Ever wondered if you made the right career choice?

If you were to ask me for an activity high on my Not In This Lifetime list, taking 20 three year olds to the local art gallery would be right up there. And yet, today, I found myself doing just that.

After our week off, we returned to the preschool routine yesterday. During the ‘morning tea in the basket-drink bottle on the bench-lunch in the fridge’ frenzy, we were approached by Mr3’s teacher, who was waving a form at us. Uh-oh. There was to be an excursion. A walking excursion. To the Art Gallery. Yippee.

After consultation with Mr3, who thought it sounded very fun, I signed the form. No, I circled, I could not attend. I was working. Smiles all round, kiss goodbye, see you later.

At 11pm last night, Mr3 woke in a panic. He could not possibly go on a ‘scurshon’ without me. He would not sleep unless I agreed to go.

I went.

And so I found myself leading a little band of short people the three blocks to the local art gallery. I was responsible for three – Mr3, Little Miss Red Hat and Little Miss Dora. LMRH is a confident, outgoing child of four, whose silver Converse sneakers were too cute for words. LMD is a tiny little girl of three with huge brown eyes and not a lot to say. Mr3 was so happy to see me that he kissed my hand repeatedly. We were team red badges (every adult had three kids to watch, we all wore matching badges so we knew which ones were ours – efficient).

During the 30 minutes it took us to walk the three blocks to the gallery, I had time to reflect on why I’d decided (via work experience) that a career in childcare was not for me. They say that when you go bushwalking you put the slowest person at the front of the line and walk to that person’s pace. Nobody gets left behind. We were following in the tiny teeter-totter steps of LMD.

To stave off my overwhelming feelings of impatience (I am really not good at this), I asked Mr3 if he remembered going to the big gallery in Canberra a few months ago.

No.

I asked LMRH whether she thought we’d see paintings at the gallery.

No.

Would we see drawings?

No.

What did she think we’d see?

“Stuff to look at,” she said.

We spent several hours at the gallery. The first 10 minutes was taken up with a flurry of toilet visits. Then the preschool teacher gave a talk about how much work people had put into their artworks and how we could look but not touch.

Moments later, a gallery staff member gave the same talk. We moved inside the gallery.

Three minutes later, another gallery staff member repeated the ‘don’t touch’ rule, adding in ‘don’t run’ and ‘don’t speak, in case you ruin the gallery experience for other visitors’. All of this said at a volume and in a tone of voice that one reserves for the very old, the very young or the very hard-of-hearing. All I can say is that they’re small, but they get it. Talk up. Plus, looking around, I couldn’t see too many others trying to experience the gallery. They’d taken one look at the be-badged sea of preschoolers coming their way and hightailed it for the exit.

My little team were unimpressed by much of what they saw. They liked the helicopters in one painting, the horses in another. They didn’t really get the idea of ‘distortion’. But they loved the opportunity to roll around in the sun and stick spangly bits on cardboard frames. The doing, not the viewing.

On the way back, they kept falling over. This is a relatively good sign that a good time has been had by all. When you’re so tired, you’re walking in circles and forgetting where your feet go, you’ve had the three-year-old equivalent of a ‘rage’.

I learned a few valuable lessons myself. One was that there was nothing on my desk that really suffered from having to wait a few hours. One was that Mr3 has progressed from scribbling colours to drawing those funny huge-head-skinny-leg pictures that show that his world view is changing. One was that time goes so much more slowly when you’re cruising along at preschool pace.

But I’m confident I made the right career choice. 

{image: Ephemera Assemblyman}

Spring is sprung, the weeds are riz

Tomorrow is the last day of winter. I don’t need a calendar to tell me that spring is coming. I have weeds for that. The first thing I did on my return from a restful week away? Weed the front garden, where the grass is on the march into the flower beds and the last delivery of mushroom compost seems to have introduced the dreaded onion grass to the rose bed.

