Much of what you hear

today will have been about one of two things, depending where you live. If you are in Queensland (or have loved ones there as I do) then your discussions will have been heavily focused on Yasi and the terror it appears will be caused by this mass of whirling cloud and chaos. If you live in Victoria it will have been about the third day in a row of phenomenal heat.

Usually when people talk about the weather it is merely small talk. "Oh hasn't it been hot lately". "Yes, yes it has." (when in their minds they are thinking hmmm I really have nothing to talk about with this person so what is something innocuous that won't inspire a debate that I'm really not prepared or interested in entering into - oh yes, the weather, that'll do). Today however any talk of the weather involves people actually taking a keen interest in it. What is Yasi doing? Is it moving northwards still, or is it veering back down south? Information pages are popping up on facebook and links to press conferences dot the news feed. Everyone wants to know, because six degrees of separation everyone knows someone who in one way or another will be affected.

The floods were one thing. One huge, massive, horrid thing. Cyclone Anthony was another thing, a category 2 thing. And now Yasi has to get his 2 cents worth in. They say it goes in threes. Theoretically this should be it for poor battered Queensland.

And so my thoughts are never far away from Mackay and my loved ones (or one to be precise), however I and the kids are here. And we carry on with our lives because the kids have no inkling as to what's going on up there, and mummy will just keep that to herself because they don't need to know and quite simply they just wouldn't understand.

Here, today, was a mummy's dream day. It was very very hot, and very windy. It was, as you mummy's out there will relate to, a "perfect drying day". Who knew that that phrase would ever become part of my vocabulary?? So of course I did the mum thing and stripped all the beds and washed all the towels and by 9 am I had 3 loads of washing done and two hung out. I was on fire.

As always I learned some lessons today.

1. If it is a perfect drying day that involves wind, leaving the empty laundry basket underneath the clothes line is not a good idea when you are living on a property.

2. It is excellent exercise to go searching for a missing laundry basket in 39 degree heat as you build up a good sweat.

3. Much as a bucket of clothes pegs may LOOK heavy, strong winds do have the ability to upend said bucket and spread pegs remarkably far.

4. On "perfect drying days" you need more than 2 pegs to hold a sheet to the clothes line.

5. The 10 second rule applies to sheets that have flown off the clothes line.

I'm off to start another essay because I am quite obviously a glutton for punishment.

If you find yourself in the path of Yasi, my thoughts are with you. And will continue to be until he (or she, I haven't quite worked that one out yet) has dissipated into a mere cough of a breeze inland.

And may all your children sleep through. Amen.