Things You Might Already Know...

...if you are my facebook friend. And a few extra things as well.

• Fixit and I went and saw the mighty Bill Bailey at the Palais. I'm on Bill Bailey's mailing list, which meant I was able to book earlier than regular punters and thus we ended up in excellent seats alongside the rest of the fanclub. If you want to know where all the geeks and nerds and trainspotters of Melbourne were on July 17th, I can tell you that they were sitting down the front with Fixit and me. I've never seen so many in one place, but then I suppose I don't frequent comic-book conventions, boom-tish. Apparently if we'd hung around a bit longer after the final encore we would have seen BB wander out and do another 30 minutes of material for the die-hards. I almost wish I hadn't been told that, but I suppose it's useful knowledge for the next time we see him. It was an excellent show and my favourite part was his rendition of Cars by Gary Numan where he used a whole lot of those horns with the rubber squeezy thing on the end, all differently tuned, to make up the synth solo.

• Last night I finally sorted, folded and put away the mountain of clean washing which was taking up every available surface in my bedroom. Those of my facebook friends still cowering under their own piles of clean washing were either mildly abusive or congratulatory, depending, I suppose, on how big their piles were.
  

• I went to another Creche Trivia Night and we were winning the whole way, until the music round came up, at which point, somewhat surprisingly, we bombed. I hate coming third. I still feel disgruntled. Also, I hate bombing out on the music round, and the following day found me on iTunes listening to MGMT and MIA to see if I liked them and should be downloading them so as to keep up with the young peoples. To date I have not. I'm not ruling it out though.
  

• Both my boys now know about menstruation. Periods have been a very well-kept secret in this family because blood makes the Climber feel highly anxious. But we'd read this great book about a pre-adolescent girl (Do Not Read This Book), and the kids loved it so then we borrowed the sequel (Do Not Read Any Further) which saw the main character well and truly hit puberty. I'd been reading ahead and knew the period bit was coming up, so I'd prepared myself to talk about it. However, that chapter arrived on one of my teaching nights, so poor Fixit stumbled into it, suddenly realised he'd hit an area he was in no way ready or even qualified to speak about and promptly skipped forward a few pages. Hilarious. But seeing as I'd primed myself to 'splain it to them, I went back and read the missing pages to the boys the next night and had the chat then. As predicted, poor Climber felt terribly anxious about it and I had to keep saying things like it doesn't gush out and it's not really the same as your normal blood and it's perfectly fine etc. Then I showed them the paraphernalia and that was that. But it did remind me of another thread on my facebook page, about the paraphernalia, where said "ladies products" were discussed. When my kids first saw a tampon roll out of my handbag and asked me what it was, I'd said it was a bandage, which when you think about it, is true. Another friend said, under pressure and on the spur of the moment, that they were earplugs. Earplugs! Gosh that makes me laugh and I immediately asked if she'd ever then seen her kids stuffing them into their ears at any later date (she said not yet). Most hilariously of all, another friend, who, as a child, had not quite been told the difference between sanitary and table napkins, had set the table with the sanitary variety because she'd thought that would be extra nice for the dinner guests. I'm still trying to picture how that must have looked, tucked neatly under the knife and fork.
  

• I scored a free ticket to see a contemporary dance piece last week. I enjoyed it, I did, even though I went in with the preconceived idea that contemporary dance was all about how many times you could fling yourself at the floor - evidently been watching a bit too much So You Think You Can Dance. But what I came out thinking was: for a dance piece there wasn't much actual dancing. To be honest, the years of dance training they probably all had were not needed to perform this piece, they could just as easily have been first year drama students and I'm saying that as someone with dance and drama training. But a good piece of theatre, truly. I think my reaction says more about my lack of knowledge of contemporary dance practice.

• The Cherub has had his first sex-education where-do-I-come-from chat, aged 6 and 3/4. (Compared to the Climber - he was 5 when he first asked me about it, I was really not ready for that one - this is quite backward.) Cherub was about to hop into the bath and had given me a little kiss when he suddenly asked me if kissing would make a baby. So we had a big chat about seeds and eggs and where they were and what needed to happen to bring them together so you could make a baby. For the record, when I got to the part about the um... insertion, a look of mild disgust crossed his face and he said errr. After we'd had the whole lesson, he said but Savvas says a Saint Kilda player (footballer) kissed a teenager and she had a baby. So this is what the 6 year olds are talking about at school, hey. Now I wonder if Savvas will be getting his own little educational playground 'chat' and wondering if I need to give his parents the heads-up.