Let’s just say you want to build one of these:

And you want to build it by the end of July because  that is when Aunty Natty is coming to visit and you so much want to LOUNGE!

On the enormous lounger!

With ice cold drinks and the latest trashy novels!

Because that is what sisters (should) do!

Let’s just assume you want to paint it a cheerful color and after some research and many baleful glances at your current, UV-damaged garden furniture you decide on a coat of primer and three coats of outdoor enamel, followed by three coats of Spar Urethane (Count it - 7 coats!). So you cut your many, many pieces of wood. Slowly, with a handsaw, because you can’t cut straight with a circular saw and are too cheap to fork out for a sliding miter saw.

Slowly, with a handsaw in 98% heat.

Then you sand all one hundred and two million pieces of wood in the 98% heat and wipe them all down in the 98% heat.

Obviously, you cannot do this all at once. You know, because of the 98% heat. So this step takes several weeks.

Then you start to paint your boards. You can maybe see where this is going.

Waiting for paint to dry in 93% humidity is like … watching paint dry. Only six hundred times as long. Torturous.

Try and apply the protective coat over this tacky tacky paint and when you sand after the first coat, half the paint will come off with it. I know because I have tried.

I should clarify that The Daddy has specifically requested No Distressed Furniture Within House or Yard.

Now I am the one who is distressed.

So, a friendly warning to anyone living in a humid zone who feels the urge to build an enormous double lounger and lacks an air conditioned workshop:

DON’T!

(Sorry, Aunty Natty. This has now become a winter project. But we do have a hammock!!)

It was all WIN!

And then, this morning, as oil starts to wash inland in Lousiana and the first oil balls wash up on Texas shores, comes news of this:

Seems like some of those BP losers thought they were still playing that old game from their childhood, complete with chump change oil cleanup bills.

Well, well. How about that then.

So we told the children that we would go to a public display instead. Then we happened to pass the field from where said display would be viewed and were horrified to see that they were setting up a fairground. A small, horrible, overpriced fairground. The type of magic fairground that kids absolutely have to line up to ride. And no, just one ride will not do, and when one of them sees an understuffed, dusty purple dog on display major cases of The Whines ensue and suddenly the night becomes all kinds of stressful.

Of course, we could say “No” but it is much easier to bypass the wailing and determine up front that we will not, after all, be going to the public fireworks display because it will be “too muddy”. We will, instead, we proclaim, go buy fireworks from a roadside fireworks stand. Ooh, exciting.

And also slightly intimidating, but we could not change our minds yet again, so we parked the car and unloaded the kids and made our way to the stall.

Surprisingly, we found it manned by a group of maybe 17 year old boys. Which suddenly explained the hordes of teenage girls channelling Carmen Electra draped across the counter as we arrived. Thankfully, they disappeared, taking their visible panties with them,  and made room for us to goggle the fireworks, of which there were confusingly many. The teenage boys were polite, patient, knowledgeable and happy to impart advice such as “you’re not supposed to hold it in your hand but everybody does”. They gave us lots of free extras. It was a pleasant choosing experience.

And then we tried to pay and you know that old joke “How many … does it take to change a lightbulb?”  Well, to work out what we owed for our five token fireworks, it took three.

One to jab ineffectually at the calculator and give up after he “oh yeah, pushed the times button by mistake hahaha”. He then tried to work out the total on paper.

Two to look over his shoulder, point out that he should start with the ones, and then give us the sum of the ones as the total.

Three to come along before I had managed to pay the hugely diminished sum, and work out the true total in his head.

Oh, party pooper Number Three!

Later the Daddy and I talked about the nice young men and what great customer service personas they had and how the most shocking thing was not that they could not do long addition on paper, but that they could not use a calculator.

And then The Daddy pointed out that rather than stupidity or under-education, they had maybe just been smoking.

And I am holding onto that thought…

…I find it strangely reassuring.

On Sunday morning when he woke up, he was 4 years old! On the way to the store, he led his brother and sister in a game of finding all the number 4s in the world outside. Street signs, house numbers, advertising hoardings… isn’t it amazing how many number 4’s there are in the world? Number 4’s just like The Wictor!

Mommy? He said, Remember yesterday when I was three? And I had my party at the gymnastics club?

