85 posts tagged “kids”

 

Sometimes, when its late at night, and I'm lying in bed trying to sleep, I feel like walking up to Lizzie's room and saying to her

what the fuck are you actually doing?

Because it sounds to me like she's moving a large herd of cattle through a small obstacle course.

Or sometimes its like hospital noises. You know, random things crashing about, television blasting, phones ringing, laughing. At any moment I expect her to crank up the vacuum cleaner.

And I'm beginning to think she's retarded in some way. Because no matter how many times I ask her to try and be quiet after 10.30pm, she persists in being exactly the opposite.

It seems that she lives in the filth and squalor that only a teenager can live in for months, then suddenly decides she must clean her room at 11.30pm.

This also requires a loud thumping up the hallway past my bedroom to the bathroom, where she deposits an extremely large pile of dirty washing which she is always surprised to find hasn't been washed ready for her by the next morning. It also means a large pile of towels to be washed, some of which feel suspiciously like they have never been used, just left on the floor for a while.

Now here it is, 11am and she's still in bed. Meanwhile I had to be up at 5.30am to fit a 30km bike ride in before my day even began and she'll be up soon wondering why I need an afternoon nap.

I wonder if you can have morning tea naps.

Well, Lizzie's school report came home today.

And before I start I just have to point out that she did lose her mojo this year. I dunno what happened. Friends, boyfriend, parties, turning 17. Shit happens.

But it came back, so she told me we have to ignore this report.

So the first subject I came to was Maths.

And I really didn't get past that because it was the funniest Teacher Comment I think I've ever read on a report.

 it said.

Lizzie is a student with the ability required to do the work but finds it very difficult to fully concentrate on a task and is always talking with peers and occasionally eating.

I said to her - what are you occasionally eating?

But he is a bit of a nutter. One day there was a girl in the class using one of those vicks inhalers. You know the white sticks you put up your nose and inhale to clear your nose when you have a cold?

Anyway he rang up the girls mother and told her that she was sticking tampons up her nose during class.

Now I must admit that Lizzie did tell him that it was a tampon. But she was joking. And you'd think he would check before he rang and told the girls mother.

 

 

 

When I was a kid, and through my teenage years I did a lot of running. Sprinting. And my mother used to drive me around to these carnivals and when it was getting close to race time she'd start on about me going to the toilet. She'd ask me about ten times - do you have to go to the toilet? And I'd always say, no. Then right when we were in the marshalling area I'd say - I have to go to the toilet and she'd say, in an exasperated voice, well its too late now!

We did that for years.

And today I have the same nervous tummy, but its on behalf of my son. Today he is playing in the AFL grand final. And he's playing against doctors orders and against mothers orders because he has had a badly torn thigh muscle. But when I told him he was being ridiculous to risk it by playing he told me he was being a 19 year old boy who wanted to play in his grand final.

So I said I wasn't going to go and watch because I didn't want to see him get hurt or disappointed or carried off on a stretcher. And I said that if I went that would mean I condoned what he was doing. And Daz said that was ok because Hazim el Mazri's mum only ever went to two of his games because she didn't want to see him get hurt.

But when I woke up this morning I knew I just have to go. I can't sit here and not know whats going on there. I'd be ringing Daz every five minutes. So fingers crossed that it all goes well, the muscle hangs in there, he plays brilliantly and they win the comp.

Bloody kids.

I think I have to do a nervous poo.

 

Why does everyone wait until I'm on the treadmill before they decide they have to tell me something really important! 

Is it too much to ask for 50 minutes (in a row) to myself. Obviously yes.

This has been going on for fifteen years.

When the kids were little they'd give me about ten minutes alone before they'd turn up in the garage wanting to tell me something, or have a fight about something, or had hurt themselves on something.

And now its Daz.

This morning he roamed back and forth in front of me a few times so I was sure to see him. He blew his nose, spoke to the dog, bashed things about in the kitchen until finally I got off and said to him -

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT

Turns out he wanted a couple of invoices typed up. Now I'd just like to point out that we're talking 7.30am here. Thats the trouble with having a home office, people think you're on call 24/7.

I was really really cranky.

really cranky

Today my baby is 17. I said to Daz, I guess we should stop treating her like she's 13, she's almost an adult. The years have flown by.

