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...
The first weekend of August was an unusual one. We had planned to do nothing and that was precisely what we did. We didn't go anywhere (other than taking Kalle to tumbling) and we didn't do anything. It was wonderful. Actually most of August was relaxing with not much in the way of social commitments.
The following week Tim went away, he drove down to Norfolk VA on Monday afternoon for a two day "workshop" on the use of commercial components in military systems. Very interesting stuff (note, this is irony). He did manage to get out two evenings, the first night he got to see "There's something about Mary" with Dave Cunningham, who was in the States to attend a course and afterwards look into testing of a joint US/Australian development. TSAM is a very funny film, a bit infantile but nevertheless very very funny. Dave and Tim cried with laughter a few times. The next night Tim and Dave went down to Virginia Beach to look over the scene and have some dinner. We walked about fifteen blocks looking for somewhere that looked appealing and finally settled for a place that served crabs. Very enjoyable food. Unfortunately Tim had to run away in the middle of the meal (between the appetiser and main - which for some strange reason is called and entre here) so that he could feed the meter. Luckily, Tim and Dave had performed a bit of a loop in their search for a reasonable restaurant and Tim only had to walk about twenty blocks (there and back again) to ensure that he didn't get ticket or have the car towed away. By the time he got back Dave had not only been served, he had finished his main course. Thanks Dave.
After the workshop, Tim headed up to Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren for a rather short briefing. Actually it was about three hours long but was so interesting that it seemed like an hour at most. Very unusual. Usually they seem like three hours when they are an hour long and a three hour briefing feels closer to eternity.
Strangely enough, Kajsa didn't get out and have a lot of fun while Tim was away. However, Kajsa did say that she quite enjoyed the peacefulness of the evening when Tim wasn't there. Probably because she didn't feel the need to nag anyone and didn't have to expend huge quantities of mental energy thinking of something new to complain about. On the reverse side, Tim missed Kajsa and the kids terribly, even the nagging. He made up for the last by nagging himself, spending a little time tidying up the hotel room while muttering under his breath about how all his possessions should be stuffed in a corner (not that corner) where they can't be seen. Luckily he remembered where he had stuffed everything and didn't leave anything behind. (Unfortunately this was not the case later in the month.)
On the way home from Dahlgren, Tim looked around for something for Taltarni for her birthday (which was the next day). He visited the really big PX store in Fort something or other which is just south of the Beltway. He didn't manage to get anything for Taltarni but did manage to buy a present for Uffe, his brother-in-law (once removed, he is a brother-in-law by marriage if that makes any sense). Tim was able to get home in time to pick Kajsa up from work so we both headed off to Toys R Us to see what was available. Kajsa had been wanting to get Taltarni something for the backyard for a while - some sort of cubbyhouse. Little Tykes make a few and we looked at what was available. Little Tykes stuff may be cheaper over here but it is still expensive and some of what is on offer is not much for the money. Eventually we decided to not go for just the cubbyhouse but rather to invest in a little jungle gym type arrangement. It has climbing bits, a little cave and its own slide. We thought that the kids would love it. We paid for it and Tim went to get the car. When the sales assistant came out from the store with the box we realised that we had the wrong car. We were in Baldrick (a sedan) and should have been in Rusty (a stationwagon or estate). The box was huge, about half the size of Baldrick (perhaps we exaggerate). After some effort we managed to get about a third of the box into the boot and the angle was such that, unless we were unlucky, the box couldn't fall out. Needless to say, we drove home very slowly. We don't know what the people behind us thought about our very slow driving because we couldn't see anything out the back. At least nobody shot at us so they can't have been too annoyed.
In the evening Kajsa and Julia went shopping for provisions while Tim put the gym together in the basement. Or at least he tried. Purely through luck, not exhaustive research, we have found something that is harder and more infuriating to put together than IKEA furniture. There was a lot of swearing going on for about an hour and a half while Tim tried to put the gym together. Finally, when Kajsa came home, Tim did something that he has never done before.
