But first, for something pretty

There aren't enough pictures on this blog.

This one makes me a bit dizzy.

For want of a better title

It's high time somebody did something about writing something here. So much goes on, and so little of it gets remembered. By me. I started out doing this as...

...I can't remember. But it soon became a handy way of getting some writing done. Practicing for when I'm a famous writer, you know. Now, however, I find to my delight that there are MEMORIES recorded here, and some quite precious ones, too. So I think I'll keep at it.

Anyway, Polly has left school. What a relief for both of us. Actually, before I talk about how lovely that all is, I need to whinge about HOW THE SCHOOL SYSTEM SO TOTALLY SUCKS* and should only ever be considered as a last resort for any thinking and/or compassionate parent, and only when they can't find a decent babysitter.

But to do this, I'll need to gather evidence**. Stay tuned for rantage.







* Not withstanding (which I think means- not including) the absolutely delightful Ms Blackberry, who will no doubt single-handedly revolutionise the entire thing, and even if she doesn't, will be excused on account of her being the one glimer of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape of state-sanctioned nazism and the systematised channeling of young enthusiasm and naivete into cynical, virtual-reality, escapist, self-hating nihilism.

** I think I left it under my bed, amongst a pile of other ignoble ignorable papers.

Wrapped in goosebumps

I'm rewatching Twin Peaks- haven't seen it since it was on TV.





I had forgotten how absolutely delightful is the Special Agent Cooper. Just wonderful.





That pleased, slightly manic smile he gets when he figures something out. Wonderful.

Oh God, but how AWFULLY scary is Bob?!

Why being a grown-up is better.

I said I wouldn't say it ever:

I'm glad the kids are back at school.

I always look forward to holidays and long weekends, because you don't have to do the mad rush in the mornings to get everyone fed, dressed, packed and out the door on time.

I always used to cringe when I heard mothers say (in front of their kids!), "Orr, can't waaait 'ntil skewl goes back." Or, even worse, when they'd try and get me in on it, "Doncha haaate skewl holidays?"

"Nope, I love 'em", I'd say. "I really miss the kids when they're at school. The teachers get the best part of their day."

I even said it last week. Yay. Long weekend. No Monday morning rush.

But it's so quiet right now. The house is a mess, but I'll get to it. Maybe. I can watch a DVD, maybe even vacuum out the car. Not going in to work until Wednesday.

I feel bad for the kids. Six hours of school a day, plus travel time, is a full-time job for kids. Then they have to come home and do homework. Poor little buggers. Their morning rush doesn't finish until 5 o'clock this afternoon. They've got the whole social minefield to walk, on top of the classroom stuff, and they won't have a moment to themselves all day.

I'm so glad I'm not a kid anymore.

Testy

Again, neither witty nor charming, but food for thought all the same.

Do you now, after all these years, qualify for what, in highschool, you would have considered "cool"?

Find out by taking this test.*


* thanks to Hamo

A quiet little whinge

While waiting for blog-worthy inspiration to Strike! I shall be thinking aloud on more mundane topics. There are some things I want to figure out.



Expect what follows to be neither witty, entertaining nor charming.



For instance:



Why am I a useless mother at bed-time? and, more imortantly, How do I fix it?



To recap, the players are:



Overkill Bill (husband) - big, bossy, bearded, bashful (although you wouldn't know it from talking to him)



Polly (15) - melancholic, determinedly depressed, emo from her unkempt hair right down to her holey, black stockinged feet.



Mayday (12) - choleric, fashionably stylish, the Quin to Polly's Daria



Noisie (8) - sanguine, dramatic, devastated, endearing, generally out of sorts with everthing.



Basil (1) - phlegmatic, sociable, enjoys school holidays and pet stores.



Oh, and this just in:



Bob (due in November) - has already threatened to cause the mental disintegration of his/her mother, but bound to be cute enough to get away with it.



So anyway:

During the day (unless I'm at work - Thank. God. for work) I'm bored, a bit miserable, unmotivated, surrounded by lots of things to do that I don't feel like doing, and feel pathetic for not doing, and don't like not having done. Like vacuum the car, do my budget etc.

Suddenly, when the kids get home, I'm all motivated and happy to do the stuff I haven't wanted to do all day. The dishes are a JOY! Suddenly we must have TREATS! I bake, I chat, I chase. I am supermum.

Until eight o'clock.

Then I hit a wall. And the wall tells me that the children either go to bed NOW!!!! or they die.

Noisie goes first, supposedly at 7:30, but she pushes it for drinks of water etc until 8:00. I can manage this, because the wall has yet to be met with.

