Whip Cracking Easter

Whip Cracking




Keeping Up



Disturbing the Peace





I often wonder how my children would have turned out if I was a Labeller. By Labeller I don't mean one who likes to file away personality types. I'm talking in the more literal sense. You know, like if I was to get my Brother P40 and make labels for everything in the home. Labels such as "leftovers 13/3/2008", or, "White Undies size 10", or, "Please Place Your Stinking Rubbish In The Bin and DO NOT Leave It Lying On The Floor Or I Will Kill You".


If I had been a Labelling Parent would I have had enough spontenaity about me to want to teach my son how to crack a whip (as shown in the photo above labelled "whipcraking").

My father taught me how to crack a whip and this weekend I displayed the technique as I was taught it to my 17 year old nephew. Since my nephew was a toddler all he has ever wanted is a farm of his own, full of big bad bulls to boss around and because whip cracking is an essential farm-owner skill he knows how to do it well. He dared to challenge my technique and my claim that my father had taught it to me. In his gruff 17 year old manner he grabbed the whip from my hands and said "Grandy would never have taught you to crack a whip like that. You'll knock your bloody eye out" and proceeded to show me how it was done. I didn't admit it to him but he was good and although I could crack it my technique was crap. He can swing that thing around his head and crack it one billion times while it's still airborne. I'm not even kidding a little bit. It's not surprising really. My father, who taught my nephew had a favourite trick; to have us hold a lit cigarette in our mouths just so he could knock it out with the whip. I don't want to hear any of you saying that it was child abuse because I was a fully grown adult at the time and that was his way of saying "don't smoke".

I was trying to teach Henry the technique that I claimed my father had taught me but my nephew took over. After a long observation time of approximately thirty seconds Henry thought he had it down pat. He ordered his father to "stay out of the way Dad, just stand back, this is really dangerous". He then proceeded to try and swing that whip around his head just like he'd seen his cousin do. He almost got it right.

He also thought one afternoon that he would join Maya and Riley for a bike ride. Unfortunately they were way too fast for him. He tried hard to keep up as they rode down the driveway and out the gate. As they got further away his feet left the pedals and hit the ground. He must have thought he would somehow go faster that way.

The Easter bunny came and left some eggs in his Easter nest, made from an old hat and some grass and the cow, heavily pregnant, kept to herself despite Henry's best efforts to disturb her peace.

We had a fantastic time and it was a shame to come home. to avoid the weekend traffic we drove home via the inland higway and enjoyed the scenery but it took us a very long time to get back. If I was a Labeller I would probably have printed one that said "Successful Family Weekend" because none of us fought...much.

Thunderbird 3 - Get Ready for Blast Off!

Henry has been asking for a Tracy Island for some time. He's even begged me to make him one. I tried but apparently we didn't have enough alfoil or the right sized yoghurt containers. This is Australia, not England and we don't have Blue Peter.

We've searched, kind of, for a Tracy Island and the asking price of some of them on ebay is equal to the national debt of a third world nation. This obsession might be short lived too and we're not prepared to get a bank loan to buy one.

As I was mentioning Henry's obsession in the lunch room at work one of my co-workers piped up to tell me she had one sitting in her shed and it was going to be donated to charity over the coming weekend so it was lucky I brought it up when I did. Yesterday, she brought it in and I brought it home. I locked it in the boot of the car and when we got home I gave him three guesses as to what could be in there. His first guess was "It's Thunderbird 2", second guess was "It's great", third guess was "I'm going to love it". He was right on two counts. When he saw it he almost stopped breathing.

He hasn't left it alone since and even insisted on sleeping with it last night. As he drifted off he said "Mum, this is so totally cool and I am so totally lucky".

The power switch is currently switched to off

Maya has started her own blog and last night she was reading mine, you know, just to make sure it's not better than hers. She said, "Mum, this is funny, you're not that funny in real life but for some reason all my friends think you are". I told her it was because they were obviously smart and she had a lot more work to do in human studies.

So far she hasn't written much on it and I'm allowed to link to it but there's no way she's EVER going to link to mine. That would be just plain embarrassing. If I had a myspace she would positively die from the embarrassment of it all because everyone knows that if you do have a myspace you need to delete it as soon as you have finished celebrating your 25th birthday.

There's also something really very cool about today. No it's not my birthday. I am actually home ALL ALONE. That's right, there's no one here but me. I have the music turned up to full volume and I'm reveling in the peace inside my brain.

Even I think they're totally cool

Henry's current obsession is the Thunderbirds. This obsession is much more intense than any other he has so far had. We thought it might be nice to buy him some kind of Thunderbird toy and so looked to see what we could get. Apparently not much under $300 because it's no longer made. Anyone with anything Thunderbirds related should check out ebay to see how much their treasured childhood toys are going for. We did however find a box of Thunderbird VHS movies and episodes. He's watched them all over and over. This is his effort at turning them, and a few misfits, into Thunderbird 2.

