Now every boy in a knitted vest has got some precedent

I've come back from my long-weekend break just full of observations (and that nine-hour drive really did help to adhere to my brain my ideas for blogging). Instead of eke-ing these out over a few days, here is every blogging idea I've got for the next six months....

No need for exercise or dieting, just hang out with my MiL

My MiL has a habit of regularly observing to me that “Gigglewick, you have lost a lot of weight since I saw you last”.

In this instance, I saw her two weeks before Christmas. The last time, the gap hadn’t been significant either. There is only one response to this statement:

“No, you must just imagine me FATTER THAN I REALLY AM”.


Mr High-Margin-of-Profit-y

A couple of weeks ago on a profoundly hot day, we heard a Mr Whippy Van. Both Mr Fix and I were deprived of Mr Whippy goodness as children, growing up as we did on the kind of roads not habitually driven by Mr W. and his kind. So because we are ridiculously indulgent parents, we decided to run out and buy an icecream with Grizzlewick – could anything be more exciting? In fact, there is one thing that will make your heart pump faster than the anticipation of a Mr Whippy ice-confection treat, and that is the realisation that you must now mortgage your house in order to pay for it. FIVE DOLLARS FOR A KIDDY-CONE. And it didn’t even have lashings of speed or cocaine on top! Mr Whippy has a product which costs TWELVE DOLLARS! Surely that one has some drugs in it. Just a small amount?

Assuming this isn’t a cover for illegal drugs trade, Mr Fix and I are now thinking of putting a clause in our will which uses our (alleged) inheritance to purchase a Mr Whippy Van for Grizzlewick. With any luck he’ll be a millionaire inside his first year of operation.


Welcome to Crazytown’s Family Co-operative

There’s nothing like a family wedding to get people all worked up. And there’s nothing like a family wedding to write in huge letters across the sky that the usual passive aggressive way of doing things just DOESN’T CUT IT. Take the following exchanges for example:

Ring ring

S1: Hi bride, my boyfriend has a suit for the wedding, is that okay?

Bride: Sure. Yes. That’s fine. Whatever you think.

Ring ring

S2: Hi bride, my boyfriend has hired this suit, I’ve emailed you the picture. Is that what you wanted – because he can change it.

Bride: No it’s fine. Sure. Whatever you think.

Ring ring

Gigglewick: Hi bride. What do you want Grizzlewick to wear to the wedding? Does he need a suit?

Bride: Whatever you think.

Gigglewick: Well, if he doesn’t need to wear a suit, then perhaps a nice pair of slacks and a shirt would be okay? I’m just conscious that if he wears a suit he might wriggle out of his jacket in two seconds flat anyway.

Bride: No, really. Whatever you think.

Ring ring

Mr Fix: Bride, I have a dark suit ready for the wedding.

Bride: That’s great.

In later conversation:

Gigglewick: It’s really good that Mr Fix doesn’t have to buy a whole new suit.

Bride: Oh, does he have a dinner suit does he?

Gigglewick: Ummmmm. I don’t know. He just said he has a suit for the wedding.

Bride: It’s black tie, you know.

Gigglewick: Is it okay to wear a black dress to your wedding? It’s my nicest formal dress, but I have other things, or I can buy something new.

Bride: Whatever you think.

Gigglewick: …because I don’t want to wear something inappropriate, and it is an afternoon wedding. What do you want me to wear?

Bride: Whatever you feel comfortable in.

Now I know it’s not good manners to hassle the bride about her lack of clarity, but really. How many openings were there in those conversations for the bride to make it clear that:

a) it’s black tie
b) no other suit will be acceptable
c) black is not a colour to wear to weddings and
d) if Grizzlewick isn’t in a suit there will be big trouble?

Many. There were MANY. If just ONE of those statements were greeted with a “well, it’s black tie, so if you could dress in formal wedding attire that would be best”, we would not find ourselves four weeks away from a wedding with no appropriate clothing whatsoever.

And now I have the horrible feeling that if we go along with Mr Fix in a regular dark suit, me in a black dress and Grizzlewick in slacks and a shirt we will be considered slackarse, slut and tomboy, respectively. So we’re all off to buy new clothes and get hair cuts, manicures and cosmetic surgery.


