Neighbours

We moved house about two and a half years ago, to where we live now. As the crow flies we only moved 1.1 kilometres, but that was far enough to get away from some of the neighbours, of whom we weren't so fond.

On one side we had a lovely family, Mum, Dad and two daughters, one of whom moved out during the time we lived there. On the other side, an elderly couple who both eventually passed away, and their house was sold to some people who knocked it down, commenced work on a two-storey monster with a massive concrete fence at the front, and who would eventually lie to us and buy our house so that they can one day demolish it. Having built their fugly house on almost every square inch of their block, and then jamming a pool in the only bit of space there was left for their children to run around in, I guess they felt they needed our block as their back yard.

Across the road and down a bit was the single mum with the troubled teenager, who was often seen in the street screaming at his mum or her boyfriend, and was frequently visited by the police.

The street itself was busy, as people used it as a way of avoiding a major intersection. Our front room looked out on the footpath, so every time someone walked past the house it felt as though they were in our front yard. 

You can see why we wanted to move.

Where we live now couldn't be more different in lots of ways. We are the last house in the street, a nice quiet No Through Road. Instead of neighbours on our right side we have a local creek and walking track, with a playground five minutes in one direction, and roughly a twenty five minute walk to Mars' school in the other direction.

But one of the best things about where we live now is our new neighbours. You already know about X-Man and his baby brother Bumblebee. Their parents are Captain Spreadsheet and Ms Awesome, and they live two doors up from us. We didn't meet them until we'd lived in our house for just over a year, which looking back seems like a great pity. 

In between their family and ours lives the Z family, so named because they each have a z in their first name. Master Z and Baby Z are only weeks apart in age from X-Man and Bumblebee, and Mars and Venus are great friends with all of them.

But really, they are not our neighbours any more. They are our friends, and we are so grateful for them. In the last few days alone I've given a cup of sultanas to Mrs Z in the middle of a baking crisis, been out for lunch with Ms Awesome, borrowed some specialist screwdrivers from Mr Z to change a rear light bulb on the car after Ms Awesome followed me down the street to tell me the globe was blown, looked after X-Man for a while so his mum could have a break, and enjoyed Quiche Thursday with the two small boys, the two baby boys, the two mums and X-Man's Grandma.

And if you wanted any more evidence, it arrived tonight. I received a text message from Ms Awesome, enquiring as to my shoe size. Less than an hour later she quietly knocked on the door and handed me these.

And the reason for this wonderful impromptu gift? We were talking recently about classic literature and she knows I'm a fan of Jane Austen. So when she saw these boots with their scenes of the English countryside she was reminded of Mr Darcy, and of me.

And that's why her code name is Ms Awesome.

So I don't really think it's fair to call all these wonderful people my neighbours. Even though it is entirely accurate, it does nothing to explain how caring and thoughtful they are, and what a tight little community we've become, or how devastated we would all be if any of us had to move away.

Still, all things pass. So for now I am just so grateful, not for my neighbours, but for my friends who happen to live right here.

Training wheels

Before Christmas it became clear that Mars really didn't need the training wheels on his bike any more. So he and Supernerd spent some time out on the bike path practising, so that he would gain confidence and we would be able to ditch the training wheels forever.

Supernerd thought it might be a good idea to start by taking just one training wheel off, so Mars would feel that he was doing well, but would still able to use the second wheel as a kind of bike stand (his bike doesn't have one), and all the reports indicate that he only fell off two or three times each time they went out to practice.

Often when I think about my son I am greatly reminded of my younger brother, and the things he used to do when we were young. Any activity associated with riding tricycles or bicycles, wth or without extra wheels, was fraught with peril for my brother, and my parents used to keep a running tally called Gravity Versus Steven. Often, gravity was the victor.

Anyway, we asked Mars to explain to his Nana what he had been working on down on the bike path. The conversation went like this:

Mars: "Nana, we took one of the wheels off my bike!"

Nana (with tongue in cheek): "I hope it wasn't the front wheel."

Mars: "Yes, it was the front wheel! Now it's a unicycle with training wheels!"

So it becomes clear that not only has Mars inherited some of Uncle Steve's love/hate relationship with gravity, but he also shares some of the mad sense of humour that comes from my side of the family.

I believe that some fun times lie ahead.

Dream

Today I dreamed that I was pregnant. 

The dream started at the moment where I looked down to see a suddenly massive belly, and the shock of the realisation that what I thought was just gradual weight gain was actually something much more.

Then somehow, weirdly, I was able to discern the baby's head and cup my hands around it, and I knew that she was a girl, and I had to tell Supernerd about her, because he, like me, had no idea that she existed.

Then I woke up and, not surprisingly, never got back to sleep. 

I was a bit upset because she was beautiful, just like Venus, and I loved her. Even though she wasn't real and I knew it was a dream, I loved her. The mothering instinct is just that strong. I couldn't help it.

The plan is for no more children for us, and that was a hard decision to make for lots of reasons. So it was nice to fool myself for a few minutes, but hard to wake up from that dream and get on with my day. Thankfully we were going out, so I had other things to think about.

But as I sit down for some quiet time at the end of the day she comes back to me, and I know what I need to keep in mind above all things is that I am so blessed already, I have so much to be grateful for, not the least of which are people who love me and need me very much.

Venus may never have a little sister, it's true. But if she's very lucky, one day she might have a little girl of her own, and then she will begin to understand just how much I love her.

Science at the dinner table

Last night we were having dinner and we each had ice in our drink. Halfway through the meal Venus looked into her cup and said "My ice is gone". Not wanting to miss an opportunity for a science lesson we asked her where she thought it had gone. The conversation went like this:

Venus: "It turned into water." 

Supernerd: "What would you do if you wanted it to turn back into ice?"

