five stages of exiting the house in the morning. Upon this realisation, I began conducting my own empirical studies, approximately 4-5 times a week. The study, an action research project in which I am an unwilling and entrapped participant, commences usually just after breakfast, sometime between 7.20 and 7.30 each morning. It is at this time that I announce to the junior recipe testers what time we will depart for their...