Just Add Water

Science states that the human body is up to 70% water.

Evolutionists say that life as we know it crawled out of the ocean some 3-4 billion years ago.

You only have to watch what happens when particular humans are placed near a body of water to see that it's true.

Take what happened to us late last year.

I noticed our front garden was looking a little lush, considering the lack of attention we give it - first a bit of extra moisture, then a trickle, then a faster flow into the carport beside.

It got to a point that the men of the neighbourhood did as men do, stood around and discussed the matter. After a suitable length of time, and appropriate number of beers, the menfolk decided a natural spring had sprung up in the midst of the front foliage.   

And left it at that.

Until the local Water Board left a little card in the mailbox saying our water usage was "higher than usual".  Still my Beloved thought it nothing of consequence, it was summertime after all and kids being kids had been splashing about a bit in recent times.

When the Water Board left a message on the phone that our bill was on its way and it was, again, a little higher than usual, I felt a trickle of concern.

It turned into a full blown flood the day the bill appeared- December 21. Whereas our regular bill was around the $400 mark, this one came in at $4521.18 (was that 18 cents really necessary?) I mean to say: Four Thousand, Five Hundred Dollars!! A "little higher"? Yes, like Lady Liberty is a little statue!

A discussion with the Water Board had me trying to track down a plumber to come take a look. Good luck with that, 4 days before Christmas. 45 minutes and countless phone calls later I still had not found a tradie willing to come before the holidays; the earliest any of them offered was the 4th of January!  Forget the sugarplums, I had visions of dollar bills running down the driveway. So back to the Water Board I go and beg them to help me find someone suitable to assess the situation. Finally a company agrees, for only $150 call out, plus $90 an hour. 

There go the kids' Christmas presents. I need a Secret Santa, stat!

Anyhow, plumber comes at the crack of dawn next day (pun fully intended, you know what tradespeople are like) and there's me out in the garden in my pjs, with him saying "You need someone with underground detection gear to find the pipe and save a lot of digging". I make no assumptions on the intelligence of the plumbing profession, but Einstein he ain't. So, why, I ask, did your company not send someone with said gear? His advice was to get someone else to do the dirty work, unless I was willing to pay two blokes the hourly rate apiece. Yeah, no.

Armed with shovels my Beloved and neighbouring blokes started shifting soil.

4 hours later, 6 feet down and 8 feet along, they found where the water was coming from.

But we seemed to have misplaced our menfolk.

Instead we had mud monsters of various shapes and sizes, three grown men had a total and terrific transformation back to boyhood, they were having so much fun playing in the mud. 

Our actual children, on the other hand, stood well back from the filth, in their gumboots. 

The womenfolk were standing a little further back again, armed with various  cameras and recording devices, capturing the moment for posterity...just in case one of the aforementioned fellas did something that might win us the big bucks on those Funniest Home Video Shows.

Sadly, while there was a lot of laughter, cursing, and occasionally squealing from 'the pit' (yes, squealing), there wasn't any footage worth submitting. Happily, they found where the Water Board were making their money, and after more swearing and squealing, they were able to clamp it off until the plumber could come back - using a system that would have made MacGyver proud- a bit of wire, a rubber glove, some duct tape, and a plastic bag.

They caused such a spectacle that the neighbours across the street had set up deckchairs and were sitting, drinking, and cheering everytime the water got turned back on and the men started their swearing and squealing again.

After much mirth and way too much mud, the boys reckoned their rubber glove/duct tape/clamp combination would do the job until the professionals came back (at the crack of dawn the next day). Surprisingly, it did.

Now all we had to do was unearth (literally) our spouses, by way of the garden hose on the lawn- no way was that much mud coming inside our homes.

And after a bit more begging, pleading, and form-filling for the Water Board, they accepted our submission that the original water pipe had simply given way due to old age (happens to us all), and they reduced the bill from 4-and-a-half grand, to a mere 500-hundred-and-something.  Plus the plumber's bill.

The kids got their Christmas presents after all.