A young guy that I work with loved Thunderbirds too as a child and brought me in a matchbox model of Thunderbird 1 which has not left Henry's hands since he got it.

Special Online Price Today Only. No Further Reductions. 20% Off. Until Friday.

Today is Friday and I don't work on Fridays. Well I don't get paid for the work I do on Friday at least. Usually Fridays are put aside for catching up on all the stuff I don't get done at home while I'm out getting paid to work. But I also have Henry at home with me on Fridays. I love that about Fridays but it also means I'm limited in what I can actually get done. I've learned to compartmentalise and prioritise my Friday. I usually decide what I'm going to do for the day soon after I wake up. I dream about the list of things that need taking care of in the early hours while I'm drifting in and out of sleep and then while drinking my first cup of tea I mull over them all. Usually I've made a final decision by the time I take the last sip.

This morning, while mulling through the list in my mind I decided I wanted to do something that would have a visually appealing end to it. The pile of bills, while they would be able to be filed once they were paid would simply make my bank statement ugly. The pile of clean washing had only grown over the week and while it might get put away if I folded it, it would grow just as large by the end of the day. I could dust and vacuum but it seemed pointless because the dust never disappears, it just moves up into the air and then settles again somewhere else. I walked outside to say good morning to the world and took a look at the state of the garden. I knew then that I was going to at least make an effort to do something about it.

Normally I try to achieve only two things on Friday. That's realistic for me considering I have Henry at home with me. If I think I can do more than that and don't manage it I get frustrated. So I decided it would be the gardening and the folding of the clean washing and if I can complete only those two things I will feel a sense of achievement.

I'm a lazy gardener. I like gardens but I don't have the time to do anything too creative or to dig weeds all day. I like to do things the easy way. My garden was looking more like a weedbed than a garden and the few actual plants that are in it all look a bit sick. Never mind, I thought. I'll just break that job down into smaller parts too. I'll get weed matting and then some mulch and that should do it.

I went online to find the contact details for our local lanscape supply place. I was going to call them to see firstly if they stocked weed matting and secondly how much it was per metre. Their website told me all I needed to know. They had it in stock and it was $1.80 per metre. I put Henry in the car and off we went. Less than a five minute drive from home and we were there.

I told the young but friendly looking girl at the counter that I was there for some weed matting. The following conversation ensued.

Her: Yeah we've got some, it's $2.95 per metre

Me: oh. But the website says it's $1.80 per metre

Her: Yeah, that's our internet price. You have to order it online to get it at that price.

Me: So if I go home now and order it online for $1.80 per metre can I pick it up or does it have to be delivered?

Her: No, you can pick it up.

Me: So when I come back to collect it will you cut it from this same roll?

Her: Yeah. That's just our special way of doing it. It's just different, you know.

Me: (acting as though I completly understood) Yeah, I know. Ok. I'll go home and order it and be back in ten minutes.

Her: (looking quite daft) uh, ok, sure.

I don't think she believed that I would do it but I did. I drove the three minutes back home, ordered it and paid for it online and returned to her store with the order in less than ten minutes.

She had seen me pull up and as I walked through the door she was obviously telling her work colleague that I was the woman who had gone home to place an online order. She rolled her eyes as I walked in and handed her a print off of my order. She tsked and then stormed outside and without measuring, cut me what she obviously guessed was five metres of weed matting. She then scrunched it up and practically threw it at me.

I thanked her profusely, being sure to sound completely over the top and appreciative of the fact that she had gone out of her way to help me. She stormed off back into the protective confines of her air conditioned demountable office.

I didn't quite have enough to complete the garden but what I have done looks so much better and almost as though someone actually cares about it. I haven't yet started on the pile of clean washing but I'm thinking it might be just as easy to burn it.

Therapy in Boredom

When people ask me how I am I resist the urge to tell them that I need to win lotto, get a maid, a gardener, a nanny and a therapist. Instead I say that I'm fine, that life is good because it is, if I ignore the fact that I need all the aforementioned things.

Being a working mother is hard as anyone who has to do it can atest to. Lately I've been trying to make time to walk each afternoon with my neighbour. I use that time as therapy and offload all that worries me to her. Tonight however she didn't want to go walking. Her excuse was that she had walked hard today and had spent the entire day engaged in some heavy duty cleaning. I think she may have been sick of me offloading onto her.

I justified my reasoning by reminding myself that she isn't working right now, SHE has all the time in the world to exercise and clean. SHE doesn't even really care about how I feel. SHE is just selfish. I therapied myself and was able to work out that my feelings were born out of jealousy.

Right now I would almost kill for the chance to not have to work. Sure, I might get bored after three years or so but I would make the most of that boredom by reading three billion books. I might even learn how to sew or even make a vegetable garden. It would just be nice to have a pile of washing that at least appeared to become smaller on a daily basis.

It's not going to happen any time soon but never mind. I'm planning on inventing a machine that makes money that looks so real no one would ever know it's not.