Hello? I Think There's Been Some Kind Of Mistake...

Look, I know a lot of people must say this, but I'm really sure there's been a mistake. I don't belong here, you see. No. Really.

I mean, sure, obviously I share enough genetic material to interbreed with the dominant species on this planet, but there are plenty of species that can interbreed. Why should this particular one be different? Like I said: there's been a mistake.

I want to go home.

I'm not sure where home is, or who else is there, but honestly, it's got to be better than this.

There has to be a planet some place where they do things differently. I figure the intelligent forms there are similar enough to humanity - but there are fundamental differences. Important ones. And somehow, I got left here. By accident.

So - if you're monitoring this... I'm done now, okay? I've had enough.

I'd like to leave now, please.

Strange Milestones

Yesterday, I took Elder Son -- who has become 'Jake Flinthart' in these notes because of the identity he gleefully assumed at WorldCon in Melbourne last year -- off to a five-day music camp near Ulverstone. It was a long drive: forty-odd-minutes to Launceston, and then more than an hour across the top of the state to the site of the camp.

We had a decent time of it. Stopped in Launceston, got him a wallet so he'd be able to carry some cash for the week. Picked up a bunch of blank business-sized cards, put his name and his email address on them, filled the wallet's pockets. The theory is that he'll be meeting people, and making friends with whom he wants to stay in contact. It's probably an accurate theory; Jake has inherited a certain gregarious streak.

After lunch in Ulverstone, I took him to the camp proper, and spent a few minutes getting him settled in. Natalie had encouraged me to stick around for a while if it looked like it would help him find his feet, but it didn't seem like a good idea. They've bunked him in with five or so other lads the same age, and it took me only a few minutes to work out that they're smart, friendly kids. (Not really surprising. They are, obviously, all strongly involved in music, with all the parental care and attention that implies.) Within a few minutes, they were all talking about Doctor Who - and I knew that staying around longer would hinder Jake's progress, not boost it.

So I turned around and drove home again, stopping briefly at one of the various cherry orchards to pick up a few kilos of ripe Lapins. (Yeah. I'm actually becoming familiar with different cherry varieties. Lapins are big, dark, juicy cherries, very sweet.) A long drive, and only my memories for company.

I absolutely hated the school camps I got thrown into as a kid, and I would never choose to inflict anything similar on my youngsters. Big, drafty dormitories up the back of Lake Tinaroo, on the Atherton Tableland in Far North Queensland. Bunks rejected as unfit for WWII. 'Food' that deserved every lame joke ever made about institutional cuisine...

Worst was the enforced contact with a range of schoolkids I usually avoided like the plague. There was a big, big gulf between me and most of the kids around. I'm sure that if I'd had sophisticated social and emotional skills, I could have dealt with it better. But when you're ten or twelve or so and smart rather than physical, you're just not equipped for the raw primate pack politics of the schoolyard.

It was bad enough five days a week at school, but at least I could go home in between, and I could look forward to weekends. But school camps could last up to two weeks. Nowhere to go to get away. Nobody to talk with. No way to carry enough books...

School camps sucked shit.

Jake's music camp, on the other hand, is full of kids who play stringed instruments. It's within walking distance of a beach. It's got a couple of huge, in-ground trampolines, ropes courses, giant swings, and a bunch of other stuff. He's in with a lot of boys his own age in a small cabin, not sharing a gigantic dormitory with a pack of mouth-breathers of all ages. We tried to phone him last night at the prearranged time, but he was busy, and it sounded like he was having fun.

Good.

But his brother missed him. Younger Son - who has been fierce in his occasional demands for a Room Of His Own - was reluctant to sleep with the older brother, off in his bed at the other end of the room. And the place was altogether quieter without him.

So there it is. He's off now, spending his first length of time away from family and home. I'm sure he'll have a great time and everything. But it is only the first, isn't it?

I like my kid. I'm going to miss him.

My Birthday Present From Jake

It's school holiday time. A while back, Natalie got cranky 'cos the kids didn't seem to be doing much besides lounging about the place, reading, playing games, and playing with video toys.

