The things our children say....

When I drive the Daughters to school, I always listen to a morning show on the radio with the media personalities Chrissie and Jane. Most of the times I find the topics they are discussing to be, well, not my cup of tea. But the ladies are my age, both are mothers and every now and then I hear something I can relate to. Right now they have some competition; five couples are competing to see who gets pregnant first in order to win five thousand Australian dollars. Every day the couples get to answer questions on how they would handle certain situations with children. One of the situations was what to do when your child says something embarrassing for you. My darling daughters are going out of their ways to make me proud of them and I am so proud, so very, very proud. But we had a situation several years ago...

                                 Our eldest daughter, only 24 hours old

It was about five years ago when we lived in Mexico. I had a parent-teacher conference with the teacher of my Daughter-who-shall-not-be-named. The teacher told me that she was doing well, happy girl and all of that. The only thing was that she could become a little restless during music class, the music teacher had said that sometimes she gets up from her seat and walks around in the class room, maybe dances a little and so on. Since I knew that my Daughter loved to sing and dance, I thought I’d be really clever and smooth things over with the music teacher by telling him that my daughter loves music. One day when I was picking up my girl I ran in to the music teacher. I told him that her home room teacher had said she walks around in his class room. He didn’t seem to have put much thought into it himself; ”they are still young, they cannot sit down for long time. I have three kids myself so I know how they are” he said.

”She really, really enjoys your music class” I said and fired of my best smile.

”No I don’t” said the Daughter.

”Yes you do” I replied with a somewhat stiff smile.

”No I don’t” insisted Daughter.

The music teacher was standing there and he did not look very impressed. I could feel my cheeks blushing and tried to smooth things over, get the teacher to see that my Daughter is really a music lover.

”But darling, you love to sing and dance, you do it all the time at home”, I said, hoping I sounded convincing.

”At home yes” said the Daughter ”but not in your music class” she said to the teacher. ”Your music classes are BORING.”

The teacher dropped his jaw but he didn’t say anything. I was mortified, mortified I say.

”Ah well, thank you for your time” I said to the teacher and hurried away with the daughter before anything else could be said.

I told a friend of mine of the incident with the teacher and she said that everybody thought his lessons were boring and the music was too dated. I just wished it wasn’t my daughter who had pointed it out to him. The music teacher DID change his lessons after this and the children actually enjoyed his class and his choice of music from then on. As they say, all well that ends well. 

Mexico: Not so much singing and dancing in the streets as you'd think....

"Real housewives of Melbourne"

In Sweden, USA and many other countries it is very popular with ”Real housewives” TV-shows; you know those reality shows where a group of women are followed by a cameraman who records everything they do. The women are usually rather solid when it comes to finances, they usually lack of manners and they always get in to disputes and fights with each other as well as random people.  This genre of TV-entertainment doesn’t seem to appeal to the Australian audience. Australian TV channels provide a plethora of reality shows of cooking and house renovations instead. Totally understandable, I enjoy much more watching people cook and do home improvements rather than watching women getting a mani-pedi or insult each other. I cannot say why the phenomenon of reality shows with housewives has not reached Australia, perhaps Australians are not interested in the daily life of other people or perhaps housewives in Australia are not that exciting to watch? Let me share today - which is a typical day of mine - with you and you be the judge.

In a beach side suburb of Melbourne on Thursday 13th of June

I wake up at 7.00, get up and turn up the heating in the house. I prepare the Daughters’ lunchboxes while I eat a bowl of special K with some thawed frozen berries, take a quick shower, wake the Daughters at 7.30 and take their breakfast order. This morning both wanted two small, slightly warm croissants with raspberry jam; one wanted a smoothie to drink, the other a hot chocolate with whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon sugar on top. After our regular morning ritual – me making sure youngest daughter doesn’t submit herself to Angry Birds and that the eldest gets out of the bathroom within a near future, we leave the house at 8.30 in my typical ”mother and housewife car”, Volvo XC90 with a Swedish moose sticker in the rear window. The Daughters are dropped at 8.40 and 8.50 in their respective schools.

            My housewife car that has a weekly average speed of 34 km/h

I continue on to the supermarket Coles, located in Southland mall. I am there when they open at 9.00. I am environmentally conscious and bring my own shopping bags, the green ones from IKEA’s bistro. I make up the coming days menu in my head, recall what I have at home and do the additional shopping. I do not talk to anyone hence my shopping trip to the supermarket was uneventful as it usually is. At home, I unpack all the groceries and start the laundry machine with dark colored laundry. I study a couple of hours every day so I light some candles in my TV-room/office/guestroom to make it cozy.

        Candles are setting the right mood for studies among other things

 A-ha! Finally some excitement today! One of the students in my tutorial group is an indigenous Australian – Aboriginal to be specific – and he has very strong and upset feelings about the non-indigenous Australians. Today he is urging his people to make a revolution and dethrone all the self-appointed non-indigenous leaders who have stolen their land, their culture and their language and are oppressing the indigenous people of Australia. I do a bit of researching for my essay and write down some notes before lunch.

                                Environment friendly shopping bag

I make myself a sandwich which I eat standing by the kitchen counter. I make a mental note to buy more Kalle’s Kaviar at IKEA sometime soon, there’s only enough left for one more sandwich. 

Kalle's: considered inedible unless you have grown up with it - like Vegemite.

