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As a child, Tabitha would hold a magnifying glass – the one from her brother’s science kit – over ants on a summer’s morning and wait for the tiny, satisfying pop that they made. As an older teenager, she looked back and recognised herself as a nascent feminist.

As as adult, she bristled when people blamed fires on her.  “It’s bloody unfair,” she thought. “They hate me.”

As she walked from the room, a thin wisp of smoke snaked up from the crumpled paper in the rubbish bin.

This morning, with a view towards my trip to Tasmania, I pulled my old anorak out of the cupboard and found three-and-a-bit dollars in there. It’s one of the nice things about living in a quiet street. Of, if that isn’t, then it is nice to ride my bike slowly down the middle of my street with impunity, like a fool. Speaking of the foolish, it may be be incumbent on me to tolerate them, but that’s as much as I feel like achieving on that front.

All of which brings us to twenty past seven.

Today was, just in case anyone happens to be interested, a pretty good day at school. I did my work. My students did theirs. I managed to get along with my fellow staff members.

It might sound trite, but these are really all things that I want out of your average kind of day.

This seemed like a simple and effective plan: A microphone for each child, identical in every way, except that Finn’s is blue and green and Leila’s is pink and yellow. No chance of confusing which is whose and no reason to fight over them. At 2 bucks each, a cheap and cheerful afternoon’s fun with little to no risk. Or so I thought.

I went outside to bring some washing in and left the kids happily yelling (aka ‘singing’) at each other through their mikes. As I was coming in with the first armful of stuff I spied Leila crouched on the ground while Finn attempted to put the fake bit of cable hanging out the bottom of his mike into her ear. I was suitably horrified and made a big deal of telling both of them that we never, ever put things in other people’s ears (except their hearing aids, of course …). Finn accepted this cheerfully enough and then promptly attempted to insert the same bit of cable into his own ear, past his hearing aid mould. I cut the pieces of cable off both mikes and went back outside.

After a couple of minutes I could hear Leila crying so came back in to see what was going in. When I got there she had her mike, but was still upset. I asked her what was wrong. “Finn took my microphone and gave it back when he saw you coming.” (The clothesline is outside her bedroom window) I bet Finn is starting to regret the days when he used to complain that Leila couldn’t talk …

I asked him why he took Leila’s microphone. “Because I wanted it.” I didn’t bother to ask why because the answer would only have annoyed me. Instead I sternly told him that there was absolutely no reason for him to take his sister’s microphone and that if I saw him with it again he would lose his own, along with his Lego. An over-reaction, perhaps, but necessary to make the point I thought.

I went back to what I was doing, only to find them a few minutes later, playing sword fights with the microphones … I suppose it was too much to expect they’d just use them to sing through.

As we were at a playground this morning, we saw what seemed to be a family of swans. There are swans in the creek near out place, too, but they disappeared for the worst of the drought.

It’s nice to see swans, They feel a bit more exotic than the various little birds and ducks.

I certainly hope that it is minor and we have our pointy, brown friend with us for a while yet. it might be a very common name for a dog, but you just don’t find a dog like our Indiana every day.

Whedon himself was warm and interesting, although I did find that his habit of being self-depreciating got in the way of fully answering some of the questions. Still, it was a lovely experience and I was really happy to be there.

On a side note, it’s been years since I walked across the city at night, and I was surprised by just how many people were on the street at nine o’clock and then at eleven. I walked about five blocks and each and every street had steady foot traffic.

Last night as I was doing some tidying up in the garage, I made a pile of dusty, faded or slightly battered baby toys that I found. As I bundled them up for the op-shop, I realised that neither Finn or Leila are babies any more and I felt a twinge of sadness.

I am not even sure why I felt this way. I just love our kids more every day and I wouldn’t wish for them to be babies again. Still the realisation that our baby days are behind us was a strangely poignant moment.

But I am feeling wrung out and tired, and it would be nice to spend the day lying on a bed, reading my Bill Bryson book, and basking in the sun steaming through the front window of our home.

Soon.

Term Three at school has felt long, and I suspect that a cold and dark winter has only added to that. There has also been a small amount of professional silliness about, and that manages to steadily drain my enthusiasm and verve.

And the election last night. My word, was that close. It seems that it was Labor’s to lose, and they have done a pretty good job of it. Perhaps a minority government of either colour is the best outcome when there is no clear majority. All the same, it reminded me of the end of Romeo and Juliet.

A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe

Anyhoo…

I’ll make sure to get some decent sleep tomorrow, which is – happily – another day.

When I was at Knifepoint last week, I noticed that a shop called Socrates was closing down and they had 30% the stock that was left. Over the years, we’ve found some terrific things for the kids, so I went it and had a nose around.

I did find a game called Hyper Dash, which I’d seen before and was almost curious about. The idea is simple and very clever. You lay out five markers and the cap barks orders. We played with it last week end and, as you can see in the video, it’s a bit of fun.

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

He changed his tune when he discovered that his was for a higher level. As his dad, it was cute to hear of his reactions and nice to see he is doing so well in the pool.

But, if he should leave the kitchen for any reason, she would be off like a shot. The bread would fly off the counter, at least until he returned, flustered an annoyed.

Today, he was not distracted and the sandwiches made it into plastic containers and then the freezer. The dog would try again next time.

When I started listening, there was a lot that I liked about this Australian novel. The tone seems to strike a good balance between conversational and authentic and the content seemed balanced, sensible and thought provoking.

A key feature of this novel is that each of the eight sections is about a different character. The narratives overlap and start from a common incident, but they are mostly individual stories. For a while I thought that this might be a powerful technique. However, I soon felt that these characters fell into cliche. There were still moments of genuine tension, but in 16 hours of audio these moments were few and far between.

Although this popular book has been much acclaimed and even nominated for a Booker, I can’t say that I would recommend it. I found the characters to be basically horrible, trite people and, although it nods at a litany of contemporary issues, I didn’t actually prompt me to understand or think about any of them more deeply. I felt the occasional flash of emotion in response, but that wasn’t enough for me.