Notes from a Very Small Island

Alien? ...or MAN? (exhibit 1)

2010-01-29T15:50:00.001-05:00

Lately there has been evidence that my cute little baby Alien is turning into a MAN.

As evidence I present exhibit 1:

MAN-handling the helm...

Winter comes to Very Small Island

2010-01-20T11:28:00.004-05:00

Hubby is in Utah. Snowboarding. On a boys trip.

Caveboy and Alien have school, and so were not invited to join the fun despite having all the testicular equipment required to qualify for a boys trip.

Instead they have made their own winter on Very Small Island.

Yes those are ice chests.

With ice.

Bundle of green cuteness

2008-07-25T05:22:00.004-05:00

We rescued this little guy from our cat this morning.

He's a baby iguana.

When he grows up he'll be three feet long, brown, and extraordinarily ugly, but right now he's a cutie.

I never really imagined I would find myself using that descriptor for a scaly reptile, but that's what I've come to after 11 years of nurturing male children.

There's more to life than sailing

2008-07-20T08:01:00.007-05:00

Sometimes when I complain that it seems like our lives have been wholly taken over by sailing, hubby reminds me..

in his most soothing tone..

that there's also kiting.

Well thank goodness for that.

More sailing

2008-06-26T05:53:00.000-05:00

This weekend was major kids regatta weekend on the next door island for Alien.

He even got time off school for it. Hence the smug look.

Hubby takes Alien's sailing very seriously.

Between races he fine tunes Alien's boat to adjust for changing wind conditions. This kind of tweaking of boat equipment, I am reliably told, is called 'wanking' in technical sailing speak.

Sometimes several dads will get together and have a group wank.

Hubby is very even tempered. In fact he can be so calm, my Very Glamorous Mother once mistook him for being comatose, but that's a story for another time.

The point is, he doesn't easily get agitated.

Unless he's watching Alien sail.

He's mostly quite good about letting Alien learn by experience, but every now and then, when he just can't help himself anymore, he'll let loose an enormous bellow of helpful advice.

Like this.

"Hike it ouuuut! Hiiiiiiiiiiiike"!!

When Alien hears the familiar bellow of the papabull he tosses his butt as far off the boat as is humanly possibly without actually falling in the drink. This apparently is not approved hiking technique, but he gets 10 out of 10 for effort.

In the Green (beginner) fleet, bellowing dads are indulged. When Alien eventually graduates up to White fleet, the race committee will likely be less amused by this type of behaviour and Hubby will have to try to find a way to stem it.

Here Alien is hauled before the judges and told off for an infraction of the rules. If Hubby popped an artery at this point, he was blissfully silent about it.

Note here, on the third day of racing, that Alien is in the water relaxing while everyone else is fretting over their boats.

He can do that because his boat is already perfectly wanked.

After a heavy day of racing it's time for a little R&R (Alien style)

And an enormous dose of ice cream.

Evolution

2008-05-25T20:00:00.003-05:00

I know I call him Caveboy.

But the truth is he's just barely out of the trees.

The tinsiest Island of all

2008-05-25T19:57:00.001-05:00

This is Itsy Bitsy Tinsey Winsey Island.

It's the tinsiest island of all.

It belongs to someone very rich.

Who can afford fake trees.

And real flamingoes.

Sometimes we trespass.

But don't tell.

Flyplass

2007-12-20T20:00:00.000-05:00

This is Flyplass.

He is three hundred years old and has no teeth.

He belongs to my Very Glamorous Mother.

“You can’t kill somevone just because they are verry verry old” VGM says pointedly every time I come over.

She has been carefully drilling this message in to me for the past 200 years of Flyplass’s life. She wants to be very sure I understand that extreme old age is not an adequate excuse for popping someone.

She demonstrates, with the help of Flyplass, the correct way to feed someone who has no teeth. I break out the note book.

Alien considers life in the homeland

2007-12-16T00:32:00.000-05:00

I finally take delivery of my new car.

I pick Alien up from school in it. “Sweeeeet” he says as he sinks himself into the creamy leather and starts surveying the knobs and dials. He fiddles for a while until the AC is blasting and his seat warmer is on full tilt.

After a quiet bit of contemplation he says “this must be what it’s like to be in Norway.... freezing air and roasting butt.”

“Yep” I say “That’s pretty much how it is over there.”

A snow day for the kids..

2007-12-11T05:29:00.000-05:00

Last night Tropical Storm Olga formed directly over our heads. Temperatures plummeted to a chilly 23 degrees (yes thanks, I can feel your sympathy radiating directly in to my woolly socks).

This morning it's actually blustery, which is a weather condition that is only supposed to happen in the homeland and certain abandoned regions of England.

Most likely they'll close the schools, which is what happens on Very Small Island any time there is a remote possibility of rain. Caveboy and Alien are still sleeping, but when they wake up and see the sprinkling of rain outside they'll feel the same glee as little Viking boys in the homeland feel when they wake up to discover the house is completely buried in snow.

2007-11-27T18:48:00.000-05:00

Very Small Island philosophy on women is traditional (to use the polite term).

You'd think that coming from good old Norwegian Viking stock, I'd be all in to the men wear the horned helmets while the women stew goats and raise children kind of thing, but actually the very overt porkchopism of Very Small Island used to irritate the hell out of me.

Until the first time the septic tank overflowed.

Then I turned to Hubby and was all like "Oh studmuffin, your pants are sooo well equipped for this kind of job - why don't you run a long and deal with that while I bake us some faerie cakes".

Hubby is very obliging in these matters. He never questions why it's always his job to deal with the decomposing rat at the bottom of the garden, or the irate machete wielding neighbour in the driveway. He's a guy. His pants are heaving with testosterone. If there's a smell of faerie cakes in the air, he knows that somewhere nearby there's a man job that needs doing.

Today I am baking. This is because I am planning to buy a car, and on Very Small Island, anything to do with cars is a man job. Last time I tried to buy a car here, the Very Small Brained Car Salesman refused me the stick shift I wanted because "women should always drive automatics so they can concentrate on their steering". This time I am arming myself with my man, who will do the talking, while I do the pointing and faerie cake baking.

I am assuming that under these arrangements I can have any damn car I want.

The Very Dangerous Nearly Retirement

2007-11-20T06:22:00.000-05:00

"Your fader trried to kill me trree times dis morrning" my Very Glamorous Mother purrs in her sexiest Scandinavian accent. She is not complaining, just reporting.

I nod sympathetically. He Man Pilot Hero likes to live on the edge. If you happen to be in the way you need to move fast or prepare to build some serious character.

VGM is not moving as fast as she used to at the moment. It's her back that's bothering her. Makes it harder to dodge the bullets that fly around the Retirement Home for the very Glamorous and Nearly Retired.

A little later HMPH comes up from his ~~playroom~~ workshop in the basement.

"Look at this" he says, and raises his leg up for my inspection. It has bulging veins and interesting scars, as you might expect from a leg that's spent a life-time living dangerously. It's also completely hairless.

me: "You SHAVED?"

HMPH: "I blasted all the hair off when I exploded the dumb-waiter shaft. Flames shot out 60 feet and blew the doors off the kitchen."

He wanders off happily. His impending retirement is looking better than expected.

VGM shakes her head indulgently and adds Alien and Caveboy-size full body armour to her christmas shopping list.

Nature takes its course

2007-11-07T17:38:00.000-05:00

Hubby does a lot of winning when he sails.

Even when faced with the most dire circumstances, say a sinking boat and a hysterical wife (to take a totally random not-that-it's-happened-lately example), he'll still very likely pull off a first.

Hubby's seemingly unending winning streak is endearingly coupled with an almost pathological modesty over his sailing ability. If you ask him how he's done at a regatta he'll say "Okay-ish", which means he wiped the floor with the competition.

He also invariably jettisons all evidence of victory at the first available opportunity, usually before we get home. He pushes his trophies into the hands of unsuspecting passers-by, or leaves them behind bushes, or crams them down behind the toilets in the men's room when no one is looking.

I don't ask. I figure it's a guy thing.

Recently Hubby's been spending a lot of time coaching Alien in his sailing. They speak technical sailing speak (which sounds a great deal like profanity to the uninitiated), and use unusual body language like crotch grabs and head slaps, which apparently also have specific meanings in sailing.

I don't mind that Alien is turning into his dad. He's 10. So is his dad. It's just nature taking its course.

Last weekend Alien came third in a kids regatta.

He won a prize.

It's buried behind the garden shed.

Nature has spoken.

Last weekend on Very Flat Island...

2007-10-27T08:27:00.000-05:00

Last week my Very Glamorous Mother jet-setted off to the MotherLand, ostensibly to return our visiting Octogenarian Granny to her Octogenarian Boyfriend, but possibly also to secretly shop for shoes.

He-Man-Pilot-Hero, not one to twiddle his thumbs while the cat's away, loaded us up in the plane with his Impossibly Long Dog

and flew us to Very Flat Island, which is about 7 minutes flying time away.

unless your 10-year old is doing the flying...

