Hey -- Did Somebody Order A Winter?

Holy sheepdip! That was fast. Where the flock did that come from? Couple days ago it was all shirt's off, snoozing under the sheet with the windows open. Then all of a sudden, it's Tasmania!

We've had a couple days of rain now. No -- three, actually. And not just rain: that cold, wet, insistent, continuous rain that characterises a Tasmanian winter. In keeping with the them, temperatures have plunged. We've got the wood heater going, and all the windows are misted up on the inside. When the clouds opened briefly this morning, I saw a fresh snowfall atop Mount Barrow. Thought about taking the kids, but the weather was too dodgy. I have no desire to find myself trapped on the mountaintop when the weather really closes in - and given that it only got worse all afternoon, I think that was a good decision.

I hope we get a real winter this year. It's been a bit dry and warm for the last three in a row. We need a serious winter's worth of rain to bring the aquifers back to life, and refill the whole hydroelectric scheme, and generally remind mainlanders that the don't want to be here, no sir, far too wet and drippy and cold, that's right, ignore those flowers...

Indoors stuff today. No chainsawing for me. Just a lot of reading, editing and writing. I made hot chocolate for the kids, played Scrabble with Natalie -- and whipped her arse something terrifying! -- made pizzas, etc. With the woodfire burning and the world outside dissolved into a grey-green mist, gentle rain falling on the roof, the coziness of this house beggars description.

May winter treat all of you as kindly.

Chainsaw Chuckles

Got in a good session of work this morning. Natalie is having a rare (recently, anway) weekend home, so the kids are Not My Problem for once. I hammered away for several hours, then felt the need of some physical activity.

We had rain, yesterday. A lot of it. It was great, but we were supposed to get more today, so it was quite a surprise to see the sun this morning. Plenty of sunlight, too -- warm, strong and bright. Made it all the more enticing to go outside.

I figured I had a job to do with the chainsaw. Since we threw the cows off the property and took out the internal fences, I've been putting in fruit trees, nuts, a few natives -- and letting the wattles do their forest recolonisation thing. Wattles are fast growing. We've got seven-year-old trees that are thirty-plus centimetres through the base, and fifteen metres high.

Obviously, a tree which grows as fast as that can be a pain if it comes up where you don't want it. Also, wattles aren't particularly long-lived. Their job is to recolonise clear spaces in the forest, and to grow high quickly to take advantage of the light. However, after maybe twenty years they senesce, and frequently die. In their wake, you get the slower-growing species - species locally known as myrtle, sassafras, and blackwood among others.

Clearly, I can't leave something like a wattle right next to the driveway, for example. And in fact, we had one there -- about ten metres tall, maybe 25cm at the base. I figured I'd start with that one, clear it away, then move on and take out a few of the others which are becoming inconvenient or unsafe.

So, yes: chainsaw time. Sharpen. Oil. Refuel. Check the tension -- hmm, a bit loose. Tighten it. Whoops! Not much there any more. Hmm.

Take the chainsaw down to the driveway. Start the job. Hmm. Chain isn't pulling itself into the cut properly. By now I probably need to file back the rakers. Pity I haven't got a file for the job, eh? Bugger.

Oh well. It's cutting, albeit poorly. Have to do.

The tree falls perfectly: into the driveway, right into the centre, doesn't touch anything else. Now commences the job of cutting it into rounds suitable to dry out for firewood. One round. Two. Three. Cut away a few branches.

Hmm. Not cutting? Oh, look. The chain has come off.

Bugger.

I've tensioned it as far as it will go. What has to happen next is that I need to take a link or two out. But I've never done that before, and I don't have the tools, either. And now I've got a flogging great wattle tree across my driveway, and Natalie is on call for random baby delivery stuff... not that anybody's expecting anything, but you never know when the doc may have to leave the premises in a hurry.

This is NOT the time to learn how to tighten a chain.

Alternatives?

Just one.

I put the chainsaw away, and got out my bow saw. And then for the next hour or so, I proceeded to saw up the entire fucking tree and pile it along the sides of the driveway.

Yes. That was tiring, thanks.

Good Food And Mixed Messages

Mixed up sorta day, yesterday. It was a Home Day for Elder Son, but the Mau-Mau was home too, and Smaller Son was in da house as well since he had a cough that kept him up all night. It made doing the educational stuff with Elder Son quite challenging, although Godzilla helped for a while, by beating the shit out of MechaGodzilla to keep the younger pair entertained. Thank you, Big G.

Part of the problem was that Elder Son apparently had a report to write about a recent excursion. And unfortunately, his teacher has decided that the home days are perfect for him to catch up on report-writing. Which is entirely not the bloody case.

