Archives for May 2008

Loggerheads

May 9, 2008 by Jen

The last two mornings have been hell in getting out of the door for work/school. It’s ended up with us both yelling at each other and achieving absolutely nothing. I was still taking deep breaths, because I was so frustrated, when I arrived at work yesterday.

Yesterday I dreaded how JJ would fare at school, wondering if the shenanigans at home might manifest into naughty behaviour at school. I had a missed call from the school but luckily it was about something else.

When I picked him up from after school care, one of the teachers pulled me aside and said that at snack time JJ had stood up on a chair and dropped his pants. I stood there shaking my head and saying that he knows this is inappropriate behaviour. When we talked about it afterwards he said he knew it was wrong and that I should take one of his ticks off his reward chart which I did.

This morning we were late for school because he wouldn’t hurry up and get ready. When we got there I made him apologise to the teacher.

I used to have his jobs written down for the morning and I’m going to need to do it again so he’s got a very clear idea of what needs to be done.

I’m at home at the moment and was just cleaning up some of his junk. I found a piece of paper he’s been writing on for the last few days and it brought a tear to my eyes. It’s a bit hard to read because he spells a lot of things how he hears them, but here’s the gist:

‘I love you but sometimes you are a bit bossy. Sorry for the many things I have done to you mum. I know that you are looking forward to mother’s day. ???? Are you sad that my dad ???.

Love JJ’

I wish I could read the bit he’s written about his dad. Underneath the writing he’s drawn a picture of himself, myself and Monty, and our fish (this is our family that he talked about at school earlier in the week).

The poor love obviously takes a lot of things to heart. I’m going to buy him a special book that he can write this stuff down in. Perhaps he’s like me and writing down feelings is helpful in moving past them.

Carnival of Australia 7 May 2008

May 7, 2008 by Jen

I’m very pleased to host the May 7, 2008 edition of Carnival of Australia. I had to delete a couple of spam type posts but otherwise all have been included. I had some trouble with the formatting from the Word doc I received so if you notice any errors please let me know. Read on….

Lin Burress presents So Sexy, So Soon: The Sexualization of Childhood in Commercial Culture posted at Telling It Like It Is.

Lightening presents Netball Grief posted at Lightening Online, saying, “A raw and emotional post with bittersweet memories of a time gone past.”

Business

Martin Russell presents Long Copy Vs Short Copy – The Final Say. posted at Word of Mouth Marketing.

Sandy Naidu presents Income Protection Insurance (Disability Income Protection) posted at Future Nest Egg, saying, “Personal Finance Blog”

Keran Thomas presents A touch of Birdwing history posted at Birdwing Therapies, saying, “How my business name, Birdwing Therapies, came to be.”

Brennan Ryan presents Do You Have What it Takes to Lead? posted at Free Business Tips.

Suzie Cheel presents My Big Hairy Audacious Goal! posted at The Abundance Highway, saying, “On Monday I said I have a big goal I want to achieve quickly, based totally around LOA and that I would expand on this on a post on Wednesday. That was optimistic but here we are.”

Current Affairs

7million7years presents A retirement dream – Australia « How to Make 7 Million in 7 Years^TM posted at How to Make 7 Million in 7 Years^TM, saying, “Australia is the country most people around the world would like to live in when they retire. So, how well does the typical Aussie live in retirement?”

Shan Siddiqi presents Disease can’t go on strike; why can doctors? posted at Globally Rational, saying, “New Zealand’s junior doctors recently went on strike for more money. Wait… doctors can go on strike?”

Family

Megan Bayliss presents Sex predators groom against child protection posted at imaginif, saying, “While personal grooming is generally considered to be good, grooming is also a process of desensitization that sex predators use on children. A sex predator will use grooming to make themselves look nice and to prepare and trick a child into accepting sexual abuse.”

Kathie Thomas presents You’re only as happy as your saddest child posted at The Thomases.

Belongum presents “You look like a man I knew,”… « Belongum’s Weblog posted at Belongum’s Weblog, saying, “A family Yarn!”

Jen presents Being a boy posted at Semantically driven, saying I think I was blessed with a boy so I could learn just how different they are from girls.

Helping a mate

Craig Harper presents The Non-Optional Stuff. posted at Renovate your life with Craig, saying, “Q. Why do so many of us who want to get in shape (whatever that means for us individually) fail to do so, even though we know exactly what to do, and why we should do it?”

History

Anne Maybus presents Two Kinds of Courage. posted at The Tall Poppy.

Jeff presents Leonardo da Vinci Machines Exhibition posted at Jeffagogo.com, saying, “Leonardo da Vinci Machines Exhibition Perth”

Technology

PlanningQueen presents A Newbie’s Lessons From Upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1 posted at Planning with Kids, saying, “While still not perfect, some lessons on how I muddled through the upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1 and got the blog up and running.”

Des Walsh presents The One Dollar Trial a Gift that Keeps on Giving posted at Thinking Home Business.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of australia using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of australia, blog carnival.

Reading 93 Festival – the bands and the memories

May 6, 2008 by Jen

While doing my washing I noticed this t-shirt had survived yet another wash. Even though it’s obviously disintegrating I can’t bring myself to throw it away because of the memories it brings back. One day it probably will literally disintegrate, so I’ve documented it.

