kids

The last couple of weeks have been incredibly busy.



Mister has started kindergarten and LOVES it. Missy Mopps has started pre-school and LOVES it. WIN!



We started the fall season of gymnastics; Mister chucked his seasonal hissy fit, running away and refusing to join in his group, protesting loudly and laying on the ground, like I am the most torturous mother on earth...which is ultimately what I ended up being. After about 10 minutes of his antics, I thought "Bugger this!" Got down to his level and muttered that we would be coming to these lessons every week for the next 10 weeks whether he liked it or not, so he had better get used to the idea because there is no way in hell he is getting out of gymnastics. And yeah...I have noticed that he only carries on like this while I am present so perhaps next week I will leave him and go and do something else for the hour, and come back at the end. Mafia style tactics prevailed and he eventually participated. Predictably he ended up loving it - like every other time (why me????) and can't wait for next week, because one of his friends ended up in his group. Missy Mopps on the other hand was champing at the bit for her lesson the same afternoon and had a great old time, minus the self-inflicted drama.



Speaking of Missy Mopps, I actually had a great day with the kids today. We are getting used to the new, frantic routine, but today turned out perfectly.



At present, it is still lovely weather out, so we have been making the most of these warm sunny days in dwindling supply and have spent most of this week outdoors.



While Mister was in kindergarten Missy rode her trike while I walked. Her trike is pretty cute. It has an umbrella top and a handle so I can push her when she gets tired (and to save my back). This trike pulls a lot of attention and she loves it. A little old lady was walking by when we were heading back from the park. The lady asked Missy if she would give her a drive home if she sat behind her on her bike. With a wide eyed nod of the head, Missy agreed to ride the lady home on her trike...melted that lady's heart she did. "Oh, you are sooooo cute", she crooned. She really is. My little missy mopps is so sweet.



Funny ting happened at the store today. We were walking along the pavement, heading toward the area where they keep the shopping carts. Along the way there is this great pile of dried bird crap - there must be a nest high in the rafters or something, because no other mounds of crap were visible. On the way back to the shop entrance, cart in hand, I notice a little boy, probably about 7 years old, standing, staring at this great pile of dried bird shit; he appeared totally mystified by the vast quantity of shit heaped on the ground. As I passed him by, he spoke, trance-like, as if speaking the private thoughts of his own mind, "did some bird die there or something", he questioned to no one in particular. I lost it - cracked up laughing. It sure did look like some one had blown the shit out of some bird.

Binned!

I just finished the book Power of Now by Vancouverite, Eckhart Tolle. I must say, I think this book has had a bit of an impact on me.

In the past, I have been quite a reader of the "spiritual growth" type books, but soon tired of them once most of them started saying the same type of thing... while I occasionally stumbled upon something helpful, the majority weren't really doing it for me anymore.

A very good friend of mine gave me "The Power of Now" for a birthday back in 2004 and for whatever reason, I just wasn't in the right place to read it back then. Even still, I basically only plucked it from the bookcase, because I had nothing else to read one night, while sitting with one of the kids as they fell asleep.

Tolle's words are helping me to let go of the anger I have too long held anger over the SIL and MIL incident. His words are helping me move on from past disappointments and hurts, especially about the career I planned, but never had. His concepts are really helping me let go of "stuff", which is symbolic I think, of this release of emotional baggage. I feel more capable of going with the flow, regardless of the uncertainties that still reign unclear at the present moment. I am reminding myself "in this exact moment, everything is perfect"...because it is. The past is gone, both 15 seconds ago and 15 years ago, and the future has not yet happened, this moment really IS perfect.

We have been sorting through all this stuff. We don't have that much stuff really; we are quite minimalistic people. But man...there is still all this....stuff. I love sorting through stuff I no longer need; clearing the path so to speak. It seems like it is just stuff, and yet it has always felt so freeing for me to do that.

We are having a garage sale in a couple of weeks and so there are piles of miscellaneous goods stacked in the corner of our lounge room. Tonight we have gone through the office cupboard. Every house, it seems, has a dumping ground. My parents chose their pool table. We tend to throw papers and foreign objects into the office cupboard with the intention of sorting through the clutter and filing it properly, in the ill defined time of later.

