mickey stories; chapter eight

I have a small friend called Mickey.  This year he has started grade one.  He has completed one week.  Only twelve years minus one week of formal schooling to go.  I wonder how his teachers will remember him?

Today's Mickey memories are more little snapshots of his life rather than a whole story.

1.  Mickey sticky taped a live gecko to his wall.  When questioned why he answered 'so it will stay and be my friend and not run away like the others do'.  I think the other geckos were the quick smart ones and the sticky-taped gecko was the one who was a bit distracted - 'what are you saying guys?  There's a kid doing WHAT?  Where is he? Look - a moth ! yummmm....ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh'

2. Mickey's mum was coating pork cubes in flour for dinner ready for frying.  Mickey wandered into the kitchen and saw the plate of neatly dusted tasty cubes sitting on the bench, got super excited, and ran out to his sister yelling joyfully 'We are having TURKISH DELIGHT FOR DINNER!!!'

3. Mickey's mum found a whole lotta holes in the trampoline.  When interrogated Mickey confessed that he had been out jumping on the trampoline with a steak knife slashing holes in the mat.  And he then proceeded to demonstrate how he leapt around with a knife.  On a trampoline.  Slashing holes.  With a knife.

In time I plan to give Mickey's mother an Australia Day medal for bravery and courage under extreme duress.

But for now I count her as an awesome friend.  And a generous one for letting me share about Mickey for posterity.

oi oi oi

Australia Day for the Pines means our annual open house BBQ.  We have had this BBQ for 17 years now - it started as our engagement party, then the next year it was the housewarming party, then it was a TRADITION.  People kept turning up with their sausages to be cooked and expecting the slip and slide to be running.

I love it.  It is a great way to catch up with people we haven't seen for a while, and I always love a party.  Out house gets pretty trashed, but today it has snapped back ok into regular functioning.  My friends who I asked to make salads about seven years ago still turn up with a salad. 

Also, my oldest daughter's birthday is on Monday.  I remember vividly the Australia Day BBQ where I was nine months pregnant and fully expecting to give birth down the slip and slide.  She held off for a few more days until the very hot weather broke.

Some pictures of Australia days - what I found on our hard drive! There are some signficant gaps - I guess I was too busy chatting and cooking to take any photos.

1996

2007

2008

 2010

2011

more cleaning up

I have spent a couple more days this week helping clean up after the floods in Brisbane - this time in Fairfield at my school friends parent's house.  They live right on the river, and they were pretty badly flooded.

Starting to clean out the pool with buckets of mud.

We had to stir up the mud from the bottom of the pool so it would go up the pump.  I was convinced I could see creatures moving in the water and had visions of swamp monsters and bull sharks lurking in the water - so when a tiny silver fish leapt into my boot I let out an almighty screech totally overdramatising the event.  There were little fish, frogs, lizards, prawns and cane toads all swimming around in the mud in that pool.  It was eventually all pumped out and clean.

 Digging out the garden

The river still in the backyard

Child labour - they were in charge of cleaning up the vegie garden

but soon came to shovel mud

Also we got to use a fire hose.  Those things are mighty heavy - no wonder firemen are buffed.  Not that I have ever noticed that much....

It will take a long time before their house is back to normal and liveable.  I hope we can keep supporting them, and others in Brisbane whose lives will never be the same again.

Also - check out these pictures from the ABC website - they are amazing.

clean up time

The waters have subsided in Brisbane and the brown slick mud trail remains like the calling card of a giant watery snail.  As people try to understand and pick up the pieces I went out yesterday and started helping with the clean up - with thousands of others in Brisbane - so many that the roads were jammed obstructing the trucks from the army and the council.  Our church organised teams, provided child care for people who wanted to go and help and became a 'control central'.  We may have even needed a big map of Brisbane with little cars on it being pushed around with long sticks.

It is hard to explain feelings at the moment - a kind of 'survivor guilt' that our house is completely fine and I am doing routine things like the washing and having people over for dinner - a slight nausea that I think is from accidentally swallowing some river mud yesterday - a deep compassion for the people who have lost houses and lives - an admiration for our leaders Anna Bligh and Campbell Newman as they steer our state through a disaster.  I keep walking around our house making inventories - "I would keep that, I could lose that, I could buy some more of that, I would be sad if that went" - but you don't often get to make those choices in a flood or a fire.

Yesterday I helped two families at Karalee whose houses were underwater.  Someone described today as being like the houses were in a slow cooker, and everything was just falling off like meat off the bone.  It is a good description.  I was shovelling stuff out of one man's house and I couldn't even tell what it was - CDs, books, clothes, papers, bits of chipboard - it was all covered in brown mud and slime.  In the second house I helped at the water came up to his second floor window - so we packed up a lot of the higher stuff to take to his daughter's house and ripped up his carpets.  He told me the story of how he had to swim his horses out as the flood waters rose, and he pointed out the horses standing nervously in a higher paddock watching all the activity in the street.

It makes you wonder again about suffering.  If God is good why do bad things happen?  There are no easy answers at all.  It is a creation groaning and crying.  It is a world screaming and sobbing.  What I do know is that 'the Lord is King, He's gonna look after everything, every single thing' - and I can't see the bigger picture.  We talked about Job this morning - a man who lost everything but refused to curse God.  He chose to praise.  I hope we can show love and praise as well.

