Morning

Most often, the best part of my day is in the morning.

On school days I usually get up first, wake Mars and make sure he's getting dressed, and then I creep into Venus' room to wake her up.

She is a little angel, wrapped up in her bright blankets with that serene expression that happily sleeping children share.

I kneel down beside her bed and I kiss her on the cheek. Her eyes slowly open and then she smiles, and the sun shines.

She says "Mummy!" and she wraps her arms around my neck.

And even though I know that later there will be tears over something unimportant, it doesn't matter because at that moment, there is only love.

The world game on the table

At home there is a chart on the wall with the children's names on it, and when they do something particularly impressive they get a sticker, called a positive, beside their name on the chart.

When they have ten positives each they get a treat. The first time they chose their own treat - a special lunch at a local pancake restaurant. The second time I gave them a really cool easel from Ikea.

Lately Venus has been making special efforts with helping to clean up around the house among other things, so she had more positives that Mars for a while and this was causing him some unhappiness. So when he finally caught up to her I wanted their treat to be something they could use together, and something that Mars would particularly like.

I gave them one of these.

They absolutely love it. It is cheap and not particularly well built, but they really enjoy playing "table soccer", as it has come to be known. When I first gave it to them they played for about thirty minutes without a single pause.

Within five minutes Venus had rewritten the rules of the world game. When Mars scored two goals in a row she was most displeased. We got our first amendment to the rules.

"Mars, you can't score two goals in a row!"

If only someone had explained that to Germany before the World Cup.

The church that was

I didn't grow up in a church, but when I was nearly sixteen I started going with my friend. It was within walking distance of home and I came to love the place, even though the building was nothing special. It had no stained glass windows and really its only concession to ornamentation was two wrought iron sculptures on the two feature walls, one depicting a city surrounded by the holy spirit and the other a meshing of the alpha and omega symbols.

But somehow none of that mattered really, because the people are the place and they became part of my extended family. Then when my Gramp died and my Gran moved house to live in the street behind the church, she became part of the congregation too.

I was married in that church, and my Gran's funeral was there. I became part of the music ministry almost as soon as I joined the youth group, and I continued to play until we finally left to change churches more than ten years later.

Now what was the vicarage is six or eight two-story units crammed together, and what was the church is a day care centre. And today for the first time I had occasion to visit that day care centre and the feelings that I had just walking around in there took me by surprise.

I don't know if it's because I miss that time of my life, or because I miss my Gran, or just the feel of the place that was such a big part of my growing up. But I'm sitting here crying without really knowing why.

I guess that's just part of life though, change. My Gran would be happy to know that the children who attend that day care centre all seem happy. It's a nice place with lots of bright colours, children's art on the walls and generally a nice feel.

Still, things won't ever be like they were.

The installation

For a couple of hours yesterday afternoon Mars and Venus worked together on a project. A big project. An installation of such size and location that it almost completely blocks egress from the front door to most of the house.

It happened in just the same way as I remember from when I was a kid. It started out as a small idea, and then it got bigger and bigger. They'd do some work on it and call us in to look at their progress. Then we'd go back to what we were doing and after twenty minutes or so they'd call us back in to show us something new they'd added.

Eventually they came into the kitchen and announced that they'd finished, and then asked me to come and take a look.

I came around the corner to see this.

Venus sits in the front on the pink chair with Mars behind her on the blue chair, both of which are tipped over to make them into bucket style seats. The boxes on each side hold toys, and you can see they've incorporated their water bottles into the design, to stave off thirst. When I asked about several other features I was told they are "for decoration".

So finally I asked what it was.

Venus replied "It's a boost off."

I asked "What for?"

Venus replied "A jump circuit."

So there you have it. If you ever wondered what a boost off for a jump circuit looks like, now you know.

What I want to know is, when the time comes, how am I going to get them to dismantle it?

Doctor Venus

We are playing Doctor and patient. I am the patient and Venus is the doctor. Occasionally she finds something she doesn't know the name of in her doctor's bag, so she'll ask me what it's called and what it's for. Our stethoscope is broken, which she finds most inconvenient.

She has put bandaids on my legs, given me medicine in my mouth and in my arm, looked inside my ears and has even waved a blood pressure cuff in my direction.

She has checked behind my neck and she says she saw something, but she won't tell me what. She is taking copious notes and muttering to herself.

And her conclusion?

"It's a bit of a virus."

"Really? Venus, what is a virus?"

"I don't know, but that's definitely what it is."

The irony is, I really am sick and I really do have a virus. I wonder how she knew.

That elephant stole my car!

I didn't go to the zoo today with Supernerd and the kids to meet the baby elephant, but I should have. If I had, maybe they wouldn't have lost the car.

It's partly my fault, even though I wasn't there. I have a rotten head cold and I really didn't sleep well last night - I felt like I was waking up every half an hour all night because my sinuses and glands hurt so much. So when the time came to go I realised that I was feeling too tired and sick, so I piked.

We planned to go to the zoo mid-afternoon because it's school holidays here and the zoo is usually quite busy, even when the weather is awful. At about 2pm I remembered that the baby elephant is only on view from 11am to 3pm, so they'd really have to hustle if they were going to get there in time.

They arrived at a quarter to three, so naturally Supernerd was keen to park the car and get going. When he arrived he found that the zoo was not as busy as he expected, and he found a parking space right near the front gate.

They rushed into the zoo and got to meet the baby elephant, and then visited the butterflies, the tiger cubs, the orangutans, the sea lions, the penguins and the giraffes. The kids played on the playground while Supernerd drank the worst take away coffee ever (apparently), and then they headed out the back gate, because we always park near the back gate.

Can you see the problem?

We always always always park at the back, and Supernerd had zero recollection of parking the car at the front gate and rushing in. So, from what I understand, they wandered around the carpark at the back for a while looking for the car. It doesn't help that the walls and pathways all around the zoo look the same, so Supernerd had a really good idea of where the car should be, he just didn't realise that it was way over the other side of the zoo.

He then did three sensible things.

He explained to the kids that it was possible that the car was lost, but it was more important that they were all okay.

He rang my Mum and asked her to come and get them. We only have one car, and it was lost.

He rang the police and reported the car as stolen.

When my Mum arrived with emergency rations for the kids (chocolate, milk and bananas) and blankets, she bundled them into her car and Supernerd suggested they do a lap of the zoo, thinking that maybe someone had taken the car for a joyride and left it elsewhere in the carpark.

Sure enough, they found the car just near the front gate, right where they'd left it.

Then he did four more sensible things.

He sent Mum off to bring the kids home.

He rang me to tell me what had happened.

He rang the police to unreport the car as stolen.

He brought home fish and chips.

When the kids got home they told me all about it, and their version pretty much agreed with Supernerd's story.

When Supernerd got home he told me that the baby elephant had moved the car.

I didn't believe him.