Tonight, while going through a stack of notebooks and paid bills, I found, yet again, the diary I kept while in year 12; I spoke about it a couple of weeks ago - the one that was filled with teenage angst and unintentional hilarity. I threw it out. I don't need it. Yeah, it holds some of my history in it. For sure, it talks about the emotional pain I was in at the time. It talks about parental frustrations, school struggles, boyfriend issues, stupid pranks played on school friends, bad poetry and other stuff, but why keep it? For 18 years I have kept that diary as a reminder of my youth; as a material snippet of my journey thus far; perhaps even as a testimony to or evidence of my very existence.....I don't need it anymore.

Carth

My son is completely obsessed with anything to do with the Disney/Pixar movie Cars. I am not really sure how he became aware of the movie. We didn't take him to see it at the cinema, but when the posters began to emerge advertising its release on DVD, he begged for a copy.

We got the movie, unsure of whether it would hold his interest, but it did. He loves it. He even pretends to be Lightning McQueen, who actually helped him out with some pre-school bullies when he found, while pretending to be Lightning McQueen, that he could outrun all the kids in his class. Since then he has been progressively collecting all the little die cast car characters from the movie. He has t-shirts and pj's emblazoned with the Cars theme, even his sandals and undies have Cars on them.

Leading up to kindergarten, Mister has been less than enthusiastic about starting something new (read: outright defiant). Last week however, I managed to find a Cars backpack, lunch kit, drink bottle AND pencil case, so now he is impatiently counting down the minutes until he is able to use all his new Cars stuff and show it all off to his new school friends. Hey, whatever helps.

Recently his best buddy has been enthusiastically collecting cars and they play well together with their cars and swapping characters with each other. This week his best bud got a number of new cars and excitement over these toys reached fever pitch as they plotted together which ones they wanted to collect next. Upon hearing this for the entire week, I went on the net the other day and searched out some hard to find characters that we NEVER see in the shop and won an eBay auction for some of them. I wasn't sure how or when I was going to give them to him, until today....

Mister has a bit of a speech problem; he quite badly th'usses his ess'es, and unfortunately Missy Mopps decided to copy him even after she had originally started saying these sounds correctly. I once spoke to a speech pathologist about it, and she told me, if the rest of his speech is fine, especially if he can say his z's properly, then his th'ussing is merely a habit - "a habit that will be difficult to break", she assured me. Thus far, she has been right. We have tried everything to help him out of the habit, but he would become so frustrated that he would simply refuse to co-operate or he'd intentionally th'uss at us with exaggerated defiant emphasis.

Today we bribed him. "Practice saying your ess'es correctly and once you have them down pat and spoken without a second thought, we will get you a couple of hard to find Cars characters". Well! Never before have I heard him so enthusiastic and excited by a challenge. I was impressed. We corrected and reminded him for a good 2 hours tonight, without one wobbly cracked - he was really trying. As I said...whatever it takes.

Guess who he wants to be for Halloween?

My happy place

Ok, we are officially sold. Yep. SOLD SOLD SOLD SOLD. So sold we broke out the champers. So sold the stager lady took back all her stuff (boo hoo).

For a week our humble abode lived up to its potential. Its inner beauty shone out to all the world and said - "this was what I was born to be". Now it is a mere skeleton of what it once was; a mish mash of unrelated objects, and a chasm of echoey space.

Hand over day is October 7. We have a back up plan to move into the skanky motel, if required. Otherwise I am feverishly scanning the postings at craigslist for a reasonably local sublet, short term lease, vacation house or furnished dwelling that allows pets: so far no luck. Just for the record, I will in fact consider it a minor miracle if I do find anything that suits - just being realistic.