I listened to the back-and-forth for a while. Then I did what I do: fixed things. The boys got holiday projects.

Younger Son and I have been pulling apart an old lawnmower. We've got the motor completely free, and we're in the process of cleaning it and hopefully repairing it. (Or we were until Natalie lost the petrol tank. We're gonna need one of those, I think.) If we can get it running, the next step is to figure out how to make it push a go-cart. That'll be fun.

Jake, in the meantime, has been taught the basics of stop-motion animation. I've mentioned it before around here. These days, anybody with a digital camera, a tripod, and a bit of free software can do a pretty fair job of putting together basic animations.

This is Jake's second effort:

The plasticine bloke in the middle is, apparently, me. I'm dancing with the Doctor, and K-9, and a Dalek, with the TARDIS in the background.

Heh.

Happy birthday? Well, yeah. It's kind of cool to see something you've taught to your kid work out like that. And, you know... dancing with the Doctor, and everything!

It's About The Attitude, Mostly.

We were watching some DVD or other last night -- 'Fringe' season 2, I think. Yeah, that was it. And there's this dying kid character. He's been learning to do that thing where you roll a coin across your knuckles. You've seen it a zillion times. Looks cool as the coin flip-crawls from one side of your hand to the other, yep.

Anyway, the Younger Son pipes up. He says: "Can you do that, Dad?"

Without thinking, I answered truthfully: "I don't know. I haven't tried."

I didn't really give the exchange much consideration until later, when I was tucking the boys into bed. But it was relevant: young Jake is off to a sort of music camp next week for a few days, and he's come over all timorous, so he got into one of those stupid, non-productive arguments with his mum.

He does this crap. Always has. Faced with a new thing, he gets nervous, and retreats. Then Natalie tries to jolly him along, and he starts defending his own position, there in the corner. The more she talks up the positives, the more he starts envisioning the potential negatives, and building up his own fears.

It's a f__king stupid cycle, and I'm waaaay the f__k over it. It happens time and again: with learning to swim, learning to ride his bicycle, reading his first novel, wading around the rocks at Cataract Gorge, and a dozen other things. He gets nervous, and negative, and the talk goes round and round and round, and eventually someone (usually me, but occasionally Natalie) just loses their patience and throws him in the deep end.

And of course, every time his basic native abilities rise to the occasion, and in short order he's not only dealing with the new situation, but enjoying the hell out of it. And he's even willing to admit that he's enjoying himself, and to apologise for behaving like a ninnyhammer - but it doesn't change.

Natalie's a kinder, more patient person than myself at heart. She'll still have these arguments with the boy. I won't. Once he starts inventing reasons to dislike something new, I give him the Blank Stare of Doom, and say something like: "Tough tittie, kid. You're doing it anyway, so best you start figuring out how to get the most out of it."

Thing is, that attitude of his is the flipside to the one that's carried me through most of my life. My father - bless his anarchic little boots - provided me with considerable impetus at a young age, and also a hell of a role model. Father is smart, thoughtful, and fit. By and large, anything he ever chose to do, he did well. (Except maybe write. He's more a visual person.) And he did it by observing, thinking, planning, extrapolating, and most of all, by getting in and making the attempt.

I hardly ever think about it, to be honest. But when you put down a list of the stuff I have done/can do... eventually it gets a little embarrassing. The truth is, though, I'm pretty sure most people could keep up, if they really gave it a shot. It's interesting, what you can achieve with a modicum of thought, research, planning and discipline.

Of course, there's a difference between a hardcore professional and a thoughtful dilettante. I'm not going to be renovating a house from the ground up on my own any time soon, for example. And while I can take a decent photograph when I want, I'd have to work a lot harder to be a real pro. Likewise the cooking: I can put together a pretty damned good meal here in my little kitchen, but I'm not planning on opening a restaurant any time soon, y'know?

There is a difference. Yes. And it's a big one; no question about it. (Although having a full professional toolset and a proper, professional workspace also makes a hell of a difference!) Yet in the real world, high-end professional skills are not required for most jobs and situations. You think a pro photographer really sweats over family portraits and wedding shots? You reckon that Jamie Oliver goes for the Michelin star when he's turning out a decent dinner for a bunch of mates? Do you need to be Frank Lloyd Wright to put a decorative screen on your verandah?