Tim asked for help.
He admitted that he couldn't put the gym together by himself (note that the pictures showing how to put the gym together quite clearly show two men putting it together, although there is no picture of them collapsing in an exhausted heap afterwards and enjoying a beer on the couch). For while Kajsa's help meant little more than there were now two people swearing at the gym,at the design guys at Little Tykes (read Little Bastards) and at anyone involved in the invention of plastic (take this Monsewer Du Pont!) Finally, with the assistance of a screwdriver, a very sharp knife and a hammer (plus careful reading of the instructions), we managed to put the gym together. We were both very sweaty; sweat was literally cascading down Tim's face and into his eyes which didn't improve his temper any. His final comment was "I'm going to need to keep this knife, because if the kids don't like this I'll have to kill them!" Fortunately they loved it.
Less fortunate is the location of the gym. As mentioned before, Kajsa wanted something for the backyard. Although she has been reasonably good for a while, Tasha does tend to love chewing on plastic, so Tim thought that it would be a bad idea to put the gym together in the backyard, at least at first. So, the gym was put up in the basement. Given the difficulty with which the gym was put together and the fact that it is far too big to go up the stairs, the gym is still in the basement. It is Tim's sincere hope that it will remain in the basement.
Taltarni's birthday went off without a hitch. As usual, the birthday started with a little singing and the serving up of presents. She was amazed to find that a big brightly coloured plastic thing had materialised in the basement. It was quite a success with all the children that day. Kajsa had invited a few people for lunch (she actually managed to ambush them by not telling them that it was Taltarni's birthday!) including Jackie Gates, Deanne Inman, Petra Mossberg and Cecelia Pittcairn and all their respective children. It was a pleasant day and the lunch was great (thanks to Julia's efforts). Taltarni cottoned on to the fact that it was her second birthday and sang "Happy Birthday" to herself many times.
In the evening, we left the kids and went off to see Riverdance at the Wolf Trap open air theatre. It was excellent, made even more so by the fact that our seats were just about perfect and that Jill and David (who we took with us) managed to arrange entry to the member's pavillion (Jill's mother is a member of the board). We had taken a picnic but the au d'oeuvres were so good and plentiful that we didn't need to eat anything else and there was also free wine and beer (plus some dessert and coffee afterwards). All in all, it was an excellent evening.
Kajsa worked most of that weekend so we didn't get up to much. On Sunday, after Kajsa got home we set off to DC to visit the NZ Embassyfor a hangi. A hangi for the uninitiated, is a meal that has been buried (note that they don't normally bury the salad). You get some cheesecloth or some such, some carpet (although I'm not sure if that is authentic Maori custom) and wrap up some meat and veg. Then you bury it all and build a fire on top and let it burn for more than ten hours. We believe that it is during these ten hours that you customarily drink, heavily. This stage of the process enhances the process enormously, especially if you get so drunk that you can no longer taste the results of this rather quaint form of cooking, namely food which is infused with a delicate burnt carpet flavour. The salads were nice.
Seriously it all tasted fine, if a little odd at first. While the food was being finished, Kajsa and the kids went swimming. Kalle is real fish and loves the water. He has been getting some lessons recently and his swimming skills are coming along well. Taltarni loves the water too and probably would also benefit from some lessons. Eventually Kajsa was able to persuade them to leave the pool and eat something.
The last event of the evening was the North vs South volleyball. We got two teams, one from the Northern Hemisphere and the other (you guessed it) from the Southern Hemisphere, a very poorly defined volleyball field and a ball and played a somewhat less than serious game. Although no-one on the teams was playing for sheepstations, some of the audience were a little more enthusiastic. Two older boys from the Northern Hemisphere were shouting encouragements, advice and abuse (more of the last if truth be told) to their parents. Kalle, being very impressionable was very keen to see his pappa win. He wasn't very happy when, at the end of the game it was North 2 - South 0. In fact, he burst into tears and started shouting at Tim - "I don't want you to lose, I want you to win!" over and over again with only slight variations. (He never actually said "I don't want any loser pappa!" but Tim is pretty sure that that is what he meant.) Soon after we dragged Kalle away and by the time we got home he had pretty much calmed down. We are not sure what sort of long-term damage to his self-esteem this event has had on him. Perhaps he will write a shocking exposé in his future "Growing up with a Loser Pappa - The son of a loser speaks out!"
