Canada in a Thong

My mother-in-law left a pile of New Yorkers on a side table at my house, and I picked one up and flipped through it, because I couldn't reach my Us Weekly from the La-Z-Boy.  In the August 24 issue, David Sedaris has a piece called "Laugh, Kookaburra."  Like a lot of his writing, it starts out hilarious and then goes somewhere kind of dark. But before it goes there, he describes a trip he took to Australia:

Spend that much time on a plane and you're entitled to a whole new world when you step off at the other end--the planet Mercury, say, or, at the very least, Mexico City.  For an American, though, Australia seems pretty familiar: same wide streets, same office towers.  It's Canada in a thong, or that's the initial impression.

That made me laugh.  And then this morning I click over to my little sister's blog, and they are swimming.  Swimming for pleasure, because it is almost summer in their crazy antipodeal world. Amy, you were wearing a thong, right?

What I wanted to say is that Amy is doing NaBloPoMo, that thing in November where you post every day.  Hurray!  I did it last year, and it is great for growing a blog.  (I have some slight discomfort with using "grow" as a transitive verb like that, but that's what it does, it grows yer blog.)  Y'all please go show her some love from time to time.  As much as I want to crush her in our unannounced competition over who has more blog readers, I know she would like some support as she commits to blogging every damn day this month.  Good thing Thanksgiving isn't a big deal in Oz, Amy, 'cause it was kinda hard blogging through the holiday last year. I know, first world problem.  

You go, Amy!  Is anybody else doing this?  If so, be sure to comment and I'll add you to the blogroll, if you're not already there, so we can pop in and recognize.   

Babies LOVE Me

Here is baby Grace, sister Amy's newborn, and one of the main attractions of Sydney, Australia. And here I am frightening her with my large teeth. She is seven weeks old now, but in these photos she is a youthful six weeks.

When we weren't seeing the sights, we watched the cousins. Completely entertaining.

Hank and Nate, who is also 3, were hilarious together. They spent many hours riding side by side in their carseats, and they would have these long conversations that were pure Samuel Beckett.

Hank: What's wrong Nate?

Nate: Nothing.

Hank: Did you say rainbow?

Nate: RAINBOW.

Hank: I win.

Nate: No, I win!

Hank: No, my mom wins.

Nate: Nooo, my mom wins!

Hank: My mom is a wife! A beautiful wife!

Nate: I win! I win! HURRAY!

Hank: Rainbow?

That's not an artful summary, it's a straight transcription.

Five kids is a lot, even if one of them is a baby. We took them places on trains, ferry boats, and cars, and every time I thought, "There's no way we can keep up with all these kids. We'll probably lose one." But they all managed to stick to us.

These cousins have never lived in the same place, or really even on the same continent, so watching them play and be together was a real highlight of the trip.

This has been another postcard from Oz, the Cousin Edition.

Things to Love in Oz: Kiama

A couple hours south of Sydney, on the Tasman Sea, is the town of Kiama. While other little beach towns near Sydney reminded me of California, this place has kind of an English flavor, maybe because it was built up during a Victorian boom (that lighthouse has been there since 1887), or maybe because the weather just seemed English the day we visited.

Kiama has a famous blowhole in the volcanic rock at the beach. The waves come in and water shoots up through a narrow opening into the air.

In this pic, it's only kind of burping. Visitors a hundred years ago report seeing it shoot up higher than the lighthouse, but as the opening has widened and eroded, it doesn't go that high anymore. It's pretty fun to watch though.

The kids loved climbing all over the rocks in the harbor, and I loved the scenery. You can climb way out there and get a good view back to the town.

It's hard to believe that we were there one week ago today. A sign at an overlook said that we were 3800 miles from the South Pole, and we were over 9000 miles from Atlanta. Whoa. And down there, you can believe that you're close to Antarctica. I mean, there are penguins. Just feels like the bottom of the world somehow. Geographically, that was as far as our tether stretched, and then we started to reel ourselves back in.

This has been another postcard from Down Under.

Skinny Mirrors

In my living room at home I have a skinny mirror. Somehow it makes me look thinner. Other people have noticed the same thing. And then, at the Target near my house, the mirror outside the dressing room is most definitely a fat mirror. Are you familiar with this phenomenon?

