Life, one day at a time ..

I think I'm going to have to cut my fingernails ... the dashboard won't be able to take much more!

2011-11-10T14:14:00.003+08:00

We were getting ready to leave this for school and work this morning and I was yawning my head off after taking Peter to the airport at dark o'clock. Andrew noticed and asked me if I was awake enough to be in charge of a vehicle. He then very kindly offered to drive for me to which I replied something along the lines of ~~over my dead body~~ maybe he can when he has a learner's permit. The instant gleam in his eye at that comment made me wonder what was coming next.

You'd think I would have learned to not speak out loud in front of my children, especially when tired, as it inevitably leads to a decision I find myself second-guessing for the rest of the day, with today being no exception.

Andrew's next response?

"So can Alex drive us all seeing as he has got a learner's permit?"

Yes, ~~my first baby~~ Alex has a motor vehicle learner's permit as well as his moped licence. He has been for two, count them: one, two, lessons in total (only one of which was on the actual road) and has had about 30 minutes of country highway driving experience (obtained last weekend with Peter). So, after a few seconds deliberation and reasoning that I'm already going grey (ssshhh!) so a few more grey hairs wouldn't really hurt (until I tried to pull them all out and sent myself bald), I agreed.

I don't know who was more nervous ... him or me. I know they were all surprised that I said yes (so was I to tell the truth!) and were probably wondering if I was trying to kill them by letting him drive.

Overall, considering it was only the third time he'd ever driven on a road (no Peter, driving the Navara at the shed doesn't count!) and the third different car in which he'd done it, he did really well. A bit more practice (and Valium for me!) and I'm sure he'll be fine.

The curbs may be living in fear for a while as I'm sure Alex was trying to get my front passenger side tyre and the curb on every road to have 'intimate relations' or some sort of strength competition but that may have just been my perception from the ~~death seat~~ passenger seat.

I have decided that the entire world looks way too close from the front passenger seat ... must be something to do with the way light refracts through the windscreen and my fingers over my eyes ... as, despite knowing that we were only going at 55kmph for most of the trip, it sure seemed faster. Everything seem to appear suddenly in front of us and not having a brake pedal on my side of the car resulted in a few new dents in the floor pan .. nothing a mat can't cover!

His first time driving an automatic coupled with his rather large, very heavy feet, resulted in a couple of hairy moments like the time he got up to 80kmph between two roundabouts approximately 400m apart, at both of which he had to stop to allow other cars to continue. I don't think I dented the dashboard with my head but I'm sure I put a a hole in the floor trying to brake a la Fred Flintstone!

Seriously though, he did much better than I expected but I think I'll go stock up on some more Clairol Nice 'n' Easy and some Valium ...

(Just Another) Manic Monday

2011-10-25T09:16:00.005+08:00

Snippets from recent Manic Mondays:

3/10/2011

First official day of school holidays so of course I slept in to 7:45am.
No milk for a cup of tea (which I didn't really have time for anyway).
Noticed I had next to no fuel so crossed my fingers and hoped I'd make it to work.
Got caught at every red light and railway crossing on the way to work.
Made it to work (and only 15 minutes later than usual).
Walked into my office to a ringing phone and nearly broke my leg on the parcel some ~~idiot~~ person had kindly left right in front of the door as I raced for said phone.
Answered the phone to find Bradley on the other end asking if he could have ice cream for breakfast too.
Upon further questioning, I ascertained that the idea had been planted in his head by his supposedly more sensible older brother (Alex) who was at that very moment chowing down on a very large bowl of ice cream.
When I questioned Alex as to why he thought that eating ice cream for breakfast was a good idea or even acceptable, his response was that it was a dairy food so how was it any different from having milk?
Then he asked if it would be better if he put Milo cereal in it.
It was about this point that I realised it wouldn't kill him (his brothers maybe) so gave up and went back to dealing with the other ~~children~~ employees waiting for my attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

10/10/2011

My first day (of three weeks) at Austral Bricks Malaga.
After it only taking 35 minutes for me to get to Malaga on the previous Thursday, I was somewhat surprised to find that it took me over an hour to get there on Monday morning.
During the long and rather boring drive, I spotted a van in front of me that had all sorts of stuff crammed into the boot and back seat. It looked like the occupants were moving house and this was the dregs ... you know all those leftover bits that seem to hide when you're packing.
Upon pulling level with the elderly female driver, I realised it was in fact, an episode of Hoarders ... just on wheels!
There was so much stuff crammed into every available space, I'm surprised she was able to see out of the windscreen. There was barely enough room to turn the steering wheel and I'm not just talking boxes or bags of stuff. There was layer-upon-layer of receipts, paperwork, rubbish and junk mail. Some archaeologist would have a had a field day excavating that lot. There may have even been remains of some pre-2000 lifeform, possibly under the layer of stuff that used to be the passenger seat.
That wasn't the scariest part though. That was as I pulled level with her for the second time, she reached into the pile of stuff that was where the passenger seat should have been, pulled something out, peered at it for a second then.ate.it! Eeeeewwwwww!!
Then she turned up Kewdale Road and disappeared from sight ... off to scare some other poor unsuspecting road user.

Love this one!

2011-09-18T16:39:00.001+08:00

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The point of no return...

2011-09-18T10:40:00.003+08:00

It has been six months since I started at Austral and I am now officially off probation.

I don't know whether to be relieved or amused that the boss didn't even realise I was on probation until I pointed it out to him at our last ~~snooze-fest~~ meeting. All the other managers/supervisors said they were aware of it (due to it being standard practice) but, as the probation goes both ways (ie. me giving them a trial too), they were hoping that if no-one mentioned it, I would be happy to stay. Nice to know I'm wanted.

I do enjoy the job and like (most) of the guys, but I am now at the stage of feeling settled, while at the same time feeling like I'm on auto-pilot ... and not just at work.

I have nothing but admiration for single mums who do all this on their own as well as all the other mums in similar situations to mine (hubby working away and working full-time themselves), but at the moment I'm not thinking about them. It's all about me people!

Auto-pilot is dangerous for me as it usually precedes a lower than usual depressive episode. The fact that I have resorted to my old organisational quirks to try and feel in control of my life is a bit of a concern too.

The boys think it's funny when Mum makes the clothes pegs match each other as well as the clothes they are pegged on.

And apparently it's hilarious when Mum makes sure that there are only white pegs on the clothes airer and a certain number per rung at that.

And then when she organises the pantry so everything is organised by type of goods and then size of box/container, they are almost in hysterics (until they are told that they now have to wash all the Tupperware containers they put back in the pantry empty!)

However, it's not so funny when Mum can't be bothered getting out the bed she has crawled into after work to make them dinner.

And it's not funny when there's no clothes to wear because they're all still sitting in the washing machine after being washed for the fifth time without being hung out.

And it's definitely not funny when Mum totally loses her shit and yells about every.little.thing (real or imagined) that should have been done but hasn't or hasn't been done right or hasn't even been thought of yet but why haven't they read my mind and done it without being asked.

Luckily, I am not as the stage of crawling into bed as soon as I get home or of yelling at them for anything and everything. I am aware of this particular slippery slope and am making more of a concerted effort to keep myself upright and moving forward; not downward.

I am not as terrified of showing people the 'real me'; the one that occasionally doesn't cope too well with the whole situation; the one who sometimes just wants everyone to just go away and leave me alone.

However, it is still hard to not feel alone and isolated; still hard to ask for help when you don't know what would help; still hard to keep putting one foot in front of the other even though you know people are depending on you; still hard to put on your game face and get out into the world.

I came to the realisation the other day that I am way more like my mother than I would like to be. Depression is hereditary after all. But hopefully my awareness of my own triggers and warning signs will ensure that they aren't too affected by my issues. Hopefully it will make them slightly more sympathetic to those who struggle with issues of their own (be they mental, physical or emotional).

Hopefully my boys will be OK.

Where does he get this stuff from?

2011-08-07T16:51:00.002+08:00

Overheard in the car this afternoon, whilst driving home from taking a look at the house:

Brad: Drew, you know how they say 'you are what you eat'?

Drew: Yes. What about it?

Brad: It's really strange isn't it?

Drew: What's strange about it?

Brad: I really don't remember eating a sexy beast!

I'm kinda dreading what he'll be like once the testosterone really kicks in!!

The things they say ...

2011-07-31T15:27:00.003+08:00

Whilst having a discussion with the boys about our menu plan for the week, Bradley came up with a new term for boiled potatoes. It went a little something like this:

Me: Well how about we have vegetables and potatoes with that instead of chips?

Brad: Mashed potatoes?

Me: I was thinking jacket potatoes.

Brad: No, I want nude potatoes.

Me: What on earth are nude potatoes?

Brad: You know Mum (insert eye roll here) ... ones without their clothes on.

Me: (being purposely slow on the uptake .. honest!) What clothes?

Brad: The only clothes they have ... their jackets ... duh!

Be afraid! Be very afraid ...

2011-07-20T15:29:00.005+08:00

because:

I am now officially licensed to drive a forklift.

I had to have a photo taken for the new licence which resembles one of the 'after' shots from those scare-people-off-Meth programs. Either that or a drunken mug shot. (No, I'm not going to post it here out of courtesy to your delicate monitors and eyes).

Alex has his learner's permit for a moped licence.

Andrew has asked for braces which means you guys will now get to listen to me whinge about how much it's going to cost for the next three years .. lucky you!

Bradley, despite not yet being a teenager, has a full blown teenage attitude and he's not afraid to use it!

I think I'm seeing things that aren't really there. For example, on Wednesday evening while driving home from work, I could swear I saw an oversized troll doll riding a bicycle along the footpath towards the train station. After looking at 'it' several more times (all while trying to keep driving in a straight line), I discovered it was a middle-aged woman with an over-abundance of very orange spray tan and hot pink, fluffy, standing-straight-up-in-the-air hair. To quote my Dad,

"The sights you see when you haven't got a gun!"

AAAArrrgggggghhhhh!!

2011-06-22T12:20:00.003+08:00

Just had a phone call from Peter to tell me that Alex has been suspended for two days.

"What for this time?" I hear you ask.

Thankfully it is nothing involving violence or bullying. He has apparently taken a computer file of his from TAFE to school with him and, by using it at school, managed to compromise the school's whole network! Don't ask me how 'cos I don't understand most of what he spouts about computers these days which I know can be dangerous (hello .. suspension!) but I just can't keep up with it all.

My first reaction was dread upon hearing of the suspension .. what's he done now kind of thing.

Second reaction upon hearing what he'd done was relief. Thank goodness no-one has been injured kind of thing.

Third reaction .. laughter. He's only 15, been studying computers for a term-and-a-half and he has compromised a system managed by a rather large team of very expensive 'professionals'.

I keep having to resist the urge to slap him on the back and tell him good job! (There's a bit of history behind that comment .. knowledge about how the previous school-employed IT people were sacked with no notice and then escorted off the premises to make sure they didn't sabotage anything as revenge for the whole no notice thing. Good Christian attitude huh?)

While I don't agree with him messing with something just to prove he can, I honestly don't believe it was done with malicious intent and am therefore going to go into bat for him about the whole two day suspension thing. The system is still working; no private/confidential information has been accessed and there is no lasting damage so I think it is rather severe.

Plus there's the whole 'let's punish him by giving him more time away from school' thing. I've never really understood that especially with this child. I have explained until I'm blue in the face that it is not a punishment and teaches him absolutely nothing but the school insists that 'justice must be seen to be done'!

AAAAArrrrgggghhhh

Now I know where Brad gets his warped sense of humour from ...

2011-06-19T09:14:00.002+08:00

Well, actually I already knew but it was just confirmed once and for all.

Peter, Drew and I were sitting watching Better Homes and Gardens on Friday night when a segment came on about some flowers that look like carnations but aren't (some sort of relative to them though).

As the presenter was extolling the virtues of this plant with very pink flowers, Peter pipes up with "Did you know there's no such thing as a pink carnation?"

I was just about to reply with something along the lines of "Of course there is!" when Drew asked "Why?"

Peter's response?

"Because every nation has many different coloured cars."

Cue groans here!

Channelling Ke$ha this morning ... "This place about to blo-ow"

2011-06-03T07:29:00.005+08:00

I am going to kill the child. Feel free to guess which one!

Sorry, that is supposed to be:

I shall not kill the child. I shall not kill the child. I shall not kill the child. I shall not kill the child.

The only thing saving him at the moment is the fact that I have to go to work. I will however be phoning the school to confirm that once again, he has failed to complete a homework assignment and that they (once again) have my full permission to punish him as they see fit.

I'm at my wit's end with this child.

How can I help him to see that he is only hurting himself?

That even though I am the one ranting and raving, that it doesn't really affect my life to the same extent it does his?

That despite the fact that I understand that homework is, at times, both boring and seemingly pointless, he still must do it and hand it in, on time?

I'm sure he is sick to death of me saying that it is all up to him and then proceeding to make him sit down and produce something just to get me off his back.

I'm sure that the teachers think I am an ineffectual parent who isn't doing anything about this situation.

I see them look at me in disbelief when I tell them how long I sit with him (sometimes 5 or 6 hours), only to get a paragraph or two of actual work down on paper.

I'm sure they are thinking that I am exaggerating for effect, pity or attention when all I am doing is asking for help in how to get this child to complete the tasks they have set.

I wonder how he is going to survive in the 'real' world out there without me to poke, prod and push him to 'get with the program' and to explain the subtleties of human interaction.

It all comes down to just one thing really ... I'm scared.

I'm scared he won't be able to provide for himself.

I'm scared he will get himself into dangerous situations that he can't talk himself out of.

Sometimes, I'm scared that I haven't done enough to help him and at other times, I'm scared I've done too much and prevented him from learning a valuable life lesson. Then I think that he probably wouldn't be able to apply that lesson in another similar, but different, situation anyway.

It's not that I'm not worried about the other two boys .. I am .. just not to the same extent.

Is this because he is my eldest or because of the autism?

Is it due to our personalities being similar and really being able to understand his point-of-view?

Or is it just because I'm a Mum and that's what we do?

A quick update ...

2011-05-22T15:18:00.006+08:00

Wow, I hadn't realised just how long it's been since I was last here ... 9 weeks!!

As you may have gathered, I have been kind of busy and have been on auto pilot while I settle into some sort of routine with the new job, kids working, husband being away/home/away/home, household chores and all the other assorted things that we women/adults/parents have to deal with. This auto pilot mode has resulted in me basically cutting myself off from the rest of the outside world while I endeavour to find some balance, which I still haven't managed but I'm getting a bit closer.

The kids are being their usual selves .. mostly good with an occasional need for a 'come to Jesus' meeting. Alex and Drew are busy working and going to school while Brad is hanging out for the day when he can go to work as well. As I keep reminding him though, if he whinges about putting the groceries away, chances are he's not going to enjoy working much!

Andrew has decided that he doesn't much like this working thing. The money he likes; the actual work ... not so much! Apparently it's boring and it hurts his legs to have to walk around so much to which I replied that he needs to exercise more to increase his fitness/endurance levels. Should be interesting when he gets a 'real' (full-time) job where he has to do that all day, every day for the rest of his life ...

He has decided to hang in there until we move to the new house when he is determined to get a 'better' job at the Woolworths or Coles that are supposed to opening up out there. Personally, I can't see how it would be any different working in Woolworths supermarket versus a Foodworks supermarket but what would I know? It's not like I've ever worked in a supermarket ...

Alex is still big on procrastination and avoidance of things he finds distasteful ... like homework and housework. Strangely enough, he is quite happy to go to work and will take just about any extra shifts he's offered, but I suppose there is actual real money involved as opposed to some far off distant promise of improving his lot in life further down the track.

I am still concerned about what will happen with or to him once he is out in the real world after school due to his impulse control issues and lack of 'street smarts'. Last week, he and Andrew went to Gosnells after school on the bus (with my permission) and on their way back, Alex was baled up against the wall at the train station (where they were waiting for the bus) and punched several times by a complete stranger for seemingly no reason.

I was at work at the time and received a rather panicked phone call from Andrew telling me Alex was 'being beaten up'. I immediately left work to try and get to the train station to pick them up but they had managed to get away from the guy and get on the bus so I just met them at home. Alex was in total shock, crying and shaking and unable to talk about it. After calming him down a bit, I was able to get a few details out of him.

Apparently the guy approached him, grabbed his sleeve and said something about a smoke. (I'm assuming the guy was trying to 'bum a smoke'). Alex flung his arm out to try and shake the guy off, which the guy has probably interpreted as Alex taking a swing at him, and has then baled him up against the wall and punched him in the stomach a couple of times. During the course of this, Alex bumped his elbow on the edge of a sign and that was the injury he focused on .. for the next four days!

Luckily, there was no blood or lasting physical damage but I think the emotional scars will last a while. He is now extremely wary of anyone he doesn't know approaching him, especially if they are of a 'darker skin tone' than him. I tried explaining how he could have done things differently (which may or may not have changed the outcome) but I'm not sure how much of what I said has sunk in. The joys of being a parent ...

In a word ... OMG!

2011-03-18T23:46:00.001+08:00

OK, so it's not actually a word, it's three letters .. picky picky! ... but those three letters describe my life perfectly at the moment. I've been so busy living life that I haven't had a chance (or the motivation) to write about it here.

The first big thing that happened during my little hiatus was Bradley turned twelve. His last year before the dreaded teenage attitude really kicks in! Just kidding ... he's a good kid (they all are though you'd never know it by the way I whinge about them all!) and I just hope he stays the lovable little pumpy-umpy-umpkins he is now!! Love you schnookums ... mwah!!!

The older boys finally got their first shift at work ... three hours of checkout training on a Saturday morning ... and have done many more shifts since then. They've each received their first pay and Alex has already spent most of his. Andrew wasn't sure how much he had been paid as he didn't get an email notification/payslip, so he decided to not spend anything until he could find that out. He's also hassling me to help him set up a savings account for his car .. yes you heard right .. a car. Glad one of the boys has a forward planning gene in there somewhere!

We've had Pre-Start for the new house!! We finally got our preliminary plans on the 24th February and got booked in for pre-start on Friday 4th March. It was a long day and we didn't get the pricing done then and there as there was only one estimator and three pre-start consultations happening at the same time. (The fact that we asked for prices on everything under the sun to be included may not have helped our cause!) It was a long weekend as well so we had to wait until the Tuesday to find out that we had majorly 'overspent'.

After sitting down with a red pen, we managed to reduce the pre-start spending from $35,000 down to $18,000 ($4000 was electrical changes and $6650 was to have the house smart wired) and have now officially signed the contract to build the new nest. All we're waiting on now is the final finance approval which should hopefully be through by the end of this week. Fingers crossed!!

I can't remember if I've mentioned before (and I'm too lazy today to go back and read through all my previous posts!) but I applied for a job at the end of January and was granted an initial interview on the Thursday 3rd of February. It was advertised as a 'Production Clerk' and the duties included data entry, stock control and other general office duties. It sounded perfect for me, is nice and close to the new house (and not too far from this one either) and I was still keen even after taking a tour of the dingy, dusty transportable building that would serve as my office and the equally dusty manufacturing plant attached to it.

I came away from the interview and subsequent tour of the office and plant feeling that I had interviewed well and feeling confident that I would pass though to the next level. I received a call on the Friday afternoon asking if I wanted to progress to the next stage but was having second thoughts about working full-time so I asked for the weekend to think it over.

On the Monday, I rang John (the plant manager) and let him know I was prepared (as prepared as I could be anyway) to go through. He arranged some psychometric and aptitude testing (apparently a standard thing for this company) on Wednesday 9th February at the head office in Caversham. I was told to allow 2 to 3 hours to complete the testing but was out of there in just over an hour and then sat back and waited for the results, which I was told would take about 48 hours to come back from Sydney.

And I waited.

And then I waited some more.

I finally gave in to the insecurities and phoned John on Wednesday 16th February to ask what was happening. Apparently he hadn't heard anything either and wasn't getting any response to his calls about it. Eventually, he rang (22/2) and explained that the person responsible for dealing with the reports had gone on holidays for a week and no-one thought to check her mail for anything urgent. Luckily the report was favourable so I went off for a medical on 24/2 (another standard thing for this company) and then waited for, what I thought would be, the inevitable job offer.

Another week passed and I still hadn't heard anything so gave up on stressing about it for a while and focused on pre-start and the new house instead. During our pre-start meeting, John rang to say that they would like to offer me the job but the contract had to be drawn up by the eastern states head office, so he would call me when it was available to be signed.

Yet another week passed and John rang to say that head office had finally signed off on the contract and he would drop it around to me on his way home from work on Friday night. Oh and could I please start Monday. I'm sure the Universe was working with me on this because I didn't get the request to start until we had finished pre-start and signed all the necessary documents.

Anyway, I have survived my first week of training and will be starting ~~the company funded psycho-analysis sessions~~ at my own job any day now. Pray for my sanity if you have a moment as I am the only woman on a site with 37 men most of whom, judging by the double takes when I worked there on Thursday, have never seen a woman in their workplace before and are all worried that they'll have to mind their P's and Q's. Can't wait to set them all straight!!

Do you think he's trying to tell me I spend too much time on the computer?

2011-02-20T15:40:00.004+08:00

"Please pay me some attention .. I'm begging here!"

Or is he trying to help me type?

"No silly. That's not how you spell hamburger!"

Or is he just hungry?

"You're just not getting it are you? Feed me ... please?!"

Can't decide.

I still think he's trying to tell me something.

Please let me know if you work it out ....

Our new addition ...

2011-02-19T11:25:00.003+08:00

Her name is Bob (short for bobtail) and she lives at the shed. At least I think it's a she and from her habit of crawling inside out of the sun, I'd say she's related to me! She was just there one time when Peter went to the shed on his way back up to work. He said he was a bit startled when he noticed a plastic bag moving along the floor so he went to investigate and found Bob. He released her from the bag and she has lived there ever since.

She loves banana, eggs and the occasional insect and so far has been very little trouble at all apart from hissing at Peter the first few times they met ... so definitely related to me then!! We fed her some banana last time we were up at the shed and then the boys tried to get her to go outside. She walked about 15 metres along the shed wall then turned around and came back inside to the cooler air. A woman after my own heart! Here's a picture of her and her beautifully coloured tongue trying to eat some banana:

And here's a picture that Bradley took of her skin (on my dining table ... eeww!!) that she very kindly left out in the middle of the floor for Peter to find:

Brad loved the fact that it is almost complete and that even the legs have turned inside out. If you look closely, you can even see the little holes where the claws were. Now he wants to keep the skin but won't keep it in his room .. oh no .. it has to stay out on my bookshelf where I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye thinking it's some creepy crawly invader come to frighten the daylights out of me and doing a very good job of it. It may just have to disappear one day when no-one is looking ....

