Country Life: You don’t get this stuff growing wild at my place.

I have had a weekend of fun and funny catch-ups with friends, and has given me pause to think about how different we all are.

I think that I have the best job in the world, and so some days I look around at all of the people, doing all of the different things, and wonder at why they aren’t all chiropractors like me.

I think that I live in the best part of the world, and so some days I look around at all of the people, living in all of the different places, and I wonder at why they don’t all live at my place.

And the list goes on.

Because every day that I consciously choose this life and the things in it, I am expressing my preferences and crafting out a little more of the story of my life. And because I love all of the things that I get to do, and feel so lucky that I have somehow been able to make all of these choices, I find it weird that not one single other person on this planet is choosing that same things as me. Why aren’t you all trying to muscle in on my space?

Could it be that you like your choices?

Seeing my country friends on Saturday, and the things they love, and then seeing my overseas friends on Sunday, and listening to the things they love about their home, made me smile and smile at how much I love the decisions I have made. All of the little choices that I have made over the passing years, that make me, me. I also loved that we are all able to sit around a table together, share a meal and some laughs, find our common ground and relish the things that make us similar, but then also search out the differences, and rejoice in the things that make us so unique.

Vive la difference!

…From The Ashers

Golden

Sometimes kids can be annoying. They can be silly, they can make annoying noises, laugh at inappropriate things, get ALL of the toys out, not eat their dinner, have to be reminded to do basic, basic stuff, and, you know, just be kids. So annoying.

And other times they aren’t like that at all. They are amazing, and you get a little sideways glimpse of the adults they may become.

We had a weekend like that here.

On Saturday Liam went to a coding workshop at the library. It’s something that he has wanted to do all year, but the course fills up quickly and he has been on a waiting list. It finally began this week. I can’t tell you how excited he was to go, and how bubbly and light he was when he came home. At ten years of age he was one of the younger kids there, yet still he put his hand up to present his coding results at the end of the course, in front of everyone. Who does that willingly? I suspect he is not of our making. He has somehow, in the ten years he has been under our care, made himself.

At times I forget to parent the kids that I have, and try to parent the kids that I think I should have. I try to stop them from reading and writing stories and playing make-believe games with sound effects and mess. I tell them to “get outside”, to kick the footy, ride a bike, run around. And of course they do do those things at times, but that is not what comes naturally to them, or at least, not always. Today is a day off and I asked them what they would like to do, open slather, anything you want. Answer: a resounding chorus of “Pajama day”. So, in trying to parent some other mythical children, I said, “How about a bike ride instead?” They both just looked at me blankly, and Coco said, “Why did you ask us what we wanted, if you were just going to make us do something else?” Fair question. And why would I want my little dudes to be anything other than who they truly are?

For those little dudes did something pretty cool on Sunday.

They planned out an event called ‘The Golden Garage Sale’. They culled their cupboards and collected bits from other people to sell. The made signs, they dressed in gold, and they sorted things into themes. (Coco is still gutted that the goods in her “Pinkatorium” didn’t sell out.). When customers were scarce, they went out onto the main road and danced around with their signs, to drum up business. Liam did some busking, and Coco jumped up and down.

Ready for business

And they did all this for charity.

For gold coin donations.

This was all without direction from us- Liam chose to do it and how it would go. He explained what was going on to all of the customers, and managed to get quite a few donations, as well as sales. Several times during the planning I tried to add things, change the charity, or just generally make it how I thought it should be, and he would quietly say, “It’s my garage sale, Mum.”

And he was right.

This life is theirs for the taking.

They should be allowed to play this game however they like. It’s their game. Their days are just how they should be, the most perfect way for them. Not me, not Nath, not some other kid up the road. Them. And these days are just fine.

In fact, they are golden.

…From The Ashers

There are two children in this family, but sometimes by these posts you could think there was only one. The one who demands more time and attention. The one with all of the needs, that sometimes take over the other, more mundane requirements of a family. The squeaky wheel.

We also have a quiet wheel. A kid who has not given us a moment of trouble since the day he was born. Hang on, that isn’t strictly true- we had a day when he was about a month old called Black Sunday. I remember it well because there was stupid car racing on the telly, and Nathan wouldn’t turn it off, and the kid somehow got overtired and cried and cried and just WOULD NOT SLEEP for a whole day. That one day, I thought he might never sleep again. For those moments, I feared that this may never pass, and that my life would always be like this, with a crying child and a grumpy husband, that I would be pacing the house juggling the two of them forevermore. Then he fell asleep and it was all over, and I learned that he was the type of child who thrived on routine and structure and in knowing what was coming next. So I never varied from the predictable again.