The neighbours got a new drinking game out of it.

And next time the neighbourhood needs a bit of cheering up, we'll just add water.

Jx

©2012

Mind over Matter

It seems like such a simple concept.

Leaves on a stream.

It’s the basis of this technique in relaxation that's been suggested for people like me who can’t seem to shut down their thoughts long enough to get some decent shut-eye.

‘Mindfulness’ it’s called.

What you have to be mindful of, is that you don’t let your mind run away with you, and by imagining leaves gently floating down a stream, you’re on track for some quality meditation. When you get that going, you imagine that each leaf is carrying an unwanted or unnecessary thought, which you pop on the little bits of foliage and let them just drift away. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.

Now, the problem I have- and have always had- is that I overthink things. So what seems a simple application of imagination becomes a full-scale exercise in geography, botany, and logistics.

Here’s the thing…

I start out well enough: there’s the stream, here come the leaves, and here I am standing by to plop my errant thoughts on board.

But then I start wondering where I am to have such a verdant setting – it’s obviously not the drought-stricken paddocks I’m used to seeing here in Australia, as the area is lovely and lush and the water is running clean and fresh at a cracking pace. If I can get beyond my initial mind meanderings, I start to wonder what sort of leaves they are. What kind of trees or plants are nearby that are dropping their vegetation at a constant rate? And simply because I have that creative streak in me, I conjure up many different species of shrubbery, just for variety, which only brings me back to the original musings of where the heck I am to have such diversity?!

Can you see my problem?

OK, so if (and I do mean if) I can get through all that without totally stuffing up the whole relaxation mode I’m meant to be in, I then seem to have a bit (ok a lot) of trouble with placing aforementioned thoughts on aforementioned leaves in order to let them drift off down aforementioned stream.

The idea is, it’s ok to have thoughts pop into your head, it’s only natural in our conscious state after all…but for the sake of this exercise you need to learn to let them go again. I seem to have some issues with letting them go before I have reached some conclusion depending on what is warranted by the thought at the time. Not to mention the decision of which leaf to use (don’t want some flimsy little frond sinking under the weight of a life-changing concern now do I?)!

A good place to attempt this whole Mindfulness technique is the bath or shower, according to the good lady who gave me the exercise. Apparently the water (running or otherwise) helps create the metaphor of the stream. Unfortunately, I’m too mindful of the water bill to stay under the shower long enough to get the process going properly, and if I lay in the bath too long I start to get distracted by the renovations still required in the room. Not very conducive to relaxation, wouldn’t you agree?

You can also do it in bed. The nice lady also gave me a CD with a softly-spoken bloke talking me through the exercise. Trouble is he has a really unique accent so the first few times I heard him I was busy figuring out his ancestry and missed a whole lotta leaves. I finally decided that he was probably born in Liverpool (UK) but has spent some time in Australia. Turns out I was right. So at least the next time I laid back and listened I could put that particular idea on a leaf and wave bye-bye as it sailed off into the sunset.

Now, if only all the other thoughts that stray into play while I’m standing near my metaphorical stream could be as easily resolved and relegated, I’d be laying ‘em on leaves like nobody’s business.

I guess that’s what you’d call mind over (leaf) matter.

Jx
©2010

For Our Grandparents

There he is, my dusty soldier,
I can but see him in the gloam;
he's travelled far and witnessed plenty,
now he wants to make it home.

He was but sixteen when they signed him
(he wrote eighteen on the page)
they didn't ask- they needed numbers-
so didn't question 'bout his age.

They fit him out with guns and khakis,
they hacked away his lovely hair,
they sent him far across the water,
where he went, they didn't care.

He made mates and stole thru' jungles,
he saw bombs and bullets too.
Then the dying and the bloodshed
began to chill his soul right through.

He missed friendships and his family,
he wanted kids to call his own,
he wondered if he'd ever see them,
if again he'd make it home.

Spent his birthday in the trenches,
bully beef, and half a cig.
And with firing in the distance
he was told to fight, or dig.

