14 November 2007 - 14:17

Me again

G and I went to Sydney for a week. No kids. A whole week with no kids, just G and I. We had a great time and spent every single waking and sleeping minute together (except for those necessary plumbing functions).

As much as I enjoyed his company, he's not allowed to retire. EVER.

E turned 8 on Monday. He's getting fairly tall now, nearly at my shoulder. He's got that special stick-insect look that little boys have (all arms and legs with nothing much else).

A turns 4 in a month. So I have one more year with her and then I have to hand her over to the education system.

:o(

Books, All Blacks and Gok

Where were we? Ah yes, me being a horribly neglectful blogger. Well what can I say?

I've been working at the local library as a volunteer, just putting books back on the shelves. It's a very small library (but then, it's a very small town) and they have too many books for the shelf space. Shelving involves moving whole sections of books around to make it appear that there is space. Being slightly inclined toward having things in order (alpahbetical, size, shape etc) I'm quite enjoying the challenge.

Having said that, Danielle Steele must be stopped. She takes one and a half rows all to herself.

I get to watch all kinds of people and hear all sorts of conversations (another hobby of mine; People Observing). You know you're in New Zealand when you hear a female librarian engaged in passionate discussion with an elderly female pensioner about how the All Blacks SHOULD have been coached, and why they lost the World Cup.

I wonder when this country will realise that no one else cares as much?
It's funny really, I watch Deadliest Catch and one of the captains wears a jacket with USA stitched on the back. You'd never see a guy wearing a jacket with New Zealand plastered all over it, unless he was a tourist or part of a sports team. But you would see a guy with "All Blacks" on his jacket. Or Shirt. Or trousers, hat, car and underwear.

A new angle on patriotism I guess.

Speaking of TV, if you get How To Look Good Naked where you are, you'll know that what I'm about to say is absolutely true: Gok Wan should be cloned, miniaturized and made into a pocket version. Pocket Gok.
I'd buy one.

That's all folks.

Plutoed

73 days ago I wrote an entry and posted it here in diaryland.

73 days from now I'll probably write another one.

In the mean time, ponder this: Pluto is no longer considered one of the nine main planets. As of last year is has been redefined as a Dwarf Planet. Try explaining that to a seven and a half year old who has learnt far more about space than I'll ever know.

I have taken to reading whatever he's interested in, at Wikipedia. So far E still thinks I'm brainy. I haven't been Plutoed yet.

Invasion of the freaky Sis-in-Law

My house is about to suffer an invasion of the Sis-in-Law variety. She's bringing Boy Genius down for a few days while her man is away (guess she must have figured that G isn't about to let him in the door just yet).

She's pregnant again, only this time she's not going to have an abortion, this time she's all happy and shopping for fluffy new blankeys. Of course, this time she's not breaking up with a a man and needing to be as available as possible for the next one. Dunno what she's going to do when THIS one sees through her weirdness and she's then got two kids to tow around while she hunts men.

I have been exchanging the odd email with her ex-husband#2, which although she hasn't mentioned, I'm sure she's figured out by now. So I know a lot more about Boy Genius and the things he can manage without Mummy's constant smothering assistance. Oh, this is going to be so much fun.

I have been teaching 3 1/2 year old A to make her own breakfast (cereal with milk), sandwiches (not cutting them though) and crackers (messy but hilarious). I'm hoping that molly-coddled Boy Genius, who likes to try new things and appears to dearly want to be independent, will join A in the kitchen for some preschool food prep.

And I just know that E is going to give Sis-In-Law a lecture about how 4 year old Boy Genius is big enough to feed himself his toast now.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do when A tells Boy Genius to "Shut up, Poo Head!".

She's such a lady. Naturally I'm every proud.

The wisdom of G

The MIL (Mother-In-Law) and FIL were here last night.
E has been sick, so he wasn't eating much and MIL tried to get him to eat some more veges...