Venus: "Put it in the fridge."

Supernerd: "Would it turn to ice there?

Venus: "No, it would just be really cold. It would have to go in the freezer."

Supernerd: "Why would it have to go in the freezer?

Venus: "Because it's all freezy and cold in there."

Supernerd: "That's right. Because the freezer is colder than the fridge."

Mars: "I know where else you could put it... in your anus."

In the moment between moments I was thinking just how unhappy I was that some obnoxious kid at school had taught him to be so rude, but the next thing he said was:

"Because uranus is a long way from the sun and it's really cold there."

So now I'm trying to teach him to pronounce it uRANus, which is the way I was taught as a child. It's not going well, but it's probably easier than trying to explain to him why I was choking on my dinner. 

Octonauts

Captain Barnacles, Peso and Kwazii have a lot to answer for. 

Aimed at preschoolers and early primary school children, the Octonauts is a beautifully animated TV series (originally from books) about a small band of ocean dwellers whose mission is "Explore. Rescue. Protect", and it's hard to know whether their hip and catchy theme song is totally awesome, or the most annoying tune to ever get stuck in my head.

Having said that, it is very cute to watch X-Man and Venus sit on the couch together and sing along to it.

What has been driving me crazy lately is that Mars and Venus know that there's going to be a new episode recorded on our Tivo every day (the show has only recently come to Australia),  and so every day when we get home from the school run I get hit with "Mum, can we watch the new Octonauts now?" every few seconds. Sometimes when we've just walked in the door. Sometimes before I can even get the front door open. Sometimes when we're still in the car with our seatbelts on. 

One day Venus made the mistake of asking me before we had even reached the driveway, and that's when we began to explain that hassling the parents makes us cranky and a lot less likely to say yes to requests for television.

Now what tends to happen is that we get home, Mars and Venus look at one another conspiratorially across the back seat, and they wait. We get in the house and put all our bags down, and then Venus will ask. Mars reminds her "Venus, you can't ask now. Mummy won't say yes if you ask now. You have to wait", and she knows he is right, so she waits. 

When Mars thinks I might be ready they ask again, and I put the television on and we watch the new Octonauts. Then they fight about which one they're going to watch next, and that's when I start to regret ever turning the television on.

But some good has come from the Octonauts, quite apart from anything the children may learn about narwhals, hydrothermal vents or comb jellies. 

Some nights when it's time to go upstairs to bed, nobody wants to go. So the other day when they were being a bit stubborn I called out "the last one upstairs is a barnacle on Captain Barnacles' butt". I've never seen them move so fast.

That night Supernerd was the last one up the stairs, and as we were waiting for Mars to finish brushing his teeth and for Venus to get off the toilet, she called out to him "Daddy, you're Captain Barnacles' butt."

We're giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she didn't hear me properly.

Oh, and by the way the remedy for having the Octonauts theme song stuck in your head is to belt out the theme song from Hawaii Five-O as loudly as possible. Trust me, it works.

Camping

The first rule of camping should be:

Pay close attention when you put up your tent.

We were pretty excited when we bought our first tent recently, and within 36 hours of the purchase we had erected the tent in the spacious back yard of some friends, and they were kind enough to let us stay the night as well. 

I thought Supernerd was being a bit nuts but he was right, it was a good idea to practise getting a tent up with two children helping, so that when we actually went camping the following week we would know what we were doing. And we did. Right up until the point where I put the fly on backwards.

I'm still not sure how I did it, and it doesn't really matter, but I must have fluked it on the practice run, because by the time I realised what I'd done it was mostly pegged down and too much of a hassle to fix. 

All it really meant was that we couldn't put our verandah thingy up because it was technically on someone else's campsite. On our second day that site was vacant so we did put it up and sit under it for a couple of hours, until someone backed their caravan in. So we hastily took it down while Supernerd explained to the nice woman from the caravan park what a twit I am.

The second rule of camping should be:

Don't let all the things that go wrong ruin your holiday.

I threw out my brand new picnic plates with the rubbish on our first night away, and I didn't realise until the rubbish had been moved along to the gigantic bin full of big black bags of rubbish, any one of which could have contained my plates along with goodness knows what else.

Supernerd wouldn't let me search the bin. Instead he did it for me and told me afterwards, but he couldn't find them.

I got really angry with myself for being so stupid. I had even made a mental note earlier that day to not do exactly what I did. 

The worst part though is that we were only away for two nights, so I really struggled to let it go and get on with the holiday. When I realised what I'd done we were only 24 hours from coming home and it wasn't quite enough time to recover, relax and enjoy myself properly.

Also the man in the next tent snored worse than Supernerd.

The third rule of camping, as Edmund Blackadder would have it, should be:

Make sure you buy a tent big enough for your family, with plenty of room for Mr Cockup to stay the night.

Haircut

Not long before Christmas I finally got the big haircut that I've needed for a long time, and now I have short hair like I had when I was the age Venus is now.

It's very short at the back and at the front I have bangs that fall in front of my eyes unless I do things to them, like pin them back or attack them with a straightener.

It's a good haircut. I really like it. I think there are only two people of my acquaintance who don't like it, and in the case of one of them I think it's because he just doesn't like short hair on any woman.

The good thing about this haircut is that my hair now takes only a minute to wash, and less than a day to dry.

The bad thing about this haircut is that now I have to wash my hair all the time, because I no longer have the lazy option of just pulling it all back into a ponytail and ignoring the fact that what it really needs is a wash.

Today I discovered another bad thing about this haircut.

I was out with the kids and a man mistook me for a boy from behind. A boy. A boy!

That's never happened to me before, and I didn't really know what to think. Then I realised that things could be much, much worse. He could have mistaken me for a boy from the front.

Now that would be bad.