Hi. I'm Donna and I'm weird.

2011-02-17T09:41:00.003+08:00

I'm sitting here listening to my iPod while browsing some house/building/decorating blogs and I have just realised that I must have one of the weirdest music collections I've ever come across.

The iPod is on shuffle through my 'upbeat' playlist and here's the last 20 songs ('cos that's all I've had time to play so far):

The Way I Are by Timbaland
1,2,3,4 by The Plain White Tees
Sharing the Night Together by Dr. Hook
Fearless by Wes Carr
A Little Too Late by Delta Goodrem
Ain't No Other Man by Christina Aguilera
That Don't Impress Me Much by Shania Twain
The Rose by Bette Midler (not sure how that made it to the upbeat playlist)
Pon De Replay by Rhianna
Blackbirds by Linkin Park
Sunny by Boney M
If Today Was Your Last Day by Nickelback
Hey Baby by No Doubt
Annie's Song by John Denver
If Tomorrow Never Comes by Ronan Keating
Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
Axel F from Beverley Hills Cop
Just Lose It by Eminem
Me and My Shadow by Robbie Williams
Sadeness by Enigma

And that's not including the 'classical' or 'mellow' playlists... both of which my kids absolutely hate for some reason. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the volume at which I insist on playing the classical music (as loud as possible) or the fact that I usually end up either singing along or crying (or both) to the songs on the mellow list.

Oh well, at least there's some variety in there. Nothing worse than listening to the same ten songs over and over and over and over and over and .. I'm sure you get the picture (Are you listening Alex?)

Help me feel not quite so weird here people .. please share what you have on your iPod/mix CD for the car.

Oh and "I Like to Move It" has just finished and "When They Come For Me" by Linkin Park is just starting ...

Don't you just hate it when your kids beat you at something?

2011-02-09T09:27:00.005+08:00

To try and encourage me the boys and I to get jobs, Peter said to all three of us (Brad is still too young for a job) that he would give $100 to the first one of us to get a job and keep it for at least a week. Call it an incentive, a bribe or whatever you want; point is, it actually motivated the boys to put their resumes out in the big wide world. (Mine was already out there with not much luck.)

They put their resumes in at about ten places between the two of them and got a call for an interview each at the local little supermarket. Andrew's was last week on Thursday and even though he was really nervous, he went into the interview on his own and seemed to do quite well. He was in there for about 15 minutes and came out feeling rather pleased with how it all went.

Alex's interview was supposed to be on Friday but was re-scheduled to Monday and was all over and done with, with him back in the car ready to go home, in about 6 minutes. I was thinking that wasn't necessarily a good thing but kept my thoughts to myself at the time. Despite Alex being the older child by nearly two years, in some ways Andrew seems a bit more mature and I thought that may affect Alex's chances of getting a job seeing as they were supposed to be interviewed by the same person. Alex's interview ended up being conducted by a different person, which may account for the time difference as he wasn't given the interviewer's entire work history before proceeding to the questions about him.

I have to admit, I was rather concerned that there would be all sorts of problems if one got a job and the other didn't and had a little chat to each of them about that possibility. Luckily we don't have to worry about that as I have just received a call asking me to let them both know they have been "successful in their applications" and could they please call in ASAP to collect an employment package. Congratulations boys and welcome to the beginning of your working lives!

So it looks like I miss out on the $100 ~~bribe~~ incentive and as they both got offered a job at the same time, there is bound to be some discussion with Peter about who gets what. I'll leave that completely up to them to work out while I go and have some psychometric and aptitude testing for a job I've applied for.

Wonder if they'll pick up on the voices in my head?

Are you sure?

2011-02-07T10:19:00.000+08:00

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Public Service Announcement

2011-02-02T10:55:00.002+08:00

When you are on the roof of a house, attempting to attach a new patio and effect repairs to said roof, do not be tempted to look in the windows of the house two doors over.

People think they are safe from prying eyes while inside their houses and will quite frequently wander said houses in various states of undress. Especially when they are looking for the remainder of their clothing before attempting to go outside and face the world.

So, unless you like looking at larger ladies wandering about in jeans and a pink bra (with no shirt), don't be tempted to peek! (Readers: you're welcome for that mental image!!)

And you can't blame me for blinding you ... it might have been the glare from the roof next door that blinded you.

It's not totally my fault my skin is so white that you can see it from outer space.

Or that the bra is day-glo pink and lights up the inside of the washing machine when the lid is closed. (Well actually, that kind of is my fault 'cos I bought it in the first place ... but it was cheap!)

So, in short, (too late I know!), it's your own fault if you nearly fell off the roof. That will teach you to be a Peeping Tom!

Theyr'e baaa-ack ...

2011-02-02T09:56:00.002+08:00

... at school that is!

I thought I was doing relatively well with being organised for the boys to go back to school. I had purchased most of the book list requirements, checked that uniforms and shoes still fitted and even thought about what they could have in their lunch boxes. Then on Sunday afternoon I realised that I was still missing some of Alex's text books.

Being in Year 11 this year, he's doing six subjects plus his TAFE Cert IV course. Actually, technically he's only doing five subjects, as the school have allowed him to use one of the grid lines as a private study session to enable him to catch up on any lessons he misses by going to TAFE all day on Fridays.

Due to the exorbitant cost of some of the text books, I had tried to get most of them second hand which I managed to do for two out of the five subjects. One of the remaining subjects (English) only required a novel which I purchased from Big W as it was heaps cheaper there than at the school supplies place. So we were down to books for two subjects: Biology and Food Science and Technology, neither of which seemed to be available second hand.

Shouldn't be too bad I thought.

Got out of this easy this year I thought.

$100 should cover it I thought.

Guess what?

I thought wrong .. majorly wrong!

One, just one, of the biology books was $90! The other two were $40 and $36. The foods book was $59. For those prices, they should sit the exams for you and guarantee an A grade!

It could have been worse though .. I could have bought all of the books at full price. That would have cost me a grand total of $452 plus stationery and all those other must-have items (like a new wireless mouse that he just had to have for the new laptop he got for Christmas.) As it was it only cost $370 for text books .. a saving of $82 .. I get to keep both my kidneys .. yay!!

Anyway, 'nuff complaining for now. They're all healthy and happy to be going back to school and I'm happy to have a little bit of peace and quiet in which to ~~whinge endlessly~~ write a post about the little darlings.

Hope you and yours all have a great first day back too!

Something new to read ...

2011-01-29T20:26:00.002+08:00

We are in the process of planning to start thinking about building a new house so I decided to make a new blog for all the stories that go with it. Being the ever-so-slightly mad person I am, I have called it "Building A New Hawk's Nest".

I'm hoping it will be updated more regularly than this blog because there will be heaps of things happening with which to update you all. So far there hasn't been much progress but it has only been 7 months since we bought the block .. can't rush these things!

Anyway, feel free to check it out and let me know what you think!

The sympathy is overwhelming ...

2011-01-28T19:51:00.004+08:00

After asking the boys to keep the noise down because I had a thumping headache, Brad and I had the following exchange ...

Brad: Would you like a Panadol?

Me: No thanks. Just some peace and quiet.

Brad: Do you want a Panadeine instead?

Me: No thanks.

Brad: So do you want a saucepan?

Me: A saucepan? (insert quizzical look here) What on earth for?

Brad: So I can hit you with it and you'll forget about the headache pain for a while and give us some peace and quiet.

Nice to know I can count on them when the chips are down ...

The job search continues

2011-01-19T20:28:00.003+08:00

I've been looking for a job, admittedly rather half-heartedly throughout December, and had managed to apply for quite a few when I hit a snag.

My computer decided that it wasn't going to play anymore and it would lock my files up tighter than a fish's backside. After a minor breakdown (for both me and the other computer I used to try to fix the problem), I was finally able to extract my ~~photos~~ ~~favourite websites~~ resume and previous cover letters to follow up on some of the applications.

Now, I have a couple of gripes regarding this whole process; mostly about how things have changed since I first started applying for jobs all those years ago (in the Jurassic era, according to Bradley):

Is it really so hard to just acknowledge an application? Considering that they are all sent electronically these days, it shouldn't be that difficult to set up an auto reply acknowledging receipt of the application even if they can't be bothered replying individually. Something along the lines of "Thank you for your application for a position with our company. We will be assessing candidates shortly and will only contact those that have been short listed." Not hard people!
When placing a job advertisement, it is wise to put in the hours and days of work required. It is not ridiculous to assume that because one is applying for a full-time administration position, one expects to work 'normal' working hours. A full time admin position that starts at anything other than 9am should state this in the advert. An admin position that needs you to work six days a week should state this in the advert. An admin position that involves split shifts on every day of the week should state this in the advert! One does not normally expect admin positions to start at 6am, break for a rather long unpaid break between 10am and 12 noon, then go through to 4:30 and be Monday through to Saturday (inclusive) unless it says so in the advert!
If you require applicants to have extensive knowledge of a specialised computer program, it is wise to state this in the advert to avoid wasting your time and the applicant's as well. Just because they don't currently have a job doesn't mean that their time is any less important.
Last (for now) but certainly not least, if the position has been filled, remove the ad from the job search websites. Ringing on Tuesday for more information about a job that was advertised on Monday is not 'weird' or 'pathetic'. How are we to know that you filled it in-house and only advertised it because you had to? Oh and make sure your receptionist knows that you actually have advertised a job and also that she knows how to press the mute button before screaming across the office about 'another weirdo asking about some job'. If I were you, I would be advertising her job ...

I did get an interview for a position at Smith's but unfortunately it starts at 7am and with two sloth impersonators coupled with a squirrel on crack for children, I felt it may not be the best fit for our family at this time. (In other words, I would be ~~pouring money down the drain~~ paying school fees to a school that they would probably miss the bus to every morning, thereby negating any benefit of paying for a 'quality' education.)

I have received an email from another advertiser thanking me for my application and advising that I had passed the first level of their screening process. They will be in touch via phone sometime in the next week to arrange an interview. (Yay ... someone who is actually with the program ... the manners program!!)

There are still 9 other outstanding applications for which I have received no acknowledgement or interview request. I shall just keep applying with my fingers crossed. (I'd cross other body parts too but that just makes me look as crazy as I am seem.)

I feel like I'm stuck in a version of Donkey Kong where you have to jump over a certain number of barrels (or through metaphorical hoops) before advancing to a face-to-face meeting with the big man himself, only to slip on a banana peel at the last possible moment. I was never any good at Donkey Kong as a kid. Maybe I should have paid more attention to that and less to my books and education ...

Spare a thought for those in Queensland

2011-01-12T09:07:00.003+08:00

As a lot of you know, I'm originally from Queensland and still have a lot of extended family there. For those who haven't been watching the news in the past few days, there has been massive flooding in many areas of Queensland, including a freak 'inland tsunami' which took out most of Toowoomba. Here's some pictures of the damage done so far:

The flash flooding in Toowoomba

A house in Rockhampton

Rockhampton airport

People have had to be rescued from their roofs

Not sure which town this is, but can you imagine the devastation?

If you are so inclined and can spare a little, could you please donate to the Queensland government's flood appeal to help out our fellow Aussies in their time of need. Thankfully all of my family is OK but please send up a few prayers/good thoughts for those who weren't so lucky.

Out of the mouths of babes ...

2011-01-11T17:56:00.002+08:00

I was taking the boys and Debbie's daughter to the movies today and we parked in the underground car park. As we were walking across the pedestrian crossing towards the entry doors, Bradley said "I wonder what people would do if I put road spikes all along the crossing? You know the kind with really pointy needles in it? Yeah that would be cool!"
Amy responded with "You could even put medicine in the needles for all the kids that walk on the crossing so they wouldn't have to go to the doctor's."
Then Brad came out with "Nah, not medicine. It would be better for everyone if it was sedatives for the little kids before their mums take them shopping. Would make it heaps quieter for the rest of us wouldn't it?"

Out of the mouths of babes ...

Missing in action ...

2011-01-06T10:54:00.005+08:00

... and oh so much action!! As is typical for most people at this time of year, we have been rather busy. Here's a brief update on some of the happenings around here:

Dec 1: Alex finished school and had his river cruise.

Dec 2: I decided to take on the rather fiddly task of making cake pops and went to Clare and Richard's for dinner for Clare's birthday.

Dec 3: Went to work and skipped out for an hour to watch Brad receive a certificate for participating in the Maths Olympiad this year.

Dec 4: Took on the even more fiddly task of making Christmas themed cake pops which turned out quite well, if I do say so myself (and I do!)

Dec 5: Had a lovely child-free High Tea at Nicola's house with Debbie, Tracey, Irene and Nicola (of course!)

Dec 6: Bradley had his Year Six Dinner Dance (to which I forgot to take my camera when dropping him off .. aaarrggh!) He came home feeling a bit under the weather due to the volume of soft drink consumed but soon perked up once home.

Dec 8: Attended Primary Praise and Thanksgiving at school and watched Brad up on stage as part of the graduating class of 2010, singing and dancing his way to the end of year 6. Upon returning home, I was unable to get into the garage due to an uninvited guest taking up residence right where my tyres would have gone ... a bobtail lizard. I didn't run him over and just left him to find his own way back from whence he came, which he did .. eventually!

Dec 9: A day when the children had great fun dressing the dog up in his blanket and turning him into "Superdog".

Dec 10: Peter arrived home and Andrew immediately pounced on him and begged to be taken to have his ear pierced. Due to school uniform rules, he's not allowed an earring at school so we had to wait until the beginning of the longest school holidays of the year before having it done, to enable it to heal sufficiently to remove the earring during the day. Apparently it didn't hurt as much as he expected it to but that didn't stop him from being very careful about removing shirts over his head for a week or two!

Dec 12: Due to Peter not being home for Christmas, we had an early Christmas with extended family. Mark, Bec and the kids, Clare and Richard, my Mum and Pete's Mum all came for a lovely lunch followed up by Christmas pudding, pavlova and more Christmas themed cake pops. All the kids (and the adults too!) had a great time opening presents and just enjoying each other's company.

Dec 13: Watched Brad playing with his new skateboard thingy ... one like a Ripstik called a Switchblade. Watched Brad fall off numerous time as he tried to get the hang of it. Rejoiced with him when he managed to a full circuit of the back pationwithout falling off!

Dec 16: Peter left to go back up to work.

Dec 17-23: Tried to organise kids and self for planned holiday at Moore River with Mum, Clare and Rich.

Dec 23: My Mum arrived to whisk the children off to Moore River for the extended long weekend. I got to stay home by myself for one night then joined them up there on Dec 24.

Dec 24-28: Enjoyed a lovely (very hot .. thank God for air conditioning!) weekend away complete with another Christmas lunch, more presents and lots of lounging around by the beach/river and at 'home' in the holiday house.

Dec 29: Washed (what seemed like) every item of linen and clothing in the house while trying to make sure I had presents organised for Peter's birthday.

Dec 30: Tried to ring and message Peter to wish him a happy birthday but he was 'feeling unwell' and 'unable to work' so his mobile phone was turned off. Eventually sat back and resolved to wish him happy birthday the next day (when he was due home) only to have him turn up at home in time for dinner. Gave him all his presents and thanked the heavens that I had the children make him his birthday cake that day instead of leaving it 'til he was actually home.

Dec 31: Had a very quiet New Year's Eve at home and was in bed by 10:30pm ... Boy are we getting old!

Jan 1: Realised it was time I started getting organised for the children to go back to school. Freaked out majorly over cost of school fees, uniforms and book lists then had to go lie down. Decided to face that after next pay day.

Jan 2-5: Did very good impersonations of a sloth and a meerkat on crack ... not at the same time obviously! The sloth was happy to just lie around, reading books and consuming whatever snack type food put in front of her. The meerkat on crack would walk into a room, spin her head around surveying the room and then bark out orders to "move this, clean that and what on earth are those and why are they there?" before scampering off to the next room. The meerkat impersonation usually only lasted a small amount of time before the sloth took over again and as a result the house still looks like the proverbial bombsite but is slowly getting better.

Now I'm off to fill out more applications for jobs and cross my fingers that I actually get an interview for at least one. Wish me luck!

A little request when you're doing your Christmas shopping (or any shopping really) ...

2010-12-18T20:34:00.007+08:00

Big confession here: before I had kids I was one of those people who would shake their head and tut loudly at other people's children being loud/naughty/disrespectful in the shops.

I would sometimes even catch the eye of the person next to/in front of/behind me and make a comment along the lines of "I know what I'd do to the little darling" or "why doesn't the mother do something?"

I would vow and declare that none of my kids would ever dare to behave like that in public. Even after I had my kids and ended up with an Olympic class tantrum thrower (Karma really does come back to bite you doesn't it?), I would still wonder at the people who just stood and ignored their child's behaviour and silently mutter a pox on all their houses.

But somewhere along the line, I realised that everything is not always as it seems. Children who look 'normal' quite often have little (or not-so-little) issues that aren't immediately obvious.

I think having a child with autism, admittedly very mild autism, but autism nonetheless, has encouraged me to, when faced with difficult behaviour, take an extra deep breath, count to five, breathe out slowly and smile. Key word there is smile .. not sneer, grimace, frown, snarl or any of the other negative possibilities. It may make you seem like you've escaped from a lunatic asylum, but realistically, you're shopping at Christmas time .. you've escaped to a lunatic asylum!
(The anti-depressants have also helped majorly in my case ... I'm no longer at risk of expelling my vocal chords out of my throat and onto the floor due to screaming at the children. I can usually deal with most things in a relatively calm and rational manner. Now I just have to worry about my mind wandering .. it's too small to be out wandering on it's own!)

Now I know that at this time of the year, there will be heaps of 'little darlings' everywhere you turn and there will certainly be a hefty percentage of spoilt rotten little brats chucking tantrums to get what they want. You'll usually be able to hear them the second you walk into the shops and you will probably know their name within the first ten seconds as their parent or guardian threatens increasingly dire consequences if they don't "stop.it.right.now!"

However, there will also be a much smaller group of kids whose parents are seemingly ignoring the escalating wails or throwing of things out of the trolley. These parents may look slightly shell-shocked, have a look of steely determination or one of total resignation. Some of these parents are trying out a new tantrum control method (usually on their under-3-year-old) and the rest of these parents are probably like the long-suffering woman I saw at Kmart last week.

She had three children, two boys and a girl, all still in their school uniforms and all between about 7 and 11 years old. Important note here: all the children appeared 'normal' and by that I mean no obvious physical disabilities or any of the more common signs of mental disabilities.

The boys were waiting patiently for their turn to have their items scanned while the girl was chucking a major hissy fit about having her shopping taken out of her bag to be scanned by the very annoyed checkout operator. Her wails of displeasure were getting louder and louder and people were turning to stare and starting to mutter those immortal words of "what that child needs is a smack", "spoilt brat" and the perennial favourite of "I know what I'd do to her". I have to admit, I was getting a bit annoyed myself as I already had a headache and the noise certainly wasn't helping.

It was at that point that I saw the despair on the mother's face as she registered all the murmuring and tried to restrain the little girl from taking one of her brother's toys to put in her bag. I then watched as she leaned down to the oldest boy and said quietly "you know she doesn't understand, don't you? Thank you for not yelling at her and making it worse."

I then realised that in all the noise, I hadn't heard the girl speak a clear word; it was all just noises of distress. The mother was trying to apologise to the checkout girl for the noise by explaining that her daughter was autistic, couldn't speak and didn't understand why she had had her shopping bag emptied. (If the checkout operator had moved faster than the speed of dead and allowed the little girl to put her things back in her own bag, instead of insisting that they all go into a plastic bag, most of this could have been avoided!)

Due to the level of noise the girl was making, no-one else heard the explanation so the muttering and murmuring was still going on. I turned away, feeling suitably chastened as I had 'been there, done that' and knew how it felt and was silently beating myself up for not being more understanding in the first place.

The woman next to me, who had been waiting there with her three perfectly-behaved ~~Stepford~~ children, caught my eye. She frowned, shook her head and said "I know what I'd do to her".

My reply? (said loud enough for all to hear)

"There's no point in smacking her. She's autistic and doesn't understand."

Most of the murmuring stopped immediately and there were a few other chastened faces in the crowd.

Feeling a bit embarrassed for having spoken up, I turned around just in time to see the look of relief on the mother's face. I shrugged and smiled and watched as she walked away with her daughter now happy because her shopping bag was once again full.

So to get back to the request I mentioned in the title:

When you see a 'normal-looking' child misbehaving or making a lot of noise for what seems like little reason, remember, everything isn't always as it seems.

Stop, take a deep breath, count to five, exhale and smile. If you can't do that, walk as far away as you can.

And give the parents the benefit of the doubt. (I wish more people had done that for me!)

They are doing the best they can.

The school holidays (with major apologies to Billy Joel)

2010-12-18T10:42:00.004+08:00

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd staggers in
Wiping sleep from their eyes, they all stare at me
Then, as one, they all begin

Mum, can I have lollies for breakfast?
It is school holidays you know
And you promised that we could go out today
But not ‘til after my show.

La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da dum

Chorus:
Give us some food
You’re the mother here
Give us something to do
We’re all bored out of our tiny minds
And it’s your job to fix up our blues

Mum, I need something to do right now
I’m bored and I don’t want to think
So what should I do with myself today?
Yes I know there are dishes in the sink

But what does that have to do with me?
Why do I always have to clean?
It’s not just me that made all this mess
So why do I have to make it gleam?

Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum

Mum, I have nothing to wear today
Where are all of my jocks?
Whaddayamean they’re all on the floor of my room
Right next to my very smelly socks.

You should have washed them all by now
It is your job after all
Hey Mum, why do your eyes look so weird right now?
Mum, stop banging your head against the wall!

Chorus:
Give us some food
You’re the mother here
Give us something to do
We’re all bored out of our tiny minds
And it’s your job to fix up our blues

It’s a pretty good crowd for a bail hearing
The defence lawyer gives me a smile
'Cos she knows I’ll be free 'fore the clock strikes three
Every mother’s been there for a while

In the place where chocolate is your best friend
And sedatives are nothing to fear
Where you sit and stare blankly at these four walls
And wonder how the hell did I get here?

Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum

Chorus:
Give us some food
You’re the mother here
Give us something to do
We’re all bored out of our tiny minds
And it’s your job to fix up our blues

Happy School Holidays everyone!

The Twilight zone ...