Wagga Wa – “increasing by one-third the number of surprises”

For the first time in my life*, I experienced the thrill of visiting the regional centre of Wagga Wagga. Apparently it has “double the surprises”. I decided to take an empirical approach to this statement. Here are my findings:

Number of potential surprises anticipated: 3

Namely:

1. Not a complete hole
2. People actually referring to Wagga Wagga by its complete name now and not just the abbreviated “Wagga”
3. Pleasing river-side vista

Number of surprises experienced: 4

Namely:

1. Not a complete hole
2. Mini steam-train (not operational)
3. Not entirely revolting apple-slice
4. Entire side of street designated to meet the needs of the private used-car market

You’ll note that anticipated surprises 2 and 3 were not realised. I would have expected in order for their optimistic thesis to be proved correct, I should have experienced SIX surprises. Wagga Wagga, you have some work to do.


IMPORTANT UPDATE: apparently Wayne Carey is not in Wagga. Does this constitute a surprise?????


Just because it's from the internet, doesn't mean it's true

I don’t know if anyone else is on the high-rotation, send every half-funny email you’ve ever received on to everyone you know network like me, but I have a pet peeve about these things. I can receive pictures of tiny people made out of fruit or jokes about the lumberjack and the sardine for hours and laugh heartily. I love a good “things to do in meetings to piss off your boss” viral email as much as the next drone. But what really bugs me is when people send on an email clearly written by some one in the US and, instead of just leaving it as it is, perform a “find and replace”, replacing each instance of “America” with “Australia”.

The latest one I received claimed, among other things, that a large percentage of our Federal politicians were fraudulent, sexually harassing criminals. However, it also claimed that the House of Representatives had 300+ members. Why does this happen? Not only did some one do it, but then hundreds of other people passed it on. It’s mindless and stupid. People in this country have a bad enough attitude to politicians as it is without peddling that kind o’ crap. By all means take exception to people’s political views, but to further the idea that all politicians are by definition corrupt, horrible, baby-eating criminals is just a step too far.


You can come back again

We had friends over for dinner last week and I was told I have a "very impressive library". Then they racked out a Trivial Pursuit set. Those friends will be invited back.


* That I remember.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Thoughts which don’t seem to be morphing into an entire blog post despite my best efforts:


Tasmanian Government awards compensation to the Stolen Generation

YOU LITTLE AUSSIE BATTLERS! Nice work, Tassie. The Age is reporting that 104 (roughly two-thirds) of the applications for compensation were accepted. Pleasingly, Indigenous activist Michael Mansell is also quoted as saying that the process was "fair".

I wonder what Keith Windschuttle will make of this? His criticisms of Lyndall Ryan seem to be centred around the idea that her thesis on the enduring status of Indigenous Tasmanians despite the “symbolic” death of Trugannini was wrong. No doubt he’ll have another apoplexy about the hijacking of history for political ends.


Can talking about celebrities induce their departure from the mortal realm?

My friend and I were just discussing Heath Ledger this week, because apparently she used to run in the same crowd as him as a child. Weird.

INCraig has come up with an irritatingly difficult puzzle

And that’s all I have to say about that.

UPDATE: am going to New South Wales for the weekend. May miss INCraig's puzzle deadline (among others)

Save me some of the prize-cake, will you? (there will be prize-cake, won't there?)

The birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees

I’m intrigued by this story, where a parent says that she was shocked to learn that her daughter was taught the words “penis” and “vagina” at kinder. The parent also says that her daughter had some boys put their hands down her pants, and that in response she "bashed them".

Leaving the second part of the story aside, this incident is curious to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, I would prefer that Grizzlewick use the correct terminology. Somewhere along the lines, Grizzlewick has picked up the word “prestons*”. “Prestons” is a stand-in for “testicles”. I think that he probably mis-heard the word at some stage (in much the same way he insists that Ned Flanders’ name is “Planners”) and stubbornly will not be told that he has the wrong word (in either case).

Secondly, I’m wondering how you could have a child with two older siblings get to the age of four and not have them acquainted with the variety of body parts. I mean, I try to close the bathroom door and everything, but really, do you think it isn’t endlessly fascinating for my son that I don’t have a “peeny”? Or that I’m not endlessly trying to retreat from the fact that, in a fit of stupidity, Mr Fix told him that sanitary pads were “mummy’s nappies”**?

Thirdly, I think it is contingent on both kinders and parents to have some kind of conversation about it - I understand the desire for parents to give consent where these things are concerned. But I'm also reasonably confident that this was a "sex education" course that included nothing more detailed than the naming of body parts and a bit of self-preservation instruction about stranger-danger.

Meanwhile, I have spent the last few months answering the following questions, among many others**:

“How does the baby grow? Is it like a balloon?”

“What does it eat?”

“But how does the baby get in there, mummy?”

“Why would it be a girl or a boy?”

“Where does it come out?”

