Searaven’s Blog

To explain Saturday I need to back up a bit.  A few weeks ago, Teresa made me a deal. On a weekend that she’d been particularly overwhelmed with doing laundry… okay, I guess I need to go back even farther than that. I’ll get back to this thread in a bit.

When Teresa and I first bought our house in the US, or maybe it was even before that when we were living in her apartment in Waltham, I’m not sure. It was probably Waltham. Anyway, I did a load of Teresa’s laundry for her. I was very proud of myself. Not so much for doing the laundry, but for doing the laundry. I mean, I understand how laundry is done and am fully capable of doing it, in my own way, it’s just that I don’t do it very often. I’ve always been happy to let the laundry pile up until the pile has nearly acheived consciousness and come to life. This quirk, and I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that it’s not an uncommon one among men, has meant that I’ve been required to possess a large amount of clothing, in particular lots of socks and underwear.

So, I did a load of Teresa’s laundry. I probably folded it and everything. What a proud moment. Right up until Teresa showed me the sweater I’d washed that now would barely fit a childs doll. I seem to recall that I’d shrunk a few other things as well. I was requested to never wash her laundry again. You see, I not only ruthlessly shrink all my clothes but I have only two loads of laundry that I do, whites and colors. Apparantly there’s some supposed delineation between light colors and dark colors for most of the world, well, not in my universe there isn’t.

Since then, Teresa does her own laundry and most often mine too, since she has a much lower tolerance for piles of dirty clothes than I do. I’m happy to do my own laundry, I apparently just don’t do it soon enough, so Teresa ends up doing it.

There, I think I can move on now. So, a few weeks ago, after doing seemingly endless laundry, Teresa made me a deal. If I take over doing the laundry, all of it, except still, of course, Teresa’s clothes. If I do Heather’s and my clothes, and the sheets and towels, then she will clean up after she cooks. Our normal deal is, probably, like many peoples’, I cook, you clean. Fair enough, you say?. Now, that would be fair in most houses. Not so much in ours.

You see, I tend to clean up after myself while I’m cooking and I do cook a fair bit. Granted, since I started my new job and get home much later now, I don’t cook as much as I used to. Teresa,on the other hand, uses seemingly every pot in the kitchen to make even the simplest of meals. The kitchen ends up looking like a pack of hungry, wild dogs, plus a few overly caffeinated chimpanzees have ranged through the place, leaving in their a wake an abundance of food encrusted pots, pans, skillets, collanders, utensils, torn open food packages, chopped off vegetable ends and peelings, dirty cutting boards and kitchen gadgets strewn about the place.

The end result that comes out of this effort is typically wonderful and delicious, but back in the kitchen is this scary, nightmare zone of cooking mayhem. So after a lovely meal, having relaxed at the end of the day, played with Heather for a bit before she gets her bottle and is put to bed, going into that kitchen to clean it is so far down on my list of favorite things to do that it’s somewhere between having my toenails pulled out and getting a nail through my foot. Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but it’s way down there, just the same.

So this past week or two I’ve been doing the laundry. One or two load an evening, since our washer is very small, and I seem to be keeping up with it quite nicely. Or I was at least until Saturday. You see, Friday night the washer started making a horrible noise after Teresa put in a load of her clothes.

We shut it down and I took a look at it. There’s a big drain plug down the bottom of the washer that covers a filter of sorts. Inside there, you can see an impeller. The impeller is attached to the drain pump and is responsible for moving water out of the washing machine. I couldn’t see any blockage in there and resigned myself to working on it on Saturday. Sigh.

Saturday dawned and while Heather napped, Teresa went out shopping while I worked on the washing machine for a good four hours, draining it out, unhooking it, flipping it on it’s side, disassembling the bottom, figuring out what’s broken,finding someplace to get the part I needed, ordering it, putting the washer back together, testing it, having water run all over the floor, draining it out again, unhooking it, flipping it over, taking it apart again, finding nothing wrong with what I’d done or any explanation for where the water came from, puttin it back together, flipping it back up, etc, testing it again, satisfied that even though it’s still making a nasty noise, as least it’s no longer spewing water out. Whew. Just as I finished mopping the floor, thinking about having a sit down with a book and a nice cold James Squire Hop Thief Ale, Heather woke up. Oh well, so much for any relaxation time.

The rest of Saturday wasn’t so great either. I was in a foul temper from spending the day working on the washer, that mood was magnified and reflected back to me from Teresa, so, to put it mildly, family harmony was illusive on Saturday. The day wasn’t all bad. We did manage to squeeze in a delicious trip to yum cha for lunch before the washer repair, but the rest of the day went downhill from there.

Sunday, a new day dawns. The great thing about each day in our lives is that they give us  a chance to change how the day before was, a do-over, if you will, within reason, anyway. Sunday was no exception. Family harmony having been restored, we set out to join Andy, Fung and Zoe at the Sydney Aquarium for Zoe’s birthday.