Last weekend, we all went out to the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, and stayed in a hotel for a couple of nights. Nothing fancy, just your basic Best Western. But the mirror in the bathroom was the skinniest mirror I have ever seen. It would have put the dressing room at any Prada store to shame. The effect was so striking, without being carnival-mirror distorting, that I pulled my sister into the bathroom to show her. Then I pulled down my jeans so she could admire the miraculous reflection of my thighs. I don't think that was weird at all, do you?

I looked around on the interwebs to see what people were saying about the skinny mirror situation. I turned up a story of a woman who regretted breaking up with a boyfriend only because he had an especially skinny mirror in his apartment. Lots of people pointed out that department stores somehow have skinny mirrors in their dressing rooms. The consensus seems to be that a mirror that tilts back against the wall will make you look longer and leaner. That's not what's going on in my living room or in the Best Western, so it remains a mystery. I don't know if science can explain it.

I am writing this post to distract myself from two sorrows: it is our very last day in Australia, and my laptop stopped working. Matt is working on the laptop, but there is not much help for the other situation. Hope y'all are having a good weekend and are surrounded by skinny mirrors.

Heading Into the Sunset

The sunset from Amy's porch.

Friends, just wanted to pop in for a moment. Today the whole extended clan is heading to the Blue Mountains, to a place called Katoomba. It looks like this.

Then, THEN, on Saturday Matt and I are leaving our kids with mom and dad and going here, Vanuatu.

For a little of this.


Or maybe this.

Yes, we will probably look just like that.

I hope y'all have a good weekend! Back next week.
xoxoxo
Suburban Matron

Things to Love in Oz: Birdlife

In addition to Vegemite! and Jackets! I am loving on these birds they got Down Under. The trees in Sydney are full of feathered things that look like they've escaped from pet stores. It's so much fun to see these guys all around.



These are sulphur-crested cockatoos on my sister's front porch. On her porch. You see these everywhere--they're as common as mockingbirds--and it blows my mind.



At the koala park near her house, you can feed these guys, and lots of other birds, and the cockatoos say cute things like, "Hello Darling," and "Wanna treat?" Sure, maybe this is not their pristine natural behavior, but it is totally adorable.



You can feed an emu too, as Matt is doing here, even though an emu would just as soon kill you as look at you.



That's a kookaburra. They are ubiquitous and wonderful. Remember the song, "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he"? Dad took this picture today at a state park near Amy's house. They really do make a sound like laughing. But here's my fave, the rainbow lorikeet. These are super common too. There were two of these in a bush next to where our car was parked this afternoon.





Sorry peacock, the lorikeet makes you look so BORING. (Kidding, dude, you know you're my bird.)

This concludes today's postcard from Australia. I thought y'all needed an avian update.

UPDATE, commentary from my Dad:

I talked with an Aussie on the street in Paramatta yesterday and he asked what would bring an American to his little river town. When I said that every tree held amazing birds he seemed surprised. He seemed to think about it for a minute and recalled a travel ad for Australia that he had seen while in California. He said that the ad talked about Australia being world-famous for parrots. He said, "I didn't know that." I told him that I had seen a King Parrot just that morning. He didn't know what that was. I guess it proves that we don't appreciate the common place things in our lives.

What's Cooler Than Bein' Cool?

Ice cold, y'all, that's Mom and me. I give you. . . Team Awesome: World Police!





It takes a certain amount of savoir-faire to get off the ferry in downtown Sydney, buy the first "Australia" warm-up jackets you see, and wear them proudly right that minute. Kind of like walking into Disney World and immediately donning mouse ears, when you are not yourself a child. And if your mom did it with you. We rocked it, friends, and we did not stop it.

I wanted Dad to get one too, but my sister said she would not walk around with us, and I think she was almost serious. Just a little postcard from our day for you, from Australia with love. That's Circular Quay in the background, and we saw very beautiful things and places today, but I'll post pictures of those later, because. . .jackets!

Vegemite!

Several of you guys mentioned Vegemite, and who doesn't love that old Men at Work song? So when I saw it in the supermarket, I was curious. The package says that it contains "yeast extracts, mineral salts, and malt extracts," plus so many B vitamins that it will "keep your family bright and alert." Okeedoke. When in Rome, right?



The package is cute.



Thanks are owed to Amy and Jason for telling me that people eat it smeared very thinly, with butter, on toast or crackers. I might have just squeezed it on my toothbrush otherwise.







