Memoirs of a Packhorse

Fashion Victim

2008-12-13T22:06:00.002+10:00

Orla's been choosing her own clothes for a while. This is an ensemble she put together herself and like a true fashionista she got her accessories at the local charity shop.

Evil is Abroad

2008-10-24T22:40:00.000+10:00

We’re practicing for Halloween. This excellent outfit was posted from Ireland. I can see many minutes of maniacal cackling ahead.

Feeding Time at the Zoo

2008-08-22T17:46:00.000+10:00

I can remember when breakfast was a quiet time of day, silently ruminating on the morning fare and peacefully contemplating the day ahead.

Nowadays breakfast time at our house is more like feeding time at the zoo, except the chimps have highly developed negotiation skills, cuter smiles and worse manners!

Glitter Nail Polish $1.00 - two hands

2008-08-03T20:02:00.002+10:00

Orla and Mia tried their hands at some enterprise today. The venture was only partly successful due to a shortage of foot traffic. After Nana and and the girl from across the road visited nothing else happened. So it was closed down and the revenue raised went towards paying creditors.

Brisbane Festival

2008-07-21T11:53:00.004+10:00

This was the biggest shark I have ever seen. I was almost ready to turn around and go home when I saw it, but Orla pointed out to me that it wasn't a real shark, for three reasons.

1. There's no water in the sky.
2. Sharks can't fly.
3. It's a kite!

Phew!

Orla Turns 5

2008-07-06T09:57:00.003+10:00

We had a birthday party for Orla a couple of weeks ago, it was all about
butterflies. Sue was forced to test her baking skills and produce a
butterfly cake. This is the result.

I had to call on all my years of clowning around to keep 10 kids entertained
for 2 hours. One of the adults asked Sue if I was available for hire. Sue
told her that although my appearance fee was low, my ongoing maintenance charges were astronomical.

Orla and her buddies had a great day and we made it to the end of the party
with no injuries.

Things you never thought you would have to say...

2008-07-05T23:12:00.000+10:00

Stop feeding your sister toilet paper

Flower Power

2008-06-30T14:47:00.000+10:00

We went to the Brisbane Botanical Gardens today. The kids had a great time, especially when we hired the bike with a trailer – the guys in Asia really earn their money towing overweight tourists around, I’m still suffering after towing a couple of pre-school age children.

Orla was feeling very peaceful at lunchtime.

All Dressed Up And Nowhere To Go

2008-06-28T09:25:00.001+10:00

Orla is off to see Disney on ice today. Tillie has her Cinderella dress on in anticipation, but this is when she learned that this time Cinderella wasn't going to the ball...

Feeding the Baby

2008-06-26T19:13:00.005+10:00

If you've ever been for a walk with a four year old you will understand that walking is not the purpose of the outing. So when I walked to the park with my girls last week, I wasn't surprised when Orla took her 'baby' in a pram. On the way the baby, who is a pink elephant named Ella, needed feeding and so, like any modern mum, Orla hitched up her shirt and put the mastodon on the mammary.

Attack Puts Brisbane Boy Out Of Dance Comp

2008-03-11T16:19:00.005+10:00

The "So You Think You Can Dance Dream" is over for Jack Chambers. A bizzarre assault has left him unable to compete.

Police have released this gruesome image in the hope it will help identify his attacker.

Scientifically Santa - by A. Non

2007-12-23T14:00:00.000+10:00

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.

This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element.

Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them... Santa would need 360,000 of them.

This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Cogito Ergo Sum

2007-11-28T21:29:00.000+10:00

I had the questionable fortune of witnessing a dowsing last night. No fires were extinguished, this dowsing involved bent coathanger wire being used to detect biophysical auras. (It could be dousing, I really don't know)

I have seen this before on TV, but never in real life and I am quite sure I saw the "dowser" move his wrists to make the wires cross at the appropriate time to prove his point.

This presentation was to demonstrate how certain thoughts can change your aura and, in the preamble to the dousing, he quoted the French philosopher Descartes. The fact that the presenter put three syllables in the philosopher's name, and that he referred to him as Greek, did little to convince me of his authenticity.

