Sundays in the park...

"How you liking it?"
"Oh yeah, it'd be great if I could see anything,"
says the woman spilling over the edges of her seat
behind my (rather tall, it must be admitted) beloved.
I endure a few more of her snipy, pointed (and loud) comments before casually glancing over my shoulder to put a face to the snark.

(Retrospectively, I should have taken one of the vacant seats to her left post-interval. Then I could have made loud complaints about the crushing claustrophobia her bulk imposed on me. And no, I realise there are plenty of fat people who are not that way by choice. Trust me, he doesn't always love towering over people either. If you would like him to only purchase end-of-row or back-row seats in the future, maybe you should consider seating only dead centre of the row and taking your seat before everyone else so you don't crush them as you attempt to tippy-toe past.) Ahem. Sorry.

Aside from the ranting of the bitter twisted moron behind us who could easily have moved to sit in the vacant seats behind me (much more average stature), Jersey Boys was brilliant. Utterly awesome and great. I don't even like musicals.

The evening of wonderful continued into dinner. "That pho place on Swanston? Chinatown?"
Beloved smiles, considers. "Blue train? Because then I can order anything, like pizza or steak, or..."
"Sure."
I like blue train. Over on Southbank, it's been our favorite after-theatre place for years. So we walk on over. Of course, it's packed. We wait for twenty minutes for a table, we scan the menu and wait for our orders to go through.

"Wouldn't it be funny if we walked all the way over here and waited and I wound up ordering the Singapore noodles?"
He's grinning goofily, hamming it up. He's serious.
"Not so much, no. I'm going to have the tandoori chicken."
He performs another finger scan down the menu.
"Yeah, uh... I think I'll have the steak."
See? Simple. The waitress arrives and I triumphantly order my tandoori. His turn.
"I'll have... The Singapore noodles. And some flatbreads to start."

Argg.

I am a sick chick.

Stuffed up, hacking, snuffling... and I have to teach tomorrow.
Oh, the joys of a seven-day week. Frick. It's fair to say that interacting cheerfully on a daily basis with children and parents is challenging. When half out of brain on Codral it's VERY challenging. When not half out of brain on Codral and therefore unable to breath properly it's ridiculous.

When dancing around like an idiot at the ballet hall it's a certain recipe for collapse. I've been sitting in bed since about 8pm tonight surfing the interwebs and attempting to read Carpentaria.
Missed out on a party and a show... oh, the sadness. And just to rub it in, I can clearly hear someone down the street rocking on with their beats. Bastards.  

Then watched the embarrassingly awful clip of Red Faces on Hey Hey's reincarnation, or whatever the network wants to call it. Stupid. I'm not linking to it here, either you saw it or you can go look for it on youtube, but please don't think all people residing in Australia found it funny, clever, or... anything. Can we just pretend it never happened? Please? My next half-hour was much more profitably spent on episodes of The Guild and now I'd like to attempt a little oblivion.

Our night formula in capsules,
codral be thy name,
your dosage come,
your effects be done,
in my sinuses as in the adverts.
Give me tonight sweet peaceful sleep.
Enable my respiratory function,
as I enable the learning of innocent children.
Lead me not into the depths of primetime "humor",
but deliver me from the auditory abuse of doof-doof from down the street
For thine is the phenylephrine hydrochloride, the codeine phosphate and the paracetamol 
forever and ever
shoot me now.

Apparently it's Friday.

And what a Friday it's been.
Today I've realised that one of the seven-year-olds I teach is in fact no ordinary child, but my nemesis. This epiphany was compounded by her cheery "Look, Miss Chelsea, I have hair cut the same as you now!"

Yes, yes you do. I generally don't have issues with challenging kids. I have rules, there are consequences. I'm happy to be the responsible adult that doles out tough love and kicks them into some kind of understanding about group activity, cooperation, participation, personal space, respect, manners, grammar, grooming, musicality, deportment, and oh yeah, ballet. Nearly forgot that one.
It's a little hard to get onto sometimes when it's October and eight months on parents haven't taken the hint about writing R and L inside school shoes so their child sees this information five days a week. I wrote R and L on the feet of three girls today.

It's not that they're slow kids, or "too young" (HA!), it's that their parents have failed to provide consistent opportunities for this information to be assimilated and integrated. This gets me a little tetchy, as you might have noticed.

Evidence of their capability to learn and retain information: over the last ten weeks my littlies (predominantly six and seven year-olds) have learnt two ballet routines. They have not only learned the dances and spatial information (where to start, order to line up in, direction to travel and formation/pattern changes) but can sing the music. Yeah. Forty-five minutes once per week.

So, what's wrong with their parents/teachers/every other adult in their world? Is it just that the kids live down to their (the adults') amazingly low expectations?

In other news, celebrated six years of coupledom with my lovely hubs tonight. Yep, six years ago he decided that perhaps I was actually the girl for him and proposed some kind of going out arrangement to my skeletal and pathetic post-glandular self. The rest is history.
He's remarkably able to view the world with a child's perspective. While sometimes this kills me, I'm reassured by his idealism and sunny disposition.

He's certainly a much nicer and more deliberate person than I will ever be, and I'm quite sure he will be a parent who teaches shoe-tying with infinite, graceful patience. (From my earlier ranting, the attentive reader will deduce this to be a compliment of the highest order.) uhnm, yeh. He's awesome.

Now, if only I could sneak him into ballet to deal with my nemesis.

hot springs = blissed out of brain

Today there were hot springs. Oh yes and indeedy. And they were hot.
Not so much springy, but the hotness made up for the lack of spring. There may or may not have been a little misleading advice that NEW POOLS would be open (they weren't) but luckily they weren't so overpopulated as our last visit.

Strangely, there seems to be no dress code at the springs, unlike your local pool, which will ask you to wear skintight bathing apparel so you don't drown in your XXL tee before you even get into the pool.  I suspect that today I could have worn a Snuggie. Into the pool. And no-one would have said a thing. At least not so loudly I could hear it, given the plethora of signage reminding people to talk quietly, maintain the peaceful atmosphere, etc., etc. .

Hang on. Who am I kidding. You think Australians can READ? Evidently not. Or the average Australian concept of 'quietly' differs by some decibels to mine. Or they were Americans in a cunning disguise. Oh look, there go allllll my followers. Bye-bye, have a nice life. You can remember me as that strange, quiet girl who is dreading the return of her husband from the United States of A... no, probably shouldn't write THAT - simply because he will shatter my peace and quiet. Only child much?
Mmmm. I don't play particularly well with others.

Anywho, it's late. It's been a delightful but long day. Tomorrow I'm going to six hours of lecture goodness. It'd better be good. One hour there, six hours of tedium (oh, oops, seven, there's a lunch break), two hours of nothing, dinner, Sarah Blasko gig (hurrah!). I'm taking a change of clothes with me. A change of sanity would also be a lovely thing, but I suspect the magic little black dress may have to do.

And, don't be frightened.... but there are some italics next, and we all know what that means. RUN! It's poetry! You'd better not comment! (SARCASM, people.)

Half-slumbering
she whispers love
beneath billowed sheets
damp-countenanced brave


She murmurs love
from drowsy fading
of manifold dreams 
approaching her wake


Stretched passively
unaware in frailty
his dark lashes
adrift 'neath wild brows


into such perception
into unconscious beauty
she tells her love