Mayday is supposed to go to bed at 8:30, but by 8:00 I forget this and send her anyway, overriding her protests. Mayday is (currently) my most problem-free child, and I just can't be bothered with her. I punish her for her lack of issues, and for being compliant.

Polly goes to bed sometime, I don't always know when. I go to bed first. She watches too much television and never does any homework. I've decided to not hassle her about this. She seems happier, but it still bugs me, and I sometimes give her my exasperated, disappointed look, and a mini-lecture if I'm anxious enough, which I know is really heavy to bear, even for a teenager who pretends it isn't.

So I'm not at work today, and I've eaten three honey joys and two banana choc-chip muffins which are supposed to be for the kids but are, of course, just comfort food for me.

Maybe this'll work

There's no such thing as writer's block. Someone in the weekend paper said that if inspiration fails you, go out and hunt it with a club.

I do think I'm a bit out of practice with the clubbing.

So I'm going to start small, with a haiku or two. Maybe one every Monday?

Ahem.

Keyboard fails to hold
satisfactory interest.
Busting for a pee.

You see what I mean?

I'll try again later.

Next bar one

Actually, I think it was the depressing photos back in November that put me off.

Never fear. Won't be seeing or hearing or reading any more of that tripe.

Not here, anyhow.

So, "Self", I says

I really wasn't going to bother. Would anyone read it anyway?

Then I thought, so what? I haven't written anything vaguely poetic or semiautobiographical or prosaicish or anything at all since I stopped writing here.

And that's just a waste of a perfectly good tattoo.

I've gotten horribly responsible like that. But, as much as I don't miss writing, I miss being a person who likes writing.

Such as this is. Or might be if I bother.

Bothering, then, shall comence with my next post.

Old chip, new chip, woodchip

When it comes down to choosing between:

One must strive to remind oneself of the privilege of living in a liberal democracy. Oh the freedom! Oh the choice!

What bugs me about these guys is that the future they haggle over is measured in 3-year blocks.

So I've decided to vote for someone who knows how long it takes to grow a jarrah tree, or a person.

Problem is, you can't get much more ideologically different than The Greens and Family First. But a vote for either at least says something about something. Which, in this election, would be nice.

I've decided that I really do like Tohru Honda. At first she annoyed me, like all female anime characters annoy me. Like all male anime characters annoy me. Like all anime writers, ipso facto, annoy me.

Because despite all the degrading, self-flaggelating squawking she does, despite the p*rnographically short skirts coupled disturbingly with rediculously childlike features, despite the whole damn pro-patriarchal propaganda of the thing,

.
.
.

she knows who she is, and how she wants to live, and it's good, and other-focussed, and she pushes determinedly towards it. She is unshakeable.

When I grow up, I want to be like Tohru.

twiddling

Soooooooooo.....


Read any good blogs lately?


This is just to save me time actually looking for any myself.

OR!!!!!!!!!

Maybe everyone is over at Facebook now.

But that's just too much exposure for me. Too much pressure. I'd have to be consistent. I'd miss the anonymity of my nice, dark, slimy little blog.

Heh. Slimy.

It was all downhill from there

First chiild: Is more comfortable in the company of adults than with her peers, as her parents are her first and, for some years, only friends. Shoulders the burden of parental anxiety and expectation, and is thus prone to worry about the future. Is a responsible and capable carer of younger siblings, although at times resents this expectation.

Second child: Lives in the shadow of the first child and, as a middle child, also of the younger sibling. Thus, is highly competitive, and will push the boundaries of decorum in her sense of humour, and the boundaries of safety in her physical activities, in the effort to be recognised as valuable in her own right. Prefers negative attention to no attention at all. Secretly adores and admires first child, and as an older sibling herself, alternately dotes on and resents third child.

Third child: Basks in the adoration of her elder siblings, and revels in the relaxed discipline of her parents. Is naughty and gets away with it because she's cute and her parents are too busy these days to do much about it. Feels no pressure from parents to perform, conform or achieve. Is consequently quick to pick up any skill, and is charming, competent and comfortable in any social setting.

Fourth child: Drools, bites. Thinks normal sibling interaction is being dragged across walls to the tune of "Spider-pig! Spider-pig!"

But if you, Sit and stare

I wouldn't have said six months was what you'd call a long time.

Yet there it is.

Many and varied precious bloggers no longer blog.

(One feels the reader ought immediately to click on the links and harrass them.)

So what do I read nowwwwwwww???????

At least the man with the bad tempered pants still knows where his computer is. There's still that. (Although he seems to have forgotten where he keeps his telephone.)

