unsubstantiated theories

i should probably mark this as “unsubstantiated theory no. 1″, as i’m sure i have a few bubbling away in my brain.

anyways, here’s this one…

our lovely neighbours have sold their house.  and i have a bad feeling about it.  congrats to them on doing so of course.  they were pulling the plug when an offer came in that was acceptable and both parties signed up.  well done too on negotiating with the agent to pay no commission!  how does that happen?!

but back to my bad feeling.  lovely neighbour told me that the purchaser is a guy buying solely in his name and his wife/partner/girlfriend hasn’t see the place.  why should this trigger doubts for me?  well, because i wonder who will be living next door to us.  we already have absolute shits on the other side, i really like having lovely, nice, sane, rational, friendly, chatty people on one side.  i don’t want to lose that.

who might move in next door?  perhaps it is to be an investment and some other lovely family will rent it, hence the partner doesn’t really need to see it.  but my concern is that, given women account for 80% of the buying decision, particularly for the family home, what woman hands over this big decision entirely to her partner?  is she a beaten, subjugated, worn, silent observer?  (take that as literally or as figuratively as you like)  does that make the guy an arsehole?  on the other hand perhaps she’s overseas and he’s taken her thru electronically via his smart phone.  i shouldn’t tend towards the negative.  i just don’t want to be at home most of the time and have idiots on either side.

additionally, when we come to extend and renovate our house, shit neighbours are going to make it hell, please, please, don’t let that hell get doubled.

i suppose we’ll find out in six weeks when the settlement happens who the new neighbours are.  no point fretting before then.  except i can’t shake my trepidation.  oh well.

and finally, how do i tell percy and tally their dear friends s and j are moving away??  hopefully not too far away but there’s nothing closer than hollering over the fence and running back and forth between yards to play with each other.  i predict tears (perhaps from all of us.)

three weeks of real estate

some thoughts on my experiences working as a sales assistant in a real estate office…

(these days it’s common for sales agents to have an assistant, or two, or even more!  the assistant does much the same job as the agent but for a set salary rather than a commission on sales made.  the progression is usually after 18-24 months the assistant becomes an agent in their own right.)

it probably won’t come as a surprise to you but every agent is it in for the money.  i imagine i was still being naive, however i thought sales agents were interested in the back story too.  you know- who the seller is, why they are selling, what motivates them, what do they want to achieve in life? and likewise for the buyers.  but they’re not.  and maybe that is a good thing because the relationship should be a professional one, not a personal one. 

i did think some personal connection would be created tho.  some caring, some out-of-hours thought.  not so.  if you think the sales person selling your home cares about you, it’s just pitch.  they’ve practiced this and polished it and it’s working a charm on you.  believe me the agent doesn’t give a flying fig about you.  you are just a walking wallet to them.  sure they’ll remember you for a while and say hi in the street for a year or so, they’ll send you a christmas card every year ’til you move address or die.  but they don’t care one bit.

i asked my ex-boss, when he said to me “it’s the best job in the world”; “why?”  because it’s easy money, and lots of it, he replied.  yes, easy money i suppose it is, particularly for a high school drop-out.  i then asked, “aside from the money, why is it the best job?”  he hedged and fudged and um’d and didn’t have an answer.  tellingly, he’s not alone.  every sales agent i’ve spoken to since, particularly potential employers, emphasise the uncapped income.  i realise none of them are interested in the person.  you could have deaf-mute, disabled twin toddlers to house and all they see is you’ll pay more to get a house that suits your needs.  what are those needs?  who cares!!  so long as you’ll pay thru the nose, and they can skim off a nice commission, when you buy one of their listings.

another observation… total and complete lack of respect.  if you don’t list your house with a particular agent you are a fucking idiot.  if you do, you are an unrealistic fucking idiot.  if you have questions about buying a property you are a deranged fucking idiot.  need i go on?   i will summarise a little story for you…  one of my colleagues and i were talking… about sending our kids to school next year.  my colleague has chosen a catholic education as they feel better discipline, respect, authority and morals are to be achieved in this way.  they then took a phone call from a possible buyer of a listing they held.  after a short conversation about strata fees the call ended and my colleague took to swearing and abusing the buyer, for no fair reason.  hope that catholic education works out, ’cause they sure aren’t going to learn those things at home.  this is not an isolated case.