2010-12-18T09:45:00.000+08:00

Cue music ....

I have typed up several posts over the last few weeks and I thought they had posted, but they have disappeared into the ether.

I will endeavour to find them and re-post them over the next couple of days 'cos I know you're all just dying to hear my incessant, sarcastic, cynical ravings on life, love and the pursuit of sanity.

Failing that, I will just have to find new material to blog about.

Be afraid ...

... be very afraid!

What I've been up to ...

2010-12-06T11:39:00.003+08:00

You may have noticed, over in my sidebar, there's a link to a wonderful site (and person) called Bakerella. She makes the cutest little things called cake pops and I, having oodles of spare time (snort!), decided to give them a go.

My first attempt was at the (what I thought were) easier version called cupcake bites. (Having now made both kinds, I think the pops were the easier of the two; especially when dipping them in the chocolate!)

And then the Christmas Pops:

All packaged up and ready to go!

Frosty the Snowman

Rudolph

Christmas pudding

I cheated a bit (OK, a lot!) and used store-bought mud cakes for the centres. Woolies sell lovely mud cakes in three different flavours and the cost is very reasonable (less than it would cost to make them myself!) I used white mudcake balls for the snowmen, chocolate mudcake balls for the Christmas puddings and caramel mudcake balls for the reindeer. A little handy hint: when you crumble the mudcake before rolling it into cake balls, make sure you crumble in the icing too. I didn't do that with the first batch and they dried out and crumbled a bit before I could dip them all.

They are a bit fiddly to make, especially when you have to keep smacking boys' hands away from the decorating ingredients bowls, but are oh so much fun! And the looks on people's faces when presented with the finished product makes the work worthwhile.

I did find we are slightly more limited in our choice of decorating bits and pieces than our US counterparts but managed to find suitable substitutes for most things. I haven't yet attempted colouring chocolate (and I refuse to pay the $10 + per 200g bag for the pre-coloured choc melts off the internet) but as I have now finished working at the school for the year, I may give it a go soon. I'll keep you posted!

And yes ... they tasted as good (better even!) as they looked!

Another one of those "I'm feeling so old" posts but about Lurch this time ...

2010-12-02T12:10:00.005+08:00

... oops I mean Alex. Peter has taken to calling him Lurch (from the Addams Family TV show) because he towers over both of us and does that shudder/groan/grunt thing so well! But back to the original topic, which was of course, me and how I'm feeling so old!

Alex had his Year 10 River Cruise last night and actually allowed me to take a few photos on the proviso I didn't put them on facebook. This isn't facebook so I figure that means I can post them all here. OK, maybe not all as blogger only allows five photos per post, but that should be sufficient to ~~throughly embarrass him~~ get the general vibe.

Alex and his best mate Chris being 'serious' for a minute:

(Yes Chris is rather tall .. 6'2" at last measure and he's still growing!)

He scrubs up all right, doesn't he?

(even with the silly face he's pulling!)

The whole gang:
Some of the ~~Barbie dolls~~ other girls:

I was sure they would all freeze because it was very windy (and I was cold standing around in jeans and a polar fleece jacket), but Alex said it was warm on the boat and they all did heaps of dancing to warm themselves up, which then prompted the thought that I hoped they all had very good 'support garments' under those strapless dresses.

Apparently they all had a great time even though it was so windy and choppy that the captain abandoned plans for a cruise down to Fremantle and just did giant bog laps from South Perth to Burswood and back to the Barrack St Jetty. Alex managed to get one picture of the lights ...
which lights I'm not sure but hey, he took a photo for me!

Chris's mum Julia picked both boys up and Alex stayed there for the night and most of the next day while his brothers had to go to school .. a fact he took great delight in rubbing in every time they mentioned anything to do with school. "No more school for me-e! You've got school tomorrow! No more school for me-e!" You'll just have to insert your own visual of Lurch trying to do a conga line on his own while singing the above chant ... you're welcome!!

I'm feeling so old ... my baby is going to high school next year!

2010-11-30T11:39:00.005+08:00

Brad had his valedictory service last night so now it's official ... I no longer have any kids in primary school. Waaahhhh! I'm so not ready for this .. because we all know this is about me and how I'm feeling and nothing whatsoever to do with Brad and his feelings about moving on to the next stage of his academic and social lives.

It was a lovely service with lots of photos of the kids throughout the years of their time at the school. We've only been there for the last five years but quite a few of the kids had been there since kindy (eight years in total so far) and it was really good to see how they've all changed and matured over the years.

There was the traditional handing out of graduation certificates by the principal of the whole school as well as the Head of Primary but unfortunately, the lighting isn't the best inside the chapel and the angle was all wrong too, so my photo of Brad receiving his certificate didn't work out (tragedy for a scrapbooker like me!)

Then came the candle ceremony. Each graduating child is given a votive candle and candle holder with their name on it and Bradley didn't want to blow his candle out after the ceremony. He was going to keep it lit until there was no more candle left. I managed to persuade him that trying to eat the supper afterwards with a burning candle in one hand and his (flammable) graduation certificate in the other, would probably result in damage or injury, so he finally allowed me to blow it out. I then had the privilege of carrying it around for the rest of the evening, which was actually a good thing because it meant that it definitely came home to be put away safely with his brothers' ones.

So here you go: my last baby leaving primary school (note the still lit candle!)

Good luck for high school Bradley! Just try your best and we'll be happy!

2010-11-24T08:13:00.001+08:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Dear Donna ...

2010-11-15T09:25:00.003+08:00

Long time no ~~see~~ speak! In case you hadn't gathered, this is the Universe popping in for one of my little 'helpful hints' talks. Let's get started shall we?

First and foremost: when moving house, make sure you are wearing underwear that actually fits and is comfortable! Spending most of the day trying to find a quiet corner to discreetly deal with the mother of all wedgies is not conducive to actually getting anything done. Spending the rest of the day trying to prevent said underwear from falling out the bottom of your 3/4 pants is also not exactly productive. And for heaven's sake, don't wear a new bra. It will dig into places you didn't know you had and cause bruises you will take weeks to get over. Both undies and bra will make for some embarrassing moments with the removalists. Hopefully your face is back to it's normal shade of pink instead of the flaming red you wore for most of the day.
Asking the children to 'put things away' in their new rooms is bound to result in stuff being thrown through in the doorway and left wherever it lands. I realise this is not that different from how they used to put things away in the old house, but as you are still trying to move furniture and large, heavy boxes, it may be advisable to be ~~a bit~~ a lot more specific about where things should go. For example: "Put your clothes into the correct drawers of your chest of drawers and not on the floor" is going to save a least four ankle turns, two stubbed toes and one almost broken arm.
You can survive without a phone and internet and for longer than you think. However, your children will think their eyes have been gouged out with a rusty safety pin if they go more than 12 hours without access to facebook, runescape and a various assortment of mind-numbing flash games. All I can say to this is stock up on chocolate, Valium, earplugs and tranquiliser darts. Oh, and make sure you know which box the alcohol is in!
Next time, try moving a bit closer to Christmas. The children will find so many things they had 'lost' that it will save you money on Christmas presents as they will have heaps to entertain themselves with (and to fight over who it actually belonged to in the first place).
Even though your kitchen was the first thing to be moved, make sure to claim ignorance of where anything is placed in the new kitchen. This will ensure takeaway (and no dishes) for at least four nights after you move in. This will unfortunately leave a rather large dent in the food budget for the week but it is worth it to save your sanity. Oh, and find a rental with a dishwasher next time (not that there will be a next time but make sure the new house has one before you move in!)
Get used to the fact that you will be living in a house full of boxes of stuff you 'need' but don't have a space for ... yet. Just tell the children that the boxes are giant cardboard Lego pieces when they start to complain about the boxes blocking the view to the TV and suggest that they build themselves a nice ~~jail cell~~ ~~soundproof room~~ 'cubby house' instead of ~~whingeing~~ ~~whining~~ ~~moaning~~ politely voicing their discontent.

Now that we have some of those things settled, I would suggest that you keep this list handy for next year when you get to do it all again.

Your friend,

The Universe

The things you do when you should be packing ...

2010-11-02T08:00:00.001+08:00

I wrote this the morning of the actual move. When asked to justify my actions, I explained that it was to be my last creative effort for quite some time and that the internet wasn't going to available for ~~an eternity~~ a couple of weeks so I had to get in while I could.

Anyway, here's my attempt at creativity from 6am yesterday with sleep in my eyes and a frantic husband ~~yelling at~~ trying to organise everyone else in the house ....

Dear friends, please note that our address

Has changed since last you were our guests

When you walked in through the door

And one hour’s stay turned into four.

We emptied the cupboards when the kids went to sleep

And soon found ourselves buried knee deep

In stuff we just had to have at the time

But now just makes us whinge and whine

Oh all the packing we have to do

And oh the dramas we’re going through

It will be worth it in a while

But for now, it’s hard to smile

To try to get the phone connected

Is like trying to get a fly elected

To the exalted office of Prime Minister

You’d think we were trying something sinister!

Our internet has gone away

And won’t be returning for many a day

About fourteen at latest estimate

So please don’t send us many messages

As yet we have no new home phone

But please don’t leave us all alone

We can still be reached on our mobile numbers

Just try not to disturb our much needed slumber!

We’re almost packed and on our way

To the beginning of a brand new way

Of life, of love and many guests

Please come visit us at our new address!

Nostalgic mood is now kicking in

2010-10-30T07:02:00.006+08:00

We are starting to move house today and I am feeling ever-so-slightly unsettled. We have been in this house for ten years and I, for one, am going to miss it.

When I told Peter that I was feeling 'fragile', he replied "the day has arrived and it's time to evacuate." (sounds like an emergency drill not house move!) then said "we didn't conceive any children here but it has been a good house."

We may not have conceived any children here (thank goodness .. three is enough!) but the ones we had already have changed so much in the past ten years that it seems like an entire lifetime ago that I was stressing about the last move.

A few of the big events from the last ten years that jump to mind:

My Dad passing away six months after we moved in. I'll always remember the conversations we had when we were painting the boys rooms and my grudging acceptance of his near-enough attitude to cutting in. He was right .. it doesn't really matter in the long run.
The boys all starting 'big' school. They've all grown up way too quickly!
Alex being diagnosed with autism. I can still remember coming home from a very unproductive meeting at his school and standing in the carport crying on Peter's shoulder about all my fears for him and his future.
The births of Mark and Bec's children. So wonderful to see them become a family of four and then five and it really didn't hurt that they're all cute!
The horrible phone call in the middle of the night to let me know that Pete's Dad had passed away. It felt like Pete was on the other side of the world even though he was only 700km away and all I wanted to do was to bring him home and make the pain go away.
All of the other seemingly small moments that added up to a sometimes painful, yet still wonderful, ten years.

Apparently that's enough reminiscing for now as we have boxes to move and 'stuff' to sort. The slave driver awaits ...

2010-10-28T07:39:00.001+08:00

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Out of the mouths of babes ...

2010-10-23T08:48:00.004+08:00

Being the ever-so-slightly OCD type that I am, I decided to use a colour coding system on the proliferation of boxes that have taken up residence in every room of the house.

I thought that by giving each room/area a colour and labelling the boxes filled with stuff from that room/area with aforementioned colours, it would make it heaps easier to deal with the chaos that is moving house. Having so much more 'stuff' than the last time we moved house was frightening me just a wee bit because I could envision many complaints of "I can't find my ..." and "Why has he got my stuff?"

I even made a pretty little chart with the colours and areas clearly labelled so when the removalists got to the new house with the boxes, they would be able to easily find which room to put each box into ... see:

I was feeling quite proud of myself for being pro-active instead of reactive for a change until Andrew asked the blindingly obvious question:

"Mum? What happens if the removalists are colour blind?"

I think I'm just going to go and cry in the corner now. Please call me if you find removalists who aren't colour blind ....

Plague proportions ...

2010-10-20T07:00:00.001+08:00

Every room I walk into lately has one of these in it:

Even the hallways have sprouted these unusual growths:

Some areas have been more badly infected than others:

And this room appears to be beyond all but the most professional help:

(Take note of the smaller wild versions making a break away from the main group)

Luckily help is arriving soon ... I hope!

Another step closer ...

2010-10-19T14:59:00.005+08:00

The termite inspection guy has been and gone with the oh-so-wonderful news that the house is not infested with termites or any other nasty multi-legged creature (except for Brutus who took an instant dislike to him, as he does to every other male that comes within ten feet of the outside of the front door. Once said male is inside the front door, he couldn't care less .. great guard dog huh?) This means that we are now free to progress to settlement, which has been delayed two weeks due to the buyers changing their minds (and even though they changed them, they still don't work the way I want them to!!) about renting back to us for two weeks. I know they are perfectly within their rights to want vacant possession at settlement but why agree to let us rent and then change their minds? I'm a forward planner people .. I need to know what is going to happen so I can finish picturing the worst case scenario and implement the many and varied back-up plans in plenty of time! Don't mess with the system ... please? (warning .. breakdown imminent .. take evasive action .. warning .. meltdown in progress .....)

OK .. meltdown over for now. Clean-up crews have started fixing the damage ...

So from the very beginning, we/I have:

agreed to the sale of the house
agreed on a settlement date with us renting back for two weeks
granted access to the building inspector as requested by the buyers (and then wondered why they wasted their money seeing as he was here for a grand total of 17 minutes with literally 2 minutes spent in the roof)
found a rental and booked a date to move (after settlement, when Peter is home because I'm damned if I'm moving this all myself! What's that saying though ... damned if you do and damned if you don't!)
been told that we are no longer able to rent back resulting in me burning a whole tray of pizzas at work as I was contemplating aforementioned worst-case-scenario of being homeless with all this ~~crap~~ ~~junk~~ stuff
finally agreed on a (later) settlement date meaning I had to ~~pull oodles of money out of my backside~~ 'find' the bond money and payment for the removalists elsewhere
passed the termite inspection (feels like being back at school .. passing this test and that exam!)
packed enough boxes to deforest a quarter of the Amazonian rainforest (is it still called rainforest if it's been deforested? Always the deep questions here people!)
freaked out about how I still don't have enough boxes to pack the rest of the ~~crap~~ 'valuable and vital items of everyday life'
written long and rambling blog posts about how I've done so much whilst not actually achieving anything
snarled at children who dare to interrupt my whining at the world to ask permission to make chocolate crackles as a treat for me for afternoon tea
apologised to said children for snarling and grant them permission to make aforementioned chocolate crackles so long as they are delivered with a cup of tea
decided to wind up blog post as I'm starting to sound ~~ever-so-slightly mad~~ like a raving lunatic who needs to be packed into a padded box for transport to a secure facility.

Off to have chocolate crackles ...

Mmmmmmmmm ... chocolate crackles ... yum!

After the week I've had this is oh so apt ...

2010-10-19T07:43:00.000+08:00

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Boxes, boxes, everywhere ...

2010-10-10T07:39:00.005+08:00

Woohoo!! The buyers have finally had their finance approved (after a week's extension) so it's official ... we've sold the house! I have also managed to find a rental house and been approved for that too. Now I'm just madly packing everything that stands still long enough, which may be Peter if today is anything like yesterday.

For those whose husbands/partners aren't into motor racing, lucky you! It's Bathurst weekend when the V8 Supercars go round and round and round 161 times. However, that's not the most mind numbing part. That would be reserved for the endless discussions about the merits of this tyre versus that one, who was 0.001 of a second in front of or behind who, how long it took to build this car, how much it cost to build that car and we can't forget the endless repeating of the positions/times/leaderboard throughout the whole thing.

It does have benefits though ... Peter will agree to almost anything to get me to move out of the way of the TV! And apparently it's very educational though I'm not sure I want Drew to know just what these are supposed to be educating him about ...

(Is it just me or do most of these girls look constipated or like they're having some kind of fit?)

I'm sitting here listening to the occasional outburst whenever someone overtakes someone else and the running commentary from Pete, explaining all the minuscule details to the only one of the boys who is vaguely interested (Drew). I think they're both just waiting for the inevitable bingles and crashes that are bound to occur in a race of this length. That's when it really starts to sound interesting.

Bradley came into the study about three minutes ago and I sent him off to say good morning to his father with the instruction to stay and watch the car racing with him. Brad's response was "If I have to watch the car racing, I may as well go back to bed." Good to see one of my children has some sense!

Seriously though, it's one weekend a year and Pete enjoys watching it. He works pretty damn hard the rest of the time so I don't begrudge him this. It's heaps better than listening to, or worse, actually watching test cricket so I'm immensely grateful that hasn't started yet!

Now I'm off to pack some more boxes and try to work out why I thought it was such a good idea to buy so much Tupperware ....

Some more show photos ...

2010-10-03T20:41:00.004+08:00

Brad in his Viking helmet trying to avoid having a photo taken:

Ninja Brad:

Alex's remote control helicopter (purchased instead of a heap of show bags ..
his sugar rush could have been worse!!):

Amy in her funky new glasses and rasta hat (complete with dreadlocks):

Andrew going all rasta (and his shirt matches too!):

We survived the show. However, the post showbag sugar rush has only just started winding down ...

2010-10-03T19:27:00.004+08:00

... and I am ready to kill the inventors of M&Ms ... specifically the person who decided bright blue food colouring was the ideal coating for a chocolate filled sugar coated sweet. Alex's teeth and lips are a beautiful shade of mottled blue. If we lived in a cooler climate I would be taking him to hospital on suspicion of hypothermia!

Then the fact that he is ~~a teensy bit~~ ~~slightly~~ OK, majorly 'sensitive' to blue and yellow food colouring, has meant an interesting couple of days. Yes I know I could have taken them away from him, but where's the ~~blog post~~ fun in that? (I tried to get a photo but retreated before he literally broke the camera. Teenage boys don't seem to like having their photo taken, as is evidenced by the number of photos of hands in front of faces that are now languishing in my archives.)

Overall though, we had a great day out and were home by 3pm. We arrived nice and early (9:20am) and managed to look at everything we wanted to see before the real crowds started arriving just before lunch. The first stop was the cake decorating (which all the kids had asked to see .. I know .. wonders will never cease!) We all had a laugh at the look on this groom's face:

and this couple:
Very well made, but my favourite was still the little mice peeking out from all sorts of places in this farmyard scene:

After the cakes, we checked out the sheepdog trials, log chopping, needlework/craft display (for Bec's gorgeous cross stitch sampler) and the dairy pavilion. Then it was on to the ~~worst~~ best part of the show ... sideshow alley. Thank goodness we were there early otherwise I would be writing this from the East Perth lock-up or Graylands Mental Hospital ... no sensory overload issues here!

Brad and Amy went on the bumper cars then had a go at an air powered cannon/gun thing where Brad won his new favourite stuffed toy, Whipper the dolphin. Then it was on to the laughing clowns where he won the only thing he wanted to buy ... a ninja sword. (It didn't stop him from buying another two anyway!) Amy had a go at climbing a horizontal, rotating ladder (and fell off) and Alex made his way around to the Scouting display and tried to go the whole distance around the rock climbing wall without touching the ground. He probably would have made it if there weren't so many little kids .. how rude!! :P

While Andrew ate lunch (no-one else was hungry ... weird!) we watched the dog judging then I sent the kids off to buy show bags while I wandered for a while on my own (bliss!). I checked out the photography and art exhibitions, the "only at the show" specials pavilion and the baby animal nursery before meeting up with the now-broke children. Much to my surprise, they said they'd had enough and were quite happy to go home with their ~~diabetic-coma-in-a-bag~~ spoils.

We caught the train home, where I retreated to the safety of my lounge chair with a magazine for some down time. When it got a little bit too quiet, I ventured down to the games room and found the spoils of the day spread from one end of the room to the other. Oh well, at least they had fun picking out the bags even if the contents only last a day or two.

Now I just have to get a job to pay for next year's expedition!

And it's not even halfway through the school holidays ...

2010-09-30T09:08:00.002+08:00

see more dog and puppy pictures

...usually Yu-Gi-Oh

or Pokemon

or The Simpsons

or Runescape

or bodily functions ...

Today is the day ...

2010-09-28T10:19:00.006+08:00

... we find out if all our hopes and dreams, well the ones about building the new house anyway, will come true. Nothing like a bit of pressure there Universe!

The people wanting to buy our house have until close-of-business today to let us know if their finance has been approved. I admit I have been and, truth be told still am, a little bit worried that it may all fall through.

It's the pessimist in me; the one I try not to let out into the bright light of day but that somehow still manages to escape the confines of my happy pills and rear it's very ugly head at the most inopportune times ... like now!

Today is also the last day I can use 'not going to the Royal Show' as a threat. It has come in handy these last few days and has even motivated Alex to listen to my request for him to mow the lawns. I've been asking him to do it for the last two weeks, so the fact that he is currently outside battling with the triffids masquerading as lawn, shows how seriously he takes the possibility of missing out on enough fairy floss to induce a diabetic coma. Ooh, that reminds me, I must find the tranquiliser darts and gun before tonight to make sure I pack them into my bag for tomorrow.

The other two ~~slaves~~ children are currently vacuuming and polishing anything and everything that stands still long enough ... including the poor dog! I don't think Mr Sheen furniture polish will do much for the shine on his coat but I suppose it's worth a try. (j/k ... he escaped long before that was even an option. You can put the phone down now .. no need to involve the RSPCA!)

I am wondering about what evil little impulse prompted the Universe to make me offer to take the children to the Show. Am I being punished for some past life transgression or was it the optimist in me taking over briefly with a reassurance that 'surely it won't be as bad as last time'? I mean yes, they are another year older and hopefully another year wiser (a girl has to have dreams!) but that also involves wanting more freedom to not look at the things I want to see. Luckily, at least two of the kids coming with me, and teenagers at that, want to see the cake decorating and baby animals so I will count myself amongst the fortunate!

Now I am off to:

.. do some more of the Mt Everest of washing that always seems to appear at school holiday time

.. go to the tile shop to work out exactly how many square metres of tiles we require to make the new house habitable before moving in. (Not doing the living on bare concrete floors thing again .. the hay fever was unbelievable last time!)

.. buy the necessary flavoured milks to enable 'free' entry into the show tomorrow (saving me a whole $36 so it's well worth it!)

.. pack a couple more boxes of stuff that we absolutely must keep but don't use.

.. bath the dog (or make an appointment at the doggy salon for him to have a bath and haircut .. option two sounds way more appealing!)

.. other stuff that I know I have to do but can't think of right now...

Enjoy your day and if you don't hear from me by the end of the week, my new address will be c/- Graylands Mental Hospital, Perth WA.

Notes from the Universe ...

