People take Football very seriously

I watch the cameras being tested and focused, the camera men making sure all the angles can be covered and nothing missed.
I watch the coaches and assistant coaches with magnetic boards in deep discussion with football managers and other support staff on final player positions.
I watch intently as the players complete there drills and warm ups and move into their final huddle before the game.

These are all the things that we love about AFL football. That pre-game excitement.

Then - the bell goes and the ball is bounced.

What ? What do you mean it's a siren and not a bell ?

You know I'm talking about under 9's footy right ?

image courtesy of blog.smilebebe.com

Confused ?

And all of those things described above actually happened. Not from our team of course.

Picture this, there's a coffee gently warning my right hand and my jacket is clutched firmly in my left as I look out over the field. It's Sunday morning and time for footy. The Youngest and his team are peppering the goals with footballs and the parents are chatting away on the sidelines.

Yet the opposition team seem to have an entire support team to rival any AFL teams, busily preparing for the match.

But I digress. Watching these kids play is great because -

a) They're outside and in running around in what Melbourne mostly passes as fresh air.
b) They're playing a team sport which is forcing them to work together to get an outcome.

I can not ask for any more. Well I can, I need decent coffee. But as Grandpa on the Go always said - "if you want it done right then you're probably going to have to do it yourself. So I now make my own coffee in a travel  sippee cup.

The Youngest has been put in the mid field which seems to mean anywhere on the ground the ball is. It also seems to mean go where ever all the wettest and stickiest mud is and tackle people there.
He does well, except for a couple of moments where he skips around a bit looking like he is having way to much fun.

image courtesy of jeffdowsing.wordpress.com

I'd say the opposition will have to edit that bit out of their very serious post match review, before the other kids find out.

Anyway despite being a few men short and facing a difficult slope in the ground away from the goals they notch up a win.

They march off the ground arms around each other singing the club song at the same decibel level of air-planes taking off, smiles wider than the grand canyon.

There is a post match game discussion which seems to be more about giving out chocolates and footy cards than the serious business of post match dissection. But everyone gets praised and all achievements are duly noted - including The Youngest attempting to ride the full back like a donkey head first in to the ground.

We wrap him up in a towel and off we go home.

And next Sunday I'll do it all again, because after all this is bloody serious you know.........

Toilet roulette and road trips

We all know how fond of road trips I am. I see them as the last great travel method (apart from trains which I love). When I think about the road trips I've taken I always have a smile on my face. Don't get me wrong, there are portions of these trips I am sure that my brain has deliberately suppressed- the mind numbing stretches of straight road and more recently the kids niggling each other as we get close to the 10 minute concentration span they currently possess. So we have developed different ways to pass the time in the car  to ensure my blood pressure stays at a reasonable level.

Before I do that lets picture this  : Grand Pa on the Go and the family driving through The Death Valley into Nevada and to keep us entertained ( there were no radio stations) constantly re playing  Sesame Street cassette tapes that we could sing along to.

All 9 of them. Over and Over. Here's an updated version of one of these little treasures

How my parents stayed sane still mystifies me to this day. I see this as the true definition of hard core parenting.

image courtesy of  freefoto.com

If you wish to avoid this and are not interested in an in-car DVD's (or hard core parenting ) you need car games. Here's just two that we use :

The test of Patience - See how many games of eye spy you can play before you lose it completely.
The Crudity test - How many number plates you can turn into words before you resort to vulgar or slang words.
You get the idea.

Many years ago Grand Pa on the Go decided that we were all going to go to Noosa Heads. He was to attend a conference and we would stay on for a while as a family holiday.
This was back way , way, way before it became the thriving Mecca for tourists it is today.  The plan was simple we would drive up the Newell Highway on the way there to arrive quickly and come back along the coast on the way home.

Imagine my delight when I was told I was to sleep on the couch in the living room. Right in front of the TV.  Nothing can go wrong, its bolted to the wall - right ?

I'm sure my disappointment was evident when he trotted off to the car and produced a set of spanners, unbolted the TV, wheeled it into their room leaving me alone in the dark. It still ended up a great holiday and due to the very large pile of beach towels strategically placed between my sister and I by our wise parents the trip home was fine and by now we had graduated to the soundtrack of Grease - The movie.

One of the other treats of the road trip is discovering things. Like discovering that the red food dye in skittles made the Eldest break out in hives. A short trip to a doctors and some anti-histamines rectified this and we soon were back on our way.

Toilet stops are an inescapable part of the travel. You can say 100 or even 1000 times to your children - "take it easy and don't drink that 600ml Coke/Big M/ Gatorade all in one go"

 OR you could just not let them have it.

But for a father of my considerable experience , that's just the easy way out. I like the challenge of the roadside toilet roulette.

image courtesy of abc.net.au

There is nothing like pulling up to a toilet like the one above and opening the door for the first time and in that split second working out  how bad you really have to go. The beloved has passed on many occasions.

The reality of these trips is you will see more of Australia than you ever will by strapping yourself in a giant steel tube and allowing some guy you don't know hurtle you through the air at in-human speeds, to then bounce your way to another place.

