Classic literature is not to be trusted with your children.

The other day (and in the words of the amazing Ed Byrne “when I say the other day that really means between now and…. ever”) I was having a conversation with my 20 year old son who is currently reading The Divine Comedy by Dante, more specifically, he is reading Dante’s Inferno. And let me tell you, that is some pretty messed up stuff. Human Centipede, Teeth, Saw? Nope, the people that imagined those sick and twisted plots lack the nauseating and warped imagery that Dante sprang forth from his dark and perverse imaginarium. Seriously, there is essentially what is a rape tornado in this book. Did you get that?   A tornado full of raping. Yeah, that happened.

What’s worse is the dentist’s office style waiting that is one circle of hell.

Me: “Your soul is important to us. Your afterlife may be recorded for training purposes.”

Me:“Thank you for waiting. Your deity of choice will be with you as shortly as possible.”

Son: “It doesn’t say how he got to hell.”
Me:“Probably took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.”

Son: “Yeah … can you go to hell for us…….(shrugs) Seems legit.”

Son: “Much fire. Very pain. Such ice. Wow.”

Son: “He got lost… and went to hell!”
Me: “Yeah, that happens. I went to Gosford once too.

Sloth for Husband Exchange Program. This should be a thing.

My devastatingly loud poor, lovely husband has had bronchitis in the last week and although I feel bad for him, the snoring has reached epic proportions; rivaled only by that of wild bears in the dead of winter and a chain saw hooked up to the speaker used by Marty McFly in Back to the Future. I love him dearly but I’m starting to wonder if baby sloths snore. And if they don’t, is there a “Sloth for Husband Exchange Program”? Is this a thing? It should be a thing. I’m going to look into this, maybe set up a charity or commune to make it happen if I can’t find one.

Its a trap!

Admin’s Log: July 15

It has been 5 weeks since Telstra pulled the copper lines out of the street where I work leaving us with no phone or internet service until we could hook up to the NBN. As it stands we have no phone lines out, calls have been diverted to my mobile so there is no real ‘knock off time’ for me, no network connectivity so emails and intranet are down, cannot network to the printer. Shredder still works but am expecting that to change soon. Slowly going crazy. IT guy attending site to fix the issues. Am not planning to let him leave until all is fixed. Will set a subtle, yet 100% effective trap to ensure his capture.

Seriously, 5 weeks since Telstra took our phone lines down and we’re still struggling to get everything back on track.  Needless to say I was super excited to hear that our IT guy was coming to my office to fix our problems.  And after doing our printing at home after hours, using my phone tethered to my laptop as my work desktop is essentially a giant word processor and using my mobile for a work phone, there was no way on this green earth I was letting him leave until it was all fixed.  But how to ensure he stays here until it was  done? <strokes chin thoughtfully>

I present to you the Acme Trevor Trap:

Complete with kibble and something to drink, all I need to do is put paper down for him to sleep on so he doesn’t make a mess.

What’s that I hear you say?  My trap is cunning and subtle and completely 100% foolproof.  Why thank you, I was pretty impressed with myself, and every client that stepped through the door thought it was brilliant.

The Trevor I was trying to trap?  Walked through the green door RIGHT NEXT TO IT and didn’t see it!  I should have made it larger and more obvious.  Up until now I hadn’t thought that subtlety was my strong point, but *clearly* I was wrong.

His excuse is that he is smarter than the average IT guy (points awarded for the Yogi Bear reference).
I think he is less observant than the av-er-age Bear.

In fairness, I think I’m right.  Because, well, I’m always right for starters.  Also, because – I’m always right.

Next time I’m going to dig a big hole in front of the office entry and cover it with leaves and twigs.  If he didn’t see the trap, there’s no way he will notice that.

Go home Outlook. You are drunk!

What the hell Outlook???  Why does Outlook think this is an appropriate trend to start???  While I’m appreciative that they are offering easy payment options, I think that the amount of lube and liquor that it would take for me to respond to this offer would violate my office’s Workplace Health and Safety regulations.

Hitler was right. ……..Don’t be a superficial asshole. (Please keep reading.)

So I have recently looking for work and getting more than a little frustrated that people don’t seem to be looking past my job title to see that I have solid admin skills that would transfer over to a PA or office management role. I was expressing this frustration in a definitely not ranty type of manner to my boy and his response made everything okay.