Back in the early 1990s I spent two years living in England. One of the things I really wanted to do during this time was go to the Reading or Glastonbury festival. I managed to get my two flatmates to come to the Reading Festival with me in 1993 and this is the t-shirt I bought there.

Let me turn it over and show you some of the fantastic bands that played there. We have the Big Day Out here which get some pretty good acts, but nothing like festivals in Europe attract.

Can you read any of these names?

Or these?

Or is your eyesight exceptional enough to make all of these out?

No, probably not, so here’s my attempt at listing them all (some of the names might be wrong because the font used is fairly illegible so please let me know). An asterisk next to ones I saw, or think I saw, or indeed wish I saw.

Jim Rose Circus Sideshow (I don’t think this went ahead)
Oilseed Rape
Magnapop
Shampoo
Truman’s Water
The Posies
Masters of Reality
The Pastels
Jesus Lizard
Bettie Serveert
Primus*
The Juliana Hatfield Three
Alice Donut
Paul Westerberg
Goats
Big Star
The Bob Broleys
The Breeders
Mother Earth
The Cherry
Fishbone*
Die Cheerleader
FMB
Lemonheads*
Biduac
Dinosaur Jr*
Credit to the Nation
New Order*
Swervedriver*
Gigolo Aunts
Mighty Mighy Bosstones
Madder Rose
Drop Nineteens
Eat
Family Cat
Ringmaster
Blur*
Radiohead*
Senseless Things
Fenn
Gary Clail’s On U Sound System*
Ozric Tentacles
Voodoo Queens
Therapy? (the question mark is part of the band’s name)
The Flaming Lips*
Siouxsie and the Bansehees*
The The*
Green Apple Quick Step
Tool*
The Doughboys
Gallon Drunk
Leatherface
Bad Brains*
Senser
Adorable
Stone Temple Pilots*
Babes in Toyland
Back to the Planet
Butthole Surfers*
Chumbawamba
Neds Atomic Dustbin*
Rage Against the Machine*(this band was at this year’s Big Day Out)
The Franks and Walters
Porno for Pyros*

It’s a pity I don’t remember more of it but sneaking of the bottle of vodka in was probably not a good idea for the memory. I did share the vodka with my two flatmates.

I do remember sleeping three people in a two-man tent amongst hundreds of other tents. I do remember lying in the tent one night and someone pissed on the outside of our tent. I do remember between acts people would light up those disposable foam type containers to make little fires and the awful chemical stench they made. It really wasn’t cold enough to even warrant a fire but the smell of the chemical smoke was really awful.

Despite this, the bands were awesome and I’m so glad I went.

Here’s a taste of New Order’s Round and Round live at Reading Festival 93.

Being a boy

May 2, 2008 by Jen

This is a rare moment, that is sitting still and waiting. Mind you, it was very short lived. They were told to sit still so hopefully the rabbits would come up to them. They didn’t.

JJ is not a sit down still kind of kid. Being in a classroom must be very frustrating for him because of the ants in his pants and it must be frustrating for the teacher to have to tell him to sit still.

One activity at present that’s keeping him sitting still is doing the tomboy stitch (I’ll write more about that another time). JJ calls it his knitting. Apparently he was doing his knitting at recess and lunch yesterday. This is the kid that recently got into trouble for fighting at school!

He’s full of paradoxes my boy. The other night he came home and hated life, hated himself and was lamenting the fact that he has no friends and that his one friend was mean to him that day.

Last night we sat down taking it in turns to do his knitting and he told me that he didn’t hate himself any more, but that he was pretty happy with his life. Phew!

Something spontaneous

May 1, 2008 by Jen

On Anzac Day last Friday JJ and I went to visit friends up in the Adelaide Hills and I took my camera. Normally when we head up that way we drive up the Freeway because it’s quicker and there’s two lanes in case someone is going slow you can overtake them. At Aldgate we veered off the freeway and I decided to take non-freeway route.

This was dangerous for me because I had no idea which way to go as I’ve never done it before. The reason I wanted to do it was because it does get monotonous going the same way all the time and I wasn’t in a huge hurry.

The reason I decided to go a new way was because I love autumn colours and wanted to have a look at the scenery on the way (as much as I could being the driver and all).

JJ snapped some pictures in the back seat of the car and they all turned out pretty blurry but on the outskirts of one town we stopped and I took a couple of photos.

For those non Australian readers I’ll explain a couple of things about this photo. We drive on the left side of the road here (you can see the little blue car on the left side of the road in the distance). When I nannied in England I remember my employer reiterating a few times that they drove on the left side of the road. I explained to her that Australians do also and she hadn’t known that.

The two signs on either side of the road tell motorists that when the lights are flashing (the lights are further down the road again) that they need to slow down to 25 kilometres per hour. These signs are typically out the front of a school, childcare centre or kindergarten and it appears as though this mystery town has a school on the left of this photo.

The last thing I’ll explain about this photo is that it was taken on 25 April and it’s autumn here. We call fall, autumn – don’t ask me why the same season is called different things in different parts of the world.

As it turned out it would have taken the same amount of time to go this back way as it did the supposedly quicker freeway route. Now I know which way to go I’ll be able to pick and choose.

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