The Kids Are Alright

Everyone wants to know, how are they doing, really?

For your consideration:

Exhibit A

The big crack you heard, that was Grice coming out of her shell. She nominated herself as a candidate for School Captain (a move which surprised us all), spent three weeks agonizing over the content of her speech, presented it Monday along with ten others vying for the position, and Tuesday was declared the winner in a landslide election. Next year she and her male counterpart will announce and present the weekly award certificates at the student assemblies Monday mornings, and perform the duties of Student Council member: organizing fundraising efforts and dances, and representing the school at formal events.

Exhibit B

Elle voted for someone else.


Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.

-- Harry S. Truman

Turkey Day

As an ex-pat, I’m feeling a tad left out this time of year, especially when my Yahoo page loads and the first thing I see is Martha’s glistening gravy boat and a link to six troubleshooting tips for the perfect mashed potato topping. I’m not knocking Martha, some of my best non-traditional Thanksgiving traditions were inspired by her, like Pommes Anna and sweet potato fritters (met by my father with a weak smile and a look as if awaiting a punchline or the appearance of some REAL potatoes), cranberry upside-down cake, and haricot vert with garlic and almond slivers.

As I was typing that I thought: Wow. With all this Thanksgiving talk I can almost smell the turkey cooking now. Wait. I do smell it. Or something…


(A BRIEF INTERLUDE WHILE I CLEAN UP THE CHICKEN SOUP THAT BOILED OVER)

Anyway, getting into the holiday spirit, I decided to list a few things I am thankful for today:

SELF-MOTIVATION

I haven’t got much, but I appreciate those around me who do.

-- Sarabelle surprised me this week by announcing she had gone in to see her principal to request taking advanced courses next year in order to graduate earlier. The principal will speak with her teachers about it.

-- Grice is presently working on an assignment to create a book for the first graders on energy. Her classmates’ efforts average around five pages. Grice is engrossed in the subject and has a rough draft comprising twenty fun-filled pages thus far.

-- Jorge has three jobs, like a proper immigrant. This morning he began with the second coat on a paint job for a neighbor, then went off to his regular daytime employment at a resort, and when he is done there he goes on to pull an overnighter as a security guard. We nearly laughed ourselves silly over that last one. The girls wanted to know if he had to wear an embarrassing uniform or got to carry a gun (no and no.) He is actually guarding the costume department and wardrobe for a movie that is shooting in town. Fool’s Gold stars Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, and Donald Sutherland, and is partly set in Key West with Port Douglas standing in for the southernmost isle. Imagine that, it’s cheaper to film halfway around the world and pretend its Key West than to actually do it there. Sure he has to stay all night with creepy mannequins staring at him, but he gets to sleep (his snoring scares away the bad guys), help himself to the food in the fridge, work on his real estate course, make more money than at his day job, and is privy to all Kate Hudson’s measurements. When he finds some extra time, he will finish his volunteer work cleaning and repairing the elementary school’s tennis court.

A DECENT HAIRCUT

I took a big chance today and got my hair cut by a complete stranger. I had been holding out for a return trip to the States so Todd, the guy I had been happily going to, could have at it again. Even if I had to wait another six months. See my photo up above? That's Todd Hair. He seriously scared me at my first appointment after I requested he just “do something with it,” flinging hair up in the air over my head as he sliced away, keeping up a constant chatter and rarely taking his eyes off himself as he spoke -- you couldn’t blame him, a big strapping lad who beautician’s license photo reminded me of a young Richard Grieco, though Todd’s eyebrows were more devilish – but the results were wonderful. Of course, Todd was a stranger when I first went to him, but our mutual friend, J, spoke very highly of him and her hair alone was a big endorsement.

Then J told me that Todd was killed in a car accident in September.

I got a little teary while the new hairdresser shampooed me today. She did an adequate job, didn’t get any soap in my eyes, even did a relaxing massage-y kind of thing, but it wasn’t nearly as invigorating or as fun as having your whole scalp rearranged like Elmer Fudd’s in The Barber of Seville episode, while listening to Todd’s latest exploits and his big, booming, contagious laugh.

Her cut was very precise, not exactly a bad thing when it comes to a haircut, and though she asked far too many questions instead of delivering a cheery, snarky monologue, to her credit she didn’t try to sell me any fancy skincare treatments even if my complexion currently resembles someone in a Faces of Meth “after” photo (it’s just hormones and humidity, Mom), and for that I am especially thankful.

FRIENDS

Old ones, new ones, ones who surprise you with a bottle of hard-to-find ant juice.

