Conversations in the Car 2: In which a parent is berated by her eight year old for excessive computer use

Sally is eight. Sometimes she makes up little songs. I’ve already shared with you her song entitled “You eat your own crap and I think its gross”. Lately she has been singing a little ditty, the words are “I’m good at maths yeah”, and the tune varies from day to day. She has been selected for an advanced maths group at school and this has affected her self image considerably. 

On Thursday morning I had to drop all four of my kids off at different locations for them to start their school days. Kat and Rosie to the bus stop and secondary school respectively, Emma to soccer training and Sally to primary school. Sally was the last one left in the car. She chatted to me from the back seat all the way from the soccer ground to primary school. She chose the topic. She was on my case:

“Mum, what percentage of your time do you estimate you spend on Facebook?”.

“Oh, that varies Sally. Sometimes I get sick of it and don’t go on for days. I’m having a patch at the moment though where I’m probably on everyday”.

“Yes, but what is your estimate for the average time you spend on it as a percentage?”.

“Oh, gosh, not that much. I’d say point two percent”.

Sally starts laughing in the back seat. I was sure she wouldn’t understand what point two was so I clarified my position:

“Point two is less than one. Its a fifth of a percent”.

Sally continues to laugh but through her laughter she manages to articulate the reason for her mirth:

“Point two of one percent!”, she says with laughter bubbling through her words, “that’s really funny because my estimate would have been seventy-five percent!”.

Oh god, I thought, she is a clever one. I laughed too, out of surprise and delight at how well she understood her percentages. Her perception of my computer use, however, has given me food for thought!

Here is a video sent to me by a close friend who is also on facebook. She is currently living in the UK. We share photos by sending them through the ether via facebook, we use the chat on facebook to sync times for phone calls. If you are on facebook too you might appreciate it:

Part of the Furniture

“I want to talk to you about a problem”, said the principal of the school where I’m working at the moment as a visiting science teacher. He had sidled up to me in the corridoor during the lesson I was teaching with a class of enthusiastic grade 3 and 4 kids today. We were in the corridoor measuring how far the cars they had designed and built out of recycled materials and some you-beaut plastic wheels went after being released down a ramp. 

Its not unusual for him to pop in on my lessons. He likes to know what’s going on. His comments about my work are usually supportive and positive. He had been talking to me about how impressed he was with the thought the kids had put into designing their cars and how the activity had promoted parental involvement. I was a little surprised when he changed the topic to broach a “problem” in the middle of a lesson and concerned that his timing could reflect its urgent nature.

I looked at him questioningly waiting for him to continue. When he recognised concern in my expression he smiled. His eyes lit up with happy creases. He has a very cheeky smile, this experienced and active principal who is close to retiring. I relaxed, smiled and waited. He had my full attention and he continued, “Yes, its a problem I’ve noticed. But I’ve already done something about it. I’ve noticed the gradual build-up of science equipment that’s been spreading around the school”.

“Oh yes! Um, sorry. I’ve got stuff piled up in the staff room, in the room opposite us and also in the other corridoor”, I admitted sheepishly.

“Mmm yes. So what I’ve done, is ordered two large double cupboards. I’ll put one in this corridoor and one in the other one”. His smile bubbled into an almost laugh. He was having fun delivering me the directive to be more orderly and tidy with my science equipment, in the nicest possible way.

And the up-shot is: I’ll have two special cupboards! I was already starting to feel like part of the furniture at this school. This has sealed it! 

 

The Hot Pink Coat

Last night I went to a theme party. You had to go dressed up as your favorite character from TV. My daughters went as: Ash Ketchum (from Pokemon), Sponge Bob, Mulan and Robin the Boy Wonder. The hub went as Leonardo (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).  This is the story of how I chose my character.

I’ve had a busy week. I’ve been teaching, had a couple of seminars to attend in town, had heaps of errands to run (like getting the operating system on my laptop upgraded) and out in the evening twice during the week: once to dinner with girlfriends and once to a primary school disco decoration-making working bee. The theme for the disco this year is Outer Space. At the working bee I drank too much champagne and covered trillions of donated CDs with sparkly contact (these will hang from a large net on the ceiling and reflect the disco lights). And on top of that, the Real Estate Agent wanted to bring people through our house to begin the process of selling. 