We had a major breakthrough during dinner in following week. Kalle was doing his normal "I don't want any yucky things" routine and Kajsa had just about had enough of it so he was being forced to finish his meal (there was a prize involved so he had both carrot and stick and the beatings were minor anyway, he didn't even bleed very much). Finally, while Kajsa was putting Taltarni to bed (it was turning out to be an hour and a half long ordeal), Tim stumbled onto a winner. He told Kalle to eat while holding his nose so that he couldn't taste the yucky things. By this time Kalle was in the high chair - if he is going to eat like a baby he may as well be in the high chair, it was high drama indeed! - and he wanted a way out. So Kalle agreed to try it. Eventually, he forgot to hold his nose and because he actually didn't mind the "yucky things" he was able to continue eating them. When he noticed that he was eating the "yucky things" without holding his nose he was amazed and wanted to know how this could be. At this point Tim strayed a little from absolute truth. He told Kalle that when he holds his nose it teaches his brain to like the "yucky things" so that he can eat them. That means that the "yucky things" are still "yucky" but he can eat them anyway. He was so grateful it was amazing, he even wanted to try other "yucky things", like salad, so he could grow to be big and strong. He's been holding his nose while eating a lot recently and has added a new word to his vocabulary - "tastebumps".
The thirteenth was a good work day for Tim. He completed and handed in a report that has been hanging over his head for a while. This meant that he could relax a little which was a welcome relief. Work has been a little less stressful since. Kajsa on the otherhand does get a little stressed over her work because there seems to be no chance for her to get on top of it. "Unmated pair" has become a common phrase in the house. It usually just refers to shoes but after the Embassy bombings there was a headline that talked about "unmated pairs" and mentioned that some of the unmated pairs still had feet in them. Kajsa's problems seem small in comparison. The effect of the bombings has been minor within the Australian Embassy. There was an increase in security but it wasn't overly noticeable. There was a little bit of an increase again after the US attacks in Afghanistan and Sudan. It is strange, waiting for something bad to happen when you know it inevitably will. Bin Laden adn his people will retaliate, eventually. There is a suspenseful feeling, sort of like there is in the old joke "... now we call all get some sleep!" We are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
We all had a long weekend on the 14th to 16th during which we drove up to Steubenville, Ohio. Bill Hemschrodt and his wife Glenna come from this area (although Bill was actually born in West Virginia) and there was a big "cook-out" planned, to which we were invited. It sounded good to get look at another state so we accepted. We crossed a lot of state borders that day, driving out of Virginia into Maryland, then into West Virginia followed by Pennsylvania. We drove back into West Virginia again and finally just across the border into Ohio. Five states, five border crossings. It was a long trip during which the kids were very well behaved. During the first part we had a very serious conversation with Kalle about the moon and space and stars. Kalle has decided that he will be an astronaut and bring home moon rocks.
During the weekend we actually had two cookouts, one just after we got to Steubenville and the other (the big one) the following evening. The people were nice and friendly (good ol' hospitality) and we felt at home. On Saturday morning we looked around the town of Steubenville and learned a little of the history. Aparently the expansion into what was then called the Northwest Territory started from old Fort Steuben around which Steubenville was built (due to the protection provided against marauding Indians).