Nope.

Most stuff out there you can do yourself, if you're prepared to think, plan, ask for advice, and put in some effort. I swear: it's true. You can learn enough of a language to get along in a foreign country. Play a musical instrument well enough to sound good with a group of casual players. You can execute a hip throw, grow roses, take impressive photographs, turn out a creme brulee with a crackly crust, hang a door, fell a tree, do a handbrake turn, hit a head-size target at 50m with a small-caliber rifle... and so forth. You're a human being. You are the most adaptable, most dangerous animal on the planet because the thing inside your skull gives you an infinity of options, if you just take the time to pay attention to what it's telling you.

There's nothing to it, really. The trick is simply to forget the words "I can't," and replace them with "I don't know how... yet."

That's the one thing I really, truly want to pass on to my kids. More than anything else. If they take that attitude to heart, they can learn anything else they need for themselves. I don't know how to get that into them - not for sure, but I'm going to keep trying every way I possibly can for as long as it takes, because there is nothing I've seen in all my forty-odd years on the planet which compares to this single not-very-secret piece of knowledge.

And by the way: as of last night, I can roll a coin across my fingers. Slowly, yes. But I'll get faster. It's just a matter of a little practice.

DIY Tolerance: A Heartfelt Plea

In every long-term couple, there are divisions of labour. It just falls out that way. One person cooks, the other one doesn't - because they really shouldn't. One person does more laundry than the other. One person gets more friendly with the vacuum cleaner than the other.

And one person handles the minor household patches, fixes, repairs and chores. The dreaded DIY stuff.

In this house, that's me. Natalie is a very good doctor, a fine fiddler, and a dab hand with sushi. But her cooking is limited. And while she probably sees more of the vacuum cleaner than I do, the laundry generally lands in my lap more often. No problems there. But when it comes to picking up tools and fixing something, that's my territory.

This is interesting, of course, because I've no particular natural inclination in that direction. Indeed, before shifting to the countryside and having three kids, I was inclined to ignore that shit altogether. (Mostly we lived in rented houses, after all.)

But now I'm a dad, and a home-owner. And so I have a garage full of tools, and I use them. But I do not always use them to the time-frame and effect that Natalie would desire.

Case in point: quite some time ago, we paid to have some floor-length drapes installed in the boys' room, and in the Mau-Mau's room. There's a lot of glass in those rooms, and in winter, that means heat loss. Particularly for the Mau-mau: I designed (and the builder installed!) a big, lovely, bay-window type alcove that turned her bedroom from a pokey little box into a beautifully light and airy place for a little girl. But of course, the winter thing... that room could get seriously cold.

Hence the drapes.

Unfortunately, the folk who installed the drapes only anchored the supports into timber at either end. In the middle, they just stuck the screw into the plasterboard. This probably wouldn't have been an issue if the room wasn't owned and operated by a five-year-old. She decided that those big, salmon-pink curtains would make a good swing, you see... and naturally, that screw in the middle pulled loose, taking with it a chunk of plasterboard. And then the curtain-rod pulled apart in the centre, and the whole goddam thing came cascading down.

(It's really irritating. If they'd situated that curtain rod five centimetres lower, the central support would have been screwed straight into a chunk of hardwood that goes from one end of the bay window alcove to the other. Five goddam centimetres.)

Anyway. I drilled the two parts of the curtain rod and rejoined them with a dowel-peg and glue arrangement. But the actual remounting of the rod has languished for about three months now.

Why?

Well, let me take you through the job I did today. Step by step.

1) Cut a decent access hole in the plasterboard: to do this, I had to buy a reciprocating saw. (I wanted one anyway.) I also had to lug a ladder into the Mau-mau's room, and clear enough crap off her floor to set it in position.

2) After moving the insulation, I then had to measure the distance to the various chunks of support timber, and calculate the size of the piece of wood I needed to insert in order to provide adequate support for the curtain rod. Then I had to track down a bit of timber that might do the job, and trim it up to fit. (Bench saw, carpenter's square, measuring tape.)

