Archives for December 2013

The summer school holidays here last for six weeks. That’s a long time for the lad to be in vacation care – not that it’s even open for two of those six weeks. I’ve been lucky enough since he’s been at school to have the christmas/new year week, and a bit longer, off work. This year I decided to take three weeks off.

When I tell people that’s what’s happening they always ask if we’re going away. Like you’re supposed to go away if you’re not at work. I suppose I’m a culprit of this question to other people as well.

No, we’re not going away, we’re hanging at home. Apart from a night away here and there that is.

We’re a week and a bit into the holidays and now that the christmas hoo-ha is out the way I’m starting to relax. It’s new year’s eve today and I was awake and up just after 7am. It’s going to be quite warm so I wanted to get the dog’s walk out the way. I’d done that, come home, fed the dog, watered the garden and put a load of washing on by 8am.

We’ve had something on every day and the moments we do get at home I potter around doing the bare minimum and JJ is playing an Xbox game he bought with christmas money.

The dog follows me around and seems to have found a spot he likes under the kitchen table. I’ve got to be careful not to go out and leave him under there.

The other day JJ invited a friend over and we went to Grange beach – a beach I don’t normally go to. While they spent over an hour in the water I setup on the beach and just watched the world go by. Some people sat down right in front of me spoiling my view so I moved! There was plenty of room to sit elsewhere and they had a bloody chair as well.

Once I got the boys out the water we found a fish and chip shop, bought some food and drove until we found a park to sit in and eat. We found a wetlands with heaps of birds and tried to ignore all the bird shit on the table we sat at. Lucky we had a plate in the form of the paper wrapped around the chips.

The boys played on the playground and I even joined in pushing them on a big swing thing and got them to push me around on it as well. Playgrounds have changed heaps since I was a girl. For a start they are a lot more colourful and the equipment is quite different. Except for the swings. I think there will always be swings. Just the seat has changed from a wooden seat to a rubber seat.

It’s days like this that I like about having a staycation. We did something we don’t normally do, well not at those particular locations. It didn’t matter what time we got home as there were no major commitments for the next day. And the weather was perfect.

I enjoy going to the movies. There’s something about the big screen and the surround sound that’s very enjoyable. Enjoyable, that is, apart from other movie goers.

Most people are pretty good. They know the cinema etiquette, but some don’t. Or they’re just SO important that nobody else matters.

I think there are two main things that you don’t do at the movies. One is talk. A quiet whisper here and there is fine, but not continual chat. The second one is not using your phone. I’ve had two lots of different people break these rules recently.

A few weeks ago The Surfer and I went to see Enough Said. We sat about two thirds of the way back in a relatively quiet cinema on a Friday morning. Two women sat a bit further back from us and talked. And talked. And kept on talking. I’ll give people a few chances then I’ll usually say something. As it was quite distracting I turned around and asked them to please be quiet. They were. Then they left about half an hour later. They probably went to a coffee shop to continue their conversation which is where they should have started it in the first place.

We watched the rest of the movie in peace.

Yesterday I took JJ to see Frozen. It’s just been released. It’s school holidays so the cinema was pretty packed. There was a group of boys a few rows behind us and they didn’t have any adults with them. No, it wasn’t them I’m going to talk about. They were pretty good apart from one boy groaning every time a song started in the movie. I didn’t realise it was a musical movie. It wasn’t too musical, just a few songs here and there.

It wasn’t the three year old girl near us who kept standing up and moving around because she was obviously too young to be there in the first place. No, it was her father who kept getting his phone out and texting. He did it once. He did it again. And when he did it again I leaned over JJ, who was sitting between us and who’d also expressed his disdain for this behaviour, and asked him to please put his phone away as it was distracting. The man asked who it was distracting. Doh! I told him it was distracting my son and I. He said, ‘sorry champ’ to JJ. And as he was putting his phone away he said, ‘how rude’. At first I thought he meant that he realised he was being rude and saying it in a passive aggressive manner but later I thought he may have meant that I was being rude.

I don’t know and I don’t really care as he didn’t do it again. Not too long afterwards he picked up his three year old daughter, the one who was moving around and complaining a bit, and took her out not to come back.

Does anyone else encounter these problems at the movies? Surely it’s not just me.