Creepy Crawly

1) With Halloween right around the corner and no celebration in sight -- why, oh, why isn't it a big deal down here, I wonder -- I read Stephen King's latest, Duma Key. Duma Key, in case you're wondering (and even if you're not), is a fictional island just off the southwest coast of Florida, and is connected to our own island, Little Gasparilla by way of Don Pedro, on its scary south side by an equally fictional footbridge. While it was fun to spot familiar places, Dan's Fan City, the Nokomis 7-11, and Casey Key, and frequent mentions of The Bone, "Tampa Bay's Classic Rock Station," there were a couple nights spent wishing I didn't have to get out bed and walk all the way down the hall, about ten whole steps, to the pitch black bathroom.

2) Grice went to a sleepover not too long ago and now we're all enjoying a rerun of The Itchy and Scratchy Show. One of the only things I will not miss about this place. As a potential card-carrying member of the National Pediculosis Association, please join me in celebrating "September Is Head Lice Prevention Month". Oh, damn. It's October.

3) The post office clerk commented when I sent off my absentee ballot the other day (return receipt requested, thank you) that she had seen quite a few of these come through lately. People who hadn't voted in years were making it a point to have theirs counted in this very important election. She predicts a landslide. When questioned about the potential winner, she winked and said she believed it would be "something new!" for America. A woman VP? Nah, we've already done "stupid," so I'm thinking she meant a black guy. Or Ralph Nader. And later that day, turning in Grice's donations for her 40-Hour Famine fundraiser, her teacher, an honest-to-goodness bleeding-heart liberal if ever there was one, tossed out a few favorite bits from Bowling For Columbine and expressed his fervent hopes for a non-McCain/Palin win. (I'd quote him, but many times in conversations with Aussies I'm left feeling as if I need subtitles. Move your lips, people!) I was feeling quite optimistic until I got home and read an article on the Bradley effect.


People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

-- Epictetus

Reality? Check.

Some of you already know that I have a vivid imagination. And sometimes, late at night especially, I hear things. Sometimes they're false alarms and sometimes there's actually something to them.

Like last week. I heard a bang and a squeal of tires and announced to the girls that I thought I'd just heard an accident on the highway, maybe right at the top of our street. Sound travels very well up the side of our mountain. "Yeah, right," was the general consensus. I was vindicated 15 minutes later when we heard a siren. We knew it was pretty serious when we heard the helicopter about 20 minutes after that. Our neighbors' horse escaped his paddock and was hit by a van with eight passengers. The horse split the van in half and came to rest inside the vehicle behind the driver's seat. The van rolled over, but everybody, except the horse, survived with minor injuries.

And then, the night before last, I awoke to a loud ssshhhhhhh-ing sound. I bolted out of a deep sleep and after finally getting my gummy eyes to focus, noticed the room being lit by a rhythmic pulsing glow which caused further disorientation until I realized the power had gone off and then back on resetting the clocks on the microwave and stove and restarting the ceiling fan. Phew. Then I heard the noise again. A few possibilities shot through my mind: The wind? The water heater cycling on? The water heater springing a leak and shooting high-pressure water all over the place? And then I realized it was coming from directly overhead. Up in the attic, whose floor creates the ceiling of the small nook where I sleep. I held my breath. My fingertips were buzzing with adreneline. It sounded like a sandbag being dragged around. A very heavy sandbag. A very, long, heavy sandbag that could be dragging around on both the left and right side of the alcove ceiling simultaneously. It was a snake. A big one. Lulu, our faithful guardian and protector, looked up at the ceiling and whimpered. Little bits of plaster fell inside the wall behind my head as it shifted around and that's when I remembered a) the news story of the local man who had a snake so large in his attic it collapsed his ceiling; and b) the attic access door in the girls' bedroom. It was headed that way. Luckily the door only swings inward, so unless a big gust of wind chanced to blow it open, as it has done on occasion, I figured that was fairly secure. I wanted to wedge a fishing pole through the door handle but I needed a ladder and I was not going outside in the pitch black to drag it in. Except, really, what did I have to fear, the worst thing out there was already inside my house. Then I set to worrying about the hole in the wall, a snake-sized gap cut to allow the knob on the door between our rooms to swing fully open and not dent the drywall. I propped the door open with a large trunk, doorknob filling the hole, and hoped for the best. I listened hard thinking that if the basilisk started whispering to me I would lose it. After an hour, the noise became almost inaudible and concentrated near the outside wall, where it presumably slipped back outside through the eaves.

