Back to school, back to life!

So, yesterday was the day I’ve been waiting for; first day of school. Oldest Daughter started secondary and we went with what seems to be very popular here in our area; a girls’ school. When I first heard about girls’ and boys’ schools I found it to be very outdated and old-fashioned, not to mention incredibly boring. But I must say that I see the benefits of a girls’ school; it’s a calmer and more quiet environment, the facilities are cleaner and in better condition. The atmosphere is pleasant and the girls look happy and friendly. When I was old enough to have boyfriends, I never met any of them in school, I might as well have gone to a girls’ school! Our Oldest was very happy with her first day of school and was looking forward to today when she was going to have both textile and cooking lessons for the first time in her life. Welcome to a Western society! Here we can do most things ourselves and do not need to hire someone else to do it for us. 

Youngest Daughter made her usual drama about starting school again: ”Can I not be home schooled instead, please mamma, pleeeeeeeeeease?” ”I’m feeling sick.” ”I miss my friends in Kuwait/Mexico/Thailand and I want to move back there instead”. She refused to take a shower in the night and was fussy about everything before bedtime. Same procedure as every year. In the morning, she was happy, got into the shower, dressed quickly and was very happy to go to school. She even told me to leave, ran off to her friends without saying good bye. Same procedure as every year. A couple of minutes later she was walking with her friends, laughing and looking very happy to be back in school. She had a really good day in school she said. Of course. 

I had been counting the days until the Daughters started school again, I should be rejoicing, relaxing, doing whatever I wanted to. I was singing ”Freedom” in the car on the way back home. I’m not blessed with a singing voice but in small spaces and in the shower, the acoustics are pretty forgiving. I came home and it felt really empty without my girls. I missed them! So I cried a little bit, like I always do. Every year. Same procedure. 

This photo has absolutely nothing to do with my text. I just like it; very peaceful, very Australian. 

The thrill of golfing Down Under

One of the first nights after we had come to Australia, I was flipping through the TV-channels, fighting jet lag and trying to find something that would keep me interested and therefore awake for a couple of hours more. I found a talk show with the topic ”How to move on with your life after a shark attack”. I was surprised and somewhat startled too. Is this really happening to so many people it’s necessary to dedicate an entire talk show during prime time to this?! ”Avoid surfing in shark infested waters as it could be hazardous” is perhaps an advice that would be of good use before hitting the waves. 

Summer means peak season for the golfers. But not only golfers come alive during this time. Golfing in Australia is bringing a whole new level of thrill to the sport. On the news they warned golfers to search for their lost golf balls as more than one golfer has been bitten by snakes out in the high grass. And the ponds, if you lose a golf ball there just leave it as the pond – although it’s in the middle of a golf course – might very well be home to a crocodile or two. The best advice for golfers in Australia: stay on the fairway! A lost ball is a lost ball. Drop a new one and move on. 

Melbourne is relatively spared from predacious animals; sharks are not often seen in the bay and they don’t like the shallow waters by the beaches here. The temperatures are too cool here for crocodiles, the really big snakes and the dangerous spiders. The temperatures are somewhat too cool for my liking as well but If I have to choose between 25C-45C all year around with all the creepy crawlers, over sized slithering snakes, savage sharks and carnivorous crocs that comes with the package or 12C-40C with less or none of the above stated animals, I would choose the latter. Being a mother and housewife provides me with a steady flow of adrenaline, stress and excitement – I don’t need more excitement than necessary when I’m outdoors. 

I read an interview with a lifeguard at one of the beaches here. He said that he hadn’t seen any sharks swimming by, only snakes. Great... Anyone fancy a swim?

          Shark at the Melbourne Aquarium. That's a close enough encounter. 

Cleaning while the children are small is like...

”Cleaning while the children are small is like showing snow while it’s still snowing”. These words of wisdom can be found on a sign in my brother and his wife’s house. How very true it is too!  I would however like to extend the age group to include tweenies as well. Not that my daughters keep pulling out stuff and make a big mess wherever they sit, but because I’m constantly interrupted when I’m cleaning the house. Normally, meaning when it’s not summer holiday and the girls are in school, I clean the entire house three times per week and the kitchen every day. It’s done in some hours and I’m killing two birds in one stone; the house is nice, clean and smells good and I’ve worked up a pulse, gotten a good work-out and I reward myself with a long, nice shower if it’s a rainy day. Why only if it’s a rainy day you might wonder? Well, in Australia you need to keep down the water consumption a bit. We have a water collection tank and solar panels, so our shower and bathtub water is primarly rainwater, heated by the sun. 

To get back to the topic: Instead of cleaning the house in a few hours, the cleaning process is a never-ending activity when the girls are home. I’m constantly asked to assist them as a hairstylist, fashion consultant, dresser, chef, waitress, peacemaker and judge (”who do you think is the hottest guy in One Direction, Mom? You have to pick one.”). The girls have their daily chores: make the bed, put dirty laundry in the laundry basket and keep their rooms nice and tidy. By the time it’s two o’clock in the afternoon, I usually give up, what hasn’t been done has to wait for the next day. I pack a lunchbox, get some towels, a picnic blanket, an umbrella and we head down to the beach for the rest of the afternoon. The next day I pick up where I left off and continue my close relationship with the vacuum cleaner and the mop. 

The school resumes in two weeks and as much as I enjoy spending time with my daughters, I also look forward to getting back to our daily routines when I do all the household work, have some ”me-time”, pick up the girls in school before we head down to the beach for a couple of hours. As for my much awaited ”me-time”, I know just what to do: read. I walked in on a big book sale and got myself a big pile of classics. Only twelve days left....

Neighbors, for better and for worse!

