The rest of 2014

So since my last catch-up, I have the following things to report.

Fixit has been made permanent at the Rehab Equipment Hire place. He initially applied for a warehouse packer/delivery driver position but his skills and talents were recognised and he was eventually hired as the Warehouse Manager.  He works long, physically demanding hours in a hot dusty shed, but seems reasonably content.  This is a shot of him celebrating his birthday this year, we had a deluxe dinner of sushi, garlic prawns and Peking duck pancakes, and he was very impressed.



Cherub graduated to a full-size bike. It is my old mountain-bike with a more masculine set of handlebars.



Cherub's school had another fete.  I made more bunnies for the craft stall, and some cupcakes for the cake stall which suffered somewhat by being transported to the fete in the basket of my bicycle.  I worked pretty much the whole day on the Champagne/Strawberries and Cream stall so didn't really get to wander round much. It was a good day though.



My sister was diagnosed with tongue cancer.  She has had the lump removed and had 6 weeks of radiation to make sure.  It's been hard for her, but she's been brave and positive throughout. Her recovery starts now.



During the school holidays my Dad and I rented a house on Phillip Island for a week and took my kids and Bron's kids with us, and while we were there we celebrated Cherub's 11th birthday.  We did a bit of rock and tree climbing too, and some maze-running.




We also visited an a native animal park, where we patted kangaroos and tried to avoid the stroppy emus.




We helped Bron move into a better house, and I cooked lots of soup for her. Not that she was able to eat much of it before her mouth got too sore, but you do what you can.



We went to the Royal Melbourne Show with friends, and the kids had a great time as usual. Patting baby animals, trying out rides, inspecting yarn-bombed items and getting a showbag. Fun.




The boys finished off their soccer seasons, and Cherub was awarded Best and Fairest Player in his U11 team.

We took Cherub to see The Dream by Bell Shakespeare (Climber was off camping with a friend and a whole host of mosquitoes at French Island)  The production was an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream using only 6 cast members. It was clever and fun, although not as fantastic as some previous Bell Shakespeare plays I've seen. But you know, gave my kid some culture.

And we took both boys to their first comedy gig.  We started them with a master, the brilliant Bill Bailey, and the kids loved it.  It was really fun taking them to see this, sharing with them something we love and seeing them love it too.



Both kids received excellent reports, and Climber received an A for his flute exam.  He also performed a short flute solo as part of Junior Stage Band. It was beautiful.

I missed out on September Craft Camp, but got to sneak off for a night to enjoy a girly-getaway to a deluxe spa resort with Jen and Astrid.



Climber went away on Year 8 camp. He had a very good time, possibly too good a time... (don't ask)



Fixit wasn't granted any holidays over the Christmas January period (grr) but was given a week in early December.  It was nice to spend time with him again, and he certainly needed the rest and recharge..


And summer is on its way, which means we see much less of Basil. So I grabbed a picture while I could, with the portable air conditioner which will soon be working hard as the hot months arrive.



So that is us pretty much up-to-date, although I need to report back on my end-of-year concerts too. Still waiting on a bit of footage and some time to piece it all together.

In the meantime, I'm quite glad to see the back of 2014, what with the various familial health scares and the job stuff with Fixit.  I hope that next year brings health and stability and fun, and wish anyone that still reads here love and happiness for the new year.

Bike Ride

Today was a gorgeous Melbourne autumn day, and Fixit, Cherub and I decided to ride our bikes to school.  After we'd crossed the river there's a hill you need to stand up in your pedals for, with a little bit of flat in the middle for a respite. When we approached the hill, I overtook Cherub (little legs, small bike, no gears) and called out Come on Cherub!! as I powered past. He hates me overtaking him, it's very funny.  He called back Don't do that, you make me laugh and then I haven't got enough power to get up the hill!  Then as we came to the second part of the steep hill I heard a stifled chuckle, and there was Cherub being assisted past me by Fixit riding beside him and pushing him along.  After they'd passed, Fixit looked back and smiled at me, very pleased.

I love riding with my family.

(Cherub's school photos, can't decide which one I prefer)

The New Purple Bike.

Meet Violet Beauregarde, my new purple ladybike.  Isn't she lovely?  I hope she is much nicer than her fictional counterpart, and that she doesn't have a thing for chewing gum.  I can't wait to take her out for a ride.

