Month: May 2015

Children are weird

Mine is currently rolling around a problem in his head – he is hilarious, but his friends don’t yet get it. They ask him to stop being hilarious, but he is convinced that if he keeps being hilarious, eventually they will get the joke, and everyone will have a good laugh. In the meantime, they are throwing rocks at him. Actual rocks. And he keeps cracking jokes.

I put it to him that “most children are assholes”, and that expecting them to change will be an exercise in frustration, so he had better choose between sharing his gifts, and protecting his soft fleshy bits.

He is taking this under advisement, but thinks that hiding his light under a bushel won’t allow him to be true to himself. Ergo, children are weird.

Meanwhile, round three of “meetings with the school” starts tomorrow. Wish us luck!

What do you want for dinner tonight?

I ask the question.

Squish: I want to go to that place. You know, the one I like but I can’t remember the name of?

Mama: Xi An Food Bar? (Our fave “rustic” Chinese noodle joint).

S: Yes.

M: Hmmm. I’m getting a bit bored with that one.

S: I feel the opposite. Like I want to go there more and more.

M: Hmm.

S: But you respect my opinions, and I’m going to respect yours. We can go somewhere else if you like.

May the 4th

This time last year we were just settling in to Auckland, and visiting Hobbiton.

Not much has really changed. Squish is still (mostly) going to school happily enough, Mark seems to be enjoying arguing with data sets at work, and I am ticking along, mostly being a mum, and advocating for Squish at school, and also as the area delegate for Creative Fibre.

We all miss home. I miss watching my favourite little people growing up, miss watching Squish interact with his cousins and his grandparents. Mum and Dad have been here for a visit last month, and Bev & Ted are coming in a few weeks too, but it’s not the same as being able to see them every week. I guess homesickness has kicked in with the weather getting colder here.

Our little house in Westmere is a lot like the house in Denistone where Mark and I first lived together. It’s a draughty old council house that hasn’t had a kitchen renovation since it was built in (probably) the late 1930’s. But the location couldn’t be better, we see the sea every day as we drive down to our street, we are about 100m away from a gorgeous public reserve and a bit further to the community garden. The Countdown (Woolworths) is a 4 minute walk away, and the bus that goes from there goes right past Inigo’s school to Mark’s work.

I have met some wonderful new friends, and although uni doesn’t seem to be working out at the moment, life is good.