2010-09-27T09:44:00.005+08:00

What a difference a week makes!

2010-09-23T16:09:00.003+08:00

This time last week, I was despairing of the eldest child's lack of concern about his English assignments.

I was ready to impose the worst restrictions ever ... no access to anything with a screen and was going to remove (and pack!) everything from his room except for his school uniforms and pj's.

I was wondering where I had gone so wrong that a child of mine would seem to despise the written word so completely.

I was envisioning a future with an increasingly belligerent teen being forced to repeat the same things that he hated this year, over and over again.

And then his medication kicked in, along with an attitude adjustment.

And we have completed all but one journal entry and both major assignments. (Yes, I did say 'we' because I sat with him as scribe during the brainstorming sessions to help him capture the thoughts before they ran away!)

And all is now right with the ~~world~~ English teacher.

Well done Alex. I'm proud of you!!

Deja vu .. all over again!

2010-09-15T19:30:00.002+08:00

This week has been a repeat of 'being pecked to death by a chicken' and I'm really, really over it. I found out that Alex is going to fail English if he doesn't extract his head from his behind and do at least some of the work he's avoided up 'til now.

The deja vu part is that we went through the same thing last term, first term, last year and the year before. I know, I know, which part of autistic and ADD aren't I getting??

I'm just frustrated that the teacher, knowing his history with work avoidance and lying about it, didn't let me know that he hadn't handed anything in this term ... and when I say anything I mean not.a.single.thing!

I tried explaining the consequences of his actions (and lack thereof) in simple terms...

"If you don't pass English this term, you fail English completely. If you fail English this year, you can't go on to Year 11 ... at all!"

This was met with blank looks so I amped it up a bit.

"If you fail English, you will have to repeat Year 10."

More blank looks...

"At another school."

Slightly panicked looks...

"And you won't be able to the computing course you want to do at TAFE."

Awareness starts to dawn that this may be serious...

"So what are you you going to do about it?"

Back to the blank look...

It was at this point that something stopped me from committing actions I would no doubt regret once I was put in prison for them and poured a bucket of ultra-calm over my head. (It must have been his guardian angel! Thanks whoever you are!!) I was then able to calmly sit and discuss the various options available to him (all of which included him doing the work, much to his disgust!) and reach a suitable compromise (none of which included doing him bodily harm, luckily for him).

In all seriousness though, I am worried that we, as parents, and the system are both failing him. If he, someone with a 'label' and a rather vocal mother, is falling through the cracks, what chance do the quiet, struggling students with disinterested parents have?

I realise that some of his behaviours are typical of teenagers but I am concerned that I can't tell which ones are teenage rebellion and which ones need active specific intervention and help. It's very much a deal with them on a case-by-case basis and hope I'm not totally screwing him up in the process.

I also realise that the teachers have many students with differing needs and abilities and are probably overwhelmed with everything they have to do. Yet I am incredibly frustrated that some of the teachers he has had repeatedly for the last almost three years, still don't understand how difficult it is for him to do some of the things they are asking.

I'm not asking you to give him a free pass or straight A's (especially seeing as he hasn't done the work!) but when I ask for more information to help him with a task, please don't act as though I've asked you to donate a lung to a chimp with a 40-a-day smoking habit. All I need is clarification on a couple of points or a more specific set of questions for him to work with and I'll get out of your hair!

Another thing I discovered in amongst everything else, is that he hasn't been taking his ADD medication. We had discussed this earlier this year and he wanted to be responsible for administering it himself. I allowed him to do it under supervision for a couple of weeks then left him to it. Apparently he decided some months ago to only take it every now and then which, of course, doesn't do much to help him at all. One day back on his tablets and he's been able to write almost two pages for one of the assignments with no arguments, backchat or dramas. What a difference a day (and some severely restricted pharmaceuticals) makes!

Now we just have 5 journal entries (at least a page of handwriting each) and a major assignment to finish before next Friday. Wish me luck!!

My thoughts exactly!

2010-09-12T11:19:00.001+08:00

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Almost there ...

2010-09-10T14:17:00.002+08:00

... with selling the house. We've accepted an offer on the house and are now just waiting to hear back about their finance. Please keep your fingers crossed just a little bit longer!
... with handing back the books for the canteen at the school that my kids don't go to. I've been thinking about 'chucking it in' for a while and have finally bitten the bullet and resigned as canteen treasurer. I don't have any vested interest in making it work and to be perfectly honest, I'm totally over all the 'office politics' involved.
... with starting to build the new house. We have the final draft of the floorplans and the costing. (Anyone have a spare kidney I can have? I've sold both of mine to pay for the house!!)

I can't believe how quickly this school term has gone by. It seems like only yesterday that I was wondering if I was still required at the canteen, seeing as it was a new term and I was technically only employed up to the end of last term. I have really enjoyed working there and will miss it next term when the new contractors finally take over. Mind you, that was supposed to happen at the end of term 2 and we're still there at the end of term 3!

Alex is now officially 15 years old! My first little baby now towers over me and he hasn't stopped growing yet. Despite the occasional hiccup, which we all have with our teenagers, overall he's growing up to be a lovely young man. He bought himself an iPod Touch with all his birthday money and unfortunately has dropped it already! It's not badly damaged but now can't be locked (what a shame .. nothing to keep Mum's prying eyes out!) so he rang the nearest Apple store to find out how to get it fixed. Upon being told that it wasn't covered under warranty, he politely asked if they knew of anywhere else that could fix it, took down the details and hung up. He then came into see me and question what was the point of a warranty if it didn't cover damage? He now understands the difference between warranties and insurance which is more than I can say for a lot of people out there (having worked in retail, I would estimate 90% of them didn't understand the difference!!)

Bradley is currently the walking wounded due to taking a spill off his bike yesterday afternoon after being out in the sun for most of the day at his school's junior sports carnival. He has a beautiful ~~burn~~ 'tan' line across his forehead where his fringe was sitting and the rest of his face looks like he just walked out of a sauna. Add that to the nasty grazes on his left hand and right elbow as well as the multi-coloured but mostly black bruises on his thigh where the handlebars hit him, he really looks like he's been in the wars. The saddest part of it all was that my second response after "Are you OK?" was "Don't bleed in the grout. It's too hard to get out!"

Anyway, had best be off to school to pick up 6 boys (Alex is having some friends over for a sleepover/birthday party). Anyone have some Valium I can borrow to get through the night?

Today's emotional forecast ...

2010-09-05T08:07:00.001+08:00

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The oh-so-enlightening speech patterns of the adolescent male ...

2010-08-21T19:33:00.002+08:00

Found this on the website of a motivational speaker whose talk I attended last week. It really struck a chord with me probably because I'm not living through it at the moment.

I have one adolescent male who never seems to be quiet but now that I reflect on it a bit more, he's not actually that different. He's just more of a politician .. you know, says an awful lot of words that never seem to answer the original question and more words that aren't related at all. I'm thinking it would be easier (sometimes anyway) to have one that spoke in monosyllabic utterances! Mind you, with a mother as verbose as I am, he didn't really stand much chance, did he?

The motivational speaker, Graham Hyman, gave a talk called "Living with your teenager". The title alone was enough to rope me in and then hearing that he was funny as well sealed the deal. I picked up Elle (mother of two teenage boys) and Betty (mother to a 20yo son and 16yo daughter) and headed into the dark and dismal night, not really knowing what to expect.

We all had a ball and came away from it with some useful information and strategies for fostering healthy relationships and self-esteem whilst not killing them. It was very comforting to realise that we're not doing anywhere near as bad a job of parenting as we all thought we were and were actually using a lot of these techniques already.

The brief overview (at the risk of breaching copyright .. um-ah!) is basically:

Talk to your kids .. all the time; not just when you want them to do something. Make time to talk about stuff that interests them; make time to just be in the same room; gossip with them (as in ask about other people and do it nicely .. no negatives) listen when they do talk (even if you consider it dribble!). Being around to talk to about the silly stuff will allow and encourage them to talk about the more serious stuff should the need arise. One I try to practice but sometimes the 'dribble' just gets to be too much!
Pick your battles, otherwise you'll be battling all the time. Something we are repeatedly told as parents and one which is so much easier to say than do! I try to use the 'Rule of Fives' .. will it matter in five minutes? Five hours? Five weeks? Five months? Five years? If the answer is yes to weeks, months or years, then you need to deal with it and deal with it now. Otherwise, bite another hole in your tongue!
Break the no-talk rule before it breaks your family. Be prepared to discuss anything and everything and then make sure you do so! Kids, teens especially, are going to push limits and boundaries so making or taking the opportunity to discuss sex, drugs and alcohol is important. Listen to their point-of-view without just declaring they're wrong/stupid/etc. but stand strong on your own moral principles. I try with this one but it is hard! Trying to let your teenage son know he can talk to you about anything including bodily changes, feelings or other sexual-type stuff can result in nothing but a very clammed-up and embarrassed teen and an equally embarrassed mother. Apparently, that's what Dad is for!
Don't handicap teenagers by making life too easy for them. Let them accept the consequences, be they logical or natural, of their actions. So many parents these days step into the breach every time little Johnny hits a bump in the road (usually of little Johnny's own making) that he never has to accept responsibility for anything. Not much chance of that happening here. I will admit that I am a lot more lenient on the boys in certain areas that annoy my darling husband, but it comes back to the whole 'pick your battles' thing. Overall, I think I'm picking the right battles.
Catch your teenager in the act of doing something good. It helps to reinforce the good behaviours whilst letting the teen know they're good for something after all (contrary to their own slightly warped beliefs at that age!) The only problem with this is that every time I praise Alex for good behaviour, he seems to take it as a challenge to then behave as badly as possible! Breathe in 2, 3, 4, 5 .. breathe out 2, 3, 4, 5 ....
Remember - the Lone Ranger never had kids and neither do most superheroes. Being a parent is a tough job and parenting a teen (or two, or three) is tougher. Accept that sometimes, you'll need help and don't be afraid to ask for it. This is another tough one for me to do. I don't like to ask for help but luckily I have a very good support network who can usually see when I am struggling and reach out to lend a hand. Thanks people .. love yous all!
Something is always better than nothing. Parenting your teen will test you but don't expect too much too early .. growing up takes time! Be patient, keep your sense of humour, be forgiving, communicate unconditional love and learn to trust. That last one keeps saying to me: learn to let go. Being the OCD control freak I ~~sometimes~~ am, that's the hardest for me to do. My babies are growing up too fast and whilst I know that they will eventually ~~escape from me~~ leave home, I'm nowhere near ready for that to happen, hence the hanging on with both hands.

So that's it in a not-so-small nutshell. Obviously it's not the be-all and end-all of parenting a teenager, but it made sense to me and the delivery of these ideas was done very well. We all had a good laugh, (at ourselves, others and the whole situation/process) and came away feeling re-energised to tackle the next worthwhile battle.

If you ever get the chance to go see this guy give a talk, go! It's well worth it, if only for the laughs!!

I don't know ...

2010-08-14T17:01:00.000+08:00

if I'm cranky because I'm tired, stressed about the home open tomorrow or not eating the right foods. I just know I'm cranky!
why I continue to do things that I know are bad for me. I just know that I need to change the habits of a lifetime and it's hard.
how Alex manages to be so helpful one day and so darn irritating the next. I just know today is 'the next'.
where this year has gone. It seems like only yesterday that the boys were starting the new school year. I just know that the year is flying by way too fast.
why Bradley has been so cranky with Alex (and to a lesser degree, me). It's not for the usual reason (bowel problems) so I'm at a bit of a loss. I just know he needs to change his attitude soon or there will be serious repercussions.
what we're having for dinner tonight. I just know they will want to be fed .. yet again!

Missing in action

2010-08-10T08:09:00.002+08:00

.. and boy, so much action!! (and not the kind of 'action' that half of you are thinking of, so get your minds above the belt and with the program people! Sheesh!!)

Anyway, as I started to say before your dirty minds led us down a whole 'nother road of moral issues, we've been busy around here lately. I can honestly say that my house hasn't looked like this ~~in ages~~ ~~in a very long time~~ ever!

I'm actually scared to let the children into the house for fear they will breathe and all the banished dust bunnies and spiders will use that little bit of extra oomph to stage their hostile takeover, rendering all our hard work a total waste of time. However, they (the children, not the dust bunnies) objected to sleeping in the car park next door so I had to let them back in, with strict instructions to keep a look out for rampaging hordes of disgruntled evictees.

The photos are being taken this morning at 10am and I still have to:

clean 2 bathrooms,
replace all the mismatched towels in said bathrooms with colour co-ordinated ones,
do the breakfast dishes,
make the boys' beds to 'mummy' standards,
vacuum carpets,
mop tiles,
dust (again! Where does it all come from?)
convince husband to pack up his 'stuff' from the floor of the bedroom,
recover from 'convincing' husband,
and about a hundred other things that I will only think of once the photographer has left and I am perusing the photos on the website.

Yet here I sit telling anyone who will listen that I have so much to do and so little time!

Oh-oh .. husband is home from taking the kids to school. I think I'm about to get 'motivated' in a big way! If you don't hear from me by the weekend, send in a search party.

I'll probably be buried in the garage under everything else we've 'hidden' down there.

Bring heavy digging equipment and sniffer dogs ...

Out of the mouths of babes ...

2010-07-27T19:05:00.002+08:00

Bradley came down to my room this morning and said to me through the ensuite door, very seriously, "Mum, we need to replace Dad."

Curious as to the reason behind this sudden pronouncement, I asked him why.

His equally serious response?

"Because he's a pre-1980's gas appliance."

Love it!

(There's a campaign on TV at the moment telling people they have to replace their pre-1980's gas appliances due to some upcoming changes to the gas supply. He's just taken that idea and run with it. Love the way his mind works!)

The boys have changed their names ...

2010-07-26T07:14:00.004+08:00

They have all taken to calling everyone Captain something-or-other so now we have:

Captain Buzzkill (Alex),
Captain Obvious (either Drew or Brad) and
Captain Awesome (either Drew or Brad again)

I have asked when the next round of promotions is due because I think Major Awesome and Major Pain-in-the-butt sound more impressive but I just got pitying looks and a slow, sad shake of the head.

Obviously I'm Captain Fail-to-get-the-point-of-this-game.

At least I made it to Captain!!

The first step is admitting you have a problem ...

2010-07-24T07:47:00.008+08:00

The last couple of weeks, which just happened to have been school holidays, have been crammed full of exciting activities like weeding, cleaning out Peter's garage, de-crappifying (yes it's a word 'cos I said so!) most of the rooms in the house and just generally making the house resemble something liveable and appealing, rather than the post-apocalyptic nightmare it was before.

As a result, I have had lots of time to think while performing these not-exactly-mentally-challenging tasks and have come to the conclusion that, as much as I try to deny it, I too am a hoarder. I have been calling Peter a hoarder for years, with very good reason (car magazines from the 1980's anyone?), but have finally come to the realisation that he has rubbed off on me and not just in that way, so get your minds out of the gutter!

I have managed to fill the council wheelie bin in less than 30 minutes with my frantic efforts to reduce the amount of stuff I will have to pack (and yes, it is me that will have to pack as Peter is still working away). The main problem is that I tend to get carried away and fill the bin within 24 hours of it being emptied and then have to spend the next week telling the children to stop creating kitchen waste as there's nowhere to put it!

On a side note, do you know anyone who really enjoys packing to move? If so, they have more problems than me .. yay someone weirder than I am! .. and can you please send them my way?

The children aren't too happy with my new-found de-cluttering skills and have been found surreptitiously sifting through the top layers trying to 'rescue' items they deem to be of extreme value. I feel bad for all of two nanoseconds before encouraging them, in the nicest possible way (snort!) which can probably be heard at least ten streets away, to "put that back right now mister, unless you want to join it!" They couldn't really join it as there's no room for another scrap of paper, let alone a rapidly growing, increasingly hairy teenager or his slightly smaller siblings, but the threat does sound slightly impressive and has worked so far.

As the kind of child who regularly rearranged my room, had my books organised 'library fashion' and who purged 'stuff' on a very regular basis, I am really struggling with the boys' keep-it-just-in-case mindsets. We have found things like a scrap of paper with a hand-written Yu-Gi-Oh game score from more than two years ago, broken elastic bands, bent paper clips, dead batteries, pencils sharpened down to be so small even Tom Thumb would have been able to use them, empty chip packets from before the last packaging change three years ago and various other assorted 'things' that have to be kept .. just in case. Thank goodness they're back at school because now I can get into their rooms with no interference and I have yet to have any of them ask me "where's my ... ?"

I shall have to get them to admit their hoarding issues so we can get some help .. hopefully a bulk discount at the local shrink! While I'm working on that little problem, I'd best go and finish some of the million other things to be done before the house officially hits the market on the tenth of August. Real estate agents can be soooo particular about things .. who says you need to finish painting a half-painted wall?

Or make the beds?

Or weed the gardens?

Or de-crappify the carports?

Or mop the floors?

Oh, potential buyers do. Best be off then .... lots to do!

Woohoo .. the finance is approved!

2010-07-12T11:51:00.003+08:00

Now we're in more debt .. oh yay!!

Seriously though, it's great news 'cos it means we're one step closer to moving into the home we have all had some input into. Peter will have his hhuuugggeee garage, I will have my central kitchen, practical linen cupboard and pantry, rooms that aren't traffic areas, lots of storage space and heaps more. Even the boys have put forward several ideas for the new place we're building; some of which have been accepted and more which have not. At least they're helping!

Now we just have to:

pick colours for tiles, roofing materials, bricks, bench tops and walls,
work out where all the lights and power points are going (and then add more .. can never have too many power points!),
deal with inevitable hiccups in building process
sort out reticulation and landscaping
paint everything
actually move in.

And that is after we/I:

finish painting this house ready for sale,
finish throwing out all the accumulated junk,
finish getting rid of excess furniture (anyone need a student desk with hutch/ set of wall units/ extra desks?)
sell the house
find a rental
move into said rental
find a job
work at said job without killing anyone, least of all self or children
survive living in said rental whilst running around like a headless chook organising everything for the new house

Remind me again why we're doing this?

Those who know me well will understand ...

2010-07-09T09:20:00.000+08:00

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Andrew wants to die a slow painful death ...

2010-07-07T21:45:00.003+08:00

or maybe that's just my interpretation of the way he keeps reminding me of my, in his opinion, extremely advanced age.

Example one:

"I'll help you set up your sewing machine Mum. I know how to thread them and everything."

"OK but be careful. My machine is a bit different from the ones at school."

"You're telling me! Wow, this thing is ancient! Does it plug in or do you have to pedal it?"

Example two:

"Mum, did you watch this program when you were my age?"

"No darling. It wasn't around then."

"Oh. What did you watch?"

"Whatever my parents wanted to watch because we only had one TV."

"Oh. Were you guys like poor or something?"

"No darling. We just had one lounge room and that's where the TV was."

"One lounge room and one TV? I'm so glad I didn't live in the olden days!"

Example three:

"Mum did you have electricity when you were little or did you have to use candles for lights and go to bed when it got dark?"

"Yes we had electricity and we only used candles when it wasn't working .. same as we do now."

"Wow! Electricity really has been around for a long time hasn't it?"

After delivering these little gems, he usually looks at me with an innocent face before registering my reaction, then running for the relative safety of his room before I come over all weak and decrepit and start demanding my dinner at 4 o'clock in the afternoon with "it had better be mushed up so my poor old teeth can take it sonny boy" added for good measure.

Now I know why my mother always looked so upset when I asked her about what type of dinosaur she rode to school.

Kids .. gotta love 'em (I think it's a law!)

I have no idea what I'm doing here so I'm just going to ramble for a while ...

2010-07-06T14:32:00.003+08:00

I'm feeling the urge to update this little ol' blog but can't think of anything interesting to update it with. And by 'update', I mean write something wonderfully witty or at least faintly funny (shows how sad things are at the moment, I'm resorting to alliteration to satisfy my OCDness!) As nothing is presenting itself for inspection, I'll just have to resort to giving you the rundown on school holidays so far ...

Saturday/Sunday: Now I know lots of people don't regard Saturdays and Sundays as part of the school holidays, as they are days we would normally be responsible for our own offspring. I do count them because of the ~~slight~~ major attitude change that takes place at the final siren on the last day of school. It seems to change the children into some sort of otherwordly creatures .. a kind of a cross between a sloth and a locust .. you know, something that wants to lie around all day yet still manages to consume every food-like item in your kitchen, seemingly by osmosis as they don't appear to move, all the while complaining that there's nothing to eat.

So now we have that clear, Saturday and Sunday went almost exactly as expected for the first days of the holidays .. minor skirmishes as they re-established the pecking order of the home, then all out warfare for control of the TV remote.

Monday was better as there was a small amount of extra oestrogen, in the form of Debbie's daughter Amy, to help ease the testosterone overload. They all played (relatively) well together with no blood, broken bones or trips to the emergency room and I even got some biscuits made for me! Actually they weren't specifically for me but my house, my kitchen, my ingredients, therefore my biscuits! Seems fair to me...

Today, I managed to ~~drag myself~~ bounce joyfully out of bed, get dressed before 8am and was writing an appointment I had just remembered on the calendar, when I noticed that the boys had a dentist appointment at 9am. Figuring I still had plenty of time, I woke Alex for the first time and sent the other 2 to have breakfast and give their teeth an extra good brushing.

At 8:30am, I woke Alex again telling him we were leaving in 10 minutes and that he had to be up and dressed with his teeth brushed properly. We finally left at 8:50am and arrived in plenty of time after freezing ourselves half to death in the car. (Don't you hate it when the car trip is not long enough to heat the engine and therefore the heater doesn't work?)

Got the dentist over and done with (nobody needs any fillings .. yay!) then decided that seeing as we were already all dressed and out of the house, we may as well do a couple of things on my to-do list.

We went to a favourite plant nursery of mine (wholesale prices for much larger/healthier plants than at the local hardware store) and got a load of plants to try and make the house look a bit more presentable for sale. Then it was on to Spotlight (fabric/craft/haberdashery store) for some curtain material for the ensuite, bathroom and toilet (again with the 'more presentable' thing). Just happened to find myself in the scrapbooking section after buying the curtain material .. not at all sure how that happened! .. and spotted a border punch I've been trying to find for a while. Treated my self and then treated the boys at McDonald's for lunch as they had behaved themselves beautifully all morning.

After finishing lunch I felt all inspired to get outside, despite the cold (still only 12 degrees according to the radio news), so of course I dragged the boys along with me. They helped me weed, shift excess dirt and plant most of the new plants. The ones that weren't planted have been given a lovely drink of wetta-soil and placed in the sun for some warmth. Now all I have to do is get some mulch to keep the weeds away and it will look lovely.

