Cars

I have driven a few interesting cars in my fairly short driving life. One was the camry, this was fairly straight forward except that the speedo needle stopped telling us how fast we were going after we hit 60 km an hour. I fixed that with a pocket knife.

I also drove the verada. This was called The Music Bus because when MEC first started it shuttled most of the music team and their instruments to and from church. This one developed a few interesting quirks; firstly the doors handles disintegrated so that you needed special training before being able to exit the car. Next the the right hand windows, while going down with amazing ease, had difficulty going back up. Then, at intersections, we discovered we had an automatic that stalled to the point where it did it four times in a 5 minute drive one day. Then the speakers merely produced a grinding noise when the radio was on.

Whenever another person drove the car, I would diligently explain all these facts and what to do about them. This does not stop every single mechanic from winding down the driver window (a real problem since it rain here a lot). The funniest one though was when my aunt had to drive it and forgot about the window till she tried to wind it up, then couldn't open the door from the inside and had to get help. She decided I needed a new car.

The last car that I will tell you about is the Nanny car I use while I am here. I named it very early on in the piece, it is called the Seacow because she is ugly, grey, slow, smells funny and really irritating to handle. A Seacow is a Dugong or Manatee and my boss reckons calling the car Seacow is an insult to Dugongs but I reckon it fits nicely.

Laundry Detergent

The laundry detergent we are using at the moment is really irritating. It does the job as well as can be expected considering red dirt doesn't EVER wash out. The problem is when you are tipping the last few drops into the machine, before rinsing it out into the next load.

When you tip the bottle upside down, the liquid detergent, instead of following the usual laws of gravity, falls sideways. This is very noticeable because the only thing it falls sideways onto is the tippers shirt which they had intended to wear all day. Usually the washing is done in the morning which means that the shirt has only been worn for an hour or two before it needs to be changed.

Puppy Training

I have stopped horse training for a while because I have been busy and disinclined, though I will need to start again as he has gone completely mental recently. I have begun puppy training. This is a useful thing to do I suspect because, as someone pointed out, she knows her name, when you call out Friday, she runs away.

First and obviously she was taught to sit. I did not teach her this, every one else did when she was really young.

The next thing was to wait till I said she could before eating. This is valuable in a Labrador since they are so keen on food they will knock you down and breathe it in. I try to get everyone who is giving her food to make her wait till they have put it down then said "eat it up". This was funny when one of them did it with a toy and she said "go" and I said to try "eat it up" and she did and Friday grabbed it.

The next thing was for her to not barge inside whenever we open the door, this has gone backwards of late unfortunately.

Then, for fun, we have all begun to teach her hide and seek. I used to play this with Roger, my dog. One person goes into the laundry with the dog and the others hide in simple places, like behind bushes, then Friday is let out and the person with her says "go find" and she goes to find her pack. The kids hid behind 3 bushes and she found them, then they hid behind the same bushes again and Friday must have decided that the key was looking in these 3 places, because the third time they hid in different spot and she was sorely confused. She seems to have the general idea now though which is nice.

Today I was teaching to sit, stay come. To lie down and to crawl. She is much quicker at picking things up now and it is a rewarding experience to teach her things. I was also beginning to teach her to come when she is called even if she has something in her mouth. This may seem odd but usually it is somebodies shoe or shirt or similarly desired object.

Perspectives

There are two perspectives (at least) in every event, issue, process and story. One of these I had not considered the other side of is the job hunting scene. I am obviously more experienced with the looking for employment side of it, as most of us are, but what about the other half... the potential employers.

Since moving to work for the boss of a company I have heard a lot about the frustrations of finding staff for their business and, more so, of finding nannies. Specifically nanny role applications (which I hear more about) the first frustration is the applicants not actually reading the ad properly and when they are contacted saying they actually don't want the job because of xyz. The second irritating thing is people applying who don't even remotely meet the requirements, for example never having spent time alone with any children of any age (seems a frivolous requirement I know). The third frustration is when people agree to come and then pull out before leaving home for whatever reason. The fourth frustration is people coming and then leaving 2 weeks later because they only accepted the job so they could get a working visa into the country.

One of the other weird things I found out is that when you put down referees on your resume or similar, the potential employer is meant to only call them with your knowledge and permission and then your referee's are not actually allowed to tell them anything useful. This strikes me as pointless, why put down referee's if you don't expect somebody to give them a call. Why call a referee if they are not allowed to give any useful information. Easier to work with integrity and have nothing to hide and then they can ask and tell what ever they like (as long as it is true).

Just out of interest I wrote that entire post while Romeo the cat was asleep on my lap with his paw across the keyboard so I had to keep shifting it to get to the letters.

Also some of this information may be wrong, this is just what I have gathered and as a result I actually read ads now and only apply for jobs I actually want (assuming I get asked of course)

Making lunch

Yesterday the kids were asking for playdough and it was nearly lunchtime so the obvious solution was damper. This was what we used to do for lunch when we were home educated and we had run out of bread (yes, my mum is a genius) Here is a picture of the creations we came up with.

As you can see firstly the writing has turned blue and is now underlined ??????

