Often go right to shit... as they did today. Today was supposed to be the homeschool group Science Centre excursion. The kids were So looking forward to it, and honestly so was I, despite the fact that it is IN the city centre. Brisbane city is NOT somewhere I go without extreme need in most cases, as a matter of fact the last time I set foot in the CBD (city business district .. think skyscrapers, much traffic, little parking, and usually a lot of grumpy bitchy people & bad drivers) was last April when Samwise needed a root canal and the only pediatric dentist to be found was guess where?
So last night I sat down with google maps and worked out exactly how to get there and stared at it until I felt that I 'had it', got everyones gear ready for the morning and thought I had it covered. In the morning I decided we'd hit the bakery at the shopping centre and get morning tea to munch on the way in to the city, so we did that and still had 45minutes to get to our destination. Sweet. The drive in was a breeze, there were two roads to choose from and when I approached the first one and could see the mad morning traffic ahead... zip, off the main road I went. The kids were pointing out the skycrapers, the road works (never ending on the motorway we take to the city lol) and all sorts of stuff. And voila, we are THERE! I make the turn to where I think the entrance to the car park is and find I am mistaken.. no worries, I'll do a run around the block (after I cross the river :S) and come back! Amaingly enough I am not even a tad flustered by this.. still singin along to some rockin 80's tunes on the radio in face.
Then it happened... I heard a gods awful noise from the backseat and was just about to ask the boys what the HECK they were doing.. when I turned my head to see a chocolate milk VOLCANO come flying out of my youngest son. *suppressed retch* OOOkkk.. well there goes that trip! Down go the windows.. ffs it had only been 15minutes since he drank that milk how on earth could it have gone SO foul & sour smelling so fast?!!?! Am I flustered yet? Nope, not even ruffled. Ok change of plans kids.. we'll do the science centre another day. By some sheer miracle I ran right into the on ramp to the route to get to the HWY to get home and found a spot to stop eventually and clean the boy up. I called DH (who we probably passed as we drove our spew stench trailing car through the cbd lol, he works driving there) and he was astonished by how CALM I sounded lol. As I said, I loathe the cbd with a passion if it involves driving... so he figured that alone would have me irritable.. but add to it spewing child and he thought for sure I'd be coming unglued.
Still haven't decided if I should be insulted by that or not?? lol
Well, it's appearing more and more like we'll be relocating yet again in late April. We will have been here 18months, and while we love the house and the yard... there are a few things that cause issues. One, the real estate agent/owner shows very little interest in maintaining the property (note the very large tree limbs that have been laying in the front yard and on TOP of the shed for pushing 3 months now)... and two, my dearest was accosted the other day on the way to the store only a kilometre or two from here. A jackass of immense proportions stopped his car and proceeded to come back to Striders van (he rolled up the window/locked the door when he saw this moron coming) and proceeded to bash the window & scream abuse at him while threating to kill him/ take his head off. What if it'd been me with the kids? They'd have been scared shitless by this fuckwit. Not the environment I want to have them living in... so realestate.com & I will be close friends for the next month or so ;)
Before we pack all our gear up again, I plan to thin out crap we don't need/don't love/don't use... I did this before we moved here and it was very liberating! We really don't HAVE that much stuff (compared the the average consumerist "westerner") but it still seems to be too much. The kids playroom (allegedly designed to keep the toys in one place.. ha) is always such a disaster that you can't walk through it. The problem isn't lack of storage.. they have shelves and hanging pockets in the closet, and bins etc... the problem is that there is just TOO MUCH STUFF. It overwhelms them.. they can't find what they want so they do a major dump of bins into the floor, find the one thing they wanted, then leave. Tonight, with their total approval, we took a good sized box of little people and other assorted toys to Lifeline :D They weren't the only ones offloading stuff though... Strider & I went through our wardrobes and filled two pretty good sized rubbish bags with thngs we no longer wear. I'm sure there will be more to come!
In addition to just plain getting rid of stuff, I'm compiling quite the IKEA shopping list to get things to organize all the leftover stuff :D Shelves and boxes and hangers oh my!
The news of the day... my boy is H.O.M.E! (above is him before leaving the hospital) and damn glad to be there. I'm just beyond amazed that in basically 2.5months he went from struggling to stay alive, to walking and talking and going home. Wow. My son, the total legend.
I have a phone & net again, can I get a hallelluja? LOL (it's the ultimate of ironies for a pagan chick to say that hehe) Dude finally showed up today around lunch time and eventually sorted it out, after he found where the junction was. This did not not exactly fill me with confidence that he knew WTF he was doing ;) Now I can go back to hunting a new house to rent when the lease is up on this place in April, since it's going to fall apart around our ears it seems lol. List of required elements: 4 bedrooms, DISHWASHER!, little to no crapet, air conditioning, enough backyard to have a sorta garden.. and working phone/dsl lines hehehe.
On the homeschooling front, I've spent the weekend working out the boys 'learning plan' for the distance ed school.. basically saying this is how we plan to meet objectives in math, science etc etc etc. One segment I had no plan for was "Information communication technologies" (ICT's) .. so after a bit of thought, I've decided to help Frodo keep his very own blog about our activities! It'll be on this acct and I'll link it on my sidebar =) Should be a bit of fun, and he loves the computer so another excuse to be on it will be just fine by him lol.