Now I think I should spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find my sewing machine and dig through the deep dark recesses of my mind for the ability to use it, so that I can honestly say I have done something towards selling the house. Though exactly how a toilet curtain is going to sell the house I'm not sure but .. meh .. it sounded impressive just for a second!

Hope you're all surviving the school holidays!!

Oh yay .. it's school holidays!

2010-07-03T14:19:00.003+08:00

19 days of fun-filled, full-on, in-my-face time with the boys (I'll leave it up to you to determine whether I'm being sarcastic or not!) and it all started so well ...

I had, when in a state of mind most people call insanity, offered to have a friend's two boys over yesterday afternoon after work/school to ~~entertain~~ play with my three boys. Then a different friend rang and asked if I could have her daughter for the afternoon as she had an appointment. No worries said I breezily and made appropriate arrangements for food and drink, causing the lady behind me in the supermarket queue to ask if I was a scout leader or something. After assuring her that the quantity of snacks was only for six children, she launched into protracted praise of mothers with more than the standard 2.4 children and congratulated me on bucking the trend. It was quite sad to see her face when I informed her that only 3 of the children were mine and that the other 3 were 'blow-ins' for the day.

The mother of the two boys came and collected them at 5:30pm after only a few instances of raised voices and threats of bodily harm (which I stopped making when I realised the neighbours were listening!) and then settled in to enjoy a lovely chat with the second friend (we'll call her Debbie .. Hi Deb!) over ~~an extremely healthy~~ dinner.

During the afternoon/evening, there had been some conspiring amongst the children and after some cute puppy-dog-eye looks, Andrew ended up spending the night at Debbie's house. I arranged to collect him at around 9:30am and went off to bed at a relatively decent hour for a great night's sleep and sleep-in the next morning.

After a bit of a mad panic to get out of my ~~clown pants~~ pyjamas, I went on my way to collect Drew, leaving the other two at home with strict instructions to stack the dishwasher before I returned, knowing full well that it would probably still be sitting there emptier than my bank account at Christmas time when I finally deigned to re-appear. A girl has to have dreams, right?

Anyway, I collected Andrew and headed to Kmart to attempt to lay-by some items for Christmas (mission accomplished), checked out the clothes sale at Miller's (nothing caught my eye enough to make me buy it) and then headed for home to ~~make the children work~~ spend some quality time with the children outside in the backyard.

Alex managed to start the lawnmower and mow the lawn; Bradley and I swept the patio area and got rid of some things things that had just been hanging around and Andrew pulled some weeds and helped Alex with the emptying of the lawnmower catcher. Very productive effort with a lovely result .. the patio and backyard look much better. Everyone worked well together with very few ~~arguments~~ discussions as to the merits of particular methodologies.

After finishing up, I told the boys the rest of the afternoon was theirs and set them free. Of course they all immediately headed back inside (I think I'm raising vampires!) and to the comfort of their electronic entertainment.

Things then took a turn for the worse when Alex tripped over his laptop computer, which was on the floor in the TV room after being told repeatedly not to leave it there, and has now broken it beyond any sense of redemption I could offer. The only thing that would have kept him away from his brothers, yet still occupied, has now gone to laptop heaven.

He has spent the last half an hour crying and throwing himself very dramatically onto his bed (silent movie heroines have nothing on this kid and his over acting abilities!) but is now laughing maniacally at something his brothers are doing .. one extreme to the other in ten seconds flat .. welcome to my world!

So now, as I sit here listening to the replacement washing machine trying to remodel my house by knocking out a few walls, I am in a bit of a quandary:

Do I attempt to have his laptop fixed to save my sanity over the next 18 days or do I let him suffer this natural consequence?

Do I spend money on getting the laptop fixed or on Valium and other sedatives to get us all through the next 18 days?

Or do I just give up and go chocolate myself to death?

Hmmmmm? Which option people? Let me know what you think ... please??!!

2010-06-20T07:24:00.003+08:00

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... because if you lie on the floor and pretend the ceiling is the floor, everything looks so much cleaner and tidier.

Except for the chocolate milk stain near the dining table (too much vigorous shaking resulting in a minor explosion) and the shoe print on Andrew's ceiling (put there by Alex when it was his room) and the numerous daddy-long-legs spiders that have taken up residence in every available corner and the fact that the now-ceiling has oodles of stuff on it making it very uncomfortable to lie on and that seems to be defying gravity to create an obstcle course of mammoth proportions and ... let's just leave it there shall we?

I have enough to do today as it is!

I'm back ...

2010-06-18T15:59:00.004+08:00

... working at the canteen, for the next two weeks anyway!

The canteen manager called me on Wednesday and asked me to work Thursday to which I said yes, of course. Any extra money is good money! While I was at work on Thursday, she then asked me if I would be able to work Friday as well. Once again, I said yes with all the speed of the Road Runner .. beep beep! .. and thought to myself how great it would be if I could work at least one day a week for the next two weeks, as we could really use the money at the moment, but at the same time resigning myself to that not happening.

You can probably guess where this is going by now, but for those who aren't with the program (hurry up people!) today I was asked to work three days a week for the last two weeks of term, which just happen to be the next two weeks. So as of next week, I'll be working Monday, Thursday and Friday while I continue my search for a 'real' job (one that involves more than 18 hours a week and hopefully heaps of extra money!)

Speaking of searching for jobs, I have just found the perfect one for me so please cross all applicable body parts and send good vibes my way. Cheers!!

Brain teaser time

2010-06-13T18:32:00.003+08:00

See if you can figure out what these words have in common:

Banana
Dresser
Grammar
Potato
Revive
Uneven
Assess

Are you peeking or have you already given up? Give it another try.

Look at each word carefully.

You'll kick yourself when you discover the answer!

Scroll Down ...

Answer:

In all of the words listed, if you take the first letter off, place it at the end of the word and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word.

And today's mascot is ...

2010-06-12T08:04:00.000+08:00

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The good, the bad and the just plain annoying

2010-06-10T16:11:00.008+08:00

The good:

We are in the process of cleaning up around the house to try to make it more saleable so that we can pursue my dream of building a house that will be miles too big when the kids leave home but won't ever be big enough 'til then.

After checking out the laundry side of the house, with my eyes open for a change, I realised just how many ~~triffids~~ weeds there were and decided to put Alex to work helping me clear them out. Whilst he approached this task with all the enthusiasm of someone going into surgery to remove their brain via their rectum without anesthetic, we have managed to achieve a lot. We have filled the trailer to overflowing and apparently now I need to take it to the tip and empty it by myself, because he has 'other things' to do. Hopefully one of them is to study for the exams he has to sit as soon as he gets back to school ...

Anyway, what started out as a punishment, in conjunction with the suspension, has turned into some good one-on-one time together, where we are discussing anything and everything (when I can get my brain to keep up with his!)

The bad:

The usual worry about whether I'm doing enough to help Alex, the endless list of things to do and trying to find a job.

The just plain annoying:

Our fence was damaged in a storm (for those Perthites .. THE storm) back in March and the neighbours and I have been trying to get someone to fix it pretty much since then.

We had a few guys come out and give quotes, who surprisingly enough were on time and which weren't inflated past the stratosphere, but when it came time for them to come out and do the actual job, they all seemed to vanish quicker than chocolate during PMS time.

"I'll call you when I can fit you in."

"Next Wednesday .. definitely."

"Sorry. Can't make it then. Have to make it Tuesday .. week after never."

"What do you mean this is an insurance job? I don't want to wait for my money."

So in which part of "I need a quote for my INSURANCE company to be able to replace my damaged fence" did he hear "Sure. I have a spare three-and-a-half thousand dollars just sitting around for you to have up front"? Because I'm positive that I said the words 'insurance claim' at least four times during our conversation and specifically asked if he was OK with dealing with the insurance company at least twice. (Can you tell I've been burned before?)

Yet he still managed to misunderstand and rang me the night before he was due to start, to tell me that cash was preferable for the full payment, due as soon as the job was completed. When I said that I didn't have access to that much cash, he said to ring him when I had it all together and then he would be out to do the job.

At that point (Wednesday evening), I gave up on him and rang someone else who was only too happy to take an insurance job and who could fit me in Friday. I then spoke to the neighbour to let him know what was going on, only to find out that all four guys had rung him on Wednesday wanting to do the job on Friday. Never rains but it pours!

So ultimately the whinge is what is so hard about doing the job for the agreed price, under the agreed conditions on the agreed date? Apparently all of it!

One step forward ...

2010-06-09T20:14:00.004+08:00

... and five steps back again!

Alex has been suspended from school .. again .. for having an altercation with another student. He is four years older than the other child, along with a few other factors that I would rather keep to myself, so the school has taken a rather dim view of things and suspended him for five days. We are very lucky that he wasn't just expelled this time, especially given his past history.

I totally understand the school's view on this and am in total agreement with the punishment, but I am struggling with what to do about his continuing impulse control issues. I have tried to seek a referral to a different doctor, to see whether changing medications or dosages would help but they are all so busy, we'll be waiting a while for an appointment, even with private health insurance.

When I went to pick him up from the school, I was able to have a 'chat' with him before the deputy principal came in. I didn't yell, threaten dire consequences or rant and rave. I simply sat down and told him how disappointed I was to receive another call from the school when he had been doing so well. I told him how using the excuse of "I have a bad temper" just wouldn't cut it in the real world after school and doesn't even cut it now.

It was about this point that I began to cry as I talked him through my fears of having a phone call or a visit from the police to say that they had him in custody for seriously hurting or killing someone. Or that he himself had been injured or killed as a result of an argument probably started over something small. And that I wasn't sure what to do to help him as I can't be there to watch over him every second of every day 'just in case'.

Please don't get me wrong .. I'm not trying to paint him as the innocent victim in all of this (not by any stretch of the imagination!) and am extremely grateful to the school for taking mitigating factors into consideration. I'm just at my wit's end and am totally out of ideas of what to do to help. I'm so tired of this constant fight with the world because most of the time it feels like I'm fighting him and not allowing him to just 'be'. I feel like I'm constantly having to defend his right to even be here.

I know that we all have to conform to a certain degree to survive in society and I'm scared that he won't be able to do it. I'm scared that he will always be like this and will be bounced from one bad situation to another and not have the skills to get himself out. I'm scared that he will end up being in the wrong place at the wrong time, because he can be so easily led down the wrong path without even realising it.

I'm terrified that I'm failing him; that I'm not doing enough to help him get the right skills to deal with these sorts of situations. That I should have pushed harder and earlier for help. That I should have done this or that differently. That I should just let him figure these things out on his own (but given the severity of this incident, that isn't really an option.) That it's all too hard and I want to just scream "Stop the world! I want to get off!!"

And then I look around me and see how I don't have it anywhere near as bad as some others. And I think I should be grateful that he is healthy, (overly) verbal, mainstream schooled, intelligent, capable, wonderful, loving, helpful and all the other good things that make him who he is .. and I am grateful. He is who he is, I love him and I will continue to fight for him.

I'm just so scared that I'm not enough and I won't be able to help him.

I'm just so tired of this battle.

And then there were two ...

2010-05-30T16:48:00.002+08:00

... teenagers in the house!

Happy Birthday Drew!! (or do I have to start calling you Andy like everyone else does now that you're a teenager?)

It's another case of 'where has the time gone?' It seems like only yesterday .. OK maybe last week .. that he looked like this:

and now he looks like this: (protecting his birthday cake from everyone!)

At least he still wants to receive hugs from his dear old mum!

When he was asked what he would like for his birthday dinner, he very seriously replied that he would like to continue the 'tradition' of going to Sizzler with the extended family ... a 'tradition' that was started with Alex but I suppose they all have to start somewhere! Then he asked Peter "seeing as it's my birthday, can we take the (motor)bike to dinner?" After establishing that he didn't actually want to take it inside the restaurant for a meal "duh Mum!", we agreed that he could ride there with Peter but had to come home in the car with me. I also had to continue the tradition by making a cake and decorating it with a number 13 done in rainbow style with mini M&M's. Ta-dah ... the finished product:

We managed to get just about all the extended family together for dinner and all had a great time especially when it came to singing happy birthday... it's been a while since I saw him that embarrassed! After eating some cake and dessert .. hey it was a birthday party! .. we headed outside for a photo and then I made the executive decision that he could ride home on the bike too.

We're going to let him stay home from school tomorrow for a day out with Mum and Dad (another part of the tradition) and hopefully get him a decent watch that he can keep.

All in all, I'm very proud of the young man he's becoming (even with the occasional bit of attitude!) and hope that he continues to be true to himself. Love you Drew!!

Computers suck!

2010-05-22T22:04:00.001+08:00

More precisely .. computer problems suck!

My desktop had been running more and more slowly over the past couple of weeks but I had put it down to the fact that the boys had always been on the 'net at the same time I was. Last Monday it decided to turn itself off in the middle of my morning blog reading session and hasn't been playing at all since then.

I tried using Alex's laptop but it didn't want to let me have access to my posting page, Andrew's laptop has the ominous blue screen of death appearing at random times and Bradley's laptop didn't have internet access so I have been unable to post for a while.

I have finally managed to get Bradley's laptop to talk to the internet and the printer so I am back .. when I can wrest it away from his vice-like grip. Apparently, playing games is ever so much more important than allowing your mother her internet fix.

After a little 'chat' (give Mummy the laptop or she will go even more crazy than usual!), he agreed to let me use it on the proviso that I "don't break it as well." According to him, I have the computer death touch .. I touch it too much and it dies. We have yet to negotiate exactly what constitutes too much but hopefully I will be able to get mine fixed before his dies. Then we can share again ... oh what joy!!

Thank you Brad for being nice to your internet-deprived mother and allowing me to hog your laptop while you are in bed! I promise I'll try not to kill it ....

And this is why my blog is called 'life, one day at a time'...

2010-05-11T20:22:00.003+08:00

If you met Alex this afternoon, you would never guess he was the same ~~changeling~~ ~~child~~ teen that was causing me to want to tear my hair out just the other day. I realise this is the nature of a teenager, never knowing what you will get from one day to the next but it was nice to have my happy obedient child back, if only for an afternoon.

Alex doesn't have an aide officially assigned to him at school, as the structured environment does more to help than having someone constantly looking over his shoulder ever could. However, one of the special needs aides does check in with him and his teachers on a regular basis to ensure he is coping and fulfilling his homework obligations. She, angel that she is, also volunteers her own time one afternoon a week to help guide him in the right direction with any longer-than-overnight homework assignments. Betty drops him home after these 'study sessions' as she lives just around the corner and today stayed for a chat.

She started by praising Alex for the amount of work he had managed to achieve this afternoon and went on to give more praise for the vast improvement in quality. Without any prompting from either of us, he thanked her for her help then voluntarily went and finished the project he had been working on. I was flabbergasted and jokingly asked her what she had been feeding him during the afternoon to make him listen to her.

Her reply was "I didn't feed him anything and the only reason he listens to me is that I'm not you. Haven't you figured out that teenagers never listen to their own mothers?" We both laughed before she added "Anyway, he's a really good kid and has beautiful manners. You're definitely doing something right."

And that is what I mean about taking life one day at a time. Each day is a new opportunity start over and to remind yourself to rejoice in the good things.

A recipe ...

2010-05-09T17:10:00.003+08:00

... for ~~a lovely picnic for Mother's Day~~ a very stressful day.

Ingredients;

Absent husband (due to being away for work)
Me
11 year old boy
almost 13 year old boy
14.5 year old boy ('Slightly' autistic is best. Even better if you can find one with ADD as well!)
My Mother
Sister and Brother-in-law

Method:

Mix Me, Mother and Sister together to make arrangements for a lovely day out at Araluen Botanic Park for a BBQ and picnic to celebrate Mother's Day. Bask in glow of expectation of nice day out, in good company, with good food.

For the week before, prepare 14.5 year old repeatedly for the prospect of going out in public with no electronic device to entertain him or bed to throw himself onto when he doesn't get his own way. Repeat process (and expectations of behaviour) numerous times in days leading up to ~~minor~~ 'obviously huge' event.

The night before, ensure that 'Me' gets little sleep, due to a bed-hogging 11 year old and a ~~slightly~~ totally psychopathic dog, who barks like the four horsemen of the apocalypse are trying to break in at 2:30AM, when it was just a pot plant waving in the breeze outside the window. Allow 'Me' to feel small amount of resentment towards peacefully slumbering children, especially the 11 year old who is hogging all the blankets and most of the space in a queen size bed.

Have 'Me' return to bed, only to toss and turn for at least an hour before finally falling asleep. Allow 11 year old and 12.5 year old to energetically wake 'Me' up at 7am with many hugs, kisses and several gratefully received and appreciated presents, followed by 14.5 year old making his way into the room resembling a drugged sloth soon after. Enjoy some family bonding time before going to have breakfast at McDonald's.

Have 'Me' fight through the crowds at the bakery to get the boys the treat food they have requested for the picnic then have a mild panic attack at the prospect of not being able to purchase the main item 'Me' was asked to bring: hot dog buns. Relax slightly when hot dog buns are found, then make trip to pick up 'Mother.'

Enjoy short visit with 'Mother' before 'Mother' being interrupted by a somewhat upsetting phone call. Console 'Mother' then corral boys and 'Mother' into car and drive to picnic destination. Endure constant repetition of "He's in my space", "He's touching me", "Now he's leaning on me", "Mum, make him stop touching me!", "I didn't touch you! I invaded your space but I didn't touch you!" from the boys and "how much longer?" from the voices in Me's head.

Park car and let out the passengers. Find nice picnic spot and settle in for quiet, enjoyable time. Upon review, realise that the 14.5 year old has managed to combine teenage attitude, over-stimulation by somewhat busy surroundings, a sense of deprivation at being removed from the usual mind-numbing electronic entertainment and mild hunger, with his autism and ADD.

Prepare 'Me' for 'not-quite-so-relaxing picnic' and then rapidly downgrade to 'Lord-grant-me-patience-because-if-you-give-Me-strength-he-will-die!' Make allowances, within reason, for 14.5 year old's repeated button pushing as well as physical pushing of 11 year old and almost 13 year old. Allow 14.5 year old to play in creek until large rocks start rising from water and landing too close to picnic table. Distract 14.5 year old and endeavour to keep entire party on even keel.

Soon after, adjust 'Me's mental state to one of 'ignore-ignore-ignore' then pray for people hogging BBQs to hurry up so 14.5 year old can be fed something other then simple sugars. Praise 'Mother' for pushing her way onto corner of BBQ plate, then curse laws preventing BBQ from being hot enough to cook sausages in less than 30 minutes. Finally mix 14.5 year old with food then pack up so 'Me' can retreat to sanctuary of friend's house.

Place boys and 'Mother' in car for return trip. Endure another round of "He's in my space", "He's touching me", "Now he's leaning on me", "Mum, make him stop touching me!", "I didn't touch you! I invaded your space but I didn't touch you!" from the boys before depositing 'Mother' at home.

Reluctantly decide that 'Me' would not be very good company right now, due to lack of sleep and homicidal tendencies and retreat to study to write long, whiny blog post. Insert occasional verbal outbursts about extreme level of noise and lack of chores being done, then stew for an hour or two. Cook dinner (or not!) then send boys to bed before their normal bed time. Sit back and try to enjoy 'Bones' on TV without falling asleep.

Happy Mother's Day!

Sometimes I ...

2010-05-05T20:40:00.004+08:00

... don't answer the phone at home because I just want to be left alone.
... wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't been able to have the kids (as the doctors predicted!)
... let people take advantage of my generous nature and I always end up angry at myself for letting them.
... wish I had travelled more on my own before settling down.
... hide special treat food from the kids just so I can have it to myself.
... wonder 'what if this is all there really is?'
... just have to laugh at the stupidity and ignorance of the people I seem to encounter on a regular basis, but only because homicide is still illegal.
... just don't want to and you can't make me!
... wonder when I got so cranky.

Let the bridge crossing commence.

2010-05-03T18:12:00.006+08:00

Remember how I told all and sundry about my new job in this post? And how I was so happy to finally ~~stop contributing to our financial decline~~ be helping with the boys' school fees? Just in case you missed it (tsk, tsk!), here is part of the aforementioned post:

I will be working Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays for the rest of this term, unless the other part-timer wants the hours back, in which case I'm back on the scrap heap. Let's cross that bridge, climb that mountain, whatever else you can think of to symbolise 'getting over it', if and when we get there. Almost all the money I will now be getting paid will be going straight back to the school to pay the fees, but it's better than having to find it myself!

I would like to draw your attention the section I have oh-so-conveniently made bold for you. Apparently, she does and I will be at the end of the week.

I'm off to climb the mountain, cross the bridge and find some chocolate.

Oh Lindt, Lindt, wherefore art thou dearest Lindt?

I need to share some good news and vent as well!

2010-05-02T10:00:00.006+08:00

Good news first:

I have been volunteering in the canteen at the boys' school for most of first term and was hoping to get a job there (oh so convenient!) when one of the other girls left at the end of the term. Unfortunately (for me) it was offered to another part-timer who already works in a different part of the school who, much to everyone's surprise, agreed to do it.

She had some health issues but thought that she would be able to cope with working the extra hours but, as she confided to me later, she hadn't realised how much standing up for 6 hours straight would affect her. She decided two weeks ago that she wasn't coping as well as she would like so told the bosses that she was just going to do her original job at which point we all thought that I would be offered the position. The bosses decided to wait it out as there are plans afoot to outsource the whole canteen, but soon realised that they needed the extra person as they couldn't rely on the volunteer (yes singular volunteer! I am the only one!!) to fill the gap.

So, to lengthen an already lengthy story, I received a phone call last Thursday as I was on my way to pick up the boys from school. I won't tell you how I broke the law by answering the phone while in charge of a motor vehicle (it was stopped at the time, just not turned off) but I will say that I very eagerly grasped the opportunity to be paid for something I had already been doing for 3 months!

I will be working Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays for the rest of this term, unless the other part-timer wants the hours back, in which case I'm back on the scrap heap. Let's cross that bridge, climb that mountain, whatever else you can think of to symbolise 'getting over it', if and when we get there. Almost all the money I will now be getting paid will be going straight back to the school to pay the fees, but it's better than having to find it myself!

And now for the vent/whinge/pity party for one ...