There are many murals on the buildings in Steubenville which certainly cheers the old steel mill town up somewhat. We were going to visit a store that Glenna thought highly of but when we got there, we were disappointed to find that it was closed. Luckily there were some people inside and when they saw us a man came out to talk to us. When he heard that we were from Australia, he invited us in and gave us a special tour. He was the owner of the company that specialises in making dolls and puppets (he used to work with the Muppet show and has some of his work at Disneyworld and some other theme parks). He had a few interesting things in the back, the most impressive being the extremely life-like stuffed and animated coyote - a most beautiful animal. As we were leaving we bought a few things, he gave us some stuff and he wanted to give a book. As he had none in the store he walked us up a few shops and took us into another of his businesses, the Christmas Store. He showed us around that as well, including a room with ten or so of the most beautifully decorated trees. A couple of them were very simple but oh so elegant, unfortunately not the sort of tree you'd have with kids around. He gave us the book and signed it also, and then we noticed that it was his own published book on puppet making so it was a very special gift.
That afternoon, after a little sleep, we had the second cookout, at the house of a bloke called Don. As far as Kalle and Taltarni were concerned, it was a place with a pool and that was all that mattered. Kalle spent about 80% of the time there in the pool and Taltarni only spent less because she needs more parental supervision. We got to eat some real American dishes (lots of beans and apple pie) and generally sat around chatting. Tim did the right thing and bought some Australian beer but after a bit of conferring it was decided that bringing it out would be inappropriate - they don't drink much in Steubenville - in fact there was no alcohol there at all. Very strange. Apparently an Australian came to a party once and brought some sort of wine, what was it called, oh that's right - "champagne". We're not kidding. They just don't drink. (Or if they do it's something like Budweiser and that hardly counts.)
Towards the end of the afternoon we heard tell of a dog somewhere and went to check it out. It was a nice little beagle. While looking around we noticed something amazing next door. The guy who lived there had set up a train set. Not just some little ol' train set, a huge one with three separate lines, one raised up on stilts a little under a metre high. It was beautifully landscaped with a town in the centre and even a little waterfall arrangement. It was truly awesome and would have taken ages to put together. Kalle and Taltarni were amazed (actually Tim and Kajsa were pretty amazed too). There was one more surprise that the train man had in store because in his front yard he had a sheep. We didn't ask what it was there for, we didn't want to pry. It did seem to be suffering a little from the heat and it looked well overdue for a hair cut.
The next day we drove back to Virginia. We checked the room very carefully but despite our good efforts, our ability to put things away out of sight were better than our abilities to find things that weren't in plain sight. We managed to leave Kalle's new school bag which was stuffed with books and small toys. Later in the month we called about it and asked for it to be delivered. As of the end of the month we are still waiting for its delivery.
Once we got way, we stopped for some fuel and then went to a restaurant for breakfast. An unusual experience - for us at least, the place was packed. During the meal we were talking with Bill and Glenna about getting up to visit the Amish area in Pennsylvania and a place in West Virginia called Winchester. At this point Kajsa piped up and told us that she was really looking forward to visiting "Incest". This was a bit of a Freudian slip because the real name of the town that she was thinking of is "Intercourse". Luckily our friends are not Amish!
When we got home we were visited by the neighbours (Kyle and Patrick) and Kyle brought with him a video of Goosebumps (the scary kid's series). It was a bit of a mistake to let Kalle see this video because he really got obsessed about how he wasn't afraid of "Gluestops" yet he refused to watch it by himself and spent a fair amount of the time hiding behind the couch. After the show we got about three days of reruns as Kalle explained the story to us while reminding himself that the pappa in the story was rescued and that the half human half plant died. When we hired a movie later in the week he insisted that we get "Gluestops" again. Fortunately it was another episode so we got a bit of variety as Kalle went through the same process with a story about a haunted mask. About this time he realised that the series was actually called "Goosestomps". A gratuitous piece of advice - don't let your five year olds watch "Goosebumps" videos.