final point.  if you have bought a property and now need to sell your current place, don’t use the same agent you bought thru.  don’t, don’t, don’t!  that agent now knows exactly how stretched for cash you are and will squeeze you and squeeze you until you accept any price for your old place.  it doesn’t make that much difference to them.  $8k commission isn’t much different from $11k.  but not getting any commission from a non-sale is a big deal.  they will “condition” you every day of the week until you drop the price enough to secure a sale- the faster the better.  don’t get suckered into thinking this person cares about you, they really don’t.  even if it is your uncle jack.

this day in history

sounds a little dramatic doesn’t it? 

it will be significant in my history i’m sure, but probably not for anyone outside my immediate family.

since telling you about my planned career change in october last year i’ve been quite busy and too knackered to write.  i have an unexpectedly spare afternoon right now.  i’m at home, tally is at day care and percy is seeing the picasso exhibit at the art gallery of nsw with her grandparents.  plus i seem to have buggered the chain saw so i’m not outside hacking the damn macadamia tree into burnable pieces like i thought i would. 

the telling piece in that paragraph is that “i’m at home”, on a friday.  here’s the story why…

while serving out my remaining four weeks at housing nsw after i resigned, i secured myself a job as a sales assistant at a local real estate office.  yippee!  the career change plans were so far working well.  i was going to be working very close to home doing something that i’m sure i would love (helping people realise their ambitions of selling or buying their houses) i would make great links to my local community and i would bring ethics and a caring soul into real estate.  these things i did.  and i did really enjoy it.  real estate is not a brain taxing job.  sure, there are things to remember and legislation to follow, procedures and processes, obligations and requirements; just like most jobs.  it is not difficult, however it is time consuming.  time and raising young children don’t really mix.  we had plans to smooth this out tho- a nanny, paul coming home early on certain days, me staying late on set days, long day care, two cars, activities involving kiddies scheduled outside work hours, grandparents… 

the time consumption was exacerbated by the stated work hours and the actual expected hours being quite different.  my boss and i clashed on this a number of times.  i think we were both at fault in not explaining our expectations to each other clearly.  one of the most important tasks a real estate agent must undertake is prospecting for new business- getting ‘listings’.  now if you’ve been in the game for a long time and you have a large referral list perhaps you can let business come to you (tho eventually all that business will move away, die or forget you) otherwise you need to find people who want to sell their house and commission you to do it for them.  finding these people means knocking on their doors or telephoning them.  it’s called cold-calling.  i actually don’t have a problem, as most people seem to expect one to, with this activity.  in fact i love nattering to people about property, and as property is a hobby for near everyone in sydney, most people i’ve come across are happy to natter back.  perhaps it’s different out here in the ‘burbs as i found nearly everyone either wanted to talk, not just tolerated me giving the sales pitch before they released the hounds, or actually wanted to show me around their house and discuss all the good and bad aspects of the place, the street, the neighbourhood, the local shops, the local schools, you name it.  however (here it comes) in the month or two leading up to christmas not many people are concerned with selling their homes.  unsurprisingly they’ve got other things on their mind.  which is not to say some people don’t, but i think it is fair to say their focus is elsewhere.  which for me, meant securing absolutely no listings and turning in dismal numbers.  as an example… i stayed late one evening and made 70 telephone calls, which trust me, is not a big amount, during what is understood to be the prime time to call 5:30 to 7pm.  of those 70 calls, only 7 people actually answered and none wanted to sell their home at that time.  can i force people to answer the phone?  my percieved poor performance and apparent “lack of enthusiasm” meant that after three weeks i was asked to resign.  i wonder if it’s better to resign or get fired?  so the week before christmas i found myself truly unemployed, and i’ve remained so since.  i have applied for two other sales assistant jobs but have been unsuccessful.