I am sleep deprived. So, what's new you ask? I mean I'm really sleep deprived as in I only got 3 hours sleep last night in half hour lots. I'm the kind of person who needs at least 8 hours, preferably 9 or 10 hours, to make any sort of sense and be ~~nice~~ ~~civil~~ non-homicidal to those around me. I haven't been this bad since the days of babies and snoring!

Background to the current episode of sleep deprivation: I offered to have two of the boys' friends over to spend the night on Friday. These are the same two boys who have stayed with me in the past, while their parents were interstate or overseas, or just so the boys could have their friends over for a sleepover. Both of the boys fall on the autism spectrum (admittedly at the high functioning end) but they know the rules of my house and follow them, especially the one about 'when I say lights out, that means lights out or I'll put your lights out permanently' (j/k!).

Friday night was relatively late for the boys (10:30pm) but when I said bed, all five of them quietened down and went to sleep (or at least faked it well and, more importantly, quietly!) They slept all night and when I awoke, by myself not by them, at 7am, they were all playing as nicely together as five boys of different ages are able to.

Last night was a wholly different scenario. I had lost one boy to a friend's house for a sleepover and gained one extra, not related to me and who is also apparently not familiar with the concept of 'go to sleep and stay that way for at least 8 consecutive hours'.

Now this child of 11 years is a good kid. He generally follows the rules, has manners, and plays well with my youngest. His mother is a friend from my working days and we have similar attitudes to parenting, which generally makes having someone else's child in your home a much easier proposition.

However, for some reason last night, neither of the boys could get to sleep, let alone stay that way for 8 hours. Once again, I had let them stay up later than normal (to maximise their playing time), and fully expected them to go to sleep soon after lights out at 10:15pm. I crawled into my own bed and, after fighting the dog for more of the doona, was asleep in nanoseconds.

I was awoken by Brad at 12:27am complaining that he couldn't sleep. I dragged my sorry self out of bed, went and checked on the conditions in the room and, upon finding that someone ('not me' or 'Mr Nobody') had left the climate control set at 26 degrees, fixed that, threatened dire consequences if they didn't go to sleep and crawled back into bed at 1:02am.

The threat of dire consequences obviously had no effect as after that I was awoken approximately every 40 minutes with some complaint or another, with the best one being at 3:52am when I was informed that guest child had waited too long to go to the bathroom and peed all over my carpeted games room floor. Bradley had already done a pretty good job of cleaning up what he could so there wasn't much left for me to do, apart from the few little bits he missed, do my best to reiterate the importance of sleep and head back to bed.

There were two more wake-ups after that one which I did my best to ignore, then it was time to get up and wait for Drew to be dropped off at 8am. I'm sure I look like death warmed up, with steamer trunks instead of just bags under my eyes, but I have so far managed to function due to the help of my wonderful eldest child, who has been making me yummy cups of tea without being asked.

The real injustice of the whole situation is that guest child is now fast asleep on the lounge in the games room and, despite the amount of noise we've all been making, is sleeping the sleep of the almost dead. I think nothing sort of an earthquake combined with a nuclear bomb would wake him now!

Hmmm ... I wonder if his mother knows he's turned nocturnal?

Saturday 10/4

2010-04-24T09:20:00.000+08:00

Over a leisurely breakfast, we discussed where to go and what to see today. Alex was pushing (really hard!!) to go to the Powerhouse Museum so we decided to head into the city on the train and take it from there.

We arrived at the train station to see one just leaving and were a bit concerned that we would have an hour's wait for the next one. I was looking around for a timetable when I realised there

was actually a manned (personed?) ticket booth with a friendly helpful looking person inside.

After overcoming my shock at there actually being someone around to help (a very unlikely situation on most Perth train stations!), I asked if there was such a thing as a family daytripper ticket. Miss Smiley Face in the booth (whatever she was on, I want some!!) replied that indeed there was and proceeded to sell me one at the jaw dropping price of $45.40. It was about then that I realised we weren't in ~~Kansas~~ Perth anymore. The same thing in Perth would cost less than $10!! Thinking this over later, I did come to the conclusion that there are a lot more trains, buses and ferries in Sydney than Perth could ever aspire to, so maybe the cost was justified after all.

The 9:40 double decker train on the 'light blue' line arrived soon after and the boys were fascinated with the seat backs that flipped over so you could change the direction you were facing. We did a deal with them that we would travel on the bottom level into the city and the top level on the way home, but only if they stopped changing all the seats and just sat down.

It took us just over an hour to get to the central station (there's something like 9 stations in the main CBD) and, after fighting our way through the ~~lemmings~~ people who knew where they were going, we emerged from the bowels of the Earth into the sunshine and headed for the Powerhouse Museum. When the tourist guides said that it was an easy five minute walk from Central, they must have used one of the Olympics' competitive walkers as a guide, because fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the very non-descript building and made our way inside.

I paid the $30 for us all to get in (forgetting to use the discount coupon I had specifically brought with me .. duh!) and we set off to explore. It is the kind of place you could easily spend a whole day or two in and still not see everything. Of course some things didn't interest the boys, or us, but we had a great time checking out the 'Back to the 80's' exhibit. Many great memories for Peter and I and the kids had wonderful fun trying to play all the old video games like Frogger, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong in their original formats on the original equipment. There were so many kids there, all fascinated with the fact that this was as good as it got back then! We spent about 3 hours wandering around, had a quick snack then checked out the souvenir shop. Total and utter waste of space unless you wanted designer home wares or very expensive toys. It was like a high-end department store instead of a souvenir shop. Not one thing was branded as coming from the Powerhouse Museum which kind of defeats the purpose of calling it a souvenir shop, in my opinion.

We walked back to Central station and caught the train over to Darling Harbour to check out the Harbour Bridge (from the ground this time) and The Sydney Opera House. It was getting quite warm so we treated the boys to an ice cream as we walked around to Bennelong Point, where the Opera House is.

There was some sort of triathlon going on, so a lot of the walkways were fenced off to protect people from the bikes speeding past, but we managed to get the boys onto the steps of the Opera House for a photo. If you squint really hard, you may be able to see them up there somewhere...

We then took a walk around to the other side of the Opera House to get out of the sun before heading back to to the train station. We had planned on taking the train across the Harbour Bridge to visit Luna Park, but Peter suggested we take the ferry instead. As you may or may not know, Peter has a 'thing' about boats so this was a very generous offer on his behalf and the boys jumped at the chance. We caught the 3:45 ferry and I realised why Peter thought he would be able to handle the trip .. it took literally five minutes!

We took the obligatory tourist photos out the front of Luna Park and then made our way inside (something with free entry .. yay!) to check it all out. The last time I came here as a kid, it was closed for the season, so it was good to be able to go in and see what all the fuss was about.

I'm still not sure what all the fuss is about, as everything costs an arm, leg and a kidney and was so crowded, there was a 20 minute queue for a bag of fairy floss, let alone the rides! We gave the boys some money but they were soon back complaining that it wasn't worth spending all their money on one ride .. taught them well! .. and they didn't want to wait 40 minutes for a five minute ride. We grabbed some food instead (goodbye kidney .. it was nice knowing you!) and then sat down quietly for a while.

Andrew had started complaining of feeling unwell, so he had a rest on Pete's lap while the other two and I browsed the souvenir shop. Peter got a travel mug with Luna Park on it, but the boys couldn't find anything they wanted so we left and just managed to catch the 5:31 ferry back across to Circular Quay. It was a lot rougher crossing the harbour this time and we were all glad to get off at the other end. After we got off, I noticed that the ferry was named Alexander so that may explain the difference!

We walked back up to the train station and managed to get seats together on the rather crowded train headed back to Glenfield. Drew was still feeling unwell, so he leaned on me until about halfway 'home' when he got a second wind. Then we I had to contend with all ~~three~~ four of them being hyped up and playing silly games, but luckily we had most of the carriage to ourselves so it wasn't too much of an issue.

It was well and truly dark by the time we got back, so we went to find the car (still where we left it thank God!) and went 'home' for dinner and a movie (Underdog). We all went to bed when it finished and I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Friday 9/4

2010-04-23T11:39:00.004+08:00

The bed in this unit is nowhere as comfortable as the one in Queensland but we managed to get some sleep before being fully awake at 6:45am (otherwise known as OMG-it's-still-way-too-dark-o'clock). We all had breakfast while we continued our discussion of what we wanted to see while in Sydney. The final decision was that we would head out to the Blue Mountains to see the Three Sisters and whatever else took our fancy while we were there.

We arrived in Katoomba in time for morning tea at 10:45, after negotiating enough roadworks to rebuild an entire third world country's road system. We managed to find two bakeries in the main street so the kids had ~~a hefty dose of sugar~~ treat each then we went out to Echo Point to view the rock formation known as the Three Sisters.

As all things are apt to do, the area had changed dramatically from what Peter and I remembered from our childhood visits. The lookouts are actually safe now! We took a lot of photos then decided to take a drive along the tourist scenic route in hopes of finding somewhere nice to have lunch.

We stopped at Leura Cascades which, at first glance, appeared to be a drain 'cascading' into a very small creek. Turns out that that was the rainwater run-off from the road and the actual cascades were about 1.3kms down a hiking track. Seeing as my twisted knee was still giving me plentiful amounts of grief, we walked a small distance along the track and found this little cascade before turning back to the car.

We finished the tourist drive and went over to Scenic World to check out the 'rides'. Had a look around the rather extensive souvenir shop and left without buying anything or taking any of the rides. Managed to get this lovely photo though:

On our way back to Sydney, we stopped at a little roadside stall selling, of all things, ugg boots and cow hides. Peter wanted to buy a cow hide rug for the 'country estate' but I managed to talk him out of it on the grounds that shipping it back to Perth would cost as much as the rug. I liked the design of some of the pieced rugs but resisted the temptation, satisfying myself with a picture instead:

One of our main reasons for coming to Sydney was to show the boys where their dad grew up so, seeing as it was still quite early, we headed for North Ryde. Peter had a great time showing the boys his old haunts: where his house was (it has been demolished and replaced with a set of units), the old corner shop (also no longer there), the lane way he walked through to get to high school, the six-lane highway he had to cross to get to high school (complete with a fence down the middle to discourage pedestrians which he, of course, just jumped over daily!) and his primary school. The high school has been demolished but here's a photo of him in front of the primary school:

Grown up just a little bit since the last time he was here!

After that trip down memory lane, and a few wrong turns down other streets, we asked the GPS to get us 'home'. It directed us through the city at the beginnings of peak hour and we ended up going through the Harbour Tunnel, as well as almost every other tunnel possible! At least the kids can say they've been under Sydney Harbour but it took us 1.5 hours to get home. The GPS doesn't work in tunnels so we nearly ended up taking exits to heaven-knows-where on more than one occasion!

Once we got 'home', we had to find parking (in the car wash bay again!), then had a quiet dinner and were all in bed by 9pm. All in all though, a very good day out.

Thurs 8/4

2010-04-23T10:11:00.006+08:00

Up early this morning to clean up and pack. I had serious doubts about fitting everything into the cases from whence it came, but we managed .. just! Better not buy too many souvenirs in Sydney or we'll be paying excess baggage for sure. Maybe we could just leave one of the kids behind and put the extra stuff in their seat .. hmmmmm, food for thought. Will get back to you on that one ...

Managed to get everything shoved into cases and cleaned up by 9:30am so we headed over to Mark and Bec's to give them the leftover food and to say goodbye. Had a quick chat then got into the car and headed into Cairns, where we had a (very) early lunch at McDonald's (blech!) on the Esplanade. I wanted to do a bit more ~~shopping~~ browsing but we had run out of time, so we went to find a petrol station, to avoid paying the $3 a litre the rental car companies charge!

As I mentioned before, Cairns airport is undergoing a major renovation/extension and as a result, the directional signage was open to interpretation. As you can probably guess, our interpretation was wrong and we ended up delivering the rental car to the right area .. if we were flying international.

The international terminal is not that far from the domestic terminal .. as the crow flies. As we aren't crows, we had to walk there and it worked out to be about 1.5kms. Now I can hear you saying "1.5kms isn't that far" but with our four suitcases, five backpacks, CPAP machine and Peter's 'manbag', as well as the fact that a lot of it was outside, over rough surfaces and in the rain, by the time we fronted up to check in, I was sweating like the proverbial pig (has to be the proverbial pig, because real pigs don't sweat!)

After giving the nice little man at Qantas all of our suitcases and assuring him that I wasn't going to pass out or worse, throw up, from heat exhaustion, we went up to the thankfully air-conditioned departures lounge to await our flight to Sydney.

We took off from Cairns at 1:10pm and had a nice smooth flight until we started our descent into Sydney, when the plane turned into a possessed metal bucking bronco, determined to rid the bellies of all of those in its belly of their lunch. According to the captain, it was mild turbulence. but according to my insides, it was the kind of 'mild' you get after eating a five alarm chili meal .. nothing mild about that people! I'm not normally a nervous flyer but it was enough to have me gripping the armrests on my chair whilst thinking to myself: must.not.scare.children. do.not.show.fear. Luckily the children were distracted by the injustice of only two out of the three having window seats.

Andrew managed to get this shot of Sydney Harbour as we came in to land:

Once we'd survived the mid-air rodeo, landed and walked halfway back to Perth, again, to collect our bags, we then tried to find the rental car office. The office inside the terminal was unattended and had a sign that told us to make our way to their carpark office, with no directions on where that was. After getting caught up in the ~~parade of lemmings~~ crowd of people heading for the exits, I managed to spy the competition's office and figured, quite rightly, that our hire company couldn't be too far away.

We happened to walk in on someone returning their hire car and having a major hissy fit about the fact that they were to be charged for some damage to the vehicle. She was arguing that the damage was there when they picked the car up and that the staff had failed to notice it before it was given to them. She then started spouting on about how they hadn't done their jobs properly and why should she be late for her plane just because they were all stupid. I resisted the urge to point out that she wasn't going to win herself any fans, or any assistance from the 'stupid', inept staff and just had a nice little dialogue in my head instead.

"Did you not read the instructions on your rental form? You know, the ones that state to please inspect the car before leaving the lot and report any damage not noted on your copy to the office staff? The same office staff who were available to you at the ungodly hour of 2am when your flight landed, just to make sure you would be able to get your car? The same office staff who are now staring at you with disbelief and pure loathing while managing to keep their thoughts to themselves?

While you're noticing those looks, you may want to take a look at your partner's face. Can you see that expression? The one that says, 'for heaven's sake, shut up! You know we did that damage so for the love of all things holy, shut up before you get us arrested for making a scene'? Can't see that one? Well guess what sweetheart, everyone else can! Leave while you can!!"

After watching that little meltdown and telling the very apologetic woman who served us that some people just needed a good kick in the pants, we managed to get the keys to our car. this time we ended up with a Ford XR6, with Victorian license plates. Andrew was happy because he's a Ford man. Peter was happy because having the Victorian plates meant the NSW drivers would stay out of his way.

We found the car, inspected it (see stupid lady .. that's how you do it!), then spent the next ten minutes trying to work out how to open the boot. With the Commodore, you push the boot unlock button on the remote and the boot actually pops open. With the Ford, it just unlocks the boot but you still have to find the button on the boot itself to open it.

With that sorted, the boot fully loaded and the GPS programmed, we headed off into the organised chaos that is Sydney traffic. The GPS asked if we wanted to avoid the toll roads and knowing absolutely nothing about the toll system here, we decided to take the safe option of avoiding the toll roads and the possible fines. I worked out that we went an extra 19.7 kms to save what turned out to be a $5 toll. Better safe than sorry though!

We arrived at the unit (one in a complex of 25) and found the garage way too small for the car. After a quick look around, we parked the car in the car wash bay and lugged everything inside. Peter was getting very cranky at this point, so I made the executive decision that it was now officially time to get food.

We went back out to the car to find it was raining quite heavily. Must have brought it with us from Queensland! Headed off to the local shops hoping to find somewhere to get some dinner and found a food court. After a heated 'discussion' with the oldest and youngest boys about what they could have (Peter had decreed no more chicken nuggets and chips), I ended up storming off to find out what else was there and returned with two extremely healthy Wendy's hot dogs. At least they ate them and didn't complain!

Did a quick food shop for breakfast and lunch the next day, then headed back for a shower and bed.

Wednesday 7/4

2010-04-23T08:05:00.002+08:00

Slept in this morning .. isn't that what holidays are for? ... then decided to take another trip up to Kuranda to see if we could actually see Barron Falls this time.

It was fairly overcast but there weren't too many low-lying clouds so, after a trek along a lovely rainforest path .. puff, puff, pant, pant, that's my exercise for the year! .. I managed to get some photos of Barron Falls in almost full flow. Taken from the top lookout:

and the bottom lookout: The lack of rain made it so much easier to take pictures but also made it so much more humid so after trekking all the way back up the rainforest trail .. puff, puff, pant, pant .. we poured ourselves back into the air-conditioned comfort of the car and headed for Kuranda.

We sent the kids one way (with their mobile phones of course) and we went the other way. It was lovely to be able to just wander through the shops on our own, especially when we came across a fudge shop! Had to buy some, just to compare to WA fudge. Very nice but not really anywhere close to Candy Cow fudge but I may have to try them both again just to be sure.

It was starting to get quite warm so we poured ourselves into the car again and headed back down the hill to the air conditioned shops in Smithfield, where Peter bought himself a rash vest and new swimming shorts. A bit late considering that we leave tomorrow and won't be swimming in Sydney .. too cold! .. but at least he's got them now. Then it was back to the apartment for lunch to try and use up the rest of the food.

After lunch we went down to the pool with the crocodile slide for a swim .. and for Peter and I to see if the girl that was checking Alex out last time was there again. She wasn't :-( I think he was relieved that he could just enjoy a swim and some more hot chips!

We headed back up to 'our' pool where I ~~jumped~~ inched my way into the freezing water with Brad and Drew. Well, I inched my way in .. they, already being dripping wet, threw themselves in with gay abandon, blue lips and chattering teeth. Can't let a little thing like cold stop them!!

They were just attempting to drown me .. exhibit A: ... when Peter came back from a visit to Mark and Bec to tell us it was time to get out and get ready for our walk down to the pub for dinner. We raced upstairs for a warm shower and quick change and met them downstairs and headed off to Palm Cove via a mangrove boardwalk and the main street along the beach.

Along the way, I spotted some 'sleepy plants' .. no idea what their real name is but we always called them that because the leaves close up and go to sleep when you touch them .. and Alex had great fun showing Lachlan and Kathryn how they worked.

The reason we picked the pub for dinner was that kids eat free .. every little bit helps people! .. but of course it was one of those "one-free-kid's-meal-with-every-adult-meal-purchased" deals. Alex, being a growing ~~boy~~ young man, wanted more than just the usual fare of nuggets and chips, so we ordered him a 300g rump steak, thinking that if he didn't finish it, Peter would. Just for the record, Alex is not a big meat eater; not in the form of steak anyway. He'll quite happily eat mince, sausages, kebabs, etc but not usually a hunk of meat of its own. Peter didn't even get a look-in! It was inhaled in record time and thoroughly enjoyed too, if the expression on his face was anything to go by. File that away for future reference .. Alex likes his steak done medium and hot!

Poor Bec didn't get much of a chance to eat her dinner as Mackenzie was rather unsettled and only wanted Mum; not even Dad would do. I remember those days and am so glad they're over! The rest of us enjoyed our meals and dessert (pavlova nest with white chocolate mousse, berries and cream ... very naughty but extremely yummy!) and then started the walk back.

Why is it that the walk back always seems longer? Nothing to do with the fact that we were now loaded down with food and drink and tired from all the exercise (sorry for the bad language!) of the morning. I was carrying Mackenzie for part of the way home. I had totally forgotten how heavy little ones get and when Bec told me she only weighed 13 kilos, I realised that she was only part of what I've already lost. I couldn't imagine carrying an extra 20 kilos around again!

Mark and Peter stirred poor little Lachlan all the way back by telling him there were crocodiles in the bushes along the beach. Every little noise was attributed to these fierce boy eating crocodiles .. "they only eat little boys because they taste better" .. and by the time we got to the mangrove boardwalk, the poor kid was just about jumping out of his skin. So when Uncle Peter disappeared from the back of the pack, right before the boardwalk, he was quite worried. I threatened to send Peter over to deal with the inevitable nightmares at 3am and funnily enough, he reappeared, none the worse for his ordeal. Apparently, he wasn't tasty enough 'cos he's too old!

In all the commotion at the back of the pack, no-one noticed Alex had gone missing too. Just as we reached the end of the boardwalk, Alex jumped out of his hiding spot and frightened the daylights out of Brad as well as Lachlan. In the ten seconds after he did it, I think Alex thought he was going to get in trouble, but when we all roared with laughter, he relaxed and had a laugh along with us. It was so good to see him being a kid and having fun with his cousins.

We finished the walk back, put all the kids through the shower again and then fell into bed for a well-deserved sleep.

The beginning of the rest ...

2010-04-22T16:58:00.005+08:00

of the holiday journal, that is!

Tuesday

I was determined to check out the Butterfly Sanctuary in Kuranda, so all ten of us headed back up there after breakfast. It was still raining, a fair bit heavier than the last time we came up, but most of Kuranda is undercover so I figured it would be ok ... once we got from the car to the undercover part!

We went to the Butterfly Sanctuary and were the first ones there so we managed to get a tour guide pretty much to ourselves. She was lovely and took the time to talk to the kids, instead of just talking at them. She took us on a tour of the laboratory where they 'grow' more butterflies and moths, then took us to each of the different feeding stations. Each station had a different kind of food so there were different butterflies at each one.

Kathryn was wearing a rainbow coloured outfit (rather bright) and managed to take the fancy of one of the beautiful blue Ulysses butterflies. He didn't want to leave so she just stood there with him on her arm and let all the other tourists take photos. Such a good sport about it all!

I got some lovely photos of all different sorts but will have to play with them a bit to actually find the butterflies in them. They all moved so quickly, it was hard to get decent shots of them!

Once we were finished there, we headed down to check out the Heritage Markets where the boys bought some 'stress heads' (stress balls in the shape of a face with woolly hair) then, after dragging me away from yet another opal store (he's still not getting the hint!), I found the ultimate touristy thing ... a kangaroo fur bikini! Nope, I'm not kidding .. here's the photo to prove it: Who would wear this?? On second thoughts, don't answer that. I really don't want to know!

We did manage to buy all five of us a new hat, Akubra style but a lot cheaper, before having lunch at the fabulous bakery again, after which we all piled into the cars to go to Atherton for some more headstone hunting.