Tim was forced to leave the safety of his workplace and spend an afternoon exposed to the elements during the week. It was necessary for him to play golf. Not very well, mind you, but at least he didn't have any temper tantrums so he felt reasonably proud of himself. He also collected a lot of balls out of the dry creeks. Mostly because he hit a lot of balls into the dry creeks. Even so he came away from the course with nearly thirty more balls than he started with. He also had the honour of playing with the winner of the wooden spoon, Glenn Doherty. The game had some special rules to help speed up play, one of which was "don't spend time looking for lost balls" which was duly ignored. Another was "stop counting at double par", meaning if the hole is a par three pick up your ball after six strokes. Par for the course was 72 so the absolute maximum score you could get was 144. Glenn managed a face saving 140, partly as a result of getting a bogie on the last hole (4 on a par 3). He won an umbrella for his sterling effort. Tim only managed a 121 but he did manage to have 45 putts which was only four short of the new record achieved that day (and the previous record was 44).
The following weekend was reasonably quiet as it was another of Kajsa's work weekends. We did manage to get to a children's show at Wolf Trap which was quite nice. There was a routine by a comic basketballer followed by a puppet (actually marionette) show that kept the kids spellbound. The Community Liaison Officer (Jeanette Carroll) held a little Teddy Bear's picnic afterwards with a little story and a couple of games. Apart from a short visit to the waterpark, not much else happened that weekend.
There was much excitement about the next week. Another visit to Kings Dominion was on the cards and Volcano the Blast Coaster was open. The trouble this time was that there was a bloody big hurricane approaching from the Bahamas. We watched intently as the storm moved past the islands and approached Florida. It seemed to stall for a while and then made up its mind to attack North Carolina, right below the border with Virginia. It then stalled again with the eye sitting somewhere about Virginia Beach, just above the border. The area around the storm was heavily affected and on the morning of the day that Tim had taken leave to go to the park, the news was that there was heaps of rain and chances of tornados all the way up to just about Fredericksburg - just where Paramount Kings Dominion is. Great. We called off the trip and went to the Zoo instead. It was a very pleasant if somewhat exhausting day.
As part of the process of breaking the news of the change in plan to Kalle, we explained that there was a hurricane down at Kids Dominion. "What's a hurricane?" Well, its sort of a big tornado. "That means that we have to go down to the basement." Ah, yes (remembering an earlier conversation about tornados) but a hurricane is not as strong as a tornado. "But we need to go down to the basement and pappa can work on the computer." Hm, yes. "And mamma and Taltarni and me, we can play games and do puzzles." Yes, Kalle. That evening, Kalle was convinced that the tornado was coming, partly due to concerns expressed earlier in the week by Petra. He didn't want to go to bed, in case we all needed to go down into the basement. We assured him that if the hurricane came, we would wake him up and go downstairs. About an hour after he had been put to bed, we heard the familiar patter of Kalle's feet as he came down to check whether the tornado was coming. It was then that he made it clear to us that water tornados aren't dangerous but real tornados were (he had seen a vortex in a swimming pool and called it a water tornado). Thanks for that Kalle, now go back to bed, we will wake you, if the tornado comes!
Tim's birthday was very busy for a day of leave. It started at about half past four in the morning when Tasha woke up Taltarni who cried and woke us both up. Then about half an hour later Tasha woke us up with her howling (she was on heat). About half an hour later again the alarm woke us up (Kajsa started very early) followed by another awakening about half an hour later when Kajsa got up. Then Tim was awakened again half an hour later by Kalle and Kajsa singing Happy Birthday (appreciated even if the timing left a little to be desired). About every half an hour from then on (do you detect a trend here) Kalle woke Tim up because he was very keen for the presents to be opened. Tim valiantly resisted the urge and tried to sleep. At some point, still early, Kajsa's mamma rang and wished him happy birthday, he wasn't very alert at that point and probably understood about four words she said (one of which was her name). He hopes he didn't sound too unappreciative. When he was forced to get up (by Taltarni who was getting bored with sitting in her cot), Tim took the kids to the doctor for check-ups, then bought some school stuff for Kalle, got the kids lunch and tried to get them to take a nap (unsuccessfully), wrote some of this, went to Kalle's school for an orientation (for Kalle that is), ate some dinner and cake and then spent the evening trying to play a game of Magic with Kajsa (we finally played a hand just before midnight).
