Brian: Gone in 60 Seconds

Suzanne: The Hours

Ashton: Soap (the entire series)

Jett: Don’t Go Near the Water

You may remember, from about a year ago, Jett’s horrific facial injuries sustained while performing his rite of passage into manhood. Or rather, you may remember that he fell off his bike while learning to ride. But to Jett, I guess, it was a bigger deal because after the tribulation he never got on his bike again. His bike has been sitting in the garage in pristine condition, unused since that fateful day. We’ve tried different techniques like praise and encouragement, threats and intimidation, promises of rewards or punishment, and ridicule and derision but he has never budged.

But last week he finally cracked. He’s a stubborn little bugger, I’ll give him that. We had to start from scratch in teaching him to ride and he fought us every step of the way. I got a sore back from leaning over trying to hold his bike up while he gained balance and confidence, but flashbacks of the pavement rushing up to smack him in the chops would come back to haunt him and turn him into a blubbering, frozen mess.

It took about a month but we finally got there. In baby steps we got him to ride from one neighbors house to the other. Then, all the way to the corner (one way only, he wasn’t about to ride all the way back). Then, in one bold, ambitious expedition and with the help from a couple neighbours kids we made it all the way round the block!

Then this week I came home and he was proud to tell me he rode all the way to school and back on the new bike track to pick up Ashton with mum. For some reason he was too unwell to attend school himself that day, but that wouldn’t stop him getting some peddle time on his bike. It turns out it took about an hour each way to ride 2km but hey, it’s a great achievement.

Jett and I had a boys day out on the weekend. Jett had it in his mind, for some unknown reason, that he wanted to go to the Art Gallery. I think he heard Ashton telling her story about how she set off the alarms when she touched a painting and the guards came running. Jett would have still been in the pram at the stage so it’s understandable he had no memory of it. He was talking about it all week and was excited to go.

But first thing to do after making the trip up in the train was to have lunch. We weren’t going to have the normal McDonalds or Subway during this cultural excursion. No sir. This special event required special food, and the most special food Jett knew about was to be found going round and round in circles on little plates. We were headed for a Sushi bar!

We’d walked past this place a couple times, and Jett had seen the plates moving by themselves and, without being able to actually see the mechanism, imagined that the plates were being taken around the track behind a little train. All he wanted to do was visit the place that had the Sushi Train.

So, Sushi it was. We were seated and Jett was mesmerised by all the little plates rattling by. The plates were different colours and cost different amounts of money. I told him to mostly eat yellow and red, and try to leave the orange and brown as they were $10-$12 per plate for two little bits of Sushi. Sure enough, the first plate he took was brown. I could feel my wallet trying to scamper away and hide. But after that we stuck the the lower price cuisine which was simply delicious. I’m surprised at how adventurous Jett was, eating from many different plates. We had the freshest of fresh sushi, taking a plate that we had seen the chef prepare no more than 5 seconds earlier and place down in front of us. It was great!

Then we spent about an hour at the Art Gallery of WA. They had a paid exhibition of 15th to 17th century “treasures”, mostly tapestries and clothing and whatnot which I convinced Jett wasn’t really worth spending money or time looking at. We were here just for the paintings and sculptures. I tried to ask him what he saw in some pieces, what he thought the artist was trying to “say”, why he thought the painting was done this way or that. He had quite an imagination and came up with some good answers.

One thing we both took away though was how “dumb” some art is. There was one display of four completely black panels. Nothing else. Four black panels in a row. We couldn’t for the life of us work out why this was considered good enough or important enough to hang in an art gallery. The one below at least had a gold border, but it was still just a black panel with a thin gold border.

There was some spiel about the artist, and how the painting was exposing inner turmoil and struggle and blah blah blah. Neither of us could understand what he was getting at, even with Jetts hyperactive imagination.

Suzanne has been forwarding me job postings from employment web sites lately. In one of my increasingly rare appearances on Facebook a couple days ago, I posted this image:

 That’s a pretty funny image you posted the other day.

 Haha, yeah I thought you’d like it.

 You know it’s not entirely true though.

 Well, yeah I know.

 I’ve never sent you emails about losing weight!

 …

 …

 I’m so defriending you on Facebook.

What is this?

What?

This! This… thisthisthis green sludge stuff in the medium sized pot on the bottom shelf of the fridge.

Oh, that’s just an experiment.

An experiment? How long have you been conducting this experiment?

Couple weeks.

A couple weeks?

Stop rephrasing my answers as questions. It’s annoying.