The Cherub, the Climber and I (on my old bike) have been riding to school most mornings.  Climber rides on his own, like the big grown-up high-schooler that he is now, and Cherub and I go at Cherub-pace behind him.  It's a 5-kilometre ride for us, and it is a lovely, refreshing and exhilarating way to start the day. Far more pleasant than driving, especially in late summer and early Autumn, when the mornings are crisp but not cold.  I love riding behind Cherub. We don't go very fast, but we can have little chats and he looks very sweet bobbing about, as he pedals, and checks to make sure it's safe when he crosses roads or tramlines, and gives little waves of acknowledgment to car-drivers who are waiting for us to pass.

The more I ride, the less fond I become of The Lycras, those aggressive and righteous cyclists who think wearing neck-to-knee lycra gives them the right to behave like fascists. They're all men, of course, the Mean Lycras, as if you needed me to tell you that. The first day Climber rode to High School on his own, he messed up doing the exit from bike-path to school crossing and was abused by an intolerant Lycra, which is akin to hassling a Learner driver, in my opinion, and you shouldn't do it! One of the things I like about cycling is the feeling of being part of a community, a two-wheeled, zen-like, planet-saving, healthy, gentle community, so when angry Lycras start abusing other cyclists, it feels traitorous as well as unpleasant.  If you're going to be a road-rager, get back in your car, I say.

Bikes

Now that we're all on holidays, we need some exercise!  The boys and I are very used to a lot of daily physical activity: me with my tap and the boys with their crazy term-time schedule.  We miss it if we don't get it.  As for Fixit, he is supposed to lose 12 kilos in 6 months. I seriously do not know how he will manage this, as I watch him hoe in without any moderation to the various Christmas temptations on offer - beers with his friend the Bike Nazi, the bottle of port and mega-Toblerone my Dad gave him (the Toblerone was gone in 2 sittings and it was ENORMOUS!) and all the chocolate I seem to have accumulated via tap students.  Attempts on my part to get him to stop after just one treat are met with surliness.  I mean, I know no-one likes a nag,  but apparently his brain doesn't send him any messages about moderation or health.  You'd think he'd be grateful for my support, but no. (Nell is never grateful when I try to encourage her to give up smoking either, go figure.)  

(Give up, Nell, you know you should!!)

Anyway.  We have been doing bike-riding in the last week.  Every little bit helps. When we ride as a family, Fixit leads the way with Climber and I ride behind the slowest member of the family, the Cherub.  Although it's not a great aerobic challenge, it is just lovely.  I love the way he chats away as he pedals, he way he dings his bell as he passes a pedestrian, the way we say I love you to each other just because the feeling comes over us.  I particularly love looking at his small rib cage from behind as he bobs up and down on his bike, and thinking about how little he still is and how tiny his heart and lungs must be.  (Is that weird?)  It is one of my favourite things to do, being out with my family on our bikes.



(I also love watching Climber on his slightly-too-big-for him bike, looking all long-legged and cool, but he is often far off in the distance so I don't see him as much)

Riding, eating, watching and fixing

Things that have been happening round here.  In no particular order.

Climber received a new bike - with gears! - from my Dad: one that my [workaholic] father had actually bought for himself, thinking he might do some riding, and never unpacked from the box. The bike is a leeetle bit big for Climber, but he is riding it very well, except if he has to stop suddenly he leaps off the bike sideways and lets it fall, owing to not wanting to bang himself on that middle bar, which is fair enough but means that in under a week the handlebars are already pretty dinged up.



Cherub has also graduated to a bigger bike, the last-but-one of Climber's and is riding it with aplomb.  We've been for a couple of family bike rides since the upgrades and I'm pretty sure we're going faster than before.



The boys, courtesy of Nell, attended their first cricket match at the MCG to watch Australia beat the English in a day/night match.  When Nell, who had the 4 tickets through work, rang and kindly offered them to the boys I just assumed that only Climber and Fixit would be interested, but Cherub, to my surprise and disbelief, piped up I want to come too! and after me saying are you sure? quite a lot, it was arranged that Nell and the boys would go and that she'd bring Cherub home when he'd had enough. He lasted exactly 55 minutes before announcing to Nell that he'd like to go home.  She said Really?! Do you think you could make it to the one hour mark, Cherub? so he dutifully waited another 5 minutes.

Climber and Fixit meanwhile lasted right through to the thrilling end at 10pm and caught the train most of the way home.  This is them after the match, sporting the headbands the crowd were given to mark the 40 year anniversary of one-day cricket, in tribute to the 70s look favoured by Dennis Lillee.  They had an absolute ball.



Here is Cherub modelling his headband, [much] earlier in the day. He put it on, then asked Do I look like a pineapple? but I don't think he got his hair to go up quite high enough to pull off that particular look.