But, putting aside my skepticism, I couldn't help admire his enthusiasm for what he was doing and his seemingly genuine belief in the process. I even asked myself whether he realised he was moving his wrists. In some ways, he was the embodiment of Descartes Second Meditation

"I think, therefore I am" (a dowser)

13,915

2007-11-21T20:29:00.001+10:00

Thirteen thousand, nine hundred and fifteen days since I arrived in this world and today I heard two phrases for the first time:

“She’s not allowed to wash my monkey!”

“Tillie took the cup off the mushroom!”

Interesting times.

A minimum number of children were hurt in the making of this movie

2007-11-19T22:48:00.000+10:00

Companionship

2007-11-19T21:22:00.000+10:00

A dark spectre looms on the horizon. Every night, from her bed, Orla aks "Mum, will you be here in the morning?" So far the answer has always been an emphatic "Yes!". Although she knows this will change sometime soon, she calmly accepts the staus quo, rolls over and goes to sleep.

Don't panic everyone! She's only going on holiday, to Melbourne for four nights to see her friends and to celebrate(?) her recent 40th birthday.

While she's away I'm sure we'll cope. Although I can imagine there will a fair amount of crying at bedtime, refusal of food, wearing of dirty mismatched clothes and general despondency.

The kids, on the other hand, will be having a ball. They will love having me all to themselves. With the alpha female gone, they will be able to rule unchallenged, ordering me, the token male of the household, to do whatever they want me to do, and I am sure there will plenty of that.

What Sue and the girls don't know, is that I have recruited an ally, another male. Who, while unable to talk, drive the car, clean up, or even go down to the shops for a litre of milk, will offer me solace, when I need it. Who will listen to my drivel without question, will watch what I want to watch on TV, won't care if I'm reading a book and not paying attention to him and will love it if I drop food on the floor and don't pick it up immediately.

I promised his owner I would return him on Sunday. Sue may never know, if only Orla can keep a secret :-?

Elections and the media

2007-11-19T08:37:00.000+10:00

We are now five weeks, or 11 months depending on when you started to care, into what is officially the most boring election campaign Australia has ever seen!

The leaders of the two major political parties - the Liberal Party of Australia and the Australian Labor(al) Party have now become so closely aligned in policies, looks, demeanour and the inability to provide a direct answer to a direct question, that if we didn't have compulsory voting in Australia, I doubt that anyone would come out on Saturday.

Roll on election day! When it's all over, the media will at last be able to go back to covering the more important issues - sport, gossip, water shortage and house prices.

Diddly dee!

2007-09-25T22:04:00.000+10:00

Questions are the answer

2006-07-15T22:48:00.000+10:00

Guest speaker?

Anyone who knows me will agree that I'm a man who likes to talk. So it is unsurprising that I am als a member of an organisation aimed at improving speaking skills, namely public speaking skills.

I joined Toastmasters in June 2005 and set myself the goal of achieving Competent Toastmaster within 12 months. To do this I needed to present 10 speeches at Toastmasters, each of them with specific objectives and building on the skills learned in the preceding speeches. The key objective of the tenth speech is to 'Inspire your audience' and I was invited to present this speech at our club's annual dinner. The transcript of the speech follows and every word of it is true.

Questions Maketh the Man

I stood in the laneway behind the bakery, took a last look around and opened the lid of the garbage bin. Inside was dinner, all I had to do was reach in and take it out….

Madame Toastmaster, fellow Toastmasters and welcome guests. Why was I eating dinner out of a garbage bin?

Two years before that day, my father had died after a short illness. As a nineteen year old, filled with the unrealistic expectation that life would always be fair to me, I was unprepared for that loss and it nearly destroyed me. I spent the following two years tearing myself apart as I looked for a reason why this had happened to me, when no reason existed.

My deepening depression had alienated me from many of my friends and family and was steering me towards destructive behaviour. But, instead of talking to someone about how I felt I had taken my pushbike and gone to France in the hope that some sun, sand and solitude would sort me out.

I was trying to run away from the problem. Three months later, after braving sub zero temperatures in the Alps, Spanish rainstorms which lasted for days, blistering heat in the Portuguese hinterland, I was in France, again.

I had cycled more than 4,000 kilometres, yet I hadn’t managed to outrun any of my problems. To make things worse I was broke, flat broke, which was why I was eating from a bin.

