June 12. Day 163. Day dreaming

There's this test called the mini mental.  It's a series of simple questions such as "what day of the week is it?", "who's the prime minister", "where are we now?" and "count back from 100 in sevens". Medical practitioners use it to test for dementia and by repeating it can tell how the disease is progressing. Given that my father died of Alzheimer's Disease at age 62 there's a fair chance I'll be subjected to a few of these tests in my time. I can only hope they don't start in a week with a public holiday. Quite frankly I haven't had a clue what day it is all week. That Monday holiday thing really throws a girl. As I'm not teaching at the moment and Drama Teen is in "exam block" and not adhering to the normal school timetable only serves to completely throw me. That and the fact that I'd generally prefer to forget who our Prime Minister is might be seen as a definite sign of mental impairment. The thing is the Fur Friends in my life are much better at knowing what day it is than I am. I have not run any scientific study on it but I'm pretty sure Rumple can interpret small visual clues and know what's on the day's agenda. Wednesdays I get up particularly early and get dressed in proper clothes as soon as my feet touch the floor. Every other day as soon as I move he's behind me a fact which has earned him the nickname Shadow. Not Wednesdays. He seems to know that's the day I go straight to the ABC studios without him so he doesn't even bother to lift his head from the pillow. He goes back to sleep. Thursday Drama Teen goes to performance class at Albion and to fill in time during the lesson I always visit my Mum's and that means playing with cousin The Fed in the park. Both dogs seem to know this. Rumple can barely sit still in the car and Fed is up looking out the window waiting for us to arrive. Someone should devise a mini mental for dogs. I'm telling you, they are far more intelligent than we give them credit for. They are also cuter, and better at catching balls and ....

June 11. Day 162. Sorry mum

Becoming a parent really makes you want to do two things 1. Apologise to your parents and 2. Thank your parents, the exact balance of the two depending on the day. Today I wish to apologise for the food fights. Here I am not talking about the teen movie high school canteen food throwing fights but the fights about eating. As the mother of a teen who is possibly the world's fussiest eater, I  now know just how frustrating convincing a non-eater to eat can be. Might I say I was never a fussy eater as such but in my teen years I simply refused to eat breakfast. Ever. Being a good mother, my mum begged and threatened and bribed and used just about every other tool in the parent manual to get me to break my fast but I would not. I was not a morning person and the last thing I wanted to do first thing was eat. So I wouldn't. Eventually we reached an (unhappy) compromise. I would have a glass of orange juice before leaving for the school bus. A friend who caught the bus with me reminded me recently that I would tip the glass of juice into a pot plant as I left the house. I look back on that now in horror. There is no way I could conceive of not eating breakfast. A bowl of cereal first thing is an absolute must. The weird thing is, this food refusal business seems to be a very much human thing and a first world problem at that. Do other species refuse to eat? No, they do not. At South Bank this morning all the creatures seemed to be licking their lips in anticipation of the first bite of the day. No need to force feed, no need to food fight. Like I said "sorry mum".

June 10. Day 161. You have to laugh

I'm sure that most young children, if they ever stop to think about it at all, assume that the customs, sayings and routines of their family are probably shared by all families. It is only much later that one starts to question whether your own family is "normal" and in fact if there's any such thing as a normal family in any case. Certainly I never stopped to ponder whether other families called each other ridiculous nicknames, lived in fear of the wooden spoon (which was often threatened but never rarely if ever used), or had a specially carved indent in the concrete driveway perfectly shaped to hold a macadamia nut still so you could crack it open with a hammer. We did, so I guess I thought so did everybody. So I also never questioned the reason why kookaburras laugh. My mother always said it meant someone had wet the bed. While I never believed that I rather thought it was what all parents jokingly said in much the same way as they may have linked eating crusts and curly hair. I don't think anyone actually believed it but people said it anyway. I feel certain the bed wetting yarn didn't enjoy the same widespread appeal but to this day every time I see a kookaburra I think of bed wetters which is rather unfortunate for poor kookaburra. In my household now bedwetting jokes are normally associated with early rising. If the teen emerges before the alarm on a school day or before mid morning on other days my husband will always say "what happened? Did you wet the bed?" Today there was both a laughing kookaburra and an early rising teen on our property. Fortunately for all there was no bed wetting involved. A nice sunny spot on the pool fence gave the kookaburra something to crow about and a deluge of assessment due before school prompted the teen cave early evacuation. Mind you while there's not a lot to laugh about in washing wee from sheets dealing with assignment angst is hardly a bundle of laughs either. I just need to grin and bear it for one more day and then I can send drama teen out to sun himself by the pool and then we can all get some sleep.

