Squibblog

bats II

Every year at about this time our backyard fills up with the littered remains of rotting guavas. For the first few years we lived in this house I tried to convince the kids to eat the guavas, I juiced them, I preserved them, but to no avail. After a few even I couldn't stomach them anymore. Plus the bulk of them seem to be afflicted with fruit fly and so fall rotting to the ground wriggling with worms. It's disgusting.

My daily task for the month of March is to wander around collecting the rotting guavas, bag them up and throw them out to stop the smell of fermenting fruit invading the house. I collect about a kilo of guavas every single day for a month.

My job has been a bit easier this year, most of the guavas coming off the tree are already half eaten. I do not begrudge the birds a feed if we are not going to eat them, but I was beginning to worry that we had a real rat problem because many guavas had teeth marks, not beak marks.

The other night I was collecting the washing off the line after dark and I walked past the guava tree when I heard a huge ruckus. Three enormous fruit bats rose up out of the tree and flapped away. They are not subtle creatures and I could hear them for a long time after they flew away. Today as I collected the bat's leftover fruit from the back lawn I felt a little better knowing that the guava tree is sustaining a colony of Nell's beloved fruit bats rather than a colony of rats under the house.

the debrief

Nell and I have just got home from the Triple J studios after Nell comprehensively beat Dools at all five of the pentathlon challenges   on Triple J's drive show. That's the bit I want to remember.

The bits I'm not so keen to remember are the fact that Nell almost didn't speak the whole time. There was lots of head nodding and she happily participated in the drawing and toy playing aspects of the competition, but I couldn't impress upon her the importance of speaking when you're on the radio. Giggling would have done. She just sat there, smiling.

In the breaks the judge, Playschool celebrity Jay Laga'aia, told me the most fun part of the competition was watching me squirm as Nell repeatedly refused to speak.

The bit where Dools made Nell cry on national radio by shouting at her was kind of a low point. But I can see how it made for better radio than the not speaking. Jay literally fell onto the floor laughing. Not at Nell, of course, but at the fact that a DJ had made a little child cry on the radio by being overly competitive. Nell couldn't really see the funny side.

She's a trooper though, and the show must go on. So after a few music tracks she rallied for the final challenge which was a running race which she won by a full length. She actually was trying very hard in the race and took Dools by surprise. After her final victory the tears had dried but she still refused to speak.

Let's face it, if you heard the segment you would know that she made Dools and Linda work very hard. When he wasn't on air Dools was very cute with her, tickling and making her laugh. But back on air he was his petulent radio personality and Nell was confused when the shouting started. No amount of saying "it was just a joke" could overcome the adrenalin frenzy she was in by then.

Overall it was a great experience for me, to be in a radio studio. Nell remembers that she's a champion, she ate a lot of lollies and got a huge bag of fairy stuff from the ABC shop so there seems to be no lasting psychological effect for her. But despite the fact he's actually quite a nice guy, she still isn't a huge fan of Dools.

PS when we first met Jay before the segment went to air, Nell looked up and said "is it the real Jay?" to which he replied "No, the real Jay is still in gaol". I'm not sure she got it but she laughed.

my boy bowls leg spin

Soy is obsessed with cricket. It is the game he loves like no other. Watching it, playing it, reading about it, writing about it. He introduced Zac to the game early but only in the past few weeks has he begun to emulate his father's love of the game.

Now he can bowl leg spin he's pretty happy with himself.

Another cute thing in our household lately is Nell's ability to absorb the jargon from whatever Zac's latest obsession is and incorporate it into her play. So for a while she was playing with fantasy Mario and his brother Luigi, but yesterday, when the cricket match was being played in the backyard, I asked what she was doing, she replied:

"I'm fixing Zac's leg-spinner-machine, of course"

impulsive stage mum

Now I am beginning to worry.

