Modern dilemma: Did I do the wrong thing?

This morning as I left the school after drop-off, swinging my keys and whistling because Mr5 had gone in like a dream, a worried little face approached me. "Excuse me," he wobbled, "what's the time?"

It was 9.10am.

"Are you waiting for the bus?" I asked.

"Yes, number four," he said. "I've been here about 25 minutes."

There is one bus that often runs late. It disgorges its kids after the bell at the primary school and I see high school kids getting more and more anxious waiting for it. I'd never seen this guy before, so surmised he was year 7. He was clearly worried.

So was I. The bus had never been this late before. I was thinking he'd manage to miss it.

I found myself in a dilemma. The mother in me wanted to put him in my car and drive him to school, taking the worried look off his face, and ensuring that he didn't stand at that bus stop all day.

But I was torn. The mother in me also didn't want to put him in the position of having to decide whether to accept a ride with a stranger. No matter how nice and well-meaning I was. Because the next stranger might not be so nice or well-meaning.

We stood and looked at each other. He wanted me to fix it for him, somehow. I wanted to fix it for him, somehow. But modern times have made it very bloody difficult to be charitable. Under normal circumstances, I would have whipped out my phone and rung his mum. But, of course, today of all days, I'd left my phone plugged into the wall, charging merrily, of no use to anyone.

"Do you live nearby?" I asked. He did. Around the corner.

"Maybe give it five more minutes and then pop home again," I said. I was relieved when he nodded, not saying 'oh, there's no-one there'. We looked at each other for another long moment before I smiled, wished him luck and walked away. Feeling like a heel.

I drove around the corner and was detoured by a policeman (thanks to an emergency situation), which brought me driving back around the block past my anxious little friend. I considered stopping and telling the policeman about him. What would I say? I kept driving. On the way back around, he saw me and gave me a little wave. I drove away. Feeling like a heel.

So tell me. Did I do the wrong thing? Should I have driven him to school to wipe the anxious look off his face? I kept thinking of Daniel Morcombe, who waited for a bus that never came. I wondered what I would have wanted for my own boys. Whom I have schooled over and over to never get in a car with a stranger. No matter how nice and well-meaning.


What would you have done?

[image: I love this illustration by NanLawson/etsy - sums up how we both felt]

Scaling a mountain

I've been working on the edits for my novel. Slowly going through, moving a mass of words around. Putting all that thinking into action. And you know what? It feels pretty good. Now that I've actually started, I'm remembering that I was the person who wrote the book in the first place. Of course I can make changes to make it better!

I'm about 100 pages in at the moment. Still in the foothills, with an enormous climb ahead of me. The big changes are still ahead, waiting, looming, but my travels through the foothills are helping me to set up a good base for when that moment arrives.

I think it's going to be okay. At least until I find myself hanging out over a precipice with no safety net and nothing between me and a very thin plot line (not that this will happen, of course... no way).

Starting really is the best cure for fear. You can't focus on the anxiety while you're trying to flesh out a character or build a setting.

All will be well. Just as long as I keep climbing - and don't look down.

[image: mountain notebook by LittleAlexander/Etsy]

The woman who saved my Sunday*

The Builder and I have been living under a lucky star. Right up until last Friday. When it all came crashing down. Under a pile of books. Books that needed to be covered. In contact. By Monday.

The news was broken to me by Mr8. "Take this Mum," he said, handing me his school bag in the pouring rain. "It's really heavy."

I picked it up, wondering how a lunchbox, a water bottle and an empty reader bag had suddenly gained weight.

"Good grief!" I said. "What's in here?"

"All my books," he said, nonchalantly. "They need to be covered. In contact. Can we get some with pictures on it?"

My mind flashed back to our last experience with contact. Two textbooks in kindy. Two textbooks that had taken The Builder about three hours (and not a small amount of swearing) to cover in contact. Without pictures.

"Sure," I said. "I'll give them to Dad."

It must be said that The Builder is often lumbered with any task that requires precision. Mostly because he is a precise kind of guy. Who likes things done precisely. I, on the other hand, tend to take the 'they're not marking us down for air bubbles' approach, which may, in unkind terms, be described as, er, slapdash.

"There are books to cover," I mentioned that night over a glass of wine. "Nine, to be precise." He rolled his eyes. "I'll start tomorrow," he said. "No point in leaving it to the last minute."

"Er, you'll have to wait until I buy the contact. With pictures," I responded. He rolled his eyes.

Slap dash.

The next afternoon, as he sat at one end of the dining table armed with four rolls of contact (yes, pictures, see above), scissors, a ruler and a teatowel (for 'smoothing'), I asked him if he wanted me to Google a You Tube tutorial on how to cover books. He rolled his eyes (seriously, can't wait for the teenage years around here), muttered something about not needing instructions, and proceeded.

Ninety minutes later, he went out for a bike ride. Having covered three books. He had tried many methods during that period. The hanging-book-off-side-of-table method. The call-in-the-wife-to-hold-contact method (I was banished soon after for not preventing air bubbles). The call-the-wife-in-to-hold-the-book method (I was banished soon after for not preventing air bubbles). Every time I looked over, he was in a new position, trying something new.

It wasn't pretty.

This afternoon, while he was otherwise engaged, I thought I'd have a go. I knew that I ran the risk of, gasp, air bubbles, but I also wanted to go to the beach that afternoon and figured that any progress I made got us closer. Being a girl who likes instructions, I Googled 'How to cover a book in contact' and found my saviour.

