Hello Again

I fell off my blog bike but I am determined to get back on and pedal faster than ever. Life in Australia is starting to just feel like life - we are all busier than ever and pretty much, dare I say it, completely settled in. This week alone Rosie was invited to three birthday parties. She will attend a roller skating party, a dance party and a gymnastics party. Last month it was a horse riding party. She has stopped having nightmares about crocodiles and no longer needs to ask me questions about God because she knows everything about him, even, so I've been told, how he smells. Term two saw her with yet another new teacher as Ms. Crompton moved to Melbourne. But my old Rosie is back, skipping into school expecting to like any teacher they throw at her and assuming she will be liked in return. When I had my parent/teacher meeting with the newbie she said Rosie was a very serious child. Yes, I replied, it's true, but wait till you met her father.

Mike is just back from a week in Bangkok. He was there meeting with suppliers and getting massages. Really, I do know it was a trying week of meetings and negotiations, but when someone is able to book all 20 of your party into massage rooms at your 5 star hotel at 10 p.m. after a full dinner where someone polished off an entire bottle of vodka, I have to wonder if I made the right decision to leave the work world. But I suppose that's my work fantasy, not Mike's. After 9 hours on the plane catching up on emails he arrived home exhausted. I was as sympathetic as I could be, but stopped short of manipulating his bath towel into the shape of an elephant carrying a fresh orchid in it's trunk, assuming he was sick of that sort of thing.

The week before that Mike was on the Gold Coast (about an hour south of Brisbane) celebrating Genie's 15th year in Australia with some of the company's nearest and dearest. It was a party to end all parties and I am sorry I missed it. They arrived in 15 chauffeured stretch hummers (Australia is really big after all) and walked down the proverbial red carpet which was flanked by cheer leaders. How nice it would be to enter a room and be reminded of how great you are by eight young and gorgeous women shouting accolades at you. Well done Genie Marketing.



15 years ago was 1997, a great year wasn't it? Clinton was in office and Axel Rose was just going off the deep end. Besides cheerleaders, hummers and well placed character actors, 1997 was remembered with several rounds of semi pro boxing complete with famous Australian cricket personality and sport hero Max Walker MCing. Here is Mike in the ring with Max - thankfully, not boxing.

Actor or Kiwi?

Kiwis getting into the spirit.

Paid Actors

Not pictured were Madonna, Zoolander, Sister Theresa (who won the Noble Peace Prize in 97), Stephie Graf and Robin. Some of the these costumed personalities were not paid actors though....some of them were customers! I never thought a group of people could top the Aussie's zest for life, but apparently the Kiwis really get down. I hope we move there next!

Kiwi






I thought about bringing the girls down the coast after school on Friday to join Mike and have a fun weekend at the beach but then remembered we had Wiggles tickets. I am being completely honest with you when I reveal I had never heard of the wiggles before last month. Rosie came home from school all abuzz that the wiggles were playing so I bought tickets. Ten minutes into the show I leaned over to Mike and said, these guys have got to be Australian, yeah? He just looked at me like I was crazy and on the way home explained to me the billion dollar corporate empire that is The Wiggles. Yes, they are Australian and it makes so much sense that they are. Little Red Car! Toot! Toot!

Booyoolie, Goblebackinglup, Bangingoo - no, not Wiggle song lyrics. Australia is full of fabulous Aboriginal  place names that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. I recently found a book translating Aboriginal words. I opened it up, flipped through the pages I until I found Indooroopilly, hardly able to contain my excitement to find out what it might mean……tropical paradise? mango station? sunshine satellite? rainbow factory? Imagine my disappointment, no, my dismay, to discover our neighborhood, Indooroopilly, actually means Gully of Leeches. Hmm. At least I haven't seen any, which is comforting since I ended up here instead of WabbaPickinCoke, where Don Johnson parked his turquoise porch in a driveway lined with white rocks and birds of paradise.

I am very happy we landed in the Gully of Leeches though, as the neighbors here are fantastic. Because of all the fencing and gating and remote control action it took us a while to actually meet them - but meet them we have and thank goodness. It was the Saturday we saw the Wiggles. A gloriously hot late afternoon walk home from the train station found us whistling wiggles songs, toot toot! As we turned the corner onto Neulans Rd we saw some kids on scooters and bikes, a couple of dogs, and our next door neighbor picking a leech off his youngest. We stopped to introduce ourselves. Wine bottles and cheese platters appeared almost simultaneously from two houses across the street. That was 4:00. At midnight we stumbled off our neighbors porch, carrying 2 over excited little girls home to fall asleep exactly 30 seconds later.

Since that eventful night Nola has peed on one neighbor's carpet and walked another's blind black lab around the block - bonding is complete I'd say. Between our four houses there are 12 kids between the ages of 3 and 17 and 8 adults who like wine and cheese, nice people all - for this I can forgive a few leeches.

Now it is Mother's Day. Rosie gave me a cross. It's my first one and quite tastefully decorated with pink beads and silver sequins. I think Jesus would be touched. The girls also made me breakfast in bed and for some reason insisted on washing my hair. Now Mike has taken them to the science center, leaving me in a too quiet house to get back to blogging. But not before rinsing a bottle of shampoo from my hair, mopping up the bathroom floor and hosing down the kitchen. 

Happy Mother's Day Moms! May any cross you bear be sequined!