For the record

Simon has almost finished his record 4 or 5 years of extreme workload. So after being a de facto single mother for 3 years, the tide is starting to turn. I'm going to keep a record now, of the time he spends at home on the weekends, until it becomes completely normal for him to leave work on a Friday and not think about it again until Monday.

7/8 July - in Brisbane, a couple of hours of work
14/15 July - in Brisbane, no work
21/22 July - home on Saturday, working from home on Sunday
28/29 July - home, but working Saturday afternoon, and a couple of hours Sunday
4/5 August - stay tuned....

A change is as good as a holiday

Mixed feelings today as I resigned from ECU to take up a position (starting August 20) at Curtin Uni.  I will really miss the folks at the School of Law and Justice.  But I am very much looking forward to a week off between jobs, and to starting a new challenge.

Rudd v Howard on myspace

Interesting mention in the Australian on the weekend that Kevin Rudd has over 8000 friends on his Myspace site, and Howard has only 8 on his.

and I was, like, what's that?

The word "like" has appeared in Harrison's vocabulary, much to our consternation. He reports on conversations with friends and intersperses 'I was, like, "what's that?" ', and 'he was, like, really funny' in the descriptions. Don't know where he got it from.

Happy birthday Marg

Marg Y's birthday was on Saturday (Bastille Day), so Harrison, Marg and I went to Whiteman Park, where we had a ride on a steam train and a birthday picnic, and then to Caversham Wildlife Park, where we hand fed kangaroos and patted a koala. It was a glorious weekend in Perth - clear and sunny and pleasant. Quite unlike the very chilly weather they're getting on the east coast at the moment.

I made a gluten free cake for her birthday... an interesting combination since it started out being a butter cake with a hint of lemon, but then we added squares of chocolate at the insistence of my assistant chef. He couldn't conceive of a birthday cake that didn't involve chocolate! We decorated it with gluten free hundreds and thousands, and gluten free marshmallow flowers. Now if only I had a daughter I could roll out the old "hippy flower" cake for about 15 years in a row, I reckon. With Harrison I think it's going to be variations on the train theme for a few years to come.


On Sunday Harrison went to his first "theme" birthday party. It was a superman theme, so he had an excuse to wear his superman costume. The boys had no trouble dressing as super heroes, but for girls, it seems fairy and princess costumes are all they can come up with. We coped very well with the food issue - he had his own iced mini-mudcakes instead of birthday cake, and we brought along a big bag of coloured pop corn to share, plus he had a few of his own snacks as well. There was another girl who also wasn't able to eat the party food, so he didn't feel too "special".

In a couple of weeks he has a pirate party to attend, which should be fun.

Simon is in Brisbane for 11 days - teaching an intensive native title law unit at QUT. Life continues pretty much as normal for Harrison and I, except I do the day care drop off three days a week. Simon seems pretty relaxed over there, actually, so hopefully he continues that way when he gets back.

Harrison refused to wake up this morning - asked me to turn off the light and kept trying to pull up the covers and roll over and go back to sleep. Even when he was up and dressed he kept telling me he was tired. Not sure why. He was fine by the time he got to day care, so perhaps he just didn't want to face Monday.

Downlands 1987

There's a website for my 20 year high school reunion, where people are posting photos and bios in the lead up to the reunion. I thought our class was particularly disfunctional, and the 10 year reunion was ridiculous. It was preceded by the most offensive sexist "questionaire" imaginable, and the event itself was in a half empty hall with a crush of people around the bar, no music, little food, no speeches, nothing. So I didn't have high hopes for round 2, and had absolutely no enthusiasm for making any effort to get there. But it seems we're a more interesting bunch 1o years later. A bit less of the blokey/boozey crap, and people seem a bit more circumspect about life and their place in the world. It seems a lot of people spent 10-15 years figuring out where they fitted, and are more settled now. Of course, I'm still not going, but I'm reading the website with interest.

Stop singing, Donkey!

Simon was singing along to Bernard Fanning while he was driving Harrison to daycare the other morning, and he kept singing after they'd arrived and he was leaning into the back seat of the car, putting Harrison's shoes on. He was just thinking what a lovely father-son moment they were sharing, when Harrison burst out at the top of his voice with "Stop singing, Donkey!" (a la Shrek 1).