Even Caveboy had a flying lesson.

If you look carefully, you can see three perfectly shiny halos...

Happily (and not entirely by accident) we meet Caveboy's best buddies and go Geocaching

The loot is located

and Negotiations begin

then Impossibly Long Dog's nose leads us to the salt ponds

Where Caveboy finds a flamingo-feather and Hobbes frets about bird-flu

and.. ack!!! what is that?

later it's off to the beach to dig to China...

...or (if you're Impossibly Long), to recharge

...for bonfire roasted marshmallows

Of course there is plenty of shark fishing...

Caveboy reels him in..

And Alien finishes the job at the coalface.

HMPH and his Impossibly Long Dog give us a low fly-by and a wingwaggle as they head home at the end of the weekend

When we get back to Very Small Island the boys squeeze just a little more entertainment out of the weekend

until the fat lady does her thing..

Peace and Harmony at the Retirement Home for the Very Glamorous (and Irretrievably Heroic)

2007-01-08T17:26:00.000-05:00

The Retirement Home for the Very Glamorous is nearly finished! So nearly finished in fact that we managed to spend Christmas there.

In a game of give and take played out at master level, my Very Glamorous Mother and He Man Pilot Hero dad have each added their unmistakable touch to their new home.

Frankenbird

2006-12-20T05:28:00.000-05:00

Alien and Caveboy found a dead bird on the porch yesterday.

Since the advent of birdflu I've been trying to teach my kids to give dead birds a wide berth, but alas it was Hubby who was home with the boys yesterday, so the dead bird was under full microscope autopsy by the time I got home.

Alien was convinced he could revive it if only he had two wires and a size 'D' battery. We could use a Frankenbird around here.

In other news, Caveboy and Hubby went shopping for my Christmas present yesterday. Caveboy was tripping over himself not to tell me what it was, but got as far as 'very sparkly and mega-expensive' before his brother quietly gagged him and carried him out of earshot.

A little later Caveboy spotted (as if for the very first time in his entire 4-year old life) the plasticky fake diamond earings I've been wearing more or less since the day he was born and he shrieked 'mama's opened her present before Christmas!' so loudly Santa could hear it all the way up at the North pole.

Let there be no secrets in the Hobbes-household.

The Big Cheese Himself

2006-12-11T16:48:00.000-05:00

Caveboy has come home talking about the big Cheeses living on a cloud in the sky.

It would appear that once again the Hobbes-household collective failure to subscribe to organised religion has come back to bite my children on their skinny little heathen rumps.

There is probably a special little corner of hell reserved for mothers like me who allow their children to believe the almighty is a dairy product.

slow boat to China

2006-11-28T17:41:00.000-05:00

Alien has done up an excellent report on the 13 books in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events for his creative writing class at school. It's due to be handed in for grading today, however by an eerily coincidental series of unfortunate events, it has ended up going to Hong Kong on Hubby's laptop instead.

I phone Hubby on his cell phone. No answer.
I phone him on his work cell phone. Still no answer.
I phone his hotel, and a lovely little Chinese lady answers.

nice Chinese lady: Hello?

me: Can I speak to Mr Hobbes please

(pause accompanied by tappity-tap on the hotel computer)

nice Chinese lady: I'm velly solly madam, Mista Hobbes not checking in until tomollow moning.

I suspect an administrative error, until I check Hubby's itinerary and discover that despite leaving home 2 ice-ages ago, he is in fact still sitting in a metallic tube somewhere high above the Pacific Ocean.

Either he is flying at a glacial pace, or China is a long long way away.

I start on an excuse letter to Alien's teacher. I haven't done one of these since I was at university. I'm quite please with the result. The Hong Kong excuse comes across as sophisticated and believable. I wish I had thought of it before.

a little piece of paradise

2006-11-27T20:36:00.000-05:00

We have purchased a piece of land in a swanky neighbourhood on Even Smaller Island. It's not a million miles away from the Retirement Home for the Very Glamorous. In fact, you might even say (if you were given to stating the obvious) that it's directly across the road.

We have cleverly waited until construction of the Retirement Home for the Very Glamorous is complete before making our purchase, the better to ensure that the neighbourhood can't just pick up it's bags and run away screaming when we move in.

Very Glamorous Mother and He Man Pilot Hero are no doubt celebrating this wonderful opportunity to catch up on missed baby-sitting duties, now that we will no longer be separated by that inconvenient 10 miles of caribbean sea.

In a secret bit of pre-purchase reconnaissance Hubby and I have determined that we'll be able to hear the tinkle of our own childrens' laughter across the road as we sip our rum punches on our future porch.

Coming soon to a neighbourhood near you

my Very Glamorous Imelda

2006-11-21T05:27:00.000-05:00

My Very Glamorous Mother pulls me into an enormous hall in the newly constructed Retirement Home For The very Glamorous.

"And this" she says "is the walk-in closet" Her voice echoes in the vast chamber.

"What's this?" I ask, pointing to a wall of floor to ceiling racks.

"For my shoes" VGM says, rubbing her elegant hands together in delight.

"Ah - I thought one of the advantages of retiring on a very small island would be being able to walk around barefoot all day." I say. Stupidly.

She carefully ignores my comment, in the same way one might carefully ignore someone who farts loudly in public.

"And this is where I will hang all my white clothes" she continues, "and here I will hang yellows through to corals, up to but not including tangerines. Tangerines through to ruby reds will hang here.." she doesn't actually say this last bit about the colour coding, but she thinks it loudly and I can hear it.

We continue the tour until we come to a small mis-shapen corner that looks like it might be a construction error.

"What happened here?" I ask.

"This is where your He Man Pilot Hero dad will hang his clothes."

Caveboy pulls a sickie

2006-11-14T19:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Alien had to come home from school early. Diagnosis: mild stomach bug; Treatment: good book, bed rest, kisses.

Meanwhile Caveboy observes, and learns.

This morning Caveboy announces he is ill. Nothing to be alarmed about, but school is out of the question. He delivers this news while bounce-bounce-bouncing on the couch.

Clearly the lad is having us on.

Me: Are you really sick? Do you need to go to the hospital?

Him (like a pro): Yes - I need a huge injection of medicine, straight into my eyeball.

Oh he's good. I have not choice but to go straight to mean.

Honestly Caveboy, you're bounce-bounce-bouncing on the couch and you've had two helping of Cinnamins for breakfast - I don't think you're really sick.

Him (tearful but still bounce-bounce-bouncing): You have no idea how sick I am, and you JUST DON'T CARE.

Caveboy enjoying a day off in my office while his friends sweat in school

back again

2006-11-10T05:25:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, finally home after 3 weeks of travel. Most of it was business, made marginally less tedious by the fact that it was here:

This was my first trip to Russia, so I tried to act unsurprised when the event we attended (financial services?) turned out to include ladies in fur bikinis and other exotic creatures...

Clearly I will have to learn to adapt to Russian style business.

The very best part of the trip though was 3 days snatched in Norway on my way home. More about that this weekend..

Very Small Island Monday

2006-10-16T20:13:00.000-05:00

The call comes at about 3:45 in the afternoon. Whale carcass off Salt Island.

Work is insane at the moment. I'm off on a three week business trip at the end of this week, and things are getting pretty hairy. Without offering any excuses I dash off from work early. Hubby does the same. We hunt down the kids from wherever they lurk between school and home hours.

Very Glamorous Mother and He Man Pilot Hero zoom by in their boat to pick us up... We're going whale watching.

Actually, we're going shark watching. Shark-munching-on-whale watching, if you want to be really picky.

The tiger sharks feeding off the carcass range in size up to a monstrous 12-13 feet. Hubby reckons 15 feet, but then he's a guy, and you know guys and fish...
Anyway, I can't describe what it feels like to watch a shark over twice the length of a grown man ripping into dinner. They're so close we can literally reach out and touch them.

Very Glamorous Mother focuses almost exclusively on her nugget-size grandchildren, and she makes little squeaking noises each time they lean over the edge of the boat to get a closer look at the maw of the feeding sharks. The stink is enough to hose your sinuses.

that was my Monday - how was yours?

Hubby's wingbuds

2006-10-11T05:31:00.000-05:00

Hubby wants to learn to fly.

He Man Pilot Hero, who knows a worthy cause when he sees one, has taken it upon himself to nurture his son-in-law’s flying ambitions. Flying manuals and pilot log books and second-hand aircraft directories start appearing in my home, and behold, for Hubby’s birthday, a flying lesson with Javier on Large Hispanic Island to the West.

HMPH generously flies us to Large Hispanic Island to the West himself. In the air, he teaches Hubby the correct technique of lurching and dropping the aircraft. He does this under the pretence that it is an important part of flying, and Hubby (bless his little cotton socks) naively believes him, never once suspecting that actually this manoeuvre, when performed with your wife in the back seat, is the most direct route to arctic bedroom conditions with extra frost on top. HMPH sniggers knowingly and I practice my deep breathing and put on an elaborate show of calm from the backseat. Lurch? What lurch?

