June 5. Day 156. A feather in my cap

Most of the time I am my own worst enemy and my harshest critic (although being a parent of a teenager does mean frank character assessments are freely available).  But occasionally even I do have to admit that I get it right. So I shall give myself a feather in my cap for today's picture on two grounds. One, I am rather chuffed with this image. I was watching the birds while at dog park and fired this off. Even at the time I thought it kind of spec and couldn't wait to get home and have a look. But here's the thing. When I got home it was gone. In the past two and a half years I have taken literally hundreds of thousands of photos and I have developed a very sophisticated system of managing the files. I never delete straight off the camera. Ever. Today, however, I did. Somehow. Which brings me to the second ground and that is perseverance. I was not going to take the case of the missing photo lying down. So a great deal of time and effort went into data recovery and ta-da, here it is. Isn't that rather Yankee  Doodle Dandy?

June 4. Day 155. The eye's have it

I am having an extreme problem with focusing of late.
In part this is the result of being driven to distraction by fatigue but there is a more pressing problem.
My inability to focus is almost certainly related to the fact my most recent pair of prescription glasses is no more, it has ceased to be, it has become a dog chew. While I would have thought a $2 ball would be perfectly suitable as a pooch play thing, Rumple decided otherwise. In a manoeuvre that involved climbing from the bed to the bedside table he grabbed the glasses and managed to destroy both the frames and one of the treated, graduated insanely expensive lenses in the blink of an eye.
It was of little to no consolation that in the optometrist showroom I where I despairing went to buy a replacement pair, there was only one other customer - a woman about my age choosing a set of frames to replace the glasses her dog had just consumed. Both dogs are serial offenders. Her fur friend has now taken out three pairs. It is quite reasonable to ask "how are these dogs able to get away with it?". Well, here's the thing. My vision may be more than a little blurry at the moment but I am not so blind that I can not be influenced by those puppy dog eyes and the "Sorry Mum" look. I know I'm being conned but it is hard to focus on my anger when the tail wags. Before I've had time to reflect on what it is I'm annoyed about he's off breaking some other house rule and my heart in one go. That's why they call it puppy love, I see that now.

June 3. Day 154. In a big flap

My community is is a grip of a very bad outbreak of assessment stress. I have a double dose being infected on both the work and domestic front. The work stress I can deal with. I am used to it and I plan for it and have more or less learned not to spread myself too thin. The home stuff is far more acute. Year 11 has certain people in a flap. There is also a quite pronounced ripple effect - when one person has it the aftershocks spread to the whole house and soon everyone feels like they are being engulfed in a sea of awful. While it is not a condition I would wish on anyone, I admit it is vaguely comforting to know that there are other households in the same boat.This afternoon I spoke to a friend with a daughter in Year 11. They are also trying to navigate their way through the stormy sea of assessment overload. As far as I can tell the only safe ways through are to batten down the hatches and eat chocolate or flee as fast as one's little (or in this case big fat) legs will carry you. I've been doing a lot of option one but this afternoon adopted the second option and I must admit the fur friend and I rather enjoyed our time at South Bank where the waters were far calmer even if the wildlife was still in a bit of a flap. But then we had to return to the nest and try the best we could not to ruffle any feathers.

June 2. Day 153. An Ace up my sleeve

If you want to know the naked truth, I don't like Mondays very much. But this particular Monday I had an ace up my sleeve - a diary entry that read "Naked Magicians". Yep, I'm shallow but the concept of buff men in their birthday suits pulling rabbits from goodness knows where rather tickles my fancy. Over the course of my lifetime, it would be fair to say I've seen far more than my fair share of live performance. But apart from the occasional flash of nude bits in shows such as Shirley Valentine almost all of the performers I choose to watch keep their kit on. I know. How very conservative of me. Even though generally I get a kick out of good costuming these boys do all right without it just quietly. Their motto is "Good magicians don’t need sleeves, great magicians don’t need pants". Some may debate this but I reckon we could all do with both a little more magic in our lives - and a good laugh.

June 1. Day 152. All's Fair

If you were to meet your teacher on a Sunday afternoon knowing he was grading your exam that night would you
a) be extremely polite, helpful and perhaps even suck up just a little?
or
b) grab a sponge, soak it in water, take aim and let him have it?
A smart person would, of course, answer A. But how dull is that? Let's face it, all fair's in love and at the school fair. You pay your $1 for the right and Year 7 teacher Mr Sainsbury is fair game, literally.
So it was this afternoon at the West End State School annual fete. With sponge throwing being just one of the highlights of the afternoon, it's little wonder most of the school community seemed to have gathered on the school oval for the festivities. The weather on the first day of what Queensland laughingly call winter doubtless contributed to big turn out. When it's 26 degrees and sunny with barely a breeze, taking a sponge full of water in the face is not such a bad way to lose an hour on a Sunday afternoon. But should any of my students read this and think the take-home message is that an assault with a wet sponge is the best path to a fine grade, think again. I was at the fete lured by the prospect of a marinated lamb and haloumi wrap and the realisation that spending a day like today inside bonding with exam papers would be just plain wrong. The wet sponge will come tonight when I battle to stay awake and finally face those papers. Let's just call that fair's fare.

May 31. Day 151. Singin' and dancin' in the rain

Jumping for joy (from left) Xanthi, 6, Skye, 8, Brianna, 7, Eloise, 8 and Madeleine, 8

And little Summer clearly can't wait to join the bigger girls on stage

Beautifully styled hair and perfect make-up has no greater enemy than rain - but try telling that to the young ladies of Jam Performing Arts. They were poised, talented and beautiful but they'd been up since 5am, their eisteddfod performance was over and it was mid afternoon and raining. So what are young girls to do but to take their moves outside on to the soggy school oval? Yep, you can't take the dance moves out of the child any more than you can take the child out of the dancer. And let's face it, who would want to? As the mum of Drama Teen, I know there's a huge difference between a stage mum and the mother of a child on stage. I also know it's the same with dancers but TV shows such as Dance Mums do nothing for the image of the average parent of a child who just loves to perform. Sure you have to drive Mum's taxi and open and wallet (often) but the passion and drive comes from within not from tiger parenting. I didn't see them on stage but given they have an average age of just 7 and were dancing in an Under 12 competition it's clear they have professionalism and talent to burn. Talking to them it was also clear that they had a dance vocabulary way beyond my own but in the end these girls just want to have fun and that's how it should be.

May 30. Day 150. Taking flight

Humans consider themselves so smart yet it is other species - such as birds, whales and wealthy Victorians - that migrate for the winter. With only two days left of autumn I again need to consider how I plan to survive winter. Hibernation, on the surface seems attractive, but it apparently involves not eating. That will never work. The model I want is more like taking to bed for several months with one's head under the doona. I'm told that's defined as laziness not hibernation. So I'm back to migrating, a concept which even I admit seems somewhat ridiculous given the weather of late. Certainly this kookaburra was laughing at something and I'm pretty sure it was me. Ok, I admit today's maximum of 25 is not "exactly" freezing but yesterday was 28 degrees do you can see where this is heading - south. This is pretty much exactly the opposite direction from where I'd like to be heading right now. Frankly I have more than I care to admit in common with the whales and they have all started their journey north. So laugh, kookaburra laugh, but warm my life must be.