3) Having cut the timber to fit, I then climbed back up and stuck it in place to ascertain it fit properly. (Not doing that would have ensured I had the wrong sized bit of wood, of course.) Once I was certain, I then drilled a couple peg-holes in the support beam behind the spot where my bit of timber would sit. I drilled a couple of corresponding holes in the back of my bit of wood. I applied PVA glue to the wooden surfaces, and to two dowel-pegs which I then inserted into my bit of wood. And then I banged my bit of wood into position, so the pegs fit into the pre-drilled holes, allowing the glue and the pegs to hold it all together. (Electric drill. Dowel/peg bit. Dowel-pegs. Wood glue. Mallet.)

4) For certainty's sake, I drove a long wood screw at an angle through the lower front of the new bit of support timber, so that the screw came through into the bit of timber underneath, anchoring the new bit of timber on a second axis. (Rechargeable drill; phillips-head driver; phillips-head screw.)

5) Next, I measured the hole I'd cut in the plasterboard, and then cut myself a similar-size and shape piece of plasterboard from a chunk I had spare after the renovations. (Pencil, measuring-tape, bench saw.)

6) Of course, the hole was a touch irregular, so I climbed the ladder, put my new chunk of plasterboard in place, checked where it didn't fit, and marked it. Then I went back down the ladder, out onto the deck, and trimmed the chunk of plasterboard down. (Pencil, reciprocating saw.)

7) Getting close now. I mixed some fast-setting two-part epoxy resin glue, and applied it both to the back of my plasterboard patch, and to the new piece of timber I'd set in place behind that hole. Then I put the new piece of plasterboard in place, and held it for a couple minutes until it dried enough to stay put of its own accord. (Two-part epoxy; disposable mixing surface; disposable mixing rod.)

8) Next, I checked my plastering gear. Okay - I had plaster-mix for making repairs, but I didn't have the tools to spread it with. A quick trip down to Scottsdale fixed that (and I picked up the groceries, too.)

9) I mixed a batch of plaster, and carefully spread it over the plasterboard patch, ensuring that it filled all the little holes around the edges, and smoothed it roughly level with the surface of the existing plasterboard. I also carefully marked the place where my installed bit of timber sits, because of course I shall have to put a mounting screw in there for the curtain rod support. Then, of course, I quickly washed up the tools I'd used before the plaster could set. (Steel bowl; measuring cup; plaster mix; plastering scrapers).

So, that's where we stand at the moment. When the plaster is properly dry, I'll get the tool that holds the fine sandpaper, and I'll spend half an hour sanding the plaster back until it's completely level and smooth with the wall. (Yes. That will be a dusty, shitty, messy job. On top of a ladder.)

After that, I will grab the cordless drill again, and put in a mounting screw. Of course, I'll have to carefully measure the location so that it provides proper positioning for the curtain rod support.

Once that's done, I can then put the curtain rings back on the rod, replace the pelmet on the end, and mount the rod back on its supports. And then I'll be able to hang the f__king drapes back up, and once more, the Mau-Mau will have curtains.

Of course, the plastered patch won't match the paint. Therefore at some point, I will again take down the curtains and the rod, remove the curtain rod supports, put down a bunch of dropcloths, acquire a clean paint roller and a new tray. I will check that the tin of wall-paint is still good, and if not, I will go to the hardware store and pick up another lot. Then I can climb that ladder and carefully reapply the 'Bohemia'-shaded paint to the wall. If I'm very careful and lucky, I won't smudge the white ceiling, and I'll be able to stop short of repainting the ceiling too.

***

I'd like to think you get the picture now. I'd like to believe you can understand why some apparently small jobs can languish for what seems an unexpectedly long time. But just to make sure, allow me to point out that I'm supposed to do all this while still keeping three kids underfoot, answering the phone, handling the home chores, doing the shopping, the laundry, and making dinner.

Today, Nat was home to handle the kids. Today I'd caught up most of my deadlines. Today, Natalie agreed to make sushi for dinner.

Today, there is no longer a hole in the wall where the Mau-Mau chose to swing from her curtains.