fast forward to yesterday.  i made the momentous decision, with paul’s support and encouragement, to take up my other full time job in a full-time way- parent.  for the next year and maybe more i’ll be a stay at home mum.  given that the salary for a real estate sales assistant is $32k a year we may actually save money!  here’s what we won’t be spending money on:  day care (poor tally is going to be staying home with me; hope he survives), driving to day care, me buying lunch, drinks and snacks while at work, make-up, hosiery, hair cuts and colours, car running costs, mobile telephone bill (the $1k a year phone allowance does not cover it!), nannies, before and after school care for percy and i’m sure some sundry other things i’m not remembering at the moment.  the things that we will gain include percy getting walked to and from school everyday, tally having my mostly undivided attention during the day, my time to do the house things we’d all rather not do at 9pm- i mean ironing and the like! and particularly important my time and soon to be much ramped up expertise in being project manager for the redevelopment of our little slice of suburbia. 

i wrote a list yesterday of my goals for 2012.  it is as follows:

1. toilet train tally, 2. help percy to have great year at kindergarten, 3. learn to cook more dishes, 4. practice yoga everyday, 5. complete renovation of front yard, 6. clear excess vegetation from rear yard, 7. relocate shed, 8. build rear deck, including access ramp, 9. complete plans for house renovation, 10. build new chicken run, 11. create vegetable garden and 12. defy mayan calendar!

it’s a good, achieveable list i think.  there’s more to it than first appears too.  for instance, the deck is no little bit of wood on a level, easy access bit of ground, it’s to be an enormous structure that spans ten metres across the site, steps over probably three levels with a fall of four to five metres and i estimate around 12 metres of depth.  plus, let’s not get into what it will take to defy those head-strong mayans!

had you said to me five years ago i would choose to be a stay-at-home parent, and be looking forward to it, i would have peed myself laughing.  how we change…

mind you, if anyone has or knows of a book shop for sale within reach of my home let me know.  that’s another career path i’d love to grow old into.

career change

so, big news!  having an early mid-life crises, assuming i’ll live to more than 72.  actually i don’t think it’s any sort of crises at all.  still, big news!

 (note: i use the word “so” too often.  if i left in all the “so’s” before publishing you’d stop reading this blog; quite a few get edited out.  i think i picked it up when i was flying; all the austrian crew said it all the time.  maybe i’m ethnically inclined to pick up the usage, what with being mostly german and what with austrians and germans being much the same people- don’t tell the captain!

on the other hand, i love using punctuation marks and i won’t stop!   think we all should use a lot more punctuation.  spice up your sentences and messages and put your personal twinge on it.)

so!  (ha ha, just kidding!)  the big news is i’ve quit my job.  first time ever in my working life i’ve put in my notice with nothing to put my hand to next.  hummm, errr, ok.  mostly.  i know my working life would generally be counted as a short one.  i’ve been having a tilt at this town planning thingo for 15 years now.  tho i would like to claim my working life, with real responsibility started when i was six years old.  there was a considerable hiatus from age six to sixteen but at six i put myself to work at the caravan park my parents managed.  i don’t recall being asked to do that job i just wanted to, i’ve been a pushy thing all my life!  (i prefer to think of it as supremely well organised and nearly always right now, thank you)  what job was it?  i answered the telephone and made bookings for people to holiday at the park, i manned the office when mum and dad were away and allocated spots to drive-in holiday makers and i led people to those allocated spots.  i did wonder later what the grown-ups used to be thinking when they were driving slowly down a dirt road with a scrubby six-year-old marching ahead of them to show them where to park their ‘van.  or when they were greeted in the office with my piggie-tails sticking out and me probably picking a scab on my knee.  (i didn’t have the finer points of personal presentation in the fore front of my mind at that time.)  i never fucked it up either; never made double bookings, never put people in a spot they wouldn’t fit, always checked whether they’d like to be nearer or further away from the amenities block, near the play ground, how much space they needed to manoeuvre the ‘van, etc. 