Grace at Living Footprints has created a seven minute video on how to do the job. Seven minutes? If she could manage the whole process in that time, then, even allowing for the fact that Jamie Oliver's 30-Minute Meals take me at least one hour, I was going to knock the books over before The Builder got home. I watched her video and loved her even more for the fact that the first two minutes and thirty seconds are taken up with gathering tools, cutting out paper, and trying to separate the damn contact from the backing paper.

Video complete, I sat down at the table and had a book covered in 15 minutes. Yes, there was a crease (tiny, really, hardly noticeable at all), but by the time I'd done my second, I was air-bubble-free! Yes!

When The Builder came home, I was still in my pyjamas at 2.30pm, but I had a neat pile of books ready to go. And two little boys ready to go to the beach.

Win/win.

The only downside of the whole arrangement? It appears that I have created myself a job. The Builder is so far resisting efforts to watch Grace's excellent how-to video... and so the book covering role is now mine. Unlike Grace, however, I will not be inviting you all to send your books round to the Fibro for me to cover. My love affair with her method does not extend that far.

Have you covered school books this year? Which method do you favour? 

*I was going to call this The Woman Who Saved My Sunday (and my marriage), but I thought that might be overly dramatic.

The time when Lisa Wilkinson mentioned my name (on the tele)

Today was an exciting day. My name was on the tele. In full. Allison Tait. Oh, my co-author Kate Sykes did a brilliant three minutes on television, sharing all her expertise and the wonder of our book, Career Mums, with the audience of Today. I was very proud.

Then Lisa Wilkinson mentioned my name. On the tele.

It was quite a thrill.

You can watch the whole thing, including the name drop, right here:

http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/mums-back-to-work/xq8yvzz

Kate is very good. A natural on the tele. Much like my name.

PS: I wanted to do that cool embedding thing, but it seems this is not possible if it's not a You Tube video. Or maybe it's just not possible if you are me...

Big shoes, big shorts, big hat... big boy

Today Mr5 started school. My baby has morphed into a Big Boy. Big shoes, big shorts, big hat.

He has not talked about it much over the holidays. No desire to try on the school uniform. A 'not happy Jan' face when we bought the school shoes. No particular interest to identify an A from a B from a C. (His favourite letter is still L. I suspect it always will be.)

This morning I went to wake him for his Big Boy breakfast. He rolled over, warm and sleepy. "Do you know what day it is, Mum?" What day? "It's my first day at school Mum," he said, leaping out of bed. Ready to go.

Later, as he endured the 1500th coaxing to 'look at the camera, smile for Mummy, don't scrunch your nose', weighed down by the tortoise shell of his enormous backpack, jumping up and down to test his shoes, I wondered if I was ready to let him go.

At school, The Builder and I helped him put his bag away. We found his table where, to his delight, he is seated with four friends and a 'new guy'. And then he turned to us: "You can go now." A kiss and it was all over.

I picked him up this afternoon, almost unable to pick him from the line-up of little boys. One thing a uniform does is make a person blend in, right? When he spotted me, waiting to collect him, he beamed. Suddenly he stood out like a beacon.

Big shoes, big shorts, big hat, big smile. My little Big Boy.

Sigh.

The dress-up box

With Mr5 out of the house for a few hours today, I decided that the last day of the holidays was the perfect time for an assault on his room. And I do mean assault.

It is impossible to remove any item from Mr5's room while he is on the premises. He shows a marked tendency toward the Family Hoarding gene, and clings like a barnacle to anything - and I do mean anything - that I might decide is surplus to needs. He LOVES those chocolate wrappers and is "collecting them to make Mr8 an Invisibility cloak". He NEEDS that wooden train set, despite not having looked at it for three years.

So I must sneak through under my own Invisibility cloak while he is otherwise engaged.

I really wanted to do it today. I wanted to clear his shelves, air the cobwebs, remove the old, and give him a clear, uncluttered space in which to begin his schooling life (on Tuesday). So I put aside the aforementioned train, the fake food and fake picnic set, several books, outgrown clothes, any variation of Wiggles puzzles (or, in fact, anything Wiggles, him being 'too big for them now Mum')... all ready to go to a young friend of ours who will love them too.

And then I got to the dress-up box.

Our dress-up box is like a perfect time capsule of the boys' interests over the years. The doctor's kit and cool little white coat. The fireman suit with reflective strips. The fireman helmet that makes a whiney, siren noise. The Spiderman suits, the Superman suit (with attached cape), the cracking Ninja Turtles suit (complete with shell). Harry Potter robes, wands, glasses (all bent).

But it's the additional stuff that I love. The baby wraps that can be capes, or togas, or ghost outfits. The five different gloves that serve as Super Whatevers, or Ninja whatevers, or medical protection. The lanyards from various conferences. The scarves that can be utility belts, or Ninja wraps, or Knightly garb. The swords of assorted length, colour and degradation. And the hats - so many hats! Hard hats, police hats, beanies, helmets.

My boys love dressing up and there is nothing they like better than ferreting about and creating the perfect outfit. An outfit that may make no sense to outside eyes, but to them, turns them into The Masked Avenger, or Sir Whosiwhatsit.

The dress-up box I left alone. There'll be time enough to sort through that. But for now, it's feeding their imaginations. It pays its way.

Do your kids have a dress-up box? What story does it tell about them? And what do you think are the essentials for a great dress-up box?