There comes a time in a person’s life when they have to take a risk, do something wild and crazy... something irresponsible and DANGEROUS! Yeah, baby!

And that’s why I was driving to Brisbane on the holidays with a sleep-deprived brain, and three kids in the car. Drop us in to three lanes of congested traffic interspersed with roadworks, comprising commuters, holiday makers hell-bent on getting to their destination at warp speed, and just some drivers accidentally sucked in from their suburban puttering… and you’ll imagine the excitement I was faced with.

You see, I’ve had such a deficit of sleep from the wonders of raising a babe that sometimes if we sit for too long at the dinner table saying grace, I would feel my eyes roll back to the darkness of Sleepy-bobo Land and I’d have to jerk my head up from falling into my mashed potatoes.

So anyway, having this frame of mind, it seemed natural to embark on the extreme sport known as Travelling to the City When Tired. Being well rested is way over-rated, so I hear. What I needed were nerves that are sharp, on edge, and reflexes that are ready to jump into action at the slightest provocation. I hoped my twitchiness would come in handy when I went to Brisbane. Sometimes when you are overtired this is the state of being.

But I soon discovered that sometimes when you are overtired, you just want to go to sleep. The thrill of this ride was so much that sometimes my brain had to shut down from over-stimulation and often I found myself going to my Happy Place. That place where I had lots of cool water to drink, the air was fresh and cool and a distant chirrup of birds could be heard from across the grassy hills. In this place there was no need to keep track of the fluctuating speed limit and notice where the lanes merged and which exits went where. In this pleasantly- scented cocoon of harmony there were no crying babies, and no hungry kids who talked incessantly. The only thing that saved me from lying down for a Nanna Nap in my Night Garden was the really annoying music my teenaged daughter insisted on playing as we drove.

I know a song that’ll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves… I know a song that’ll get on your nerves, and it goes a bit like this…

Some people look forward to going away on holidays. Some people are quite barmy. These same people also like subjecting themselves to sharing a confined space – say, a lift, a shopping centre, or motel restaurant – with a whole bunch of strangers who may or may not have a contagious skin disease that reacts with air.

So to cut a long story short – no, I didn’t crash and die. With the aid of the aforementioned annoying music and some good chocolate I managed to stay alert and only moderately alarmed.

I have to say it was nice to catch up with family, and nice to see the beach for a few stints in a rainy weekend. It was nice to forget about my daily housework routine and cooking duties also. (But hey, I neglect that while at home anyway. I don’t need to travel for five hours to refresh myself; I can just sit outside on my own verandah and whisk myself away to LaLa Land for a relaxing break.)

I did pop into an electrical appliance shop that probably specialised in vacuum cleaners. They may have had other appliances but I didn’t see them. Maybe they were all sold out. You know how people go on a toaster and waffle-maker buying frenzy during the holidays. So anyway, I asked the salesman why all the vacuum cleaners on the market had such large powerful motors. We have a solar electric set-up for our house and can’t use the large wattage motors that are currently being sold. Something under 500 watts would be good; the salesman told me a new vacuum cleaner would be available soon that would have their smallest motor, at 1200 watts. “That sucks,” I told him.

I also made a point to visit a place in Brisbane called “Reverse Garbage” which is a distribution point for a huge range of commercial discards and recycled materials. Plastic boxes that once housed electrical components, wooden off-cuts from carpentry jobs, card and paper from printers, carpet samples, old coffee bean sacks and so on are all for sale. For a hoarder like me, it seemed like a treasure trove. So much useless junk!! Teachers and artists seem to be their regular customers, using many of the pieces for collage and sculptural artworks.

I looked at all the buckets of goodies and as my reasoning side of the brain switched on, I thought, hey, I’ve got just as much useless junk at home. So I used restraint and only bought a squat cardboard drum for $6 that will make a great toy box. Oh, and some holey rubber mats that will be cool for stencilling. Oh, and some fluoro orange sticky paper. Because you always need stuff for stickers. Always. But that was all I bought. Well, also some sheets of cork for a noticeboard. Everyone needs a noticeboard. I couldn’t buy any more because there’s only so much stuff I could carry down the street to where the car was parked.

Spending urge sated, I did manage to get back home safely and with dollars still in my purse. I must admit, though, I felt a whole lot like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz as I drove came back across the Range at Cunningham’s Gap and felt the air change to a crisp freshness. Taking the back roads from Warwick, I grew more and more relieved to be again in familiar territory. There’s no place like home, I thought. The wailing of a restless baby from the back seat for more than half an hour only slightly tarnished the joyful homecoming. I guess, he was crying when we left home so it’s only natural that he would cry when he returned. He’s quite consistent that way.

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