Looking back, I dread to think how it may have ended up for me. You hear so many stories of people who suffer one major setback which sends them into a freefall which lasts decades, and sometimes never ends.

But when I reached that low point, when I found myself on the edge of an abyss of despair, that I finally got the jolt I needed to shift my focus.

I suddenly started to look at the situation from a different angle. I was still aware of all the things in my life which had made me so unhappy, but I started to see what the real problem was.

The problem wasn’t that my father had died, sad though that was. The problem wasn’t that life was unfair, because sometimes it is. The problem wasn’t even that I was depressed, and I most certainly was.

The problem was my attitude.

While I had been focussing all my energy on blaming past events for how I felt and trying to find a way to change something which could not be changed, I had been wilfully driving myself to despair, while ignoring a lot of things for which I really ought to have been grateful.

I was young, I was healthy, I had family and friends who cared about me, and eventually helped get me home and I was even lucky enough to have found the girl of my dreams, although I nearly blew that too!

Once I took that step back and made this realisation my attitude changed. Once I changed my attitude, I began to feel a lot better. And once I began to feel better, would you believe; life became better!

Some of you may be thinking it’s easy for me to say that it is our attitude rather than past events which determine how we feel. Some of you may have faced circumstances in the past, or you may be facing them today, far more difficult than the ones I have described. I’m not saying that things won’t hurt us or make us sad, but I am saying that what happens to us in life does not absolutely determine how we act or feel?

Victor Frankl, the German psychiatrist, wrote ‘Man’s greatest freedom is his ability to decide the attitude he will take to something’ and he ought to know. Frankl spent many years in Nazi concentration camps, experienced atrocities most of us could not imagine, lost all but one of his family members, yet his attitude throughout all of this proved that nobody can take this freedom away from us.

So when we feel that circumstances are getting the better of us, what can we do to control our reaction? What can we do to help ourselves exercise that freedom of choice and decide how we feel?

I believe it comes down to asking ourselves the right questions.

In any situation you are asking yourself a series of questions about what you should do, or believe, and the funny thing is, when you ask yourself a question your brain will always come up with an answer, no matter how implausible it may be.

Leading up to that day in France, I had been asking myself pointless question: Why did this happen to me? Why is life so unfair? Why am I so unlucky? And the answers I was getting were making me feel worse, but that’s what to expect when you ask questions like that.

Nowadays, when I find myself facing a difficult situation, I often ask myself ‘What can I learn from this experience?’, and I always come up with something worthwhile.

Whenever I am disheartened or dissatisfied with life, as I was that day in France, I ask myself ‘What do I have to be grateful for today’ And the truth is, I always have a great deal to be grateful for, I just forget sometimes.

So what is the difference between a bad question, one which worsens our attitude, and a good question, one which improves our attitude?

A lot of us are dissatisfied with our level of fitness, and would like to do something about it. But when we think of the problem and ask ourselves ‘Why can’t I improve my fitness?’ that question will not help our attitude for two reasons.

Firstly because it contains the presupposition ‘I can’t improve my fitness’, so we immediately reinforce the thing we want to change.

Secondly, it asks ‘why?’ and as I mentioned earlier, our brain is going to come up with an answer no matter how implausible, which will probably lead into a downward spiral of self recrimination.

Why can’t I improve my fitness? – Because I’m lazy.
Why am I lazy? – Because I lack motivation.
Why do I lack motivation? – Because I’m not smart enough to know what’s good for me.

And so on, and so on. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

A much better question would be ‘What can I do to get fit and enjoy the process?’ this question immediately presupposes that we can do something to change the situation, therefore making it easier to take that first step towards effecting change.

So we can see how asking ourselves the right questions can change our attitude and therefore change our lives. And, while the examples I’ve given you tonight work for me, that’s not to say they will work for you and you may need to come up with your own questions.

But, I do believe there is one basic question which we should all apply to any problem:

‘What can I do to change this?’

The trick to answering this question lies in knowing what we can change and recognising the things we cannot change. Because when we run up against a problem we simply cannot change no matter what we do, as I did when my father died, the best thing we can do is accept it, smile and move on with life.