Secondly we used food die to make it more interesting. This resulted in patches of colour on some hands and entirely blue hands on one child.

Needless to say we had fun.

Walking

Today I got some big news so I went for a looong walk to process it. I went to the bottom of the driveway (1.5 km) and turned right and went past the next door neighbours house and wandered along thinking about stuff.

After a considerable distance I was thirsty so I turned back, as I walked along I noticed a calf in the paddock. In springtime in beef cattle country this is not unusual, however this calf was really small and wet and the cow standing nearby had afterbirth (sorry for grossness, maybe it is good I did not have my camera) hanging down between her legs. It appears that I had wandered past a cow in labour and not noticed and missed watching a calf be born by about 10 minutes.

This was one of my more pleasant experiences with cows, partly because of the calf but mainly because apparently it is only dumb steers that feel the need to rush up to you and stare at you like you have an extra head. Cows seem not to have this need.

Exciting moments

We took the Labrador puppy down to the dam to teach her to swim. Everything was going swimmingly but she did not seem to be very confident at it. She can do it but she is not really a huge fan.

When she would go in to get a stick, she would wade in and when it got to nearly her chin she would do a funny little jump. This pushed the stick out of reach. She did this a couple of times until she got the stick. She had thus far only gotten the stick while standing, the effort of plunging valiantly made her sink under the water. We all went "oh look" the OH LOOK!!!", she came up just as I was going to grab her. This appeared to shake her confidence because she did not go out of her depth again.

When we had all gotten out to dry off and go home, one of the kids yelled "snake, JULIA, just behind you!!!!" I looked down in time to see a snake slide between my feet towards the water. We left after that and I considered that it is the kind of excitement we did not really need.

Horse event

Today we all went to a horse event and one of the parts of these events is packing away the equipment. I went out to help pull apart the temporary dressage arena's and after we had pulled them apart and put the poles and things into piles. I was the last one out there with one other person.

She said I think there is a trailer coming so we can pack it all away. I said that I too had heard that rumour. She said "Lets run away quickly". As we got to the gate exiting the field, another lady saw us and said "There is a trailer coming if you just wait for a minute. My pack up buddy turned and said "rats, we weren't quick enough".

More Traps

Because I was home educated, I was pretty cluey about some things but naive about other things. One of the things I was a bit innocent about was that people would try to catch you doing the wrong thing.

When I was working in a fast food place, I was usually on dining room clean up because I complained the least about it. I discovered an honest way to have a sit down and rest and that was to clean seats. Because they were mainly bench seats, the best way to clean then was to slide along, cleaning as you go. I was doing this one day, out of sight from where everyone else was, and chatting to myself (it is not weird if it is intelligent), totally absorbed in what I was doing (not a busy day obviously) when I looked up and saw a scary manager standing over me. I explained cheerfully what I was doing and that I thought somebody had lacquered over a child's foot print because it wouldn't come off. She laughed at me and went away. It only occurred to me years later that she had probably wanted to catch me bludging and doing nothing.

Happily, I have been taught by my parents and the bible to work diligently all the time not just when somebody is watching. Also there is a certain protection in that sort of cluelessness, it protects you from assuming the worst in people every time they say or do something that could go either way.

Animals

Here are some of the animals we have here:

This is Major, ready for a ride.

This is Choice, ready for a ride as well.

This is Romeo, sleeping in the lid of a suit case

This is Simba (Golden) and Friday (chocolate) having a rest outside in the sun.

Traditions and simple pleasure

We have set up weekly traditions for the times when I have the kids and their parnets are not there. On Monday mornings, if they get themselves ready in time, they get to have a pancake. This is tradition after I suggested it once. They NEVER forget to ask.

On Friday afternoons, when I pick them up from school, it used to be making a cake or biscuits but there was always a squabble about what we make and who gets to do what. Now, we stop off at the shops on the way home to get ingredients for Pizza and then make our own dinner. Friday night is pizza night and there was some disappointment on the part of a child was going to a sleep over on Friday night that she would miss pizza night.

Traditions like these are good, I like them.

Verbal Traps and similar

There are some social and conversational patterns that I really don't like and one of these are verbal traps. A verbal trap is when somebody puts you into a position where you can't refuse. An example of this was when I was sitting on a bus to go on an excursion and two girls approached me and said "would you mind moving? only we want to sit together" What can you do? In this case it was either fold and give into their intimidation (there were other places they could sit) or refuse to move and seem like a petulant child.

Another one might be your sister is asked to go out with friends and they ask you if you would mind staying behind as there are no spare seats in the car (hypothetical but helps with my other point) If you say ok, you are left out (which you probably don't want). If you say "No I want to come" you spend the evening feeling like you ruined their night.

Another pet conversational hate that I am sure others share is "no offence but..." Also once you get upset or offended by something someone said "I was just joking" Both of these phrases mean that you are not allowed to retaliate or get upset because you would be seriously overreacting.

paradox

I was cleaning the shower the other day and I noticed something interesting about the bleach bottle.

Notice the little dark spots? That is mould growing on a bottle claiming to contain a liquid guaranteed to kill mould.

The presence of mould is not a good recommendation for the product.

I should put some on the mould and see if it kills it.