Well, at least they didn't take that.....

One of the things they don't teach you in school or anywhere for that fact is - about being robbed.

And of course they don't because they assume the best about the world - just like parents who play pass the parcel and ensure everyone gets a prize.
But the reality is that for some of us, it will happen. And for some of us it will happen more than once.

I'm talking here about your house - not your kids under 12 football teams issues with bad umpiring by the way.

No one explains to you that sinking feeling in your stomach when you get home ( or worse wake up in the morning) and realize that - someone you don't know and didn't invite in - has been into your house and not only gone through your stuff but taken things that are yours.

On a side note I've often wondered that if they don't take stuff that you think is  valuable - does that mean it's crap ? I mean apart for photos and the like it's a bit of a blow to the ego if you think about it.

I've had the displeasure of being robbed many times, as I live in a suburb that is a bit of a magnet for people who need money for things that enrich their life ( so their brains are telling them anyway) and have no way to fund this, other than removing your stuff and exchanging it for cash at a significantly lower exchange rate than when you first purchased it.

Nowadays with improved security and an increase in the median house value, that propensity has decreased some what. But it doesn't mean they aren't still trying to get to my priceless odd sock collection.

And after the 3rd time it happens you kinda just fall into a routine - calling the police, the insurance company, the banks etc, but once you have kids it becomes very different. They don't have any experience to fall back on for this new problem.

This experience is new and terrifying. They figured you would keep them safe. They figured you would shield them from the evils of the world. ( they know it exists, just not in their area )

So all of a sudden just like I did when it happened to my parents, they realise they have to go through this.

The last time it happened to us it was a mini home invasion, they picked the  front door lock grabbed all the purses and wallets neatly laid out on the sideboard ( see where being organised gets you ! ) with the car keys and my sports gear and none of us (including Captain Incontinence ) were any the wiser.

I still fail to see the point of a guard dog that can not do exactly that, but anyway. We still live in hope that all the running around the back yard barking at the pigeons in the trees is basic training and will one day transform into preemptive 24hr protection.

If you think that some days your dealings with bureaucracy is difficult - try proving who you are to someone in the government without a single piece of identification. So it went like this - to get a temporary license you need photo ID, but the only photo ID I had was my license I explained to the brick wall.

The funniest part of the whole thing really came when the beloved came to pick me up from a triathlon in the hire car that resembled a pregnant roller-skate.
I basically had to disassemble my bike, fold all the seats flat, shove all the gear in around that and then make the kids walk home.

And then after they declared our much loved 4WD a write off due to " Bio Hazards present in vehicle " it's off we go to find a new vehicle to transport the ridiculous amount of things we seem to need to take when we go anywhere. Buying a car is a whole different matter and more than enough for a separate post.

We went through the whole unpleasant and came out the other side - hopefully - an awful lot wiser.

And I think the boys now understand that sometimes you might get none of your things back and sometimes you get back someone else's size 12 bikini.

At least they didn't take my odd socks, so the search for their lost mates continues........

Family death match

I reach out full stretch.

Nothing , its all just air.

Then as fast as conventional physics teaches us, the earth is in my face and catching my hip with all the grace of a hippopotamus falling off a skateboard.

I lie there - the dust swirls gently in the fading sunlight and the sweat trickles off my face mingling with the dirt making little tiny mud puddles. Both of these things are useful in hiding my tears at yet another loss.

At the other end the victor stands, defiant. The Beloved has won.

Another family death match has been decided.

I get up and dust my self off, get a beer and sit down to wait for the pain in my hip to subside. The boys are still laughing.

The eldest declares " time for me to whoop your butt little  man" and with that it's on. Our match is forgotten and the the two boys are at once locked in a similarly intense battle.

The volley ball set we got for Christmas ( the above matches ) really is just part of the long running competitions we are constantly engaged in. We don't mind too much what it is - just that they have to be able to be competitive for all of us , so weight lifting or formula 1 racing are out.

( I am thinking though, we should get a clay target set and some shotguns for next years summer games and only because The Beloved  banned bare knuckle boxing after I dislocated a finger and the youngest went to school with a massive bruise in the middle of his forehead.)

I like the fact that we are competitive. I try and teach the boys that life is like that it's a competition. Not all the time, but lets face it -

You compete for school results
You compete for a Uni place
You compete for a job and your promotions
You compete for all sorts of things

So you need to know how to compete. There are rules.

There are consequences if you act badly during competition.
That's where the fine line and the parental boundaries come in. Time and time again I see parents acting badly during their child's sporting activities and I caution both boys about what is acceptable during sport or indeed any competition - win or lose.

But family death match is different. Anything goes, because sometimes breaking the rules and watching it all burn down is just so much fun.

I still remember the stare and the long silence punctuated by further glaring after, because during a very close game of golf  The Beloved was in front of a bunker with a short pitch shot to get on to the green.

                                                                              image courtesy of www.intotherough.co.uk

Being only 1 shot behind, I thought ooohhhh that's an easy shot , how funny would it be to say

" Tough shot , don't choke".

