As I have repeatedly written in one form or other, blogging is not about writing posts. Heck, that’s the least of your challenges. No, blogging is about cultivating a mutually beneficial relationships with an ever-growing online readership, and that’s hard work.” ~Alistair Cameron

Life is messier than we expect & full of surprises.  When I began blogging I really wasn't all that surprised when I crashed my first blog.  I'm technologically incompetant.  I was devestated but not surprised.  I was not surprised when I crashed a 2nd blog ~ though less devestated.  I'd learnt a thing or two by then & figured on putting it all back together.  What I didn't expect was the friendships ~ though when Ruby first agreed to meet with me on one of her trips to Brisbane I admit to metaphorically kicking myself for letting me in for who knows what?!  What if she didn't like me in the real?  What if we had nothing to talk about & our time was full of those long awkward silences?  What if our differences were a problem?  I stewed myself into a lather & then added the lethal combination of trying to find my way round Brisbane to the mix.

So silly, because Ruby is lovely.  If she finds me a little strange she has been kind enough to never say so.  So naturally, when she found herself in Brissie again she got in contact.  Could we meet up?  Panic stations at this end.  I have 3 adults living in this house at present all of whom use my mainland car more than I do & have commitments.    We juggled times & locations.  I had a meltdown all over Liddy & she felt sorry enough for me that she agreed to drive me.  Ruby was subjected to the full impact of the Ganeida Women in whirly~gig mode.  Last time there was just Ruby & I & Star plugged in to her i~pod ~ & we were all a little shy.  This time there was Ruby & Ruby's young gentlemen [who looked askance at Star for some time before deciding she was harmless & safe to talk to lol], Liddy & Star in outrageous mode & me.  I talk too much when I get nervous.  Poor Ruby.  Star 's dad had just paid her allowance so she went & bought sugar.  Trust me, that child does not need a sugar fix, ever.  Liddy is no shy shanks & no slouch in the verbosity department either.

This time we met up as friends who have been apart too long & were delighted to see each other again.  So much of life happens off screen  & there are things you just don't put up there on a blog for all the world to read about.  Well I don't & Ruby doesn't.  We had a chance to chat about those things, to share a little more deeply & I know there are things added to my prayer list because that is what friends do for each other; they pray for each other's needs.  We were still chatting as Ruby's car pulled up & she got in & drove away, on her way back to her other life, a plane ride away in a township I once visited in the long ago.  She will be back & I hope we will do this again.

So while Ruby was negotiating her way into the airport I was dropping Liddy back at the boat & taking Star to lunch...which reminds me.  Star has the oddest eating habits & she thinks sugar is a food group so deciding on a meal the child will actually eat is something of a marathon effort.  Chinese is usually good but to my surprise she opted for a kebab.  A kebab is usually something Liddy or I will opt for & we add all the trimmings: tabouli, humus etc.  Star stuck to chicken, lettuce & carrot but as Star handed me the change the young man serving her noticed me & a delighted smile lit up his face. He touched a hand to his head indicating my covering & gave me a thumbs up. Oh dear.  I think he thought I was muslim.  And no, I wasn't wearing my kameeze.

It was just one of those days.  On to choir & the child on crutches informed us all she's just learnt there was a difference between crutch & crotch.  Apparently she's been telling everyone about her crotches.  What a howler.  Then Star pushed her in her wheelchair out to the car ~ only it wasn't her car & it was raining & in the process Star bogged the wheelchair.  While the rest of us fell about laughing Alison videoed it for prosperity.  Reckon it's doing the round of the choirs this week!

I got home & the cats fell all over me because I'd been gone too long & they'd missed me ~ & I was exhausted.  Now you all probably are as well.

 "Oh," cried Chicken Little, "the sky is falling. I must go tell the king." ~Bulrovian fairy tale

 It stormed last night.  This morning the wind began to blow.  It blew & it blew until  this little old house rattled & shook & things thumped on the roof, rolled down the gutters & crashed through the shrubbery.  It has been very exciting.  We have no idea what will fly past next. Oh, & if you're not sure why this particular pic, the dark patches are the wind passing over the water. The darker the water, the stronger the gust.  The wind is from the south & has churned up the sea bed to a most gloriously icky shade of yuk.