Was the experiment to find out if a full pot of … whatever the hell that is… gets more edible the longer you leave it?

No smarty. And if you don’t like it you’re quite welcome to start cooking all the meals yourself.

Guess what kids! No more early meals. You have to wait until about 8pm from now on before dinner is ready. What are you doing now, Suzanne?

I’m chucking it in the bin.

But Suzanne, the experiment can’t be over. Why don’t you leave it a few more weeks. It might magically turn into a Crayfish Sandwich, or perhaps some Key Lime Pie judging by its current colour.

I’m chucking it so you can’t take a photo of it for your blog.

Curse you, woman. I needed that as evidence.

Shut up, and finish washing the dishes. And stay out of the fridge from now on, fatty.

So we played a bit of Junior Pictionary the other night, and a fun time was had by all. Ashton and Jett thought it’d be fun to play kids vs adults, a challenge we were all too willing to accept. I was quite proud of my “wand” attempt:

Ashton managed to guess “chicken” from a drawing by Jett:

It was going alright for Suzanne’s drawings, until this picture. I had to remind her that “Ice Cubes” don’t necessarily sink to the bottom of the glass:

Jett somehow managed to guess “Tattoo” from a plain square box drawn by Ashton, but I think he might have been looking at my picture instead.

The first round was a close one but the adults won it by a slim margin. There were howls of how unfair it was to allow “Stamp Collection” when the clue was clearly “Stamp Collecting”. So in the second round the adults decided to forgo allowing the little indiscretions we’d witnessed from the kids in the first round. No more Mr Nice Guy for us; no more looking at the other team, we’d claim winners instead of allowing “draws” if the call was close, and the guess had to exactly match the clue. This was all much to Ashton’s dismay when she guessed “Sun” from one of Jett’s pictures, but it was disallowed. The clue on the card was very clear that she was supposed to guess “The Sun” and not just “Sun”.

Junior Pictionary is a great game for young ‘uns to develop their imagination and artistic talent, and should be part of every family games collection!

So Ashton learned a valuable lesson last night. Do not mess with Dad when drying the dishes!

Ashton thought she would try and start a bit of a tea towel fight with me rather than actually dry the dishes. If you asked the two other witnesses you’ll get three different stories (Suzanne, being a woman, will change her mind) but I’ll tell you how it really happened.

We traded a couple shots, nothing more than glancing blows. After one too many I decided we needed to focus on the task at hand. I could see Ashton readying for another shot so I decided a warning shot was needed.

Unfortunately for Ashton, she lunged into exactly the wrong spot at the wrong time and instead of a warning shot it became a perfectly timed THWACK across her thigh.

Hours later, when the crying had died down, a great big welt appeared on her leg very similar in appearance to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter.

Luckily its school holidays right now so she can’t show it for class news, but the first thing she did when we visited her grand parents was to proclaim to them what a mean Dad I am for mercilessly whipping her.

No matter how old I get I’m always going to make race car noises while pushing the shopping cart when Suzanne asks me to go grocery shopping with her.

My kiddies woke me up this morning to this little beauty!

Promos for shows from different networks marking the 10 year anniversary of the Sep-11 attacks have started appearing on TV recently. This has led to my kids, who are under ten, asking questions.

What happened on Sep 11? Well, a bunch of bad guys hijacked some planes and crashed them into some buildings in America to try and kill as many people as they could.

This was ten years ago? Where were you? Yep, it was 10 years ago, a bit before you were born. Me and mum were getting ready to go to bed while it was actually happening. See, while it was early morning in the Eastern US, it was close to bedtime here. I remember seeing a news ticker on the bottom of the TV screen about a plane crash, but we shut the TV off to get an early night. This was when me and mum both worked at the same place. We didn’t see any of it until we woke up the next day. The clock radio went off at the appointed time, and they were talking about a plane crash. “Must have been the news from last night”, we thought. “Let’s turn on the news after breakfast before we go to work”. When we turned on the TV, it seemed every channel was carrying the same story. Two planes had crashed into the tallest buildings in New York called the World Trade Centre, and another into the Pentagon. And the World Trade Centre buildings had actually fallen down! Later we learned there was a fourth plane crash too.

Why did they try and kill those people? (OK, here we go…) You’ll soon start hearing a lot of people talking about this, and about related events that have happened in the 10 years following Sep 11. The short truth of the matter is that there are two reasons.

1. They wanted American soldiers out of their Holy Lands, particularly military bases near Mecca and Medina which are Holy Cities.
2. They wanted the American government to stop giving military support to Israel.