So this baby who was soothed by schedules has become a boy who is independent and knows his own self. He knows what he likes, often before he even tries it, and he can be tricky to coerce into things he has already made up his mind about. So of course, because I am the mother and I worry about things that have not even happened yet, I try to modify that, to make him more open to change, to try new things, to do be okay with spontaneity (even though deep down I suspect it has “its time and its place”*)

That child also came on the bush walk.

His challenges were different to his sister’s. He found the actual activity easy, but he soon tired of the sameness that is the Australian bush. He said he felt like we were just walking around in circles, and that there had better be a good reward at the end of this trip, because the journey sure was boring. I almost laughed aloud at how similar we are. As his sister and father were looking up down and all around at all of the different trees and plants and trying to spot wildlife, we were stomping ahead, intent on ‘getting there’. For us the joy of the journey was in the arriving. We have a lot to learn, my boy and I, from those other two. (Remind me sometime to tell you the story of the Woolomi Lighthouse.)

Once we ‘arrived’ he immediately got prepared for the fun to start. He had seen a rope tied to a tree that someone had left behind, and he was keen to swing into the rock pools. I said to go ahead and do it, mainly because I didn’t think he would.

So I sat back and watched his preparations: testing the rope for strength and then for fastness. He then did three or four practice swings, swinging out over the water, making sure he had the distance right, the grip on the rope sufficient. He did things that I wouldn’t have thought to do. I asked him what made him consider all of these variables. “Standard safety checks, Mum,” was the reply.

Oh. Okay then. You would have thought it came with a manual.

Finally it was time for the real deal.

Got the camera on Mum? Check.

In video mode? Yes Liam, I said check.

Okay, here we go then.

I held my breath a little, still thinking he wouldn’t really do it, but holding it just in case he did, and cracked his head on the rocks or something, not wanting him to do it, yet really wanting him to dare to do something outside his comfort zone.

I didn’t video it.

He gave me a foul look (that I suspect I will see some more of in the years to come) gave the little sigh that leaks out when you have to deal with idiots, and prepared to do it again. For fun? No, for the camera. I pretended for a while that I still wasn’t getting the shot, just to make him do it over and over. All of the videos are almost exactly the same. He swings the same way every time, drops at the same moment, surfaces, and gives me a thumbs up. Mission accomplished.

Pretty much how he does his life.

When did you last do something that takes your breath away?

Are you trying to change someone’s ways because you think they could be better?

*A quote to run your life by right there: from the character, Alison, in “The Sure Thing”, sometime in the 80s.

Also: I would have loved to have shown you the video (which I did take) but I can’t figure out how to import it over here. Feel free to enlighten me WP nerds.

…From The Ashers

Things that ‘normal families’ do on weekends: go for long walks on the beach, play sport, go for bike rides.

Things that families with different kids do on weekends: go and be the test-patient in the doctors’ exams, prepare for transfusions, go and give thank-you talks at the blood bank, get interviewed and photographed for articles in the paper about the need for blood donations.

We have never been for a bush walk.

One of our kids is seven years old, and we have only just taken the pram out of the back of the car, because we never know when we might have to use it, when her little legs will seem to run out of oxygen, and she will need to be helped along for a while. Seven is too old to be in a pram- I know this because a lady once told me when we were at the shopping centre, so I didn’t take the pram so much after that, preferring to use a shopping trolley instead, regardless of whether or not I had any groceries.

This seven year old kid is also a strong-willed little thing, which means she wants to do the things that the other kids do. She wants to walk to the park, walk to the ferry stop, walk along the boardwalk. It’s just that sometimes she can’t. When she was little it wasn’t much of a problem if she couldn’t make it, as I was able to carry her. I did it so often my left arm is much bigger than my right, with bulging biceps and triceps. (Shame it didn’t help the tuckshop arms.)

When we went to Bali, all of the Wayans said that I was like a Balinese mother, carrying my child until she was grown up. I didn’t tell them it wasn’t by choice. I was a baby-wearer by default.

Sometimes in my weaker moments I wondered what would happen once she was too big for me to carry. Would we get a wheelchair, a motorised scooter, or would we just stay home?

This weekend was different.

This weekend we braved a bushwalk to Kondalilla Falls. We thought we would just go down to the rock pools at the little falls and that would be it, but the children wanted to go ‘all the way around’. We looked at each other nervously, and decided to give it a go. There were times when I thought she wouldn’t make it, and times when I thought her wobbly legs would make her trip, and fall over the edge of the path to some unknown.

There were some mishaps…Of course

She surprised me with her stamina and her tenacity, and it gave me an opportunity to talk to the kids about effort and resilience and about staying the course, even if things get tough. Most gratifying of all, I got to use the words of my gorgeous friend Sam Naudin, who embodied the spirit of all we were discussing: Never, never give up.

