Twenty Years.

Last night the whole family went out to dinner to celebrate the fact that Fixit and I have been together for twenty years. (I think this means we must have started going out when we were children, because twenty whole years can't possibly be right! Not when I'm still this young.)  The actual anniversary (of the party where he was brought along to be 'set-up with someone' and that someone totally got to give him their phone number by the end of the night) is on Friday, which is also my birthday, but I am nicking off early Friday morning to Craft Camp for the long weekend.  (Best birthday treat I could have, Craft Camp. Fabulous company, food, drink and crafting, plus a bath and a massage planned.  I am only sad that we won't be joined by a treasured member of our clan this weekend, owing to family circumstances.)

Anyway. We had a lovely time out at a local groovy Vietnamese restaurant last night. The food was delicious and the kids were excellent company. Impressively, Cherub was able to spot yet another poisoning attempt on his life before it came to pass, and politely-but-firmly declined the waitress' offer of chocolate or strawberry topping on his plain vanilla ice-cream.  These would-be assassins must be so frustrated with Cherub's vigilance.

And twenty years, hey? Twenty really good years: lots of laughter, lots of kindness, lots of pleasure in each others' company.  Annoyances and spats, yes, because living with other people brings that in its wake. (And men can be so annoying.)  But always there for each other through illness and adversity and challenge and change.  We never got married and set it out in public that we would do this, but we have.  And best of all we can share the love with our two gorgeous boys, who light up our lives every day.  So Happy Anniversary Mister Fixit.  Here's to the next twenty xxx.

Mister Fixit and his Bag of Fruit

Mister Fixit caused a mini sensation when he appeared in the schoolyard yesterday wearing THIS:



Fixit reckons the not-really-an-interview went well. It turned out to be a group session with 24 other applicants; they got put into small groups and were given a task and we assume that the panel was assessing teamwork, leadership, ability to follow instructions or cope with difficulties etc. Fixit said he enjoyed himself, which I put down to his task being the assembly of a Meccano bike. I'm thinking having two small sons might have given him an unfair advantage in this area, frankly. Apparently he is in the final 100 of over 2100 applicants. There are 30 positions and we should hear in the next fortnight whether he's made it through to the last round which we think will be an actual Face-to-Face Interview. Talk about jumping through hoops.

You say potayto and I say potahto

You may have guessed, from my predilection for dance and drama and writing that I'm Humanities Girl. Not Maths / Science Girl. And definitely NOT Engineering Girl. This is not to say that I did not do well at those subjects when they formed part of my curriculum (well engineering was never there but I was pretty good at maths and science. If you don't count calculus and physics, and why would you?) It's just that, given the choice, my interests lie on the arty-farty side of the brain. Whichever one that is, I always forget. Once stuff gets a bit technical I lose a lot of focus. This is why I suspect knitting and I will never be great friends, because if I try to read one of those fancy patterns I immediately feel my brain fuzz over. It's not that I'm dumb, but let's face it, I am more given to creative flights of fancy than technical analysis.

So I don't know why Mister Fixit thinks I want to hear all about the mechanical stuff he did at work. Or TAFE (trade school). I'm starting to dread TAFE weeks to be honest (and not just because poor Fixit gets so angry about the incompetency of pretty much everything or everyone involved in the schooling process - which of course comes home to roost with us, his loving and -mostly- competent family.) No, I dread TAFE weeks because Fixit's method of processing new information is to talk it out. He has to regurgitate in his own words to understand; it's just the way he learns. This has been vaguely annoying, but when the subjects were easy (like say maths, which he already knew, or Human Factors, which is common sense) he didn't feel the need to bang on about it so much. Recently, however, they had to cover Year 11 Physics in the space of 3 weeks and he had a lot to wrap his head around. The upshot of this was that he spent a fortnight trying to teach me physics and I don't want to be mean or anything but : I DON'T WANT TO LEARN PHYSICS!

I acknowledge that it is important and would probably be very helpful in day-to-day life but I already have too many things to think about and..

.. I DON'T WANT TO LEARN PHYSICS!!
It makes my brain bleed. Also, the day I decide that Aircraft Mechanical Engineering really IS my cup of tea is the day I sign up for my own apprenticeship, meanwhile I don't really want to learn it second-hand. Call me crazy.

Do people wonder what we see in each other? A typical after-work conversation at our house goes like this:

ME: (sitting quietly doing something absorbing like reading your blogs or playing online scrabble)
FIXIT: (walks past and stops) Oh, you should have seen, at work today we had to dismantlelandinggearstripbackwingtipblahblahblah.
ME: *thinks* can he not see I am busy? Still, better be polite.. Oh right.
FIXIT: It was a prick of a thing. The guy Philip who was the leading hand [inserts a whole lot of information about Philip that I couldn't care less about]
ME: (eyes straying back to computer screen or book or newspaper) Mhm hmm...
FIXIT: Anyway, he got us to pull out the blahblahblah and there was this blahblahblah. (wanting me to understand, because to him stuff like that is Very Interesting and Important to the Anecdote:) You know how a blahblahblah goes blahblahblah?
ME: (sensing an answer is required) *thinks* No Yes.
FIXIT: Well, the blahblah goes into the blahblah like this (demonstrates)
ME: (nods intelligently)
FIXIT: Yeah, so then we had to blahblahblah ad infinitum...

... which goes on to the end of the blahblah while I keep trying to make my eyes look at him and interject appropriately. It usually winds up with me trying to connect the only way I know how, by contextualising it on an emotional level ie Was that annoying? or Gee I bet that was frustrating. Or with him realising my eyes have glazed over and saying good-temperedly I don't know why I bother talking to you! or more snarkily Would you pay more attention if I put a computer screen round my head?

I, of course, never say anything boring to him.