So what was going on 17 years ago that I remember. Well I was enormous because I'd put on 25 kilos, and I spent amost every day in a pair of green bib and brace overalls. I had a four year old and a two year old and we drove around in a 1964 Valiant station wagon that broke down so often the NRMA man showed me how to fix it myself. Lloyd wet his pants at playgroup, I left Kimba there, drove home to get him some clean ones, the car broke down and I sat down on the step and cried. Thats when I knew I was having going to have a baby that day.

Sure enough at 3am I woke up Daz and said lets go to the hospital. Then we stood on the front verandah and had a fight about what car we were going in. I refused to get in the Valiant. He wanted to go in the Valiant because his mother actually drove to the hospital to have him in that very same Valiant. Cheryl came out and said - for gods sake kids, just get in a car and go to hospital. We didn't go in the Valiant.

I don't have any photos of Lizzie now. She refuses to have her photo taken.

So here she is when she was little and sweet.

 

 

And here she is when she used to let me dress her up and take photos of her. God knows what the neighbours thought if they were looking over the fence.

 

 

And here's a sneaky one I got recently. Now she's sort of sweet and sour.

 

 

And here we have Jem and myself celebrating last night. I think we thought it was our birthday.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIZZIE.

MWAH, MWAH

Have you ever experienced a natural disaster? If so: when, where and what happened?

Well yes thanks for asking. Only a minor one. But we were declared a disaster area so I guess it counts. It was a hail storm. About 10 minutes of massive noise and blustering winds and great destruction.

I was home with the three kids. They were all very young then. They would have been 2,4 and 6. There were two very loud claps of thunder and I just had time to go out and lock the dogs in the laundry before it started. We live in a house thats over a hundred years old so it had a tin roof then and the noise was tremendous. I sat us all in the middle room of the house because I thought the wind might smash the windows. And it did in some houses. People were finding pieces of glass stuck in the walls opposite the windows.

Lucky for us the room we were sitting in was the one where the piano was, and Lizzie (who was 2) decided it would be a great opportunity to impress us with her piano playing skills. This involved a lot of random bashing of many keys. So that made a tremendous noise as well. At the time I thought it was a bit like the band playing as the Titanic went down. But it was distraction I guess because we couldn't talk anyway over the noise of the storm

When it all ended we tried to go outside but the doors were jammed shut because the hail was piled up so high. When we got outside it was blue sky and sunshine. And a lot of water. And smashed up cars everywhere. I had this old black jaguar and it had holes smashed right through it. So that was a pretty sad end for a nice old car.

Our house held up well. The ones that were really hammered were the ones with tiles on the roof. My tomatoes and other trees in the backyard were just stripped. Just sticks. And lots of dead birds about. And some cats drowned under peoples houses.

But everyone in town got a new roof so that was good. And heaps of people got a new car out of it as well. Well, so long as your insurance was up to date.

It was our dog Billie who came out of it traumatised. She was a red cattle dog and she was terrified of storms after that. We couldn't go away for the day and leave her in the yard. Even if we were home, first sign of a storm and she'd scramble over the fence and run away. It was very annoying.

Daz missed it. He was out of town working. His apprentice had left his car outside our house and it was hammered and just about floating away. I rang them up and said - errr, I think you'd better come back to town. But he misses all the disasters. He missed the earthquake as well.

I was laying on the bed on Sunday afternoon reading a book when Lizzie came in and said

I don't want you to freak out, and I don't want you to come and look, just tell me what would be the best thing to get nail polish off bathroom walls and floors.

Bloody hell I thought, there's no way I'd ever want to look at that.

Gumption maybe, Ajax, what about nail polish remover.

Ok, it involves a broken bottle as well.

Off she went and got to it. She was back about ten minutes later and said

Do we have an old toothbrush?

Yikes, I thought, that sounds bad, must be in the grout as well.

What colour is the nail polish?

Black.

of course

She walked past a bit later and said

good as new

It was only then that I was game to venture into the bathroom. Which did seem fine. Except for the overpowering fumes of nail polish remover.

And at least she was old enough to deal with her self. Unlike the time she set the bedroom carpet on fire when she was four. She tried to deal with that but when it got too complicated just decided the best thing would be to walk away from it and pretend it never happened.

We laugh about it now.

Sometimes in the morning, when I look at the clock and see its 6.25am, I just want to turn over and say

Go away Lady Ga Ga

Because she's my alarm, and I know she'll be telling me about her poker face at 6.30.