Unless you live in a really isolated place, you probably have neighbors. They can become your friends, acquaintances, just someone in the street whose name you don’t even know or menaces who affects your sleep or mental stability. We live in a new development with townhouses, meaning the houses are connected and there are no big trees and bushes to obstruct the view or to muffle the sounds and noises. Our house happen to be a corner house with very large windows, windows that could function as large TV-screens showing the Real Life of a Melbourne Suburb. 

We have an interesting mix of people in our little community. Some are really lovely like the expecting family of three and the petite woman who is really a tough fire fighter and chief of her station. From our reality show screen, i e panoramic window, in our dining area we have full view of three households. In two of the houses live two ex-spouses with one teenage child each. They are both in new relationships. The ex-wife sweeps outside her door as well as her ex-husband’s, she pulls out the weeds and waters the plants. I don’t see him doing anything outside her house but then again, I’m not constantly monitoring the activities of our neighbors. The divorce was clearly very amicable and that they can live next door to each other is wonderful and yet so strange. At night time, the TV-screen by my kitchen counter is more of a peep-show only without a curtain going down. That’s when the otherwise so correctly dressed Asian father takes his clothes off and walks around in his underwear for the rest of the night. When it actually happens for real, why can’t it be someone handsome and fit like Hugh Jackman who struts around in his boxers, why does it have to be a Danny de Vito look-alike in washed out jockeys with Y-fronts who is shuffling around his living room? 

The house behind us is for sale and while waiting for a buyer, the house is now rented out to a gang of barely 20 year old girls. They have lived there for about three weeks now, meaning that we’ve had very few nights with peace and quiet. Loud music, drunken chatter and hysterical laughs have kept the street awake until four o'clock in the morning. We’ve asked them repeatedly to keep the volume down, my husband asked diplomatically, I shouted furiously. No results. Not until we filed a complaint with the administrative office who handles the legal matters for our community. Australian law is very strict when it comes to being a disturbance to the neighborhood and the fines are high. We have been instructed to call the police if the disturbance should start again. Apparently that’s what you do in Australia when your neighbors are being loud after 10 on weekdays and 11 on Saturdays, you call the cops. The word "cop" comes from Constable on Patrol by the way. We can finally sleep at night again and we wake up well rested in the morning. Thank you, Australian law makers!

                          This has to be the best company car I've ever seen!

How to give instructions to a man

The following scenario has happened in our house several times lately:

”Darling, can you collect all the white laundry and put it in the machine please? It’s time to wash a machine with white...” I asked my husband one morning. Sure, he replied, collected whatever he could find in the various laundry baskets and went down to the laundry room. When I came down to said room about one hour later to take care of the wet laundry, I see that my husband had done exactly what I had asked him to do: he had put all the white laundry in the machine. Perhaps it’s a female thing, the reading between the lines, I mean. The part with the dots, the ”it’s time to wash a machine with white...” is implicit that once the dirty laundry is in the machine, detergent should be added and the start button pressed. A man does not read between the lines, the instructions were to put the laundry in the machine. The instructions said nothing about washing powder and getting the machine going. 

It was not the first time this had happened. The other times, I just sighed loudly to myself. This time I couldn’t help myself from being somewhat sarcastic. I called for my husband and said in an overly pedagogic voice: ”Honey, it’s time I showed you how the laundry machine works. Do you see this compartment? This is where you put this powder, called laundry detergent. One scoop is enough. In this compartment, you put this liquid, called softener. Just put a little. This is the start button, press it, and voilà, it starts. Do these simple steps every now and then and I will be enormously grateful. I’ll even praise you on Facebook if you want me to.” My husband did not find my poorly disguised lecture very funny, he muttered that he did indeed know how to start the laundry machine and the only reason he hadn’t started it was because I didn’t tell him to do so, I had only told him to put the laundry in the machine and that’s what he did.

My husband did take notice; not that he has spontaneously collected any laundry and started a machine but he has unsolicited started the dishwasher several times as well as emptied said kitchen appliance on numerous occasions. I’m very happy with this progress. And as they say: ”Rome wasn’t built in one day”.

Some kind of New Year resolutions

Happy New Year of 2013! I have made some New Year resolutions that I will do my very best to achieve. 

1. I need to loose a couple of kilos and get rid of my sweet tooth. Christmas time and Beach season is not a successful combo. No chocolate, cakes and cookies during the week. I will only drink Coca Cola Zero on the weekend. And just so that I know: the weekend does not end on Monday and start again on Wednesday. Weekend is Friday evening until Sunday evening. 

2. I will not shop any new clothes, shoes or handbags during 2013 unless I really need it, like gloves when it’s getting cold outside. I will instead start using all my clothes and shoes and not save them for the future. Who knows what’s waiting around the corner? I’d rather meet my future in a pair of Jimmy Choos than a pair of Hawaianas. 

3. I will tell the people in my life as often as I can how fantastic and wonderful they are, how much they mean to me and that I love them. I tell my Husband and our Daughters every day how special they are and how much I love them. I will now extend my Declaration of Love to more people and let them know how happy I am that they are in my life. 

4. I will keep in mind that I shouldn’t worry about people from the past, there’s a reason they didn’t make it into my future. What I mean, I’m not going to think another minute about the simpeltons I’ve had the bad fortune of meeting over the years. As an expatriate you meet people you wouldn’t have met otherwise, for better and for worse. Notorious liars, notorious womanizers and their notoriously jealous women, notorious cheaters, notorious free-loaders; I’ve met them all and they have no place in our life. 

This list of Promises to Self should be easy to live up to and by doing so, the year of 2013 has every possibility to be a fantastic year. I already have the main ingredients; people I love, good food and a beach. I intend to make the most of it!