Poxy Birthdays

2006-07-15T22:17:00.000+10:00

When I started my blogging, I thought it would be easy to write a piece every couple of days, and I wasn't wrong, it is easy. The hard part is finding the time to type it out and post it to the blog.

Time marches along and we now have a little baby who can sit up straight, grabs anything within reach, loves a bit of horseplay with her sister and charms the pants off anything with a pulse! I am also seeing an increasing resemblance to Dr Evil as the photo shows.

The past month has been taken up with Chickenpox. Six weeks ago, Orla came home from kindy with the news that someone in her class had the pox. It was at this time that we learned there is a vaccination against chickenpox - too late after she had been exposed!

Two weeks went past and then the first marks appeared. This was on the evening that Sue and I were going out for the first time in six months (I was the guest speaker at a dinner, more about that up the page) so we had a mini panic and then decided to go anyway. Orla seemed calm and happy and was even getting into bed before we left the house.

We found out the next day that the drug we had given her to suppress the itchiness, whilst not a prescription medicine, is monitored because some unscrupulous parents had been giving it to children to help (force) them to sleep. We kept half a bottle for future emergencies!

She had a bad case of the pox, with marks in some places the sun doesn't shine. To make matters worse, we had to postpone the much anticipated birthday party too.

On her birthday we had a little cake and tried on some party hats at home and Orla finally got the bike we had wanted to give her a Christmas. More to follow....

Happy Anniversary

2006-04-27T21:36:00.000+10:00

You all remember romantic weekends away, candlelit dinners, relaxing and reflecting on another year of marriage.

So what did we do to celebrate our thirteenth (Lace) wedding anniversary?

We went to Seaworld!!

Load the kids in the car, load enough provisions to feed an army, don't forget the music, books, toys, nappies, change of clothes (x 2 x 2) and we're off for a happy family day out.

We thought we were being really clever, going on a Monday, the quietest day of the week. So imagine our surprise to find the car park almost full when we arrived 10 minutes after the park opened! We'd forgotten it was still school holidays. The photo shows a bemused Orla and Matilda, 25 minutes into the first bout of queueing for the day.

We had a great time, we saw sharks, polar bears, dolphins, starfish, sea cucumbers, seals, penquins, pelicans, giant groper, stingray. And what was Orla's favourite?

The merry-go-round!

An exhausting day out by anyone's standards, and by the end of the day we had seen only a small number of the attractions.

But not to worry, we bought annual passes, which means we can go again, and again, and again, and again!! You can see how happy this makes me feel.

Easter Gastro

2006-04-16T23:46:00.000+10:00

Parenthood gives you many things, including an increased tolerance for bodily secretions. When you become responsible for an infant, you quickly lose all squeamishness when it comes to puke, pooh and wee.

I was reminded of this on Thursday afternoon when Orla developed gastroenteritis. Nothing serious, the pattern was: one violent upheaval, 25 minutes of crying, a five minute nap and another eruption. The usual toddler illness thing.

Adults and older children will usually jump up and run to the toilet when the bile starts to rise, or they will seek out a handy receptacle to contain the offensive liquid - bucket, pot plant, somebody else's shoes. Toddlers, they take a different approach. Experience leads a child to believe that Mum and Dad have the answer to everything. Therefore, a toddler with a rumbling gut will run to the nearest parent for intervention.

After several failed attempts at finding a solution to her problem, all of which ended in Mum or Dad having to change clothes, Orla worked out that we weren't going to prevent the violent expulsions, so she took a different tack - run away from the pain. So, after silently wishing she would stop puking on us, we began running after her in the hope she would puke on us and not on other more sensitive items like books, the computer, her baby sister or her own favourite blanket.

It eventually passed without too much drama. Tillie is not showing any signs of infection, but Mum now has the bug.

So far, she has made it to the loo when necessary, but I have moved my boots out of sight just in case......

Why Packhorse

2006-04-15T18:50:00.000+10:00

This is a draft of a speech I recently gave to my Toastmasters club.

The photo to the right, is of Orla, the main subject of the speech. Orla has recently welcomed a new member to our family, Matilda. I am happy to say, that after two years and eight months of being the undisputed number one, she is adjusting very well to the new family dynamic.