NEWSAGENTS WITH LARGE SELECTIONS

Went in for a few school and office supplies, came out with The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel; Lisey’s Story; Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (wherein I have discovered I am an Oxford comma kind of girl); and another Lynne Truss effort, Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door. I also noticed Carl has a new book out, Nature Girl, but I decided to show some self-control.

THIS

...along with the built in iSight camera on my laptop enables me to scan in all the UPC symbols from all my books and get my library under control. Best program ever.

HELLMAN’S/BEST FOODS MAYONNAISE AND THE ONE GROCER IN ALL OF FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND THAT CARRIES IT

There is no substitute. Slap some on white bread, add a little stuffing and a lot of black pepper and think of me.

Happy Thanksgiving!


'Twas founded be th' Puritans to give thanks f'r bein' presarved fr'm th' Indyans, an' . . . we keep it to give thanks we are presarved fr'm th' Puritans.

-- Finley Peter Dunne [Mr. Dooley]

Happy Birthday!

Awwww, look at those little ridges!

(Donna, I replied to your note below.)

We received an excited phone call this morning: Ashaki was missing all morning but they just found her and she was having her puppies right now!

We jumped in the car and arrived to find her tucked under the woodpile with her new litter. When they settle in a bit, we'll go pick out a little girl.


I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

-- Alexander Pope (on the collar of a dog)

Funky

As The Wet gets underway I am noticing some new things, particularly the way things smell. There is a peculiar scent I now associate with The Wet: Body Funk, a condition that borrows its appellation from an ineptly named piercing and tattoo shop down in trendy Port.

I noticed it immediately when we moved into the first house. A subtle whiff of putrefaction, nothing as obvious as a dead animal though nearly as gagging; one not easily identified or located, but one which punches you in the face when you finally discover its font of nastiness. An appalling, wandering, ghastly smell; heavier, cheesier than any standard mold or mildew stank you’ll ever come across. It turned out to be the fabric shower curtain the owners had left behind, the source pinpointed after I had the misfortune of taking too close a sniff. The second instance of the creeping crud was detected while viewing a property for sale up near Cooktown. This time it was our tour guide. The realization that this stench could manifest itself in human form was truly frightening. Good God, could I ever possibly smell like that? But granted, this guy was a hermit who lived in an open shed, a roof and no walls, out in the bush, whose hygiene appeared to be slightly lacking to begin with. Recently we looked at another property for sale, a charmingly ramshackle Queenslander on five acres, a bargain, that we might have snapped up were it not for the odiferous emanations wafting out of the bath house. The termite damage, the bedroom that was nothing more than an open porch, none of that that fazed us, but, put it this way, our own family’s body funk we might be able to tolerate, but we are not going to spend money for someone else’s. A few days ago I again crossed paths with the noxious scent. My friend, who is generally clean and well kempt, opened her car door and it blasted me. Was it her or her vehicle? I’m not going to get close enough again to find out, but if she could stink like that…

I showered before bed last night and woke this morning smelling like someone’s grandfather. Maybe I should reconsider my mother’s Christmas offer of a new bottle of Chanel No. 5.

Like lice, apparently body funk is just another inconvenience of life in the tropics.


That smell…that smelly smell that smells smelly…

-- Mr. Krabs

The OK Corral

Yesterday our friends invited us greenhorns over to watch, help, stay out of the way, whatever, while they tagged and branded seventy head of their cattle headed off to market. They thought we might enjoy it and we did. We watched mostly, we helped a little (I closed one chute door once), and stayed out of the way a whole lot, especially when that last little heifer freaked out and caused a heap o' trouble kicking our friends' dad squarely in the...well, ouch, use your imagination.

After a while, the girls got restless and went off to round up some wild mulberries.




As I was a-walking one morning for pleasure,
I spied a cowpuncher a-riding along.
Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies,
It’s your misfortune and none of my own,
Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little doggies,
For you know Wyoming will be your new home.

-- Anonymous

Ashaki

See the big belly? Less than a week to go...

Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, is bordered on the north by the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, but the girls do not care about the literary roots of the name, nor the fact that it comes from one of their mother's favorite stories, they refuse to call their dog Limpopo.

Any other great ideas?


Somewhere, what with all these clouds, and all this air,
There must be a rare name, somewhere…
How do you like “Cloud-Cuckoo-Land”?

-- Aristophanes (Birds)

Melbourne Cup

The Kentucky Derby ain’t got nothing on the Melbourne Cup.

Jorge, without my prior consent, volunteered us to assist today running the Sweepstakes that our local tavern was hosting in conjunction with Australia’s most famous horse race, with twenty percent of the take to benefit our elementary school. Good thing we went too because the other key person did not show up making Jorge and I two-thirds of the team. We sold tickets and raised about $1,000 for the school’s P&C.

