Whose streets are they anyway?

Today got fairly difficult filled with anger and despair. Only now at 11pm have I been able breath out and find some peace and mental quiet... quiet.

Life will always present us with adversity... but how do we fight a society that would seek our demoralization?

I have to confess I occasionally struggle with the obvious futility and meaninglessness of many things in this life. I know I am prone to seeing the darker side of things but most of the time I manage to keep it fairly real and just get on with things... Actually I'm not a depressive kind of person, I just don't like to kid myself too much about what's going on. Honestly I try to get a great deal of pleasure out of this world, but today I got a glimpse of the dark side and have struggled not to be overcome by it.

(Side note)

I recently received word that a man who has been on hunger strike for the past two months may soon succumb to severe malnutrition and all the unpleasant consequences that go along with it! I am not writing this to invoke an argument or stir any kind of reaction. I include this piece of information only to suggest that there is cause for despair! If a person has gone to these lengths to defy the callous nature of his imprisonment and the dehumanizing system that would treat him and other asylum seekers the way the Australian Government continues to do, then any human being with a heart must ask themselves is this justice? To loose all hope for a future and be driven to take such action must surely be the response to an absolutely intolerable situation. My heart goes out to this man and his family. I believe it is too late to rectify the harm starvation has done to his body and he may only have days to live.

"When I was your age...."

Yep I think it and I say it all the time and I know that every generation seems to struggle to relate to the one before it or after but!

The tipping point for me today came when this happened!

When I got home from work the kids and wife appeared having just ridden their bikes back from the local park. It's not far and they only had to ride on 'quiet' suburban streets. Sadly there is no such thing as a 'quiet suburban street'!

In just a few hundred meters ride my boy was nearly hit by a car and apparently soon after another car passed my family, and in a completely unrelated incident some dickhead yelled at them to get off the road and ride on the footpath! (Not on a major road but a suburban street with a speed limit of 50km per hour and 40 during school days!) This scared the crap out of my children and caused my wife to feel vulnerable and intimidated! 

The kids got home and were in tears, they vowed never to go out on their bikes again! We talked through what had happened and the kids were reassured to know they'd done nothing wrong but this did nothing to restore their faith in their fellow humans or their entitlement to be outside at all! I could not lie and tell them that on the whole people are OK. As a cyclist on Australian roads generally we have to assume that our countrymen and women are NOT OK! They act with such a sense of entitlement on the roads and an almost narcissistic disregard for human life that they need to be regarded as extremely dangerous.

Recently in an eight week period Darwin has had 5 hit and run incidents.

This incident coupled with the knowledge of the condition of a man who'd rather starve himself to death than entrust his future to the care of the Australian people has left me once again wondering if humanity is only a romantic myth.

Things were different when I was a kid! And the differences cannot be ignored!
When I was my kids age, I was free to play outside without any great fear of being killed by my neighbors. We all played in the street. Cars slowed down when they saw people on the road and it was expected that we would share the road! Without that kind of liberty how long will it take for our children to reach the same level of despair experienced by our friend who is now lying in his death bed? If we allow the bullies to determine the culture and don't actively start caring for each other pretty soon we may lose the capacity to care for ourselves!

Peace.

Help... Nonsense

After a somewhat harried day I come home to be swamped with kids running amok in the house, crap all over the place, playing fighting yelling... making noises you would only expect to hear in a zoo.... Their mother sitting numb and stressed, non responsive on the couch.

I try to contain my agitation, sit down and pick up the latest children's book from the library and find a short poem that pretty much sums up the condition I am in 95% of the time.

Here it is....

HELP

Help, help
nothing's right
I can't find my ears
and my pants are too tight.

There's a clock in my sock 
there's a rose up my nose
there's an egg on my leg
and there's a stink in my sink.

Help, help
I've had enough
I can't find my eyes
and the going's getting tough.

There's bread in my bed
there's flies in my fries
there's a slug in my jug
and there's a ghost in my toast.

Help, help
I'm in a mess.
have you got my head?
the cat says yes.

The donkey says no
the hamster in the swimming pool 
says he doesn't know.

 (Michael Rosen's Book of Nonsense)

Thank you Michael... Thank you illustrator Clare Mackie.

And this is me when I have got my shit together.
lol. Have a nice day.

Oh Come On!

Kids get stuck in buckets! 

The boy is unstoppable! 

"Don't sit in that bucket boy! .... Listen to me I know!"

His favorite line... "Oh COME ON!" So despite my advise, he sits in the bucket... and... Ha! He gets stuck!

We spent most of the day together today, just hanging out, doing our favorite stuff. Amongst a bunch of other stuff, me scrounging at the tip shop and the boy scamming lollies from the receptionist at my work. 

I finally finished putting the Cargo bike together, (mostly) and we did some miles together in her, me peddling, the boy jumping around like a crazy monkey on a stick! Singing, laughing teasing joking. The kid cracks me up! Later in the day I loaded the cart up with three kids and we went riding in the rain with the roof on, our outfit looked just like a wagon from an old John Wayne movie. The kids ran amok in the cart, laughing and goofing around, screaming when we hit a bump and sticking their heads out and waving at people as we bounced along the bicycle path. It's about a 6 km ride to Rapid Creek where we dropped our temporary charge back to her folks. We then rode the Nightcliff foreshore path all the way around to Nightcliff and then branched off to the Mulch pit for a bit of gardening and to take a couple more kids for a short joyride in the cart.
As the sky began to darken we headed back home. Mission accomplished. The Cargo bike handled the load, three kids, easily but most importantly, they enjoyed riding in it.