Stopped at a lovely little shop called The Humpy and bought some warm roasted cashews and honey roasted peanuts ... very yummy! Peter bought himself another travel mug (I know .. sur-prise, sur-prise, sur-prise! Excuse me .. just channelling Gomer Pyle for a minute there!)

Asked at the tourist bureau for directions to the cemetery and had to laugh at the look on the guy's face. Bet that's a question he doesn't get very often! Found out that there's actually three cemeteries but we managed to rule one of them out as the grave we were looking was classed as 'modern' not 'pioneer' .. that is, Aunty Veta died after 1950.

We wandered the cemetery for a while, not having much luck but after checking with the staff at the crematorium, we managed to find her headstone, clean it up and get photos of it for the family tree research.

It had started raining again by then, so we headed back into Atherton for some undercover entertainment at The Crystal Caves. The guy who owns this gemstone shop has built a 'cavern' underneath it and placed all sorts of gemstones and fossils into the walls and ceiling. It's supposed to look like an underground mine, so of course the two big boys didn't want to go .. "It's fake! We'll have coffee and pick you up later!" .. and that's exactly what they did.

Bec and I took the six kids down, with our ultra-sexy hard hats on, to look at all the, to quote Andrew, 'rocks and stuff'. There was a huge amethyst thingy down there so, being the horrible mother I am, I made the boys stand next to it for the obligatory tourist photo. Don't they look impressed??

Once I had ~~dragged them kicking and screaming~~ finished taking the children on the very enjoyable tour, we bought some souvenirs, collected the big boys and then parted ways with the other Hawkins family.

We headed off towards Cairns via the Gillies Highway with a quick detour to the Curtain Fig Tree. Hasn't changed much in five years but I managed to get some photos of the boys. I really like this one of Alex:

And introducing 'Andyinna Jones' (Indiana Jones) and 'Crocodile Bradley' (Crocodile Dundee) in their new hats:

After that nice little stop, it was off to brave the winding, often scary, Gillies Highway back down to the south side of Cairns. Last time we came down that highway, it was pitch black, raining heavily and full of little hazards caused by, and being fixed by, roadworks. Luckily this time we only had to contend with the road and the way it winds back on itself almost constantly. I swear, if not for the fact that you spend most of the time going downhill, sometimes you'd think you were going back the way you came!

A quick stop off at KFC for dinner then 'home' for a quiet night .. what was left of it anyway!

We're home!

2010-04-15T10:34:00.003+08:00

I didn't forget to blog the remainder of the time while we were away ... the laptop decided to take a little holiday of its own and, as a result, I'm now suffering major 'share-the-mundane-details-of-my-life-with-everyone-just-because-I-can' withdrawals.

Once I finish organising the children's school uniforms, what to pack for the trip to the block tomorrow and fitting in some more catch-up sleep, I'll finish typing out the rest of the holiday diary and post it for you all ... 'cos I know you're all just dying to hear more of my incoherent, sarcastic ramblings!

A busy couple of days (part 2)

2010-04-06T07:56:00.005+08:00

Monday

I demanded a catch-up sleep-in last night before going to bed and threatened them all, Peter included, with dire consequences if they woke me before 9am. Peter came down to the bedroom, making as much noise as possible, just as I was starting to wake up and started talking about what time we were leaving. I was getting ready to follow through on the dire consequences when I had the presence of mind to ask what time it was. Upon being told it was 10am, I (reluctantly) decided to not pursue the retribution and got out of bed.

We had made plans with Aunty Jenny to go down to the Esplanade for a BBQ lunch on Monday with the rest of the aunts and uncles, but due to the rain, it was changed to Sizzler. I was under the impression we were still going there for lunch, so when Peter started packing for a BBQ, I got more than a bit confused. Turns out Jenny had rung while I was asleep to say that the BBQ was back on.

It was a lovely morning; a bit overcast but no rain. I got to see all Mum's brothers and sisters again, even Aunty Joan who is here on holiday from New Zealand. Mum has 2 brothers and 3 sisters, who were all there, as well as Jenny's husband, her 2 girls and 1 of their friends, Nanna, and the five of us. A lovely time had by all catching up and exchanging memories from other times we were all together.

After lunch wound up, we went back to check out Pete's new girlfriend, Willow, the red-tailed cockatoo at Cairns Dome. She took more pieces out of his hat but didn't make him bleed this time! Tearing Peter away from her, we went off for a quick shopping trip to one of the big shopping centres at Earlville then home for home-made hamburgers for dinner.

Off to Kuranda again tomorrow to have a proper look at the shops and attractions and to hopefully get to go to the Butterfly Sanctuary. I've missed out on going there every other time we've been here and I'm not letting anyone talk me out of it this time!!

A busy couple of days (part 1)

2010-04-06T07:50:00.000+08:00

Sunday

Sunday dawned, if you could call it that 'cos we couldn't see the sun, with heavy showers and more clouds than we had seen so far. I had picked Sunday to go on the Skyrail because the weatherman had said that the rain would be clearing; he didn't mention that it would be at midnight into Monday!

The Skyrail trip was still worth it and, to be perfectly honest, I'm kind of glad it was overcast because that meant that we couldn't always see how high up we were! We went through the clouds and were even above them for most of the middle leg of the journey. The kids were a bit underwhelmed in stages (due to not being able to see much) and Bradley was a bit scared of the whole thing, but I think that was due to Bec's teasing and Lachlan's very matter-of-fact statements about 'if we fall, then we die' and 'if we crash into another car, then we die' and ... oh I'm sure you get the picture!

There's a limit of six people to a car/gondola so Bec and I took a car each with whichever kids wanted to go with us at the time. Kathryn attached herself to Bradley so wherever he went, she went. He nicknamed her "The Limpet" and "The Barnacle" and was starting to get a bit frustrated with her when I said that he had to come with me so we could have a photo of the just the four of us at the last station. The look of relief on his face was almost comical!

It was still raining quite heavily when we got to Kuranda and when we phoned the big boys to find out where they were, they told us to walk up the hill to the cafe. Not happy Jan! We all got pretty wet and once we got there, they had decided that it was too expensive to have lunch in Kuranda. Bec and I ordered the kids a milkshake each and a drink for ourselves and then popped into the shop next door to have a look at the 'hippy clothes' (made from hemp and organic cotton).

After that it was a matter of dodging the really heavy downpours to get up the rest of the hill and back to the cars. Because I kept holding them up by daring to actually look in some of the shops and Peter decided to buy himself a new hat, we ended up having a late lunch at the bakery at the very top of the village (and it worked out heaps cheaper than going to McDonald's!) Score one for me!! We had planned on going to the Butterfly Sanctuary but the big boys wanted to go out to Mareeba cemetery for some photos of family headstones and due to it getting late for the little ones, off we went. We wandered all over the cemetery and found what they were looking for about an hour later, then it was time to head back 'home' for dinner.

Peter and I have obviously forgotten what it's like to have little kids as we couldn't believe the day was over, that is we were back 'home', by 5pm! We could have gone out to do something else, but decided to chill out in front of the TV ... just like at home.

A quiet day

2010-04-03T21:22:00.001+08:00

After having a bit of a sleep in, Peter and I were sitting quietly on the balcony enjoying our cuppas, when one of his cousins rang. Christine lives near Brisbane but just happened to be on holiday up here to visit a friend and heard we were here, so she came for a visit. Mark and Bec came over with their kids and the circus started. Six kids, ranging in age from 18 months to 14.5 years, plus 6 adults in one area equals noise.

There weren't any toys for the little ones to play with but I found the tennis balls from last night and then Bec and I spent the next couple of hours mediating the 'discussions' over whose turn it was to have a horsey ride from Bradley and who should have the tennis balls.

Once Christine left to continue her trek up to Cooktown, Bec and I went food shopping while Peter and Mark took the kids to the main pool at the resort. It has a slide in the shape of a crocodile and Kathryn was telling the boys all about the 'crocodile slide.' I had Brad and Andrew convinced that it was a slide for crocs to get in and out of the pool and they weren't too keen on going until Kathryn told them I was joking.

The kids had a great time at the pool while Bec and I enjoyed our kid-free shopping experience. Once we got back and unloaded the groceries, we went down to the pool to join them. It was pouring rain but the kids were having a great time, as were Mark and Peter. The difference was that Mark and Peter were having a great time ribbing Alex about the girls that were following him around, checking him out. My baby's growing up .. waaahhh! He was completely oblivious so there's hope for me yet!

After a snack of battered chips at the pool, we walked back to our rooms and had fried ham and cheese sandwiches for dinner ... we'll deal with our cholesterol when we get home!

Off to the Skyrail and Kuranda tomorrow.

And then there was blood ...

2010-04-02T21:16:00.001+08:00

Today started out quietly with Peter and I awake before the kids ... again! We let them sleep in until 8am then got them up and organised for another day out. We didn't want to go too far as we had made plans with Mark and Bec to have dinner tonight so we decided to check out the Cairns Rainforest Dome.

The Dome is on the rooftop of the Reef Casino and Hotel and is full of all sorts of birds and other wildlife. We checked out the pademelons, the huge croc named Goliath, koalas, cockatoos, lizards and freshwater crocs. There was a talk about some of the local bird life and when the handler asked for 2 volunteers, Alex decided to give it a go. They both ended up pretending to be a tropical tree by holding a flower in their outstretched hands while the handler squeezed some nectar onto the petals. One of the rainbow lorikeets came down to feed on the nectar and kept jumping between the two 'trees' and walking up and down Alex's arm. His face lit up as soon as it landed the first time but by the end, I think the claws must have been bothering him. He said he enjoyed it but it was someone else's turn next time.

After the bird show, we went to have a look at Peter's favourite bird (apart from me of course!), the red-tailed black cockatoo. As soon as she saw him, she launched herself off her perch and landed on his shoulder. He was ecstatic until she started pulling on his earrings! When he covered them up, she got stuck into the little knob on the top of his cap. She dismantled it completely and then flew off back to her perch.

Peter couldn't leave it at that though, could he? He put his arm out and encouraged her to fly back onto it. As soon as she landed, she started trying to to peck at his watch so he tried to put her back onto her perch. She wasn't having any of that and promptly dug her claws in ... and then there was blood. Not much, but enough to frighten the tourists just walking through the door into the Dome. My comment of "Now that she's made you bleed, it's time to go" probably didn't help much either!

We went back into the souvenir shop where he got some first aid (a tissue and the offer of antiseptic, which he refused), then we watched some American tourists having their picture taken with a koala named Harvey. Typical Aussie male that he was, he had his paw on the girl's boob in all the photos! After laughing at the looks on the male tourists faces once they realised that, we headed back to the car and off to Crystal Cascades.

On the way there, we spotted a McDonald's and gave the kids an early lunch before they started complaining that they were dying of hunger. We were just finishing when Mark rang to ask where we were. They had arrived only to find that their room wasn't ready for them yet. We gave them the code to our apartment so they could have a bit of a rest while they were waiting and said we would see them when we got back. (They left Perth last night at 11pm and flew via Brisbane, with an hour's stopover, to Cairns. If they're anything like us, they would have been dead on their feet!)

I remember Crystal Cascades as a lovely swimming hole in a river just outside Cairns. I came to the conclusion today that time really does change things. Either that or everything just looked really different when I was a kid. It is now a very fast-flowing river with incredibly steep banks and an awful lot of rapids. This may be due to all the extra rain north Queensland has had recently (two cyclones in the area) but I'm starting to think I have just labelled a mental picture wrong.

We walked as far as we could, getting rather wet in the process as all the little waterfalls on one side of the path had turned into things resembling a burst fire hose, spraying everyone within range. The stream water was lovely and cool but as most women know, you can only put up with wet underwear (especially bras) for so long. We went back to the car, dried off a bit and then headed back to the apartment.

Once we got back, we sent the boys straight to the pool from the car so they wouldn't go barging upstairs like a herd of rampaging elephants, waking everyone up. Peter and I went upstairs to check whether Mark, Bec and the kids were still there and if they were asleep. We must have just missed Bec and the girls as we spotted them from our balcony,walking down the driveway to their block. Apparently they had just woken up and headed down to their room, where Mark and Lachlan were waiting.

Peter and I left the boys ~~trying to drown each other~~ ~~trying to deafen the neighbourhood~~ having a 'peaceful' swim and popped over to visit Mark and Bec. Poor Mark looked absolutely exhausted and, after visiting for a while, we left them to have a nap and to let us know when they were ready for tea.

They arrived at about 6:30 so Bec and I sent the big boys out for dinner and beat back the starving hordes with a whip and a chair until they returned. The food was soon inhaled, as were the follow-up ice creams and then the kids had fun playing with some tennis balls I found in the bottom drawer in the kitchen. (What? Don't you keep your tennis balls in the bottom drawer in the kitchen? No? Glad it's not just me that thinks that's a bit weird!) The kids all had great fun playing horsey when the tennis balls got boring, while the ~~adults~~ rest of us entertained ourselves by seeing who would fall asleep the fastest. If we had continued that game to its inevitable end, I'm sure Mark would have beaten the rest of us by a mile.

They ended up leaving just before 9pm and now I am going to head for bed myself as I have no idea what we're doing tomorrow and need a decent sleep 'just in case'. I think we discussed some possible options but for the life of me, can't remember if we're each doing our own thing or going out together. Oh well, I'll find out tomorrow ...

It's raining, it's pouring ...

2010-04-01T18:19:00.000+08:00

... but no, I'm not snoring! Not yet anyway ... it's not bedtime and besides I've got a CPAP machine to stop the snoring.

We've had rain for most of the time we've been here but it got a fair bit heavier today. Luckily, we had made arrangements to have lunch with Aunty Jenny and Nanna and to do some indoor shopping so the rain didn't really bother us.

After managing to buy nothing at Cairns Central shopping centre (apart from some brownies, lemon slice and caramel slice) we headed for The Pier for lunch. It was lovely to see Nanna again but she is really starting to look old. The fact that she is 93 and having difficulty walking may have something to do with that, but she still has her sense of humour. When I asked how she's been lately, she said, in a very matter-of-fact tone, "old". She then told me that I need to fatten my boys up because they are still very skinny .. just like last time she saw them. Or maybe it's just because I stretched them to make them grow taller. Apparently feeding them is easier than stretching them .. who knew? I hope I'm as well as she is when I'm 93 .. if I get that far!

After lunch we wandered around the shops at The Pier then were headed back towards the apartment when I realised it was the Thursday before Easter and that we didn't have any eggs for the boys or Mark's family (who arrive tomorrow), so we stopped at KMart and did a quick shop. Now the place is full of chocolate and none of it's mine ... waaah!! (Apparently some of it is mine because the boys have bought me something but have hidden it from me ... waaaah again!)

We were headed homewards once more, when Peter spotted the Outback Opal Mine. I had asked to stop in there at some point during the holiday and he remembered and pulled in for a quick look. The boys stayed in the car as it was pouring down again and Peter and I went in to check it all out. It's basically an opal and pearl jewellery shop with a museum section about opal mining. I love black opal (the most expensive kind ... damn it!) and found a lovely pair of earrings and a matching pendant but had to walk away without them. I'm hoping to go back before we leave Cairns but I'm not holding my breath.

Once we got back to the apartment, we all had some quiet time just reading and relaxing before the boys decided it would be fun to go swimming. (Bear in mind that it's raining quite heavily at this point.) I pointed out the rain but they still wanted to go. I knew they were determined to go swimming when they put their towels into plastic bags to stop them from getting wet while they were in the pool. Andrew wanted to keep swimming until the pool lights came on ... easily pleased that one!!

After yelling over the balcony that dinner was almost ready, Peter started cooking dinner. Nothing like the possibility of missing out on ~~burnt~~ 'heavily browned' sausages to make a kid get out the pool in a hurry ... not!! Once they were back upstairs and in the shower, the noise level in the bathroom required some intervention so I walked down there just in time to hear Bradley complaining that it was too steamy. "It's so steamy in here, I can't even see my wang in the mirror." (That's the word of the week at the moment .. 'wang'. Don't ask me where he got that one from ... I really don't want to know! ... and it could be much worse.)

Now I'm sitting in front of the computer screen yet again while Peter has gone out to see if the local fish and chip shop will be open tomorrow night. (A remnant of my Catholic upbringing .. fish on Fridays during Lent.) I have no idea what we're doing tomorrow but at least dinner is sorted out!!

A quiet day

2010-03-31T19:00:00.000+08:00

I had a lovely sleep-in this morning and woke to the sound of birds outside. I made a cuppa and then sat out on the balcony in the beautiful cool breeze with Peter, just enjoying the quiet before the boys woke up. Check out part of the view <<<<<<<<

We ended up waking the boys up, gave them breakfast then got into the car intending to go into Cairns to check out the tourist bureau. When we got to the T-junction, Peter wanted to turn right instead of left so we ended up in Port Douglas instead. Peter had a great time testing out the car and frightening the daylights out of me in the process. The road is almost on the beach in several places and the constant rain wasn't helping. Despite that, we made it safely to Port Douglas in time for morning tea.

I was very disappointed that there were no nice little bakeries in Port Douglas ... actually no bakeries at all unless you include the one in Coles supermarket. I was looking forward to a nice cream bun or donut, but still managed to enjoy my date muffin and hot chocolate, while the boys had their good ole standby of chips, at a little cafe across the road from the beach.

We went over to check out the beach and found this sign:

In case you can't read it, it says that there are stingers and crocodiles in these waters so please swim between the flags. I didn't know that crocs could read or that they obeyed the swimming rules and regulations! There was that and then a lifeguard in a raincoat so he didn't get wet! Comforting huh?

The rain started again in earnest so we headed back towards Cairns. I talked Peter into going to the Skyrail terminal so we could book a trip up to Kuranda. It's the one thing the boys said they wanted to do while we're here, so I thought I'd better book it so we didn't run out of time or money, which at the rate we're going is a distinct possibility.

After that we headed back to the apartment where Alex put himself to bed and slept for 3 hours while the other two went down to the pool. Peter and I caught up on a couple of TV shows he'd downloaded before we left Perth then we all had dinner and watched the movie 'Meet Dave'.

Now the boys have gone off to bed so we can just have some quiet grown-up time. Get your minds out of the gutter ... he's watching cricket (again!!) and I'm typing this. Tomorrow we're going into Cairns to have lunch with one of my aunties and my Nanna, as well as a wander around Cairns itself. Might even take a dip in the Lagoon:

I know, I know ... it's a tough life!

We're hee-ere!

2010-03-30T16:57:00.000+08:00

We flew out of Perth last night just after 10pm and arrived in Cairns at 4:15am.

I was a bit concerned when I saw how many very young children were on the flight with us. I had visions of having to poke my eardrums with something sharp to stop the noise, until I remembered that there would be nothing sharp on the plane due to all the new rules and regulations. Then my mind wandered to other possible solutions, most of which involved opening the doors mid-flight to eject screaming child(ren) and their parents, if the parents hadn't already committed hari-kari from the sheer frustration of trying to quiet a fractious child 10 kilometeres up in the air whilst enclosed in a fragile tin can with wings. Luckily for everyone concerned, all but one of those children were absolute angels. Unluckily for everyone, the other one tried her damndest to make up for all the rest. Luckily, her cry, whilst being almost ceaseless, wasn't actually that loud. The boys managed to get small snatches of sleep between playing musical seats but they were still exhausted by the time we arrived, as were Peter and I.

Once we got off the plane, we discovered that Cairns airport is undergoing a major renovation so we had to walk halfway back to Perth to collect our bags and organise the hire car. We then went out into the rather wet car park to find our hire car (a literally brand-new Commodore with only 17km on the odometer) and headed for our home-away-from-home in Palm Cove, north of Cairns.

Seeing as it was now close to 5:30am, Peter and the kids decided they were hungry so when we spotted the golden arches, we stopped in for a quick bite to eat and then proceeded to get slightly 'geographically misplaced' .. thank heavens for GPS! We finally found our parking space only to find someone already parked in it, so we comandeered another unit's space, unloaded the copious amount of luggage and went up to our penthouse suite. (It's a really nice three bedroom apartment on the fourth floor with a lovely view out to the hills and over one of the seven pools available for our use during our stay.)

We had a sleep until about 11am then went food shopping. It's amazing how much money you can spend on junk food and ice creams when you're on holidays! Actually, it's amazing how much you can spend on it any time but especially on holidays!

So far this afternoon, we've had a bit of a rest while Peter watched some cricket, had a very relaxing swim in the pool downstairs and now all the boys (Peter included) are watching "The Cannonball Run" while I sit here and think about what's for tea.

A mother's job is never finished ...

The countdown has begun ...

2010-03-27T21:37:00.002+08:00

It is now only two sleeps (three if you count the plane trip) until we arrive in Cairns.

As much as I have told myself (and you) that I don't really want to go and that we won't be able to do much due to budgetary constraints, I think I'm actually looking forward to it. (Hey, I'm a woman .. I'm allowed to change my mind! I just wish I could change it for one that worked better and more often!!)

The house has been cleaned, the bags are (almost) packed and the house-sitters have been introduced to the Lord and Master, aka 'The Dog', 'The Boss' or in lighter moments, Brutus. I have to admit, I was rather concerned about his reaction to having a 'strange' male in the house but he reacted to Bevan like a chocoholic when finding an open box of Lindt: initially wary (what's the catch?) then all over him like white on rice. (Sorry for all the similes .. or is it metaphors? I can never remember which is which and surprisingly enough I know, I don't actually care .. lol!)

Isn't it strange the things we women get in our heads to do just because someone else is coming to stay? I was pondering that exact thought just the other day as I sat on the kitchen floor, surrounded by mismatched Tupperware while trying to stop the dog from pinching any to use as a chew toy. There I was, completely emptying out all my cupboards so I could wipe them out with disinfectant and boiling hot water, all because a stranger was coming to stay.

It didn't seem to occur to me to make the front of the house more presentable by pulling out the ~~triffids~~ weeds growing along the edge of the driveway, or to empty both the carports of the extra stuff that I'm sure has parties after we go to sleep (parties that have been advertised on the internet and as a result now other people's leftover junk is still 'sleeping it off' at our place).

It didn't occur to me to me make sure that the numbers on the letter box were all still there so the house-sitters could find the house without the aid of a search party and bloodhounds, lured by the scent of the doggie treats I used to try to distract the dog from the all the lovely ~~chew toys~~ plastic ware strewn from one end of the kitchen to the other.

It nearly didn't occur to me to ensure there was sufficient food for the 'Lord and Master' but luckily one of the children is slightly more on the ball than I, so Brutus will be well nourished during our little trip to the other side of the continent. (The child will be given food but I cannot vouch for its nutritional content as we will, after all, be on holidays and that entitles us to some leniency in our intake of all things artificial .. apparently.)