Those of you who do NOT have the job of slinging the tools around the household - please... a little patience, if you could. It helps.

I'd Love To Believe This Pair Were Tourists

...but they sound far too Australian to me. Sigh.

Click the headline for the (very short) news story.

Pair rescued after sex doll river ride

I dunno. When I was a kid in Far North Queensland, the wet season was a time for some serious fun. Gullies became creeks, and big, open culverts became water races. You'd climb into your swimmers, grab a beat-up polystyrene surfboard or a vinyl air-mattress, and go flood surfing.

In all the years I was up there, I don't recall any kid getting killed playing in the monsoon flows. I know it's verboten these days, of course. And I know that Sydneysiders are routinely sucked down drains during flash floods.

But we lived there, and the rains came every year. The roads were quite reliably cut for maybe two weeks a year (not all at once, usually.) The power would get knocked out, and you'd have to rely on your stocks of non-perishable food, plus candles and Tilly lamps, and you'd boil your drinking water.

I'm not saying that we're not better off these days. But there's something to be said for being prepared, and for knowing the enemy. Almost nobody had to rush off to buy kerosene and lamps and candles and matches and tins of food, because everybody had a cupboard or a box full of essentials for the cyclone season.

And as for stormwater surfing... again, I don't think kids then were smarter than kids now. But I do think they were allowed to take more risks, and as a result, developed a better sense of their own physical abilities.

We didn't get sucked into stormwater drains because we didn't play in the places that might have been too dangerous for us. And we knew how to judge that because we'd been given the chance to have a few falls, take a few risks, and acquire an understanding of the need to look after ourselves.

Ah well. There's progress for you, eh?

Anyone Got Designs For An Ark?

The image above isn't mine. It was taken by my brother-in-law. It's the interior of the business that he and my sister run in Toowoomba, on the day of the now-infamous flash flood. My young nephew was in there too.

They survived, though they had to climb on top of the counters to avoid the rapid rise of the waters. My sister is fine too, though it will be quite a while before things are straightened out down where they live in Brisbane.

The picture is up here -- with permission -- as a reminder. That wall of water rose in nothing flat, and caught people completely by surprise. Toowoomba is a wreck, large chunks of the Lockyer valley are in trouble, and there's a hell of a clean-up to come in Brisbane.

If you haven't already found a way to offer a bit of help to Queensland, now's a good time to think about it. The kids and I did a big gather-up here in the house -- six big, sturdy bags full of clothes, toys, books, and house-hold items: serviceable things which can be sold on by the Salvation Army, or even directly contributed to people who are looking to rebuild lives.

There are many ways to donate. The Queensland Premier's Flood Appeal can accept donations directly from this website, for example. But don't forget that in such a sweeping disaster, it's more than just money. A register of volunteers for the cleanup is already in place - but even simple things like donations of non-perishable foodstuffs and basic household materials can be useful.

Meanwhile: if you've read about floods in Tasmania, don't worry about us. We're well set, and well stocked, and floods down here never last more than a few hours. Besides, the worst was over on the East Coast, where a couple roads have been cut.

Of course it never rains but it pours, as the saying goes. So it's raining here - not too hard, but with a maniacal, relentless quality. I won't be too surprised if it turns out that by tomorrow we've seen 200mm or more here. And that's a bit problematic, what with Natalie still on the mainland, planning to fly home this afternoon.

And naturally, it's been pissing down over where she is, near Kyneton in Victoria, on the music camp. I found out today they've been sandbagging in anticipation of rising rivers... she says the roads are clear and she can get to the airport. I hope so. The kids are looking forward to seeing her, and I'll be glad to stop doing the sole parent thing after the better part of a week.

That last, of course, would be why you've not heard a lot from me. Trapped indoors with three small kids for the last five days or so. We played a six hour game of Arkham Horror yesterday, defeating Yig the dreaded Serpent God with style. Today I've sent 'em up to the shed to play Wii games. Hopefully that'll keep 'em entertained until we have to go to the airport...

...wherever you are, whoever you may be: stay safe, and consider how good your life has been to you. Things could be a lot worse.