Hopefully Javier’s teaching techniques will be more conservative, and at any rate I’ll be safely ensconced in the mall by the time the real flying lesson starts.

As it turns out, Javier’s opening remark to Hubby when they get in the air is ‘Try to kill us’, which blows any hopes I had of Hubby developing into a nice conservative pilot. Ah well, I suppose it will add a little spice (with extra frost on top) to our existence.

berry optimistic

2006-10-01T16:41:00.000-05:00

In a fit of optimism, my employers have issued me with a Blackberry.

I say 'in a fit of optimism', because our monopoly-holding cellular service provider does not support blackberry-style data services. In fact, we've only just got SMS texting, 12 years behind outer Mongolia.

The first time I saw a Blackberry was maybe 5 or 6 years ago when a friend from the states came to visit. He leaned off the edge of my porch, and like a large hairy Statue of Liberty pointed his blackberry in the direction of Uncle Sam's Much Larger Island to the West, whereupon the little device ingested and displayed a dozen emails of such critical importance that dinner was quite forgotten.

Luckily our Very Small Island cellular provider has long since grown wise to the illicit services available from my porch and cranked up their own signal so it is no longer possible to pick up data services (or make cheap phone calls) by piggy-backing on the signal coming from Uncle Sam's.

As a result my Blackberry is nothing more than a fancy gadget for storing birthday reminders. I am however fully equipped should the opportunity to travel to outer Mongolia present itself.

Dear small and insignificant client

2006-09-28T05:52:00.000-05:00

I have had no internet connection at my house for over a week now. I have not bothered to report this to our monopoly-holding telecoms provider Cable and Worthless, because they have recently taken out a full page ad in our local paper saying something to this effect:

"Dear small and insignificant clients

We know your telephones don't work and you have no internet, but quite frankly we are so busy dealing with our kick-ass corporate mega-clients that we do not have time for you.

We suggest you sit back, relax, and think of all the money you are saving by not having a phone, now that we have tripled our rates. Speaking of rates, you will still be required to pay your monthly $120 internet service charge regardless of whether or not your internet is actually working, otherwise we will cut you off and skin you like a dog.

Please feel free to go to the competition if you do not like our service. Oh wait... there is no competition. haha.

Yours sincerely
The Management"

coincidence or conspiracy?

2006-09-20T19:40:00.000-05:00

I have discovered another very small island resident - a resident of another very small island that is, not a very small resident of an another island...it is a trite but important distinction to make.

By his own very clever observation, he is an American living on a very small island in Norway, whereas I am a Norwegian living on a very small island in the Americas. What's more, his very small island is practically next door to the place I was born! (insert disbelieving gasp here). He has 2 boys. I have 2 boys. He's married to a Norwegian woman, I'm a married Norwegian woman. Our lives are practically identical.

Except he gets 11 months of winter and (most likely) pays enough tax to make his nose bleed. Clearly he is made of the stuff of Vikings, or he would have run away screaming a long time ago. I find I have developed a deep and lasting admiration for this brave man. Check him out and give him a round of applause!

On second thought, make it a standing ovation.

Weekend triathlon - swim, surf, dig

2006-09-19T05:22:00.000-05:00

who are these people and what do they want?

2006-09-15T05:21:00.000-05:00

Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Kate Grenville - The Secret River
MJ Hyland - Carry Me Down
Hisham Matar - In the Country of Men
Edward St Aubyn - Mother's Milk
Sarah Waters - The Night Watch

I think perhaps I have taken a step too far from civilization because I haven't heard of any of the authors short-listed yesterday for the Man Booker prize. I've heard of Kiran Desai's mum, but I don't think that counts.

how sexy is your sink?

2006-09-13T17:55:00.000-05:00

Today's excitement has been shopping for a new kitchen sink to go with our new kitchen counters.

You might think that the kitchen sink selection would be fairly limited on a Very Small Island such as ours. And you would be right.

The upside is that we don't have to go through the agonising process of actually agreeing on which sink to get. It's a simple transaction where we hand over cash and the hardware store hands over the only sink in stock. Strangely, there is a much broader selection of kitchen faucets available, though only one of them actually fits the kitchen sink we've bought, so we're safe on that count too.

Rather excitingly, the faucet looks almost exactly like a very large mechanical sex toy jutting out of our new sink at an anatomically correct angle. It even comes with it's own slinky enema-like attachment on the side.

This is the crowning glory of my new kitchen, and will no doubt be the conversation piece of our parties for many moons to come.

shortages

2006-09-11T05:39:00.000-05:00

Part of small island life is the frequent bouts of product-specific shortages that hit our supermarkets. Sometimes a particular thing will be absent from the shelves for months on end. Our current conspicuous shortage is cottage cheese, which as these things go, hardly qualifies as a national crisis.

Sometimes however, the shortage is a little more critical, like the time I had a child with a size 3 butt and there were no size 3 diapers to be had for 6 weeks.

I think this type of uncertain supply brings out the hoarder in many of us. I often find myself stocking generously up on things when they're finally available. In fact, with the 40 cans of solid white albacore that I have stacked in my cabinet, I may be single-handedly responsible for the current shortage in tinned tuna...

Men in tights come to town

2006-09-09T08:38:00.000-05:00

We had a little piece of New York right here on our Very Small Island a couple of nights ago, when a group of very talented american dancers put on a show unlike anything seen in these parts before.

Our little community usually doesn't attract this sort of talent, but to our disbelieving delight they had been persuaded down here by a friend of a friend of someone who knew someone else but nobody could really remember who.

So starved are we for a little bit of culture, that that island's largest venue was sold out to standing room only. The show started with a little mini-performance by homegrown talent, first the church girls, then a local Michael Jackson moonwalker. The crowd went nuts. People were stamping their feet and pumping their fists in the air and roaring their approval, chanting 'moonwalk! moonwalk!

Then came the imported talent. When the first male soloist took the stage in his tights, people smirked, then they giggled, then they laughed out loud. A girl I know from work was so scandalized by the fact that the performer wore no shirt and you could clearly see The Bulge through his tights, that she got up and walked out.

Cultural differences, bulges and bared pecs aside, they were gobsmackingly good.

Meet the cast

2006-09-01T20:13:00.001-05:00

Hobbes - that'd be me. 30ish, bookish, mother to Alien and Caveboy, wife to Mr.Hobbes (I know... it boggles the mind), daughter to very Glamorous Mother and He Man Pilot Hero, unused doctorate rolled up in my back pocket (might come in handy if we ever run out of loo-roll..)

Mr.Hobbes/Hubby - banker, rock-star sailor, always mildly surprised at the number of knees and elbows in our bed

Alien - Super-genius mega-scientist trapped in the body of a 12-year old

Caveboy - 7-year old with eye-watering table-manners. Often wears Fur (see below).

Very Glamorous Mother (VGM) - Alarmingly glamorous all the time. Funny accent.

He Man Pilot Hero (HMPH) - super hero minus the tights and cape (coz that just wouldn't be right)

Fur: Our Designated Feline. Sometimes brings us snakes & rats but usually just hangs out with Caveboy doing Cave stuff.

Very Small Island - small rock sticking out of the Caribbean Sea. We usually call this home, though sometimes we call it [insert expletive here]

Even Smaller Island - where VGM and HMPH live. Separated from Very Small Island by 10 miles of inconvenient sea (read: no free babysitting).

The MotherLand - Norway.. home to the Norwegian Clan and People Who Know How To Party

People Who Know How To Party

2006-07-04T05:32:00.001-05:00

People Who Know How To Party have arrived from the Homeland. This is very exciting for all of us People Who Mostly Hang Around in Hammocks.

empty hammock

In a heartbeat snowcabin drinking games are adjusted to swimming pool ones. This type of rapid adaptability is exactly why Norwegians have survived for millennia in the earth's most inhospitable climate.

Being seafaring folk by heritage, People Who Know How To Party naturally feel right at home on the water

and My Very Glamorous Mother almost loses her title as reigning Queen of Fashion to our young visitor, though she is saved by Gasp! What is that?! Socks? With a swimsuit? Very Glamorous Mother heaves a sigh of relief (or she would, if heaving weren't such a very unglamorous thing to do).

This, by the way, is the worlds most dedicated party animal, and he did not hesitate to heave massively in relief when People Who Know How To Party finally showed up and livened things up a little.

Caveboy shows off his snorkeling skills, but again, Almost Reigning Queen of Fashion gives him a good run for his money.