 I hung out the washing.  I had a line full of demented dervishes billowing wildly in the breeze.

Even the wildlife is taking shelter on the lee side.  I found this tiny little caterpillar scuttling frantically up a stick insect that was attached to the nor'western side of this lantern. Yep, it's been a wild'n'wooly day on the islands today.  Tomorrow I am off to catch up with Ruby before she returns to wet'n'wild Rocky.  And after Ruby, choir rehearsal.  I think I may be just a little tired when I get home ~ though nowhere near as tired as Ruby who has to get on a jet plane.

 The Havard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity & nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
~Larry Wall.

Unlike my northern neighbours we are not suffering from agonies of cold.  Rather the opposite.  The temperatures have hit the 30sC with humidity at 90%.  I hate when the weather does that.  We all flopped round under the fans & were miserable.

Marlow was so distressed he took himself outside where he quivered under the Poinciana waiting for the Bogey Man to get him.  Marlow does not go outside.  For one thing is too far away from his people.  For another there are too many unknowns:  strange screeches, little movements amongst the mulch, leaves skittering over the bricks.  He turns into a nervous ball of furr that jumps at his own shadow.

It stormed last night.  This morning is better.

 I want you to sing with rapture and dance like a dervish. ~  William Parrish

There are a few professions where you are starting your day at four o'clock in the afternoon:  ambulance driver, airline pilot, Woolies shelf stocker ~ & the Arts! 

I can't say I'm at my best heading off into unknown regions so late in my day & we had to detour & detours always confuse me, because, if you've been following along, somewhere in the wet, soggy, chaos that was travelling in & out to the Gothic Star's hanging bag acquired a rip & her performance pants fell out the bottom.  Drama, drama, drama.

Naturally the refedex was in the car so we began without me having looked at a map ~ always such a good way to start ~ & Star was in Ditz mode.  I asked her to look at the map & count of my turns.  When I checked she was staring intently out the window counting each intersection we went through!!!  Glory Be!  What good she thought that would be I have no idea! 

Picking up the new pants was not a drama.  The right size had been left out for us in an easy to grab them spot & for a wonder Star had remembered the correct size so they did actually fit when she put them on.  I had left us plenty of time ~ & a good thing too given Star was not on the ball when it came to reading the map but even so we were early. So, thankfully, was Luke.  I do not know where Alison found Luke ~ or if he found her ~ but he is terribly sweet though being in the Jekyll & Hyde production is in the midst of growing a beard & arrived in black suite & dark sunnies looking like the local Mafioso.  Cracked me up.  Like us he has no sense of direction [partly why, like us, he was so early] but informed me Google phones have the best GPS.  Now how do I get my hands on one of those?

Anyway Star was singing here ~ which has changed hands since this review was written but is huge with plenty of parking for a change.  Why can nurseries get their parking together but theatre venues can not? This was for a local councillor's opening campaign for mayor & I have nothing but good things to say about this woman, which is something given mentioning our council to any islander is like waving a red flag at a bull.  Long, sad & complicated story covering several centuries & the general feeling that anyone who chooses to live on an island deserves what they get!  Karen is responsible for us knowing Alison & for the whole AVAE shebang.  Several years back she made a concerted effort to get the island children involved in the Arts, with a capital A.  Star was all she netted.  However she was wonderful to us, compensating our travel costs & even picking us up & running us round personally so Star could get a taste of the wider theatre world ~ & got hooked, but that is Star for you & not Karen's fault.  Her girls trained under Alison too so she knows what AVAE is capable of.  Just as well as there were just 5 of them but as I keep saying 5 AVAE kids can produce a big, BIG sound ~ & they did.

We got home again quite late.  It is not the performing so much as all the travelling wears us out ~ & naturally travelling plus performance ran right over the top of dinner time so we had yet another pick ~me~up meal on the run.  We are so tired of take~aways!

