It strikes me that Finn is very lucky. A little sister is a terrific thing to have.
As planned, I will go to school tomorrow and perform my regular duties. And it will all be fine and I’ll have a nice day.
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.
I am feeling exhausted this morning, exhausted to the point of tears.
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.
Finn woke up this morning and explained that the rain was making him dizzy. I figured that he might just be hungry so I stuffed him with peanut-butter toast. He feels a little better, but not well enough for swimming lessons, so we have put him back in bed with a Scooby Doo DVD in the portable player. That set-up might make him feel a little more cheerful.
Finn has been doing an intensive swimming course for school and was apparently a bit miffed when his certificate was smaller than the certificate that lots of other kids got.
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.
As the man makes three sandwiches for lunches for the rest of the week, the dog sits at the edge of the kitchen in a drop position and quietly watched, only her eyes moving.
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.
After twelve days of listening while commuting, I have finished the audio book of The Slap.
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.