Arguing that these issues don’t need to be addressed until Grade Six or Year Seven is to condemn yourself to seven additional years of:

a) maintaining some kind of fiction about the name and purpose of said body parts

b) allowing your child to be intentionally or unintentionally misled about said body parts and their purpose, mostly by other children, some of whom have scant knowledge indeed

c) humming loudly and feigning deafness every time the issue is raised

d) telling your kids to “ask your father/nana/mailman”

So why not consider option:

e) having a frank and open discussion with your kids when they raise the issue (something which people struggle with. Even me, and I don’t really have a problem with Grizzlewick knowing these things)

As some one who didn’t have school-based sex education until I was older, I’m here to tell you that NOT discussing it certainly didn’t stop a couple of boys in Grade Five terrorising the girls in Grade Two and below at my school with their immature appendages. A bit of “don’t put it where it doesn’t belong” wouldn’t have gone astray there, methinks.

Does information equal immunisation? I'd like to think so, and that's one of the reasons that we talk in our house not about sex per se, but about the difference between a "surprise" and a "secret", and how it's perfectly fine to tell people when you don't like something that they are doing - whatever it might be.

On the more specific issue of sex education, I'm not about to let Grizzlewick watch porn or anything, but I really would prefer that if he’s going to learn about the facts of life, he’s going to learn the facts, not some second-hand, “if you sit on a stove with a girl she can get pregnant but hey, you can stick your penis in anyone you like and as long as it isn't a full moon you'll be fine” crap in the schoolyard.

What do other parents (and non parents) think about this? I'm well aware many of us here have smaller kids - how have those of you with older kids dealt with it?


* Lucky we don't live in Melbourne any more, or I'd have some explaining to do when Grizzlewick discovered we lived in the testicles of the city.

** Let’s not discount the possibility here that in fact Mr Fix was being DELIBERATELY MISCHIEVOUS in a way that only men would ever contemplate when discussing the vagaries of the female reproductive system.

*** Still not pregnant, or aspiring to be so. Just in case you’re wondering.

So I’ve been neglecting this blog. Again. I do note that some (sniff) seem to have departed the blogosphere for good, which is sad. Others, I note, have just been livin’ it up in the real world. I say good tidings to you all.


Blogging

Now that the election has come and gone, I’m finding it hard to get excited about political blogging. I judge that this will last until the disappointment that it isn’t, Gough time, MFs, sets in. Interestingly enough though – it seems Kevin07 is even getting the credit for the ascendancy of the Democrats in the USA, in particular Obama’s popularity. One might have thought that that’s what Obama’s campaign is spending millions of dollars to generate for themselves, but I’ve been wrong before, and no doubt will again.


Christmas

I got saucepans for Christmas. I am irrationally happy about this. Mr Fix was of the view that saucepans “aren’t very feminist” (he may be right, although lots of 1950s cartoons seem to depict angry women fed up with being relegated to the kitchen brandishing saucepans, so perhaps we’re both wrong there). That’s why, when I requested the six saucepan stainless steel set, I got the nine-piece extravaganza including a sautéing* pan. My MiL gave us a beautiful new chopping board and my parents gave me an awesome circular knife for herb-chopping. A Very Kitchen Christmas in the end, and just what I wanted. I am now practically Nigella Lawson**.


The Christmas break

Oh how I spent so much of it on the beach. It was awesome. In fact, thanks to our lovely friend J, Grizzlewick and one of his little friends spent all their time playing together and I got to have the longest swim of Grizzlewick’s life. There is no level on which this does not make me happy.


New Year’s Eve

There’s nothing like the beach to bring on an allergic reaction to sunscreen that you didn’t realise you had until slathered in it, is there? I spent New Years’ Eve dosed up on Phenergan and covered in calamine lotion, and was asleep in front of some Robert Redford movie involving Susan Sarandon falling to her death from a plane at 10pm. Not the fun-filled, action-packed non-stop excitement you might have come to expect, but there you go.

Subsequently however, I’ve stopped using that sunscreen. I bought a very expensive, mineral-based one. It smelled lovely. It went on a treat. I didn’t itch. I haven’t had a rash, nor have I resembled the Creature from the Fascinating Skin Disease Lagoon. In other news, IT DOESN’T WORK AS A SUNSCREEN. I haven’t been so goddamn sunburnt in years. I may be reduced to buying a Megan Gale-endorsed product to rectify the problem.





* Something about sautéing always reminds me of Baldrick. There are fewer rats in our kitchen though....AS FAR AS I KNOW.

** I doubt the neighbours are appreciating my “saucy looks to camera” through the kitchen window, though.