The boys are back!

Guess who just got back today?

Those wild-eyed boys that had been away

Haven't changed, haven't much to say

But man, I still think those cats are great ~ Thin Lizzie

No~one here eats the stuff ~ well, the lads do, but no~one else.  Pity, 'cause they do it so well.

One or two random thoughts

We survived the curse of the Gothic.
Yesterday Theo arrived home.  Star, Liddy & I arrived home behind him to find all the cups & most of the plates in the sink & a frying pan in the bin.  The boys had been out prawning once already & were back out when we walked in the door so there were prawn shells everywhere.  The baked beans were significantly reduced & all the cheese was gone. In a matter of hours.  Not days.  Not weeks.  Hours.

The boys are early risers.  My Star is not ~ which would matter less if my boys were the quiet types.  They are not.  Star might be the youngest of 5 but large family living has not been Star's daily lot.  She is not impressed.

I joked when Brisbane flooded & QPAC went under that the Curse of the Gothic was taking revenge.  It is no longer funny.  Most of the car parks in the area are still declared unsafe & while QPAC might be open to the public the backstage areas are mostly uninhabitable & the smell lingers. Ick.  We felt for Alison who is still auditioning in there & with Wicked in full swing no parking to be had.  She was sounding fraught.  I don't blame her.

The Gothic has tentacles like an octopus.  The open rehearsal has been & gone.  The performance is over & done for.  Even the critics are silent.  Last night however, we listened to some of the recording ~ which will be released.  When I actually have details I will say.  Alison had some other bits & pieces from other choirs for comparison but in my humble opinion our kids should be really proud of themselves.  I'm not sure how many children Alison ended up with but it was nowhere near the numbers she should have had ~ bit of a bone behind the scenes  ~ but there aren't all that many children's choirs that could deal with this & the commitment was huge ~ from parents as well as kids.  Lots of the kids pulled out & others weren't there for all the rehearsals, never mind the actual performance.  And the backbone of the children's chorus was AVAE [ Alison's Australian Vocal Arts Ensemble] which is what Star is involved with.  There weren't that many of them but they came in every time strong & sure ~ & they were the miked kids too.  I have no idea what Alison does but she gets the most wonderful sound out of her kids.  Just a handful can produce as much sound as a 30 voice choir.  I know.  I've heard it. There is a lovely clarity of tone but warmth as well & I thought they compared more than favourably with the lucky lot who did this in a studio with each section rehearsed & sung separately!  Not biased or anything!

Now if we can just sort out Star's pant problem she is back singing on Saturday. And next month.  If you are in Brissie then you can hear them here.  And if you do happen to be there & you do happen to notice my Star, do us a favour & make the girl's day; ask for an autograph. *snigger*!!!!

"The Sami used to believe that the northern lights were the souls of our ancestors dancing on the sky"

So I was thinking about our History component because Star had something in mind for Japan but had a brain fart & can no longer remember what it was she wanted to learn about.  Happens to that child.  However we have History down as one of our *subjects* ~ though history according to me looks nothing like your regular text book because your regular text book bores me to tears.  Like my child I have an aversion to being bored.  I avoid it at all costs.  I like to do history both in depth & as widely as possible & if you want to be assured of learning something you never knew before you choose something a little left of center, something a little oddballish, something different.  What we are studying this term are the Sami.

The Sami are the reindeer people of Northern Scandinavia.  At some point they migrated across the top of Russia into Alaska & that was why I was initially curious.  Who on earth hikes across Russian Siberia to put down roots in another icy wasteland?  Oh, & the fact they have over 300 words to describe ice & snow ~ bearing in mind people it does not snow in my neck of the woods! What on earth can you find to say about stuff that's white, wet & cold?  A lot apparently.