And with all the global turmoil and strife sometimes the simple act of taking a photo of the kids, standing next to a roadside marker that was left behind by Bourke and Wills, and the expression on their faces expresses the true gravity and boredom excitement of the moment, is sometimes just priceless.

School Holidays are expensive

The school holidays are upon us once again. It's that time of the year that the wallet is used as a public ATM by anyone providing suitable (or not) ways of keeping the minions entertained or a least mildly amused enough to not destroy the house or its surrounds.

Lets face it it's not easy. You can't just say " guys, lets read this book" and hand them War and Peace and hope for the best.

No you have to come up with ideas and places that aren't  going to get - "Dad this is so lame"

This is where the devil is in the detail. The good stuff aint free. Take for example the time we went to a fish farm. Turns out whatever you catch you have to keep and pay for. Not only that, these fish have been waiting for you , in tiny bath tubs size ponds, to show up so they can commit suicide on your child's hook.

Over and Over again.

Couple of tips for all the readers for attending fish farms :
1- Do not hand any child the wooden club used to kill the fish and let them have a go at clubbing the fish they just caught. It just ends as a broken thumb.

2 - Do not let them fish in the salmon pond, those fish are huge (and 30 bucks a kilo)

So $150.00 later we are back in the car and heading home where I will eat baked beans on toast for the next month interspersed with trout and salmon 90 different ways.

Theme parks are another great little money removing system. They not only charge you to get in and ride on the rides, but manage to charge for food at the same rate as Vue de Monde. Not to mention the fact that  I'm pretty sure they add sugar to everything they serve to keep the kids hyped up and going all day.

And as soon as they start to come down from one sugar high you give them more, because we all know nothing is worse than them crashing in a public place surrounded by the disapproving glare of 3000 other parents.

Then you have the movie complex. Where else can you watch the latest film on a screen the size of a house whilst munching on a box popcorn the size of a domestic refrigerator, that cost the same as the GDP of Great Britain and contains enough salt for 6 lifetimes ?

At least they put adult jokes in most kids movies now days and most still contain a fart joke somewhere so it's not a total loss, but I will need to drink my own body weight in water afterwards.

Trouble is if I don't do something they will just sit in front of the TV watching Sponge Bob interspersed with video games ( if they they're really motivated they will sit in front of the TV with their laptop). So I have to come up with something.

So I tried taking them to work. It's fine until they need to go to the toilet in the middle of meetings - every 15 minutes. Not to mention the fact they aren't covered by work insurance so every time someone from HR comes around they have to hide under your desk.

Holiday camps presented themselves as an alternative. They take your kids to movies, parks, aquariums and other such exciting places. Trouble is not only do you pay for the places they take them and anything they eat, you pay an extraordinary amount to actually get them to take them. We have two growing boys so each time we use these camps I have to ring the bank manager and extend the mortgage.

I know I'm not alone on this problem and who hasn't secretly wished the industrial revolution was back so the kids all had to work in the mills ?

So once again we rack our brains for ideas, begging babysitting credits from Grandparents and organizing play dates with other non working parents.

So on we soldier and know in our hearts that one they will be old enough to manage themselves and the holidays. But until the kids turn 30, I am just going to have to continue to search for new and interesting things to get them to do.

That and get a second job....

The Art of the Practical Joke - A Dads perspective

Tormenting
                  Practical Jokes
                                         Gags
                                               Pranks
                                                        Trolling

Call it what you want. From a very young age we learn that there is humor to be found in seeing others confused by what they thought should be - but isn't.

It started when I was very young, my Dad would look behind me and exclaim that he had seen parrots out the window and when we turned around to look, vital parts of our dinner went missing. He still does it and now with the kids he has had an new audience. They catch on quick so you gotta stay sharp.

Mind you he once said to the Bride to Be, there was no way she could carry two bales of hay up to the cows in a paddock, the bales were grabbed belligerently and off she marched. Boy did we laugh watching her struggle away with a bale in each hand up the lane(they weigh about 15kgs each). She still married me.

Anyway, I took to this new found wonder like a duck to water. Practical jokes appealed especially to me as I love to laugh and the jokes often have an element of engineering and physics to them. Buckets of water balanced on doors, buckets of water thrown out windows the spiders swinging down on fishing lines, the fake amputated finger in a matchbox, the list is endless.

I was always open to new ideas and would search for jokes in everyday situations. I went to magic stores and I saved my pocket money to buy all sorts of gags. Paper that went into a tooth brush to stain your teeth, joke soft drinks, fake gum - they all went into my bag of tricks.

Its important to note that you should under no circumstances use fake cola on your mother who is trying to sleep after a night shift at the hospital.

On I went trying everything and anything. It got to the point where in order to keep my edge, I took a Mars bar that my sister was saving, removed the chocolate bar, then filled the pack with sand so it resembled the mars bar in weight and feel. But the look on her face when it was opened was priceless.

All these were done in front of an audience, because with out that there was no point.. There needs to be viewers to your grand mastery. That is where the satisfaction comes from.

