Off to University

Our eldest, Sarah, is about to leave home.  Not only to leave home but to trek miles and miles away where her next visit home will be between term times.  I was (I thought) quite well adjusted to the fact when I thought she was going to a university 3-4 hours away and would be home on weekends.

Now I am sure that I am not even remotely ready to let her go.  After 18 years of seeing this day coming – I am not ready for it.  Is any parent ever ready to let their children go?  Sure we look forward to getting our life back.  But then after 18 years – can you even remember what life was like BC?  Do you really want to go back there?

I was speaking to my father and he offered words of wisdom – as only fathers can.  In between bouts of being my dad, goading and belligerent – but that’s another story.  He said that as time goes on he realises that as a parent you are just privileged to share your life with your children for a short period.  Well that wasn’t the exact words that he said – but something to that effect.

Having now pondered those words overnight – how true they ring.  I look at my daughter and the beautiful person she has become and I am amazed.  I am incredibly proud of the beautiful people all my children are growing into.  But now I have a completed model.  And when I look at her and who she has become, I become aware of how little influence I really have over who she is.  She has enormous traits and talents – which are all her own.  Like a flower that has been planted and nurtured and grown and is now in full blossom.  But like a flower, all I did was (slight pause here while I adjust my voice to match Neil of the Young Ones) plant the seed. (Okay that was a terrible line but stick with me on this analogy).  I then grew the seed, but all the attributes of the flower were always in there.  She has amazing musical talent, amazing empathy with people around her, amazing skills in writing, amazing confidence and many, many more personal assets. These are all things that I don’t think have come from me at all.  All that I did was provide the elements for her to blossom and shine, and to share her journey of growing up.

Now that all the hard work is done, all I need to is to sit back and watch in awe as her life unfolds.  And hope that she continues to allow me to continue to share her life with us.

Politics

On a completely different topic – and one that could probably benefit from a dose of Harry enthusiasm - 'politics'.

Isn’t it a bit disturbing that the front pages of the newspapers today are filled with speculation about the leadership of OUR country.  Guess what – we don’t get to vote on any of this!  So the newspapers are run by fabulously wealthy individuals.  The newspapers report on what those fabulously wealthy individuals are thinking and tweeting.  These wealthy people are thinking we should sack a chief of staff to save the prime minister.  Guess what.  We didn’t vote for the chief of staff either.

Harry's first day of High School

Harry came home from his first day of high school yesterday.  He was so excited.  He had his timetable and he coloured it in with different colours for each subject line.  He then went and got all his subject books and coloured in the covers with matching colours.  Maybe it was influenced by the colours they are wearing at the Australian Open but it seemed that fluorescent highlighter colours feature prominently.

Harry is one to wear his emotions on his sleeve.  He has a dog like enthusiasm for anything he really loves.  It will probably fade by the time he gets to year 11 like Evan.  I would just like to bottle those moments of excitement and market them in pill form.  If I could just take a small piece of Harry enthusiasm and pop it just before going to work on Monday morning – just imagine.

That Penski file with its colour coding would be so motivating.

Keeping a Pet Teenager - Part Two - Feeding

Wow - is it really a year since my last post?  Golly - your teenagers must be hungry by now.

Feeding your pets can be a tricky business.  It is important you get it right.  Firstly there are two varieties.  Hopefully when you left the hospital you kept the tag around their wrist.  Somewhere on this tag is a small M or F.  These stand for Munchy ravenously hungry insatiable beast that emptys entire fridges mysteriously in the dead of night, or Feather light bird that flits from plate to plate departing with only a lettuce leaf but simultanously can sniff out and devour large blocks of dark cacao from 200 yards.

If you have the first, you will need 2 appliances and 2 ordinary everyday grocery items.

Firstly, make sure you have an extra large deep freezer.
Stock this with an acceptable form of forzen food.  In our case it was no-name brand meat pies, although dim-sims is an acceptable substitute.
Take a marker pen with you and mark a level at the top of the pile of junk food in the freezer.
Secondly you will need a microwave.
And lastly, make sure you have an extra large bottle of tomato sauce.