Beautiful

Sam would have loved this walk, this discussion, this life that we are so lucky to have before us for the grabbing. She loved a bit of “huff and puff” as she called it.

I like to think she whispered in Coco’s ear a couple of times, to help her keep on going.

It would have been just like her.

Coco found a heart rock for you Sam.

RIP Sam.

I think of you often. Coco said she wants to the National Park walk out to “Sam’s Gates” next. 

…From The Ashers xx

We had a bit of a drive ahead of us this afternoon, and the Big Bad Bruce is very long and very straight.  So the “tired” adults who had had ample refreshments the night before, needed something to amuse themselves.  The Evil Genuises had “How much longer, what time will we be home, are we there yet?” on high repeat.  Of course.  When I’m tired.  Evil Genius 2 had just looked at the clock on the dash for the seventeen thousandth time and noted it was 2.09pm.  Two minutes since she last looked.  A cunning plan was concocted from the front end of the vehicle.  I distracted them by getting them to look at “more boring cows” as Nathan turned MissXtralia2013 into a Delorean.  Swiftly and without delay, he changed that clock to 1.54pm.

Within a minute or so EG2 looked at the clock again.

WHAT?

WHATJUSTHAPPENEDWEHAVEGONEBACKINTIME!

MUMDADWEARETIMETRAVELLINGWHATJUSTHAPPENED?

Minds.Blown.

Much whispering and muttering and hushed clock-watching ensued.

They are still talking about it tonight, wondering what on Earth happened.  This is despite Evil Genius One wearing a watch.  With the correct time on it.  So you can see that I use the term “Genius” fairly loosely.  I’m thinking that we might save this little glitch for that exact part of the Bruce Highway forevermore.  Maybe call it the BerNambour Triangle or something.  Just to reinforce the phenomenon,  we are going to watch Back To The Future on movie night this week.  Their brains are gonna explode.  (And I can watch a sweet bit of MJF, if you don’t mind.  Nath can see a cool car.)

Other things we did to amuse ourselves this day:

• We reminded them it was Monday, and took them to school this afternoon.  Pretended we were going to drop them off. They were squealing.  I think with laughter.
• Showed them some clips from ‘Gremlins’ and told them that Mogwai are real.  They want one for Christmas.  Should get that Macbook taken off the list, so Santa can bring something of his own choosing.
• Told Coco that when she has to do a reading at a school thing this week that the teachers will think it is really funny if she says “meow-meow, meow, meow-meow-meow” instead of reading her part.

So all in all we had a productive day.  Looks like the week ahead is shaping up to be a ripper.

How was your weekend?  Did you tell your kids any good stories?

…From The Ashers xx

So The Ashers are on a secret mini-break in New Farm.  Secret because we are at Mum’s joint (who is currently holidaying herself around bloody Europe on my inheritance), and we haven’t told her.

We have availed ourselves of the house rules:

Please take note of rule #1.

We have already broken that one (we have Evil Geniuses remember).  Plus 2, 3, 7 and 8.  We plan on breaking 4 and 5 shortly.

But I digress.

The real purpose of this blog is that we went to NEW FARM PARK.  The best and most dangerous park in the Southern Hemisphere.  Have you been?  It’s amazing, in that the park is built into the wizened old Moreton Bay Figs.  It’s sweet.  I’ll take some pics tomorrow if I can be bothered.. I didn’t have the foresight to take the camera today.  To up the ante I took a friend who has no children.  So that was fun.  Or something.

Here are the things we saw:

• A man who’s pants were so low we could see in excess of 4cms of flabby white person builders’ crack.  This was highly undesirable.
• Parents paying no attention to their own children what-so-ever, and then asking the other child (who was approximately four) “Where’s your brother?”  Met by blank stares.  Now I don’t wanna dis New Farm, but let’s face it, it has a very ‘mixed’ residency.  So this is not particularly good parenting.  Or safe.
• Tattoos, piercings, small people climbing up extremely high things, children getting kicked in the back, small people falling off very high things, volleyball, a wedding, tightrope walkers, crying children, drunk adults, a throw ball game, a dodgy dude who may or may not have been looking for a kid to steal- or a drink, laughing children, kids drunk on spinning, some mums who may or may not have been drinking screwdrivers, and one little lemony-skinned fairy (mine).

So all in all, a pretty good initiation for my mate into the “other world” that exists that side of a viable uterus.  I think there’s a fair chance her womb is now barren.

Now excuse me, we have this to attend to:

This is what happens when you have mates with no kids. #winning

See you on the other side…

…From The Ashers xx