Oh, Wow! This Is Brilliant!

For all my comrades-in-arms out there in the world of parenting, I present this frigging brilliant website:

Child's Own

They're Canadian, but they ship overseas. They're not too expensive, and what they do is bloody fantastic. Essentially, they'll take a drawing made by a child, and turn it into a custom-made soft toy.

So. Your kid ever make a really special picture? Now you know exactly what to do about it.

For the non-parents out there: this site might not seem so interesting to you. But trust me... it's pure genius.

Zombies? Ha. I Survived Mermaid Fairy Princesses.

That... was a big day.

No parent with even a skerrick of experience leaves the timing of a birthday party open. The invites clearly said: 2.00 to 4.00pm. Naturally, there's always a bit of looseness in these things, but a note like that tells parents of invitees more or less what's going to go down. It's after lunch, see, so it's not likely to be a big nosh-up, but of course the usual range of party food will be available. And you'd better have a damned good excuse if you try to leave your kid much later than, say, 4.30.

I had a lot of work in the morning. I scratch-built a chocolate cake with a layer of marshmallow in the middle, and I filled a bunch of ice-cream cones with the remaining home-made marshmallow, then covered the lot with colourful sprinkles. Mermaid Fairy Princesses fuckin' LOVE colourful sprinkles.

Had to do a shopping run in the morning, of course. Drinks, snacks, party favours, balloons, and the inevitable sausages and bread rolls. Oh, and jelly.

An odd moment in the car: the Mau-Mau was in the back seat, already decked out in her frilliest, pinkest, princessiest finery (did I mention her mother brought her a goddam tiara from Ireland?) while Jake was up front with me. Jake dug out the AC/DC soundtrack album from Iron Man II and stuck it in the cd player, which was all right by me. Is there a better hard rock band ever than AC/DC? I think not. They define their own genre, and whatever their music may now lack in novelty, it remains solidly what it is: hard driving guitar rock.

So 'Thunderstruck' came on. And I turned up the volume. As you do.

Jake cringed into a foetal ball with his hands over his ears. Ahh, but in the rear view mirror what do I see? It's the Mau-mau, and she is goddam ROCKING OUT. Her arms are in the air over her head, flailing away. She's bouncing up and down in her kiddy-support seat, and banging her head like a complete freak.

I could not, in all conscience, turn the music back down until 'Thunderstruck' was done. Jake just had to stay curled up. Pfeh.

The Mermaid Fairy Princesses - and one pirate - turned up on time. I believe we had an extra five little girls in the house, plus the young pirate. Of course, by that time Jake had turned out eight batches of jelly while I'd been prepping marshmallow and cake, and setting things in motion.

Three hundred balloons, in the end. I partioned off the sunroom, and just goddam well inflated balloons until the place was knee-deep (for a six-year-old, anyhow.) I think the boys managed to blow up maybe thirty balloons between them, so I probably did something like two-hundred and seventy. Yes: by this point, I am largely over the bronchitis.

Happily, we had a bit of a break in the weather. It was especially good because on top of all our mermaid fairy princesses, the Viking Lads turned up with loaded waterguns. Meanwhile, Jake and Genghis had prepared their Nerfgun arsenal, intent on keeping Mermaid Fairy Princesses out of "their stuff". Thus, when the Viking Watergun Raiders arrived, the battle was on... and fortunately, it was warm enough and dry enough outside that it was an outdoors event.

There were shrieking mermaid fairy princesses running hither and yon. Nerf darts flew. Waterguns creaked and spat their streams of moist vengeance. Parents dodged, and talked, and drank the beer I'd laid on (with considerable experience and foresight.) Whenever things started to slow down, I threw snacks into the fray. When they finally started to look tired, I grilled an abominable mass of sausages, slashed a horrorshow worth of chewy bread-rolls, fried a half-dozen onions into tasty rings, chopped up a block of cheese and a jar of pickles, and limbered up the tomato sauce jar: and many, many children were fed.

The timing was very good. By about half-three, a very light rainshower drove them inside, where they gleefully began swimming about in the balloons. (I have photos of a mass of balloons. You cannot see the children beneath. They wanted it that way.)

I played my ace in the hole, and threw Natalie to the lions with a pass-the-parcel game. The big prize at the end was a bubble-gun, and after all the balloons and notes and lollies and teary outbursts, the Mau-mau wound up with the coveted weapon and promptly added vast quantities of soap-bubbles to the chaos...

The party did run overtime, yes. Various parents were having a good time too, so the kids stayed until the oldies were done. Last to go was our pirate, whose parents had the very good manners to turn up with a really interesting bottle of bubbly, which we promptly demolished. By that stage, I was already prepping dinner - a great big pot of spaghetti with a strong tomato/anchovy/basil sauce, and plenty of fine-sliced bacon. Thus, when we were down to just the usual three kids (plus two Mermaid Fairy Princess sleepover types) I fed the hell out of everyone yet again, and Natalie and I gradually defragged the place while the kids went through their shower routine, and watched 'Chicken Run'.

Whew.