We had his party at the gymnastics club. The one where I have just very expensively enrolled all three of my children, despite the fact that one of them is very athletic but is more interested in having fun than in making precise movements with his limbs, one would fall off a couch if you sat her on it (and frequently, she does) and the other … has just turned 4. Oh well, they enjoy it.

The Wictor had specifically requested this venue for its inflatable train, and it was only after I had booked and paid for the thing that he announced he loved the train but was also too scared to go inside it. In the end he did, just the one time, with the wonderful Coach Matt. Then we watched while his friends went around again … and again … and again….

Coach Matt also led the children in bouncing and swinging and jumping their way through the place … and as an added bonus, all the serious gymnasts were away at a meet that day, so the little gymnasts got to go into the Big Gym!

(My photos get very blurry at this point as I was trying to hide some serious hurt, having just broken my little toe on a piece of gym equipment. The Show Must Go On! Unfortunately Coach Matt had made me sign a waiver, so I will get no compensation for Pain and Suffering for that one. And I was such a great actress, smiling heroically through the tears, that I didn’t even get any sympathy. Not even from the Daddy, who when I unwrapped it the next day and showed it to him all purple and swollen said “Oh, I thought you were just being overdramatic”).

This was actually The Wictor’s first ever real birthday party. Last year he didn’t have one partly because I didn’t have time to organize it, but also because his birthday falls two weeks into Summer Vacation. Although Summer Vacation lasts 10 weeks, everybody seems to leave during the first month. In the end six children turned up, which with my three was just enough to make a party. And The Wictor was delighted.

Mommy? He asked me this morning “Am I still four?”

On Sunday on the spur of the moment I decided to pressure wash our concrete patio. Usually this job falls to The Daddy but I am a little (cough) more detail oriented than he is, and I wanted to (cough) see if I could do a better job than he does. An experiment, if you will.

Could I do a better job at pressure washing the back patio than The Daddy? Well after two hours wearing jeans and boots in 90 degree heat, getting splashed with water and splattered with dirt, it turns out the answer is :

WHO CARES?????

Then in 1995 when we were out looking for our First Real Jobs, The Daddy badgered me to put “internet user since 1994″ on my CV. This would prove that I was technologically savvy and had been so for quite a while (and actually no, young people currently clutching their sides in mirth, I am not kidding). I scoffed and wriggled and tried to get out of it  and then thought What The Heck. So,  a week later I got a call for a job. They needed someone who knew what the Internet was (little people, get up off the floor, that was not a joke either), for a slightly technical role which also involved liaising with Blue Chip clients, which is why they would consider employing a girl.

Shortly after this that I stopped Assuming That The Daddy was Always Wrong, which is how we ended up in America. But that is another story, in fact one which has already been told, though I am too lazy to link to it right now.

Moving on. Our life from that point on was defined by computers, and mostly by the Internet. By this stage there were already a lot more color photos, this thing was becoming quite fun! Through the heady days of the 128K modem (we were ahead of the curve. That thing cost us £180), dialling up 50 or 100 times in the hope of getting a connection at the other end, the excitement of the first cable modem, DSL and almost immediate downloads, blogging, the iPhone… We first learned about, and followed the events of 9/11 on the CNN website, where it popped up before it hit any overseas news media. We transferred address books to Yahoo and categorized businesses by whether they had a web site (web site: yes!  No web site: no, you loser, you may be perfectly good at clipping hedges but no, no, no). If we were bored, we surfed aimlessly, hopping from site to site…

Surfing has taken a back seat lately. Unless you count inserting the DVD of Barbie In A Mermaid Tale for the one millionth time.

My life has changed a lot. The T-Bot is back at school, and I am devoting minimal time to internet businesses  and more time to doing stuff in the real world. Including rebuilding my IRL relationships, which suffered when I was putting one foot in front of the other. I actually consider myself lucky so many friends have stuck around. And tidying the mess hastily pushed into cupboards when I didn’t really have time to tidy. Calling in the relevant tradesmen to undertake much-needed facelifts around the place (No, not my face, thank you). Building furniture. And seeing to quite a lot of  DIY.

I mean, a back door isn’t a back door unless you can actually turn the handle to get out. In the absence of DIY it is just a piece of wall with a static handle. Luckily not also a fire hazard as for some reason there are three back doors in this house. But you know, it is nice to have the choice whether to go out of one door, or another 3 feet away.