I hate onion grass. I have vivid memories of the first few years in our old house in the Big Smoke. It had been a rental, left to rot by the previous owner. The front garden was a jungle of weeds. We didn’t want that, we wanted scented gardenias, dense murrayas, spears of lavender, enough rosemary to keep the neighbourhood supplied for Sunday roasts. That’s what we ended up with too – but not until we’d hand-weeded every skerrick of onion grass out of the front yard. It took years.

At first, we weeded, then laid newspaper, then mulched. Still it grew. So, six weeks later, we’d rinse and repeat. Another layer of newspaper, a thicker layer of mulch. The mulch and paper broke down, feeding the soil. Still the onion grass grew.

But gradually, it came less and less. The plants grew bigger and filled the space, crowding out the weeds. We got it under control.

Still I’d go to bed and night, dreaming of dark soil with those tiny, white bulbs beneath. Miss one, and the whole garden could go to pot.

And now we begin again. Different house, same noxious weed. Fortunately, it’s only one bed. We have good mulching foundations and dwarf lavender ready to spread beneath the rose bushes as the sun’s rays strengthen and the warmth goes right down to the roots.

As I was digging my way through the soil on Saturday, my mind turned to Foxglove Spires, a 3.5 acre garden near Tilba Tilba, NSW, and a highlight of our holiday (for me and The Builder at least – not sure that the Misters were all that impressed). What began as a vast, empty paddock 30 years ago is now a sublime corner of light and shade, mature trees and tiny flowers, chickens and vegetables, exotic plants and natives. A magical woodland, no doubt complete with fairies (somebody’s doing all that work!). The sunroom, pictured above, is made from reclaimed windows - I want it. It is simply inspirational (even before the true Spring bonanza) and I recommend a visit should you find yourself in the area.

The thought of the place was enough to steel my resolve. If Sue Southam, the woman behind Foxglove Spires, can persist with an entire paddock, surely I could manage to see off the invaders in a 2 x 1 metre garden bed. Even if I didn’t have help from those fairies.

{image: Catherine Shields/In My House}

It's all mystery from here

There is a reason that crime fiction sells in huge quantities around the world. Humans love a mystery. Even when there’s no mystery.

Last week, Fam Fibro hit the road, winding up at various locations (of which you’ll no doubt hear more over the coming week). One of these places was Mystery Bay, just south of Narooma on the NSW South Coast.

Mr6 was captivated by the prospect of this destination as soon as he heard about it. “What’s the mystery?” he kept asking. “Will we find clues and solve it?”

Mr3, not to be left out, began singing the theme song from his latest favourite show on ABC Kids – Hooray For Huckle – “You and me solve a mystewy with Huckle”, over and over.

Suffice to say that The Builder and I wished we’d never heard of Mystery Bay by the time we actually got there on the last night of our holiday.

Once there, however, we got into it. Mr6 is a Famous Five fan. He loves the whole sleuthing, smuggling, sneaking gang, from bossy Julian to grumpy George to housewifey Anne to personality-free Dick to fearless Timmy. Add in his current zest for Zac Power and the mighty influence of Star Wars, and we found ourselves heading off down a bush path in search of the mystery of Mystery Bay – accompanied by a ‘SpyPad’, a torch/lightsabre, a plastic compass and a Spy ID card. We were fully equipped for whatever we might find.

We were not disappointed. Billy’s Beach, on Mystery Bay, is a wild and windswept place, cleaved by a swathe of blue pebbly shale, surrounded by cliffs and featuring (gasp) two perfect ‘smugglers caves’ and tunnel furrowed out by the water near the beach.

Mr6 immediately began plotting a mystery story, involving boats and smugglers and, in true Blyton tradition, afternoon tea, at nearby Montague Island. Mr3 busied himself looking for ‘clues’, turning up a couple of shells and several opportunities to get his feet soaked. In the end, he turned to us and stated that he couldn’t see a mystery – and what did one look like anyway?

We took a lot of photos. Mr6 has promised that if I buy him a new notebook, he will write out his mystery and use our photos to illustrate it. A brand new Mr6 original book. Guess who’s going stationery shopping tomorrow?