 Except that instead of saying it in my head I said it kinda out loud. So instead of easily making the shot and wining - the ball hit the bunker and it took another two shots to get out, and the lead was surrendered.

I still have a cute little scar on my knee from her putter.

So as I watch the boys go about their weekend  sports I  am filled with a sense of impending doom. With their bodies slowly lengthening and muscles filling out, it seems inevitable that our my reign at the top of the family death match table will all too soon be over.

Think I'll buy a croquet set next, after all it's only a game  - right ?

Don't try this at home - lessons from some one who knows

Apparently there are eight  principles of learning as set down by Educational Psychologists and Pedagogues, these are (in no set order) :

readiness, exercise, effect, primacy, recency, intensity, freedom and requirement.

As a side note here something I didn't know - Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction. 


But I digress.

I sit quietly as the tears stream down my cheeks and I reflect on my inability to learn. How did it happen again ?I fit all of the eight principles so what went wrong ? How did I get here yet again ? I replay the steps in my mind  and realise that these are amateur mistakes that just shouldn't be made.

The first time was back when I was trying to impress my wife to be whilst we were at our favourite restaurant for a nice noodle soup and conversation not only did I manage to get chili in my eyes but I followed it up with a good dose of lemon juice. My eyes puffed up, went red and I looked like Twilight saga fan who has just been told Taylor Lautner is now married.
So the entire time was spent trying to clean out my eye and suffice to say not much conversation other than "Are you sure you're OK ?" went on.

At least this time it was just onion. And I had taken precautions - I had washed the onions under running water which supposedly stops the vapours that cause you to cry be released. But once again like before I had taken my finger - all coated and primed and jabbed it in my eye to relive a perceived itch.

Image courtesy of slashfood.com

As I wait and gently wash my eye with cool water I cast my mind back to all the other "Don't do this" moments in my life.

- Get on a rowing machine after a hot dog and a beer at "O" week at University, turns out your vomit reflex is really close to the diaphragm, so after exertion the body just empties itself. I didn't make the rowing team either......

- Pull apart secateurs while holding them in front of your face. Seems they have a few safety precautions built and as I rotated them and kept up my attempts to pull them apart one half neatly sprung off and pierced my lip and embedded itself into my gum. So off to hospital we went. My wife still claims to this day I'll do anything to get out of gardening.

- Pull mussels off the pier with bare hands. It seems that even if you grab them gently they are designed to defend them selves by being razor sharp all the way around. The tiny yet prolific cuts they leave behind really only become apparent the next day. When you can't clench a fist any more or hold your cutlery......

Image courtesy of blog.smalladventures.net

- Attempt to saw rubber water pipes with a hacksaw when they apparently have steel wire re-enforcing inside them. This will cause the hacksaw to catch and then bounce out and come down on your finger you were using to guide the blade and sever a good chunk of you finger nail and slice into the finger. The sheer shock of this one (surprise and then searing pain) was enough to convince me to use an angle grinder on everything for about a month afterwards.

- If you take hot trays out of the oven with a wet cloth it turns out the heat from the tray turns the water in to steam vapour which will leave some marks behind. It just goes to show that rushing in a kitchen isn't a good strategy.
For all of you who know that I cook regularly - contain your howls of dismay, this one is not  recent experience. I use it to illustrate a point.

My eye feels a little better and my nose seems to have stopped resembling Victoria Falls, so I guess I'm good to go. Until I have another learning experience of course.

I wonder which of the eight principles I'm at right now ?

Why I can't be a spy

I really like spy movies.

I love the intrigue, the mystery of who is spying on who and the really big question - who are the good guys ? Spy movies tend to take us in to that perceived "underground " of our society. They show the threats we apparently never see and never hear about.

After all when you think about the agencies that ran the cold war during the 60's and 70's they were literally built on ensuring we were all afraid of something we couldn't see or had happened yet.

I would really love to be a spy, I mean look how glamorous it looks ! Cool gadgets, exotic locations, the positives around this obviously cool career are endless.

But when I sit down to analyse it , I have some, well, challenges........

#1- I can't drive - Spies seem to do a lot of driving. They drive to assignments, they get into lots of car chases and generally spend a lot of time in and around cars. My challenge is I am not a good driver. I like to look around constantly to see whats around. I also suffer from acute drivers rage, meaning I really hate everything other drivers do and the perceived wrong they have caused me.

image courtesy of ursispaltenstein.ch

I just can't see me riding to assignments on a bike......

#2- Not great with  Never used a gun - Hard one to over come  as I literally have zero experience with guns. I know you get training but it will be most likely that I shoot myself in the foot. I also have a slight problem with killing people.

#3- Couldn't have a separate life from my family - I cannot lie to my wife. I look in to those crystal blue eyes and confess everything. Our whole marriage is built around us talking and discussing everything that is going on. And then there's the boys, how cool would it be to go home and tell them I just added a virus to an evil lab that caused it to stop producing a super bacteria and instead made a popcorn tree that pops when the sun hits it.