mum and dad were often away from the office because they had other duties about the park and mum ran the household too.  one of the things dad did was build a fantastic playground for all the kids that came to the park.  this ‘van park was in blairgowrie on the mornington peninsula, south of melbourne.  during the school holidays it was packed!  really packed!!  there was a large house with substantial outside areas that as the manager’s family we had the run of.  during peak times even these outside areas filled up with caravans and tents too- i wonder if that was legal?  so all the parents of all the kids (there i go again, another “so”) and the kids themselves, were very happy to have a great jungle gym built right next to the bbq tables.  i’m sure it would be an oh&s nitemare now but we loved it.

where was i?  job quitting… well, i’ve got a little under four weeks to go before i’m unemployed.  i haven’t been unemployed in a long time.  i’m not scared yet.  i’ll probably wake up in cold sweats in three weeks time.  the hiatus from when we left the caravan park when i was eight years old (two years that i do like to revisit in my memory, might write about it later) to when i left my parents home at age 16 was pretty much filled with school- so i wasn’t slacking off, a’right?  upon leaving home i picked up some cash-in-hand cleaning jobs, to supplement the $120 a week austudy i was entitled to, to pay the rent.  let me make clear there are not a lot of jobs for a 16 year old in glen innes.  even the only fast food place, the tiniest kfc you’ve ever seen, didn’t open up until after i left town.  since starting uni I’ve had a job ever since.  i feel i’m some what justifying getting to 36 and choosing to be unemployed, by citing the past 30 years have been filled with endeavours of one kind or another.

i will say now that there is a plan; i’m not choosing to be unemployed, i’m choosing to start something new.  it gives me butterflies to think about it, i’m really excited and i’m out to prove something.  stay tuned!

two in the bed

last saturday (22^nd october 2011) paul and i re-arranged the kids bedroom while they were spending the day at their grandparents home.  we had primed them prior, so they new they’d be coming home to a change.

what was so important it required a couple of hours of hefting and lifting and fiddling and cleaning?  the answer is ‘new sleeping arrangements’!  tally has outgrown the cot.  the cot does have an additional bit that will stretch it to a small single bed but, as you might remember, percy occupies a double bed all on her ownsome.  not any more she don’t.  now percy and tally sleep across the double bed together. 

that is, when they do actually sleep.  paul very wisely kept the mattress from the cot and stored it under percy’s bed.  on this mattress, on their bedroom floor, is where we finally got tally to fall asleep on sunday nite.  then we lifted him back into the big bed.

there is no cot in our house now.  it’s packed down in the shed.  (well, it’s sort of packed down in the shed.  even with my superior packing skills i couldn’t get all the parts back in the original box.  even with paul’s superior “googling it” skills, he couldn’t find any tips or instructions.)  with foresight that was i’m sure unintended and unrealised paul got the cot into pieces, ready for packing, before i was free to help.  i had no opportunity to say goodbye.  say goodbye to a piece of furniture??!  well, yes.  both our babies slept in that cot and i’ve stood beside it rocking tousled heads, singing atrociously or leaned over it stroking brows and gazing with stupefied exhausted love at our babies for more hours than i can count.  it has an attached significance because of the precious cargo it carried, far beyond its use as a nice looking cot.  once it was busted up into its different parts, it kind of wasn’t the cot it used to be.  so as i entered the dining room where the dismantling had taken place, i paused, drew a breath, said “oh”, nearly leaked a tear and then said a silent goodbye to tiny babies in enormous cots, to growing babies and to toddlers standing and hollering over the side to be let out.  no more of that for us.

so how’s the co-sleeping going?  pretty good.  we did psych ourselves up for a week or two of incessant fighting, hair pulling, bouncing on each other, blanket snatching, eye-poking and general unpleasantness, and we’re only half a week into that period.  sunday and monday nite tally went to sleep on the mattress on the floor first.  because he was bugging percy too much and not settling down.  last nite he buggered around for a short while before falling asleep in the big bed.  i’m going to call that progress.