The true mystery of Mystery Bay remains a mystery. It involves boatloads of men disappearing never to be seen again. I think I’m going to like Mr6’s version better.

{image: enidblytonsociety.co.uk}

When the going gets tough, stay on your bike

You may not know this about me, but I have cycled 500+ kilometres, all at once, over the course of a week. Twice. Of course, this was BC (not just before children, but indeed in ancient times), and it was for a good cause. The Big Ride was a major fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis – and an excellent way to lose up to five kilograms in one week.

I bring all this to your attention because I’ve been thinking a lot about mountains recently. Specifically, mountains of work. As discussed before, freelancing can be a rocky, rollercoaster of a road. Lots of hills and valleys.

I was reading a blog (and I cannot for the life of me remember which one, so if it was yours please let me know so I can reference you here) recently, which talked about weight loss as climbing a mountain, particularly if you had a lot to lose. You couldn’t look at the whole picture, you had to look only one step ahead at all times.

I commented that my wise friend L had some excellent advice about mountains. I did my first Big Ride with L and it was with her that I encountered some of my first big ‘hills’ during a training ride one morning. I looked up, saw what looked like Mt Everest rising before me, and immediately stopped.

“I can’t ride up that,” I said, preparing to dismount.

“Stay on your bike,” she said, severely for someone who is generally very laid back.

“I can’t ride up that,” I repeated, taken aback.

“They’re never as big as they look,” she said, dropping down about six gears and moving forward. “If you just keep riding, you’ll find you’re halfway up it before you realise.”

Doubting her, I did as she asked, swearing the whole time (in very genteel fashion, if you’re reading this Mum and Dad).

She was right.

Whenever I’m confronted with a mountain of any kind, I think of this advice. It doesn’t matter if you’re attacking piles of work or a seemingly impossible amount of weight to lose or a mountain road that would make a Tour De France rider blanch (well, maybe not, but you get my drift), the approach is the same.

The thought is worse than the reality. They’re never as big as they look. Stay on your bike.

{image: bike club info}

True confession Thursday

I have a confession.

I can’t bear suspense. Not to any degree whatsoever.

But that’s not the worst of it.

I regularly read the last page of a book first.

I bring this to your attention because today I came upon Mr6 doing exactly the same thing. It’s genetic.

Anyone else out there share the same affliction?


{image: Introblogger}

The fantastical adventures of Alla Hoo Hoo (part IV)

There comes a time in every family’s journey when a pet becomes part of their life. Dogs, cats, fish, guinea pigs, diamond pythons, mice (eek), pigs - these and many others are all potential new family members. It’s just a matter of choosing what kind of family you are.

Alla Hoo Hoo, Mr3’s imaginary friend, has approached pet owning in her usual inimitable fashion. She and her extended family – now including Mr Pizza, Ben (her husband) and a very hazy number of children – have taken on a school of sharks. Specifically, Wiper Sharks. So-called because they are able to complete the entire Total Wipeout obstacle course without falling over. They take on the ‘sucker punch’ feature on their tails.

I know all this because Mr3 has again been spending a bit of time with Ms Hoo Hoo. He has stopped going to as many parties with her because they play too many ‘grown-up’ games at Alla Hoo Hoo’s parties. Worriedly, I tried to extract details of these ‘grown-up’ games (bowls of keys came to mind for some reason). Apparently the Hoo Hoo posse is fond of the Ironing Game. I told Mr3 I quite understood why he no longer wished to go along.

I have also got to the bottom of their shared passion for motorbikes. They like them because they get to wear helmets. I’m happy with this explanation – the helmets are something he’s likely to grow out of, as opposed to, say, a deep-seated love of the Harley Davidson.

Soon after that conversation, Mr3 asked me what ‘invisible’ meant. I explained that it meant that something couldn’t be seen. “Like Alla Hoo Hoo,” he said. “She doesn’t like people to see her.”

Indeed.

{image: bbc.co.uk}