Now the key to successful feeding, is to invite your tenager to the table for meal times with the humans.  Pretend he is part of the family and ignore the grunts and groans when he has to part from his technology and computer screen to come to the table.  Don't worry about the fact that he pretends he is not hungry.  When he withers like superman in front of kryptonite and melts off his chair at the sight of green on his plate, carry on normally. 

Do not under any circumustances, mention anything about the bottle of sauce.  This is a mistake for rookies.  Do not talk about how it is supposed to be stored in the refridgerator.  Do not express suprise about how every morning it mysteriously appears on the bench alongside a dirty plate.  Because it has absolutley nothing to do with your teenager.

Just check the level in your freezer, and provided there is a gap between the mark and the top of the pies, your teenager is eating just fine.

If you have the second variety of teenager, you must adopt a modified approach.  This is a little more tricky, it takes a little bit of extra effort and communication, but the effort is well worth it.  There are a few sub-varieties of the F model and a myriad of variations between.  Current models out there include the raw food and nuts omno loactarian dieter, the vegetarian, the vegan, the pescatarian, the vegetarian that believes chicken are vegetables, the demi-vegitarian and the flexitarian. 

Basically,  The F model may or may not eat anything.  Once again the approach is to tear them away from either
a) reading about anguish stricken teenage girls staring mournfully at super powered vampires or werewolves
b) typing on exceptionally small screens meaningless phrases to other F models in far away places.

Once you have seperated them from distractions, also bring them to the table for a meal with the humans.  Feed them a wide range of normal food and observe their behaviour over several weeks.  Observe what it is they eat and what they don't eat.  Record this carefully in a log.  Once you have a list of acceptable items of food carefully compiled over several weeks you are ready to start shopping.

Beware though - you need to review your list on a weekly basis and update regularly.  Spanish kalimata double pipped olives stuffed with green capsicum may be perfectly acceptable one week, only to be replaced by double smoked pink salmon with Argentinian artichokes the next.

If all else fails, cheese and chocolate seem to work so make sure you have a stockpile of these as emergency rations. 

Good Luck and don't forget to smile at your teenagers

Keeping a pet teenager – Part One

So, you went out and got yourself a cute little baby as a pet.  Before you know it, they have grown out of their nappies and evolved into a teenager.  If you take good care of your teenager, he/she will provide you with many years of fun and amusement.  But beware there are some tricks to keeping these as pets.  Knowing and understanding your pet can help to keep them and you healthy and sane.

The first thing to remember about teenagers is that they are not human.  During their teenager years they evolve into strange creature that defy normal human rules of hygene, behaviour, risk , aversion, social etiquette and speech.  Don’t be surprised if your teenager loses the ability to communicate, wash, act civil, shower, or act sensibly near cliff edges.  Remember they are invincible and cannot die.

Do not stress about any of these behaviours.  Believe me, its not you, its them.  Smile, laugh and move on.  They will move on one day too.  One day they will choose your nursing home, spoon feed you and wipe the drool from your chin.  This is a time in your life where you do not want their memories of you in their teenage brain to be unpleasant ones.

Here are a couple of examples of teenage behaviour considered abnormal in humans, but is quite common amongst the teenager. 

The first is slothfulness.

Here is my teenager sitting on a child’s chair to eat breakfast because he was too lazy to take the chair behind him off the table to sit on like a normal human. 

You will notice that his chosen mode of repose is extremely uncomfortable, liable to break the child’s chair and cause bodily injury, and probably takes more effort than taking a real chair down to sit on.  The natural reaction of a human being on observing this behaviour is to automatically point out the alternative chair readily available.  This is a mistake commonly made by owners new to keeping teenagers.  You cannot attempt to use logic on a teenager.  These rules of logic and behaviour do not apply.  If you are lucky you will escape with a few grunts followed by a bout of sullen silence.  Alternatively, he may become aggressive, argumentative, slam doors, punch holes in the wall and remind you of all your personality flaws.  The best approach to these quirky behaviours is just to learn to enjoy them.

The second is competitiveness.