On the night before the house inspection we had a massive tidy-up. I even finally decided to tackle the tiles on the kitchen walls that had been ‘burnt’ a few weeks ago. I had been heating up a pan of olive oil, forgot about it, the result being greasy, black stains on the tiles above the stove. When I tried to clean the tiles I could get one layer of black off, but the remaining layer was impossible to shift. I tried detergent, Ajax surface spray, Jiff, bathroom tile cleaner and I would have tried suger soap but we were out of it. Every cleaning agent I tried just seemed to shift the greasy black from one spot to another. It looked dreadful on the cream tiles. Out of sheer desperation I decided to give the Windex a whirl. I couldn’t believe the result! The grease dissolved before my eyes. It wiped completely clean with no effort at all. I am not a sharer-of-house-cleaning-tips by any stretch of the imagination, but I was so impressed with the Windex that I felt like ringing all of my friends to pass this one on. I called my family in to witness the miracle. “Look: this is what happens if I use the Ajax. Now look at the Windex”. Squirt! “Wow!!!”.

I’m not the only one who knows about the special powers of Windex either. The young man at the Apple Computer Shop used it to clean the keys on my laptop for me when I went to pick it up. He extolled the virtues of Windex (ammonia-free) to me as he cleaned. He said it was possible to purchase expensive cleaning agents for the keyboards. “But they probably are made of this stuff”, he beamed as he held up his Windex bottle. I told him my Windex cleaning story. He nodded and anticipated parts of the story, finishing my last sentence for me, “and it dissolved completely?”. “Yes!”. We smiled at eachother, bonded for a moment by shared awe for Windex. (I have never felt so connected to a computer sales person before!).

When Kathleen asked me to decide on my costume for the fancy dress I said I wanted to go as Kaptain Windex! “No you can’t! You just made that up. It has to be a character from TV”. “Damn, I’ll have to save that one for a super hero party“.  

I was stumped, tired, uninspired and considering piking on the whole dress-up thing. “Come on mum”, said my kids, already costumed-up themselves, “get off Facebook and think of a costume”. Then it hit me! I could wear my hot pink Donna Koran coat, recently purchased in New York on a whim and not yet worn (due to the fact that it is incredibly loud), and go as Agent 99 from Get Smart, my all-time favorite TV show from the seventies. 

I promised Kate I would tell the story of the first time I wore the coat. My promise has now been fulfilled and here is a pic to cap it all off:

 

Lust and Friendship Through the Written Word (highlights from NYC continued).

2. I could easily have been a groupie.

I can fall in love (lust) with someone based purely upon their mind. A person’s writing is often taken to be a reflection of their mind. As a creature of modern culture I tend to hold this assumption intuitively. There are two people in particular who have had this effect upon me. One is a fiction author, considerably older than me and not always a popular character. But I loved his writing so much that my bookclub friends roll their eyes and look at me every time his name is mentioned. For my part I can imagine myself lining up just to be with him.

The other person is an educational researcher who presented at the conference in New York. I used one of his papers in defence of my research proposal. I love his work, the way he thinks and the way he writes. Of course I went to see his presentations. His current work was equally as impressive as the work that I had already read about. But the thing that impressed me the most was the way he handled the questions from the audience. He uses a theoretical framework that I think is brilliant. It is cutting-edge. This often makes it difficult to respond to questions from people not familiar with this approach. Sometimes a common language is lacking. The theory he (and I) use resists the separation of mind and body. It takes the person holistically. When his responses to the questions stayed true to an holistic approach I could have kissed him. I went up to him afterwards, admitted one of his papers was important in my study, asked him to send me his current paper and whether or not he would read a draft paper of mine. He said he would. He said, keep in touch. I was stary-eyed. 

3. I met a blogging friend for the first time ever!

Lia from Lubeck was in New York City with her family at the same time that I was there. We had been communicating via facebook and set a time to catch up on my last morning for breakfast. 

We had never seen each other face to face. I waited in the lobby of the Sheridan New York carefully studying the faces of all the people. I wondered if I would recognise Lia and whether she would recognise me. I was looking for hints of recognition in people’s eyes, expectant looks, familiar features when suddenly she appeared right in front of me. There was no doubt. I recongised her instantly. It was a happy moment. 

Over breakfast we talked about our adventures in New York, her new job waiting for her to return home, our shared interest in education, our separate research interests, our families, language, life…

She and her family were staying in an apartment. She had been in NYC longer than I had and I could tell she was in holiday mode. She and her two children had been taking in New York. She told a funny story about her desire to witness sun rise over Brooklyn Bridge. The reality of setting off with her children in the dark, cold, deserted New York pre-dawn to do it was not what she’d been imagining. 