Surprisingly we aren't at all panicked. We have plan B, so what could go wrong? The household items will go early; our financial commitment each month should be slightly less, and then we have a free week up our sleeves. We are thinking of using that week, not to pack up the house and have a minor nervous breakdown, but instead, to chuff off after the dogs leave; arrive a week earlier into LA and do the planned Disney trip BEFORE the American thanksgiving. Originally, we had stupidly planned our trip to the happiest place on earth, oblivious to the fact that Thanksgiving week was notorious for being the most crazy weekend of the entire year oops. We are thinking of checking out San Diego or San Fransisco over Thanksgiving week instead, though still leaving for Australia the same day as originally planned. Sounds like a plan to me, don't you think. Its Only the details once BACK in Australia that are entirely vague and sketchy, but then again, we have plenty of time to work through those issues once this debacle...I mean, well hashed plan are home and hosed.

Its a test of faith...remember.

On the prowl

We had the building inspector go through today. It all seemed to go ok; mostly positive. The realtor is confident that the sale will be finalised tomorrow - yay.

I looked into renting the house in the next street, but had no luck. Most places around here seem to be leased for 6 months to a year minimum. I did look into a motel in the next town; it is in a really good location - by the bay, but its a bit of a humpy! I can already imagine the inside of it - one word "skanky"....ah, who cares. We need a place that offers reasonable short term rates and a willingness to accommodate our dogs - such finds are few and far between. This one meets our minimum requirements AND has a kitchenette, so beggars can't be choosers as my Mum would say, we'll live. If we were to go with that motel, it would mean sending our stuff back early, which is actually a good thing. It also means that Ashley could stay in his job a week longer than anticipated (I am sure he will be thrilled with that possibility). It also means a bit more of a run around with the school and pre-school drop offs and pick ups, but I am sure I will manage.

I might hang off booking that motel and wait for the local paper to come out tomorrow. They might have someone looking for a house sitter (sure) or a sub-letter during the exact times we will be needing it (fairyland, I know).

I guess there is always a tent.

Up There, Cazaly

I am re-submitting this post because, for whatever reason, the video I had attached was no longer available...so here it is again, video AND accompanying post....

Yesterday the kids were looking for items to play dress-ups in. I scoured the cupboards to see if there was anything appropriate, for that purpose. All was almost lost until I peered into one of Ashley’s drawers, rummaged around a little I found two Australian Rules football jumpers.

One was black and white, with the Port Adelaide Magpies team emblem emblazoned on the front; the South Australian team of choice for both my husband and I, prior to Port Adelaide forming a national team –The Power, and opting for the colours black white and teal (there was already a national black and white Magpies team - Collingwood boo hiss).

The other jumper was red and white striped, baring the moniker of the Ramblers Football Club or “The Roosters”, as they were known; a jumper Ashley had commandeered from the golden days of his country football playing youth.

For the moment I sat clutching those rough, synthetic knit guernseys, an array of football memories bloomed forth in my mind, like imprisoned buds on a sunny day.

I am not a sport fanatic by any means, but football is so ingrained in my personal history that I have possibly developed or inherited some kind of appreciation gene for the game.

Aussie Rules Football is quintessentially masculine. The game is rough and the culture surrounding it inspires a similar coarseness. I grew up with the passion for the game all around me; both grandfathers were players, as was my father and brother, along with most men in my community. But for me, football was more than a game; it was, and still is, a multi-sensory, multi-layered experience.

Football brought our small community together during the winter months. It brought excitement and activity to the town and surrounding region. To me, as a child, football meant long family drives in the car, as we travelled to remote towns within “the league”, to follow the football.

It meant hanging out with my childhood friends and wandering around the ground to the sound of cars honking their horns on the sidelines, whenever a goal was scored. You could hear the harsh voices of men and women screaming, “come on, get up ya useless bastard”, and other profanities, to umpires, opposition players and supporters, along with their own team players; voices that were hoarse from too much yelling, too much alcohol, too many cigarettes and too many hard knocks.

Then there was a whole other harmony. The sound of thundering feet scrambling after an erratically floundering leather ball; so unnerving was the collective sound of nearby galloping feet, panicked and urgent voices; that it sounded like a herd of screaming, stampeding brumbies were about to hurtle through the sidelining crowds, to trample us wee ones in their frantic, fleeing wake.

There was the thumping sound of leather against damp soil during the centre bounce; the smack and slap of a boot walloping the living daylights out of the ball, and of course, the shrill reverberations of the umpires whistle.