Yesterday I was listening to radio station JJJ when they put a call out for a 3 year old to challenge Scott Dooley to a competition. Scott says there is nothing a 3 year old can do that he can't, but he needed to prove it. I had one of those moments where it just struck me as a good idea to ring in to the radio. They seemed a little bit surprised to find someone with a 3 year old willing to challenge on the radio, and someone who happens to be spitting distance from the station.

I sort of assumed there would be a lot of people ringing in to offer the services of their 3 year olds but evidently not.

So now we are booked in to visit JJJ tomorrow where Nell is going to participate in a kiddy pentathalon against a Gen Y DJ. The prize is that she gets to cut Dooles' hair if she wins. I don't think he'll cut her hair if she loses.

In some ways I think it will be a hoot to visit the radio station, but a big part of me is worried that Nell will just sit like a stunned mullet which might be slightly cute on TV but will have no cuteness effect at all on the radio.

easter round up

This week things feel more or less back to normal.

Easter was sort of overshadowed by Zac's continuing illness. His mystery temperature and fatigue dragged on for 10 days, he missed school for a whole week which is extraordinary for him. He was sleeping 16 hours a day and the rest of the time his little face just looked drawn and wan.

That didn't stop him from participating in the chocolate festival with full gusto. We invited some friends over for brunch on Easter Saturday and hid* some eggs in the garden for them to find. (*by 'hid' I mean dropped in fairly conspicuous places and then had to point them out to the children).

It turned out to be a really lovely party. The kids played in their usual mix of happy interraction and screaming argument. Mostly about trains. Mixing a group of kids from ages 7 through to 1 is always a little fraught but we are all used to it now.

The adults sat around and ate way too much bread with jam, bircher meusli, hot cross buns and fruit salad. The tiny chocolate eggs didn't last long. Conversation managed to be uninterrupted for great swathes of time.

Saturday night I went to a grown up party, although perhaps 'grown up' is too strong a term. It was at Vic's house and there was dancing and bunny ears involved. Let's just say it was a party without children.

Sunday was, of course, the peak of chocolate mania for the kids. We made the most of the sunshine to take a chainsaw to the front hedge. Perhaps not the celebration of the resurrecton of Our Lord one would expect, nevertheless our front rooms now have considerably more light so that's worthy of celebration. We didn't cut down the whole hedge, but I recently had reason to look at the photo of the house taken before we moved in and the hedge was at a much more manageable height. Clearly we have been too timid in our hedge trimming endeavours in the last 2 years so this time we did it properly. There is more hedge piled up on the median strip awaiting council removal than there is in the ground.

Zac seemed to perk up by the end of Easter. I'm not sure that chocolate is a cure all or whether it was just 10 days of rest that cured him, but he is back to his rowdy, argumentative self so that's a relief. Sort of.

sometimes my new job doesn't suck

It has been 18 months since I made the big move out of corporate law and into the world of self-employment. Although I don't write about it often on this blog, rarely does a day go by when I don't think the decision to leave the partnership of a law firm was the best thing I ever did. It was also the scariest thing I've ever done because I didn't just walk away from partnership in a big firm, I walked away from my career in law.

It meant I had to start a new career as a writer which, strangely, is something I never really had any ambition to do. There were a few times when I sat at my desk with my mind blank, just thinking "I can not possibly do this", but mostly I just grasped it as an opportunity. Each time I  felt doubtful, I  cast my mind back two years to the times when I would come home from work every day in tears. Suddenly placing words one after another didn't seem that stressful.

There are other times, many other times, when I have felt proud and more than a little surprised by how well I am doing. When Nick rang from Melbourne to tell me that I am in the Green Guide (of the Age) which makes me a 'real' writer in his eyes, I was chuffed. Seeing my words and photos in the SMH made it 'real' for me too (not to mention when the cheque arrived!)

Not everything I do in my new job is writing. The writing part, however hard, is a little bit romantic. Other parts of the job include dealing with the tax office, editing other people's words and trying to coordinate a magazine which can be extremely frustrating at times. The stresses of pleasing a whole bunch of people and making them all work together are not trivial.

