Squibblog

footy cards

No matter how much we try to shield our children from some aspects of popular culture, they manage to get hold of the concepts anyway. We have tried hard to steer clear of all junk food chains and their related toy offerings. Likewise things that come in cereal and chip packets. I find myself squishing all the sultana bran packets in the supermarket to find the ones that don't get the bonus electronic game.

So Zac has never had footy cards. But he knows about footy cards because other kids have them. He seems to be learning that some things can not be pestered for so today he decided to skip the whole commercial footy card palava and just make his own.

Here they are. He made one for all the teams he likes, the Newtown Jets has been lost through the day but the others are all here: Sydney Swans, Wests Tigers, Sydney City Roosters and the Wallabys, incorrectly designated as AFL. He's still getting his codes straight.

happy new year

Last night we went to Helen and Lyn's to celebrate Rosh Hashanna, the beginning of the new year on the Jewish calendar. Soy's brother Ant and his family were there with Nell's beloved Stella and baby Leo who is almost not a baby any more.

There were the usual bottles of Cloudy Bay chardonnay, this year to accompany Borscht as my mother-in-law was getting back to her Russian roots. The children ate honey cake in honour of Leo's first birthday and ran up and down the hall screaming.

There is something wonderful about celebrating New Year in September: the plants all seem to join in the rejoicing. We have three flowers on our strawberry plants so hopefully some succulent home grown berries soon.

In this time of renewal I am making a few resolutions:

• I am going to stretch every morning. In the year since I gave up doing yoga I have slowly felt my muscles freeze up. Pilates is making me stronger but I will be a stiff old lady if I don't get some flexibility back.
• I am going to read more than one book between bookclub meetings. There's really no excuse for me to read just the one book in six weeks. Less TV, more literature.
• I am going to start a new knitting project. I haven't really attempted anything since I finished Zac's blanket while watching the entirety of the West Wing (it's a big blanket)

Here's hoping that the new moon inspires Leo to sleep through the night so that Katie can reclaim a little of her sanity.

The good thing about September  new year's resolutions is that if you fail to keep them, you can always make them again in 4 months' time.

what the hell is social realism anyway?

I loved my course last semester. I loved sitting in lectures, reading the text book. I particularly loved researching and writing the essays. I learned stuff. Stuff that made my brain sing.

This was not really my experience of studying in the 80s and 90s. While I loved Uni then, it was mostly the social aspect which pressed my buttons. The study was hard, the essays were harder.

I executed a very average Economics degree and a respectable Law degree without ever really loving what I studied. So it is no real surprise that loving my course last semester resulted in an extremely satisfactory result. The kind that starts with an 'h'.

I say that not to brag about my success but to juxtapose my experience this semester. I just can't say I love this course nearly as much. Which is very disappointing because it was Modern Art that I really came here to study, the classical and renaissance stuff was just a nice background for me.

The lectures don't inspire me, the tutorials are torture. Our reading last week was a feminist analysis of the treatment of Australian women artists. I devoured the reading and came to the tute armed with all sorts of interesting questions on the meaning of art history seen through a feminist lens.

But the (female) tutors who is, perhaps, 26, led off the discussion with a phrase something like "the author of this article really takes this feminism stuff a bit too far, don't you think? I mean, she takes this criticism of women artists personally. I don't find that criticism personally offensive, you don't find it personally offensive do you?"

I almost jumped out of my chair to say "YES! YES indeed I do find it personally offensive! The personal is the political!"

There was much eye-rolling. Sometimes I despair of my Gen Y sisters.

Anyway, I wrote my essay, doing a bit of a half-assed job of it really because the questions were all pretty uninspiring - compare the treatment of the city in Australian modernist and social realist painting. Mine was a pretty ho-hum effort. I handed it in today in the fervent hope that next year I will get to choose a better subject and my blood pressure can return to normal.

sometimes I think it's better just not to engage

This morning's conversation in the car:

Zac: "Why is the outside of the car made of metal?"

Me: "Because metal is strong"

Zac: "But not as strong as a bomb! What if someone put a bomb on our car?"

Me: "Why would anyone want to put a bomb on our car?"

Nell: "Maybe it would be a fake bomb!"

Zac: "Maybe they would just pretend to put a fake bomb on our car!"

Nell: "Maybe they would put a toy bomb on our car"

Zac: "Or maybe they would put a fake toy bomb on our car"

Nell: "Or maybe I would have a dream that they would put a fake toy bomb on our car!"

Zac: "Or maybe I could pretend to have a dream ..."

I tuned out at this point because it was getting a bit surreal for me.