Why don't cowboys have cows?

Harrison and I had very long conversation yesterday about why cowboys don’t ride cows.  I tried my best to explain that cowboys did have lots of cows - they just rode horses in order to herd their cows - but he was quite insistent that cows were perfectly good animals for riding, and that cowboys really should saddle them up…

BDW to UWA

The October 2007 Library News at UWA has profiles of two ex-Blake Dawson Waldron librarians who arrived almost simultaneously at UWA. Funny how things happen. Alissa and I worked together at BDW, and several years later we both end up at UWA together (though now in different subject disciplines).

Election wrap up

The sky is looking a bit bluer the past couple of days... There's serious talk of an apology to indigenous people, and a general sense of hope and purpose.

We hosted an election party on Saturday, banking on a good result for our lefty crowd. We started with election cocktails - the "tree hugger" (with lime and mint), and the "swinging voter" (a strawberry daiquiri). We played election bingo - marking off phrases such as "bogus pamphlets" or "the Latham handshake" as we heard them on the telecast. It was a lovely evening, with lots of food, and lots of conviviality as the result became clear. Even Kevin's ultra long victory speech couldn't dampen our spirits. Our house is great for a party, with fabulous views, a huge lounge room, and plenty of room for kids to run around. It's only a stroll to the beach, so a few of the adults took the kids down to the beach at sunset. All in all a great night.

Kevin was looking impressive on the 7:30 Report tonight, too - you can read the transcript and watch the video online.

Liam

Simon’s nephew Liam arrived yesterday and is staying for almost 2 weeks.  He’s just finished his year 12 exams, so this is schoolies week for him, I guess.  He seems quite keen on taking himself off to see the sights of Perth and surrounds.  Simon and I are both working (I have barely any leave accrued yet, and Simon is doing the final proofs of his native title book before his exam marking comes in next week), so we only have the weekends to spend with him.  We are in a good location for a solo holiday though – a stroll to the beach, and a short walk in the other direction to the bus to the city, or to a little block of shops.  

 

Liam is very tall and very, very thin, and dyes his lovely blonde hair black, plus refuses to wash it, so when he turned up with Simon yesterday at day care, Harrison was quite frightened and wouldn’t go near him.  It only took a few minutes for him to get over the initial shock, and they are getting on very well now.  Liam is very good with him.  Harrison took a little bit of persuading this morning that, unlike grandma, Liam was not likely to want a 3 year old crawling into bed with him at 7am, and that he wasn’t likely to be up before we’d all left the house.

Imagination

Harrison loves to take things to day care for show and tell, but he's only allowed to do it once a month, so instead he’s started taking imaginary toys (or as he says “pretending toys”).  He "holds" them in the car all the way to day care, carefully cradles them in his hands as he walks in, tells his carers what his imaginary toy is today and pretends to put it in the show and tell box. At the end of the day he's still acting as though there's a toy he has to put in his bag, or get me to hold while he washes his hands etc.  At home this morning he had so many imaginary toys in his hands that he couldn’t get up into his chair for breakfast.  He puts an imaginary train on the tracks along with a real one, and talks through a whole scenario around the race between the two trains and what they say to each other etc.

 

The other day when I picked him up from day care he claimed to have left Spencer (imaginary train de jour) behind.  I tried to persuade him that I could see Spencer in his bag, but he'd have none of it.  So I tried another tack and said I'd see if there was a spare Spencer in the glove box of

the car.  Sure enough, he fell for that one, and held the "new" imaginary Spencer for a while.  But after 5 minutes or so he announced

that he didn't like the new Spencer and wished he could go back to day care to get his old one. Aggghhh...  

 

It's actually not a bad phase because he can be totally distracted by something that isn't there – I don't have to worry about bringing toys for him to play with when we go out, as we can invent something at any time.  This morning our whole trip to day care was taken up with him describing what colour lollies he had (along with appropriate grunts and groans while he “made” them) then him asking me which one I’d like, passing imaginary lollies back and forth, offering me a drink of milk in case my lollies were too spicy… It’s quite fun.