And so, little by little, the computer has stopped being the default option. I no longer automatically sit down at my desk whenever I have 5 minutes to spare. My house is the tidiest it has ever been. My children have clean clothes to wear. I have all three of them home over summer vacation, and sometimes I just sit in the sun, watch them and relax.

That’s why you haven’t seen me around for a while. And really, that’s how life should be

The Mommy: Well, they … um … it depends what color your Mommy and Daddy are. If your Mommy and Daddy you are born from are brown, then you will be brown too.

The Wictor: I’m not brown. I’m tan.

The Mommy: Yes. Because Daddy is tan and Mommy is … sort of tan.

There are all sorts of colors of people. Beautiful brown, beautiful pink, beautiful tan people…

The Wictor: And yellow people!

The Mommy: Well, yes … um … I guess. Yellow people too.

The Wictor: Like the Simpsons!

The Mommy: Oh! Yes, like The Simpsons!

The Wictor: Why they make the Simpsons yellow?

Why Spongebob lives in a pineapple?

Why the Simpsons are yellow?

Why A-Zs have the alphabet?

Why pork has pig in it?

Not draw on the furniture? Why?

Is this your newchair?

Why you have a newchair?

Did you put your old chair in the trash?

Your old chair was it broken?

Your old chair was it broken because of your big bottom?

*****************************************

T-Bot(seriously): I have the hiccups …

…  A student at school had the hiccups today  …

…  I must have caught them from her.

Baby Sister: T-Bot, did you touch her hands????

T-Bot: No. But she was sitting at my lunch table.

************************

Mommy? Mommy? Why are you laughing?

Lost and far from home, she was forced to go live in a house with a big, scary thug.

She did not like living in proximity to him. He mostly left her alone, but he was rough. He had no manners and no idea how to behave. He would stare at her and freak her out. Didn’t respect her boundaries. Would come into her part of the house without warning and act like he generally owned the place (which actually he sort of did, before she came along).

She felt that he did not give her the respect she deserved and so whenever she saw him she would hiss and spit and jump at him and try and scratch him with her long sharp nails.

Baby Sister takes up the story:

Silly Whisper. She keeps trying.

But she should know you can never win a fight with The Big Cat. The Fij’ stands undefeated.

CURRENT SCORES

Fiji v Whisper: 40-something - Nil

Fiji v The Wictor: 1 - Nil

Oh yeah.

Because apparently we all want a piece of the action. This one is going for the sympathy vote.

(And yes thank you hundreds of passers by for your concern. I do see how close that is to his eye.

Next time I will remember to ask my cat to scratch elsewhere.

You’re welcome.)

]]> http://www.inzaburbs.com/2010/04/30/the-feud/feed/ http://www.inzaburbs.com/2010/04/26/the-birthday-that-went-on-forever/ http://www.inzaburbs.com/2010/04/26/the-birthday-that-went-on-forever/#comments Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:07:55 +0000 admin http://www.inzaburbs.com/?p=1489 Eight days ago we celebrated Baby Sister’s Fake Birthday. As opposed to her Real Birthday, which was a week ago, and her Birthday Party, which was on Saturday.

We had a fun and very low key time. She was delighted with her presents and cake and all the attention and … everything.

BTW, I have been reading up on how to take good snapshots. I have been learning lots of great, easy to follow rules. The kind of rules anyone should be able to remember, even in the heat of the moment.

For example, Rule Number One: Prepare your Scene. A rule covering everything from ensuring you have good lighting, to clearing background and foreground mess, to asking the person sitting for your portrait to please remove the chocolate cake from between her teeth.

Ignore the disastrous photos. I promise, a good time was had by all.

So, being a total glutton for punishment I spent last week making preparations for the party, which took place in our yard.

Just don’t ask for party photos. I was in charge of decorations, cleaning, food preparation, table laying, child wrangling, game organizing, adult social relations and repeatedly calling all the girls down from Baby Sister’s bedroom to please come bounce on the Bouncy Castle because I paid a lot of money for it to just be sitting there making a whooshing noise and swaying gently in the breeze.

The Daddy was in charge of Band Aids and photos. First he had to be reminded to get out the camera for the candle blowing. Then he decided to capture the moment with a blurry  iPhone video instead. Well, one candle blowing is just like another right? And we still have our memories…

I did get a few dark, blurry bouncing photos after the party was over!

So all is not lost