Note to my Very Creative Cousin (really, the rest of you can ignore this). Your daughter is doing just fine. Your parents are being very good about locking her up safely when the drinking games start, and there was almost some suntan lotion applied the other day so she is not too cooked. At least not as cooked as your father.
She is also completely fearless (what is it with you people?) and gave chase to a stingray twice as big as herself yesterday when she went snorkeling in 200 feet of water. She also enjoys Rum Punch. Let there be no secrets between us.
Love, your cousin Hobbes.

armchair travel

2006-05-05T05:28:00.000-05:00

I love love love to travel. I have 36 countries notched into my bedpost, and as soon as I come back from one trip I start dreaming of the next.

Hubby has long ago accepted that every so often I will hand him an apologetic look and 2 kids, and bugger off for a little adventure. Naturally this sort of thing requires intensive build up of credit in the marital bank account. For long stretches of time Hubby will be right about everything. There will be pork chops for dinner every night, and bedroom favours will be traded with stock exchange frenzy. Then tooteloo - I'm off to see new places and pick up exotic gut-dwelling bacteria.

My recent travels however have been of an entirely different sort, and the only thing I've picked up is a gin and tonic and a huge admiration for Michael Palin. In the evenings, after lecturing my children on the evil of TV and the benefits of reading and creative play, I sneak off with my laptop and 16-disc collection of Michael Palin crisscrossing the world in every possible direction and combination.

He gets cold and scared or hot and bothered in countries I have always dreamed of getting cold and scared or hot and bothered in. He gets horrible diarrhea in places I'd pay to get diarrhea in. He flies in things that shouldn't fly, crosses oceans in things that shouldn't float, and speaks to people who should really be given very wide berth.

Having previously been so scathingly critical of people who watch Jamie Oliver instead of cooking, or watch home improvement shows while their homes crumble around them, I have now turned into a fully fledged armchair traveler. By living vicariously through Michael Palin I have been to the Sudan without a bulletproof vest, and to the North Pole in my underwear. I have made 26 toasts in Russian home-brewed vodka without a hint of hangover.

If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I'm off to the Baring Strait in a walrus-skin fishing boat.

galling news

2006-04-25T19:44:00.000-05:00

Last time someone handed me an ultrasound picture of a black hole and a peanut, it represented something which with 9 months of effort and a bit of vomiting thrown in (or up or whatever), magically turned into the all-singing all-dancing child prodigy Caveboy.

When the doctor handed me the peanut picture, he said – Look! A baby! with the kind of awe and admiration that might suggest that I had achieved something no woman before me ever had. I made a peanut. It would turn into a child. I was the champion of the world.

Alas, how fortunes change…

This morning, when my doctor handed me another blackhole/peanut ultrasound picture, he looked at me gravely over the top of his glasses and said…

…..Gallstones.

He followed this pronouncement with a significant and disappointed pause that said anytime I wanted to crawl under a rock and take my nasty gallstones with me that would be just fine. I have been demoted from champion of the world to bottom feeder.

Gallstones. How unsexy is that?

Very Glamorous Mother will be shocked. She will start investigations into possible administrative errors at the hospital. Maybe they switched me at birth? Maybe somewhere out there is a gallstone free Very Glamorous Daughter that went home with an unglamorous gallstone afflicted mum. A daughter who secretly yearns for Prada shoes while I sit here in my plastic Crocs brewing gallstones.

They hurt too, the little buggers.

PoopMonster

2006-03-24T05:53:00.000-05:00

Very Glamorous Mother has ordered me to move on from Tuesday's post, as she finds the choices contained therein distressing. Until there is a glamorous way to decay, the topic has been banned.

So on to farts.

When Caveboy was little, he called farts 'poopmonsters'. This is the most delightful description of gas I've ever come across, and the word has been entered into the hobbes dictionary of essential vocabulary and will be passed down to generations to come like the treasure it is.

Tonight is Curry Night at Caveboy's school, which means tomorrow will be a great day for letting rip and screeching 'PoopMonster!' at the top of our lungs in case anyone missed it.

(Note to VGM - I realise this might not have been quite what you had in mind when you asked me to move on to a better post... are we still invited to your house tomorrow?)

so many choices

2006-03-21T05:37:00.000-05:00

I have just finished reading Mary Roach's 'Stiff - The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers', which is all about what happens to your body after you die. A bit morbid, but very informative.

I now know that if I choose to be buried (ie rot), my brains will ooze out of my nose and my guts will spill out of my bum. If I donate my body to science I may be used as a crash test dummy or for shooting practice, and my fat may be sucked out and used in penis enlargement surgery.

If I opt for cremation I now know exactly how my fat will bubble and my mercury fillings will pollute, and when I donate my organs ('coz really, how can any one in good conscience die and take their organs with them?), my heart will go first because it's the most delicate.

So many choices, the most obvious of which seems to be 'avoid dying at all cost', which is something I've been working on anyway. It's always nice to have your strategy affirmed by an expert..

civilization comes creeping in

2006-03-06T18:15:00.000-05:00

There are many inconveniences associated with living at the fringes of civilization. For example, we had to wait 6 years and 3 months for a mail box at the Very Small Island post office. Now that we finally have one, we have to wait for weeks and weeks for our mail to arrive. I'm just starting to get the December issues of the magazines I subscribe to, and there is still a steady trickle of Christmas cards coming in.

But who cares about mail anyway? There are plenty of other things to make up for such minor inconveniences. An abundance of public holidays (of which today is one) is a good example, and the ability to sail across mindboggelingly blue water to ridiculously small islands that jut out of the water like little green gems is another. Today we did just that, and the kids and I practiced tacking and jibing the boat while Hubby made helpful comments like "no your other left dear", and "looklooklook where you're going!"

So that in itself qualifies as a pretty good day, but then when we were driving home from our little sailing adventure, something else happened that just about pushed it over into the 'wake me up I must be dreaming' realm. We saw a man sitting on the pavement with a laptop. And a cup of coffee. We have (insert drumroll here) our first internet hotspot! AND somewhere on this island there's a store that sells takeout coffee on a public holiday. Whatever next? Cinema?

sage advice

2006-03-02T05:24:00.000-05:00

Dear Very Glamorous Mother

Today is your birthday, may it be Glamorous as always.

A few days ago, when you came to the big city to celebrate my advancing age (and mock me with your eternal youth), one of my friends turned to me after you had left and said "ohmygod - I didn't know you had a younger sister", which made me ~~want to tear my eyeballs out and shove them in my ears~~ very proud to be your daughter.

Now that you are almost out of your 20's (hrm) don't you think it might be a good idea to invest in a wrinkle or two? With age comes respect and a certain gravitas. People would offer up their seats on the bus to you, and you could get movie tickets for half price. Think about it.

Also, if the day ever comes when someone says to me "ohmygod, I didn't know you had a daughter" it might just crush me.

With love, Hobbes.

a flying visit

2006-02-23T05:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had this visitor in our garden.

He stayed for apples and nuts and then flew off again.

long sock things that go all the way up

2006-02-15T18:42:00.000-05:00

Caveboy has finally discovered winter wonder-world, and all the magical things that go with it. Best of all, he's invented a whole new vocabulary for all the things he's never experienced before. Words like 'snow burning' (for when you don't wear your 'globves' and your hands get really cold), 'fire smoke breathing' for your frosty breath, and 'long-sock-things-that-go-all-the-way-up' for thermal undies. He's been skiing on his 'long skiing sticks' and seen people go up into the clouds in 'the sky chair that hangs on a string'.

He's also seen Vancouver on a day without rain.

There are kids who have lived all their life in Vancouver and never seen a day without rain... that's how lucky he is.

Here it is folks - sunny!? Vancouver

Sunny Whistler

First taste of snow

"long skiing sticks"

and um - tonsils?

end of the spontaneous vacation

2006-02-12T23:15:00.000-05:00

Woohoo luvies - sorry about the long absence, but I have been playing in snow! Ha! SNOOOOW... and it's been glorious and cold and wonderful and glamorously far away. So far away in fact it's going take me 2 days to get home. Photos coming soon.

x hobbes

genetic predisposition

2006-02-01T22:07:00.000-05:00

It's been 6 months since I have left Very Small Island in any sort of meaningful way.

If I was my Very Glamorous Mother, I would have shot six holes in my freezer and flown off to somewhere glamorously far away by now. Probably without telling anyone.

Sadly though, I am not my Very Glamorous Mother, and I will probably never just spontaneously

Lizard Tail Part II

2006-01-31T05:28:00.000-05:00

A shower lizard is a very personal thing, and stepping into the shower and finding a New Lizard is a little bit like crawling into bed and finding a New Husband. It's disturbing, and it raises a lot of questions. What happened to Old Husband? Will New Husband take up more than his share of the bed? Does he bite? Will he leave his poops where I can see them? Old Lizard never left his poops where I could see them (nor does Old Husband for that matter).

New Lizard is turning out to be an aggressive little bugger. He's definitely not respecting the grout border that I had established with my old shower lizard. Also, he stops and stares when I shower, which I think is a little rude.

I do however have the Mother-of-all-Weapons for this border dispute.

