As we all know, all work and no joy makes Mac (or Jack) or anyone else for that matter a dull boy - or girl. There sure has been plenty of work going on around here but luckily there has also been truckloads of joy. All members of this household have been enjoying new interests.
My swimming lessons are still in the early stages (my best stroke is still Drownstroke) but I am determined to get to the stage where swimming is actually fun. My partner is a gun swimmer and most Saturday mornings he can be found far out to sea with many other "Masters" (while back at home I try to ignore radio news reports about shark attacks). Somewhere in the pictures below are my partner, my swimming tutor and several of their clubmates completing this year's 3.6km Busselton Jetty Swim.
I don't intend to ever join him in using swimming as a means of transportation, but the other hobby he and my daughter have taken up does look like a lot of fun. They are having surfing lessons at a local surf school and are both doing brilliantly. Here they are only one hour into their first lesson.
My daughter has also taken up hockey
and my son is making great progress with lawn bowls. He now trains regularly in Perth with the state junior squad who are the Australian juniors champions. Lawn bowls might seem like an unusual sport for a boy his age but I am thrilled that he has found a sport he enjoys and is good at as that is something that has eluded me my entire life.
While he attends his day-long training sessions, I get to indulge in one of my favourite activities and explore new-to-me parts of Perth. On the last trip I took the opportunity to finally buy something new that I have been trying and failing to buy secondhand for three years: a bike!
I use it to do chores, visit friends and tootle here,
and here.
Yup, still op shopping. I also now have a legitimate reason to obsessively scour through Trademe as I am helping a friend in Christchurch to furnish her new office. Our most exciting find so far is a huge set of String style mid-century shelving - for $30.
I am finally teaching my daughter to sew by working with her to create her costume for this year's Supanova Pop Culture Convention where last year we spotted the cutest Doctor Who ever.
So plenty of play for everyone but now I really do need to get back to doing some work. I have been offered a very exciting (and a little bit scary) new role and I need to write up some ideas for a meeting.
But I'll end with a wee skite about something that has come about as the result of absolute truckloads of work over the past three years by one member of this household and his workmates. The Mandurah Performing Arts Centre won the 2013 APACA Drover Award for the Performing Arts Centre of the Year. Woohoo!
That centre is certainly not run by dull boys - or girls. There is so much happening there that so far I have had absolutely no need to seek entertainment just down the road from there ... at the bingo hall.
As if the rivers, estuaries and numerous Indian Ocean beaches weren't enough to tempt us into the water, a new attraction has arrived in town. Just 4 Fun Aqua Park is an inflatable obstacle course which sets up camp on Mandurah's Western Foreshore for the summer. There is an area for little children,
an area for children aged up to 99,
plus some pedal boats.
Yesterday my children and their water-sports-loving aunt took it on.
It was pretty hard work for the least able swimmer in the group but between his aunt and an attentive and helpful park assistant he still had a fabulous time. They swam, slid, bounced and catapulted each other into the water. They had a lot of fun and are keen to go back for more.
Auntie N had already swum around Australia that morning with a local sea-swimming group (OK, slight exaggeration) but still had the energy to help my son between the various obstacles and push and haul him onto them numerous times.
And for the millionth time since she arrived here I thought, what a winner.
After several weeks of the sort of glorious yet comfortable weather I could happily live with my whole life, things cranked up a bit on the temperature front this week. Monday was hot, Tuesday was hotter and Wednesday was a stinker with 37 degrees recorded in Perth.
Like many people, I can merrily handle stinker days when I'm having my dream-life. If all I'm required to do is read a novel while lying in a hammock, drink umbrella drinks, swim, take siestas and eventually slope off to a restaurant for tea, then I can pretty much handle any temperature in style. (Cripes, the last time I did that was 1994.)
But I'll freely admit to being a bit hopeless where hot temperatures and real-life get combined. Fetching and carrying groceries on foot, minding hot/bothered/exhausted children, push-mowing the lawn, ironing, doing the frenzied pre-babysitter-cleanup, cooking an early dinner then getting spruced up and rushing to a posh 6pm do - all done in temperatures scarily close to my age - tends to turn me into TheOtherDeidre.
One of my children is a wilter too. On Tuesday night when we were still recovering from the heat of the day, we saw on the weather forecast that Wednesday was going to be even hotter. Even when I explained that it is always a couple of degrees cooler here than in Perth, this poor child got teary eyed.
So on Wednesday afternoon after the two people in this household with places to be had rushed off to do their thing, TheOtherDeidre and TheOtherChild decided to actually enjoy this weather instead of just endure it. We ignored all the things we should have done and instead headed to the place we call "The Town Baths" (part of the estuary surrounded by floating walkways to make an area like a swimming pool). After snatching just an hour of dream-life cooling our bodies and our brains, we both got it together enough to cope well with the rest of our hot, busy, real-life day.
On the forecast last night we saw with some relief that today would be back to lower temperatures, but he and I agreed we no longer dread the many stinker days yet to come.
