angharad_gam

Feeling a bit disillusioned with the property market at the moment. We went to look at a house that had distinct possibilities on the weekend, and decided that we would make an offer, only to discover that the place was already under contract to someone else. The owner had decided to continue with the open inspection just to gauge what other interest was out there.

And there's nothing else really exciting on the market at the moment. Only houses that are not nice, or too small, or too expensive, or have pools (Andy has put his foot down that we are not having a pool). We are thinking about maybe building, but that seems like a veritable swampland of potentially expensive missteps.

*sigh* Maybe we just need to take a break from it for a while.

A month or so ago we took Ashwyn to the dentist (probably one of the times he tried to knock his teeth out). The dentist said it was time for him to start using adult toothpaste (children under 6 are supposed to use a low fluoride toothpaste). So we started trying to get Ashwyn to use adult toothpaste. This was a slight problem because it turns out Ashwyn does not like adult toothpaste. He doesn't really like mint, so the very strong mintyness of toothpaste is a bit much for him. And oh, the performance we would have at toothbrushing time. "It's poisonous!" he would cry, and scrape the brush over one or two teeth before spitting profusely and dramatically. Or the toothpaste would turn up later smeared on the towels, or the furniture, or dropped in lumps in the sink.

So last week when I went shopping I thought I might get some gel toothpaste or something that might have a milder flavour. I was not very hopeful that it would help because most toothpaste is still pretty minty. But lo and behold there was sparkly Spiderman toothpaste. Sparkly Spiderman toothpaste is for kids 6+ and it is sparkly. And also has Spiderman on the tube. So the flavour is irrelevant apparently. Toothbrushing crisis averted. Also there are now far fewer mysterious smears of toothpaste materialising on various random surfaces.

I had one of those 'hmmm, maybe I'm pregnant' moments recently. They happen with disturbing regularity when you're, well, irregular. I'm not, thank god, although there's always a slightly bittersweet mix of relief and regret after such moments - don't get me wrong, it's mostly relief.

This time, however, it occurred to me that I'm really getting to the age where the chances that I might randomly get pregnant are not so high. I've been blithely going about assuming I am as fertile as I was when we conceived Ashwyn (which was pretty fertile really), but that was seven years and most of my thirties ago. I think perhaps next time I will skip the 'hmmm, maybe I'm pregnant' part and go straight to 'hmmm, hormones be wacky again'. Perhaps.

For those of you who don't recall what happened last time we tried to do Fringe stuff as a family you can find that account here.

So we thought we'd try to go to the Waymouth St street party last Friday night. Except when we got there it was a lot more crowded than it had been the week before (I guess word got out) and a lot more adult seeming (fewer street performers, and more people just standing around drinking). So we thought we'd go get dinner somewhere else. We went over to Hindley Street and trying to avoid the lure of McD's, thought perhaps we'd just keep going until we got to Rundle St and go to Brunelli's.

Then Andy saw the Pancake Kitchen. And so we went in there. Boy was that a mistake. But we didn't realise it until we were in there and sitting down, and it seemed a bit rude to run away then. Someone had told me the Pancake Kitchen was a shadow of its former self. Or rather, it was exactly the same as its former self, and the years hadn't been kind. It looks like the decor hasn't been changed for about forty years. Well, Liam was upset because he had been promised pasta or pizza, but was placated with a banana split. Ashwyn chucked a wobbly because he wanted chips (believe it or not, these were not on the menu). He would not be placated with promises of pancakes or icecream (he is a single minded monkey sometimes). Although he was happy enough to consume a large portion of the very enormous banana split when it turned up. Andy and I ate some greasy things. Then we went home.

We were also planning to take the kids to the Holden Street Theatres' Shakespeare for Kids series to see a Midsummer Night's Dream  on Sunday, but alas, I was a bit slack about booking and by the time I got around to it, they were sold out. They are doing Hamlet on Saturday, but regardless of them saying their productions are aimed at ages 5-15+ I can't see Ashwyn sitting through Hamlet (at least not until the part where they all get around to slaying each other horribly). And a bored Ashwyn is a dangerous Ashwyn.

So not really what I hoped for, but certainly not as catastrophic as last time. Maybe next year we might actually have a cultural experience.