More to follow… stay tuned

We took the ferry from McMahons Point to the Sydney Aquarium, at Darling Harbour. For the first time we took advantage of the CityRail Family Sunday Fun Day pass. For any family with children, it only costs $2.50 for unlimited train, bus and ferry transport for the day. What a deal!

The Aquarium was having a Sponge Bob Squarepants exhibition with a bunch of related items integrated with the normal exhibits. You’ll see some of that in the video. After the aquarium we went to a cafe in Darling Harbour for lunch, followed by ice cream sundaes at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe. All in all, it was a lovely day.

Enjoy the video!

Love to all,

Paul

So, now it’s yes (or yesh, or yeah) that’s the default answer for most questions, but not everything as you’ll see. Note the slight twitch on Heather’s face after being asked an unpopular question that doesn’t get a yes. : )

Yes

So what is it that Heather continues to look away from the camera at? Well, it’s her favorite website, my blog, naturally. After all, she’s the star of most of the videos. She loves watching them, over and over. She’s recently learned the word ‘blog’, though it comes out sounding more like glog. She’ll point to the computer when we’re having our breakfast and say “Glog” and sometimes after that, please, even.

We’ve been working on please and thank you lately and please has definitely caught on and with a bit of promtping, we can get a thank you upon receipt of something she’d been saying please for.

She’s picking up words very quickly now. It’s really just a matter of us focusing on pointing things out and saying the word for things a time or two. For instance, we were driving towards the museum the other day and we were going by a big colorful modern sculpture of some sort (I have no idea what it was supposed to represent). Heather pointed at it and said, “That”. I said “That’s a sculpture, sculpture.” She said, “Scuptur”, or something to that effect.

For many years I’ve been a bit of a beer snob. I have no love (or like) for any of the beers enjoyed by the largest percentage of the population in the US or in Australia. You can take all the Budweiser, Miller, Miller Lite (US beers) along with all the Tooheys New, Victoria Bitter, James Boag, Hahns (Australian beers) and the imports, Heineken, Stella Artois, etc. and dump them all in the ocean as far as I’m concerned, except I’d consider that polluting the ocean and I’m against that sort of thing.

If we’re going to give beer to the fish and marine mammals, who I happen to like, it should at least be something good, not the nasty, flavorless or downright distasteful beer of the average Joe. I’m talking about stuff that they barely wave the hops over the vat. Yuck. I know lots of people like this stuff. Popularity does not equal quality. I mean a lot of people liked ‘New Kids On The Block’ too, that didn’t make them good.

Give me a good ale any day. Something with some body and flavor. Something like Bass Ale on tap is my idea of a really nice drop.

That being said, I’ve really been challenged here in Australia. This is a country that prides itself on drinking and a large part of the population are descended from the English, people who know how to make great beer and ale, and yet… the vast majority of the beer here is rubbish. Most pubs I go in, there’s nothing behind the bar that I can stomach drinking. It’s a shame, it really is. The micro brew phenomenon hasn’t arrived here yet. Perhaps it never will as long as people continue to guzzle the stuff that passes for beer here.

The good news is that there is one brewery here that makes some really nice ales. James Squire Brewery. James was a convict here, way back when the English first set up shop in Sydney. They make a really nice IPA (India Pale Ale) and a very nice Golden Ale, that’s a nice Summer drink. Their Amber Ale is nice too. My favorite however was an excellent limited release they made two years ago. It was called Hop Thief Ale and it was awesome. It was only around for a few months and when it ran out I was pretty bummed.

About a month ago I was getting off the train and I noticed a woman carrying a six pack of beer and I could tell it was a James Squire product but the color wasn’t one of the usual ones. I got a bit closer and noticed, with great joy, she was carrying a six of Hop Thief Ale! I asked her if she’d picked it up at a bottle shop (liquor store). She told me she was a journalist and got it from the brewery. I said, that’s the best stuff they ever made. She said, “Well, you’re in luck. They are re-releasing it, something they’d never done before. It should be in stores in a few weeks.” I felt like I’d just won something. Sure enough, a few weeks later I got a six pack of it. I cracked open the first one this past week with David and Elaine and Teresa brought me home a slab (case) of it too!

Ah, welcome back old friend.

Welcome back

It’s again a limited release, but I’ll be sure to stock up on it and enjoy it while it lasts. : )

Here’s a post by Teresa:

Heather learned several new things from our visitors. For instance, she enjoyed jumping on the bed (though it doesn’t have springs!) with both Anya and Callum minutes after they arrived. This must be part of exploring a new place for young children.

Elaine gave Heather her first Eskimo kiss (nose-to-nose rub) and I was blessed to be holding Heather at the time. After a nice Eskimo kiss from Elaine, Heather turned her face to me, offering up her nose for a rub. Very endearing. Over the next couple of days, this became a fun thing to share all around. Thank you, Elaine!