I have Alien.

And I'm not afraid to use him.

lizard tail

2006-01-30T05:43:00.000-05:00

I have a lizard that lives on the window ledge in my shower. It's lived there for over a year, and while I usually don't particularly like lizards (or frogs for that matter), the shower lizard is OK.

This is because we have a very clear understanding of which part of the shower is mine and which part of the shower is his. Lizards are extremely territorial, and I know with absolute confidence that the shower lizard would never ever put a sticky toe on my side of the border.

But then last night when I got in the shower - eeek! Wrong lizard. Some usurper has beaten my shower lizard for the prime shower real estate. This is bad news. The lizard isn't exactly happy either about the naked giant that has just stepped into his shower. We freeze and eye each other warily. I don't speak lizard and I'm not sure how to communicate the 'no going past the second grout line' rule to this newcomer.

I eventually get on with my shower, squished up as far into the corner as possible without actually stepping out of the shower and into the toilet. I keep my eyes on the lizard in case it decides to do a kamikaze leap at me and claim the shower territory for himself.

I'm thinking this morning that I have to go in there and assert myself.

I wish I had my old lizard back.

Peuuuuke

2006-01-26T19:53:00.000-05:00

I so promised myself I would not blog about vomit. I even resorted to blogging about slimy reptiles and dead cats specifically to avoid blogging about vomit. But vomit will not leave me alone. I have been up to my elbows in vomit for a week. That's 7 DAYS OF VOMIT people, and this morning in the doctors office, Alien barfed the barf that broke the proverbial camel's back. So here we are after all. Vomit. If you can't handle vomit, this would be a good time to stop reading and direct your attention instead to Antipo's latest blog about sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. No vomit there. Yet.

For those sickos (ahem) that are still with me, I should start by pointing out that I do not do vomit. It is in the prepartum contract I signed with both my children before they were born - the one that specifies what unconditional love, financial benefits and maternal doting they are entitled to in return for carrying forward and propagating my genetic material. Whilst the terms of the contract are generous, there are a few little restrictions, one of these being vomit, as outlined in the smallprint of Section 37 paragraph 4:

S37p4
Episodes of vomiting, upchucking, barfing, puking, blowing chunks or other regurgitation are strictly prohibited under the terms of this agreement. Any vomit, upchuck, barf, puke, chunk-blowing or other regurgitation will render this contract null and void until such time as all evidence of said vomit, upchuck, barf, puke, chunk-blowing or other regurgitation has been entirely removed and The Child has been restored to its original condition.

So you see, it is Hubby that steps up to the plate when the Barf Alarm goes off in the middle of the night. He is my hero. My knight in latex-gloved armour. As the first wet burp sounds, he leaps out of bed and DEALS, while I cower under the covers thinking 'Dear sweet Mother of God - please don't let the stink penetrate the sheets and reach my delicate nose or I will surely die'

But then there came a point, about 3 days into the current Barf Fest, when Hubby had just finished his heroic DEALINGS with one child, and the other child looked him straight in the eye, opened his mouth, and let forth the Mother of All Barfs, that Hubby turned to me and communicated (quite remarkably using only the lateral portion of his left eyebrow), exactly how little my pathetic life would be worth if I didn't get off my arse and start mopping.

And then I communicated back using a series a frantic double eyebrowed twitches that I would pay him in natural currency if he would just go ahead and clean up that one little vomit. And he lifted a brow in the direction of the mop in such a way as to indicate that there are not enough blowjobs on this earth to make him mop up another vomit and that if I don't stop arguing he's going to shave off my eyebrows.

So here I am. I now do vomit. And strangely, life goes on. Even more remarkably, my poor sweet children seem quite unphased by the unadulterated horror spewing from their little mouths, and instead rub their hands in misplaced glee over yet another day of missed school.

Life is just full of surprises.

forget the cat - how's the snake?

2006-01-24T05:28:00.000-05:00

A number of you have asked 'how's the cat?' after my previous posting, but the more interesting thing here actually is the snake. The tree boa that wrapped itself around the neck of my cat is a federally listed endangered species. Its scientific name is epicrates monensis granti, and it's on the brink of extinction. I didn't know this when it showed up at my house, so it's lucky that we (Hubby) peeled it off and handed it to an expert instead of taking a pair of shears to it.

Sadly the cat is not well. Actually, I would even go as far as to say the cat is dead. Its demise had nothing to do with the boa though, and we now have...

a new improved cat - guaranteed snake-free

Feline fashion accessories

2006-01-22T16:35:00.000-05:00

This weekend has been the Very Small Island Projectile Vomiting Championships at our house, with Alien taking the lead by 2 points so far. The game's not up yet though, and Caveboy is feverishly (ahem) working to overtake him. Jury's still out on who will take home the great white porcelain trophy. To spare you the details I have decided to offer up this instead:

This is a Very Small Island boa

And this is a Very Small Island boa wrapped around my cat's neck.

'do not toch'

2006-01-12T05:45:00.001-05:00

When I came home last night there was a small carefully folded papertowel package on the table, with a note on it saying 'lizard head - do not toch' in 8-year old handwriting. As if I would.

This is how Alien will hide his stash of weed from me when he's older. He'll label little packages with names of small reptile body parts, and know with absolute certainty that I will not 'toch' them.

revenge of the lettuce part II

2006-01-06T05:50:00.000-05:00

Been feeling a bit awful the last couple of days. Some sort of stomach bug brought here by the 8000 cruise ship tourists milling around town. Most of the time I've just been wanting to hang my head over the toilet and rock back and forth drooling my 'ugh I feel sick' drool.

So I need some sympathy. Of the maternal kind. And I think 'swell, even though I'm well into my 30's, I can still call my Very Glamorous Mother when I need a little chicken soup for the soul or whatever, because a daughter is for life, not just for Christmas, right? Right? only to find that Very Glamorous Mother has buggered off again without telling anyone, this time to the French islands to eat French food and buy French clothes and generally be a European Glamour Babe while I drool inelegantly on my bathroom floor.

If anyone (ahem) is wondering, a nice pair of French shoes would go a long way in repairing the mother-daughter trust bond.

a boy who's not afraid to sweat

2006-01-04T05:15:00.000-05:00

So I know there's not going to be much sympathy for this, but it's actually getting a little cold around here at night. We're talking low 70's (that's low 20's in real money). We've got to the stage where we're actually pulling on long-sleeved t-shirts in the evening. I've even put to use a pair of woolly socks that were knitted by my Tante B in Norway. They're lovely - they have a toe cup and a heel cup that actually grab your foot and hug it when you put them on... (but I digress).

My story today is about Alien. Alien is a little weirdo when it comes to body temperature. He has some sort of manic y chromosome inside him stoking a misplaced furnace, and when the rest of us are huddled up in our woolly socks and mittens, Alien saunters around in his boxers, bare feet slapping on the cool tiles. When he goes to sleep we have to make very sure he is uncovered or he'll sweat like a monkey (do monkeys sweat?).

Last night Alien had a special pass to fall asleep in my bed, which is bigger than Alien's bed, but has fewer monsters under it. This is because the smell of grownups seeps through our mattress and everyone knows monsters are afraid of grownups.

So anyway, in our preoccupation with our own woolly socks, we all fail to notice that Alien has covered himself up with the 8 layers of comforters I have on my 'winter' bed, and by the time we come to move him back to his own bed he has sweated a small lake in the middle of my bed. A Lake. With little fishies and everything.

you can have too much holiday

2006-01-03T05:35:00.000-05:00

My holiday is officially over and it's back to work today. Hubby however is shifting jobs and has another 8 weeks of holiday.

I will need to find a way to handle this maturely.

You can never ever...

2006-01-02T14:01:00.000-05:00

...have too many sparklers at New Years!

you might be a redneck if...

2005-12-31T09:26:00.000-05:00

The coolest Christmas prezzie we got this year was a Mead telescope with a built in stargazer computer. We all love it, but Hubby lusts it. He's newly obsessed. He sits on the porch at night hunched over the telescope looking ever so slightly deranged with his makeshift bright orange bandana patch over his left eye.

All you hear is the quiet hum of the motor as Hubby slews the telescope from one celestial body to the next. Occasionally when he finds a particularly curvaceous nebula he'll give out a little moan, but that's about it for after dinner conversation in our house these days.

If we're lucky we also get a peek, but not before enduring a long list of instructions about how to approach the telescope without touching it or breathing on it, and if we could just go ahead and hand over our eyeball so he can control the 'look' that would be just great.

Last night we drove up to the cell phone towers at the top of our Very Small Island for the ultimate telescope experience. It was pitch dark and the breeze was cold, and the kids were tired and scared of monsters. Hubby was muttering darkly over the telescope and I could only assume that the north star was not cooperating with his alignment plans.

An hour later as I lay in the back of our pick-up truck looking up at the stars, with the kids tucked into the reclined front seats safe from monsters and cold, I reflected that if only I had brought the dogs and a couple of cases of beer, I could be a redneck.