We redeemed the voucher we'd won at last year's school fete for a $75 meal at Babka Bakery in Brunswick Street and by gum it was good.  After brunch-for-four there was enough left on the voucher to walk away with 2 jars of their in-house jam.  We were pretty happy with that!

Fixit has to go back to work on Monday after a month of holidays.  He has been fixing stuff like mad, pretty much stays in the shed all day unless you call him to get coffee or go for a bike ride, and I think the best effort of the lot was fixing my handbag digital camera.  To be frank, I didn't think he'd be able to do anything with it, but because it was out of warranty and had been a lemon from the day I bought it I thought why not.  Plans to replace it with a little purple digital camera have been shelved.

Overload

I'm having one of those weeks where I think I have too many things to record. So forgive this little hotpotch as I present A Week (or so) Of News At Our House.

SLIGHTLY A BIT FAMOUS
I've been profiled by Arts Hub. Lookit.

STRANGE NEW TOY.
The Cherub is a very focussed child. He knows what he wants, what he really, really wants. The item that he weally, weally wanted (directly after he really, really wanted the stupid football card album) was a toilet plunger. Yes, you read that correctly. My 6-year-old has been asking and asking us if he can have his own toilet plunger. So eventually, we gave in and let him spend some of his own money on one.



This is not because he dreams of being a plumber, mind. Actually he dreams of being a Dalek. He is already planning his Dress-Up party for his birthday (in OCTOBER!!!) because he plans to be a Dalek for that. I'm yet to find out what else he is expecting to bring that costume into being. Did I mention he is very focussed? Also, I'm not supposed to know this but he is writing to Santa's elves because what he really, really wants for Christmas - and he's pretty sure his parents and grandparents aren't going to be able to manage this one but he reckons the elves will be able to knock one up for him - is an Invisibility Cloak, just like Harry Potter's.

BIG QUESTIONS
Speaking of which, the Climber recently booked me in for a Bath Chat (that's where he and I have a good old heart-to-heart while he's in the bath and no annoying, nosy little brother around eavesdropping), and he completely blind-sided me by asking, very matter-of-factly and prefacing it with I just want you to tell me truth, whether Santa was real. Apparently 2 of his good friends had been discussing it with him. I had no smart answers, and he is 9 after all, so we discussed the matter frankly. This then led to and the Easter Bunny? Ah that's me. What about the Tooth Fairy? Yep that's me too. [pause] And God?

I think he and I are both a bit sad about this, but you should see him now, being the terrific big brother by Bolstering Belief in Magic Beings for his little brother's benefit, it is quite lovely.

ON YA BIKE
The kids and I did our very first bike ride all the way to school, 5 kms away. I towed Cherub on the way there because I didn't want to be late, but on the way home (uphill) I fortified them with a milkshake first and Cherub rode by himself the whole way. They were so good and did really well. We hope to do it once a week (weather permitting) but we seriously need to work out the luggage because I did the ride home (uphill, did I mention?) with my handbag and some fruit & veg in the basket, Cherub's schoolbag on my back and Climber's schoolbag on my front, and now that I am slightly a bit famous I do not wish to be a packhorse, thank you.

JUNIOR PICTIONARY

We had a family games night on Saturday, and had what should have been a very good fun game of Junior Pictionary. Particularly given The Cherub's superb appreciation of toilet humour. This is what he looked like because the clue he's just drawn was nut and everyone knows *nuts* are hilarious. (I may have set him off slightly by suggesting that the pipe he'd drawn was in fact something else all together.)

We kept changing the format to accommodate the different skill levels of both children so that it was FUN for everyone, and not highly competitive, (winning came down to dice-throwing in the end, not drawing or guessing skills) but I have to tell you that the Climber is a terrible loser, in a get sad, try not to cry and the game is ruined sort of way, and if anyone knows what you're supposed to do to make a kid a better loser can they tell me please because I haven't a clue and it's driving me crazy.

ANOTHER BLEEPING BIKE DRAMA
I am this close to telling Fixit to get himself a car because I am O-V-A-H the continuing saga of the motorbikes. To recap for those of you not living it, he had the ball-shaking bike accident and that meant his nice new good bike was written off and he only got $300 back for it after finance was paid off, so then we had to dip into meagre savings to buy Nell's Ex's old bike for cheap, but it's been sitting in Nell's garage for 2 years and it's not running so well, which meant that Fixit has been disappearing mentally and physically from the family circle while he tries to sort this out. Then he admitted defeat and sent it off to a shop to be professionally examined. Meanwhile a kind friend generously loaned his motorbike to Fixit. Then on Tuesday night some idiot in a car backed into it while Fixit was in at the chiropractor and didn't even notice, so Fixit came outside to find his friend's bike on the ground and some exactly matching paint scrapes on the car in front of it. Fancy knocking a whole motorbike over and not noticing! So even though I was teaching that night I had to put the kids and the camera in the car to come down and document the paint evidence and then he sat there for another 2 hours until a cop showed up and they found the car's owner. So with all that drama going on, I ended up having to bring the kids with me to the Tap Hall, where they sat quietly reading and drawing while I taught class. I think they quite enjoyed it. To cap off an evening of drama, Cherub's third wobbly tooth was hanging by a thread so rather than go through any lost or swallowed tooth agony, I yanked it out before we went home.