I'm guessing (hoping) it was a python and it was just wandering around looking for some tasty vermin and that when it didn't find any (and since we didn't hear anything last night) it decided to keep wandering outside. I'm sure this one wasn't a figment of my imagination, and I'm sure not going up there to find out.


Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.

-- Francisco Goya

Neighbors

Our friend Em brought this over for us. It's one of three recently shed python skins they found on various parts of their house and landscaping. This is the entire skin, all nine feet of it, from the tip of its nose and eye coverings to the very end of its tail.



She knew we'd appreciate it.



And we did. Some more than others.




I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.

-- W. C. Fields

Bits

I haven't posted much. Nothing much has been happening, and with the Red Sox in the playoffs and then in the World Series again, nothing I could have posted would have been more interesting than that to my family members abroad, as evidenced by recent phone calls unfortunately timed to first pitches. Look, you all had 2004. Wasn't that enough?

We are in the throes of planning another summer holiday/Christmas visit to Florida. You can imagine how excited I am about that. Jorge should be traveling over with us and then is planning to remain in Florida after the holidays to get a few contracts underway. Like last year we may have another overnight in Tokyo, which nicely breaks up the trip, but unlike last year we are expecting to bring along Grice's friend, B. We traded B's mom four weeks of a whirlwind trip overseas for her daughter for four weeks caring for our dog. We definitely came out on top in that deal.

Speaking of animals, we have noticed a frilled-neck lizard hanging around the house. Early one Saturday morning for a photo I had Grice chase him around a tree trying to get him riled up enough to show off his frill. A friend happened to mention that they were particularly nasty creatures with very sharp claws who will climb right up and shred your person if it helps them get to where they want to go. So, sorry, no pics for you. On the friendlier animal scene, we've got a pair of blue kookaburras (not the laughing kind) we've been feeding, hoping to train them to come up and eat out of our hands one day.

We have the last round of our tennis club championships coming up this weekend and then I will be officially retiring from tennis. Elle is more interested in aikido right now and Grice may want to try out AFL. Sarabelle will probably continue with tennis, but she can try out for the team at school if she really wants to play.

Interesting Australian euphemisms we've recently encountered:

"Wobbly bits", as in "Do you have cellulite and other wobbly bits?" Seen in a magazine advertisement while waiting for our visa appointment, launching us into explosive giggles while trying unsuccessfully to be all serious for the crabby immigration people. (In spite of our less than serious attitude we still managed to get our Returning Resident Visas renewed, and for five years too!)

"Special cuddles", a very innocuous and roundabout way of saying "sex."

And incongruously, how's this for a friendly how do you do: "Keepin' ya knees togetha, love?"


I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Wild Kingdom

Jorge has always been a stop-the-car-and-save-the-animals kind of guy. He found this one on the way home from work recently and rescued it from an untimely, messy highway death. The kids named it Smacky. I don't know why.





In case any of the authorities are reading this, we are not going to keep it, we know you need an "Official Government License" to possess these creatures. Relax, Smacky is merely recuperating from his traumatic near-miss and will be released one day soon.

Here is our temporary, illegal visitor demonstrating the reason for the appellation "blue-tongued lizard."



My three-year old nephew could not believe his ears when I told him we have kangaroos out in our front yard nibbling the grass every morning, so, see for yourself, B.! Aunt L is not telling tall tales. Except these three were actually in the side yard...



And here's a mama and her joey racing us down the driveway. You can glimpse our humble abode in the background.



Late in the afternoon, just before the sun sets over the mountain, it blazes the most intense orange. This shot's a little blurry, I had only a few seconds to try to capture the effect of the color blasting down our hallway (We're losing the light, people! We're losing the light!) but Lulu was on fire.



