Sunday, August 01, 2010

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.

13 comments:

  1. Wow. It's all happening at your place!
    I had an incident with tampons when I was about 17. I went into a bakery and was fiddling about in my handbag for loose change when a box of tampons fell from the bag and I swear, exploded all over the floor. Of course the bakery was full at the time and being in a small town, I knew just about everyone in there.
    The following day when I went to school, someone had decorated my locker with tampons.
    You're so brave with the puberty book with the boys. I'm afraid I fall into the "ask your father" camp when it comes to such discussions.

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  2. Oh Stacey, how hideous. Cringe. Also, I hate the person who did your locker.

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  3. Your boys will be extrodinary men. Your sensitivity and honesty will ensure it.

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  4. Heath has been asking LOADS of questions about sex and how babies are made. Very uncomfortable!!!! So far I've been able to explain about eggs and sperm, and about how the baby comes out, but have so far managed to avoid the whole insertion part, which frankly I'm not ready to discuss!!!! I've managed to diplomatically end the conversation about that time. He has of course discovered tampons, the first really was when I walked into the bathroom, to discover almost all of my newly purchased box of tampons in the bath with a delighted 'look mummy, how big they get in the water! What are these things mummy?!". He used to play a mouse game, or something like that! Very annoying! So we had to have the period conversation a bit earlier! He was a little bit concerned about the whole process, and whenever he catches me with a surreptious tampon in hand, he pipes up 'have you got your peeria mummy?".

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  5. Right. That does it. I'm going to stop living in a dream world, pretending all those Steiner kids aren't talking insertion and ear plugs and all. Can you believe I've managed to live in dream world THIS LONG? Thanks for the kick in the shins, lady.

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  6. We've been having some interesting discussions with a 6 yr old lately too! ;-)

    BTW, stalked Mr Fixit at the football recently. (Recognised him because of the Cherub)

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  7. The kids ask - I give it to em straight !

    And have made sure I told them from an early age that sex is lovely and fun and it would be great if they could wait until they were with someone they truly care for before they give sex a go...

    I would just love them to grow up without the hangups I did ..

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  8. still chuckling at the pads on the dinner table...

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  9. Finally getting around to catching up, been too busy haunting ravelry to get anything else done!

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  10. Would you mind recording the sex talk for me and that way I could just play it for my kids and I won't have to do it AT ALL?

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  11. I am chuckling about poor ole Fixit stumbling unawares into the menstruation talk.

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  12. Seriously laughing at the idea of the table set with 'napkins'.

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  13. Great little catch up that made me smirk. Smirk big time.

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Don't let the cat get your tongue.