And so ends 2005. A safe and happy new year to all.

Kisses from Hobbes.

how do you milk a dolphin

2005-12-30T12:31:00.000-05:00

Alien is going to be a scientist. He's been announcing this regularly (about 10 times an hour) since he was 3, and we believe him.

Yesterday he spent all day in the lab corner of his room, extracting DNA from peas. I refuse to dwell on the implications of an 8-year old being able to extract the blueprint of life with a do-it-yourself kit. Presumably Discovery Store took this particular product (DNA extraction kit for age 3 and up) to the Ethics and Are-We-Completely-Insane Committee before they put it on the market.

But science isn't everything.

Pending the production of a 'How to Genetically Modify Your Little Brother" kit Alien finds himself turning to his Wizardology book for a suitable way to deal with Caveboy. He tells me that with a little honey, a cup of dolphin milk, and a spell he happens to know, he can turn his brother into a talking bird.

meme from birdychirp

2005-12-18T18:59:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the 2005 edition of getting to know your friends. What you are supposed to do is copy this entire blog entry and paste it onto a new blog entry that you'll post. Change all the answers so they apply to you, and then publish! Leave a comment if you do this.The theory is that you will learn a lot of little (random) things about your friends, if you did not know them already.

What time did you get up this morning?
6am. Gives me an hour of tea and me-time before the kids get up.

Diamonds or pearls?
Diamonds. But little ones.

What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
We have no cinema on our Very Small Island.

What is your favourite TV show?
um, we have no TV either, but that is a family peculiarity rather than a Very Small Island deficiency.

What do you usually have for breakfast?
Tea

Favourite cuisine?
Indian, Thai, Mediterranean...

What food do you dislike?
Chopped liver and pumpkin pie.

What is your favourite CD at the moment?
I'm an iTunes girl. Most recent download - Dave Mathews..

Morning or night person?
Morning morning morning.

Favourite sandwich?
Rosemary focaccia with prosciutto and mozzarella.

Favourite item of clothing?
Probably something black. My team at work has instituted 'Pink Monday' just so they won't have to see me in black everyday.

If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would it be?
Somewhere in Africa I think... haven't been yet.

What colour is your bathroom?
ivory

Favourite brand of clothing?
Anne Taylor

Where would you retire to?
ooooh let me think.... maybe a tropical paradise somewhere... oh hang on, I'm already here (haha)

What was your most memorable birthday?
The one where my then boyfriend, now hubby was introduced to my parents. He Man Pilot Hero planted a fake dog poop in Boyfriend's shoe, and my Very Glamorous Mother dressed up as a French Maid and served only pink food all night. Boyfriend did the polite version of running away screaming, but eventually plucked up the courage to marry me anyway.

Favourite sport to watch?
Tennis

What is your shoe size?
Who needs shoes when you live on the beach?

Pets?
2 german shepherds and a cat. I also have a little lizard that lives on the ledge next to my shower. It's not exactly a pet, but we do eye each other naked and wary every morning.

Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with us?
SOMEONE in my family is having a baby, but I'm not allowed to tell who yet. Very exciting - congratulations!! (that should stir up some speculation.)

What did you want to be when you were little?
A roadside candy and hotdog vendor.

What is your favourite flower?
orchid

What date on the calendar are you looking forward to?
the chocoholic in me is looking forward to 12 April 2006

One word to describe the person who you snaffled this from?
Strong

the BIG JC visits Caveboy's school

2005-12-14T09:09:00.000-05:00

Caveboy had his seasonal presentation at school this week. Ordinarily this is a scrupulously secular affair where He Who Was Born Around This Time of Year must not be named, and we all bow down to the Great Santa and his Reindeer and sing commercial songs about being good so we can get lots of prezzies.

Just when I thought I'd got the hang of this version of Christmas they went and changed the rules and this year's presentation was all full of the great glory of the Big JC Himself and dammit if I didn't go and leave all my religious paraphernalia at home.

Next year I'm going dressed as santa with angel wings, That way I'll have all the bases covered.

santa lucia - queen of light

2005-12-13T19:51:00.000-05:00

Today the Norwegian motherland celebrates Santa Lucia by dressing their little girls in white and putting crowns of burning candles on their little blonde heads. It's a viking thing..

the santa report

2005-12-07T05:18:00.000-05:00

I have been so busy sneaking around being toothfairy, that I have completely neglected my other job - santa.

Sadly, the availability of toys and gadgets is paltry on our Very Small Island. This is mostly due to the little christmas elves' intolerance of our warm and humid climate (it makes them sweaty and grumpy). As a result, santa and her gold card spend much of their time negotiating with the little elves at Amazon.com and other online retailers this time of year.

Like the elves, the raindeer are also notoriously unreliable in these parts, so if santa had any sense as all she would get her act together fast or she will find herself negotiating with the Dark (and expensive) Forces at FedEx.

This santa likes to live on the edge, but she's not stupid, and she doesn't want to speak to the Dark Forces. Consequently there will be a brief radio silence on this blog while santa completes online negotiations with the mainland elves.

toothfairy report

2005-12-05T05:45:00.000-05:00

When Alien lost his first tooth a couple of years ago, he made it perfectly clear that we were to have none of this romantic toothfairy nonsense. The tooth-for-cash transaction was to be purely commercial.

"Mom" he said as he presented the first little bloody tooth, "I know you're the toothfairy - here's the tooth, you can just put the cash in my wallet."

This was a little harsh coming from a then 6 year old. I had been looking forward to tiptoeing around after bedtime in my fairy wings collecting teeth and leaving quarters under the pillow of my sleeping child.

"Oh and mom, the going rate for a tooth at my school is 5 bucks".

Five bucks! My child is walking around with 3 1/2 playstation games worth of teeth in his mouth!

Anyway, over the weekend Alien presented me with 2 more teeth. He has now decided that for the sake of his little brother he has to pretend there is a toothfairy, so for these last two installations I've had to rummage around in the vast expanse of Alien's bed looking for a tooth the size of a breadcrumb, and then slip the $5 note under his pillow vending machine style, making sure the note is crisp and firm so it doesn't crumple as it goes in.. I think I preferred the other way.

I now have a collection of 8 Alien teeth. Another $120 to go and I'll have a complete set of milk teeth minus the one that got swallowed with the Mars bar.

I have no idea what to do with them.

What do you do with milk teeth? They're wholley unattractive, you can't turn them into jewelry or put them on display. Is there a parental obligation to keep them? When my children grow up will they demand to see them? Will they want them back?

another addiction strikes

2005-11-30T05:36:00.000-05:00

I have discovered Shockwave's Word Jong, which is a brilliant (and solitary!) word game where nobody divorces you when you managed to spell a 9 letter word using only consonants.

I'm completely addicted. Can't stop. When Caveboy asked if he could have a go I had to explain that it's an educational game, so he can only play after he turns 18. I figure by then I'll either have spelled my way through all 36 levels, or he'll have his own computer to play on.

Meanwhile Hubby fixed something last night. No, REALLY. The kids have always believed that He Man Pilot Hero has the worldwide monopoly on toy-fixing skills, so when Hubby presented them with a fully repaired LightSaber they treated him like someone who has just managed to grow a third arm (or spell a nine letter word using only consonants).

Caveboy wants to know...

2005-11-27T16:48:00.000-05:00

"...Do spiders have moms?"

revenge of the lettuce

2005-11-23T19:02:00.000-05:00

I might have mentioned in a previous post or two that my Very Glamorous Mother lives on an Even Smaller Island than I do. An island with no fresh lettuce. This is the price she pays for living far enough away from Alien and Caveboy to be excused from regular babysitting duties.

Occassionally I will call VGM over the 10 miles of inconvenient sea that separates our little islands and gloat over the fact that I may not have free babysitting services, but by God, I can have fresh lettuce any day of the week.

This morning when I phoned to chat about lettuce, VGM seemed mildly distracted. "I'll call you back in a few minutes" she said and hung up.

She didn't call back. 10 hours later I tracked her down on her state-side phone to the third largest mall in the United States.

"Fuck the lettuce" she said, "I'm standing on a marble floor surrounded by 300 shops!" (Or at least that's what she would have said if she wasn't too damn Glamorous to gloat.)

When I grow up I want an impulsive streak the size of an LA freeway too.

my Very Glamorous Mother goes balloon popping

2005-11-11T13:00:00.000-05:00

VGM:
"Before your head gets too big for your ~~hat~~ crown you should know that that your great uncle Gabriel traced our side of the family tree and found nothing but degenerate homeless riffraff."

Very Glamorous Mother delivers this with somewhat more glee than is entirely befitting of her elegant self.

Me:
"um - riffraff?"

VGM:
"Yes dear, Riffraff. Homeless riffraff. Degenerate homeless riffraff."

