A day in the life of a working Mum ...

So, I return home after a day of filming in the most sublime home I have ever entered! Limewashed 1800mm floor boards (so i'm told by the zen massage therapist Mum, Amy), natural-light flooded lounge room, dining, kitchen, deck and pool area (gulp), over sized neutral coloured low set lounges perfectly placed on a sisal rug and fronting a superb glass and wood coffee table, boasting home style magazines and fresh gardenia's ... oh, my favourite flower! A family home to Mum, Dad and 3 boys - 18mths, 3 and 5!! Yep, she must be busy!

A photo from one lounge to another and out to the pool and deck. Gorgeous huh?

Looking toward the kitchen where we all hovered over a gourmet lunch ... and dumped all of our junk!

A beautiful home filled with a film crew turns it into a beautiful .... mess!

On set, behind the scenes.

Anyway, back to returning home .... to the babysitter who happens to be my God daughter, her sister Bek and her friend Honey, along with my two kids. There was silence as I opened the door - not what I expected! And the first thing I wondered was "did she have the courage to do what I thought about doing this morning and actually shove a pillow over their screaming heads for 5 minutes?". The usual smell of old floorboards hit me instantly and sent my mind racing back to dream home and the smell of fresh gardenias from her perfectly manicured garden! But today that old floorboard smell was combined withe the aroma of a home cooked spaghetti bollognaise that I had prepared this morning and put in the slow cooker! Yes I finally used the slow cooker and it worked! I crept inside, arms loaded with the 10 different outfits I had taken with me and hadn't used, and my heavy, clunky footsteps from wearing my new dusty blue suede boots were just a little obvious which resulted in a chorus of "Mama, mama, mama" and 4 feet came running toward me.

I kissed and hugged, said my hello's, "yum dinner smells good" etc etc.... and then I realised I hadn't fed the chooks this morning. Beautiful, Pecky and Chubby are our recent additions, and they free range in our suburban back yard.

Beautiful, Pecky and Chubby free ranging.

They are really quite cute under their ugliness (Isa Browns) but the mess of sloppy blobs of poo on my back deck, outside the back door and over my table - yes, that's a perch you see - makes me wonder if they're best served as the "chicken" part of a Sunday champagne and chicken brunch with my girlfriends! Anyhow, usually when I forget to feed the chooks, they sit at the back door, lined up side by side, looking in through the glass, awaiting our arrival. Kind of like a dog without a bark, but with a beak.... and feathers. But today I was home later... 5.30pm in fact, and it was nearing dark and there was no sign of B,P & C.

The chicken coup where they sleep at night

Perhaps they had felt ignored by the kids and had their noses out of joint? Do chooks have noses? So, I raced out to try and find them as the thought of losing one to the neighbors cat (like almost happened a week ago - that will be another post!) was too much to stomach right now! And I heard them chirping, or quacking or whatever the noise is they make, but just couldn't see them. It came from 7 ft up on/in the overgrown Moraya tree in our yard. And there, through foilage and dusk light, I saw the silhouette of our 3 chooks teetering on a branch and looking over the fence into our neighbors yard! They had no idea what a death wish that was!!! HELP!! There was no way I could have reached them as i'm only 5'6,  so I called for amazon woman (oops, that would be my super tall God Daughter, Jess) to come running. I grabbed the fishing net (provided to me by Steve the bunny man to help in catching the free ranging  rabbit! Did you know that rabbits only have a memory of 48 hrs, so if you don't handle them regularly, they completely forget they've ever been handled, and kick, and buck and scratch to try and escape your embrace?? That's why we have the net!) and threw it to Jess and screamed "try and trap them in the net - they're up the tree". The chooks felt the commotion and started to panic. They fluffed their wings and sqwarked (yes that's the noise they make!). Jess was on her tippy toes, balancing on a cut down tree stump for extra height - that made her at least 2 ft taller than me. I ran around the back of the tree, through Nibble's pile of poo we call "poo land" and under neath the tree and called out to Jess "I'll try to give them a shove up and into the net". I had images of myself being shat on from great heights, but continued with the mission of reaching up and through the leafy bush to shove them toward Jess. She announced "I've got one", and as I looked, I saw her single handedly pulling a chicken out of the bushes and passing it to Georgia, who stood enthusiastically by her side as "super woman" eagerly wanting to help! Georgia grabbed it in two arms and held on tight as Jess went back for round 2. In she went, grabbed Chubby just by the wing and I heard her say quietly "oh, sorry" (cute huh?) and dragged the sqwarking thing down and I ran around to take it from her. "One more to go Jess" I hollered, as I promptly threw Chubby into the coup, followed by Pecky. And with a flutter of feathers and a few squeals from me, Beautiful landed on the ground at Georgia's feet and took off under the garden bench seat to hide. I was almost panting by this stage as the tension and chaos was so great. I think what got me so worked up was the potential threat of the chooks swan diving in to the neighbours yard and becoming a mass pile of feathers and blood ... and how would I explain that to the kids? The three of us worked like border collies, rounding up this thing until we had it cornered and Georgia dived in to grab it and put it with its flock.

Chasing a chook!

Phew!! (Can you hear my heart beating?). Mission accomplished, 3 chooks safe and sound in their coup, just on dark.We could all relax now, so one by one, we trotted back inside to go back to our evening. "What's for dinner?" I thought .... "Chicken perhaps?". Oh, I couldn't ...... "That's right, spag bol is in the slow cooker!".

Looks yum doesn't it?

PS: The net is stuck in the bushes!  Photo taken the following day, in day light!