Here I go again.

In between watching Fixit's privates gradually return to something like their original shape and hue (he has recovered enough that he is even back on a [borrowed] motorbike now and ps massive thanks to Jen for lending us her car in the meantime), we have also been busy with the following:

Climber went to the District Swimming Carnival last Thursday to compete in the backstroke and I actually thought he was going to do respectably well in it, because he seemed to be swimming as fast as the other boys. Unfortunately he hasn't really mastered the go-straight bit of backstroke. So what with being tangled up with a lane-rope for a good 5 metres, then being tangled with that same lane-rope and another badly-steering-backstroker, then deciding to veer right away from that stupid lane-rope/backstroker at pretty much a 90 degree angle which meant that he had to stop to get his bearings approximately one-third of the way into the race, he stopped looking like he was in contention well before the race was over. Agonising to watch it was. He was of course last, and he was pretty dashed by that, despite my reassurances. So I made an executive decision to ditch school for the rest of the day, and we met up with Fixit (who was in between various ball-checking appointments) and drove to Carlton to spend Climber's birthday book vouchers at Readings and thence to Brunetti for cake therapy.



I think it worked.

Climber's teacher has been reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief to the class, and Climber has really been enjoying it. (Greek mythology meets 21st century American high school.) So we bought Book 1 and Book 5 with his vouchers (Readings didn't have Books 2-4) and he read it at every spare moment from Thursday when we bought it til Monday when he finished it. I never thought I'd see Climber-the-action-boy reading like that and it is making me very happy. So happy that I went straight to The Book Depository for the other 3 books in the series, even though it's not his birthday or anything.

Fixit's best friend the Bike Nazi is moving to Brisbane and his wife has been trying to juggle minding the 9-month-old baby and packing up the house. So the last 2 days I've taken the baby in the afternoon. Gawd it felt weird to be wheeling a pram again, and my goodness you move on quickly! I walked down to the school with her to pick up the boys then we headed to the park where we ate hot chips and I let her play on the equipment. The boys think it's great. She can't walk but she can climb up the little slide and although I am well-used to climbing children, I did have a minor heart-attack when she somersaulted face-first down some little stairs, even though I was guarding and -just- holding on to her. I thought she was going to break her neck, but she didn't even cry much to the amazement of the other mothers who saw it.

Me old mate Michelle was in Melbourne for a girls' weekend so I went to see Mamma Mia with her. Normally I say - with perfect truth- that I can't afford musical theatre, and I was not expecting for $110 to be sitting in the 2nd-from-back-row, but actually the back rows at Mamma Mia are a good thing because we were up and singing/dancing right from the start of the encore unlike the more staid front row types who had to wait till the cast encouraged them up. And that was totally good fun. You-oo can dance, You-oo can ji-ive etc.

The kids were ecstatic to have a sleep-over at Crafty's house on the weekend, and I think I can say with authority that they must have had an excellent time, because they both proceeded to be completely shattered -and in Cherub's case, rather tearful- for all of Sunday.

I took part in Sooz's big tea-towel swap and am very relieved to have posted my offerings a full 3 days before the deadline. I'm only doing a partial reveal here as don't know if they've arrived at the other end yet, but I worked with freezer-paper stencilling, which is unbelievably easy and effective, and applique, which was quite a bit more fiddly and lucky I was going for an arty look anyway because I doubt I could achieve perfection with that. Anyway, I was quite pleased with how they turned out. But I was so intent on getting them sent out that I forgot to photograph the slightly different one I made for Craftastrophies, so hoping that Kate will take a few pictures when her big move is over. Proper look at the one I sent to Jellybaby on my Flickr site though, if you want. My personal design brief was I wanted to make a tea-towel that looked good hanging on the front of your oven, which is where I always hang mine. I was also going for mild subversiveness.

Balls of Steel.