However, it did occur to me that I simply must:

paint the main bedroom (which I managed to achieve)
paint the boys' bathroom (which I did not manage to achieve and have forgiven myself for .. temporarily at least!)
have matching mats on which to place all the different candles and their decorative holders that I have acquired (despite the fact that they have somehow managed to still look pretty in spite of their lack of a suitable resting place for the past few years)
clean underneath the fridge and freezer (because every house guest I've ever come across moves the fridge and freezer the second you're not looking .. don't they?)
re-pot the peace lily that adorns the bench in my ensuite (because the pot was black and every else is shades of brown/beige/blue and we wouldn't want them thinking I'm colour blind)
~~torture the children~~ ask the children to help me get the house into some semblance of order by ~~removing their will to live~~ cleaning their rooms ... Yes child! I meant under the bed too! ... even though no-one would be staying in their rooms. (I know, how incredibly unfair of me to make them empty their rooms of dirty clothes, the rubbish in their bins and the mutating lifeforms under their beds and in their school bags.)

And on that cheery little mental image (school bags always make me shudder with apprehension .. eewwwww!), I shall take myself off to the Land of Nod to dream up more ~~torture~~ things for the boys to do tomorrow.

Sorry!

2010-03-25T10:29:00.000+08:00

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But Muuuummm ...

2010-03-24T21:31:00.002+08:00

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This was the boys on Monday night during the storm that knocked our power out for 12 hours.

Actually it was me, not the boys.

They were happy enough to light every candle we could find, then lounge around reading books or playing their DS's until it got late enough for bed.

I sat there with them, talking to them and reading my own book(s) all the while annoyed at Mother Nature for ruining my evening of planned comedy watching. It's just not the same watching Good News Week on the computer .. sulk, sulk, stamping foot, sulk some more ...

Yeah, yeah .. I know .. Toughen up Princess!

Toughening commencing ...

Letters I'd like to write ...

2010-03-18T10:58:00.004+08:00

also known as: "things I have to stop myself from blurting out in case I get hurt".

to the man sitting at the traffic lights: putting your window all the way up before picking your nose does not make you invisible. Incredible as it may seem, glass is actually transparent and we could all see exactly what you were doing. Thanks for that .. NOT!!
to the parent who flipped me off in the drop-off lane: I'm so sorry I dared to indicate my intention to move out in front of you and then, after seeing you stop in the through traffic lane to let your children out (naughty, naughty .. very dangerous!), pulling out in front of you, leaving at least four car lengths between us 'just in case'. Good thing I did, as how was I to know you were going to roar up behind me and do your own little impersonation of the road runner .. beep beep! Next time, I will make sure you have exited the ~~drop off lane~~ ~~school zone~~ hemisphere before I even attempt to do things by the rules.
to the rude little 'darlings' who (a) throw money across the counter at me, (b) grunt and scowl at me when I wait for you to pick it up and put it in my hand nicely and (c)conveniently forget all semblance of manners in the process, all while I'm on canteen duty: do that again and I will ensure I personally squash, mutilate, mangle and otherwise destroy every item of food you wish to purchase. Oh and I might just forget my maths and give you the wrong change .. not that you'd notice because you're too busy being up yourself!! (disclaimer: most of them are really good and have had manners instilled into them. There's just a select little group who think they are above interacting politely with the 'help').
to the woman who snatched the shopping trolley out of my hands because she "saw it first": I realise that getting a good shopping trolley, one that goes in the direction you want it to, is becoming an increasingly rare occurrence, but snatching it off me .. did you really need it that badly? And how stupid did you feel when it turned out to be a dodgy one that I was just moving out of the way to get to the decent one behind it? Karma, lady .. go look it up!
to the young people wearing clothes that are totally the wrong size: I think you should all swap clothes. The guys with pants 3 sizes too big, that hang down to their knees, and the very large girls wearing shorts 3 sizes too small, and therefore so tight we can all see what they had for breakfast the day before, should all swap clothes so that they all have some chance going out in public without blinding all those around them with flashes of underwear or worse! Just a little hint people, underwear is called underwear for a reason!

Thus endeth my gripe session.

What gets your goat? Let me know in the comments .. please?!

It's been 22 years and boy does it show!

2010-03-14T12:03:00.005+08:00

I have been sitting with Alex for most of the morning so far, trying to motivate him to finish at least one piece of homework that is due in the next week. As far as I know,~~we have~~ he has an English essay to research, a maths worksheet to complete and a rough draft of a SOSE (social studies/history) essay to write.

His English essay is on the effects of the internet on today's society and the pros and cons of the internet in general. One of the cons he had listed was the unreliability of some information on the internet; for example: on sites like Wikipedia. The best entry regarding this particular topic was found on .. you guessed it .. Wikipedia! We have managed to find evidence supporting some of the points he had made in his initial summary, but after trying repeatedly to find out the actual due date of this assignment, and whether or not it was to be done in class from his notes (quite a common occurrence), I we have moved on to his maths worksheet.

This worksheet was actually due at the beginning of last week and he has already received a lunchtime detention for not handing it in. However, as his teacher's aide explained to me, he is still required to complete the work and hand it in for a zero grade. I realise that this is supposed to teach them to hand it in on the due date next time, but that concept just does not fly with Alex. His logic is that he knows how to do all of the problems and has demonstrated this in previous tests, so why should he have to do it all again. I can understand his point but rules are rules, and contrary to certain people's beliefs coughcoughPetercoughcough, they don't just exist to be broken or bent so much they resemble a yoga master impersonating a pretzel.

I started doing some of the questions on my own piece of paper and was actually doing quite well with problems like:

If y = x(cubed) – 2x(squared) + 3x – 5, find the value of y when x = 4

therefore y = (4x4x4) - 2(4x4) + (3x4) - 5

therefore y = 64 - 32 + 12 - 5

therefore y = 39

and this:

Simplify (5xcubed - 7xsquared + 8) - (3xsquared - 9x + 2)

5xcubed - 7xsquared + 8 - 3xsquared + 9x - 2

5xcubed - 10xsquared + 6

Not bad for 22 years since I looked at algebra .. or so I thought. The next question involved compound interest which I always hated. I left that one for him to do and moved on to the next one:

A golf club has a 5-year-old lawn mower, which is now worth $5190.35

and which the club has been depreciating by 18% pa.

What was the purchase price of the lawn mower, to the nearest dollar?

What will the value of the mower be, to the nearest dollar, if the club keeps it for another 5 years?

It was at this point that I decided that I didn't need to know the original purchase price, as surely the club's accountant would have this information stored somewhere, for no-one to ever look at again. Besides, it was probably purchased from a 'mate' at a heavily discounted price, which was done as a favour to the president of the club to enable the seller to keep his membership after he was caught sleeping with the president's wife, so the paperwork was probably doctored anyway.

The value of the mower in five years time may be relevant to the tax department but considering that it has probably died a slow painful death due to planned obsolescence and the fact that it had probably been out in all sorts of weather, I think that working out the value of the rusting hulk behind the maintenance shed is a slightly over-rated pastime.

There were several more questions along the lines of the 'simplify' one listed above and then I got to some more word questions:

Bronwyn received her pay and spent 1/3 on rent and 1/4 paying off her mobile phone bill.

She then had $210 left. How much money was Bronwyn paid?

I did manage to work out that she was paid $504. What I'd like to know is:

Weekly, fortnightly or monthly pay?
Where Bronwyn is living that she only has to pay $168 rent! Maybe she lives in a share house with heaps of friends but that seems to be unlikely considering that her phone bill was almost as much as the rent. I mean .. come on .. $126 on a phone bill? Has she never heard of mobile phone caps?
If that's the phone bill for the assumed share-house and not her mobile phone, was that just her share or is she paying the whole thing? If she is, she needs to move out and find somewhere else to live 'cos she's having her generous, giving nature abused in a major fashion!
Didn't anybody teach her to budget? Why is she paying 1/4 of her wages out for a phone bill? Don't spend what you can't afford people! Oh, and don't forget to put some of that away for a rainy day and a bad hair day does not count as a rainy day!!
Why do I give a damn anyway? She's probably one of the young kids of today who don't appreciate that I had to walk ten miles, barefoot, uphill, in 50 degree heat just to find a phone box to prank call someone! I don't know .. kids of today!!

Now that I have totally ~~lost the plot~~ forgotten where I was going with this, I think I better go have a nice cup of tea and a good lie down!!

Some of the things in my head right now...

2010-03-09T09:58:00.003+08:00

I have so many things running through my head right now and have a need to get some of them out so I can filter through them all to decide what's actually important. Apologies to those who were hoping for some profound words of wisdom (snort!)

I have been seeing a hypnotherapist to try and help me with my weight issues. Despite having the lap-band, I have managed to persist with my old, bad habits of comfort eating and making the wrong food choices. This morning I made the decision to stop seeing her as I haven't noticed any improvement in these behaviours and really can't justify the cost involved, especially as I don't get any money back from my private health fund. I'm sure that if it was working, I would find a way to pay for it but as it's not, I'm letting it go. I have lost 19 kilos but I still have about 25 to go and I need to get myself into the right head space. "If it is to be, it's up to me!"

Bradley's hypnosis seemed to have worked well until the last couple of days. He isn't back to having 'accidents', but is also not 'going' as he should be. Looks like more intervention is required .. oh yay!! (Please note the dripping sound .. that would be the sarcasm!) It's just difficult finding the right balance between too little and too much interference. I don't want to make his body dependent on the medications to be able to function but at the same time, he obviously needs some help or we end up in the emergency room. The possible complications, whilst unlikely, are enough of a possibility to make me want to avoid them at all costs.

We can't really afford to go on our holiday to Queensland but seeing that we would lose all the money we have paid out so far (over $4500), we have made the decision to go and try to enjoy ourselves anyway. We were originally supposed to be going for a family reunion (of all the cousins on Peter's side) but the plans for that never eventuated, so we're just going for a holiday instead. The boys are looking forward to it so I will just put my game face on and get on with it. I realise this probably sounds incredibly ungrateful .. I mean we are going on an interstate family holiday to one of the more popular tourist destinations in Australia .. and I'm sure everything will work out fine but I guess I'm just too much of a homebody at the moment to want to go anywhere else. To quote myself though: "Suck it up, Princess!"

Speaking of money, I really need to get a job. There's not much point in applying for jobs yet, due to the holiday in a few weeks, but I am going ever-so-slightly-crazy being at home. Then there's the whole what-sort-of-job-do-I-want/am-qualified-for, full-time-or-part-time and local-or-further-afield questions to answer. Peter wants me to go back to work full-time but I don't want to do that with him being away so much. I know there are lots of parents, single and partnered, who don't have the luxury of choosing not to work full-time, but I do and I want to be there for the kids at least some of the afternoons during the week. Plus, I think working full-time and dealing with teenage boys would tip the scale so far into the crazy spectrum that it would take forever to tip it back. Oh well, I'll cross that bridge when we get back from Queensland.

I have managed to do some of the things around the house that I have been meaning/wanting to do for ages. You know, stupid things like emptying out cupboards to clean the shelves, organising bookshelves, finding the floor in the laundry .. stuff like that. I have also managed to paint a feature wall in the master bedroom, just in time for Peter to come home and help me to empty the water bed, fix the bed frame and move it all. Here's hoping it all fits and looks good after all that. Next up is painting the boys' bathroom .. the idea of which started the whole bathroom re-tiling saga of 2009 and still has not been started, yet alone finished!

All this introspection has made me thirsty, so I'm going to take myself off to find some refreshingly cold water and then start re-assembling the bombsite that is my bedroom. If you got this far, thanks for listening/reading and hope everything is going well in your respective parts of the world.

Recent conversations ...

2010-03-03T16:40:00.005+08:00

Me: Good afternoon! How was your day?
Brad: Aren't you going to ask me if I learned anything today?
Me: In a minute. How was your day?
Brad: Educational.
Me: That sounds interesting. What did you learn today?
Brad: That it hurts when a basketball hits you in the face.
Me: Ouch! You OK?
Brad: Yep. Just missing a few more brain cells. I'll be fine ... eventually!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Andrew: Hey Mum!

Me: Yes Drew?

Andrew: Prepare yourself!

Me: Sounds ominous! What for?

Andrew: (jumping around the corner in the hallway dressed only in undies)

For the adventures of Nearly-Nude Man! (strikes superhero pose)

Me: (laughing) Who?

Andrew: Nearly-Nude Man! Ta-dah!!

Me: Well, Nearly-Nude Man needs to change back into the mild-mannered Andrew, and some clothes, before his arch enemy the Tickle Monster finds him!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On that note though, I suppose it would make more sense to be a superhero dressed only in undies:

no cape to get caught in things.
very easy to change into your crime-fighting outfit.
no expensive costume to keep replacing because some super-villain managed to damage it.
no agonising over the colours and/or symbols to go on the costume in the first place.
very easy to get back into your mild-mannered persona's clothes (provided you can remember where you left them!)

On the down side:

it would be rather embarrassing if you were going commando and forgot.
it was washing day and you were wearing your 'only-in-case-of-laundry-emergency' undies.
having to have lots of the same type and colour of undies so people recognised you as a superhero and not as some weirdo running around in their underwear.
it could be rather cold which, in the case of male superheroes, could result in shrinkage and diminishing your 'image' in the eyes of your fans.

What do you think?

So many things ...

2010-02-25T13:02:00.003+08:00

... running through my head. My mind will just not shut up and give me even five minutes peace at the moment. I need to find my relaxation/meditation CD and just do it.
... to do! Where to start? "Start at the very beginning. It's a very good place to start." (You're welcome for the tune wedgie!) There's the usual housework (blech!), preparations for Bradley's birthday tomorrow (yum ... cake batter!), pre-holiday planning, homework police duties and the few small home improvement projects to get finished before aforementioned holiday. I think I should make a list and make it my new best friend!
... to say. With so many things running around in my head, I need to get some of them out to the appropriate people. Note to self: find tact and diplomacy before attempting this!
... to change. Bad habits, paint colours, sheets on beds, towels in bathrooms, furniture, attitudes and menu plans.
... to get rid of. How do we manage to accumulate so much stuff? I am slowly working my way through a lot of the stuff we have amassed and am whittling it down to those things that are useful, look good or make me happy. Preferably all three but sometimes just one is enough!
... (bills) to pay and never enough money to pay them with. Everyone is probably in the same boat with this one. It just continues to amaze me that with so much money coming in, there still never seems to be enough to go around.
... to be thankful for. We have a great home, enough money for all the essentials (despite my whinge in the item above!), our health and, most importantly, each other.
... I love. My boys are all such wonderful kids who are turning into lovely young men. Sure we have our moments, doesn't everyone, but they are good people who are trying their best. My husband, who loves me despite my failings and occasional rants. My family, who are always there for me, and my friends, who know all about me and love me anyway!

This morning ...

2010-02-15T07:30:00.000+08:00

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At the risk of TMI ...

2010-02-11T11:52:00.007+08:00

... my week has been crappy .. in the literal sense. (Warning, liberal use of quotation marks and toilet talk to follow!)

As many of you know, Bradley has ongoing bowel issues that result in him not 'going' regularly and getting quite, to quote the doctors, 'loaded'. This often results in 'accidents' (which usually weren't dealt with until he was called on it .. aarrgghh!), feeling miserable/embarrassed and just generally unwell. The constant laundry and replacing ruined clothes doesn't help my mood either!

After dealing with this problem for most of his life and consulting with several medical professionals (who all said there was nothing actually wrong with him; his bowel is just lazy and slow-moving .. like the rest of the family .. lol!), I had come to the conclusion that a significant portion of this problem seemed to be psychological. Straight-out talking and counselling didn't seem to help at all, so I decided to try ~~turning him into a chicken~~ hypnosis.

I had my doubts as to whether there would be any benefit but I talked the idea through with him and, upon receiving his very vehement assertion that he did want to try it, I made the appointment with a woman who only deals with children and their various problems.

So, on Monday afternoon we found ourselves in her very lovely house, having a discussion as to what Bradley wanted to achieve. Having dealt with many medical/psychological professionals in my time, I just sat there biting my tongue to make myself keep quiet. The results are partly dependent on the child wanting to make a change in their behaviour.

Once she was satisfied that he did indeed want to be there, was willing to try anything safe to fix this problem and assuring him he wasn't going to be turned into a chicken (unless that was what he wanted!), she hypnotised him. It was very strange seeing him 'going under' and then watching his facial expressions and body language change as she talked to him about what would happen if he continued down the 'low road', was all rather surreal. Then to see his face light up like a Christmas tree when she spoke about the 'high road' and having this problem fixed was absolutely beautiful. He came away from that session speaking very positively about the whole experience and the changes he was hoping for.

Here's where the TMI stuff really starts, so for those of you who can't handle bodily functions, stop reading now! You have been warned!!

The next morning (Tuesday), he came down to my room and showed me a 'huge lump' that had appeared in his belly overnight. Normally, when I palpate (feel) his abdomen, I can feel something like a solid sausage all the way across. That's what the doctors are referring to when they say he's fully loaded .. his bowel is full all the way across .. which in itself is not a major problem but this lump was a whole 'nother ~~can of worms~~ ~~kettle of fish~~ story.

It was about the size of an adult man's fist and, when pressed on, would disappear back into his abdomen only to re-appear a short time later. He wasn't in any pain, had no fever or vomiting but it just didn't seem right to me and if it's one thing I've learned over the years, it's to trust my instincts when it comes to one of my children and their health.

After dropping the other two boys at school, I decide to skip the middle man, in this case our GP who would have advised me to do what I did, and took him straight to the Emergency Department at our local public hospital. (With money being as tight as it is, I figured he would be taken care of under Medicare and I wouldn't have to fork out the gap payment for the private hospital ED).

We got in to see a doctor within 40 minutes which is very unusual for this particular hospital (actually who am I kidding? It's unusual for any hospital!) and probably also due the fact that his stomach looked like an alien was about to burst forth at any moment, hopefully singing and dancing and generally entertaining the other patients. Either that or the clerks were scared he was going to burst in the waiting room and they would have to clean up the mess, so they pushed him through quickly.

The doctor came and examined him (1 hour wait), organised for an ultrasound (2.5 hour wait), waited for the results (another 2 hour wait) and then told me what I knew all along .. "his bowel is fully loaded." Swallowing back the retort of "Really? No shit Sherlock (no pun intended) .. I figured that one out myself!" I asked the all important question of "So what can you do about it?" His response was "I don't know. You have to wait to talk to our paediatrician. He should be available after 5pm."

By now, it was nearing school pick-up time for the other two boys and I had well and truly had enough of sitting there, waiting for them to tell me what I already knew. I asked if he was in any danger from this and, after being given a list of things to watch out for, went and picked the others up from school, resolving to take him to the other hospital in the morning.

After an unproductive and uneventful night, despite the medication in both ends of his body, I took the others to school and headed off to the other ED. Remembered halfway there that I was supposed to be taking the dog to the vet for his 6-week-post-accident checkup but concluded (rightly!) that the child was just slightly more important at the moment, especially considering the dog has absolutely no trouble pooping .. anywhere!!

We presented to the triage nurse and were classed as category five which usually means about an hour's wait on quiet days, but lucky us managed to pick a busier day so we got to wait for 2.5 hours!! Luckily I had thought to actually pack some entertainment for Brad this time and one of the lovely volunteer tea ladies made me a nice cup of tea to go with my catch up reading of last year's gossip magazines. The ED had changed their billing structure, in that you now have to pay the gap payment at the time of being seen so I dutifully forked over $165 (inflation is a bitch!!) and then went back to waiting.

To cut a very long story short, I know .. too late!, the doctor assessed him, organised an industrial strength enema and let it take its course. Upon seeing hardly any result, he ordered another to be administered 1.5 hours after the first, much to Brad's disgust.

After trying to encourage Brad to just let his body get rid of it all and listening to his laments of "I just want to go home", I was rather shocked to hear him come out with "I just want to die! Why did I have to be born with this?" We had a little 'come-to-Jesus' talk about counting blessings and stop focusing on the negative after that which seemed to work for a little while, then he just gave up and either lay on the bed ignoring me or sat on the toilet doing the same.

Just as I was about to call the nurse and/or doctor back to say it wasn't working, a noise not unlike that of a tsunami came from the bathroom. The look of relief on his face was almost comical as was the nurse's face when she came in to view the result. (Poor nurses .. having to look at all sorts of gross things day in, day out!) I said that she was probably going to have to arrange for a plumber to unblock the toilet as Bradley appeared to have given birth to his alien in there. She just laughed and pronounced it a nine-pound 'poo baby'. (No, I'm not making birth announcements for it!!)

So after all that, Bradley's lump had gone, he felt much better and we headed for home where he proceeded to have a nice, soothing, warm shower then fall asleep for three hours. All that effort really took it out of him .. literally!!

Overall, I'm glad that he's feeling better and it was nothing serious.

I'm glad that he has now been given the chance to help himself with the hypnosis without the physical obstacles.

I'm glad that I have my happy child back.

I'm glad that he is back at school and can freely play without worrying about having an accident.

I'm just trying to get my head around the fact that it just cost $165 for my child to poop! It would have been much cheaper at home child ... lol!

If only ...

2010-02-09T07:59:00.001+08:00

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Ella sketch #3

2010-02-06T13:56:00.000+08:00

I'm loving the six weeks of sketches over at Ella as they seem to have revived my motivation and are giving me inspiration at the same time.

I did sketch #3 almost as soon as it was posted but forgot to take a picture and post it here .. oops! So without any further ado, here is my interpretation:

I rotated it, mirrored it and changed the photo sizes a bit (and now it probably looks nothing like the original sketch!) but I like it! Wouldn't have a clue which papers are which because I don't keep track of all that .. sorry!

I also did this layout of Andrew:

It's very linear and started out based on one of Donna Januzzi's sketches in her "Stretch Your Sketches" e-book (Ella Publishing) but as is typical with sketches, it ended up looking nothing like the original! I'm still trying to decide if I'll cut the striped paper to the width of the blue as there's something bugging me about it. What do you think?

Journalling reads:
The first thing most people see when they look at these photos is the lovely mess you have made of yourself with your current favourite biscuit, the humble ginger nut.
Not me. All I see are the gorgeous chubby cheeks, cute little button nose, the happy smile underneath all that mess and your eyes... those beautiful blue eyes.
I really hope you get to keep those lovely baby blues but I doubt you will, so I'll just enjoy them for now and look forward to watching them change as you grow. (Feb '98)