Road Trip

Parks are essential with road trips

When Jim Hickey says there’s flash flooding in a certain part of the country most people would steer clear. But we headed straight for it.
I’d only decided to take the kids on a road trip the day before and, after booking in with friends down the line, spent the following day packing. First stop – Waihi. This was the worst-hit but, by the time I learned this my friend had already got out a roast for dinner. This caused Master Seven, who, strangely doesn’t like meat or potatoes, to fret the night before. I found him lying in bed whimpering.
“I think I might have to stay home from our road trip,” he declared.
Road trips are a lot easier than the days of yore. We no longer need to fill the car with portacots which need assembling and dismantling at each end, double strollers and then the finer, but equally important details such as dummies, bottles, pamol, teddies and special blankies. Now it’s simply a matter of packing our clothes and food and driving.
Having said that, it still took a whole day to pack.
The last time I took a roadie on my own I had two dvd screens attached to the backs of the front seats. These were fantastic and held the kids enthralled the whole ten-hour round trip. However, I didn’t have the novelty this time and, instead relied on the ipad. Between Master Seven’s Angry Bird blasting out from that, Miss Four reading aloud to herself, Master Four’s computer games and my ipod music, we sounded like a spacey parlour.
But, this didn’t last long. In typical childlike fashion, the “Are we there yets?” began before we even reached Waipu. I didn’t have the heart to tell them we still had another three and a half hours to go – make that four and a half by the time you take into account a stop-off and then missing the Paeroa turn-off (don’t ask).
So by the time we made it to Waihi the water levels had receded till there was no evidence of flooding. At our first destination, the kids soon reacquainted themselves and before long the house was filled with the sound of stomping feet and uproarious laughter, much to the dad’s horror upon his return from work.
The next day I decided to head to my brother’s in Hamilton. My old stomping ground in uni days, I hadn’t returned to the city for nearly 15 years and realised I didn’t know where a single park was. Somehow parks didn’t feature all those years ago. But we found a lovely one by the lake and waited for the kids’ uncle to finish work so we could follow him home to his place in the country.
As we pulled up, Miss Four noticed a horse float in the drive and I explained what it was for. The following morning the first thing she said was “What is a horse ‘flute’ for again?” I, once again, explained in simplified terms that it was for transporting horses from one place to another. It’s hard to imagine what she conjured up in her head from that as, just before we left, she produced a drawing of a horse and its rider holding up a long object lined with circles.
“What’s that?” I questioned.
“That’s the horse flute,” she emphasized.
I wrote a brief explanation for my brother and his flatties, who had left for work, and pinned it to the fridge. We set off on the next leg of our roadie to the Mount, where we were to meet and stay with my old uni friends and their families. This was supposed to only take an hour but took two due to missing the turn off. Once again, don’t ask.

After driving through Paeroa three times
on our roadie, it had to be done.

All Blogged Out

This week I’m all blogged out. Isn’t that an awful word? When a friend suggested I start a blog I was not enthused. I don’t know if it was because it sounded like hard work, meant more time in front of a computer and less time with the kids or perhaps it was just the name.

But two years later, I have finally relented. I have filed all my published stories on the joys and tribulations of family life, along with images, into my blog. There is also a message board where visitors can suggest ideas.

I’m certainly not computer savvy but, after the past week, I feel like a total IT geek. I also feel like shite. How do IT gurus do this for a living? It just left me feeling like an absolute sloth who doesn’t get out. A sloth with a thumping headache.

After two days of trying to crack the code to insert a “Like” button, I finally did it and promptly came up for air in search of a glass of celebratory champagne. Friends came over for fish and chips which was a welcome break out from the computer. But, during this time, my inbox had been beeping and, just before bed, I went over to check. It was comments on my new blog. But how had they seen it when I hadn’t launched it?!

It turned out after I had cracked the Like button, I’d tried it out, which subsequently showed up in everyone’s newsfeed on Facebook, thereby directing them to my site.

This was not cool. It needed some serious editing before I considered it ready. Staying up till midnight with my thumping headache I finally called it a day and switched off. Except I didn’t switch off. When I did sleep, I was dreaming of Like button codes, gadgets and widgets (another IT word I learnt).

When I woke – all widgeted out - the headache had intensified and I decided this was not healthy. I could even feel a cold coming on. Still, I couldn’t resist checking what was going on in my blog land and was pleased to see popular New Zealand family therapist, tv presenter and author Diane Levy had subscribed and agreed to offer advice from time to time on various subjects.

Since inadvertently launching my blog I’ve tried to stay away from the computer and no longer dream of widgets and codes. It’s all raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens from now on.

Anyhow, if you can be bothered, go to my blog site and check it out: http://kiddykaos.blogspot.co.nz/ and please test the Like button on the way out. After all the trouble you now know it took, it would almost be rude not too. ;)

But you’ll have to excuse me, I need to get away from the computer and rejoin the real world. And, right now, I fancy running across the hilltops with Julie Andrews.

Questions

Whatever happened to “Why is the sky blue?” or “Why is the grass green?” Those are typical childhood questions aren’t they?
So then why has it not occurred to my children to ask these questions and, instead, fire at me the likes of: “Mum, do teachers ever go to the toilet?” or “Do policemen get married?”

“Er yes,” I answered, still perplexed by the last question.

“D’oh!”

“Why is that?”

“Because I want to be a policemen and I don’t want to get married.”

Of course.

Then there’s: “Mum, why are those flies fighting?”

“Oh because they just are!” I’m not ready to explain this one to Master Six-going on Seven – I’m still getting over him asking how the father sheep put the seed in the mother sheep when sheep don’t have hands.

And besides, I was now trying to deal with the disturbing fact that two flies were going at it in my kitchen.

Sometimes it’s just sheer exhausting keeping up with appropriate answers to their bizarre questions – who needs crosswords to get the mind ticking?

But back to why the sky is blue. Why is it by the way? Hang on while I just Google it …

Well that was easy – I hadn’t even typed the word ‘is’ in the search bar when the question came up, making it one of the most frequently asked questions.

Clearly I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know. But now I do… I think. The answer wasn’t exactly straight-forward and I imagine I’d rather attempt explaining to a six-year-old why two flies were stuck together than about atmospheric molecules of light.

So now I’m armed with an answer of sorts should they ever think to ask such a simple question but meanwhile I’ll keep fielding the bombardment of eccentric queries coming my way from three curious little minds … whilst adding fly spray to my shopping list.