Then there were the smells of the game. Such as the sickening, yeasty pungency that wafted through the air, signalling to all that the bar was open for business, and the amber fluid was flowing abundantly; the suffocation of cigarette smoke catching in our small throats, making us splutter and gag; wet leather; bruised damp grass.

There were other smells too, ones that lured children from the snug quarters of the family car; meat pies and pasties, the hot golden buttery goodness hanging in the air like the sun on a winter’s day. That smell taunted us kids, and we would pester our mothers until we had each managed to secure one of those heavenly pastries in our eager hands, along with a packet of salt and vinegar chips, and an extra 20 cents jangling in our pockets for a white paper bag brimming with an assortment of homemade cupcakes, for later on.

There were also the games – not just the bone crunching, mud bath battering and clash of men on the official ground, but the sidelines games; the climbing in trees, hide and seek in the bamboo forest, the escape into a fantasyland of kings and queens, sisters princesses, “Gone with the Wind”, castles made of bridal creeper and moss, and hanging out in the playground, inventing new tricks on the monkey bars.

Now, as adults, my husband and I would make a habit of cozing up on a winter’s night to watch a game together, whether it is fish and chip Friday with a bottle of wine, or another time when our team was playing. It was the history of our involvement with the game that drew us to it, week in week out, season after season.

Here in Canada we rarely see a game. Occasionally we might see a game telecast on FOX sport, but it isn’t live; the results of those games are already known. I can not watch it, not without the vibe, the hype and expectation, speculation, and subsequent jubilation or commiseration with my fellow country men, living in the moment that is fresh footy lunacy. Consequently, my passion for the game fell into hibernation, and receded into a mere glimmer of its former blazing self, and I told myself that football wasn’t all that important to me.

But when I handed over the football guernseys to my children, they slipping them on and running around in them, the sight made me smile, but I shrugged and happily went back to what I was doing, until they inquired into the history of the “soccer jumpers”.

”Oh! But these are not soccer jumpers. These”, I declare proudly, “are Australian Rules Football guernseys”. And at once the stories of football and my passion for the game unfurl like an exquisite Japanese fan, and my enthusiasm was eaten up and absorbed by two wide eyed children who announced that they would “like to see that”.

And since it is impossible that I take them to a game here in Canada, and there was no telecast showing today, I downloaded a song long regarded as the unofficial Aussie Rules Anthem; a song, that has, for generations, inspired many a young Aussie lad to dream of playing footy on the big grounds, with the big boys and the crowds – that song is Up there Cazaly.

Calling ALL Snowbirds

We are still in the cooling off period of selling our house. The deadline for the buyers to pull out is Wednesday...so fingers crossed that doesn't happen. They are getting the building inspection done on Tuesday. We have only had this house for two years, so I can't imagine that is has suddenly started to crumble under foot during that time; especially considering all the work we have done to the damn thing.

We have just one smidgey-didge of a dilemma in selling this house; we are being turfed out six weeks earlier than we had planned....I know we are fools for accepting such conditions, but the offer was a very good one, so we would have been just as foolish to have turned it down. We have our plane flight back to Oz already in our hot little hands and our dogs are firmly booked for their 30 day stay in the Spotswood quarantine centre in Melbourne (it is supposed to be the best), AND we have family coming to visit us at the end of October, so we can't leave Canada any earlier.

I am not too worried, Muse suggested we rent an RV for 6 weeks and send our stuff back early...might have to do that if we get desperate....Anyone need an honest, reliable and very responsible family to house sit over October and most of November...(preferably located in the Greater Vancouver region?) No? Drat!

Our neighbours across the road gave me a contact for the house behind them. Apparently it is a rental and the current tenants are planning to vacate. If that works out it would be quite a coincidental and wonderful feat. We would love to remain in the area until we leave; especially with the school year about to start next week.

We would have had to have found temporary accommodation anyway, so perhaps we will be able to stay in our temp accommodation until we officially leave. I am choosing to see this minor hurdle as a test of faith...we have a few weeks up our sleeve to find an alternative arrangement anyway. Wish us luck.