It’s always enjoyable hearing the comments flying out of my husbands mouth as he marks his students tests.  His students are paying a fortune to study at university so you would think that they would take it seriously… sadly a few of them think it’s a holiday.  It’s this group of people who warrant the following comments: (I took the liberty of writing them down over the last few days)

* I’ve been waiting to fail you!
* Aaaahhhhh Bbbbtttttthhhhh (raspberry)
* You people make me sick with your lack of explanations
* What is this guy talking about?
* I don’t want to teach you again next semester, have a pass.
* If I can scrape a dead cat off the road I can deal with your BS lady!

It makes me wonder what my lecturers said while marking my assignments and tests.

The other day I got a facebook message from one of my 206 friends (take that Angela!) saying “wow Danielle that husband sure is cute”.  After informing Luke of his fan I replied telling her that after 12 years of marriage I don’t see cute… sorry Luke.   The next day I got a message explaining that my friend meant my dog NOT my husband.  You see my profile picture is a photo of my chihuahua Lilly on my husbands lap except I cropped off Luke’s head to fit it in.  So here she was making a joke about my profile photo and I misunderstood… silly me.  So while Luke was in the shower I yelled through the door “sorry to burst your bubble but your fan was talking about the dog” to which he replied after a moments pause “I was a stud for a day!”

I have just seen pictures and video footage from this years Supernova Expo in Sydney. It’s scary, grown men and women dressed up in full costume facing off with other enemy costumed fans. It’s something I would expect to see at my nephews birthday party NOT an adult organised convention. Don’t get me wrong I love sci-fi and I would attend a convention to see the actors and props and listen to the Q&A sessions but this is just a little too weird even for me! There’s no way you’d find me dressed up as a character from Stargate or a Jedi or other such character… no way Jose. Imagine what these actors must think when they see a crowd of full costumed fans rushing them. Like I said, I love sci-fi BUT it’s not the center of my existence.

They say (whoever “they” are) that kids grow up so fast and yesterday I discovered they are right.  We had eaten dinner and I was doing the dishes when it occurred to me that I didn’t know what my oldest was doing.  So I wiped my hands and headed down the hallway only to find Claire (aged 7) sitting on the computer singing along with Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’ whilst playing on line computer games.  I couldn’t believe it, I had only just learned how to use that music program and here she was rocking it out enjoying herself.  I better not blink or the next thing I’ll know she’ll be chatting on line with boys and asking for the car keys!

No, we don’t have head lice BUT we did get another note home from the school informing us that there are head lice in the class room.  In fact during class time my daughters friend spotted a head louse on another friend and picked it off then killed it.  This child seems to ALWAYS have nits and it’s driving me crazy.  Can’t her parents use a medicated shampoo or at least spend the couple of hours required to pick them ALL out?  I know she is in a family of four with another on the way so time may be a little hard to come by in that household but come on… head lice big enough for another child to notice when she wasn’t even looking for them.  At least I could have a laugh this time round.  You see the letter sent home stated “the suggested treatments appear on the reverse side of this letter” so of course I turned the letter over… blank.  Nothing but white paper was staring back at me!

Yesterday as my husband left for work at 8:30am I gave him $5 and asked if he could pick up some bread on the way home from work.  That night at around 8pm he returned with much more than I had expected, the shopping bag was full.  He had purchased 12 buns, 12 mini donuts, a packet of fruit muffins and of course a loaf of bread PLUS he had $1.50 change.  Now that’s what I call bargain bread! He just happened to be at the shops when they had marked down everything  for clearance.  Needless to say I’ll be asking him to buy bread more often.

It has been brought to my attention recently that the world is a very small place indeed.  A country smaller and a state even smaller still… like a toilet block really.  Doesn’t all the gossip happen in the toilet blocks of life?  Messages scribbled on walls and exaggerated truths and half truths freely flowing.  You have to be careful who you say something to just in case they happen to know someone who also happens to know someone who will let it slip that such and such is this and that and by the end of the week it comes back to bite you on the arse or to make you look like a fool.  Just this week I have discovered that all the time my ex step father was in hospital my mothers friend was his nurse.  Now it has been revealed to me that all his talking about his “french ex wife” was freely flowing back to my mother… his french ex wife!  Gets me wondering about all my complaining I do in the school yard.  I bitch and groan about the mice, the leaking walls, the mouldy ceilings, the shower that won’t work, the kitchen cupboards that are falling apart, the fact that the owners won’t let my 11 year old chihuahua inside and all the time I haven’t stopped to think… maybe one of these mothers is a friend of the owner?  What if all my complaining is flowing freely to the ears of  the property owner? I may find I don’t have a house to complain about, so take my advice: It’s a small world… so SHUT up!

I don’t know about you but me… I REALLY feel the cold.  In winter my beanie is a permanent fixture which only comes off for showers.  My youngest however is happy to just wear t-shirts and I don’t understand it,  surely she must be cold?  After much arguing she insists that she isn’t cold so off to school she trots with her jumper in her bag and that’s where I find it at the end of the day.  I was saying to my husband that I just have to accept that not everyone feels the cold the way I do.  He stopped what he was doing, looked up at me and said ” No -  they have blood in their veins not ice”.   There’s nothing quite like feeling loved!

The other day a friend…oh you know who you are… was having a game of bowling on my nintendo wii.  It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt and someone DID get hurt… our family high score got hurt… annihilated in fact!  Here she was chatting away seemingly not even trying to play the game but the little turd got 2 spares and 9 strikes for a total of 264!  She plays the game every now and then but manages to pull of a new record on MY wii… it had to be a fluke!  Not that I’m bitter at all…twitch twitch… I’ll get over it.  Now if you don’t mind I have hours of practice ahead of me if I want to restore honour to the Houghton household and win back that record!

As a child I remember sitting at the table with my mother’s scrutinizing glare on me and the way I ate chicken wings.  Always knife and fork only, cutting the wing at the joints, separating the bones and eating every last piece of meat… leaving nothing but bare bone on the plate.  I specifically remember one night when my sister or I must have been having trouble with the task at hand and my mother sitting at the table in a conversation with God….”Why Lord why?”  Asking God why she had been given these children who couldn’t use a knife and fork, ate like pigs blah blah blah  etc etc  It must have worked on some level because to this day if I’m at a BBQ or some other function where chicken wings are served as “finger food”  I can’t go there.  I’ll eat my chicken wings with a knife and fork thank you very much.  I find it funny however that every chicken dish I make I use drumsticks that I debone and dice up.   Very rarely will I cook with chicken wings!