An elegant little laugh tinkles down the phone line as she pops my royal balloon and sends Caveboy back to the crime-scene tent.

said to me last night..

2005-11-09T20:49:00.000-05:00

...by a Very Close Relative who for the sake of my inheritance cannot be named:

“I also skinny-dip when I’m stone cold sober”

I have decided this is an admirable trait, and one to aspire to when I grow up.

the table manners of a king

2005-11-08T16:05:00.000-05:00

A cousin of my dad’s (who apparently remembers me best as the little girl who panicked over an electric toilet in Fredrikstad) has been digging around in our murky genealogical past and discovered that we are apparently direct descendants of Harald Haarfagre – first king of Norway. Ooooh. Royal blood. Right here folks – flowing through my fair Norwegian veins.

This means that I no longer have to throw a crime-scene tent over Caveboy when we eat out at restaurants. Instead I can flaunt the full glory of his appalling 3-year old table manners to our fellow diners and say: “Behold – so eats the son of a great King of Norway”.

the fat virgin

2005-11-05T09:16:00.000-05:00

Today we are taking a boat to the Fat Virgin (Virgin Gorda), so named by Christopher Columbus because to his starved eyes the island resembled a voluptuous woman lying on her back.

The name is more reflective of poor Chris's state of mind after many months at sea than of the actual shape of the island, which at a real stretch of the imagination (aided by 4 rum punches) might be described as 1 perky breast and 1 saggy breast attached to an errant thigh.

a goodbye

2005-11-03T05:30:00.000-05:00

My grandfather was one of those people who was good to everyone. I don't ever remember him taking sides or saying a harsh word to anyone. It's his funeral today in Norway and I wish I could be there with my family to say a proper goodbye.

There will be knowing looks on Monday

2005-10-31T05:43:00.000-05:00

Sunday was staff party-at-the-beach-day (life's rough). There's nothing like romping around in a state of near undress with all your 'respected?' colleagues for building a bit of team spirit (or at least lobbying for a better bonus).

Anyway, there was perfect weather

A little music

A lot of food

And plenty of cheating in the lime-and-spoon races.

even Darth Vader needs to eat

2005-10-30T19:40:00.000-05:00

Being Wicked Witch of the East, I made Batman and Darth Vader do chores before the Halloween party on Saturday.

bellybutton lint

2005-10-28T19:38:00.000-05:00

I have been reprimanded by members of my Norwegian clan for calling the mothership 'a little outpost'.

It has also been pointed out that if Norway is an outpost, Very Small Island must be the landmass equivalent of microscopic bellybutton lint.

Still, as bellybutton lint goes, it's not bad..

share the wealth

2005-10-27T11:01:00.000-05:00

According to a recent article in the Daily Telegraph, Norwegians are (still) the wealthiest, healthiest, happiest people in the world, this despite living in one of the coldest, rockiest, darkest (at least in winter), rainiest little outpost on this planet.

Let's give them all a round of applause and ask them to send us some ~~pickled fish~~ aquavit.

the face of a worried dog

2005-10-25T06:02:00.000-05:00

My dear sweet Kane,

One day you will forgive me, honestly. It's just a little snip, you won't feel a thing, and believe me, it's a helluva lot better than having 6?,8?,10!? yapping kids nipping at your tail. I'm not ready for that shit, and I know you're not ready for it either. Problem is, young miss Josie thinks she's ready. That's why she's all over you, smelling sweet and waving her tail seductively at you and swaying her hips and being all coy. You don't want any of that. Honest. It's not worth it.

Anyway, the vet has assured me that you'll still be top dog, even without that conspicuous cluster of manhood dangling between your hindlegs, and of course you'll still be funny and charming and good looking and brave. And I swear, I'll cook you the biggest rib dinner you've ever laid your doggy eyes on when it's all over.

Love mom.

Bone-eating snot-flower

2005-10-19T08:10:00.000-05:00

Check out this article on the BBC this morning about underwater girl zombie worms living off the coast of Sweden, covered in mucus and gorging themselves on whale bones. They've named them bone-eating snot-flowers. How cool is that? I am now putting scientists right up there with IT Geeks for creativity.

waiting for feeble & worthless

2005-10-12T16:22:00.000-05:00

Ok - So just in case you thought I was being a total baby about the rain, check this: It rained so much on Monday that they put us under flash flood warning and sent everyone home to mooch around the house and drink hot chocolate instead of the usual school/work/loitering or whatever other commitments one usually has on a Monday. Not a bad start to the week.

As an extra bonus, our home internet connection fried as a result of the flooding, and in its absence, a hubby, 2 kids, 2 dogs and a cat have crawled out of the woodwork right here in my own home. Who'da thought I had such riches?

Anyway, as I am a very good girl and not at all the type to blog from work (hrm) you won't be hearing much from me until ~~Feeble & Worthless~~ Cable & Wireless haul their arses up to my house and fix my connection. Presumably when they finally come they will take all these people and animals that have suddenly appeared in my house with them.

the well has run dry

2005-10-07T20:35:00.000-05:00

There is no chocolate in my house. None. Not even any of that nasty waxy american stuff from the local supermarket(no offence to all you Americans out there... you're lovely people but your chocolate needs work...).

The only way to get through a chocolate-less Friday night is to hit the aquavit. Hubby disagrees, but then anyone who carries the burden of english genes should be excused from activities involving hard liquor or pickled fish. After all, we can't all be Vikings.

20-toes weather

2005-10-03T16:42:00.000-05:00

We're currently located under this huge blob of messy weather that has been raining down on us solidly for 2 days now. In addition to being wet, we've also been without power for the better part of last night and today since several electrical poles keeled over in shock when the sun went out and the rain began to fall.

Not that I'm complaining. In fact, this is my very favourite weather. Here it's known affectionately as 20-toes weather (20 toes cosied up in 1 bed) except with the headcount in our house it invariably ends up being 40 toes and a pile of sharp knees and elbows and some very silly toilet humour - not terribly romantic but loadsa fun.

legless crabs

2005-09-27T22:14:00.000-05:00

We have a decent supply of Caribbean Hermit crabs around our house, particularly in the vicinity of the dog bowls. Ordinarily they will use second-hand seashells as homes and look something like this:

- but this one has opted for a more modern look:

Wikipedia (the source of all truth) has this to say about Caribbean Hermit Crabs:

"Coenobita clypeatus makes a good pet if taken care of properly. They require food and water dishes, and something to climb on. It is best to have two or more Coenobita clypeatus; as having just one will cause it to become depressed and it may die. Depressed Coenobita clypeatus go through a process of losing their limbs one by one."

So there you have it - crabs resolve depression by getting legless. I can relate to that.

I happen know that this particular glass-bottomed specimen is a male (probably a bachelor), because I can see inside his house and it's an unholy mess. I bet the girl crabs are all saying -
"OMG - did you see the state of his shell? If that was me I'd be soo legless by now." unless of course they're too busy admiring the size of his gargantuan crab-cahones through his see-through pants to notice the state of his living room. Either way I will have to start counting legs.

Fallen Jerusalem

2005-09-26T20:37:00.000-05:00

Ingredients for a perfect weekend:

1 x small watercraft

1 x evocatively named island, preferably small and covered in bird poop

2 x little cave-boys fueled on weekend candy

1 x caveman trying to get everyone to 'come and see this guys - it's sooo cool'

1 x lazy mamma floating in the surf in small bikini and enormous retro sunglasses (latter item also being perfect recipe for stupid half-face tan)

mix well and enjoy...

squid fails to sock-it

2005-09-23T19:06:00.000-05:00

Blogroll is down again. It returns this error message:
Socket Failure - Squid is unable to create a TCP socket, presumably due to excessive load. Please retry your request.

Squid? Socket? Who are these people who come up with such brilliant terminology for such sterile events? I love IT geeks. I want one. Just one skinny little bespectacled guy who can follow me around and offer interesting explanations to my boss for my shortcomings:

Turd Failure: Dungbeetle refusing to deal with this shit anymore, presumably due to excessive load. Please revise financial incentive retry your request.

nothing but salt for company

2005-09-18T19:09:00.000-05:00

This weekend we went to Salt Island, a small island just across the channel. It has a couple of inland salt ponds and once supported a significant population just on its salt industry. These days the island has only a single inhabitant. He's an old fellow, probably in his late 70's, and he lives entirely alone on this small island with no electricity or running water, and not a living soul for company.

It blows my mind that anyone can live in this kind of isolation. I imagine that when night falls our Very Small Island across the channel must look like a lit-up metropolis, glittering like a cheap woman trying to pull a date. I'm not sure whether I should be horrified or impressed by the fortitude/insanity that keeps this man here alone long after everyone else has fled to the creature comforts of modern life.

a taste of Sahara

2005-09-10T07:08:00.000-05:00

Occasionally here on our Very Small Island we wake up to air that's as thick as pea soup. The most common cause is Saharan dust, which blows off Africa in huge plumes and wafts across the Atlantic ocean. Other times it's ash from the volcano in Montserrat that fills the air.