Yesterday honking horns alerted us to the fact that some of the unfenced stock were out wreaking havoc on the road. Elle, Lulu, and I watched amused for awhile and then went back inside. Ridgebacks, though they are hounds, are known for their lack of barkiness, being highly intelligent and discriminating with their warnings -- Lulu usually just jumps to attention, stands like a statue, and gives a little "BUH" when she hears something that disturbs her normally napping state -- but she started barking away at the back door so we got up to take a look. The cows were in our back yard. And fortunately Lulu was there to save us.



Then our fearless dog ran them off.




All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

-- George Orwell (Animal Farm)

Mortein is a Girl's Best Friend

That can is never out of reach.

Unlike a kinder, gentler blogger I know, I have no qualms about blasting Charlotte or any of her progeny into oblivion; there are just too many of them to elicit any sympathy from me. This week the cockroaches made their scheduled mid-Wet appearance, a few flying ants have made their way back inside, and to add to the plague-like manifestations, we had a mouse.

We arrived home from our overnight at the resort to find one of the Roma tomatoes left on the windowsill neatly hollowed out. That night the intruder was spotted dashing across the floor of the living area toward the kitchen. Bushcraft books were consulted for information on homemade mousetraps, including one with a greased beer bottle cantilevered over a bucket of water. My more compassionate housemates would have none of it. He'll drown! they whined. They were not appeased by my assertion I would wake when I heard the splash, rescue him, and release him outdoors. And it had to be a "him," because considering the possibility it was a "her," and a potentially pregnant "her" at that, would have sent me hightailing it back to the resort. (Not a bad plan, actually.)

Without anywhere to hide other than behind the dishwasher, he was easy to spot as he darted along the wall under our suspended lower cabinets like a duck in a shooting gallery. I set a bucket on its side with a peanutbutter-covered cracker as bait and stationed Jorge nearby with a broom to sweep him into the bucket when he approached. Jorge waited for about five minutes before abandoning his post, mumbling something about him being an idiot to consider such a plan. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Out came the Mortein. A shot behind the dishwasher sent him out of there in a hurry. Without Jorge on duty, he tried to make it to the bedroom, unsuccessfully, as I had the forethought to block the gap below the door with a towel. Back to the safety of the dishwasher where I gassed him unmercifully. For two days we waited for a tell-tale odor or the appearance of blowflies and considered how in the world we would extract the rodent's remains from deep inside the machine.

Nothing.

As I'd feared, the insecticide had probably only given him a tremendous buzz and, I suspected, changed him into a mutant killer mouse waiting for me to fall asleep to eat my face.

Elle's scream and a door slam announced his appearance in the pantry last night. The new plan was to keep the pantry sealed off until Jorge could bring home a trap. A humane trap! they whined. Jorge had already left work and could not be reached in time to communicate the need for the equipment. Fortunately he had picked up a six-pack on his way home, and when he opened the pantry door to throw out the bottles' shrinkwrap, there was the mouse distractedly munching garbage. Jorge easily reached down, picked the mouse off the top of the pile with the plastic wrap, and tossed him out the door.

He'll be back.

And I'll be waiting.


Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

-- The Holy Bible (Revelation 6:8)

The Bold and the Beautiful

This fellow, a giant rhinoceros beetle, sent Grice screaming to the back of the house where she slammed the door behind her in terror after it emitted its trademark defensive hiss. The twenty-cent piece is slightly larger than a quarter.



This little critter didn't make it. It expired out on the porch, but was so pretty we kept it around for a few days just to admire its gorgeous machine-like exterior. You can see the reflection of the ceiling's flourescent light fixture, as well as the photographer, if you look closely.

---

UPDATES: Cyclone Nelson fell apart and we had, instead of torrential rains, two spectacularly clear, cool days. After about a week straight of rain, it was a pleasant change. Today is also very nice, breezy, less humid, like winter in Florida.