one negative that has come to light is that of tally losing his stuffed toy companion, rocco.  i expect in the cot if he let go of him while sleeping rocco didn’t move far because there was no space for him to do so.  last nite, twice tally got us up to help him hunt down rocco, who had wriggled his way out of hands reach under the blanket.  hmmmm…tie rocco to tally?  probably not wise.

am i a man?

right, clearly i’m not, the question is asked tongue-in-cheek.

but here’s the ‘affirmative’ case…

1. i hate shopping.  if i need something i’ll steal, buy or borrow it.  (not so much on the stealing side these days.) but i can’t abide wasting time wandering thru malls and shops and “just looking,” waiting for an impulse buy to strike me.  (unless it’s window shopping for or inspecting houses and buildings.  that i have a probably, just-a-little, mostly-harmless, obsession with- and could do all day long, for most days of the week!)

2. i hate cooking.  it seems very pointless to me to spend an hour or more chopping and slicing and cutting and mixing and cooking and whatever else goes into it, to have it eaten in 10 minutes to then spend another hour cleaning and tidying and washing and putting away etc.  i’m all for eating, i’d rather just see it on the plate and not have to do the kitchen part, before or after.  i know this point suggests that cooking is a womans domain and many chefs/cooks are men; my point is closer to the family home, where, given society’s gender imbalances, most of the home/family cooking is done by women.  i find cooking a lot like alchemy- mucking around with stuff you don’t know much about to get a result nothing like you might expect.

3. i like activities that use my hands.  and no i don’t count scrap-booking or giving hand-jobs in this category.  i mean things like woodworking, painting (the house, not water colours) gardening, building things…  that sort of stuff.  i like tools.  the wooden or metal kind.  and machinery.  i like trains, steam ones in particular, i think the bicycle might well be the greatest invention ever.  (seeing that an invention to get your kid to sleep exactly when and for how long you want, hasn’t been invented yet.)  i like hot air balloons and the awesome abilities of a wing.  or two, very much so when attached to a plane i’m flying in.

4. i’m incredibly spatially aware.  i ADORE maps.  if maps were still drawn by hand and i could learn the skills to make them my ideal job would be cartographer.  i’m not so keen on computer generated maps.  on the flip side i dislike gps’s.  pointless, silly, bound-get-you-lost, or -mad, or both devices.  i have an innate sense of space and location and how things fit together.  there’d be no hiding secret rooms or passage ways in a house from me.  once i have a look at the outside and get a feel for the inside walls i’d be able to say “hey, there’s 2 metres missing from somewhere in here.”  i’m not sure that’s a modern-day useful skill but it’s one i certainly would love to practise.  i never get lost.  one look at a map and i can place myself in the real world and travel thru it very competently.  i love byways and highways and laneways and short cuts.  it just seems there’s more to the adventure if you can anticipate what might be next.

5. i’m never fashionably-dressed.  i might occasionally be well dressed and i’m often interestingly or quirkily dressed but i’m never fashionable.  i can’t afford it and i’m definately not interested.  fashion clothes seem to largely be made from plastic and wear out in less than a year.  if fashion is a womans domain, i’m definately male.

6.  i prefer balls games and outdoor playing with my children, to dress-ups and role playing.  tho when i was a kid myself it was the reverse.

a couple of ambigious matters:

1. i admire the sleek lines and beauty of a sail boat, cars leave me cold.

2. i love building houses (if only i could!) but i also love decorating the insides.

i feel sure there’s many more things i could list but that’s what comes to mind just now.  to be sensible i think there’s a great many characteristics that are shared across genders and preferences and likes and dislikes are not wholly specific to one type of gender.  this was just a little giggle on a rainy afternoon.

taboo topic no. 2

look around you ladies (and gents), look at the women near you.  every second one is suffering a silent debilitation.  it’s not something you’ll see on her skin, in her face or in her eyes.  it’s something much simpler and much harder to fathom.  it’s not spoken about and yet it’s something that can be fixed completely in 90% of cases.  if it’s so straight-forward, why don’t we talk about it, and get it fixed?  i’d say a good part of it is embarassment and the rest is shame.

