B2=3

It’s B2’s third birthday today. He’s a great lad, always cheerful and ready for adventure, and he is so happy to share his happiness with others.



The Bs and my marriage are the only two things I can legitimately describe as proud achievements in my life (and they are both more than 50% to M’s credit) but I reckon that’s more than enough to be getting along with.

Labyrinths

It's been a busy, bitty few days, so this post will reflect my current fragmentary existence.

The kids made a couple of cute videos:





Neighbour Paul and I gave each other rather severe half-cut haircuts after a bibulous Sunday afternoon get-together:



Tomorrow I'm popping into hospital for an operation on my sinus polyps. I'f I'm lucky it will just be day surgery, but an overnight stay is likely. After long consideration, I've gone with The Slap as my bedside reading. For the first time, I kinda wish I had the flexibility of an ereader.

B1 sings!

Beth loves her music and she's just learned this little number at daycare. At the moment, I think her enthusiasm trumps her delivery:

A Bridge Too Far

An incident from a couple of weeks back that I didn’t get to blog about:



I left work in my new little Toyota Yaris at 6-ish, and began the slow drive home through the darkness and the rain. I was still a little jet-lagged from the Big Trip, and I was also pre-occupied with planning for the imminent trip to Splendour.

(Can you sense me getting my excuses in early here?)

About halfway across Sydney Harbour Bridge, aka Australia’s busiest road, the car started acting strangely, not responding to the accelerator pedal and producing all sorts of incomprehensible lights on the dashboard. Realising that I wasn’t getting much further, I managed to coast to a sliproad just off the main highway before I finally conked out.

With my hazards flashing and the rush hour traffic whizzing past me on either side at 100 km/h, I stumbled out to the median strip and made for the blue Emergency Phone. Shivering with cold, I picked up the receiver and gratefully heard the sound of a ring…and ring…and ring…until it eventually rang out. No bugger at the other end! I trudged back to the car and hunkered down, trusting to the CCTV cameras to alert The Authorities to my presence.

Evidently they did – hooray for the surveillance society! I had been there for fewer than 10 minutes when the orange lights of a repair truck appeared in the rear view mirror and two nice chaps/angels from heaven appeared to tow me away.

The ensuing dialogue went something like this:

Nice chap: “Any idea what the problem is?”
Me: “I don’t understand anything about cars. Well…I may have, um, run out of petrol.”
Nice chap: “Whoops! (fiddles with keys and dashboard) Yep, we’ll take you to the nearest servo.”

I shrivelled with embarrassment and sat meekly while they sorted my life out in a good-humoured and entirely cost-free manner. A brilliant service for very stupid people, I must say.

I am now neurotically conscious of my petrol meter and have assiduously learned what all of the dashboard symbols indicate.

One of the most humiliating moments of my life.

Crybaby

B2 has a habit at the moment of bursting into tears at the slightest provocation. Most of the time he is a regular happy kid, but occasionally M&I will hear a desperate howl and rush to his side only to find that he has dropped something and is too overwhelmed to pick it up again, or something similarly inconsequential. It’s hard, because his distress is real but my initial reaction would be to laugh, which wouldn’t be very supportive of the wee fella.

Having said which, this picture has kept me amused for days:

Splendid

I had thought my camping based festival days were behind me but when M&I saw the line-up for Splendour in the Grass 2010, we got on the phone to my mother-in-law and arranged baby-sitting (thanks, Val!).

We threw money at the situation, buying plane tickets up to Brisbane rather than doing the road trip, and paying for a pre-erected tent to save us any hassle:



The site was spectacular, a wooded area with a brilliant natural amphitheatre for the main stage. Not only was the amphitheatre rather beautiful, which meant that even shorter audience members had a great view. Yes, I am talking about M here.





As for the music, as is often the case we never saw many of the bands we were excited about prior to attendance but caught some great stuff that we had never heard of beforehand. Highlights included LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Oh Mercy, Laura Marling and the divine Jonsi. Lowlights were the queue to get in, forgetting to go see Grizzly Bear and the flight home being cancelled.



Hell, maybe we'll even go again next year.