I admit, once all the offspring and their ilk were in bed, that I cracked open another beer or two. But not until I'd managed to quell even the three Mermaid Fairy Princesses, who were lying all three together on one vast inflatable mattress on the floor of the Mau-mau's room. By pointing out that if I heard little voices any longer, I'd put one of 'em up on the Mau-mau's bunk to sleep on her lonesome, I managed to send even those three off to the land of nod.

And so, I think that last beer or two was very well earned.

In the morning, we despatched children with pointy bamboo skewers to kill all the remaining balloons in a frenzy of colourful rubbery violent death. The sun came out, and I managed at last to pour the concrete footer for the stone wall around my firepit. Laundry was done. Tasks were carried out... and lo: in the end, I even managed to convince the Three Mermaid Fairy Princesses to clean up the Mau-mau's room.

Eventually, Anna the Viking Neighbour came and claimed her daughter, leaving only one excess Mermaid Fairy Princess. I fired up the barbecue, and prepared a mass of tandoori chicken and lamb, plus a bunch of roasted sweet potato. I also set up a green salad, and a bowl of turmeric rice, and a dessert salad of melon, ginger and coconut... because when Madame Double-Trouble arrived to collect her daughter, it was dinnertime, and she had two boys with her as well. Thus, my weekend finished with a barbecue dinner for eight. (Woulda been nine, but Natalie went into town to play music.)

Am I tired?

Fuck, yes. Where's that fucking beer?

Anxiety...

Today is the day of the Mau-mau's official sixth birthday party. She actually turned six some days ago, and received a plethora of presents from all over the place, as I mentioned. But for a six-year-old girl, the birthday thing isn't complete unless there's been a party. A particularly girly party.

And therefore, we are having a Mermaid Fairy Princess party this afternoon.

Oddly, a number of boys have been invited to this party, and at least one has accepted. His mum sounded relieved when I pointed out that according to Natalie, it would be all right if the lad dressed as a pirate. Personally, I think he should be a Mermaid Fairy Princess too, but I'm not sure six-year-old boys have enough of a sense of irony to appreciate the humour.

I'm sitting down right now in the post-breakfast zone, clearing my mind, thinking things through. It's been rainy as hell down here - some flooding across the north and east. (Not affecting us, mind you.) Today it's dim and grey and foggy. My hopes of throwing all the small ones outside for a sunny afternoon play on the stupidly oversized playground structure are looking slender. Ergo, I have to come up with a way to keep about eight very small, sugar-driven, birthday-frenzied kids from annihilating the interior of my house for about two hours this afternoon.

I'm thinking balloons. Fuckloads of balloons. Kids like balloons, and if I inflate a couple hundred, they'll be happy to run around shrieking and kicking clouds of balloons into the air, right? The cats will never forgive me, but who cares?

Meanwhile, I've also got to prepare a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and a cherry on top. Maybe a layer of whipped cream in the middle. Apparently, jelly is also desirable. And marshmallow cones.

There's also party favours and lollies and decor to think of. Yes. All that stuff.

Then there's my sanity. Have you seen it? I'm not sure where I put it down. I think I had it just a few days ago, briefly, but then the phone rang. And then the University told me my enrolment was up in the air 'cos they didn't have proof of my citizenship. Citizenship? Fuck! I've been a permanent resident of Oz since 1973, and a full citizen since 1991. I don't even know exactly where my stupid Citizenship Certificate is anymore. Luckily, I keep my passport in a handy location. Wish I could do the same with my sanity.

Fortunately, there's a carton of Boag's St George in the kitchen. I will undertake the Quest for Sanity through Booze after the Mermaid Fairy Princesses are all in bed. (Did I mention that at least two of them are sleeping over? I didn't, did I?)

Okay. Gotta go. Genghis is now coughing up a lung, and quite seriously, he's amplifying his already horrifying cough by putting a very long cardboard tube up to his mouth. So I can hear this weird, echoing, rattling, tearing, gurgling bark of a cough richocheting around the house. Natalie doesn't seem to like it either, by the way she's snarling at Genghis. I can understand that, though... the cardboard-tube Death Cough is probably the ugliest thing I've heard since I last mashed up Justin Bieber and Yakity Sax.

Sanity? Hellloooo?

Alarums And Excursions

Natalie and Jake returned from Ireland on Sunday morning, as planned. I was well enough to drive in a collect them from the airport, which was damned handy. (The antibiotics appear to be doing some good. Not fixing everything, but at least I can breathe again.)

Of course, they fell asleep in the afternoon, and lay like logs. Still, they brought presents, which was good. I have a fine bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey which my antibiotics and I are observing wistfully, from time to time.

Everybody took Monday off school, sensibly enough. And by a useful coincidence, it was also the Mau-mau's birthday. Her sixth. I've had a daughter for six years, apparently. Fuck, eh? Who knew?

