Thinking Allowed: Last past the post

Hi blog, sorry we have neglected you for so long. Life chugs and occasionally sputters in Canberra. I’m actually out of town for the first time in a month, which is maybe why I’m writing and which bodes well for next year.

I’m lying on a beach in south Broulee and my brain is slowly cooking. We came for the weekend with Tash and her kids. It’s been fun. The six kids live on the bouncy pillow, where the big girls do forbidden flips and the small kids find discarded plastic which they stuff with dirty sand to fashion sausages. Tova loves all things sausage to an unsettling degree. We go back and forth to the beach, and ate a ten person taco dinner that overwhelmed the camp kitchen like a Mongol horde. The kids discovered a game room, and since they lacked a dollar to play foos ball, they resourcefully and horribly stuffed a ping pong ball through. Then it got stuck, of course, on the first goal, as I showed up. Aurora was shocked by the sting of my scold and sobbed. Others were so brazen that I can only prepare myself for a life of crime and sedition.

Otherwise here is what is up with us all.

Aurora is growing up. She found an abandoned bowl of water and yeast, and proceeded to make a delicious batch of bread with no recipe or guidance whatsoever, just totally winging it. She had a surprisingly good time at a one day math camp where some genius teacher somehow made her like matrix multiplication when she’s never seen a matrix before. Her tone on the clarinet is better than mine. She reads a lot and is still very laid back, no teenage angst yet.

Sophia reads a sickening amount. Like she is averaging a book a day. They involve fairies and princesses wherever possible. If she could have one wish it would be to be Elsa. She has started ballet and tries to sashay around the house without anyone noticing. So inside her chunky muscly body is a wafting graceful soul. She has become more socially awkward - other kids often get the cold shoulder because Soph is feeling shy. But when she’s comfortable she cackles like a witch and is totally uninhibited.

Tova is ridiculousness embodied. Don’t even know what to say. After Tamar spent a patient year trying to get her to sit down for ten consecutive seconds and read without much progress, she can suddenly read words like invisible, grandmother, absolutely, and makes remarkably few mistakes. But her spelling is highly creative. Her morning routine on the whiteboard includes “it brèkfst” (she calls this a Montreal E) and “chik mial” because she lives in constant hope of getting a letter from her grandmother. Today we played Anagrams and she found "aweez" which is exactly how she pronounces always. In her basketball class, she is both the youngest and one of three girls, but guts it out and claims to love it. She loves witches as much as Sophia loves fairies, and her favourite book character is the evil witch from Hansel and Gretel. She sleeps in the next day’s school clothes cause it’s too cold to get dressed in the morning, and usually wears between ten and twenty articles of clothing at once on the weekend.

Zadie is possibly the cutest two year old ever. I’ve been stuck at home with back problems for a month, and she’s been the best part. We read up to twenty kids books a day. She goes on little excursions down the sidewalk with her dolls. We play goofy games to teach her letters. She eats a lot of eggs and pine nuts, and I finally understand why my grandma used to just want to sit there and watch me eat.

Tamar is a busy bee. She’s working a couple of jobs as a nursing instructor and lecturer. And driving all kids to all activities. And bouldering / gymnasticsing 3-4 times a week. And doing basically everything else. It’s really impressive, and though she’s pooped by it I think she’s also happy to be getting so much done. She did a ski orienteering event for her birthday in Perisher, went to a musical last week, defuses loads of my grumpiness and is being even more of a super person than usual.

I am up and down cause of my back. It’s been lousy for a loooong time now and isn’t really getting better as such. So I am living a quiet and achy existence at home, doing back exercises when I’m able to, and feeling grateful for having 10x less work than usual and 10x more time to spend with TASTZ. We celebrated our 15th anniversary last week, with mutual chocolates plus I got a transcendentally purple flower, and i made her a blueberry pie (maybe my first ever) because I lost a bet about the Harbin ice palace.

We are starting to make good progress on our plans for next year and it’s feeling increasingly real and exciting. Aurora and Tamar have been looking at this atlas with arbitrary cities and even more arbitrary illustrations spangled across every country. This, and the novel “Mrs Pollifax and the China Station”, have formed the basis for much of our decision-making so far. Also my secret agenda to sign Tamar up for the World Nomad Games as the Australian representative for Mangala. I will compete in Horse Wrestling if my back is better, and Tova will probably do Buzkashi if we let her because of the headless goat.