Lulu has had her collar moved back two notches, so she is definitely growing, though you probably wouldn't notice much in a photo yet. She is what our friend calls "a goer," meaning she is full of pep. Playing with her littermates, she is still going strong long after the others have collapsed in puppy piles of exhaustion. Unfortunately, sometimes she mistakes Elle for a littermate. Housebreaking was not all that difficult. She lets us know when she wants to go out, practically pees on command, and is very private about leaving any hard evidence around. We tried crate training as a means of preventing any nighttime accidents and she adapted fairly well. She still sleeps inside the house, right at my feet, the crate mostly forgotten, but we do use it when, say, I have to go grocery shopping and she would have to wait in the car for too long a time. When she's full grown and there's no chance of someone swiping her, or of her going AWOL, she can come with us and wait in the car, windows down, like a proper Aussie dog. She obeys "sit," "down," "drop it," and the ever popular "no biting." We're working on getting her to come immediately when called, but she is still a puppy after all.

Oh, and re: The Wet, I forgot to mention the leeches.


Information is not knowledge.

-- Albert Einstein

Vale, Jack

December 26, 2001 - February 2, 2007

***

Jack Emerson, beloved pet and official principal of our homeschool, passed away peacefully in his sleep after suffering a tragic eye injury.

Thank you C, C, and N for loving him and taking such good care of him while we were away, and for keeping him comfortable his last few days.


The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one great thing.

-- Archilochus

Biology 101

Just because we aren't presently homeschooling doesn't mean I could pass up a valuable learning opportunity. No, siree. Our friends had their steer, Prince, butchered and we came over to watch and lend a hand. Prince had been dressed the day before and had been hanging in cold storage over night.

Here is the mobile butcher's well-stocked truck as seen from our front row seats...



The heart...



A kidney...



Sarabelle packing up some fat...



The team at work at the packing table...



Our friend doing his Rocky Balboa imitation...



And, finally, Bill the Butcher takes a smoko...



After observing the business from the middle stage, and now being somewhat comfortable around large quantities of dead cow, we followed Bill down to the cattle yard to see the first step in the process, the slaughtering and dressing (or undressing, if you will) of another cow.

Sorry, no pictures for you.


I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.

-- William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

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

After hearing the story from a friend about how upon responding to the shrieks of her five month old she discovered a huge python in the baby’s crib -- they did what any self-respecting Aussie would do, they put it outside. The snake. Not the baby -- and after I publicly outed myself as a paranoid with a vivid imagination who can’t differentiate between a psychotic murderer and my washing machine, and after breaking my promise to myself and foolishly watching another couple of scary movies, I must tell you this:

Last night around midnight, after being awakened by the two cups of coffee I had swilled right before bed, I climbed back under the covers and heard another noise.

Scritch scrotch,scritch scrotch

Coming from inside the house. In the kitchen, again. And I hadn’t done any laundry lately.

I crept through the house and in the dark could make out a bulky shape moving by the back door. By the size I determined the uninvited guest was not two-legged and by the scratching I determined it was not no-legged.

Please don’t be a rat…please don’t be a rat…please don’t be a rat…

I switched on the porch light to softly illuminate the intruder and found this:



Armed with a broom I tried to gently push the soccer ball-sized mass of spines toward the now open back door but he defensively curled up into the corner and eventually worked himself under the cabinet below the laundry sink. I called Jorge who offered no help, and only laughed about the most elusive creature in our neighborhood, the echidna, one I’d been trying to catch a glimpse of for months since he spotted some by our driveway coming home late one night, being trapped in our kitchen. The kids were woken up to experience nature face-to-face. Sarabelle was put on guard with the broom while I gathered coolers and trunks to cordon off the area. With the lights turned back off, he waddled out the door about ten minutes later.



How long was he in the house? We had been out to dinner for a couple hours. Did he nose the not-so-securely-closed door open while we were out? Or had he strolled in during the day while I had the back door propped open? We’ll never know. But he was inside long enough to wander around unnoticed through the house and leave us a surprise in the unused third bedroom.




Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start away sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!

