The Gentle Art of Procrastinating at Work & What I Did On My Holidays

Well, hello blog, I've been away for a bit. And overseas for a bit of that bit. And we've moved house, and a few other things.

But I'm here now. And back at work, completing the advance module of How To Procrastinate at Work Without Really Trying. This has been made somewhat easier through the wisdom and good sense of office management, who have given all of us iPhones. Now I can procrastinate not just on parenting forums and Facebook, but also on Twitter and the political posts of Facebook, both of which were previously blocked by the internet filter at work. Not to mention Angry Bird, PvZ and numerous card games. Oh, and I can buy lotto tickets from the privacy of my own desk. That's got to be an advantage.

Other things that make procrastinating at work easy are having management that put you in the slow lane because you work part time. Before I left for Ireland, it wasn't so much the slow lane as the carpark, with a large yellow clamp on the metaphorical front right wheel. Seriously, for weeks I had nothing much to do. If I weren't such a good procrastinator, it would have done my head in completely, as opposed to only a small amount.

And now I'm back. So the slow lane has revved up a bit. It could more accurately be described as being stuck behind a learner in Centennial Park, Sydney. Except they don't allow learners in Centennial Park any more. But at least it's moving.

The trip to Ireland was great. Worst summer in 50 years, mind you, although they're having an Indian summer now. Thank you, weather gods. Cold and rainy while I was there, and cold and rainy now I'm back in Sydney. Cheers.

So to answer the second part of the title, what DID I do on my holidays? I slept. I read decent papers. I spent possibly more time than I would have liked in the country, and less time that I would have liked in Dublin. I ate a lot of bacon and cabbage. I bought clothes and shoes. I spent time with the family of Himself, and watched the Small Child have fun with her cousins and her grandparents. She was particularly enamoured of Deux, her French cousin a year older than her. Immediately after meeting him, they set up a complicated game involving the Small Child as a traffic light yelling variously "Rouge! Vert! Orange!" at her cousin, as she stood in the door or stood aside depending on what colour she was while her cousin zoomed around on Trixie Trunki. If nothing else, she's certainly shown she's got what it takes to be a traffic cop. In a foreign language.

We went to Dublin Zoo where Auntie Ha-Ha  anthropomorphised all the animals and I mentioned how venomous/human eating/viscious they all were, and privately compared it, unfavourably, to Taronga. I finally went to the Brazen Head pub in Dublin, after years of decrying it as a tourist trap, and was pleasantly surprised to find this was not neccessarily the case, despite the large numbers of Americans in trainers tucking into Irish Stew and Germans with backpacks sitting on a single glass of Guinness for the entire night.

I managed to get sunburnt twice, nothing short of a miracle given that we only had three days of sunshine. I ate my bodyweight in cod and chips, comparing them, favourably, with the inferior product generally found in Australia. I met up with my mates. I wondered, not for the first time, whether it really was the best thing to move back to Australia. Not for the first time, I failed to come up with a satisfactory response to the question.

But best of all, Dublin won the Senior Football All-Ireland Football Championship for the first time since 1995.  And how sweet a victory it was.

But Mum.....

I have been trying, with limited success, to persuade the Small Child to wear her pyjamas in bed. She's had a persistent cough and this is one of the few things I can think of that might help get rid of it.

So I tell her that pjs, must perforce be worn in bed in winter, to get rid of the cough.

Two innocent big blue eyes look up at me earnestly as she says

"but I like my cough mum".

My poor ma

We're in the process of moving up to mum's place, probably for about a year, while we get the new house built. If it ever gets built. The housing company we are using obviously skipped "Communicating With Clients 101"as they have been remarkably tardy about letting us know what is happening, and when we can expect work to commence. This is the same company that delayed the start by 4 months after the previous consultant managed to ignore a basic piece of legislation which lead to a modification to development consent having to be lodged. Thanks, thanks very much indeed.

But I digress. Yesterday, we were moving stuff up to mums and rearranging her stuff so that there was enough room for us all. Having had lunch, we were sitting down having a rest before cleaning out yet more wardrobes. The Small Child wanted to go downstairs to the rumpus room. None of the three adults were especially motivated to want to go with her. 

The bottom lip starts quivering "But I can't go down by myself! I have to have a parent with me!"

Himself asks hopefully if it might be possible to take a grandparent. 

"NO! It has to be a parent!!"

By this point, mum was heading for beet colour, as she tried, to keep the snort of laughter inside. She failed. 

My poor ma.

This could be a disaster!

The other day we were at mum's place. It was a cold, wet and windy day with such low cloud that you couldn't see the far side of the water.

The Small Child was playing something with her dolls. She looked out at the weather and exclaimed "Oh, no! It's dark and cloudy! We can't see the water! This could be a disaster!"

She'll be a lawyer yet...

The Small Child likes bouncing on our bed. We don't mind this (the bed is old and fast approaching its retirement). The other day I heard the the Small Child bouncing, checked, and realised that she was not holding on to the bedhead like we tell her to.

So I yell "If you're going to bounce, make sure you're holding on!"

Two minutes later I look out and say "Didn't I tell tell you to hold on?"

And the reply? "But I am holding on Mum! I'm holding onto Puppy!"

There's a fine grasp of semantics there. Like I said, I think she's going to be a lawyer.

Small Child in Bed

One of the peculiar joys of going into the Small Child's bedroom of a night to check she's OK is seeing just what exactly she had chosen to wear. While you may very well put her to bed wearing orthodox pj's/nightie/knickers, if she can't sleep and gets hot, cold or bored, you can bet she'll be wearing something different when you check her a few hours later.

Last night she wanted to sleep "just in knickers, mum". I checked on her later, and lo and behold, she's in a pair of pyjamas. Other nights she'll start off in pyjamas and end up in a skirt and t-shirt. Or her nightie. Or a fleece, in the middle of summer.