On Saturday Tim got up early and let Kajsa sleep (partly because he knew that he'd get a better sleep-in on Sunday that way). The rest of the day, when Kajsa got up was taken up with shopping for groceries. We went to the Commissary (a military supermarket) and bought about six months of provisions - actually more like a month and a half's worth but it filled two trolleys to overflowing so it seemed a lot. In the evening, after we managed to get the kids to bed, we sat down and watched "In the Name of the Father". A very good movie and quite relevant in these days of terrorism.
On Sunday, Kajsa took Tasha and the kids to Great Falls National Park (Tasha really needed a walk) and to the water park. After another particularly unsuccessful attempt to put the kids to bed for a nap, we headed off to Cecilia and Duncan's for a barbecue. It was an excellent evening with much complaining about American values (there were no Americans present - just Australians, Swedes, a German and an Algerian) and some in-depth discussion of world affairs and other stuff that we don't normally get to talk about. Afterwards Tim dropped the family off and drove up to Baltimore to pick up Julia and her friend Amelie from the airport.
Monday, the last day of the month, was Kalle's first day back at school and his first day full-time. When quizzed on what he did at school, he gave his standard response of "lots of things". Tim can remember giving very similar responses to his own father many years ago, although Tim used to say "nothing" meaning "nothing special" - both accurate if unhelpful responses. Tim, at work, thought that he had got away without anyone knowing about his birthday but midmorning Debbie Woods poked her head in and said "Glenn Doherty and I are arguing something, its about you and we need you to come up to his office and sort it out." It sounded so strange that Tim was immediately suspicious, especially since we had tricked Glenn into going out of his office on his birthday so that we could sneak in with a cake. Sure enough everyone was crowded into Glenn's room, along with a banana cake. Tim got the obligatory singing effort and was then handed a knife to do the honours (cut the cake not commit harikuri due to the irreparable damage resulting from the rendition of Happy Birthday). The cake was delicious - thanks guys.
The big news this day, at least in some quarters, was that the Dow Jones index dropped around 540 points, the second largest drop in a single day, sparking concerns that America could be entering a recession. It also gave us a bit of hope that the US dollar could crash so that the Australian dollar would be a bit stronger in comparison (the $AUS dropped from about 64 cents to the US dollar to 57 cents to the dollar which has a huge effect on our finances). No such luck. Anyway, we were keen to see the latest on this breaking story so we tuned in to the 10pm newscast.
At this point I must point out that the 10pm newscast was on the Fox channel. Fox is owned by Murdoch who as everyone knows is American but was once Australian. Therefore, as he is an expat, we can complain about him without being accused about whining about the septics. Back to the story ...
The second largest stock market drop in history is big news you would think, definitely lead story stuff. You would be wrong. You see Mike Tyson was not injured in minor "fender bender" that evening. He also apparently didn't hit anyone and was given a clean bill of health from a hospital outside of which a very keen reporter gave a live telecast basically confirming that nothing much happened. So, with a riveting story like that, you'd understand that the second largest stock market drop in history - with the potential to drive America spiralling into a recession - would be relegated to second slot. Nope. You see, that afternoon, an off duty policewoman was shot in the face while in a car in Maryland somewhere. An important story. But, you wonder ... a policewoman getting shot in the face versus Mike Tyson not getting hurt in a rush hour bingle? Why didn't the shooting make lead story. The answer is that it was mostly hype - the policewoman was a passenger travelling along a bit of road, minding her own business and had something go into her cheek that could have been from a pellet gun or a BB gun or possibly was a sliver from the road kicked by the tyres of another car. Most likely it was some kids doing something very stupid, kids who would have been over the moon to have their exploits aired on TV. So, in final analysis, it was a bit of fluff that shouldn't have been aired, let alone usurp proper news.
The Wall Street crash story did manage to make it to third place.
Oh, by the way, da mouse is back. Strange really, Julia is back one evening and pestilence returns to the house.