As for we who sit here waiting,
not a letter, not a sign,
no telegram- for that we're thankful,
at least our boy's still got some time.

So while we wait, both sides of water,
for the end, or truce at least,
we prize the past and hope for futures,
him back home to live in peace.


Blasted bodies in the trenches,
Sunken ships upon the reef,
Just one thing will ease the suffering-
Stop the wars, and end the grief.


Lest we forget...


Jx
©1995

Sink or Swim

With summer coming on I started thinking it was the right time for a refresher course in swimming.

Oh not for me- I avoid a swimsuit like a cat avoids a bath- no, for the children (who have no qualms about being seen in spandex- or even in their undies if the urge strikes).

Since we happen to live on one mighty big island, with our home nestled between a lake and an ocean, I’m all for teaching water safety from a very early age. I mean, it takes a surprisingly small amount of liquid for a child to drown (as little as one inch of water!) and I know people who’ve had that tragedy happen, so I wasn’t taking any chances with my precious ones.

As soon as they reached the required minimum age (6 months) we were off to swimming lessons at a local centre.

They took to the activity like the proverbial duck to water, and I’ve gotta admit there’s a lot of enjoyment in taking your baby by the hands and floating them about in the warm water. (Not so much fun the mad dash to the change room when the water surrounding your child becomes suddenly and suspiciously warmer still...)

Things were going, um, swimmingly, until a ‘misunderstanding’ between the instructor and ourselves. Sadly, despite being well aware that our son had Juvenile Arthritis (AKA JIA) and that mobility was an issue some days due to disease activity, she still thought it perfectly fine to label him “lazy” during lessons (I since found out she’d told another boy he “swam ok for a fat kid” so maybe she wasn’t the best choice for a child’s instructor).

Swimming is one of the few exercises that doesn't cause a kid with arthritis much pain- the water cushions the joints and keeps impact to a minimum. It's also great for overall fitness, so I can't tell you how disappointing and frustrating that whole scenario really was.

We still let the kids go in the water where possible but I figured they needed a little stroke correction to keep them in the swim of things. And so a few weeks ago I signed the kids up (now aged 7 and 5 respectively) for a refresher course at different centre.

After a quick assessment, both children were put in the same lane for the half-hour lessons.

While I expected our son to have a little trouble getting his arm over his head for the freestyle stroke because of the JIA in his shoulder, he manages to get along quite fine, albeit a little slowly at times. (He does tire easily though and still manages to come out a glowing shade of red, despite the coolness of the pool.)

Our daughter, on the other hand, swims like a flea in a blender.

It’s hilarious to watch: one arm goes up and she darn near does a sideways somersault as she turns to swing the other arm…while the legs are churning up such a wake, you’d swear a 200hp powerboat was passing by. (It’s like having your own Jacuzzi without the motor!)

I swear, if the instructor didn’t keep a helping hand on her as they made their way along the lane, she’d be right back where she started (covering the whole pool in the process).

And don’t think just because you’re sitting on the side of the pool that you’re safe from the spray. No way.

My daughter can send out enough water to saturate the entire row of parents innocently watching their water babies. I try not to make eye contact now, ‘cause there’s only so many times you can say “Sorry”. (And it's really hard to sound sincere when you're laughing.)

In fact I’m almost inclined to pretend that particular child belongs to someone else entirely and just join the chorus of “tsk”ing (in shades of amusement and bemusement) that seems to follow my daughter’s progress across the pool. But where's the fun in that?

Besides, it sure is refreshing on a hot day!

So with only 7 more lessons ‘til the term is over, I’m banking on it that this instructor is making as big an impression on my children and there’ll be no need for any more of this learn-to-swim stuff, at least until this current crop of participants and their parents has moved into the bigger pool.

Either that or hope the budget stretches to a private session instead. Oh and bring the wet weather gear with me just in case.

Jx
©2009

NOTE: To download a whole lot of free Fact Sheets about water safety (in a number of languages), visit The Royal Life Saving Society - Australia website here. And to find an AUSTSWIM course near you, start here.