June 9. Day 160. Military precision

Where there is Bookfest there is always Winston to gee up the crowds and point out the bargains

So many books, so little time

My friend Donna takes only one bag preferring to operate on a strict ration system. Vanessa, however, likes to ensure she is well kitted out for the endeavour and arms herself with either a suitcase or a granny trolley. My strategy lies somewhere in between in is actually akin to my philosophy to dieting - never take more than you can carry. Yep, it's Lifeline Bookfest time and whatever your approach a task that involves selectively sorting through literally millions of books on kilometres of tables needs a degree of military precision. Being accompanied by a book-loving teen with no sense of budgetary restraint is worse than letting a kid loose in a candy store. Still books won't rot your teeth and the money goes to a good cause so it can't be all bad. Also he was forced to operate under the same war plan as myself and laziness combined with the need to walk up the high hill home is a natural disincentive to over purchasing. In any event it was a pleasant afternoon out and I couldn't help but be struck by the irony that his escape from the books and a deluge of Year 11 assignments due tomorrow was to hit the books at Bookfest. Oh well, to each his own.

June 8. Day 159. Little Viking warrior

Call me a wimp but if a huge bloke four times my size charged at me at full pelt and bowled me over chances are you would need to call a passing ambulance or an undertaker. At the very least I would need a Bex, a cup of tea and a lie down and an afternoon in bed licking my wounds. But then, I clearly lack anything like Viking spirit. Modern life has made us soft or selfish but that could be just me. I'm a lover not a fighter (well, that's my excuse for a complete lack of resilience at least in a physical sense).  I would have been completely put to shame by a tiny little mini Viking who was part of a display at History Alive today. The Viking King was showing possible ways of dealing with a Viking charge when the little one went flying. He was winded and a little teary for a bit but then he was back and demanded a duel. Within minutes he had claimed the master's sword and was all smiles and the crowd went wild. It was all part of the colour and drama of a Queen's Birthday weekend tradition where history from many eras is played out in the Fort Lytton National Park. Even those with a preference of fashion circa 2014 and food cooked in a wood fired pizza oven or prepared by a barista are made to feel right at home (but a bit of chain wire is clearly an advantage when it comes to blending in). Perhaps next year I'll get with the program.

June 7. Day 158. Riding high

They say the apple never falls far from the tree. Perhaps this is so but I sometimes wonder whether my little apple blossom came not only from a different tree but perhaps from an entirely different orchard. It makes no sense to me that I was gifted an offspring with such an obsession for the stage (and for turning every waking moment into a drama as it happens.
 I know there are times when most parents question what block their little chip actually comes from just as most kids at some time think they must have been adopted because the people they call Mum and Dad couldn't possibly have the same DNA pool.Which brings me to nine-year-old Louis who was owning the skate bowl this afternoon. He'd line up with boys twice his age and give them all a run for their money.
There were, of course, the inevitable falls but Louis would just pick himself up, dust himself off and get back on the board to give it another go.
His dad was sitting on a fold up chair by the top of the bowl cheering Louis on. He told me Louis had been skating for three years. I presumed Dad most have been a skater boy in his youth but he set me straight. Nope, he said, no balance and coordination here. He's on his own. But he said young boys needed to let off steam in some way or another and if skating was Louis's thing he was happy to go along with that.
Yep, the stage might be a bit different but there is a young performer there just the same.

June 6. Day 157. If you can't stand the heat ...

Only once has my kitchen actually caught fire - and I wasn't even at home at the time. But still I have something of an aversion to smoke killed kitchens. What's more I'm not entirely convinced that anything that requires overalls, safety glasses and huge cylinders of gas to create is fit for human consumption. And yet when the menu is all about ice cream and the flavour palette includes rocky chocky road, salty caramel popcorn and lemon meringue pie, well I was prepared to give it a go. If nothing else seeing one's ice cream snap frozen on the spot at least gives you the confidence that it's fresh. Bloody good it was too - but I do have one complaint - ordering envy. Don't you just hate it when your order arrives and you know someone else has made a wiser, more considered selection? My Turkish Delight cone was good. My husband's honey and fig cup was better (I may or may not have snuck a lick when I was collecting the orders) So not fair. In fact I scream (ice cream ... get it?)