Like the Gypsy, like the North American Indian or the Australian Aborigine, the Sami have become a minority ethnic group within their own country & the dominant culture has subtly but inexorably marginalised them until even their language is endangered.  This is inevitable when one culture takes over another.  In the Sami's case that would make us all the poorer.  Their language belongs to the Finno~Ugric family ~ a language group that has arguably the most difficult languages of all for non~native speakers to learn.  I used to haunt a language board & learnt all sorts of odd things like only the African click~click languages are worse than Finnish or Hungarian to learn & grammatically Finnish is more difficult.  Mind you, there was always someone who knew an even more obscure language who would argue this point but the general consensus was these are the hardest European languages .  Even Chinese Mandarin & Arabic are supposedly easier.  I wouldn't know.  I struggle with French & German & mangle both admirably.

Now Sami is a nature language with a wealth of concepts for all things related to the weather, to the terrain, to the natural conditions around them ~ hence the 300 different words for snow!   However what really intrigued me was the concept of *joik*.  A joik is a song/poem, usually chanted a capella, slowly & deep in the throat, that is composed & sung in isolation, deeply personal  or spiritual. You do not sing *about* something or someone, you sing them; their essence, how & what you perceive them to be.

Old hippie that I am I never outgrew my folk roots so musically this is somewhere I am very comfortable & for Star it adds to the depository of musical knowledge.  So I went scrounging around on you tube so we could actually listen to some of this stuff ~ not something likely to impress Star.  She likes her songs to make musical sense in the culture she understands.  Just the same this is possibly the oldest living musical tradition & I was fascinated to find it transposed well to heavy metal.  I loved this. Can't you just hear the wide sky, the icy wastes?  Mari Boine uses joik elements more traditionally but here is a traditional joik, sung in very untraditional surrounds.

So what do you think?  Good, huh?

Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain ~ Martin Mull


Theo is coming home.  Wednesday.  Good, I thought.  I have to be on the mainland Wednesday anyway because Wednesdays, as we all, know, is choir day.  Um, yeah.  Dino's flight lands in Brissie pretty much about when I should be dropping Star off so now we are juggling like mad.  Liddy is going to drive; drop us off, get Theo, pick us up again. I love complicating my life so much.

Maybe I should just give up on schooling my Star?  The stars all align against us.  And you know, she got it together so beautifully on Friday even her father was moved to comment.  She even did math without a major meltdown.  Don't I wish it was always like that! Plus, I have in my hot little hand 3 completed music theory tests.  OK, so it's her grade one stuff & it's taken her 3 months to get this far but I have them.

Now where did I put that grip I keep losing again?

'Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting  different results' ~Albert Einstein.

I have my moments ~ like we all do ~ of being absolutely brilliant.  And God, in His infinite wisdom, gave me a number of children who do not think the way I do.  Not in the least.  So I've had practise, you know, in the brilliance department.

In the Long Ago I had a friend who decided to go back to school & get her degree in Environmental Science.  I was impressed.  It's not just that my friend is very dyslexic, she is very left brained & science carries way more clout in Academia than an Arts degree.  I don't even begin to understand what she was learning about but she struck a snag early on.  Her course required essay writing, not a lot, but some, & some was dragging her marks way down because she's dyslexic & left brained & writing essays was so not her thing.  Not for the first time in my life a friend asked me to look over their work & make some editing suggestions that might help.

I can do this stuff in my sleep.  No, I don't do it here.  Here is my blog.  Personal expression & all that.  But I can do it right.  Apart from apostrophes, which seem to do in eveyrone's head, commas are one of those things that lots of people seem to get muddled with: you know ~ when you're making a list, when you are inserting a thought, when you are separating clauses.  My friend, like my dyslexic husband & my dyslexic kids, was inserting commas randomly ~ which made her work very hard to read if, like me, you use punctuation like you would road directions: Stop; Give Way; Slow; Steep Curve To The Right...

So I went through & cleaned up.  She had a nice direct writing style & was very clear once the random grammar was sorted out.