Heather also observed that Callum gives nice (regular) kisses. She must have decided she could do this too and started offering up a “mmm-wah!” kiss. At the moment, she goes straight for the lips and her smooches are quite wet but it’s a start… A couple of mornings ago, Heather offered up kisses to both of us right after waking up - what a nice way to start the day! Up until now, she’s really only blown kisses (sometimes with the mmm-wah sound; often with just the hand gesture).

Callum goes through periods of saying “no!” a lot, a phase which we are grateful Heather did not start while he was here. Oddly, she seems to have gone the opposite way and is recently saying “yes!” (or “yesh!”) to most questions we ask her.

One thing Heather observed from our young visitors and that we are since trying to reinforce is asking “please” when she wants something. Up to now, her common demand word has been “more!” and we usually oblige. Now, we are asking her to say “please” as well and sometimes she even says it unprompted (when she really wants something). As you might guess, she’s quite difficult to resist when she says please. So much, in fact, that when we cannot oblige we feel quite bad about it (like running out of Cheerios in the car). The next step is “thank you”, something Paul’s gotten her to repeat once or twice but not with any regularity…

Thank you for the great visit, Elaine, David, Anya and Callum!

Hi All, I know I’ve been slack about posting. It happens. Not too much to report from the week before last anyway. To sum last week up, I was sick… again.

This past week, our friends, David and Elaine, drove down from Brisbane with their children, Anya (4) and Callum (2). It’s about a 12 hour drive, if you go straight through. They planned on stopping every few hours, staying overnight about halfway. Thinking about their drive gave me visions of Chevy Chase and family in the movie, Vacation. Like the Griswolds in Vacation, David and Elaine even had to buy a new car just before the trip. The transmission in their old car gave up the ghost just a few days before the trip. Good thing it went then and not halfway down the coast. Luckily for them, their new ‘Family Truckster’ didn’t have any problems and the ‘Griswolds’ were able to avoid any mishaps on their way down. : )

In this group shot, you can see Heather’s red backpack. It’s the one we bring to daycare with her extra clothes. She loves carrying her backpack, and backpack is one of her favorite words.

The Gang's All Here

Backpack

We rearranged our place for their visit, moving Heather’s cot (crib) into our room, so Anya and Callum could sleep on the futon in Heather’s room and David and Elaine got the living room couch/futon.

We all had a lovely visit. Next time it’ll be our turn to head up north for a stay.

Story time with David

On Sunday we all went to the Olympic Park Aquatic Centre for fun in the pool. We met up with Andy, Fung and Zoe there too. Unfortunately, the heat for the pools was broken so the water was a bit chilly. Zoe and family bailed pretty early and the rest of us barely lasted an hour and a half or so.

On Monday, we, and seemingly the entire population of Sydney, went to Taronga Zoo. Well, it seemed that way in the parking lot. In the zoo the hordes managed to disperse and it never felt crowded inside. Taronga is a lovely modern zoo, situtated on a hill alongside the outer harbour. We had a great day at the zoo and enjoyed the elephants, big cats and especially, the giraffes.

Giraffes are cool

Mummy and Heather

Tall as a bear?

I’ll be posting some videos and photos from their trip as I get a chance. Now it’s Sunday and we’ll be off for some shopping soon, so I don’t know how much of this post I’ll get done now.

The children all had a good time playing together.

Heather and Callum

Rub a Dub Dub, three bubs in the tub

Daddy and Co.

Jumping fun

On Friday night, we went out to celebrate David’s 43rd birthday. We met up at Lee’s Fortuna Court Chinese restaurant in Crow’s Nest, a suburb pretty close to us. This restaurant is one of our favorites. The food is excellent. I especially enjoy the Peking duck. It’s also very child friendly. They even provide special chopsticks for the kids. They take a wine cork and use it as a pivot on one end of the chopsticks and wrap an elastic around it and the chopsticks so even little ones can enjoy eating with chopsticks.

We were joined for dinner by Elaine’s Aunt and Uncle Filomena and Felix. We’d brought a cake and when it was time for dessert, the staff brought it out with candles and a sparkler that the kids got to pass around. They also handed David a sword to cut the cake with. Great fun for all.

They left for home yesterday morning just after nine AM and drove strait through, arriving home at eleven thirty PM.

This morning I disassembled Heather’s cot and put it back into her room. She was having fun playing in it without the side on it and I took this video then.

Animal Sounds

I hope everyone’s doing great.

Love to all,
Paul

Saturday found us once again at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre along with our friends Andy, Fung and Zoe. We all had a lovely time at the pool then went to ‘Pancakes on the Rocks’ for an excellent second breakfast for lunch.

When Heather watches the bellyflop in this video, she laughs and laughs, so don’t feel bad if you think it’s funny too, you’re not alone.   : )