-- Robert Burns (To a Mouse)

Licked

Maybe because we all looked like Professor Quirrell or because I felt like Professor Snape, we sat through the first three Harry Potter movies Monday. It was the only way to keep all four of us distracted and still long enough to kill all the bugs. The other suggestion was to take everyone scuba diving. At some point the creepy crawlies would simply be crushed by the pressure. I chose the less expensive option:

1 1/2 cups Olive Oil
80 drops Tea Tree Oil
60 drops Eucalyptus Oil
40 drops Thyme Oil


Nasty little buggers.

-- Oliver Wood (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

Pick, pick, pick

If God knows how many hairs on our heads, surely he knows how many hairs I pulled off my daughter's yesterday, because I lost count after the first several dozen. All the websites instruct you to comb through wet, conditioned hair to allow the nits (a.k.a. louse eggs) to slide off BUT THEY LIE. These things do not slide off and after listening to Elle shriek a few times and finally flat out cry, we switched to the less painful removal process of yanking each affected hair out by the roots. She fell asleep in my lap, poor infested little darling.

I planned to keep her home again today to do a second round, but was assured by more than one parent that it is not worth having her miss school since the other kids are loaded as well, you are not protecting them nor protecting her, so after washing out the conditioner that she slept in under a shower cap to smother any live critters with citronella soap and coating her again with more conditioner mixed with a few drops of Tea Tree Oil, I pulled her hair tightly into two pigtails, ran through the cautions about hugging, sharing hats and hairbrushes, instructed her to politely and discreetly disobey her teacher's instructions to "lie like logs" on the carpeted floor at storytime, and sent her off.

Now it's Grice's turn.

Sarabelle and I have clean heads and we plan on keeping it that way. I purchased a bottle of disinfectant touted by the manufacturers as being the appointed producer of antiseptics, air fresheners, polishes, cleaners, and laundry products for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to sanitize all hair brushes and combs. The awful, ultra clean sickroom smell of the stuff fills our house and I wonder if this is what her royal highness smells like up close.

The next few weeks will entail a routine of combing Tea Tree-conditioned hair at least twice weekly to break the cycle and lots of laundry, although burning all garments and bedding in a large bonfire still holds major appeal, and I'll bet if we were to dance naked around the fire all the neighbors would keep their buggy little kids away.

Jorge sends his sympathies but we all agree it is much better that our dear, obsessive compulsive cleaner is on the other side of the planet.


Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation: not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive what ills you are free from yourself is pleasant.

-- Lucretius

Heebie Jeebies

Some people have wondered what it was that set us off on our homeschooling journey. Initially I had no altruistic or lofty goals, those came much later. Mostly, it was because it was easier than the alternative; easier to keep them in one place than registering, unregistering, and re-registering during our unsettled period; easier than traveling back and forth two times a day in a boat I wasn't very skilled at operating in questionable weather; easier than getting up too early in the morning; easier than preparing uniforms and lunches and participating in giftwrap and bake sales. Way easier.

My number one reason for educating my children at home, however, was to avoid this.

During our recent conversion to public education, we had been fairly lucky in avoiding this particular plague.

Until today.

Elle has had an itchy head for the past few weeks. Never saw anything. No nits, no bugs, no bites, no redness, no flakes. Nada. Nothing.

Then today, after moisturizing her scalp all night with coconut oil in an attempt to relieve a possibly dry scalp, and a discussion with the Sunday Market's soap crafter about the most beneficial bar for itchy skin, and the purchase of Neutrogena T-Gel shampoo and a special comb just to be sure, we found what appears to be
our first nit.

Go ahead, scratch your head in sympathy. It is feeling pretty crawly up there right about now, isn't it? Guess who she's been sleeping with all week since Dad left?

Giving credit where credit is due, the teacher/dad of one of the girl's friends did not snatch his daughter and run screaming in the other direction when I sought his expert opinion today. He said lice are a part of living in the tropics and no big deal. They have gone several rounds with the nasty little buggers in his home.

Tomorrow the kids will stay home and we will douse ourselves in highly toxic pesticide.

Or shave our heads.

Or both.


I consider your conduct unethical and lousy.