Teenagers are quite competitive in unusual ways.  Each teenager will have their own special talent or skill that they excel in.  The secret to keeping your teenager happy, is to discover their unique talent, and then train, encourage and build their skills in this area.  Some teenagers have an obvious talent in something such as sports, or maths or acting.  Other teenagers may have to be observed closely for many months before you can discover their unique talent.  Don’t worry if their unique talent is not immediately apparent.  Stick to watching them and you will discover their special skill.  After many months of watching my latest teenager, it was some time before I was able to pinpoint his special skill.  Here is his latest effort at stacking dishes. 

 

As you can see I have been training him and now he can stack three consecutive meals worth of dishes in one tray. With active encouragement he is now in training to represent Australia in the world dish stacking championships to be held on Tokyo this summer.

 

Stay Tuned for part two where we look at how to feed your pet teenager.

 

 

There's a fire in the house

A funny thing happened last night.  Funny looking back – not so funny at the time.

The power had been out all day and it was a balmy evening so we decided to cook on the barbecue until the power came back on.  The electricity people were fixing some poles but managed to dig up the council water mains (as you do) and were a bit slow getting the power back on.

Just after lighting the BBQ the power came back on.  Yay.  When dinner was nearly ready I wandered down to the bedroom to let dearly beloved who was with the baby know dinner would be ready soon.  Whilst down there she said can you smell something burning.  I, for a laugh said “Oh that’s just the house burning down”

Now here is a tip for the unwary – never joke about such.

On the way back outside through the kitchen I thought I would test the smell and see if there was any substance to the burning smell or if it was just BBQ smoke wafting through the house.  Of course I had a cold so I was a littler olfactory challenged at the time.

Through kitchen – Yes there is a burning smell that is not quite wood smoke.  Continue on outside – No its definitely stronger inside.

Return to kitchen – Check stove – Off, Check oven – off Check grill On – someone must have knocked it.

Now I will pause in the telling of the story here for a moment to give you the background to the next sequence of events.  I was unaware of this background at the time and it helps the story to tell it now as it explains what happened.

My dearly beloved, upon awakening in the morning decided to cook for brunch, bacon and eggs.  Eggs on the stove top and bacon in the grill.  Upon turning said cooking devices on she discovered the lack of energy to our residence was interfering with her plans for said brunch.  She turned the stove off – but not the grill.  During the day the grill door was closed.  When the power came back on the grill came back on and was heating up the grill tray which contained a quantity of bacon fat having not been cleaned by the elves since our last bacon cooking episode. Now back to the story.

Having discovered the grill was on – as indicated by the little light – I decided it must have been accidentally knocked on a smidgen during the days cleaning activities.  Having noticed a slight smell – I thought I would open the grill door to just check what it was that was burning.

Big Mistake.  At this point  in time the grill had been on for about 20 minutes and the bacon fat was well heated to smoking point but had no access to oxygen.  When I opened the door a huge plume of smoke poured out an oxygen poured in to the grill.  About one half of a second later the whole plate of bacon fat caught fire and leapt out the grill and started attacking the rubber seals on the oven and a couple of the kids paintings on the cabinets above the oven.

Brain kicked in and told me this was getting out of hand very quickly.  First reaction – call for help. Second reaction.  Hmmm need fire extinguisher said brain left.  Brain right says we don’t have one.  What do we have says left brain.  Fire blanket in laundry behind the mountain of plastic bags we are keeping.  Go grab fire blanket whilst continuing to yell for help.  Not sure what I need help for at this stage – just know this is getting out of hand.  Where the hell is this fire blanket and why on earth do we need so many plastic bags?

At this stage youngest son manages to peel himself away from computer games to see what dad is doing in the kitchen and why the house is now full of thick white smoke.  At this stage I should also mention the fire alarm decided to wake up and tell me something I already knew – the house is full of thick white smoke.

I used the fire blanket to smother the fire but it was still so hot that renegade flames still kept poking their head out from under the blanket to say hello.  All whilst still calling for help.  Finally at this stage with thick white smoke in the house, the fire alarm beeping continuously (rather annoyingly I must say), dad yelling for help and youngest son being very excited having seen a real live kitchen fire and demonstration of the use of a fire blanket, oldest son manages to pause his game long enough to  find his way to the kitchen.  I have decided at this stage that cause I can’t get the blanket all the way over the plate it needs to come out.  Luckily I have a pair of grandmas industrial grade oven mitts handy.  They don’t make them like that anymore. Eldest son – always cool in a crisis – says “what do you want me to do”.  I say open the front door – which he does whilst I carry tray out to the front lawn with occasional flames streaming from the plate when a waft of oxygen finds its way under the blanket.