On top of that, she's assigned him homework. And it's -- well, it's fucking stupid busywork. This kid is reading Conan and Doc Savage and Discworld stuff for his own enjoyment, and for homework, he has to write three sentences using the words stop, with and blue. Then he has to arrange a list of twenty-six words in alphabetic order. They're short words, and it's no coincidence that there's twenty-six: each word starts with a different alphabet letter. Tough task, eh?

Then there's the clown picture on the back. It's a colour-by numbers exercise in which you solve little problems to figure out what colour to use. Problems like 20+10, or 30-5. Again: stupid, and way, way below the level of math he takes in his extension math class at school.

There's more, but it's all much at the same level. And frankly, I'm not going to get him to do it. I've read the research on homework. It's value is limited, at best, and is most effective at a secondary school level. To be any use at all, it has to be of an appropriate time-length, and it absolutely can't be stupid-ass busywork. The researchers are all in agreement there. If the homework is to be any good, it has to extend or reinforce classwork, or the kids rapidly come to see it as a punitive waste of time.

I'd like to just ignore it, but Elder Son already gets in trouble with his teacher because he doesn't work in the manner she's after. I can certainly agree with some of her issues; his disorganization and his lack of listening skills are a pain in the ass. But that report... I had him sitting down for over an hour to write it, and when he was done, it was complete - but flat and dry. Natalie tells me his "draft version" (and yes, apparently they're all expected to do a 'draft' and a 'final') was three pages long, not one page, and it was highly creative and imaginative.

I did see a couple paragraphs. He wrote as though he was a spaceman, exploring a strange world and going out on a trip with the creatures that lived there. So why didn't he complete that version of the report?

Well -- he says that his teacher doesn't respond any better if the report is long and interesting and creative. She just wants it done.

I can see her point. He does need to learn to finish projects. But it seems to me that a little encouragement for the complex, interesting version might have seen it completed. Instead, it became a chore that we had to grind through, spending time we could have spent on more interesting things.

I'm not happy about this. And it's confusing, because at the same time, I've had a note from the school requesting permission for Elder Son to go on a science excursion to Bridport and the beach next week. They've got folks from the Vic Science museum along, and they'll be examining life in the intertidal zone, sampling micromolluscs, identifying algae, and discussing tides in relation to centripetal force and planetary movements -- according to the note, anyhow. Kids from three or four different schools in the area are going, but it's mostly about year 5 and 6. There will be one year 4 student from Scottsdale, but Elder Son is the only year 3.

And I know he'll enjoy it, and get a lot out of it. So why is his homework suitable for a kid two grades lower than he is?

I can't answer that. But I can say categorically that he's not going to be wasting his time at home colouring a clown by numbers. So there's going to be a bit of an issue coming, I suppose.

The evening went well, though. Mike the Historian came by for a drink and a talk, and as it happened, I was making a bit of a surprise meal for Natalie. I can't do the full range of Yum Cha dumplings, but I can do a decent mix of steamed dumplings -- chicken and ginger, chicken and mushroom, pork and ginger, pork and mushroom... add a couple platters of steamed buk choy and carrots with oyster sauce, and a dozen slabs of prawn toast, and you've got a pretty decent meal.

So - I just made a lot. I mean, a whole lot. And Eddy came down, with a bottle of bubbly that matched the one I had in the fridge already, and she brought a six-pack of beer, and Natalie brought home a couple six-packs, and the evening went really nicely. Even the Smashed Banana Custard 'Tard was good. (It was meant to be a banana custard tart, but I was too impatient about getting it out of the baking dish, and it all went to hell, shapewise.)

Nice end to the day, anyhow.

Dress Code Fallout

I believe I mentioned that the other day, Smaller Son went to school with a decidedly non-standard outfit on. His school shirt was inside out. His socks were wildly mismatched, and he wore blue gumboots. I mentioned the shirt to him, and he just shrugged, and said, "I know." I didn't bother mentioning the socks or the boots. They're pretty much standard for him.

However, on that particular day he also wore a folded newspaper hat, after the fashion of Calvin & Hobbes. The boys have been reading a lot of Calvin & Hobbes ever since we bought the hardbound complete editions. (I regret to say that while I think it's a marvellous comic, it's a bloody awful role model for growing boys.)

Anyway: Smaller Son had a newspaper hat on his head just to top off the ensemble, and he was blithely off to school. I admit it: I had visions of a school full of Nelson Muntz lookalikes pointing at Smaller Son, and saying, "Ha, ha!" But I figured, you know... he has to learn someday, right?

Of course, by that afternoon I'd forgotten all about it. I didn't think to ask him anything until yesterday evening, when he folded himself a new paper hat. "What happened to the old one?" I said. "What did they think about it at school?"

"Well, a couple of kids laughed," he said, very calmly. "At first. But then our whole class made paper hats and decorated them, and we wore them for the rest of the day. Everybody really liked them."

"Yeah," his brother chimed in. "They were all wearing them in the playground. I had to show some of my class how to make them too."

