Blog blurt, post school holidays

Yesterday they demolished the house next door.



It took 20 minutes to knock a whole house down.
It's taken two days to clean up the debris.
Cherub was very worried about breathing in the dust.



This was the view from my kitchen window.



The noise of all that heavy machinery is driving me a bit mental.

The kids are back at school.
We had a great school holidays.
As well as our big family trip to the maze, we went to the Museum, ...



... Scienceworks, the Zoo, ...



... the pool, Fed Square, ...



a castle park (full of wooden forts and stuff), ...



... had visits to or from friends, including Stacey and her boys who came over to meet the kitty, saw Toy Story 3 (waaah!), slept-in a lot, watched dvds, and generally trashed the house.

We've been loving the World Cup but every time Climber watched any soccer he immediately ran outside to have a kick and came back in covered in mud, a major contributor to the house-trashing mentioned above. He was playing the Kids' World Cup in his head, I'm pretty sure the Kid Socceroos won it too. The boys are fascinated with my crush on Socceroos captain Lucas Neill: Mum come and watch the ad Lucas Neill is going to smile! or Mum what would you do if you met him? (answer: get really embarrassed and tongue-tied.)

I cleaned the house up Monday, their first day back at school. Me, not the cleaning lady. Having a cleaning lady has given me a reduced threshold for coping with household disgracefulness.

I've made up the start of 2 new routines for the new term of tap-dance, only 6 more to do.

I've (well alright then, Uncle Mark has) done my tax for last year and the year before and the news, most surprisingly, was good not bad. I thought we'd have to pay but some low-income offsets came to our aid.

I reported the threatener parent to the school, first thing Monday morning. The principal and Climber's teacher were not in the least bit surprised (the family's reputation precedes them) but they're not, they say, really able to do much because it happened off school property and 9 months ago. They did call Climber in for a big reassuring pep talk and he says it was really good and made him feel very supported. I still think I need to confront the scumdogs myself, just so they know I know. Looking back, I think they were tip-toeing round me last year expecting an outburst but now they think they got away with it. I don't know what to say to be honest. They've actually been in my sights in the playground twice now and I didn't march up to them. I feel a bit overwhelmed, like I'm too angry to start, and worried that if I go up when I'm still this emotional about it I'll end up stooping to their level. I don't want to stoop to their level obviously because they are dickheads, even if part of me thinks it might actually be the best way of getting my point across.
Fixit has holidays next week so I'm thinking it might be better to have him there too, looking imposingly big and strong and cranky at them.
One thing holding me back from going up to them was that I was struggling to come up with a good strong opening line. Maybe you threatened my child? what were you thinking?

Or there's always this one:

hello
my name is inigo montoya
you threatened my child
prepare to die.