You know, it's good! It has a really strong flavor, definitely yeasty, and the butter is the right complement. I can see how it would be a way of livening up bland toast, especially if times were hard and you didn't have savory meat or something. And it really does have a ton of vitamins. I'm taking my tube of vegemite home with me.

I still don't know what "chunder" means, and I'm embarrassed to ask the locals. Kind of like how Amy told me they don't make jokes about that "The dingo ate your baby" skit from Seinfeld, on account of, you know, how horrible that was.

So there you go, let it not be said I don't take risks for this blog. Can't you hear, can't you hear the THUNDAH!

Getting There Is Less Than Half The Fun

We had a four-hour flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, then a three-hour wait at LAX, then a 14 hour flight to Sydney. It was more difficult than I thought it would be, but not in the ways I expected.

Here's what went right:

• I had good plane activities for Hank. I figured that now that he's three, we wouldn't be in for the potential nightmare that traveling with a younger toddler could be. I knew he could be reasoned with (mostly) and that he wouldn't wail the whole time or kick the seat in front of him. In my tote bag, I packed a few flap books for him that he'd never seen. I learned when Laura was little that regular books are nice for toddlers, but flap books, or books with something extra for them to manipulate, like stickers, are even better.
  
  I had two little Transformer robots that I bought just for this trip, and I didn't let him get his hands on them 'til he was strapped in his airplane seat. A smashing success--he played with them continually.
  
  I had also sprung for a new portable DVD player, because neither of our laptop batteries can go the distance. I got Hank and Laura each a set of child-sized headphones, because I learned the hard way once that the little earbuds they give out on the plane will not fit in a kid's ears.
  
  Finally, I had some snacks and candy, as a last-resort child-muting device. As it happened, we barely touched the candy.
  
  
• Both kids did great and behaved wonderfully. At age 8, traveling with Laura is like traveling with another adult. She totes her own carry-on, reads a book on the plane, takes herself to the bathroom, and puts up with Hank's feet in her lap or in her space. She whined and complained less than I did.
  
  
• Both kids slept about half of the long flight. Actually they were both asleep before we got off the ground in LA. Hank is small enough that he could lean over, put his head in my lap, poke his feet a little into Laura's seat, and zonk out. Laura made a stack of pillows on her armrest and snoozed her way west.

What did not go so great:

• We started this journey with Matt sick. Actually, he's still not back to normal. You may recall that early last week I was on my own with the kids while he went to California for work. He had a good trip but arrived home at 3am Thursday morning, exhausted, with a little cough. This blossomed into a full-blown respiratory infection, with coughing and fatigue. Swine flu? I don't know. But by the time we were setting off on Friday afternoon, he was in bad shape. It meant that he wasn't really able to do his share of the parenting logistics, locomotion, and kid-management. In the airport, every time I would leave him to take the kids to the bathroom or something, when I came back he'd be sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. That is not normal. And here he is at our gate in LA. That's not normal either.

• We were misdirected in LA, causing us to walk all over creation with increasingly tired kids and a barely functioning Matt. The dude at our check-in in Atlanta said, "When you get to LA, you'll have to go check in with Air New Zealand for your flight to Sydney. You'll come out of the Delta terminal and go to the left." So we made our way to the Air New Zealand check-in, and they had no knowledge of our reservation. The dudes finally figured out that our flight was actually operated by United, even though it said it was ANZ, so we needed to go check in with United. They told me that if I had read my itinerary more closely, I would have known that, but I swear to the Lord, it only said "Air New Zealand."
  
  So, if the airport were a clock face, we arrived at the 2, and walked to the 5 to check with Air New Zealand, and were then told we needed to go back to the 12. To the kids' bodies, it was about 1am when we got that news, and it was all Matt could do to stay upright. A couple of times, Matt broached the idea of just staying overnight in a hotel and flying out the next day. He was just looking for an escape hatch, he was feeling that bad. I told him that if he could just get himself to the gate, I would do everything else.
  
  When we were almost back to where we needed to be, Hank complained of blisters on his feet. His crocs had rubbed both feet raw, so I started carrying him. When we got into the check-in line, I took his shoes off of him and let him go barefoot. So yes, I was the person in the airport with the barefoot child. I was just thrilled he wasn't having a meltdown, because he was pale with tiredness. When the self check-in didn't work for us, even though they told us we HAD to start in that line (I hate air travel now), a really assholish guy told us that he couldn't help us and we had to get in another line, the line for people with special problems. I moved my sick and exhausted brood into the other line, the line of the damned, and my generally positive attitude began to crumble. Normally, I am all buoyancy and flexibility when in transit, but for a moment I understood how those passengers on the reality show about the airline wind up screaming and having to be restrained by airport security. I just thought, "Um, this is really hard."
  