MIL: "Look, I'm eating all my veges. You'll grow if you eat your veges. Do you think I'm going to grow?"

E: "Nooo, Nana's don't grow"

G: "Nah, Nana's shrink when they get old"

E: "No they don't. Do they?"

G:"Yeah, first you grow up, then you have kids and you grow out, then you have grandkids and you grow down"

PAUSE

G:"Pity you don't grow IN when you grow down"

Still here!!

SW's concerns about NZ dropping off the bottom of the planet are unfounded. NZ is definitely still here, scratching the arse of the world.

I just haven't felt much like writing here. I guess there's just a lot going on around my place and I'm busy. I'm still on the computer a lot, just doing other things instead of journalling and chatting (no, not porn thankyouverymuch).

Plus I'm one of these people that goes through intense phazes of interest in something and then some other shiny thing catches my attention so I do that for a while instead. I always return to previous interests for another burst though.

It's like collecting obessessions.
Currently my obsessions are scrapbooking and locating scrapbooking tools/equipment. I tell you, if I could get a job finding things on the internet for people I'd be rich.

I'm still studying though. I'll be interviewing a woman next week, writing it up as a life story, then submitting it for marking the week after that.

At some point in the course I need to write a "snapshot" of a person. I've already decided that G would be a perfect study for this. He lives with me, so it's easy to observe him, I've known him for years and he's funny (I wrote so much serious stuff last year that it's time for some laughs). Plus I've written a lot about him here that can serve as archives for it.

I'm just not sure whether to include his habit of announcing that he's going to take a leak and asking me "Can you give me a lift?" or calling out "Man this water's cold".

"Borat"

Just to add to my craft supplies woes, I have discovered that the range of Fiskars products available to scrapbookers in the US is nearly twice that available to those in Australia...which is twice that available to us in NZ.

***

Who has seen the Borat movie?
Apart from the gross slapstick parts this movie is so cleverly done I had to mention it.
My favourite line?
"I support your war of terror". And everyone cheered!!!

Hahahahaha!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! Craft Attack

Excuse me while I have ME ME ME ME moment.

I want to fly to America.
Not to see the Empire State Building, not to see the White House, Disneyland the Grand Canyon (okay, maybe the Grand Canyon) or any of the other things travel agents tell you to visit.

I want to state-hop and visit all the major craft shops that keep appearing whenever I search for NZ sites selling craft supplies.

I want to walk into Scrappily Ever After and buy as many punches as my luggage allowance will accomodate. I am willing to leave clothes behind to bring back more punches.

I want to go to all the other places that sell the things I can't GET here!!!

I want to by the "Available in the US only" costume patterns I see in the catalogues here. Why can my daughter only be Belle, Snow White, Ariel and Jasmine? Why can't she be Snow White or Aurora too? Hmmm??!

And I want the free shipping too! Not some horrendous international pricing just 'cos I live at the arse end of the planet!

*breathes in, counts to ten and breathes out slowly*

Okay, I think I'm better now.

To smack or to smash

I just read sw-iowa's latest entry and had to mention our shiny new anti-smacking law.

NZ has an appalling record of violence towards kids. Every year toddlers die of injuries caused by their parents, grandparents or other family members. We rank 6th in the world for child abuse, and we have the national population of some cities in other countries.

Unfortunately, I doubt making a smack on the backside illegal is going to stop out-of-control adults from breaking little limbs and crushing little internal organs. Free education on parenting methods might help more. I guess making the law cost less and made the politicians feel like they were doing something pro-active.

Actually, when I think about it, there are a whole pile of things the government could do to lower the stats on child abuse and neglect.

I'll use food as an example. There are a lot of kids who go to school hungry and go home hungry. It's sometimes referred to as neglect.

What they do eat seems to be junk food (according to the stats the TV throws at us), which is often cheaper than "real" food. 2 litres of milk is $3 at its cheapest. 2 litres of coke can be picked up for $2.50, or 99c on special. When every cent counts and your kids prefer the taste of coke, which are you going to buy more of?

