Does your Dad think he's funny?

Fam Fibro had big plans for this weekend. We were going to the Big Smoke. To the footy. To visit family. To see friends. But the weather conspired against us. A rugby league match loses its appeal when you know you'll be sitting on the grass, in the open, in the rain. It went against the grain, but we cancelled.

Which left us at a loose end. For a whole weekend. When was the last time you had an entire weekend with no plans? In the rain? What did you do?

Yesterday, we cleaned house. With me gritting my teeth against the tedium of it all while we were doing it - and smiling with joy once it was done. Half of my To Do list was To Done in one fell swoop. Good feeling.

Today it was literally blowing a gale. The front yard was awash with twigs and branches and leaves and general debris. Which was a better outcome than our neighbour on the corner, whose front yard was buried under an entire tree.

It was also Fathers' Day. Mr3 had picked out Katrina Germein's picture book 'My Dad Thinks He's Funny' to give to The Builder. He was drawn to the illustration (by Tom Jellett) on the front of the Dad holding the kid upside down. This form of acrobatics is often practised in the Fibro. I admit I smirked as I paid the shop assistant for it. I'd read the front page, you see.

"My Dad thinks he's funny. Whenever I put lots of sauce on my plate, Dad says, 'Would you like some dinner with that sauce?'"

It wasn't even so much that I could hear The Builder saying that, as the fact that I could hear my Dad saying that. The book is full of those universal Dad sayings. The ones that make you wonder if there's some kind of Dad study group out there that they're not telling you about. I'm pretty sure my Dad graduated top of that particular class.

Of course, each Dad also has his own particular brand of stand-up. Confronted by a group of children - actually, anyone under 40 - he will not be able to help himself saying, 'heads on 'em like mice'. It's just what he does. But he's funnier when he's not trying.

One afternoon, when I was about 15, I was standing out the front of our house, talking to a boy from around the corner. Dad wandered down the drive, carrying a pink double-bed mattress. He opened the gate, and walked past as we watched in silence.

"Where are you going with that?" I asked, teenage disdain dripping from every syllable.

"To the club," he responded.

"Like, why would anyone take a mattress to the club?" I asked (you can see the eye-roll, can't you?).

"To swap it for a suit, of course," he replied, sailing off down the street with his mattress, leaving us in fits of laughter at the gate.

He came home with a suit. It still makes me laugh. Did they do the deal in the carpark, or did he swing into the bar with his eye-catching load?

That one's not in the book. But you'll remember this one: "When I tell Dad I think there's something in my eye, he says 'Yeah, an eyeball.'"

The Builder says he doesn't use all these jokes.

I say, 'Not yet.'