Mister Fixit rang me last night to tell me that he was okay but that he'd had a bit of a bingle on his way home from TAFE. He had rear-ended a car, and the motorbike had flipped under him causing him to go flying over the handlebars. He would have been completely fine (he tucked and rolled) except that as he sailed over the top of his bike he clipped one of the bike's mirrors so hard that it snapped off. That's gotta hurt you're probably thinking and yes I think it did hurt, particularly because the part of him that whacked that mirror so-hard-that-it-fell-off was his balls.

Now. You know how men are babies when they whack themselves in the knackers? Well, Fixit's adrenaline was running so high that despite the massive blow to his privates, he got straight up, assured all the other cars that he was fine, picked up his bike and got it off the road, picked up all the snapped-off bits of bike lying on the road, exchanged driver details with the car he'd hit and rang me to organise collection whilst only really registering that he had a bit of a stomach-ache.

Anyway. A couple of hours later, when he'd arrived home after all the palaver of getting the bike to a mechanic, we had a look and the damage was fairly awesome. Swelling and bruising doesn't quite convey the full picture so to help you with your mental image, let me say: Black (Inky black. All over. All. Over) and: Tennis ball. (Maybe even a bit bigger than a tennis ball, almost softball size.) You're welcome. Obviously we're not showing them anywhere but we just had to take photographs - his idea not mine - because despite the fact that he is now very sore and for the next fortnight I will be in no danger of being pestered for marital relations and he will be walking like a cowboy, the whole area is freakily impressive, in a very bad way. And the good news is there's no haemorrhaging or other problems, and as lots of people said to me, we had finished making children anyway.

So that, my friends, is the story of Ironballs Fixit. And he's not allowed to do it again.

Playing Catch-up

We had a super visit to Queenscliff last week. I'm so lucky to have nice friends who invite us to stay with them in their (hired) holiday house! We stayed with Cherub's best friend, who is an only child; he was mostly delighted -and occasionally slightly overwhelmed- to have another 2 boys in his space for 48 hours straight. It gave him the full story of having a big brother (previously he had been very star-struck by Climber); on one hand they're so much fun and so cool, on the other hand they are completely bossy, and they will always be faster, bigger and know more, and will usually make sure you are aware of this. For Cherub, being slower, smaller and less knowledgeable is a way of life, the only one he knows. It makes him endearingly humble. And it irks him occasionally but mostly Climber is his Holy Grail, the one he wants to be with and tell things to. I find that whole sibling dynamic fascinating.



The boys had their hair cut yesterday. The good news is that Cherub no longer looks like a scarecrow (he was growing out the backyard hackjob I did on him when school swimming was on last year, the hairdresser said it wasn't too bad apart from being noticeably longer on one side) and you can see the Climber's eyes now, but we've kept the indy-rock-boy look fairly intact.



Also yesterday, the lovely Stacey, aka Sheeps Clothing, and I put our matching sets of boys together at the playground at Birrarung Marr and they seemed to hit it off, shyness aside. As the 6 of us walked back towards town, we chanced on a free trapeze show in the City Square which was good fun.



I finished off Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl and skipped through The Boleyn Inheritance and although I quite enjoyed them I had to go straight off and read Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time as an antidote to Tudor horridness.

For his birthday, I bought Climber the first 6 of the 39 Clues books, plus the 2 card packs. The final 4 books will be released this year. If you haven't heard about them, go here. As I sit here writing this, the Climber is beside me, completely immersed in the online component, solving clues and unlocking cards. He also started Book 1 last night and has read about a quarter of it. (And just by the by, Climber is still reading like a maniac and has powered through several Zac Powers, the entire Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, and the first of the Spiderwick Chronicles since Christmas)

Another birthday present, this one from my Dad, was a fiendish skateboard thing called a Rip-Stick, which instead of 4 fixed wheels -2 front and 2 back- only has one wheel at the front and one at the back, both of which are castor wheels. Climber seems to have the hang of it already, Fixit and I are too scared to even attempt it.



And a week of scooting around balancing on a pedal-less bike was more than what was required to finish the job of getting the Cherub riding a bike without trainer wheels. Today the 4 of us went down to the local school once more, but it was merely a formality. The Cherub had already worked out how to start himself off, and rode the whole way there, then proceeded to circle round the school ground at considerable speed, simultaneously talking and dinging the bell as he did so, for a good half hour. He only (slightly) crashed into a pole once.



I had dangled a reward in front of his eyes, a yellow Puffle no less, which spurred him on like you wouldn't believe. Especially because I already had it in the house - he kept going into my room to look at it, and during Climber's Party took all his friends, including Nell, into my room to show them. So here he is, with his haircut and his prize and his proud face: the Cherub, who Does Not Need Training Wheels.