In the area I live we grow grapes. Loooots of grapes. The land is being used to make wine, not food, although there are a few orchards here too. We appear to export a lot of this produce (and then import the same produce in winter). You can save a fortune on fruit if you pick your own. If you can't drive or don't have a vehicle, like quite a few people in my little town, you can't get to the orchards easily.
So you have to pay $3.99 a kg at the shop for nectarines in season. That doesn't get you many nectarines and when you're making school lunches you're going to go for the big multi bag of 18 packets of chips for $2.69 on special instead. Especially if you don't know a lot about nutrition anyway.

The government talks about poor nutrition in school children and obesity and dental problems etc etc in "'lower socio-economic areas". But instead of putting a subsidy on milk, fruit and veg, they put in place some hugely expensive nationwide activity programme for kids, complete with TV advertising, which is only attended by those people who are buying fruit and veg anyway and whose kids don't fall into the category the programme was set up to help.
You could say those parents not attending are slackers and it's their own fault if they don't take advantage of the programme...but they might be working in the vineyards all day for $11.00 an hour. Or they might not have the confidence to turn up and join in with the likes of my friend M.O. and her well trained, well dressed, carefully fed children.

I'm really getting into a rant about this, but it's pissing me off. There are so many factors that create an abusive parent. This law isn't going to help the kids who live on chips and coke and get bashed for making too much noise.
It might get parents like me arrested for slapping a three year old on the back of the hand for having a tantrum over not getting cocopops in the cereal aisle and knocking over an elderly lady and half a shelf of organic muesli.

I rarely smack my kids, I find Time Out works much better and I don't feel guilty about it afterwards. But I hear you're allowed to sew in jail. It might be a nice break. ;o)

Tamagotchi vs Life Writing

Can you believe it's March?
I can't.
Where the f**k did February go? Or January for that matter.

My year planner seems to get more covered in black marker as each week passes.

I have my first assignment for this paper due on the 31st and I haven't done a bean except read through the unit. I should be doing it now but I'm just not in that groove yet. I have, however, been doing a ton of research on something completely irrelevant.
Tamagotchi.
I love those little things. I know, that's not normal, as a parent I should despise them! E wanted to get one and was concerned about the girly factor surrounding them, so I investigated them online to find out more about them and the culture surrounding them. It seems that internationally, if not nationally, it is acceptable for a 7 year old boy to have one (maybe not a 10 year old boy though).
Finding one was a problem. No shop in the town nearby had any. So I text all my friends and got them all hunting down a boyish looking Tamagotchi. Sis-in-law was the first to succeed, she found a nice plain blue one (E paid her back of course).

I now have the dubious honour of being the most informed parent at school on all things Tama. I have even have all the passwords and codes that I can find online. E's lucky I'm a sucker for Japanese inventions.

Now to get on with the study. I know all about Tamagotchi and nothing about Life Writing.

Paper/Dumbass

My new writing course starts on Monday. This time it's Life Writing. I have two options, Autobiography or Biography. It can be all about me or all about someone else. Judging by the study guide, I really think I'm probably going to run out of things to write about if I write about myself. Not because I'm particularly boring (although I imagine plenty of people think I am), but because I just don't really want to delve into certain aspects or time spans of my history that appear to be required for the course.
Anyway, anyone who has chatted with me knows how damn nosey I am, so it's got to be biography.

Remember in that last entry, how I said my friend C was going to the UK? Weeelll. He did arrive there. And then he got turned around and sent straight home again. He tried to get in by saying he was there for a holiday, which would have worked until they wondered why he was there for 6 months and didn't look all that rich. Finding his work contract in his suitcase probably didn't help his cause either.

Dumbass.

He's filed the correct papers this time and heads back in a couple of weeks. The company he's working for found him work over here in the interim.

Lucky dumbass.

