The Man With The Hooh

I promised not to make fun of other peoples misfortunes, and I stand by that, however this little story could potentially fit into this category. I'll walk a fine line. And I apologise.

During our Camping Weekend That Wasn't Really A Camping Weekend, we had dinner out at a pizza restaurant. It was popular and crowded and we settled in for our meal. A little bit into the meal I noticed a man behind us had a cough. It was a cough that sounded like a loud "hooh", and was one of those random coughs that gives you a small fright every time you hear it. It sorted sounded like he had something lodged in his throat that he was trying to unwedge. Once I noticed it, that's when my problems started. Because now that I knew it was happening I kept waiting for it. I think it was one of those noises that you make without knowing it. (ok, I know this is dodgey, but how incredibly unlikely that the man will ever EVER read this blog and then relate it back to himself)
So I sat there waiting for it, sure enough "HOOH", maybe every 4-5 minutes "HOOH". I had a wee laugh to myself that started to get on the potentially manic side. "HOOH". Geez, this was going to be a long dinner.
And then Rafe noticed it. But instead of keeping his head straight ahead with laughter semi successfully suppressed, every time there was a HOOH, Rafe would whip his head around to stare at the man. Every time. I told him to stop it, but this was a busy restaurant and our seats were very close to this table, Rafe asked "why is that man making that noise? HOOH. Gad. I've never been a good one for not laughing at totally inappropriate times, I started to laugh. Rafe's like "What's funny mum?" HOOH

There was no where for this scenario to go apart from finish the wine, get the bill and get out of there.

A Story About Camping

Sorry my aussie friends who have heard this long painful story in person, but it's just one to be shared....

After many false starts at the warm weather and with rain imminent, we headed off for a weekend to test our "new" tent, actually it's a tent we bought just before leaving for Sydney 2.5 years ago but never outed until now. It's one of those family tents with like 3 bedrooms, a mezzanine, ensuite and games room kind of tent. It's not the type of tent you pop up in the backyard (if you had one) for a practice run. We thought, lets just do a wee trial run somewhere close so that we can give it a decent shot on our own without friends watching our pain so that if we have troubles we can resort to Plan B. Can you see where this is going?

Day starts badly with Smith developing a mysterious injury which meant he couldn't walk but dragged himself around the floor on his blanket. Doctors appointment made, packing underway with the plan of picking The Husband up FROM THE HEART OF SYDNEY ON A BUSY FRIDAY LUNCHTIME, can you guess I haven't done that part before. Tempers started to fray as I realised we were about to miss the doctors appointment if I didn't start hurling stuff into the car, including the boys. Doctor concluded it could be a fracture but could wait for the weekend to sort. I'd thrown in his defunct stroller that hadn't been used in at least 18months just in case he couldn't walk. We picked up The Husband late then as he was still working on his Blackberry, I drove our very heavy, totally sight impaired car through it felt every southern suburb of Sydney until at last we found the countryside. From there we headed to Gerringong and Gerroa, beautiful little beach towns on the South Coast, where after a little camping ground indecision, we found a spot and a site and started to unload and prepare ourselves for Operation Tent Erection. Time check 4.15'ish. What do you think happened next?

Well, nothing! We could not get the beast up, at all - we're smart people we have owned other tents and know how to put a tent up. We either had the wrong inner or the wrong instructions coz by 5pm'ish in failing light, we aborted. Throwing the tent in the car with 3 very upset and hungry boys (and 2 very tense parents), we attempted to find what little accomodation there was in the area. Apart from a grotty 1970's motel, there was nothing. There was talk of heading back home, there was more tension, by now it was dark. Last ditch effort we drove to Kiama and found a 4 star hotel with one room for 5 people (only 4 beds but hey we had BYO bedding anyway). We made the most of our disastrous day and regrouped thinking to ourselves there was so much to see around the area, we'd stay another night. But when we went to book another night there was no more rooms for an extra night for us. Of course there wasn't. By now we were laughing at ourselves so we found another place to stay and ended up having a great weekend. But it wasn't easy driving around the place with our car chocker full of all our camping gear, I couldn't even reach my carefully packed chillybin apart from a sliver of a gap which I could wedge my hand in to pull out whatever food I could reach. Even our bags weren't easy to get to, so much so, that at a gorgeous beach instead of searching fruitlessly through our gear for our swimmers, we resorted to swimming in our undies.

Lesson 1: Don't wait 2.5 years before attempting to put up the new tent

Lesson 2: Give yourselves more time and light when trying to put a tent up (that's The Husbands fave)

Lesson 4: Don't swim at a full beach in a white t-shirt

Lesson 5: Watch where you put your feet when you sit down on a rug with glasses of red wine on it

Lesson 6: Maybe put your glass of red wine on the grass and not the faux Burberry rug

Lesson 7: It's ok to wear your camping clothes at a flash hotel, just hold your head up high.

Lesson 8: When a boy suddenly is able to walk on a foot he couldn't only a few hours earlier, it's not a fracture

Lesson 9: Just roll with the punches and laugh at yourselves.

Wildlife No 8

They're baa--ackkk.......

Is It Just Me?

Does anyone else have the same painful experience when it comes to loading photos onto the PC from a camera? Or is it just me? I have a random-each-time-I-use-a-different-technique approach and it simply doesn't work. I have zillions of the same photos stored in lots of different places on my computer and when I just go and save a fresh batch LIKE I DID TONIGHT, I can't find them! So I go and try and save them again (ie duplicate another zillion photos) and some application is now missing! I am officially giving up. And will try again tomorrow. I do have some nice pics of my boyos. If I only knew where they were.

Bush Run

It was always going to happen, it was just a matter of time. I got lost in the bush.
Still feeling like crap but nervous that I'm not training like I need to be, I thought I'd do a lovely bush run behind our house, a 12km circuit around a dam on a popular mountain biking track.
First mistake: running when sick, second mistake: leaving too late and knowing I'd be cutting it way to fine to pick up the boys from school, third mistake: aborting the running and taking a "short cut" to get back on to the road.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the panicy feeling when you know you're in it deep, but that was me. The problem was I kind of knew where I wanted to be but my extremely bad sense of direction had me taking even more short cuts to try and get there. And because I wasn't feeling great, my running was tough and in fact I would have been walking but because I was cutting it so close to getting home I had to keep running. So eventually I found the road but in attempting to take another short cut to get to the home straight I ducked back into the bush and this time came up against a barbed wire fence. It was all or nothing so running along the fence line, I found a high gap, climbed up the fence then climbed through the barbed wired lined hole and jumped down the other side. With a couple of scratches I ran past a homeless person's home in the bush (hmm, not a good plan) then out onto a main road (with a 80km speed limit). I then finished off with a 2km stretch into speeding traffic running along the skinny verge of the road. And to top it off I ran into a branch on the road and stubbed my toe so badly that it's now in the process of falling off. My big toe that is. I made it home, felt like crying but realised I didn't even have time for that. I made it to school with a whisker to spare.
Lessons for the day:
1. Don't run when sick
2. Tell someone where I am going or better still run with someone
3. Don't trust my sense of direction. Ever.