i’ll tell you my little story.  it’s nothing special but it might open a door or two.

following percy’s rather difficult birth i didn’t think about it much that every time i sneezed, coughed or laughed lovely hard i wet myself.  not a gush of fluid, but definately something that required either a change of clothing or the wearing of incontinence pads.  yup, at the age of 31 i had become incontinent.  not a topic for the dinner table.  or even, i was to discover amongst girlfriends.  but look around you again, one in two.  if it’s not you, it’s the woman sitting next to you on the bus, the one in the check-out queue in front of you, the one pushing her kids on the swing… 

forward on to tally’s birth, which while much easier i’m sure didn’t help my pelvic floor any.  and forward on another two years of pelvic floor exercises, no other exercise and never running with my children, daily pad wearing and crossing my legs and gripping like all hell whenever i caught a cold, i got a referral from my old gp to a gyneo/urologist.  kindly dr benness saw me in his offices a few weeks back and ascertained that it be best if i did a particular test to check the function of my bladder and pelvic muscles.  he saw me out of his offices in tears as i confessed i was the fatest i’d even been in my life because i could no longer move faster than a medium walk without wetting myself, that sex is fraught with embarassment as i fear peeing on my husband (for the record, we’re not into that!), that i can’t play with my children as i’d like, that i’m fricken’ 35 and incontinent!!

a couple of weeks later i received a telephone call from dr benness’s office informing me that a cancellation had rung in and could i make a much sooner appointment?  hell, yes i can.  so what happens at this test?  well, not that much.  if you’ve given birth in a hospital it’s certainly less intrusive than that.  a catheter up your urethra, a camera up your vagina and another sensor of sorts up your bum.  they pump you full of water, as much as you can take, and then see what happens when you cough, stand up with your legs spread and cough and run water over your hand.  there is no dignity, however dr benness and his nurse were very kind and matter-of-fact, i’m sure they do it every day so it’s nothing new to them.  it was funny to finally pee the pumped in water out.  because it’s only been in your body a few minutes and it isn’t actually pee, just water, it’s cold; and it feels weird to be passing something that is cold.

suitably re-attired, dr benness and i consulted on our next actions.  he gave me the option of continuing with pelvic floor exercises, which he’d previously confirmed i was doing correctly.  (sometimes i wonder how many people have had their finger in my vagina on a purely medical/scientific basis?  probably best i don’t count.)  i said ’thanks, but no thanks.’  it’s been unsuccessful for over four years now, i want something more.  which is what i got last friday.  day surgery to fit a “tvt sling” to help support my pelvic muscles.  i don’t remember a bit of it being under a general anaesthetic.  not looking forward to getting the anaesthetists bill! 

we had hoped day surgery would actually mean me going home the same day but i slept, or did that doze thing you do when in a hospital ward with 17 beds in it, for the remainder of the day and much of friday nite.  come saturday i had to prove i could pee and have less than 100ml left in my bladder (checked by ultrasound) three times, before i was considered well and safe to go home.  i finally achieved this via drinking litres and really trying while hovering over a bedpan, at mid-day saturday.  home.

i have a bloody bandage over my belly button and over the tiny incision low on my belly.  they are to stay on for five days.  i was a bit sore yesterday, less today.  i’m tender but i’m otherwise physically fine. 

there is one other thing…  since the surgery was in the vicinity, i had my tubes tied too.  no more babies for me.  which is fine, and cool, and what i wanted…  but i do think there is something that has to be done to grieve the loss of my fertility.  paul and i agree that our two darlings are perfect for us.  i don’t want to go thru another bout of psd.  my experiences of pregnancy are over.  it will just take a little time to let that go.  being pregnant is life changing and a momentous feeling every day.  i need to dwell on that a little while and then let it slip away.

so there’s taboo topic no. 2.  i hope it may help someone else.  because i know you’re out there and maybe reading this and thinking i don’t have to live with incontinence.  you don’t.