One Upped

Bad me. No entry for 11 days.
I have really gotten out of the habit and it's hard to change now.
There's actually a lot going here in my little world but most of it gets carted about in my head until it's old news and never ends up getting posted here.

School's back in (HOOOOOOOORAY!) and E is settling in well with a new teacher. I have heard she's pretty demading with the homework for this age group, but I'm pleased about that because E can handle it and gets a bit bored/lazy without something to strive towards (like finishing the homework sheet before his friends).
Speaking of his friends...

Friends of mine, whom I have mentioned here and even whinged about, MO and JO, have three girls, one is E's friend. All three are turning into little know it alls. I will admit to being a bit intolerant of other people's kids, but I usually enjoy these girls' company and have carpooled with MO all last year.

Every conversation between E and these girls is like one long "Mine's bigger than your's". They've always been very competitive but now it's overflowing from Kid's World into Adult World...I even find myself being "one-upped"!

Here's an example of how it works.
Pretend that I mention that I have to stop and get petrol. There would be much discussion over which petrol I should be getting, and which pump to go to ("MY Mum always goes to that one because it's closer to the door"). Then I'd be asked how much the petrol cost me to which I'd reply "$50". I'd then get this chorus from the girls as they tell me about how their Mum spends $70 and their Dad uses so much petrol because he has to drive to the boats he fixes.
And this is just petrol. Try mentioning that there is a cruise ship in port today.

See how this could get a little annoying? Especially when you have to sit and listen to them constantly trying to do one better than your own kid, who has no idea how to play that game becasue it never occured to him that his activities/toys/interests/number of visits to the library were a competition.

I'm not carpooling this year.

***

C leaves for London today. He landed a 6 month contract managing apartments near Tower Bridge. I rarely see him but it will be a bit strange not having him in the same country. He'll be near J and F, so that ought to be interesting.

J is sending A 20 pairs of Barbie doll shoes. All individually wrapped so that I can use them as rewards for good behaviour! What a great idea, and how thoughtful!

As I said to sw...God I love gay men!
:o)

He said he does too.
Really? I'd never have notided :op

Time flies when you're not having fun

When I was 12 I used to wonder what the hell adults meant when they said things like "Time flies doesn't it?" and "There just aren't enough hours in the day".
Now I get it.
Of course, back then I had no responsibilities apart from a few chores and my schoolwork. Now I have ALL the chores and my son's schoolwork (to help with, not do for).

I want to:

*Finish sewing E's cargo pants and shorts.
*Sew A's dress and a matching top and 3/4 pants set (they're all cut out and ready to go).
*Sew clothes for A's Barbie.
*Work on my birth album scrapbook.
*Make wooden furniture for A's Barbie.
*Alter the dollhouse that was passed along to A, so that it might fit Barbie dolls.
*read through the two options for my Life Writing paper and choose one option to study (Biography or Autobiography.
*Help G with the concrete clearing and drainwork we've begun for the new bathroom
*Go to a musical in Wellington with my Mum. It's called Menopause and looks hilarious.
*make a new wall hanging out of the kids' artwork. This is a 1.3 metre square collage of the best (in their opinion) of 2006's artwork, which I frame with black paper and hang on the kitchen wall.
*make A a princess dress-up dress.
*do some baking, using recipes I haven't tried before.
*Load holiday photos onto Fotothing and then "paste" them here.
*Read Neil Gaiman's book "American Gods"
*sort out old junk that gets stashed instead of thrown away.

It goes on and on.

But right now I feel as though all I'm doing is stopping the kids killing each other, helping A find things she had in her hand two minutes ago and preparing food every couple of hours for people who never seem full (husband and kids).

I can't wait for school to go back.

What a rebel

In a premeditated act of Anti-Consumerism, I mended four pairs of E's trousers and sewed two recycled buttons on a shirt last night.
HAH!
In your face Mr Warehouse (like Kmart only red).

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