Oh yeh and the boy surprised me somewhat this afternoon. His sister likes fairly heavy rock music but he seems to have finer taste. Well we spent a little bit of time in the car today and when I put on my new Chili Pepers album I was expecting to hear the standard "Oh COME ON!", which in this context would mean get this crap off and play the music I like, but it never came! I looked over my shoulder and there he was nodding his head to the music! He likes the Chili Pepers! His Mum is gunna kill me! I started tapping and bopping away... then from the back of the car I hear. "Arrrgh.... OH COME ON!".
"What?" I ask, (maybe he's changed his mind and doesn't like the music)
"Stop dancing that's MY MUSIC!"
 How do you like that! Only a few hours previously I'd rescued him from a bucket and here he is telling me I can't even groove to my music in the car!

Managing the mischief

"Don’t throw sticks at butterflies in trees!"

That’s the conversation I had with child 1 recently… That's the sort of conversation we have on a regular basis... Sometimes it drives me crazy! "Don't stick those skinks in the bucket full of water, they'll drown!" Don't shake the bush with birds nest in it the babies will fall out and die!" "Clap your hands together to catch the moths, you'll crush their wings!" If you like a peaceful life and think settling down and having kids might be some kind of serene dignified way of growing older with grace… Good luck to you! You might find it an adventure into the limits of sanity, tolerance and acceptance. If you struggle with feelings of powerlessness and wish to seize control of your own life, if you want to develop a set of values to live by and never falter, you're in for a big surprise if you think this will be easy when raising a family! You might find that every day is a battle to maintain even a thread of who you aspire to be. You might find that as you trudge from one day to the next you are lucky if you can make the vaguest of symbolic gestures toward the life you intended to live. You might find that your daily routine, directly contradicts those virtues you were hoping to nurture. The design you had intended to live by might now only be nothing more than a wistful dream you had selfishly harbored in the space between changing the dirty nappies and washing a pile of dirty dishes. Or worse still clawing your way through a swathe of plastic toys to the front door, clambering out of the air-conditioned unit, with an arm full of Mac Donald's wrappers for the bin!   

Marrying someone doesn’t make that person your minion and spawning fry does not guarantee the children will be a physical representation of all you aspire to be.  Ha! If you wanted that you could have created an avatar in Second Life!

This is real! This is where the rubber meets the road! This is where the shit can sometimes ‘…hit the fan!’

Am I Bitching? Nahhhh! 'It's All Good!'

There are funny times as a parent too. Amongst all the madness and fighting there is a lot of humor!

Yesterday the kids were arguing over a toy. One of us told them if they didn’t sort it out we’d switch the toy off! By now the youngest is really annoying the eldest child, it went something like this:

 Eldest child :   “If you don’t stop that I’ll turn you off!”

Youngest child retorts promptly and quite seriously : “But you can’t…! I don’t have any button!”

We all burst into laughter, our little one fancies himself as a comedian. Although he was serious about the fact that he had no switch that could be pushed to turn him off, he immediately capitalized on the situation to try and keep us laughing.

Damn these kids are funny!

As I've posted previously, I feel like I am lacking in originality, however that is not true. I am surrounded by it! If I quoted half of the crazy stuff my kids have said I'm sure I'd have a best seller! 

Oh yeh, Child 1 received a prize for colouring-in a picture for a local supermarket. She has also completed the poster that Sam copied for her (minus the corporate branding). The final product was pretty good.

Child 1 painting a Christmas Poster

Bikey Boy rap...!

The family went out without me on Saturday night. I had a busy day and came home to an empty house!

I'm pretty sure it was the first time in a couple of years! I could have done anything but I wasted my time on the computer again..! Well it wasn't a total waste of time, I did manage to play my own choice of music on the sterio... through the speakers! As loud as I wanted! YEH!

Sam took the kids to the NT Schools concert IMAGINE. They were bombed out when they got back so we put the kids to bed and Sam told me all about the show. Apparently there were plenty of great performances but what the kids really liked was. The Bikey Boys from Nyirripi!

She was sure I'd like them and insisted that we look them up on Youtube straight away. We did, and I do!

Check out their video it's very cool!

Bikey Boys From Nyirripi

Some great lyrics in this song, fun dancing but, strangely, the Bikey Boys only have one bike between the lot of them!

"My bike is a bird, I fly around town.
Looking for food, crawling on the ground.
Watch out because it might be you.
There's no tellin what my bike bird could do"

Or how about this line?

"...It's me, My bike, and the dirt road!"

The beginning of the song reminded me of a section in the middle of 'The Brothers Cup' by Red Hot Chilli Peppers, a little bit.

What is the message in this song?
BIKES ARE FUN!
Rap On Boys.. and get yourself some more bikes!

School holidays - a craft program

Today was officially the first day of School Holidays at our house.

With two very active kids home life during school holidays can be somewhat stressful! If things get out of hand the whole atmosphere can become totally unbearable. If you happen to visit at the wrong time you might find yourself making excuses for why you have to suddenly leave or desperately scratching at the wire security door pleading for the neighbors to let you out!

Yes it may be true that on some unfortunate occasions one or both of the responsible adults of the household have been known to stand in a corner banging their head against the wall and pleading to be taken to the Tower of Mordor for respite! But today was not one of those days...

Today the mother of the house decided to get crafty and turned her hand to model making. The results were quite impressive.

(City village - of cereal boxes)
I think the kids really enjoyed this, I certainly did. I also brought home a rather large box which kept them busy for the rest of the night! Who know's what amazing architecture I will return home to tomorrow.

Green Grass Grub

This is a song for Green Grass Grub

Grubs.
Green Grass Grubs that squish and squash and they squirt and squelch.
They squiggle in your face.
Pooing on your nose and weeing in your hair!
Sticky grubs are sticky and that's the end!
(copyright all rights reserved)


(I'll have to request a spider song next... after the encounter with a huge Orb Weaver I'm sure there'll be a wealth of material to go into that one!)