  But we just kept on chugging. The barefoot Hank sat on the floor and played with his robots, scooting forward in line when I told him, Matt remained vertical, and Laura hung in there. Then somehow we all kept chugging through security, then we made it to our gate and Matt grabbed a nap. It is crazy, but the getting on the plane to start a fourteen-hour flight actually seemed like a relief. At least it meant we were all in the right place and could stay there a while.

• I never really got to sleep on the flight. It's just not that easy to sleep sitting up, even with a magical neck pillow. Hank fell asleep with his head on my lap, and you know how it is when you want one of your kids to sleep at all costs, even if it means you have to stand on your eyebrow and hold your breath. I just didn't want to disturb him much, and then when they turned off the cabin lights, they left the big video screen on. That thing was so damn bright that it was boring a hole in my skull. I felt around as best I could. I didn't have anything I could use for an blindfold. I felt my pocket, and remembered that when I had changed Hank into a pull-up before boarding, I'd stuffed his underwear into my pocket. I was desperate, people. So that's how I found out that his underwear won't fit over my head. Or they did fit, but the waistband was uncomfortably tight over the bridge of my nose.

• Early in our day, I let Matt put a bag of leftover garlic bread from Sbarro into my purse. Ladies, do not let someone put leftover garlic bread into your purse. The entire trip, whenever I opened my purse for anything, a noxious cloud of garlic wafted out for the enjoyment of those around me. I share this so that others may be spared.

But you know what? We made it. Matt had an empty seat next to him, and I relieved him of parenting duties for the duration of the flight. I think he slept okay. And we all got here. Of course, I lied on our health declaration forms, because I was afraid that customs would quarantine all of us. And indeed, since we've been here, the rest of us have come down with Matt's affliction, and we brought the Black Death to Amy and her family. They're so happy we're here! But all is well, and next I'll start sharing some of the sights.

Happy Fourth of July, y'all! I hope you have a great weekend. Strangely, the holiday is not such a big deal here.

I Am, Like, Walking Around Upside Down

Whoa, y'all, that was kind of hard. But we made it. I am blogging from Australia, where it is currently late Tuesday afternoon. I think in my Atlanta time zone right now it is Flursday, the 39th of June, in the year of the Llama. Seriously, I have no idea, and it is so disorienting. I keep thinking that if I can figure out what time it "really" is, then that will help me somehow with this jetlag situation, which at this point is not so much physical as spiritual, honest. I voiced this feeling last night at dinner, and Amy said, "Okay, I can tell you exactly what time it is there. In Atlanta it's 5:00 in the morning, Monday." And I was like, "That is so creepy." It didn't help at all.

Also, it is winter here. We knew that, and we packed warmer clothes. It's not like hardcore winter anyway--more like a Northern California winter. But the sun is in totally the wrong place, and it gets dark by 5:30, or 17:30 as they call it, freaks. Last night as I was grappling with the notion of June 27th, and what happened to it--I mean, we flew to Sydney on June 26th, and we arrived on June 28th, so someone owes me a June 27th--Mom had a revelation. We were talking about how early it got dark, and she was like, "I get it! We just had the summer solstice, which was our longest day of the year, but down here it was their shortest day of the year!" Dad laughed at her like she was a complete simpleton to just be figuring this out, but it seemed like a major epiphany to me too. Be gentle with us, we are not from around here. Today when I was ordering fries for Hank, or "chips," God help us, I was offered "chicken salt" to go on them. Chicken salt! What the HECKS! I've asked if it is actually chicken-flavored, but nobody will quite give me a straight answer.

Matt just helpfully explained that we did in fact have a June 27th. It lasted from when it struck midnight as we flew over the Pacific until we crossed the International Date Line into June 28th. Hmmph.

Tomorrow (whenever that even is) I'll share the saga of our journey with you, and how I came to learn that Hank's underwear will not fit over my head, at least not loosely enough to be comfortable. I hope that you all had a good weekend (whenever that even was).