#4- I love to gossip - Nothing better than a good solid gossip about the world. So I would just find it impossible to hold in that X diplomat is secretly enjoying the company of Y's wife. This would also be a problem if I was captured and tortured - my captors would pretty much run out of video tapes with all the stuff I'd be telling them.

image courtesy of newspaper.li

#5 I am quite forgetful - If I was to become a double agent who then got re-doubled, that's going to be a real problem. I once had to set an outlook reminder each month for 6 months of the year as I kept forgetting my wife's birthday.

#6 I see the good in people - I have a bit of a problem believing that people are all bad. I would want to keep giving people second chances, which could cause issues later down the track. Probably nothing worse than continually running into people you were supposed to "take care of " but didn't.

So I guess rather than become a spy and end up like the cast of "Spies like Us" that classic 80's comedy

Russian Interrogator : Every minute you don't tell us why you are here, I cut off a finger. 
Emmett Fitz-Hume:  Mine or yours? 
Russian Interrogator :  Yours. 
Emmett Fitz-Hume:  Damn! 


I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.........

Keeping up with the kids (a cautionary tale)

As the road rises to meet me, I am reminded of two irrefutable laws of this planet.

1) Gravity

2) You can't teach an old dog new tricks

So how did I end up here. Was it vanity  ?

No.

Was it stupidity ?

 No comment.

Image courtesy of berkeleymediatraining.co.uk

As I watch my sons grow into men, I have to remind my self that some of the things they will do / learn , they will have to do by themselves.

It is a natural instinct to try to simply tell them  " Hey don't do that because..."
We are parents first and people second. So I constantly have to try not to get in the way of learning. No matter how tempting it is.

But who will tell me ? Who will say "that's probably not a good idea ?"

Anyway back to the story. So here I am on a pavement in Melbourne, a brand new pair of jeans shredded. Blood trickling down my leg and my dignity no where to be seen.

All because I tried to keep up with the boys.

By trying to ride a scooter.

You know the type, the ones with little skateboard wheels and a thin platform to stand on.  The scooters were bought on line ( like a dad gift, that we all use) sort of like so we could get around to places faster and have some fun. I had just finished a delivering Older Son to choir practice and was returning home.

It had all gone well until now.

As I limped home the only real thought I'm entertaining is "how do I hide this from She who Knows best"

That's not going to be easy, the new jeans were a joint purchase on a recent trip to Sydney. The scab that was forming on my leg is sizable. Both will be hard to hide.

Once I have cleaned up I realize that I am 41 years old. I am not as nimble as I thought. I should not try am not going to be able to do all the things that the boys can do.  I ride and run regularly and try as best I can to keep in good health and I do this to keep up with my boys.

I do this because every day I see parents who just can't keep up with their kids and that makes me sad and spurs me on to not fall into this trap.

I love the fact that we run together. I love the fact that we play footy together and I will keep on trying to do all these things  until I draw my last breath (or my hip disintegrates into dust)

But it has become plainly and painfully obvious that there are now somethings I would like to do or think that I can do, that I will just have to pass on.


So I stuffed the jeans into the cupboard and put the bloodied tissues in the bin. I looked into the mirror and I said out loud " Well at least you didn't land on your face "

The next day it looked like this.

Of Mice and Men.......

The first time The Beloved One knew that she might have more than just a husband on her hands, came very early on in the journey. Grandpa on the Go has a small piece of land and he actively farms it on weekends. (more often now that he is retired). This means we had to do many things that for normal people wouldn't even be given a second glance.

But for the two of us it becomes an epic adventure.

So GP says to me  " Hey, we need to get the dead branch out of the tree before it falls on the fence and breaks it."

" Plus it looks like some good firewood"

The " tree " he is talking about is some 30 meters high and the " dead branch " is about 2/3's of the way up and wedged tight.

image courtesy of somewhereelse.com.au

So as we collected the necessary tools, the future mother of our kids followed us around, ready to help where she could. Grandma gently took her aside, patted my new bride on the hand and told her calmly " it's best not to watch dear" and off they went.

So off we went as well. The idea was simple we would tie a rope around the branch to stop it falling on the fence and then we would, with another rope pull it out of the fork it was stuck in.

It was agreed that Grandpa would hold the rope stopping the branch hitting the fence and I would dislodge it.

Like this, it seemed a good idea at the time

The tree brach went down,

The rope tightened,

And Grandpa went up.

Imagine a teabag in a giant cup going up and down banging against the side of the cup, except the cup is a 100 foot Gum tree and Grandpa is the teabag.

After he let go and dropped to the ground he hobbled inside, his knee now the size of a basketball. Grandma calmly went about getting ice packs and pain killers, she was after all quite used to this.

After we had all finished for the day and after fixing the broken fence, my wife said to me "At least now I know and it won't be a suprise later on."

and she was right.