the cost of complacency

quite a few months ago our three chickens took to roosting on the waist high boundary fence between us and our nice neighbours at no. 16.  they seemed quite comfortable up there, snuggled alongside each other.  they never went over the fence into the neighbours, possibly because of the couple of metres drop between our ground level and theirs on the boundary.  (nasty retaining wall that will have to come down in the future.)  seeing as the chookens (as percy and i affectionately call them) were happy to make their own nite time arrangements, and because it’s much easier to stay indoors on cold, wet, windy winter evenings, rather than tromp down in the dark to catch and stuff them in the coop, we left them to it.

chickens like to roost up as high as they can, gives them a sense of safety.  not for ours as it turned out.

one evening last week paul tore past the bedroom door calling “petra, wake up!”  i was on my feet and into the kids room, scanning for danger and calamity in seconds.  quite a few seconds later my brain lumbered off the pillow, crossed the corridor, climbed like a wet rag up my jamie bottoms, rested on my shoulder to catch it’s breath and then wheezed its way into my ear hole and plunked down in its usual spot on my brain stem with some grumbles and more wheezes.  it was only at this time that i realised the kids were soundly, safely asleep and paul had bolted out the back door.  i quickly followed him, colliding at the door where he asked me “do you hear that?”  yes, i did, and for just the smallest of split seconds i thought our not so nice neighbours daughter had taken up where the son had left off and was screaming blue murder.  yes, i’m an awful person.  of course it was not a person, it was a chicken, calling it’s death throes to the unconcerned nite at 2:30am. 

grabbing the torch I leave handy for checking on the kids at nite we tumbled down the back stairs and ran across to the coop and fence roost.  nothing to be seen, except one dazed chook who did not like being grabbed and rammed into the coop.  the other two?  no feathers, no blood, no incriminating evidence at all.  we didn’t spend a long time at that early morning hour searching and those of you that know our back yard will sympathise that a 3 metre plunge into a tangled jungle is not likely to be fun in your jimmy-jams and ill-fitting wellie boots.

 we gave up and returned to our beds.  temporarily at least.  within five minutes paul turned to me and asked “do you think anyone could have come into the house while we were outside?” no, I didn’t think it likely at all.  to get in our back door you have to come down a yucky bumpy driveway, open or leap over a country gate and then up the steps, or down the other side of the house which is even worse and climb or tear down the chicken wire fence on that side.  parents being parents, this was not good enough… paul got up and checked all the rooms and the kids cupboard to find no possible assailant.  parents being parents this still wasn’t good enough… i couldn’t sleep, now having the seed planted that my kids were in danger.  i eventually said to paul, “sorry, i can’t stay, i’m going to sleep with percy” (one good thing about your four year old having a double bed.)  so i spent the remainder of the nite, dozing non-restfully in my daughter’s bed prepared to defend her and her brother from the crazed chicken man that was still lurking, undetected because i was too fumble-headed to look, under her bed.

 

taboo topic (no.1)

here’s a news flash that won’t really surprise anyone that knows me.

i dislike the company of children.

there.  done.  said.

and in ten years when percy and tally might be reading this i’m really sorry to you my darlings.  disliking the company of children is not connected to and has no bearing on my love for you.  i love you totally and absolutely.

i dislike the constant crying, whinging, piss, shit, snot, struggles, arguments, attitude and anything else you care to name.  i’ve grown out of playing with lego, dolls, dress-ups, painting, trucks and make believe.  i’m wholly unsuited to the company of children.  i can force myself to do these things for perhaps 15 hours a week, i’m away at work for between 28 – 30 hours in a week and the kids sleep approximately 10 hours every nite; that leaves 53 hours every week that i am in the company of chlidren and probably disliking it.  if i can be absorbed with something else as well, for instance trips to museums or dance classes or whatever, then the wearying constancy of it, is diminished.  of course the screaming match it takes to get out the door in a reasonable manner counts as a negative.