But I don't. Instead I get up and have a glass of water, then a cup of coffee, then another glass of water, then I get on the treadmill and run 6.6kms. I'm pretty impressed with myself as well. Yesterday I put the speed up to 8.8kms per hour. Surprising how much faster that felt than the previous 8.5kms per hour.

But its been chilly in the morning here. - 3 somedays.

It was -3 on Sunday when we got up early to take the little getz for a drive. Here she is in her new hotness with mag wheels and tinted windows.

 

We were up early and off to see The Art of Dr Seuss Exhibition. I love Dr Seuss. The world would be a much better place if everone could find their inner Seuss. I wish I had a spare couple of thousand to buy one of his paintings. Or two. I'd love to have the Flower Fish, Martini Bird and Joyous Leaping of Uncanned Salmon in particular.

I'd liked to have lived in his mind for even a day or two.

I think its off to Sydney next and worth a visit if it comes near you. Free as well.

And we fit five of us in the getz. And it still pumped around. I can park in places I never would have considered before.

And nice to catch up with the kiddies and have breakfast with them as well.

Except that cranky one in the middle there who won't let you take her photo. Or talk to her. Or look at her. But thats ok, we're used to her now. And we've already had two of them and they do turn back into human beings one day.

 

 

I bought a new car on Friday.

I wasn't thinking about a new car Friday morning, but by 3pm I had one. Its a tiny weeny little Getz. Its on a truck on its way here from South Australia so hopefully I'll have it on Tuesday. And for someone who has no interest in cars, I'm pretty excited about it.

I'd been thinking of getting a new car a few months ago. I was ready to down size. For years I've been driving this huge toyota avalon. We bought it when the kids were going through their mutant teenage growing years and we bought that model because it had the most leg room in the back.

And it has been fantastic and reliable.

But now the two eldest kids have left home and Lizzie is usually driving around with friends and it seemed ridiculous for me to be driving this huge V6 tank about.

So we went looking at cars and they were so expensive! Even if we traded in the toyota we were still going to have to hand over about $25,000. So I said - forget it. There are other things I'd rather spend the money on. I mean thats a couple of overseas trips or a big slug off the home loan.

But then on Friday Daz comes home and said this Getz was for sale, brand new, drive away, for $13,000. So if I traded in the Toyota I'd have a new car for under $10,000. The guy said I'd get more for the toyota if it wasn't covered in dents and hail damage and peeling paint.

So we figure we buy this, its easy for Lizzie to learn to drive in and perfect for me to zoom zoom about town in. Oh but the power, or lack of it makes me smirk. I'm not going to be able to overtake everyone on the highway anymore, like I usually do. Especially if I have the airconditioner on. And I won't be able to take the death gap either without a few tests.

But we didn't really consider highway driving when we bought it. Because in his parallel universe where he lives, Daz is an american. And he drives this huge chevvy truck that all the boys in town are gaga over. So when we need to do any big trips we can use that.

I wish it was here now though. I am my fathers daughter. Once I decide to do something I must do it or have it instantly. I was willing to take the green one they had there just so I could have it NOW, but we decided on blue in the end, so it'll be here through the week.

So actually my answer to yesterdays QOTD about what do you wish you'd said to someone but didn't would be

do you want to come for a drive in my new car

zoom zoom

 Kimba, and her friend Riley, are going to be bridesmaids for a friend on the weekend. On friday morning they will fly off to The Whitsunday islands to get the job done.

And on Sunday night I was in bed, minding my own business, when lloyd walks in the door with these two dresses and says.

Here are the bridesmaids dresses.

Yes, I said, here they are. Did they feel like going for a car trip?

Don't you know about them?

Nooooo, what about them?

Kimba sent them back so you can do some repairs on them. One has a rip and one needs the straps taking up.

Sneaky, devious child!!

I immediately get on the phone to her.

Have you ever actually seen me sew in your 21 years?

No.

Well thats because I can't sew!

But, I'm not one to back away from a challenge so I got out my trusty sewing kit and set to work. You never really know when you're going to need some green glitter and a map pin do you. Hmm, no black cotton.

 

But I got the job done. I fixed the ripped bit and I shortened the straps. And they're even almost the same length.

And Jem was there, admiring my sewing skills, passing me the measuring tape, offering support, drinking coffee, that sort of thing.

And as I held up the dresses to admire she said

Do you know what would be really funny?

What?

If we put on the dresses and took photos of ourselves.

And you know what?

It was pretty funny.