Furthermore.

Apparently it's not just my teenage daughter who now reads manga. Or watches anime (subbed, not dubbed). This seems to be the new thing.

It makes one quite sentimental.

The eyes have it.

Polly Waffle has spent this year indulging her taste for tragic orphans, vis...
























...and:






















( With continuing sentimental affection for ...


















)





Is it the eyes? I dunno. But I'm beginning to sense a pattern.

Maybe it's the angst. angst. angst.

Flash Garden

So I was trying out my nifty new Kodak Easyshare C763:












and I must say, I don't think it's as good as my trusty old mobile phone camera, which dished up such sentimental delights as this (which I like) and these (which are blurry, but hey, it's a stupid phone camera).

For instance, I can't figure out how to turn off the flash, and, as my Guru-On-All-Things-Arty ( Bronzewing Dove) says, nothing ruins a good photo like flashlight. It even flashes outside, in the broad daylight. Thoroughly indecent.

And such is my laziness, or stubbornness, or both, that I did bother to get the model number right, and upload a picture of the stupid thing, in the hope of eliciting good advice from a passing blog-reader, rather than simply google-up some instructions as to how to switch off the flash.

I believe that a really clever person only reads the instructions when All Else Fails, with All Else including grumbling about the lack-of-right-tools/ dodgy-overseas-workmanship/ poor-eyesight/ other-people-moving-my-things until someone offers up a helpful solution to which the really clever person will appear to already be putting into place, of their own brilliance, before the words have left the helper's mouth, thereby allowing the really clever person to look at the helper distractedly and say "Look, I'm a bit busy here, do you mind just going and putting on the kettle for me?"

Nevertheless, I have been prowling around the backyard, stupid-flash-happy camera in hand, preparing a lovely sample of garden shots. I'm thinking of creating a new category in the Garden of the Year Competition, something to do with Most Artistically Neglected.


This, you see, is a fence. Also a tree stump.

I like to think of my garden as a Secret garden.

Secret Fence.

Secret Tree Stump.







We also have a Secret Patio. It used to be hidden under a passionfruit vine. Now the passionfruit vine crawls the vastly unreachable heights of the neighbour's peppermint tree, and a feral gooseberry bush has assumed responsibility for hiding the patio.










This is the Secret Entrance where the shiteful neighbourhood cat gets in to compensatedly spray anything within range of it's very tiny penis.


















This is where we hide old engine parts and the back fence.




















This is where we hide chairs.


















And so on, and so forth.

Meanwhile...

So YAY ME! I have a camera! So I can write blogs with pictures in them, and wot's more i have a computer now my kid has finished work experience, which required my computer... long story. Never mind.

Meanwhile, read this. It's cute.

First, the bad news.

I have a cold.

But who cares?

Nobody, that's who.










On the other hand... I am pleased with how the baby turned out.


He's small.


He's furry.


I think we'll keep him.

Hay hay haaaaaaaayyyy!

I LOVE MY LIFE !

I've just finished that article - the last draft I really care about, anyway, I've scheduled in all the counselling groups I'll be running over the next 5 terms, the airconditioner is working again, the dishwasher is working again, my linen cupboard looks like it was packed in Stepford, Bill is taking me out for a belated anniversay dinner, Mayday has pretty much finished throwing up, Bill jnr is wriggling appropriately for a kid due to arrive in 7 days and it RAINED today. Am I showing off? Tell me yes. Yes I am. And I'll continue so long as these hormones keep pumping.

I AM SUPERWOMAN !!!!!!!!!

I AM THE LIZARD QUEEN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just nobody put on any country music and we'll be fine. Especially this one. I couldn't even talk about this song without sobbing the other night.

Smells like rat

Is it a coincidence that my return to blogging occurs just as i begin working on turning my thesis into a journal article?

I think not.

Or that, simultaneously, I have just consumed the second season of Veronica Mars, and am at a loose end, escapement-wise?

Again, I think not.

(BTW: Do you not love Veronica? Do you not?)

It's either this, or baby-clothes shopping. Which is even more painful than woman-clothes shopping. Because at least i know what size i am.

(Another BTW: I know I'm four months behind the gossip, but did you all catch BEVIS' telling of the Sweetums birth story? My. God. Speechless with horror. Too close to home. Muchos kudos to all three.)

**sigh**

Alright, that's enough effort for one morning. I'll get back to you when I remember what my point was.

Oh. Also. I have a new phone-with-camera, and a new laptop. Neither likes the other. They aren't even on speaking terms. I'm planning to sulk until they start behaving themselves, and then I'll pretty this place up a bit.