One particularly funny night I heard a plaintive voice calling "mummy, I need help".  Turns out she had decided that leggings and a zipper jacket, with nothing underneath were the thing to wear that night. Except that the zipper on the jacket had got caught, and then split, and she could get neither wholly into it, or wholly out of it. To add to the humor, the jacket was purple, with sequins. She looked just like a mini glam rocker after a hard night, only minus the booze and fags.

Damn I wish I'd got a photo.

Big enormous bed

The Small Child is going through another stage of not really liking her bed. Tonight she followed me into our room, which currently has a pink duvet cover and where she pointed out that after she had another bad dream she would come in here and get into the beautiful enormous bed with the lovely big pillows.... because girls like pink beds, mum!

Err, right you are then, Ted!

Small Child World

The Small Child has been talking a lot about different worlds recently. There is the general one, Small Child World, and then there are others, depending on how she is feeling on any particular day. On Friday it was Small Child & Mummy World because we had adventures in the park. Another day it was decided that "today is going to be Tomorrow World". We've had Best Friends World, and, this afternoon, Pikelet World, in honour of the rather delicious pikelets we made for dessert.

And for posterity, here is the recipe, courtesy of The Guardian circa 2003.

250 grams SR Flour
100 grams castor sugar
2 eggs
125 mls natural yoghurt
250mls milk

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl. Whisk wet ingredients in another bowl until well combined. Make a well in the dry ingredients, poor in the wet ingredients and amalgamate well. Heat frypan,  put in a small amount of neutral oil and poor in appropriately pikelet sized amounts of batter. Turn when bubbles appear on surface, repeat process until all batter used,  then serve with jam and cream.

Gems

This afternoon, when I went to pick the small child up from creche:

SC- I'm boring.

BFF - I'm boring too.

This morning, Himself told me that last night in bed the Small Child while totally asleep kept running her fingers over his stubble and saying "I'm here! I'm here!"

Rainy Day

Well, actually it's been more of a rainy weekend, so we didn't get to picnic with the Small Child's BFF and the roof has sprung another leak in the bedroom. We've had several different varieties of rain these last few days, from tropical style rain so dense we can't see the far side of the park, to the current variety, a fine penetrating Irish style drizzle that looks innocuous until you come in 5 minutes later to realise you're soaked to the skin.  Even the brush turkeys are looking bedraggled and even more desponded than usual.

The Small Child has been in fine form, the other day she told Himself that "you have a lovely furry chest daddy, just like Hairy Maclary." She's a fine turn of phrase, so she has.  At the moment she's playing an  game involving herself as Dora, Himself as Swiper the Fox, and one of her friends as Boots. Thankfully for the sanity of all involved, it's not Strawberry Goat.

Out in the wider world, NSW Labor are heading for a pasting in 6 days time. Earth Hour is on the same night. They must be fecking joking if they think I'm going to turn off my TV for an hour during what promises to be a very amusing election night count. Apart from anything else, I could have every light on in our house for a week and not come close to the electricity consumption of some of the monster mansions along Middle Harbour in one night.

God the Builder

The Small Child attends a Seventh Day Adventist creche. It's not a religion I know a great deal about, as an atheist, and and atheist moreover who comes from a Catholic background. But I digress. The creche is good and I have no problem with the religion. So far as I'm concerned, people have a lot of differing views, and the sooner you learn to (generally) respect them, so much the better.

But I digress further. So the Small Child is sitting with her small friends, singing a song about "God The Builder". Her Granny watches for a bit, with an expression on her face that the carers no doubt interpret as loving the song, and a better person might interpret as deep cynicism.

In the car later, Granny asks the Small Child what the song was

"God the Builder, Gran. Mummy and me went to a special store and bought the DVD, didn't we mum?"

Err, no.

Enlightenment occurs. The Small Child is mixing up God and Bob, a natural mistake given that both build, but Bob builds better.

Especially in this house, where God builds not at all.

Goldilocks & the Three Bears - as told by John Donne

The Small Child and I were at Granny's yesterday, this being easier for both of us while my leg is in plaster. Wandering round, she chanced upon an old copy of John Donne's Love Poems, one of those Penguin 60s they were selling in the mid-90s. This, thinks the Small Child, is great little book and she promptly starts "reading" the story of Goldilocks to Granny out of it. Granny lost it a bit, but not wanting the Small Child to see her in stitches, tells her to go read it to mummy.

I suppose I can be glad that it wasn't Alan Clark's Diaries. There's a copy of that floating around somewhere and all.

And then there was Toast.

The Small Child is finally re-naming some of her dolls. Up till now, she has been fairly unadventurous in the naming stakes, going for endless variations of baby, babby, bubby etc with multiple dolls having the same name.

Today, we got something different. One doll has been renamed Toast, another Roast and the third has had a torrid time being variously Toosa, Toosla and now Toaster Roaster. No, I don't know where this has come from either. Just as she was going to bed, she decided that they were three baby Jesuses, recalling her show stopper at the creche Christmas show where she played "Jesus's mummy". I must say she did look rather adorable in the blue cape as shown in the mobile video Himself took of the event, myself being laid up with these wretched crutches.

Himself is somewhat perturbed by this infantile religious feeling. Growing up in Ireland, I suppose he has seen how the church gets a hold on children. I, on the other hand, have no fears, having grown up with my strongly atheist family. Given that the majority of his family is now leaning, at the very least to agnosticism also, I can't see that there is much to worry about.

She now want to know if she can sleep in the bathroom, having taken a scunner to her bedroom. For preference she would sleep with us, but this is not on. I have to get nookie sometimes and I'm not doing it with an audience.