Although it was the first time we had met face to face, her company was easy. When we parted she gave me some marzipan from Lubeck coated in dark chocolate. I was touched by her generosity. I have learnt that sharing stories across the ether in the land of Blog can result in friendships rich and warm. And new addictions (where to find that marzipan here…?).

 

Nut Crackers No Nuts

Hello Possums. Now that I’m back from New York, work is starting to hot up for me. I’m teaching an eight-week stint out at a primary school as a visiting science teacher. I’ll be teaching in every grade in the school once a week during that time. Tomorrow I start with the grade 5 and 6 classes on a topic chosen by the teachers, Simple Machines.

My first lesson will focus on levers. I have been trying to come up with an activity that is open-ended enough so that the kids will be able to play around and come up with their own ideas, as a starting point for the rest of the unit. For the past week I have been snatching snippets of time to test little experiments out on my own kids. For example, Sally and Emma experimented sitting on the floor in my study yesterday to see how far they could catapult marshmallows on a ruler over a tube of glue stick. They worked out that the further away from the fulcrum the marshmalow was, the higher it went upon release.

I was thinking of introducing the topic by asking kids to compare the force needed to crack a walnut with bare hands and with the help of a nut cracker (which is a lovely example of levers). Its my job to supply the equipment. I’ve been really busy and have left the shopping for walnuts and nut crackers until tonight, imagining it to be as simple as popping down to the local supermarket. The second supermarket I visited did have nut crackers. I purchased four. The young man at the check-out was so expressionless as he scanned the nut crackers: zap, zap, zap, zap, that I thought about making a ball breaking joke (but then thought better of it).

I now have nut crackers! But I have not been able to find walnuts in their shells. It seems supermarkets only stock walnuts pre-shelled. Tomorrow morning I will scour the local fruit shops and delis in the hope of finding some. Oh why do I leave these things ’till the last minute?

The Kill (or, Lovely Rita part 2).

Rita led me to a cabinet of rings. “What sort of jewelery do you like? Do you like rings?” she asked. “Yes, I do like rings. But I’m not here to buy jewelery”, I repeated. “Take a seat here. You can try some rings on for fun while we wait”. She beckoned me, her powdered skin stretching into a smile that was both alluring to me as well as frightening. On one hand her expression was so joyous and irresistible, as though she had waited all her life to adorn me with sparkling jewels and nothing in the world would give her more pleasure. On the other hand, I sensed a trap. I felt like Grettle. I wanted to believe. I sat down, trying at the same time to steel myself with will power and self talk. Rita sat opposite me and smiled with subtle surity as if to say, “I have you now!”.

“I can read people”, she professed in her New York drawl. ” I have a knack, I usually pick a ring perfect for the person”. As she said this she handed me a large square diamond set on a white gold band embelished with smaller diamonds. It was a beautiful ring, in an antique style. But I knew then and there that Rita was no magician. The ring was not at all me. I wear my finger nails short without polish in a very practical style. I have slender fingers. Large stones don’t suit my hand and don’t suit my style. She produced ring after ring.

When I hesitated on an interesting eternity ring in white gold that had no central stone but had little rectangular stones embedded all the way around the band, she began her sales pitch. “I’ll give it to you for half of the price on the lable there”. I told her it was still a lot of money. “Treat yourself while you are young and beautiful”, she crooned. I laughed to myself because I am not young anymore. I accepted the compliment gracefully however, because I figured I was still thirty years her junior.

Simultaneously as I put the eternity ring back down on the counter she produced another ring. “Try this one”, she said. It was a shiny ring with a yellow gold band. In the band were tiny diamonds and as the centre piece, small diamonds were fashioned into the shape of a flower. It was exquisite, but understated. It looked perfect upon my finger. “Oh!”, I said. I did not want to take it off. Rita sensed my interest. “You can have this one for half price too, because I really like you”. “Oh, I can’t spend this much without ringing my husband first!”. “Yes you can! You deserve it. You are so young and beautiful. It will give him pleasure to see you happy. Of course you can. Think of it this way: if I give it to you for half price its as though you are getting the Lladro for free!”.

I purchased the ring and had it set aside for resizing because it was slightly too big. When I picked it up the following morning, I scanned the shop. No Rita! Was I disappointed? Yes, to tell you the truth. I wanted to thank her. I can’t explain why. Where had she gone? Had I imagined her? Was she my fairy godmother?

Her colleague produced my ring. She was my age or younger. “Oh how beautiful!”, she exclaimed, “The flowers are my favorite pieces”. Before I could doubt her sincerity she showed me her fingers adorned with similar golden flowers on many rings fashioned in slightly different designs to mine. I admired the rings on her fingers. For a moment we shared a sisterly connection. I placed my flower ring on my finger. For a split second I felt a surge of dissatisfaction. Was one flower ring enough? I left the jewelery shop in New York City wondering if I would ever return.