Six year old girls and birthdays are... challenging. They expect rainbows, unicorns, and random falls of sugary pink candy from the sky. The Mau-mau did okay. Her mum brought her a pink satin dress complete with puffy skirt and bows and ribbons and underskirt layers. There was also a LEGO dollhouse that took half the day to build. (Kept mother and daughter nicely occupied.) There was a fine tiara of some kind of robust but graceful metal, replete with diamantes and pearl-ish things: high grade costume jewelry which she immediately adopted and adored. There was a necklace of silver. There was an embroidered purse and some bead necklaces from an aunty.

From yours truly, she got the first fifteen issues of the Marvel Godzilla comic, bound in a single edition. (She loves her some Godzilla.) She got a simple digital camera meant for kids, with which she is now photographing the crap out of the entire world. And she got (with help from Ginny in the USA) a very clever paintbrush. You use it with watercolours. It has batteries, and a metal strip down the side. You paint with it, and then with a finger of your off-hand, you touch the wet paint and become part of an electrical circuit that makes the brush 'sing'. Essentially, you form a variable resistor, and by moving your finger to different places on the painted line (with the brush touching, of course) you can change the tone the brush makes. It's very cool.

Nevertheless, the Mau-mau wanted more. More! What's Aunty Becca going to send me? Ooh!

It's not so much the having. It's the opening, and the getting. I'm quite sure that if we were to wrap a bunch of rocks and get her to open them with sufficient fanfare, she'd be almost as delighted.

She wanted tacos for dinner; I complied, as one does. And I made a fine chocolate cake with whipped cream and strawberries. (Yes. That explains the photos.) And she got to sleep on the floor of her bedroom, in her little fold-out kiddy indoor playtent. What more could you ask for?

But Dark Forces were aswirl. For starters, Natalie appears to have brought back an exciting gastro-enteritis from her Irish sojourn. Jake, as usual, is completely unmoved. The kid gets unwell so rarely that when he does, he's a fucking pain, because he has no experience with things like sore throats, or vomiting, and he gets really cranky about it.

Genghis, on the other hand, Catches Stuff. And last night at a quarter to midnight, I heard an awful, stertorous bark from downstairs. Now, as it happens, I'd only just gone to bed because I'd been watching the Mau-mau (still sleeping on the floor in her tent. Why? You'd have to ask her). She's caught the chest infection that settled on me. By day she's fine, but by night, she coughs like a ninety-year-old three-pack-a-day smoker, and her nose blocks up too. So I was kind of expecting trouble, yeah?

Except that when I got downstairs, I had to put the brakes on fast. It wasn't the Mau-mau. It was Genghis, and he'd just dumped at least a kilo of polenta-crusted salmon, green salad, hash browns and leftover birthday cake all over his pillow.

Not good at all. The bedding got changed, and everything got cleaned up, and Genghis got a bowl - but that mess was horrible, and showed absolutely no sign of being digested, five and a half hours after the meal had been eaten. This is not a good sign.

And sure enough, at 0630 this morning, another thunderous bark yanked us out of bed. The boy is not well. He's currently on the couch watching "Life of Brian", his faithful barf-bowl close at hand... unlike his brother, he's used to this sort of thing so he just takes it in his stride.

The Mau-mau? Oh, she was fine. I checked on her at the first Vomit Volcano event, and she was sleeping peacefully in her little tent.

So, here we are. My family is all home again. Lucky me!

God, I Love Science!!!

Sheep Drugged and Shocked to Prove Taser Safety

Seriously. Go read it for yourself.

Now, while I admit that I have no particular desire to teach sheep to freebase and then go all Tasermatic on their sheepy asses, there's a certain wild-eyed enthusiasm to this whole project that I find fundamentally admirable. Who came up with this idea? More importantly, who did they find to implement it? It goes to show: we may live in a modern world, but there's still a job for Igor whenver he needs it. Because who else could you possibly call upon to make sheep snort meth, then apply the lightning rod to their woolly butts if not that most tried and tested of all B-movie stereotypes: the Mad Scientist's Equally Mad Assistant.

Look, I know this whole thing is awfully hard on the sheep, but as a longtime fan of B-movies, I can't help but approve. In my youth, I often envisioned myself as a Victor Frankenstein for a new age. I liked Science. I liked weird stuff. I liked mixing chemicals until they changed colour and smelled funny (and made the cat fall over). I liked explosions and lightning. At no point have I ever been concerned with the idea that there are Some Things Man Wasn't Meant To Know. I have wild hair. I can cackle maniacally.

There really ought to be a useful place for me in the world of science. And now, thanks to this... clearly VERY scientific project, it is apparent that somewhere, somehow, Mad Science is still happening. Could it be that at last, at long last, my project to crossbreed magpies and tiger sharks has a future?

Could Have Been Worse, Apparently

Not pneumonia. That's good.

Bronchitis. That's... not so good.

The good is that I'll probably not have to be hospitalised. The not so good is two weeks worth of doxycycline... and the lingering question of why the f__k I can't cough up all this crap the way normal people do.

Referral to a respiratory physician coming up.

There May Be A Hiatus

Yeah.

So - this cough isn't going anywhere. Except downhill. Bad night last night. Not a good morning so far. I'll be taking this one to the doctors today, and I gotta say I won't be surprised if they want to keep me for a while.

I'll be back when I can.