-- Peter Arno

Bringing you up to (really slow dial-up) speed

Why, hello again! Let’s see, what has been going on since iWeb imploded…

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Jorge had a head-on in Mrs. Troopie. A “smash-up” they call it. He’s okay, the other driver was okay, but Mrs. Troopie, well, we’ll be keeping her for spare parts. Jorge has decided that she is the Best Vehicle Ever and one day we’ll get another one. For now, he’s got the 4 Runner and I’m home playing the role of farm wife, modern farm wife with her MacBook Pro, keeping myself warm cooking up huge meals for the family’s tea time. (Your main early evening meal, or dinner, is “tea,” which may or may not include that particular beverage; a light bite later in the evening is “supper.” Tea may be had anytime but is referred to as “a cuppa.” On the job Jorge gets a 30-minute “smoko,” a midmorning break originally named in the old days for a cigarette break but smoking is not permitted anywhere these days, and not lunch but a 15-minute “sit down.” Got it?)

I thought we were living in Australia, but apparently we’ve made a wrong turn and ended up in Scotland or Ireland or the Pacific Northwest or some other lovely, green, wet, cold place. The locals are freaked out by the weather. The paper has already run their special pull-out pictorial supplement titled, “The Big Wet,” chronicling the unusually high rain falls, flooding, and ferocious cyclones. I suppose everyone thought that meant it should be over by now, like Bush’s, “Mission Accomplished,” but, no, it continues to drizzle and I am forced to cook to justify turning on the gas stove, our only source of heat. We are all adapting, resigning ourselves to constant sogginess and bad hair lives, but I am wondering what the lack of sunshine will eventually do me. Will I need a sunlamp? Vitamin D supplements? Antidepressants?

Hornblower…?!

PROPERTY

For nearly the same price (check currency conversion rates here) we can choose one of the following, all in the same neighborhood – the same super wet, green neighborhood henceforth known as Green Acres -- all available as lease/purchases or with extended closings:

A) The house we are in now – 6.5 acres, seasonal creek, concrete block house in need of major renovations, too close to highway. $360,000 AUD

B) Beautiful custom built house, 3.5 acres, small but enlargeable pond, well back off road. ASKING $360,000 AUD

C) 40 acres, two clean permanent creeks, liveable stable for use during construction of a house or easily convertible to a house, well off the road. Owner has maintained old logging and mining trails through this and his adjoining 160+ acres for fabulous walking/horseback riding. ASKING $360,000 AUD

Do I even need to tell you which one has us most excited?

Another really tempting one is:

-- 119 acres with a five bedroom house, granny flat (2 bedroom apartment downstairs), inground pool, great raised bed vegetable gardens, pastures, ranch hand quarters, numerous other outbuildings (barns and such) four dams (ponds), one kilometer of river frontage bordering the property with a side branch of the river running through the property, and all the necessary equipment, fences and squeezers etc., for running a few head of cattle. Just outside the rainforest, much drier with more sun and less rainfall. One end of the property is located at a major crossroads (some highway noise) which makes for good development potential (ability to subdivide a few riverfront acres that would essentially pay for the place), and the other end is "downtown," referring to the center of a village with 225 people in it. This one is $550,000 AUD and would pretty much take all we’ve got but is a bargain for the price.

I think I’ve seen every inch of property in the Green Acres surrounds; I should be a real estate agent. Oh, wait, I am, though I only seem to spend money.

SCOOL

The girls started their first full week today (Monday, July 17). Grice and Elle go off barefoot (though I make them carry their Crocs in their backpacks because the thought of using the school toilets without shoes on makes me gag) and Elle wears her uniform hat from the moment she goes out the door until she comes home, looking like Corporal Agarn on F-Troop.