Then I remember the 16 hour days and nervous sweat in the lead up to some of my trials and I smile.

Of course self employment has meant a lot more time for the kids which was a big part of the motivation. It also meant that I could study which I consider an absolute luxury.  Today as I sipped my coffee and flipped through books on modernist painters at Sydney Uni I remembered to be grateful that I can.

But it gets better! When I got back to my desk there was an email from a client thanking me and Soy for the effort we had put in and inviting us to the Australian Ballet's production of Swan Lake. Another client emailed me saying that my story was 'terrific' and asking me to send my invoice asap. Then Soy's borrowed iPod touch arrived and I got to watch old Sinead O'Connor videos and the world seemed like a very happy place indeed.

musical windfalls

It seems to be my year for going to see live music because someone else can't. My brother took me to see Nick Cave in place of his (morning) sick wife. In February J,E&J dazzled me with Rufus Wainwright because they had a spare fourth ticket. And on Tuesday K offered me her ticket to see Sinead O'Connor, which I gratefully accepted.

Sinead has a voice worth dying for and a singing style that reminds me of why I am alive. But she was almost painfully uncomfortable on stage, she mumbled and self-effaced her way through the set as though she believed the audience couldn't see her. Perhaps that's because she almost never looked at the audience and forgot we were there.

And then the magic came out of her mouth and we all sighed and whooped and cheered and reminded her that even if she didn't want to talk to us, we still wanted to sit and listen to her.

chocolate coated Nell

While Zac was sick, Nell proceeded to have a super chocolate infused weekend.

She and I went to the sausage sizzle and Easter Egg hunt for her pre-school. I met lots of the other pre-school parents, Nell found a lot of eggs. She played with her new friends, polished off a whole sausage-in-a-slice-of-bread and came home full of enthusiasm for her new school. Phew.

Sunday we were entertained. Annie and Kylie had us over for lunch, one of those delightful affairs where we sat engrossed in good conversation, fueled by white wine and delicious food, while the children all played nicely. It was a shame to leave, just as Nell was being plied with more chocolate.

Then on to Soy's Dad's birthday celebration. Again, we sat admiring the view of the Harbour while Michael and Helen fed us. The children all played delightfully with each other, bothering us not-at-all. With grand parents around we happily play second fiddle on the care front.

Today we've been back in the grind of grocery shopping, house cleaning and child wrangling. Nell is still finishing off the eggs she found on Saturday.

perhaps this makes me a bad mother

but I really like it when Zac is sick. Sure, I feel sorry for him, what with his fever raging unabated for four days and him  looking so pale and wan. I took him to the GP on Saturday afternoon because I worried about unabated fever and endless doses of paracetamol. Her advice was simple: fever's not going to kill him, it's probably doing him good. There's nothing else wrong with him so it's probably a virus, he should rest and only take drugs if he's in pain.

In between all the drama of sickness, there is so little drama. Our son, who usually spends most of his time shouting, running or arguing about something has spent four days just lying down, quietly contemplating his fate. When he asks for things it is incredibly sweet and polite. His voice is well modulated, his language well mannered. He is affectionate, thoughtful and helpful. Maybe I am terrible but it has occurred to me more than once over the weekend that I wouldn't mind if Zac was sick a bit more often.

my first born is extremely hardy

My first born is extremely hardy. Zac almost never gets sick. He missed two days of school last year, one when he was tired and I let him stay home, one when he broke his arm. As a general rule, Zac isn't the member of our family who comes down with illnesses. Soy and I are constantly beset by niggling sore throats and coughs, Nell gets four colds a year but Zac is usually buzzing around full of beans waiting for one of us to recover.

Last night Zac complained that he had a cough in his throat. Within a few minutes he had a fever and just wanted to curl up. Today he's on the couch, feverish, dozing or watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Given he almost never sits still and almost never shuts up, it's quite strange to be able to work while he's at home sick. But I guess we don't usually experience Zac being sick.