Okay, fine. I know when I'm beaten!

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

Well, courtesy of Mr Bruce of the Cool Shite Team, I've now had the opportunity to read the eagerly awaited "Pride And Prejudice And Zombies" by Seth Grahame-Smith (and Jane Austen.)

For the rest of you eager awaiters, I regret to announce I was less than captivated. Full review by your faithful scribe to be found here.

Busy Weekend

Well, busy frakkin' week. School holidays: Dad's minutes rare, and expensive.

The kids and I have done our thing. We've played games of many sorts, done all kinds of housework, watched movies, cleaned things, taken stuff apart, and I've sorted out about a million goddam arguments, which is getting very fucking old I can tell you.

Favourite moment of the week? That would be going to Chickenfeed before we went shopping at the supermarket. They had these cheap-arse foam swords and daggers, so I got a set for all three kids, and one for me. Then we put on our best pirate accents, and went a-plundering in the supermarket. Yo-ho-ho and a lot of noisy piratical action, with swordfights in the aisles, and hostages taken, and enemies put to flight at swordpoint, and best of all, a rich haul of chocolate biscuit booty to be divided up once we made it back to our pirate lair.

I suspect the staff of the local supermarket thinks I'm cracked. But every now and again I catch them giggling at the kids, and getting involved in the pirate action (or whatever stunt it is we're up to at the time) so I figure they don't hate us yet, and that's good enough for me. It makes the shopping more interesting, anyhow.

Had a late-afternoon long lunch with Mike the Historian yesterday. He had an old college friend by the place -- by no great coincidence. Friend in question was until not long ago an Oxford professor of education, specializing in the issues facing gifted/talented kids. Yeah: you can bet I was up for a session involving a couple bottles of wine, good food, and a chance to pick the man's brains.

He was incredibly nice about it - not unexpectedly. Mike the Historian is a very civilized chap, and his friends tend to be monstrous well educated, thoughtful, and every bit as civilized as Mike and Eddy. It was really reassuring to talk with him -- he was very positive about the approach we're taking with Elder Son, and had a number of useful things to say without having to develop a specific curriculum, etc. Particularly reassuring notes: 1) formal assessments aren't a lot of use, except where parents and education system disagree over the nature of the kid. And that's not the case with Elder Son. 2) An eclectic, all-inclusive sort of approach that lets the kid discover his own body of knowledge is helpful; apparently, a wide-ranging set of background knowledge is important to creativity in general. 3) Challenge the bugger. New stuff. New ideas. Make him think!

There were a few more things, but that was the gist of it. I also got an email address, so if I really feel I'm getting out of my depth, I can scream for help. And you'd have to suspect an Oxford prof ought to know what he's on about...

Today didn't go as planned, though. We were going to have some time with Natalie, but that went south at about 0800. Turns out our Increasingly Pregnant Neighbour has finally decided to be less pregnant. Though she's still not in any hurry. It's four in the afternoon now. Natalie's in Launceston at the hospital. Having travelled in the ambulance, she hasn't got a car, so the kids and I are going to have to go in and fetch her... but that baby's still not in evidence.

It's going to be a long, annoying evening. Guess I'll just load the kids up in about twenty minutes, drive in, get something to eat at Morty's Food Court, and then see what's happening. Hopefully I'll be able to get the kids back home and into bed before too late. Otherwise, I'm really not sure what we can do...

Babies. They're such a bloody nuisance!

One From The Mau-Mau

Okay. Cute-kid posts kinda give me the ick. But sometimes kids just... do stuff. You know?

Like today. Natalie got a package. It was a silk sweater she'd ordered off eBay. Nice bit of goods, really - lovely colour, big, comfortable, and warm. Just what you need at the gateway to another Tasmanian winter.

The person shipping it was really thoughtful. They even stuck in this little potpourri thing -- a little package of petals and leaves scented with something like lavender. It was a shiny, satiny sort of potpourri, done up with a purple ribbon, and from the moment she saw it, the Mau-Mau WANTED it.

Natalie didn't mind. What the hell was she going to do with a potpourri anyway. So she handed it over to the Mau-Mau, who immediately forgave her for receiving a package that wasn't actually for the Mau-Mau herself, and cooed happily. Then she sniffed it, and said something about how nice it smelled.

Natalie agreed. Then the Mau-Mau wanted to know what it was.

"It's a potpourri," said Natalie. "It's to make your clothes smell nice. You can go and stick it in with your undies and they'll smell lovely."

A look of happy comprehension dawned on the Mau-Mau's face. In one smooth move, she yanked up her skirt, pulled the elastic of her pink undies forward, and jammed the potpourri down the front.

Natalie collapsed, rendered completely useless by laughter. It remained for me to explain that the potpourri would work better in the Mau-Mau's underwear drawer...