I look out the kitchen window and notice that our former neighbors – the previously mentioned bogans – are female slobs. While moving out they filled up both the rubbish bins assigned to their house without any regards to if they put their rubbish in the regular bin or the recycling bin. Rain, wind and cats have made a mess out of their trash and is now polluting the street. I snort loudly to myself as to underline how disgusting I think it is. The bogans final legacy to the estate; litter, debris and garbage. 

 No comments. Or rather: so many comments I cannot fit them all in here.

I continue with my studies for a couple of hours more, answering questions and giving my opinion on this weeks readings and lectures. All of a sudden it’s 15.25 and I need to go and pick up the Daughters in their schools. It is raining quite heavily and my housewife-car lets in a couple of raindrops by the roof. I make a mental note to put some silicone (meaning getting the Husband to do it) by the fitting of the railings. At home I make some afternoon snack for the Daughters, help them find accessories for their musical theater today, they are putting up ”Mary Poppins” by the end of the year. I drive them to their class and now, I am home again and will start preparing tonight’s dinner: Indian Butter Chicken with saffron rice and lentils. My darling Husband is expected home later tonight after a business trip to Tasmania. This is where I will stop reporting about my day as a housewife in Melbourne. You will probably not miss anything anyway; we’re going to have dinner, watch some TV and get ready for bed. A seemingly uneventful life and oh how I love it, I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. Not right now anyway...

Awesome, great and just wonderful... My week at a glance

What an awesome week I’ve had! My eldest daughter, my Mini-Me, went to camp with her school. She had been somewhat nervous about it, she’s not very keen on going away without her family but it all turned out to be great, she had a fantastic couple of days. I also had my birthday and what a wonderful day that was! I didn’t have to lift a finger, my family spoiled me rotten and showered me with gifts. Daughters sang the birthday song, some songs by Adele as well as the Australian national anthem in my honor. My studies are also going well so far; I am organised and keeping up with all the reading, lectures and tutorial discussions.

                                  A favorite cake of mine; Blondie de luxe

On Thursday I was woken – as every Thursday these past six months – around 1 am by those female delinquents for neighbors. They were sitting in their backyard, sharing a couples of bottles of cheap white wine. They had a male acquaintance with them and he was the reason I woke up. He was very upset with one of the she-devils which he expressed with very colorful and explicit words. I am now aware that the ”eff” word can be used as a verb, an adjective and a noun and repeated several times in one sentence. I found it somewhat monotonous to listen to, he needed some variation in order to keep the attention of his audience. Nevertheless, if anyone would have talked to me that way they would have been kicked out of my house and out of my life for all eternity. The miscreant sheilas did not seem to mind though, they were just sitting there sipping their wine and smoking their fags. Luckily the heated lecture lasted for only 10 minutes and the bogans went inside. ”Bogan” is Australian slang for ”an individual who is recognized to be from an unsophisticated background or someone whose speech, clothing, attitude and behavior exemplifies a lack of manners and education”. I had heard from their landlord a couple of weeks earlier that these villains had been asked to find a new home. I prayed that that day would come swiftly. And what do you know, my prayer was heard! When I looked out the window on Friday afternoon, I saw what looked like moving boxes. Later that evening we were happily watching from our bedroom window how they carried out their furniture and emptied the house. What a wonderful feeling! I have been happy all weekend, with a fluttering heart and a big smile on my face. I have to pinch myself sometimes, just to make sure I am not dreaming! They are finally out, O-U-T!

                          The usual weekends at the bogans is now history! 

Today is Monday and it happens to be the birthday of Queen Elisabeth of England and therefore a national holiday in Australia. Thank you for that your majesty! As I said, it’s been an awesome week!

Boring at a dinner party? Try this!

Apart from handbags, shoes, place mats and coffee china I also collect interesting information and unusual words. Not only do I find it enriching and entertaining for my own wellbeing, having a collection of unusual information could be a life savior at a dinner party when I struggle to keep the conversation going with my neighbors at the table.

An example of a pleasant dinner topic is the story behind ”Irish coffee”: The original Irish coffee was invented and named by Joe Sheridan, an Irish head chef. The coffee was conceived after a group of American passengers disembarked in the west of Ireland from a Pan Am flying boat on a miserable winter evening in the 1940's. Sheridan added whiskey to the coffee to warm the passengers. After the passengers asked if they were being served Brazilian coffee, Sheridan told them it was "Irish coffee". This little story turned out to be quite the ice breaker at a dinner party once when I was place next to a man I found to be dreadfully boring. Luckily, he also had a number of interesting things to share and the evening was more pleasant than I had initially anticipated. I sat close to him at another party half a year later and apparently he had already shared all his good stories last time we met. Enough said.

 Perhaps you like to show what a cunning linguist you are? Here are two words many people might not know: aglet and blype. Aglet is the little piece of plastic on the end of a shoe lace and blype is the name of the skin that peels of after a sunburn.

If you prefer silly and crazy facts about animals you might appreciate having the knowledge that turtles can breath through their butts, dolphins sleep with one eye open and if a tuna stops swimming it will suffocate.

I have more and even better cards up my sleeve but those I will keep to myself. You never know if you and I end up together at a dinner party and conversation is going a bit slow. Then you’ll be thankful I have saved the best for last.

"Have you heard this one? Three men came in to a bar..." Crown princess Victoria of Sweden knows how to keep the conversation going.