“Its kind of like your resume is Romeo and Juliet and the title is ‘Hitler was right’. And people just look at the title and go ‘ooooo no’ and throw it in the bin.”

So the lesson here, people, is never try anything new never judge a smurf by its outfit…. or never judge a book by its cover….. or something like that. Actually, the lesson we should all learn here is don’t be a superficial asshole – people can surprise you if you take the time to let them.

Puppies are better than brothers. Here is flawless logic to prove it.

We’ve had a house full of teenagers this weekend and the conversation turned to siblings and one 13 year old looked less than impressed at the idea of having a much younger sibling.  The conversation that follows had me rolling on the floor at the honest love expressed

Me: “Let me ask you this – if your little brother was hit by a bus, would you be sad?”

Visiting child “…….yes.”

Me: “Hmmm……If your puppy was hit by a bus, would you be sad?”

VC: “yes.”

Me: “You hesitated before you answered the first time…”

VC: “Well, my puppy is *adorable*”.

When I say honest love, I meant love for her new puppy, not for a slightly irritating toddler.

There is a shrine to me. I might be a deity of some kind. Also, it is Ryan Reynold’s fault that I can’t be trusted with your souls.

Oh my god, you guys!! My daughter came home from school with the BEST story to tell me today.

“So my friends Dad is a teacher at our school and he was wandering around the staff rooms and he found something that was so awesome he had to tell me about it straight away. He came running up and he was all ‘OMG LISTEN’ and he told me about this cork board in the PE teachers area, it has a bunch of stupid excuse notes and it has Every. Single. One. That I handed into the sport teachers. The mutant squid cyborgs and the time dinosaurs ate my sport uniform, everything PLUS a two page letter from my teacher to the head teacher about how I shouldn’t be able to get away with this and how I should make up for the lessons missed.”’

The thing is, I think that physical health is important. But I don’t think that it is important to make children spend hours running around the perimeter of the school in the mud and rain in winter. That’s just stupid. Especially when yoga, indoor cricket, hot chocolate and common sense exist. So I write notes letting my children get out of cross country running when the weather is wet and slushy. And out of competitive sports that they don’t give a damn about. Which is most of them. Except Mario Kart. Mario Kart is a sport, right? Poorly spelled notes like this:

Rebekah is excused from PE today due to a particularly vicious & fashion impaired heard of wild dinosaurs attacking the house & stealing her PE uniform, her running shoes & a pot plant. This has caused her untold amounts of stress and physical imparement.   She now, quite curiously, has been able to smell nothing but sauerkraut since the incident. As such, no PE for her on Wed 27/2.

And this:

All hail the dark overlords.

Rebekah, in accordance with the wishes of our Evil Cyborg Squid Zombie masters is unable and unwilling to participate in Cross Country Running today so as not to anger the ECSZ overlords.
Only indoor sports may be done.
And eating braaaaaiiiins……
Brains mmmmmmm…..
Braaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiins……..

Now I was quite proud of these notes and had written many like them in the past for genuine absenteeism and sport related apathy when the children were at other schools, and it had amused the teachers and excused the children. Not so much with this school. The 2 page letter writing whimsy police sports teacher prompted the head of the department to call me to tell me that I was weird. Not at all offensive. And by not at all, I mean TOTALLY. He went on to tell me that PE was the most important lesson that they have. To which I politely disagreed that running around in a circle would further my daughter’s chances of getting into NIDA as she plans to do, especially as she was making straight A’s in her other classes and I also politely (read firmly but respectfully) informed him that I was her mother and I was comfortable with my decision to excuse her from running around in the rain. To which he quite abruptly informed me that as her mother I had no right to have a say in her education. Cue me hanging up after informing him of the importance of my role in her life and education. And cue a less dinosaur studded letter to the principle to complain about his rudeness.

The next note was every bit as weird.

This was back in 2013. And I haven’t had cause to write too many zombie notes in the past year. On the odd occasion I have filled in medical consent forms and added chocolate as a recommended medication/incentive for laziness or wondered in writing if not being able to find things when looking for them was a medical condition. But all in all, Jurassic housebreakers and undead overlords have been kept to a minimum. (Also, my spell check doesn’t think undead is a word. It is. It knows this now.) And these notes are still on display in the teacher’s lounge nearly a year and a half after I wrote them.

