Daily bread

The days have slipped into routine.

Wake up
Walk kids to bus stop
Clean house, or not
Read
Meet kids at bus stop
Cook dinner
Go to bed

Oh, and do paperwork. Loads and loads of paperwork. Paperwork from two governments that love to crank out the wood pulp products in duplicate and triplicate, among them the Australian census -- which I considered fun, I love filling in all those little bubbles -- and a giant heap from the REIQ where I am applying for my real estate agency license, the equivalent of a broker's license in the US. Please don't be too impressed. You basically buy the thing. There are 17 modules of instruction that must be completed, most focusing on marketing rather than ethics or legislation. That real estate licensees are lumped under the same government division as car salesmen is rather telling. It is estimated to take from 12 weeks to 12 months to complete, although with my busy schedule, I am thinking more like 12 days.

Oh, and we also enjoy unexpected visits from neighbors popping in for a cuppa. So far, probably because we leave all the doors and windows wide open (including the one the bird still crashes into), we've been surprised by several deliverymen; potential house-buyers who've noticed the For Sale sign out front with its advice to Enquire Within (I have to remember to black that part out); the ex-Kiwi-acupuncture-student mom and her kids, schoolmates of our girls; and my German friend returned yesterday with a basket of fresh eggs, homemade rosella jam, a bible, and several religious tracts. Not only is she an ex-Catholic, a description not meant as a snipe against anyone, but as a general characterization, one other ex-Catholics can appreciate, she is Jehovah's Witness. But we won't hold that against her. The earliest version of this year's planned homeschool curriculum included a study of the Old Testament, right after the epic of Gilgamesh and alongside our classical Greek studies. And in a poke at my mom, a gentle, humorous poke, not a snipe at all, the girls spent the evening in their bedroom reading What Does the Bible Really Teach? and looking up corresponding verses in the good book.


Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

-- Joe Hill (from The Preacher and the Slave)