Antipodal Adventures
Merry Christmas!
Thursday 25th December 2014
Deck the halls with boughs of fake tree,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Things we lost on holiday
Monday 8th December 2014
The next section of my parents' visit concerns our holiday to Queensland. However, I feel it's important to be honest and give you some understanding of a typical Oates family holiday. I therefore present the following list of the things we lost on holiday:
- My passport*.
- My parents' passports
- My glasses
- My dad's glasses
- My dad's camera
- My dad's hat
- My engagement ring
- Jan's patience with this ridiculous family who lose everything
- My mother
But you can all breathe safely - we pretty much found everything again.
* I had put it in a safe place. You know the one - it's so safe even you don't know where it is.
Birthday
Thursday 4th December 2014
Or, cake-for-breakfast day, as it's known in our house. It was fantastic having my parents here to celebrate with me, because:
- I hadn't seen them for ten months, so being able to spend the day with them was super special.
- We got to go to the Opera House for our first time and theirs.
- Having your parents around always makes you revert to behaving like a child, anyway, so I felt much younger than the 21* I was turning.
* What?!
But mainly it was number 1. To start the day, it's a tradition that the birthday person gets a birthday table - including, but not limited to: a cake, flowers, candles, a present, cards, chocolates, miscellaneous sundry treats. This year I got TWO birthday tables!
Antipodal Adventures: Parental Edition #1
Sunday 16th November 2014
Right, it's time for the first instalment of the excitement of having my parents here. They arrived at the end of September, looking dazed, bleary-eyed and slightly shellshocked by the joys of long haul travel. "There was just so... much... orange juice". But they had had a nice stop off in Singapore for a couple of days to break up the journey. And, just to make them feel really at home from the start, it solidly rained all day on their arrival. Thanks, Sydney.
The first few days were spent recuperating from the jet lag and processing the whole 'being on the other side' of the world thing and also discovering the wonders of a couch with a chaise longue*.
* If you're short like me and my dad, you can stick your legs out ALL THE WAY and you still don't reach the end! Wheee! Needless to say, that became "Dad's spot" very quickly.
... read the rest of "Antipodal Adventures: Parental Edition #1"
Confessions
Saturday 8th November 2014
I am lazy. Not just a little bit lazy, like, oh I can't be bothered to
Mainly I waste spend most of my time on the internet. And I sit there reading about all these great things and really getting excited, like, yeah! I am soooo going to do that*, it sounds fantastic. In fact I'm going to start right now! And then three hours later, I am still sitting on the sofa mentally compiling all the great things I'm going to do, whilst not having moved an inch. Even now, I have stopped writing this to buy a voucher for yoga classes and check Facebook (even though most people I know are asleep on the other side of the world right now) because, also, I now have the attention span of a 3-year-old child.
* that = anything from actually eating breakfast in the morning, to doing regular exercise, to being more organised and responsible, to swimming with crocodiles...