Lovely Rita

In New York on the second morning, I decided to walk to Central Park alone prior to meeting my colleagues for a seminar at the Hilton Hotel. From my hotel on Broadway near Times Square I headed across town on fifty-first avenue. I passed Radio City Hall, where on my first night I noticed Aretha Franklin’s name in neon lights. She played there that night to a sold out crowd.

I had in the back of my mind to buy a present for a friend back home who’s birthday coincided with my visit to NYC. I window shopped as I walked until a broad, brightly lit jewelery shop caught my attention. It advertised a sale on Lladro. I entered the shop and was immediately struck by the temperature difference. Inside the door I placed my lap top bag and hand bag on the floor, removed my rabbit skin gloves and sheep skin coat.

As I rearranged myself thus, a creature emerged from behind a counter and approached me steathily. She was a creature from within the environment I then braced myself to navigate. Lladro was displayed in a floor-to-ceiling cabinet that stretched the length of one wall. Jewelery display cabinets hemmed the other walls. These were at counter height and angled perfectly for viewing by customers seated upon gold chairs with red velvet cushions. The deep red velvet of the chairs was a contrast to the dazzling brightness of the lights and the merchandise.

She introduced herself to me as Rita. I could not have imagined Rita in any other environment, just as I could never have imagined myself sitting upon one of those red and golden chairs. Her hair dyed brightly orange was shoulder length with a filck up at the ends. She sparkled. Her fingers supported stones of the largest and shiniest varieties. Her wrists were weighed down with multiple chains of white and yellow gold, chunky and jangley. Around her neck she wore a long yellow gold chain whose open links were embelished with ornamental pieces: charms and pendants. The thick cosmetic powder she wore did not conceal her deep wrinked skin, which hung from her face and stretched as she closed in to greet me. Her lips were painted red and her teeth were even yet discoloured.

Upon my request she showed me the lladro. Following behind me, she jangled her keys to the cabinets, asking me what type of lladro I was interested in and offering to retrieve pieces for me as I browsed. I finally chose three pieces to look at more closely: a curious cat, a girl holding a baby chicken and a girl standing with butterflies. Rita told me I could have a further discount. Twenty percent off she offered me. I chose the girl with the chicken for my friend because she looked after my girls during the time our pet chickens were babies. “Only one!”, shot Rita taking a step back shaking her head, “the discount was for all three. If you only take one, the discount is ten percent”. I considered this briefly and negotiated the purchase of two of the pieces with twenty percent off.

As her colleague handled the business end of the sale and took time to package the pieces securely, Rita beckoned me to one of the red and gold chairs. “Let me try and tempt you with jewelery while you wait”, she smiled slyly. “You can try”, I replied, “but I am not here to buy jewelery”. Like a fly caught in Rita’s web, I foolishly sat down upon her gold and red chair. (To be continued).

Shopping with Girlfriends

Hello Possums. I have been collecting information from friends and strangers about what to do in New York. I have had some super suggestions! Some of them have been detailed and specific. There are the obvious ones like visiting well known land marks but I have also been told to “experience Times Square by entering it from below ground”, go and see a particular stage show and where to obtain half price tickets for it and go for a drive around Manhatten. However, the most frequently suggested must do in New York is “shopping”. Why does everyone else seem to already know that you can buy anything and everything in New York cheaply? Is it really true? Should I set aside half a day and shop ’till I drop? Is it really that good?

One thing I would love to do is to find the place where the Great Gatsby was set. I want to see the east and west banks that Fitzgerald conjures in his classic novel. Unfortunately I probably won’t have time. I am in New York City for only a week. My main purpose there is to attend a five day conference.

Last year Libby and I flew up to Sydney from Melbourne to spend the weekend with our dear friend D. She lives near the Harbour. In Melbourne, I rarely shop with friends. I often shop with my daughters and that’s lots of fun, but I hadn’t shopped with friends since I was a teenager. We spent Saturday browsing around the shops and lunching in one of the many quaint bayside presincts. After lunch we went into a clothing shop that had a very comfortable back section where you could try on clothes. There were three curtained-off changing cubicles and a wall mirror in a cosy shared space where you could sit on comfy round cushiony chairs. We had a lot of fun choosing clothes for ourselves and for eachother, trying them on and modelling them.