Sarabelle went off to her first day of high school last week adamantly refusing to make any friends because that would make it that much easier to return to her old friends in the States, and because we’ve seen Mean Girls, and came home that afternoon excitedly telling tales of all the nice girls she had met. She’s already volunteered to be a buddy to the Japanese students coming in a few weeks and has asked her Japanese teacher for all the lessons she missed from the first half of the year so she can communicate better with the visitors. Sarabelle ended up in Grade 8, a recommendation by the Deputy Principal, so that she will be with same aged peers –- something she assured me is “quite important at this age” -- and because Grade 8 students sample all the electives before choosing their classes in Grade 9. Sarabelle thinks school is pathetically easy, for example her homework assignment was six pages of coloring in fractions, so is certain she will have straight A’s on her first report card. For an assignment to write twenty historic events – we used our Greek timeline and threw in major events in American history i.e. the Declaration of Independence, creation of the Constitution, Civil War – the teacher commented, “We don’t care much about American history, we’ve got our own.” Sara and I had a laugh about it, because we know ours is so much more exciting and interesting being based on revolution and rebellion… What have they got? Convict settlements. Take that Mrs. Stick-up-yer-arse. You can despise American culture all you want, I do, just don’t disrespect my Founding Fathers, got it? She’s also been penalized (penalised?) by another teacher for her American spelling. It’s “artefact” not “artifact” and “civilisation” not “civilization,” but again we had a laugh because Sarabelle, Miss Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee Participant, had one whole week to study and learn the new, correct Australian spelling. She’s got Hippocratic Writings and Archimedes and the Door of Science tucked under her bed, and both she and Grace eagerly agreed to work on at least one lesson from their Saxon Math every weekend. I’m not worried.

Grice is now halfway through Grade 6 and Elle halfway through Grade 1 though they just finished Grade 5 and Kindergarten, respectively, back in Florida. Grice received the sweetest card her second day from a little girl, a classmate, who lives across the street, stating that she would like to be Grice’s friend and eventually have her over after school. Elle received a journal to record her nightly reading and in the space reserved for comments on her very first assignment wrote, “I liked it but next time I need a harder book.”

So, they’re doing just fine, thank you.

A relatively new development in Queensland education has been the inclusion of religious lessons in the curriculum. In order to please everybody, or most anyway, families are given a choice of Catholic, general Christian (Protestant), Baha'i, or Non-religious training for their once-a-week class. I speculated the Non-religious class may be basically a free period and was told, oh, no, the children may silently read or work on their homework. Yeah, that's what I thought. I initially chose the Baha'i instruction, which teaches there is one god that all major religions worship and that all prophets of various beliefs are mouthpieces for this one being, though there are differences in the interpretations. The class examines the commonalities between all religions and focuses on values, specifically living The Golden Rule. My kids nearly had a stroke (as I’m sure my mother will when she reads this) and insisted they go for the Non-religious (free period) class, which also happens to be the class that 95% of the other students are in. Whatever.

WILDLIFE

We’ve got a pair of Little Kingfishers, brilliant blue and white birds, which according to our identification book are not often seen. These two are very visible here, perching on our garden fence and divebombing the minnows in the fishpond. The one we assume to be the male, the bigger of the two, crashes into our living room window at least 20 times a day. At first we thought he was attacking his reflection. We think he must be braindamaged. If he wasn’t before, he sure is now. We’ve got to find a way to scare him away from that window.

CURRENT EVENTS

What in the world is going on out there? Without cable television, a high-speed home internet connection*, NPR, or any factual, unbiased newspaper to read, I am in the dark about the goings-on in the rest of the world. Australian news is mostly national and then mostly sports related. Sunday evening dinner at a local pub gave us our first glimpse of the situation in Israel. As one patron said watching the cable broadcast of launching missiles, “Five minutes of the evening news can ruin your whole day.”

We sure hope Grice and Elle’s former Florida teachers have postponed their trip to Israel and that all their family is safe and sound.

* Two-year contracts with hefty penalties and expensive disconnect and reconnection fees are the norm here, so until we find our final destination we are still using the internet café in town. Now that we only have the one vehicle, trips into to town are few and far between.

The sun did not shine,
it was too wet to play,
so we sat in the house
all that cold, wet, wet day.

-- Theodore Geisel (Dr. Suess)

B-Day

It seems we’ve been celebrating Elle’s birthday for weeks.

Last night, after presents and cupcakes at the house, we went to dinner in Port Douglas ending the night with a round of shots for our entire table, courtesy of our waitress, Naughty Natty. Letting the kids do shots -- virgin, in my own defense -- is probably not the high point in my parenting career, but it was definitely memorable.