i’m sure i’m not alone.  but that doesn’t make the situation that percy and tally find themselves in fair or in any way alleviated.  i’m sorry my sweets that it’s turned out this way.  had i been able to predict this nasty, depressed side of myself i would have seriously assessed having children at all/ a lot harder.  i don’t know how to end that sentence; which ending fits what i’m really thinking and feeling more?  i couldn’t say.

i think one of the more telling, sad parts in this, is that despite swearing to all the gods of all the heavens that i would not be the parent my parents are, i am becoming them after all.  is it genetic?  are we doomed?  surely recognising the fault is good enough to ensure it doesn’t repeat.  but clearly not.  my father hates children.  how we (my brother and i) came into being is unknowable.  i certainly don’t hate children but i find i’m unable to calmly work thru daily life with them.  my mother is a judgemental bastard and i think i don’t judge my children (or any others) but i plainly have other weak and horrid faults.  anyways, there’s many years of keeping a shrink employed in this, making me reluctant to go into it here and now.

so there’s taboo topic number one- never speak about your negative, painful, fault-ful, hurtful feelings around being a parent.  i have another topic that hopefully i’ll be able to address from a happier place before the end of the year.

percy’s school career (part 1)

i figure once you get to thirteen years of something you can consider it a career.  kindergarten to year 12 is a long time to stick at one thing.  of course that one thing is aimed at getting you into your next career; uni or a real job.  one hair cut to go please!

last monday 8^th august 2011 percy become enrolled at oyster bay public school.  yesterday, thursday 11^th she, along with paul and i, attended the kindergarten open morning.

after a short welcome from the principal we were divided into small groups accompanied by a year six student to tour the rooms and facilities.  i must say i was pleased and impressed with our guide laura.  she conducted herself very well, answered our questions and was patient with our pre-schoolers.  i ought to write to the school to say so. 

the classrooms look much like the classrooms i remember, except for the whiz-bang ‘smart boards’ (thank you kevin rudd) and perhaps more craft and creative thingys hanging from the ceilings, windows and walls.  I don’t remember much of that, but that could just be me.  i remember reading mostly, and the look on my teacher’s face when she looked down at all her little charges neatly sitting cross-legged on the floor to see my friend had neglected under wear that day.  (paris hilton is sooo johnny-come-lately.)

i thought the library looked a little thin but as there seemed to be a great many books in the classrooms and the special reading room, perhaps it doesn’t matter.  plus i imagine a good number of them were borrowed out.  the playground is nice with lots of mature trees and grass as well as surfaced areas and under cover areas.  the vegetable garden is huge and i was pleased to learn that some of the produce does make its way to the canteen, the rest is sold for a gold coin at the school gate on friday afternoons apparently.

kindergarten class size is 20 kids.  seems a lot to me but i’ve never tried to look after 20 kids in one go!  the school is anticipating three, maybe even four kindergarten classes next year.  they often have composite classes too.  i think it would be lovely if percy could be in a class with our friends meghan and/or aiden who started school this year.  i think it would help her confidence and let her settle in even faster.  later on i’ll ask if this could be accommodated.  the school runs a buddy system that teams up a newbie kinder kid with a year six kid.  they get together once a week to do activities together.  i hope this works well for percy, i suspect it will as she loves the company of older children- particularly if they are accommodating of her and let her take the lead!

 At the end of our visit we re-grouped in the OOSH (‘out of school hours’, for those on the learning curve with me) care room for question time.  i chickened out and didn’t ask the question i wanted to until everyone was milling about preparing to leave.  “what do the children that don’t attend scripture classes do instead?”  the answer was delivered a little ‘round-aboutly stating that ethics classes aren’t offered yet so the children are supervised in reading or other activities.  personally i think it’s unethical to have ‘special religious education’ classes in secular schools!  take your god-bothering where it belongs…  (where? oh, you know, safe injecting centres, brothels, homeless shelters…)

i’d already been in touch with the st james ethics centre so i knew there is no co-ordinator or volunteers to run the ethics classes in oyster bay yet.  perhaps if i can find some time next year i’ll volunteer for it.  i reckon i could learn a lot too!

 there is an orientation day and two transition days to come later this year.  adventures, adventures!