Last week, when we flew in from London, the airport here had been closed all morning because of ash, but I'm pretty sure yesterday's pea soup was Saharan. The usual way you can tell is to run your finger through the deposit. If it's black it's from Montserrat, if it's red it's from Africa.

NASA satellite picture of dust coming off Africa

Hubby - working hard or hardly working?

2005-09-09T05:40:00.000-05:00

about those knees...

2005-09-06T17:56:00.000-05:00

Hubby to son: "you have big knees just like your mom"

me: (surprised)"I have big knees?!"

him: "babe, from behind they're HUGE"

(awkward silence)

him again: " um - I mean, they're really quite distinctive.."

So there you have it folks. Here I was thinking my legs were one of my more pleasing features, and it turns out that from behind, where most people have knees I have great big walloping lumps of (shudder) unspeakable proportions.

I will now start my quiet campaign of surreptitiously plucking out the hairs at the back of Hubby's head as he sleeps so that I can one day exclaim:
"Oh look honey, that man over there has a walloping great BALD SPOT on the back of his head, just like you do."

pix from The Great Norwegian Adventure

2005-09-04T18:24:00.000-05:00

As requested by super-blogger Mel: pix from our trip back to the Old Country.

return of the expat

2005-09-01T20:39:00.000-05:00

Ah – finally back from the National Lampoon Vacation to the Old Country. It was glorious. It was cold, it was delightfully rainy, it was packed with the society of efficient and helpful people. There were hikes along the North Sea trails, and climbs up mountains that rose out of fjords to unspeakable heights. There were friends and family and Norwegian drinking games. In short, there was dose of pretty much everything we don’t have here. Still, it's awfully nice to be back.

Our souvenirs? Matching blisters and two suitcases of dirty laundry. Yeah baby.

things Hubby is learning about wife's home country

2005-08-24T02:12:00.000-05:00

The men's version of the Norwegian national costume (into which Hubby is being pressed for sister-in-law's wedding)does not come with a horned viking helmet or large jewel encrusted ax. Hubby is understandably disappointed.

The women's version of the Norwegian national costume (which yours truely is pressing herself into for wedding) comes with built in contraceptive in the form of 45 pounds of silver and 6 layers of thick embroidered wool to get through before access to any exciting bits of wife can be had. Again, Hubby is understandably disappointed.

(pictures from www.husfliden.no, where you can browse all the variations of traditional Norwegian fashion - knock yourselves out..)

Things Very Small Island kids are learning about Big City Life

2005-08-22T07:08:00.000-05:00

There are no chickens or wild goats on the streets of London. This apparently has come as some surprise, as they wander freely on the streets of our Very Small Island. I tried my level best to prepare the boys for Big City stuff.. don't talk to strangers, don't wander off, don't stare at people with purple hair etc etc, but I just plain forgot to mention the bit about the chickens and goats. What kind of mother am I?

Heading to pickled-fish land...

2005-08-17T05:36:00.000-05:00

We’re leaving our Very Small Island for a couple of weeks and venturing into The Big Bad World, where we’ll try not to get blown up (London) or pickle-fished to death (Norway).

On the agenda:
Shopping, shopping, shopping, friends, family, great restaurants, cinema, sister’s wedding, culture injection in the form of theatre/museums etc, a stint of gawking at multi-lane traffic and lots of riding up and down elevators (we have neither here), medicals, decent haircuts, oh and did I mention there would be shopping?

I expect Hubby and kids to show low tolerance for popping into cyber-cafes to blog, so posts over the next couple of weeks may be few and far between.

Meanwhile I’ll leave you with this thought:

the shoe bomber

2005-08-08T05:30:00.000-05:00

Although I've always known that little boys grow into big hairy men, the olfactory consequences of this struck home with full impact the other day when my 8 yr old removed his shoes in the car. I nearly drove off the road, and then had to drive the rest of the way home with my head out the window like a dog...

A quick internet search on foot odor informs me that "Girls' feet often smell sweet and fruity, almost like honey, while boys' are more pungent". You have got to be shitting me! All those girl moms get honey, and I get pungent!? How is it possible that the same bacteria produces a smell of 'sweet honey' on girl feet and 'unholy stink' on boy feet?

the drowned land

2005-08-04T18:03:00.000-05:00

You must must must check out Anegada. Paradise on earth. Sign me up for another week in the hammock.

i'm not dressing in feathers dammit..

2005-07-30T18:06:00.001-05:00

We’ve been building up to carnival for over a month now on our very small island. The corridors at work show tell-tale sparkle trails from one department to the other as people engage in surreptitious after-work gluing and sewing and assembly of skimpy outfits with extravagant wings and feathers (and did I mention the 8 tons of sparkles?). It’s all very secretive, and on Monday dozens of themed troupes of revelers will dance in the baking sun for hours and hours until the skimpiest, sparkeliest most extravagantly feathered costume (and the heat exhausted little reveler within), wins.

There will be music and booze and more music and more booze. There will be dancing and spontaneous sex and more booze all night, along with consumption of copious amounts of bullfoot stew and goathead soup, and then, as the sun rises, there will be another bout of dancing through the streets.

Government, in its infinite wisdom, has then granted the entire population of our very small island an additional two days of public holiday time to sleep it off.

Are we going? Fuck me no. To my 8-year old’s utter disgust, we’re tucking our tails between our legs, getting on a boat, and sailing the hell away as fast as we can. We’re not dressing in feathers, we’re not dancing in the hot sun all day, we’re not eating anything containing brains or hoofs, and we are most certainly not dancing through the streets at sunrise. Been there, done that, lesson learned, carnival stripes earned, we’re outa here.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Anegada, a small coral atoll to the north, which enjoys the most shark infested waters this side of the equator. For the next 4 days we’ll swim with sharks, we’ll fish for sharks, heck, if they don’t get us first we’ll probably even eat some sharks. Oh – and there will be kitesurfing (Hubby would never forgive me if I neglected to put that in), and of course there will be drinking, and dancing, and spontaneous sex, but I draw the line at dressing in feathers. No feathers I tell you! Dammit NO Feathers!

national 'no suit' day

2005-07-29T18:28:00.000-05:00

Today, being The Friday Before Carnival, is ‘no suit’ day on our very small island, and town is swarming with men and women from every walk of life wearing whatever carnival t-shirt motif their employer has picked out for them.
The designated t-shirt buyer at our firm has opted for the ultra-conservative pruned old man playing carnival steel pans design, having taken heat for dressing us in drunken idiot shirts last year.
Hubby gets to wear the near naked dancing girl with breast-to-hip ration of 4-to-1 design at The Bank. It goes so well with his handsome ‘trust me with your money smile’ Sigh..

our 'butt'-ing photographer

2005-07-28T05:31:00.000-05:00

My three year old son has learned how to use my digital camera, which means we now have a "day-in-the-life-of'' photo diary taken from about 3 feet off the ground. This includes a full set of family portraits taken at butt level (scary scary scary), and face-to-face with my brother-in-law's dog (who always seemed like such a cute little thing from up here)..

on hunters and gatherers...

2005-07-26T20:34:00.000-05:00

Hubby and the boys are hunting the rat which has gnawed its way through our screens and taken up residence in the kitchen. Meanwhile I shall gather up the ingredients of a gin and tonic and barricade myself in the bedroom until the carnage (and subsequent clean-up) is complete.

they tell me its technical sailing terminology

2005-07-23T16:03:00.000-05:00

My hubby is a compulsive sailor, and has been racing since he was a kid, but it was not until we bought our IC24 a couple of years ago that I joined in the fun. Since then I've had a pretty steep learning curve, particularly in the technical racing terms thrown around on our boat.
The first time I saw my well mannered hubby look over his shoulder and say gleefully that 'so-and-so is being fucked in the ass' I genuinely expected to look back and find so-and-so being penetrated from behind - my hubby is just not given to gratuitous profanity you see.. I am, but he's not, and it was an unexpected thing to hear from him. But it turns out that 'being fucked in the ass' is a technical sailing term for being deprived of a good position at the start line by one of your fellow competitors. Who'd have thought?
Likewise, 'we'll be laid in a minute', doesn't mean we're about to have an impromptu orgy. When hubby yells 'crack' he's not requesting street drugs, and if we're 'a little shy' we're 'understood' and certainly won't 'get laid'. On the other hand, if we're 'overstood' we'll 'foot like crazy' and hope we won't 'get fucked over'.
'Wanking' is a highly technical term for tweaking the equipment on your boat rather than the equipment in your pants, and 'eating shit' means you're sitting in another boat's bad air.. It will be a little while before our children join us on the race course.
Today is the first day of the IC24 'Worlds', and so far (and not without much technical-speak), we're doing pretty good, coming out ahead after 9 races. I'm going to resist gloating too much, in case we blow it all in tomorrow's races.