Author: ThirdCat

If you need me, I’m on the couch recovering from jet lag and massaging my lower back

Apparently not all of you recognised the photo below as one from Abu Dhabi. More specifically it is taken in Kalifha City (A or B, I’m not sure) a satellite or suburb of Abu Dhabi which is growing out of the sand.

I love to travel. The mister and I used to live and earn money purely to travel. Twice, we’ve sold everything we own and ridden off into the sunset. Okay, we didn’t sell our stuff, mostly we gave it away because it wasn’t the kind of stuff you could sell. Okay, lots of it we neither sold nor gave away, because mostly our stuff was rusty and broken because we never bought anything new. Except the Trinitron which, I think I mentioned, died the other week. But twice we’ve disposed of our stuff in a variety of means (sold, chucked, stored in parents’ sheds) and ridden off into the sunset.

I have extensive travel lists. Lists of places I want to visit. Lists of places I want to live. Lists of places I want to catch the train through.

Abu Dhabi is on none of these lists.

I’ve been in Abu Dhabi for a week because we were going to move there, but now we might not, although we probably are. So we need to act both as if we are (in case we do) and as if we aren’t (in case we don’t). This is just a fantastic way to be living, because after a year in which I have moved my grandfather into a nursing home, sold his house, then watched my father die, I could really use a bit more uncertainty. Especially in December which is just the most best month to start out stressed.

All of this indecision is, obviously, because of reasons. I wrote all those reasons down (in a rather well-written paragraph if I do say so myself) then realised it was probably a little inappropriate given that this is the internet and all. So I can’t tell you. I also know the meaning of life and I can’t tell you that either.

I could tell you about Abu Dhabi, but I hardly know what to say. It is flat and dry and hot. But that’s how I’d describe Adelaide and most of South Australia.

I left the camera with the mister who is still there. He had a dragonboating appointment amongst other things. When he gets back I will show you some of the photos. Or I will get him to load them onto flickr – interestingly, between his last visit (August) and now, flickr has gone from being blocked due to inappropriate content, to being not blocked.

Abu Dhabi. The hommous is brilliant, the coffee is shit, the sound of construction is constant.

because whenever we travel we always like to spend a day or two going in circles

so see that building down the road a bit…

no, no, not that one, the one a bit further on…

yeah, that one, that’s it…

well, turns out that’s not actually where we wanted to go

which would be because the building where we wanted to go is in totally the opposite direction

(insert appropriate told you so music here, though I must say moral victories are inglorious things when celebrated in thirty five degree heat)

(captured on the mister’s blackberry – it all looks waaaay weirder in real life let me tell you)

Again, nothing of consequence

Who me? No, I haven’t gone anywhere, just madly writing an essay on the ethics of comedy. I know, take something that’s perfectly fun and theorise it to death, why don’t you. Funny thing is, I’ve also got a gig tonight, which is probably, for reasons I will explain when I’ve got more time, my last until Fringe next year. Don’t think I’ll worry about telling tonight’s punters (see how groovy I am, I call them punters) that I can, with reference to Kant, justify the use of my husband, my children and my dead parents to make said punters laugh.  And further, if said punters don’t laugh, maybe my use of family members it isn’t so justified.

Anyhooo, and still with the overthinking…

I am quite troubled by my chidren’s participation – via school – in the Premier’s Reading Challenge and the Healthy Lunchbox Challenge (can’t find any info about the South Australian one on the web, but google it and you’ll get the idea).

I totally get that schools need to encourage reading, healthy food and so on. I applaud creative efforts to encourage such activities and do not want to be pain in the arse PC parent who gets all uptight about everything. But you know what – reading and eating well should not be described as a challenge. Nor should they be turned into fucking competitions.

That is all.

I think I know what you’re going to say

The facts:

The mister and I might be taking a short trip (one week).

We probably won’t be taking our boys. Possibly. But probably not.

The plane trip will be about twelve hours long and involves flying over long stretches of water.

Plane incidents are on the increase (okay, I don’t have any studies or concrete evidence, but this is how it seems to me).

The question:

Is the mister wrong for looking at me with resignation in his eyes as he agrees to my demand request that he and I travel on seperate planes?

…>>>…

PS This might all be academic, because I have just watched the woman at the Post Office CUT MY PASSPORT UP, because – so she says – they can’t issue me a new one while I’ve still got the old one.

And up again

Buoyed by the joy of after-school baking,

and of the sight of youngest boy lifting his chin over the top of the bench so that he could better catch a view of the cooling cakes (rock),

I said,

as I watched them wolf down their third,

‘There’s nothing like rock cakes hot from the oven, is there’

to which eldest boy replied,

‘Well, yes, except you know when you’re really busting for a wee, and you finally get to the toilet…that feels great’.

Now it’s just me and the dog

When the rubbish truck goes past, its loud stop, start, stop, start, makes me think of the days – increasingly distant as they are – when youngest boy had not yet started school, and he ran to the door, or the window if the door was closed, and watched the rubbish truck moving down the road, and I wish I had more often stood in the hall and stared at the curls on the back of my growing boy’s head.

In my defence, we catch public transport nearly every day and no one has ever said anything before

“Funniest thing I ever saw,” said the tram conductor as he perched himself on the seat behind Adelaide’s children, allowing him to make eye contact with Adelaide while at the same time directing the flow of his words into her children’s ears, “young* mother gets on the tram, validates her own ticket, and I tell her what I just told you, that the kids pay if they’re five or over and she says ‘he’s not five’.”

The tram conductor shook his head conspiratorially.

“But then, of course, the kid pipes up ‘yes, I am'”

Even the next day as she wrote about the incident on the interwebs Adelaide’s heart still beat a bit too fast and dots swam before her eyes.

“So I had no choice but to make her buy the ticket.”

The tram conductor allowed room for a small silence. The woman beside Adelaide shuffled a little in her seat. Adelaide maintained the eye contact with the tram conductor .

The tram conductor spoke again.

“Kids, hey? They’re very proud of their age.”

And had it not transpired that, for the first time in his life, her youngest child had remained COMPLETELY SILENT WHAT’S WITH THAT BUT LET’S TAKE WHATEVER SMALL GIFTS THE UNIVERSE SENDS it could have been the most embarrassing moment in Adelaide’s life, except that she had once been standing on a stage dressed as Minnie Mouse and wet her pants.

>>>

*as with many people, he was using the young awkwardly to mean ‘mother of young children’ rather than ‘mother who is young’