Today was spent on horseback riding in the mountains. The owner of the business and our tour guide, S, took us on a great ride through the rainforest on part of Queensland’s oldest, and long since abandoned, logging road, along the top of a ridge overlooking Mossman Gorge with views to the sea, and back across her spectacular pastures. S is a former model who grew up with horses, ran with Jerry Hall back in the days, and is now back on the farm. She had us greenhorns whipped into shape in no time riding the intermediate trails. At one point a dirtbike rider came down the path though it is clearly marked as a violation of park laws, and S threw herself in front of the motorcycle, railing at the guy for disregarding the rules and endangering her horses and riders. She was absolutely fearless refusing to let the guy through, and I wondered if in addition to riding lessons she would consider offering assertiveness training.

Happiness Is a Warm Puppy.

-- Charles Schulz

Cars

Mrs. Troopie has a problem. She runs great, but her body is too rusty and will likely prevent her getting a road worthy certificate. Poor old girl, I know how she feels. See, they’re really picky here about public liability. I guess it has something to do with the fact that the government picks up the tab if you should happen to be driving down the road and a large chunk of rusted metal happen to fly off the decrepit but mechanically sound vehicle in front of you, causing a chain reaction which lands you in the hospital. Theoretically, of course. Plus the fact that the seller, Beck’s de facto husband who lives farther back in the bush than even she does, hasn’t signed some critical form and doesn’t have a fax machine within 100 kilometers. Also Mrs. Troopie was only registered as a three seater, so if we were to add seats we’d have to start from scratch. We call it a “Learning Experience” (make sure you do the finger quote marks when you say it for the full effect.) Fortunately, not a very expensive one. She will make a terrific farm vehicle. Supposing we ever get a farm. In the meantime we have purchased another truck, an older, as yet unnamed diesel Toyota 4 Runner (4WD); a friend for Mrs. Troopie.

We bought that after spotting it on the side of the road on our way into Cairns to look at yet another truck. The owner, B, works at a local crocodile farm, so the day we picked it up we met him halfway at his job. He was busy getting ready to do the feeding show when we arrived, so we decided to go in and have a look. (I’ll let you in on a little secret: There are deeply discounted unpublished prices for locals. You have to know the password though, and I’m not telling. So we got in for about 50% of what all you regular tourists would have to pay, unless you were with me, because, I have a Queensland drivers license now, which might just be enough of a reason to come visit, eh?) Anyway, the place was nothing like Palmdale’s horrifying Gatorama attraction; this was top notch all the way. B told us to make sure we got there early to get good seats, which we did, but he failed to mention that while we were stuck in our good seats listening to his partner do his spiel from the safety of a special enclosure, B would actually be in the pit feeding the biggest monsters keeping them from causing trouble during the show. He was just out of my camera range. Below are pictures of B guiding our boat tour, one of the many crocs he encouraged to leap right in front of my camera, and a few koalas from the zoo exhibit that were so close we could’ve poked them with a stick. Like the snake.

Then, because we had a theme going, picking up the new truck and dropping off the rental, we took the kids to see Cars while we were in the city. My impression? Great animation, good story, and Americans sure love their cars. It made me just a little homesick.


I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.

-- Roland Barthes

Cool

They say we’re in the tropics, but in the middle of the night, our first in the rental, I had to get up and put on one of my Irish knit sweaters then took the other to wrap around my feet. After a busy night of everyone swapping beds and climbing in with someone else in search of extra body heat or maybe in hopes of stealing another blanket, we finally got comfortable and slept in a lot later than usual. We were awakened by the crazed flapping of the birds above, Wampoo Fruit Doves, outside our window fighting over palm seeds. They have dove heads and parrot bodies, with brilliant plummy maroon chests.

We made a trip into town today and picked up some extra household supplies, a new shower curtain, scouring powder, disinfectant, and a scrub brush for the bathrooms, and extra blankets. Regardless, I’m tucked in tonight under my new wool blanket with my sweater and thermal socks on, just in case.


Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

-- Mark Twain

Wildlife in the Road

Traffic jam

There is no animal more invincible than a woman, nor fire either, nor any wildcat so ruthless.

-- Aristophanes