"But how do you know when to do that?" my friend wailed.  I will not sidetrack onto the inadequacies of the state education system. I stared at my friend whom I seriously considered much, much cleverer than I am because how could she not see what was so simple & clear to me?  And then I had one of those earth shattering revelations.  I know.  I'm slow sometimes, ok.  My friend is one of those left brained mathematical sorts & the usual right~brained explanations were short circuiting.  I grinned at her because I love when God illuminates my world with one brilliant flash & I had been coping a fair bit of flack about my inability to deal with Algebra.  "It's math", I told her smugly. "Use commas to separate a list, like you would to separate numbers.  You use comas like you would in algebra.  If you open a bracket, you close a bracket."  I left the clause thing alone.  I figured we didn't need to go there.

Yes I know there's more to grammar than that but I figure every little bit helps. Then last night I was pottering around on Facebook, a place I'm not overly fond of, & came across one of Star's friends [why do all her friends friend me?] bewailing her English assignment.  It makes me so sad to see kids hating a subject I love so much when there is so much richness to be gleaned from persevering through the hard stuff.  I can't help myself.  I had to ask what she had to do & what her problem was.  She has to write a *Who dunnit?*

I'm not sure what happens but somewhere in the great educational mind the teaching fraternity seems to think it no longer necessary to teach kids how to do stuff.  That somehow their creativity will be equal to the task.  That simply providing a seemingly interesting & challenging task is all that is required.  How I wish!!!

I took a punt.  A right brained child would have eaten this challenge up.  No internal logic.  No logic. But they would have churned out a story full of pizazz.  Once I could have.  Now I'd be having conniptions about all the plot holes I was creating!  So I figured I had a left brained child who was strong in the math area & I could give her an Algebraic formula that would make sense to her.: clue + clue (clue - clue) X clue = conclusion.  I think I nailed it...

Somewhere out there, there is  going to be an English teacher scratching their head.  

You know we have the government howling its head of about the state of this country's numeracy & literacy & demanding a National Curriculum so we can all be as ill educated as each other but until someone figures out how to teach math so the right brainers get it  & English so the left brainers get it we will remain a people who can do one or the other well & be inadequate in the other area.  I do know people who can do both; my mother, for example, but she's an exceptional woman.

College isn't the place to go for ideas ~ Helen Keller

We live with the many faces of Star, performer extraordinaire. It requires a certain sang froi, a j'ne ces't quoi, an equilibrium of soul unfazed by the drama Star can incite in a teacup in a matter of moments. Yasi has nothing on Star.

Given the right incentive, a little hand~holding at the judicious moment, & a spoonful of sugar Star is game for pretty much anything except her math.  However it is not stretching things in the least to say not everyone appreciates Star's quirks.  Among those least likely to appreciate Star are those of the teaching fraternity.  Star is the child you do not want in your classroom.  You know, the one who always asks that awkward question; the one who always comes up with an answer that isn't exactly wrong but not the one you're hoping some bright spark will supply; the one who always has an alternative in mind ~ the one who says loudly & clearly math should be banned for eternity.  That one.

I used to tell the teachers I worked with that they should be down on bended knee thanking me for not sending this child into their classrooms.  I still think that.  Star moves to a completely different drummer.  Just yesterday she informed me she was a bigger genius than Mozart; she'd written more symphonies.  Huh?  When did this happen?  Seems they're all still in her head because she lacks the necessary skills to write them down but there is a constant symphony, or big band, or swing ensemble, or rock band playing in her head.  No wonder she never hears anything.  It must be terribly noisy in there!

Now I know this about my Star & her out of control ego & I have my methods, Watson.  As does Alison.  As does anyone who has much to do with this child.  They're called survival skills.  And this is part of the reason I was not happy to suddenly be assigned a new supervisor ~ one whose portfolio read very left brained, very organized, very straight down the line & abide by the rules.  Um, yeah.  Could see both Star & I having major problems with this guy.  Mind you, I'm sure he's a very nice guy.  I just don't want him as our supervisor.

I was not the only one.  One island over is the other homeschooling family who was upset to lose our supervisor & she whinged to even more people than I had & apparently kept quoting me, which is just a little scary, but the end result is we have our old supervisor back! Yay for us! Suddenly I feel much better about this year.  Much, much better. Well, no not the math. Star is still squawking about the math.  If I write to the head of the school do you thing we can get exempted?