Memoirs of a Packhorse

"Orla, get into the car. Orla, get into the car"

It’s just before eight in the morning, and I’m trying to coax my oldest daughter, Orla, into the car to go to the daycare centre. So far I’ve asked her 10 times to get into the car, but she shows no signs of doing as I ask, instead she’s admiring her reflection in the car door’s paintwork.

I do some mental arithmetic - I need 15 minutes to drive to daycare, at least 15 minutes for the handover - unload the bags, say hello to the teachers and kids, get her involved in an activity, and say goodbye, and another 10 minutes to drive back to work. That’s 40 minutes in total, which means even if we leave now; I’m already late for work – "Orla, get into the car"

A number of you are probably thinking ‘Why doesn’t he lift her up and put her in the car?’ And in fact I have done that on the odd occasion. But if I lose my temper and force her into the car, all I will teach her is that I am bigger and stronger than her and where’s the value in her learning that?

Instead of losing my temper, I look at her behaviour, I look at my behaviour, and I try to work out the best way of improving this or any situation. Everyday, I try to encourage the good aspects of her character – her spirit, her imagination and her inquisitiveness, while discouraging the not so good, her stubbornness, which she gets from her mother, her short temper, ditto, and her need to wee in odd places around the house I’m not sure where she got that.

But now my patience is wearing thin. Earlier, I’d thought to myself that if ever I write an autobiography, I’ll call the book ‘Memoirs of a Packhorse’

Loading up everything I need – the bag for daycare which holds sheets, a change of clothes, and a hat, another bag holding morning tea, lunch and an afternoon snack, most of which comes home at the end of the day. The blanket for sleep time, a doll and shoes - because Orla won’t wear shoes when she’s leaving the house. I have to remember that the dolly must not, must not be taken into the daycare centre. Oh! and the library books which must be returned today, not to mention everything I need, laptop, diary, keys the list goes on.

So the packhorse, me, is standing in the sun, hot and sweaty from loading the car, my stress levels are creeping up as I sense the clock counting down when I hear

‘Look Daddy, Thomas the Tank Engine is in the car, how did he get here?’

I take a deep breath, because he’s always in the car and she always finds him just before she hops into her seat, and she always asks how he got there.

I stifle the urge to scream. Instead, I say, calmly, ‘I don’t know darling, why don’t we ask Thomas after you get into the car?’ A dozen times I’ve asked her, and she finally starts to climb into the car.

Predictably, I arrive late at work and have a laugh about the whole situation with my workmates, because that is life with a toddler. Every day is a test of strength, a battle of wills. Completing even the simplest of tasks requires cajoling, bribery and a degree of cunning. In return you get delays, distraction, and outright disobedience.

Every day brings me to new heights, or is that depths, of frustration but through it all I try very hard not to lose my temper and make something positive of every trying situation. However, I’m no saint or superman, and I get it wrong at times but at least I have good intentions.

So the day passes quickly and I go to pick her up from daycare. After all of the delays going there in the morning, you would think she would be keen to leave in the afternoon, but no! Would you believe it takes almost as long to get her into the car coming home?

Eventually we get home and after the ritual of dinner and bath, after at least half a dozen stories and who knows how many songs - she finally gets into bed and goes to sleep. Calm spreads through the house.

Later, I creep into her room and look at the little devil sleeping peacefully and I smile to myself. Because, despite all the tears and tantrums of the terrible twos, we do get an awful lot of laughter and love, and every day, as I watch my children grow; they help me to grow as a person, by teaching me things I don’t know about myself good and bad…

And with that happy thought, I make my own weary way to bed, to sleep, fitfully of course, for Orla now has an apprentice, and I prepare to do it all again tomorrow.

Toastmasters International is a worldwide organisation aimed at helping people to improve their communication skills. To find out about Toastmasters in your area, go to http://www.toastmasters.org

Theophilus

Why didn't anyone see this coming...

2006-04-15T18:13:00.000+10:00

It had to happen. After all, I'm a little guy with a lot to say, so why wouldn't I have my own blog spot.

I'll be using this space for a number of things.

: To keep my family up to date on the growth of my family - physical growth of the existing members, not numerical growth of the family unit.

: Share photos with the same family.

: Get things off my chest when I feel no one around here is listening (fairly often)

: Test my theory that there has to be somebody out there who shares my point of view on the world!