Upon fulfilling his familial duties, eldest son then returns to his game amidst the house full of thick white smoke, annoyingly beeping smoke alarm, freaked out dad and excited younger brother.

He later would confide “Well I could see you had everything under control and there was nothing left for me to do”

Well the story ends here pretty much.  The fans were turned on and the building excavated for smoke.  i found out that eucalyptus oil can clean smoke and burn marks off a glass oven front really easily.  we need a new rubber for the grill.  I got a small burn to the forearm that should be right in a day or two.

The safety committee (beloved who stayed in bedroom throughout and eldest daughter who also stayed in room with earphones on) did a full review on the procedures in place and decided I should have just shut the grill door again.  Possibly they were right, but then there would be no flames and excitement to go with this story. 

Sailing

Family Sailing to be precise.  Me, my good wife (as opposed to my bad wife) and eldest daughter have signed up for a 7 week sailing course.  Unfortunately, as the senior member of the family (yes I am the oldest - not just a patriachal position of authority) and a male, the good wife expects me to instantly aquire the skills to sail around the world in a smooth and competant manner whilst she sips champagne and looks glamorous with the wind in her hair pouting on the bow as the sea spray miraculously sprays all around but not on her.

Reality check.  Last weekend was our third week and we covered abandoning ship.  Whilst tacking into the wind, said seafaring captain lost control of the rudder, boat span out of control and tipped precariously catching the captain off guard and unceremoniously being dumped in the drink whilst the sail boat careered away up the river with the crew (No. 1 daughter) still in boat.  Luckily (for me) the boat capsized shortly thereafter and I was able to swim across and rescue No. 1 and right the boat.  However, since then the good wife (GW) has described the incident as Captain abandoning ship and added a few years of training to our timeline for a classic sailing round the world trip.

This week the training module covered advanced topics such as steering without a tiller and towing.  The club does a lot of sail training and said boats are not the highly maintained scarcely used sailing sloops they once were.  They are certainly well loved, but the fixtures and fittings are well worn with numerous bodge jobs from gaffa tape and a piece of old fencing wire to make them servicable.  This week, once again with Dear Old Dad at the helm we tacked again only to find the boat spinning wildly in circles.  Now in the seafaring world it is not the done thing for crew to question the captain.  However, being new to sailing and unfamiliar with etiquette, crew asks what the bloody hell r u doing, before I even work it out myself.

Now when you are tacking, it requires the helsman(or woman) to change sides and steer the boat whilst passing the tiller from hand to hand behind his or her back.  During this time you are waiting for the sail to swing wildly from side to side so all eyes are at the front of the boat to avoid a collision between a fast moving piece of metal that holds the bottom of the sail (known by seafarers as the boom) and the head of helmsman (or woman).

After 3 weeks of practicing this tricky manoevre I thought I had the hang of it and everything was going smoothly.  Thus I couldn't understand why boat was moving in a direction different to the way I was steering with tiller.  As I turned head to look at what was going on it became apparent that bodge job of connecting tiller to rudder had failed, and now I was holding what was no longer a tiller, but a particularly useless piece of wood. The rudder was delighting in its new found freedom and whooping it up performing donuts in the sail boat that I am sure if it was being performed on dry land in a vehicle with smoking tyres would make Jeremy Clarkson proud.

Thank god for the rescue boat.  Another quick bodge job and we where away again.

Luckily for me, my pride was restored later in the day when GW and No. 1 went sailing in same boat later in the day without self.  With a good tidal rain and a stiff easterly breeze, the boat decided it would be funny to perform the same manoeuvre again.  Only this time the girls were whisked away upriver at a rapid rate of knots disappearing behind the she-oaks before the stiffening breeze blew the boat over and deposited girls in the drink.  The rescue boat appeared on the scene and the girls got a speed lesson on towing back up river.

Wonder what techniques we will be learning next week?