Cleaning up at Karalee

 My newly purchased gumboots came in handy

 The pile out the front of the house

flooding

Queensland is flooded.  Queensland is quite big - so that is a lot of water.  It has been raining and raining for a long time but not quite forty days.

Our house is fine.  Our suburb is fine.  But there are terrible pictures of the suburbs by the river getting swallowed up in water.  And people being lost to the water.

I went to Woolies today to grab a some dinner things - total panic buying.  There was no milk, no bread, no eggs, no bottled water - and this is in our suburb where there is no flooding.

I feel like I should do something.  But I think there will be lots of cleaning up to help with. 

Our library puppet shows have been cancelled this week - they are advising against unnecessary travel around Brisbane.

Lots of flooding.  Lots of news and media about flooding.

This afternoon I saw a rainbow and remembered a promise.

It will be okay.

mickey stories; chapter seven

I have been a bit slack about the Mickey stories over Christmas.  But I have had a chat/pick her brains/voyouristic drain of ideas meeting with Mickey's mother, and I have plenty of new source material to share.

Mickey is a small friend of mine, and his life needs to be written in black and white.  He is very inventive and his brain works in interesting neural firing patterns.

This is the story of Mickey and the 'fireworks'.

Mickey's mother was outside doing some gardening one day when Mickey was about three when he ran out to her and exclaimed 'Mum I can make fireworks!'.  More than a little concerned about this, his mother went inside to find out what 'fireworks' meant.  Micky had found a box of matches and was sticking them into the powerpoints - causing sparks.  He had prised off the powerpoint protector thingies.  Shrieking slightly Mickey's mother whipped the matches off him and made an appointment with Kidsafe house in Brisbane.

When they visited Kidsafe house Mickey's mother explained the situation, and looked to the staff there to help her with making her house a safer place for Mickey.  The staff at Kidsafe house watched silently as Mickey went through the Kidsafe house - undoing every closed door, exposing every powerpoint and opening every childproof gate.

Then they looked at Mickey's mother and said, sadly. "I'm sorry, there is nothing we can do."

Here's hoping Mickey can use his powers for good.

sibling dynamics

Referee
It is about week four in the summer break - and I am almost convinced I need to wear sports gear with a stripe down the side and a whistle around my neck as I referee my two children several million times a day about who said what or used what or had more attention or who had a treat.  Maybe if I had more children it may be easier - or they may gang up on each other.  The vying for attention and the detail spotting of who got more is phenomenal.  They will end up working in forensics as their abilities to discern the minutest part of inequality are honed in their childhood.

Productions
The oldest daughter is most often the creative director, screenwriter and producer of the events, and youngest daughter is the cast.  Sometimes the cast has an uprising and goes on strike against the demands of the show industry.  Most of the time it kind of works and a production is born.  I spend a lot of time watching shows from my daughters - so much time that I now insist that before I commit to sitting down to a viewing the daughters have:
- five rehearsals - two of them dress rehearsals
- storyboarding committed to paper
- costuming and prop requirements sorted
- music cued and ready
- cast all in the one place at the one time
- entrances and exits rehearsed
- ticketing and refreshments provided

This approach of unrealistic expectations has resulted in a high quality of childhood productions at the Pine household.

And I only have to watch one or two shows a day.  And referee only a few diva spats.

library time

Tomorrow I start the the first of ten puppet shows in the Brisbane City Council libraries.  With Domino the Jester.  That's right - Dizzy is on tour.  Well, around the suburbs of Brisbane.

I feel a bit nervous, but also pretty excited.  It is a great opportunity.  I have wanted to be a puppeteer for a long time, probably since doing my first show over the back of the couch when I was eight.  I think as a career that earns you some money and helps with piano lessons and food to eat speech therapy is better - but there has always been that little nagging in my head that I want to be one of the people working on the Muppet show or Sesame Street.  Probably not that achievable while being a mum, youth pastor's wife and based in Brisbane.  But taking Dizzy around Brisbane is a fun thing.  And able to be done during school holidays.

Being 37 and realising a little part of a dream is a great thing.  I hope I remember my lines and the show goes great.  I will take some photos and report back!

geo caching

While we on holidays in Armidale we were introduced to geo caching by my sister-in-law. Basically this is like a treasure hunt.  For adults.  With GPS systems.  I don't think it is that nerdy...not really.  At least we were out in the great outdoors finding places around Armidlae I had never seen before.  And tramping through the bush.

What you do is register on a website and then find the spots where there are geo caches near you.  Then you enter the co-ordinates on your GPS system and follow it to the exact location of the cache - where you may find a little container with a logbook and maybe some toys and maybe a little key ring that has to keep travelling around the world.  There are apparently a million and a half caches around the world.  Our family has located four. It is kind of weird to think that all around us, hidden in secret spots, are little containers waiting to be discovered. 

To add to our possible nerdiness we also used walkie talkies from Aldi and made up code names as we geo cached.  Fun times.

Learning how to follow the GPS.

And we are off like a frog in a sock.

Tracking through the bush.

Finding little containers under logs - watch out for spiders!

Yay we found one.

 Geo caching - fun for all the family.