So the take home message from all of this is:

1. Teachers need something to break the boredom, besides putting vodka in the water cooler. Because I’d become a teacher if they had vodka coolers. I’d be the most drunk fun teacher there if there was a vodka cooler. Also, I’d invite the students I didn’t like into the staff room and give them a drink of ‘water’ from the cooler and then BAM!! I’d have them expelled for drinking on campus.
2. It was worth it. Mwahahahahaha
3. There is a shrine to me. This is undeniable proof that I may be a deity of some kind. But not the kind of deity that anyone should trust their soul to willingly. I can’t be trusted with souls. I’d probably lose them in a game of strip poker with a heavily muscled and slightly oiled Demi God. Like Helios, Kevin Sorbo or Chris Hemsworth. Or Ryan Reynolds. And yes, I know Ryan isn’t a real Demi God like Helios, Kevin or Chris, but c’mon – its Ryan Reynolds guys. I’d totally gamble your souls to try and see him up close and personal without his shirt.

China tastes funny

One of the most wonderful things about my husband is what a total and completely adorable nerd he is.  Suffice to say that when I met him, he was working in IT and living with his parents. (I choose not to mention that he had moved back in when them to support his father through his battle with cancer, because it makes it funnier to imagine him sitting in his parent’s darkened basement , bathed in the pale green glow of several computer screens and surrounded by unopened, mint condition Star Wars collectables. AND THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE A BASEMENT.  Weird, huh?)  When my in-laws gave our daughter a clicky clacky bally thing with the strings* he was incredibly jealous and excited.

“No, you don’t understand.  This is what physics looks like.  It’s actually quite impressive.”

So, in my completely supportive way, I looked at him as if he were not only completely insane,  but had to get out of the house soooo much more often.

This goes a long way to getting you to understand just how underwhelmed I was (by his standards) when he brought home a world globe for our girls.  Now don’t get me wrong, it is kinda cool, it has a light inside and bumpy mountains on it.  But it would be completely out of the ordinary for me to let him know that I thought it was cool, and it would have also ruled out any shenanigans. See – priorities, people.

The girls were in bed, so my son and I pretended to be were incredibly interested in being shown the wonders of the globe.  We first started with the basics, sitting there turning the light switch on and off saying “Daytime, night-time, daytime, night-time, daytime…” ad nauseam.  Which in itself was fun, but the most joy was to be found in seeing the look on my husband’s face as we did this.  Suffice to say, he had a look of unimpressed incredulity.

On the up side, the incredulousness and unimpressedishness (they are totally words, take my word for it, don’t look them up) were quickly replaced as his son leaned in to the globe, licked it and stated:

“China tastes funny.”

On the down side it was replaced by a fleeting look of horror and defeat.  I say it was fleeting, but we really only saw a fleeting glance at it before we hit the floor laughing.

And this is the thanks that I get for trying to show my interest in his toys.  You’re Welcome!

*My husband informs me that this is called a Newton’s Cradle and is actually an extremely exciting and highly sought after gift for a child.  I promptly informed him that children prefer candy and flamethrowers, but he stands by his original statement despite evidence to the contrary.  I would be much more impressed if they had given her one of these kind.

A deep hole and a sandwich could fix so many of the world’s issues

Dear God, surely our species hasn’t come to this…

 

Conversation with my son upon seeing this photo:

Me: “Wanna see something that will make you weep for humanity?”

S: “Yeah, okay…”

*sees photo and holds sharp pencil to his chest*

S: “Do you have a hammer?”

Me: “Yeah, staking yourself through the heart is preferable to living in a society that has made that necessary, isn’t it?  I really don’t want to be in a gene pool that has had people needing pictograms to manage their shopping splashing around in it.”

S: “I don’t really need to take me out of it, do I?  I could just take them out of it.  Have you got a flame thrower?”

Me:  “You wouldn’t need to go to that much effort.  You could manage it with a deep hole and a sandwich.”

 

When did we move to the States?

So today I had to go and take my daughter to the airport to hand her over to her father for the school holidays.  He was dressed in a cowboy shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He sauntered up to us and drawled “Howdy y’all” in a poorly executed  an American accent.  Surrounded by busy professionals, backpackers and Japanese tourists the overall effect was rather incongruous.  Like someone had done an amateur job of photoshopping a cowboy into the scene to highlight the juxtaposition of the past and present in my life.

He has never been to America.

We live in Australia.

WTFpleaseexplain…

That is all.

Here is a completely random cowboy for you. Sadly my ex does not look like this, however it turns out that he does own this shirt now.