As the loyal readers know it all ended abruptly one day for my sister during this incident so I had to find a new audience.

Where better than your workplace. It's a whole new world of potential victims and not to mention the audience reach. I can remember at one office, we organised a DVD copy of a movie that one of the managers really wanted, but the video on it was the behind the scenes footage from the "Men of NRL Calendar".

The same workplace once waited for the manager to ride his bike home so we could replace his suit and clothes for the next day with a dress. So when he rode back the next day that was all he had to wear.....
Being the good sort he was he put it on.

See how easy it is ?    Now days I select my targets based on the joke.

I do it to The Organised One when I'm  feeling dangerous.
I once got a jug of water and stood on the toilet and then poured the water in to the toilet from a height while pretending to groan in pain.

I do it to the kids when I can.
Picture this - Junior is complaining about a bad smell and I tell him that he can get his nostrils to close by sticking his fingers in his ears and breathing in quickly. My delivery was so good Mr Elder who claims to be an expert at detecting when I'm fooling, put his fingers in his ears and started breathing heavily.

Mind you it kinda back fired once when I pretended to see something interesting in a drain hole and I was going to say "boo" to Mr Elder when he looked in. Trouble was he lent over so far that he fell in head first.
Luckily there was sand at the bottom of the drain so there was no damage, but his little legs were waiving out the top furiously and it made me laugh out loud.
When I pulled him out of the hole - he absolutely gave it to me.

I secretly still laugh at this one.

I've lost count at the number of times they come to me with a bump or scrape and I proclaim it to be Ebola or that we need to go to the hospital to amputate straightaway.

I know that these are minor compared to movies such as Jackass and shows like Punk'd that take it to a whole new level, but I'm a Dad and I know I'm expected to always think about the outcomes. I spend 99% of my day reminding the minions that everything they do has ramifications and think carefully before you do something stupid, so I have to live by the same rules.

And on the flip side I also am absolutely a great victim of jokes. I encourage the minions to practice on me on any occasion.
And it is true that recently The Organised one slide a plastic coat hanger along the ground causing me to jump in the air and squeal like a girl who has just seen her first cockroach.

So I will continue to tell terrible jokes in front of their friends, I will continue to try and prank them whenever I can.

I'd like to say I do it to teach them that people will always try to get the better of you and you should watch out in the world, but the reality is I just like to laugh

What your kids won't tell you (caution may contain truth)

As the proud father of two boys,  aged 11 (going on 37) and 8, I often forget that kids see the world exactly as it is. They do this without the clutter of years of experience and learning that we as adults have and then apply to our perception.

Kids , well mine anyway, have an unflappable ability to see any situation far more clearly and simply than I could ever have imagined.

image courtesy of greenwoodpga.com

But, with that also comes another side to the coin, namely the truth and sometimes it will be truth you don't want out in the sunshine.
I don't mean kids are trying to be hurtful. Not at all, its just that sometimes the wind can be taken out of your sails far faster than you imagined.

Kids just don't dress up the truth, or engage in those little white lies that we as adults employ to preserve the feelings of others.

They just take this wonderful clarity and truth and pass it straight on to all and sundry !

"Hey Dad can I play with the big red ball in the bedroom"

"No mate, its Mums exercise ball"

"How do you know, she's never used it !"

"Hey Dad, we're going faster our our run today !"

"Maybe I'm getting fitter !"

"Nah there's just less people out today."

"Hey Johno ! Did you know my Dad once did a fart so huge he had to peel the doona off  the roof ? "

Another little gem is the eternal question " Hey Dad,  back in your day did ......"
What does back in my day even mean ? It's not like I've lived through a world war or anything significant like that.

Once again it's that simple clarity that the kids have and this time they used children time frames which are apparently very different to adults.

I'll never forget the time one of our friends family car pooled the eldest son home. They all got out of the car wiping tears out of their eyes. They saw me, stopped and calmly said  "So you're a pretty regular morning guy then ? " and all dissolved into fits of laughter.

Apparently it's OK to discuss my bodily functions and their timing in public. And yes I know in the post about boy humor and why it's different, I said it was funny but I meant about others, right ?

I think for a day I will  try talk to people just like the kids do. Straight to the point.

But not today.......

One day though.........

If that's what 3D-TV does then I'm not getting one.....

From the LG High Definition 3D TV manual......

Some days you get lucky and the fish just jump into the boat.......

I think they are going to need helmets for this trip

Norwegians take their milk pretty seriously

Got Milk ?

If you have too much Lego...

meanwhile at Legoland.....

I love a good Lego joke......

The Bike lane

One cyclists ode to why sometimes the bike lane isn't the best place to be.

Sometimes the fish will catch you !

Fishing in the ocean can sometimes be a little more difficult than you think.......

The blender and the indestructible mobile phone

This is the supposedly indestructible phone that a journalist smashed at CES 2010. Looks like the blender couldn't do what the journo could !

Email doesn't go that far.......

My youngest son was in the car with his mate from school and they were discussing a friend of theirs who had moved to Germany.

Son - " we can email him you know "
Friend - " Nah, my email didn't work because he lives to far away."