I chose a skirt for Libby that I thought would look great on her, but with her runners she looked like a bag lady in it. Libby came out of her cubicle laughing so much she couldn’t speak. Her laughter was contageous and she did look a scream!

I tried on a red top. D liked the look of it. She asked me to pass it into her cubicle after I’d taken it off.  She looked great in it too, but unfortunately there was only one left in the shop! After I bought it I asked the woman in the shop to cut the tag off so I could wear it straight away. For the rest of the afternoon D eyed it off saying, “I want that top”.

Libby chose a beige wrap for me to try on. “Oh no, I regret beige”, I told her. “What do you mean, you regret beige”. I can’t wear it. I like the idea of it. I think beige things look okay on a coat hanger. But as soon as I try anything beige on I know it was a mistake. Beige is not my colour. It makes me look like a corpse. Libby and D laughed when they understood. Libby said she regrets lacy knitted cardigans. She said she always liked the look of them but not on her busty frame. What do you always regret trying on Possums?

D couldn’t decide whether to buy a low cut wrap top. “Does it fill a gap in your wardrobe?”, I asked with the intention of being helpful in her decision making process. She laughed. I don’t know why she found that question so funny, but she used it for the rest of the day.

Yesterday I was speaking to D on the phone. She was excited for me about going to New York City. “Let me know when your next conference is”, she said, “I might come along!”. What a fun shopping spree I could have if Libby and D came with me!

A Sunday Cook-in

Hello Possums. We ran out of bread today. It was too hot to bother leaving the house so we made bread instead. Kathleen likes to make bread rolls in the shape of snails and Sally’s bread rolls are made as round faces with extra bits of dough to make the smiling features of the face.  I made a loaf much to the children’s surprise. I don’t think I have made a loaf of bread within their living memory. My loaf tin has been sitting unused for as long as we have been living in our current house (which is eight years). I took the loaf out of the oven and began cutting it while it was warm. The smell lured the children back to the kitchen. “Hey, that’s the best thing since sliced bread”, Kathleen quipped as she entered the room. She stood at the bench watching and smelling as fluffy warm pieces of bread fell away onto the cutting board. “Wow, that looks vaugely edible!”, she remarked with genuine surprise. 

Anticipation of the sweetest kind

My youngest daughter, Sally, is excited about the approach of Easter. Generally in Australia, Easter has lost a lot of its religious significance. An old school buddy of mine, who is now a poet, father and garlic farmer in Mulumbimbi, describes Easter as “The Pagan Chocolate Festival”.  

Sally made a little basket over the weekend and decorated it with Easter symbols: coloured eggs and a rabbit. She enlisted the help of her oldest sister, Kathleen, to ‘blow’ the contents out of one of our free range eggs. She decorated the empty shell with her window art paints. Once it was dry she placed it in the basket and brought it to me. “Look what I’ve made, mummy. Do you think the Easter Bunny will like it?”.  

Lately in the car driving to and from school or to and from her activities, she has been asking me questions like, “Why does a bunny bring us easter eggs when rabbits don’t even lay eggs? Chickens lay eggs”, and, “Was there some sort of saint like Father Christmas who had something to do with rabbits?”.   All I have been able to respond with is, “Well the eggs are probably to symbolise new life because Easter is when Jesus came back to life. I don’t know what the rabbit has to do with it!”. This did not satisfy her. On another occasion she persisted, “Why does a rabbit bring us eggs at Easter time?”. Inadequately I responded with, “Probably because rabbits can hop”.  

Every day she has been asking me, “How many days before Easter now mummy?”. This morning in the car she actually remembered for herself what the count-down was. She announced happily from the back seat as I merged into a lane of peak hour traffic, “Only sixteen days to Easter. I can’t wait. I just can’t wait!”. Her older sister, Emma, who was in the front next to me muttered under her breath, “I can”. Emma is in grade six this year and a bit too cool to be anticipating Easter with any visible sign of excitement. However, when Sally asked “How does the Easter Bunny get into our houses? Father Christmas comes through the chimney, what does Easter Bunny do?”. I suggested, “It probably comes through our cat flap”, but Emma turned to me with a sly smile and responded to Sally with, “I think he must have a master key that opens the door of every house”.  

I have to admit though, Sally’s count down is making me excited. At Easter time, I will be flying off to New York for a week-long conference! Before I go I’ll have to purchase four chocolate treats, one for each of the girls. I’ll have to wrap them and entrust them with their father. I feel a slight pang that I won’t be there to put the chocolate on the kitchen table on the eve of Easter Sunday. But I feel equally as sure that the children won’t need me to be there for them to enjoy their chocolate!