I read something that resonated recently about long hair. I can't remember where. Honestly I need to start writing down references for cool things I read. So often I go 'I read something cool about that in ...um....yeah...it was cool'. Anyway. The thesis of this thing was that having very long hair is a study in carefully managed neglect. Which is actually kind of true. Many people think my hair must take up a lot of time. It doesn't. I brush it once a day. I wash it approximately twice a week. I use cheap shampoo. I very rarely indulge in fancy hairstyles. I don't use a lot of product.

My hair is currently about a metre long and has been for the last ten years or so. That puts it down to about mid thigh on me. Before that I had long hair for most of my life, but I had never really been able to grow it past the small of my back. For a long time I assumed that pregnancy hormones were responsible for the extra growth, but after reading the aforementioned thing I'm now beginning to think it might have other causes. After all, Ashwyn turns six on Tuesday, so any pregnancy inspired growth should well and truly have gone by now.

Basically, to grow your hair long you need to keep it strong, and stop it from getting brittle. If it becomes dry and brittle then it will snap and you will just end up with a bunch of split ends. Washing your hair less frequently means that your hair is less dried out by shampoo (and regardless of how much you condition there is still some drying out going on - the difference in my hair after I have washed it is quite remarkable). You need to brush your hair some or it will turn into dreadlocks. Brushing also helps to distribute the oil from your scalp through to the ends of your hair and keep it supple. But if you brush it too much or get a lot of tangles, it will again lead to breakages and split ends. Hair is weaker when it is wet - I have a long standing rule of never brushing my hair when it is wet. Here you may begin to see the carefully managed neglect coming out.

Around the time I got pregnant is also the time I started working, and when I started working I started wearing my hair braided most days. These days I wear my hair in a braid most days and most nights for that matter. It makes for less tangles and makes it easy to brush. Now I'm thinking it is perhaps this, and not the pregnancy stuff that has enabled me to grow my hair longer.

I sometimes wonder the point of having it this long if I can only wear it braided most of the time, but there's a degree of vanity involved, and a great deal of my identity tied up in this hair. Hence the reluctance to wreck it with injudicious dying. Although I was looking at dyes in the supermarket again yesterday...

Anyway, it's crazy birthday week here in crazy town. I'm planning to try something a bit ambitious in the cake department, so expect photos of either really awesome stuff, or complete catastrophes, but probably not until the end of the week.

My keyboard is being a bit odd, so I apologise if I skip letters. Actually it seems to be okay now. It just seemed to be struggling to keep up with me in the last post.

So mum and dad got away at 4:30am on Tuesday. That is a real time. I should know. I was awake. And they were only stuck in Brisbane for one day before the waters receded enough that they could get home, although apparently it was a bit hairy getting out to my sister's house. And once I'd gone back to bed and tossed and turned and then gotten up again I discovered that my mother had left her handbag here. Her handbag with her Kindle, her keys, her mobile phone, her wallet, and the parking ticket for the airport. So if you've always thought I am a bit absent minded, now you know where I get it from.

Also Ashwyn's bug seems to have hit the rest of us. Liam got it on the first day back to school, which seemed awfully convenient, but he does seem to be genuinely sick (getting called up to school today because he had diarrhoea was one clue). In myself and Andy it seems to have manifested as exhaustion, headaches and bilious nausea. Fun, fun, fun. I'm half tempted to suggest that it's listeriosis, but it's hard to think of something among the usual culprits that cause that that the boys would actually eat.

I hope all of you out there are managing in the disgusting weather. The slight reprieve today is nice, but I'm starting to regret deciding not to go back to work next week.

Ashwyn had a massive nose bleed last night at 2:30am. He tends to get them when he is hot (and he also tends to cover himself up with a quilt in bed even when it is 30C overnight) and when he gets them he really gets them. I guess I'm not the only one in the family who's talented at bleeding. He then woke us up again at 6:50am because he'd had another, but at some time during the night. Besides smearing himself in blood he'd also somehow managed to splash it all over his mattress and the walls of his room. And I mean splash. There were spatter marks. It looked like a slaughterhouse in there.

Also the other day in the car Ashwyn declared he was very hot and 'all my water is coming out of me'.
He's a card that boy.