As with any official school sponsored event, there was alcohol served so Jorge and I spent the afternoon swilling champagne because unlike the Derby there is no official drink associated with the event.

Unless you live in Kentucky, when was the last time your teachers stopped their lessons and made you listen to a horse race on the radio? Grice was fortunate enough to have to deliver a paper to the office and got to see it live on television with the rest of the staff. Several of the teachers wore hats. Apparently funny hats are de riguer. Men and women arrived for the prix fixe lunch wearing fancy outfits and “fascinators”, Australian for “funny hats”. The fascinating part was figuring out what bird gave his or her life to spend eternity perched on the head of these people. For weeks the Cairns Post has featured full-page spreads on Melbourne Cup fashions. For those who must know, I wore my fifteen-year old Liz Claiborne tropical print linen skirt and newer button down cream, French cuff blouse (the same outfit, sans pearls, I wore and ended up on the front page of the Boca Beacon with my boss and Catsitter Extraordinare for the premiere of Hoot.) It was hot and I was sweating, which almost inspired me to bet on Glistening in the Calcutta event, an auction for each of the twenty-three horses running in the Cup, because we all know women don’t sweat, they glisten, but Pop Rock was our first choice being the only name that rang a bell (our kids have eaten them and we are not so old that we haven’t enjoyed them either) until our hostess, the owner of the tavern, outbid us. Then I thought we might buy Mandela, being all politically correct and all. Instead, caught up in the excitement of the day -- and after having our glasses refilled several times -- we ended up wildly bidding on Delta Blues because it was the most American sounding horse after Pop Rock, and because Jorge had just spent a few days in New Orleans with his brother and niece surveying investment potential there before returning to Australia, and because it reminded me of Jorge’s buddy Mike, whose favorite blues tune is Stormy Monday by the Allman Brothers, and because, well, I don’t know, just because.

Our new landlord and his wife were there. Let’s just say there is no doubt we will be able to make the rent this month. And I could even afford a hat or two.

Melbourne Cup Results


Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck.

-- Donald Horne (The Lucky Country)

Moving

The last two weeks or so have been jam-packed. Grice and Elle had swimming for HPE (Health and Physical Education, pronounced “Haych Pee Ee”) which I volunteered to help out with all day and all week long, then there was a P&C (Parent and Community, pronounced the usual way) meeting and pot luck supper, plus the high school’s annual sort-of-near-the-end-of-the-year award ceremony where Sarabelle received a Merit Award, and we also packed up all our belongings and relocated to our newest temporary abode with all the difficulties of new phone and internet service, so please excuse the break in posting.

We’re now living in a guesthouse on the side of a mountain. The owners’ property includes most of the mountain, their fortress of a house up above us, and the 40-acre piece with the convertible stables, two creeks, and several ponds that they recently subdivided and will be placing on the market down below. The owners don’t mind creative financing, they don’t need the money, but are primarily concerned with finding good neighbors because the properties share access and water systems. They are taking us out for a test drive.

The cottage is only a one bedroom, one bath space, but it has soaring ceilings, plenty of square footage, an almost-gourmet kitchen, laundry, large screened back dining porch, and a very clean bathroom. The owners were beach resort developers so the place has the feel of super-roomy, upscale motel accommodations from the generic artwork to the headboard and hair dryer mounted on the walls. The best part though is the land itself. The property was formerly a working mine and logging site so there are trails and roads all over the place. Our landlord maintains the old roads, connected some others, and pushed a few new ones in too. From their house you can see the mountains all the way down south to Cairns, about a 90-minute drive from here, and if you take the path up past their house, you can see the sea. There’s a 90-foot waterfall and spots with names like Picnic Pasture where you can laze around after a hike through the rainforest. It’s like having your own private park. When I was around nine, back in the days when childhood was fun and dangerous, we visited friends of my father in Connecticut who lived across from a beautiful park with terraced rock gardens and heavily landscaped walks. With endless hiding places and armed with coffee cans full of marbles, we played the most fabulous war game ever (and nobody even lost an eye.) Now my kids can experience the same delights.

Elle, after a walk down the mountain where we discovered the back side of one of the horse paddocks, crossed a hillside covered with blue-tops, and found three ponds before visiting the creek this afternoon, excitedly said, “Let’s go adventure some more stuff, Mom!”


Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape – he is a shaper of the landscape. In body and in mind he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous animal, who did not find but has made his home on every continent.

-- Jacob Bronowski (The Ascent of Man)