But for historical accident there go I.

Ruth's looking for a great nanny. When my children are driving their parent cracker I sometimes envy her lifestyle with the washing virtuously put on the line and someone bringing professional calm to their interactions with her children while she goes out to manage her team of adults in their well-ordered workplace. Her workmates don't remove their clothes, bite or pee on her, they can take turns, and when she asks them a question they usually answer. But I don't envy her this search, and after the kids have watched this David Attenborough DVD and I've got my template working we will go outside and throw the frisbee while the lasagne cooks and the sun shines. Ruth will go to meetings and read boring emails under flourescent lights.

P.S. Iris went to playcentre with no other family members and Hazel had another good time at school today.

Way to drive your parent cracker.

1. Whine.
   
2. Take off your clothes. (Bonus points for complete nudity at lunch time outside Parliament).
   
3. Bite people.
   
4. Ask for something, ask for it a lot, beg, plead, yell, then get polite. When you get the thing glance at it and hurl it away.
   
5. Pee on your parent.
6. Don't respond if your sister asks you nicely, wait until she pulls your hair, then do what she wants.
   
7. Don't get in the car.
   
8. Yell very loudly "I am!" whenever someone makes suggestions about your behaviour.
   
9. Don't eat when people are watching.
   
10. If you listen, don't look, if you look, don't answer.
    

Thanks but no.

Weird. Usually my spam is fairly varied with a bit of a lean towards job offers. But of today's fourteen messages, twelve were offering me help with premature ejaculation.

Bother that Paris.

My achilles tendon hurts.

The physio said I can't play Ultimate for a week (it'll be fine and fairly calm on Saturday and Tuesday, you can plan around that), alas.

Last night's game was the first official one I've played in (hasn't the weather been awful on Tuesdays), it was fun and we won convincingly because we played better, even I helped, so not being able to run for at least a week is rather saddening.

I am still allowed to play catch though, and I got to do that tonight.

Visitor.

There was a hedgehog in our sitting-room! Moab nosed it for form's sake. I scooped it up in a yoghurt container and put it down on the lawn. I suppose it just ambled in, searching for a quiet spot to snooze.

Hobby horses.

Last night Hazel liked the mop so much she mopped up after Iris missed the loo so she could ride it back to the cupboard.

If anyone said "Hey Susan, do you want to run after a frisbee in the rain?" I'd be so there.

I made up a person, it's just a game you know.

Frisbee in the wind.

The little aliens who pilot my flying saucer are called Trixie, Sparki (with a heart over the i), Hunny (she likes Winnie-the-Pooh), Nina and Fay. Trixie likes to fly vertically, rolling through the air and giggling wildly. Sparki gets distracted by the talent, discussing the grace of the catchers she flies farther and faster away from them hoping they'll run or jump. Hunny tries to make the others throw up with her sudden changes of altitude. Nina starts fights over the controls and then someone will bring out the jelly and it all turns to custard.

Today Fay was behaving for me though, she might be setting me up for something, but anyway, she flew spinny and flat through the wind like the grown-up pilots other people have over and over again.

Hazel test drives school.

Hazel visited her school-to-be on Monday. I asked what I should say about it and she said
"Tell people she loved it, and her class all introduced themselves so she knows their names."

Goal.

Yes! I caught a frisbee in the endzone.

I even caught it and didn't throw it to the ground during the game. I threw some nice catchable throws to receptive-looking people and that's an improvement. I'll work on eliminating the ones to people who aren't my team next time.



Last night at the Playcentre dinner I was sitting between Dee.run and Half-pie when the person opposite turned the conversation to meeting people over the internet. He reckons it's odd. The person you meet could be anything, and how can you think "Phooarr!" about an email anyway? He reckons that if he were single he'd go places where people go to meet each other; the pub, a tramping club, maybe pick up a mixed sport.

I'm a woman who role-plays and I did Philosophy at university, I never had to think about where to meet people, I had men of imagination and mental agility with me wherever I went, including the internet.

But I have just picked up a mixed sport, and having done so I'd say it was an almost opposite set of information to what you find out about someone from an on-line interaction. On-line you discover how your new friend uses words when they have the time to do it carefully, what they think is funny, how they think and some stuff that's important to them. At Ultimate I find out how people use their bodies and space, how they deal with failure, pain, stress, and success, how they communicate under pressure, and whether they care about winning.

Toilet seat.

I think the girls and I will be buying a toilet seat today, the old wooden one has been cracked for a long time but what with very energetic short people putting the lid down so they can stand on it to flush, it's got to the stage where it bites people who fidget. Iris says she wants a pink one, I'd like a clear one with strange stuff embedded in it (if anyone's seen those available in Wellington do pipe up about where).

By the way, here's a game theoretic discussion of when the seat should be left down and up. I've never minded putting the seat down myself, but then I wash my hands after using the loo.

If he really wanted it he'd say "Please".

Like many cats, Moab uses a series of short cries when he sees a bird "iiiiiii".

We ran out of Moab's normal cat biscuits during the weekend and so this morning when we woke up he'd had two meals of tinned food in a row. Usually he asks for breakfast "mraoww? mraoww? mraoww?" but this morning he asked "iiiiii-aoww? iiiiii-aoww? iiiiii-aoww?" instead, I can only presume he's noticed the wet food is made of chicken.

Too much info? What else are blogs for?

I didn't notice I'd attained perfection at the time, but in the twenty years since, I have shopped for bras looking for the high round breasts I had at seventeen.

The children helped me today. They were each breast-fed for quite some time and they show a kindly interest in my breasts much like I have in past-favourite cafes. In fact Hazel is the person who's managed to say the nicest thing ever:
"I love the way your breasts flow up when you run." (Very trajectory, for the schema spotters among us. Also note how specifically observed it is; that's what "nice" lacks, breasts just are "nice", it's not a description that tries to capture a body's unique beauty, however sincerely meant it may be).

Hazel liked the traditional black lace bra. Iris, of the obscure sense of humour, likes the non-minimizing yet stabilising sports bra (a miracle of modern engineering, I hope it washes well). We all liked the purple bra with the off-white paisley embroidery but when I wore it back to Playcentre it bit into my armpit as I drove, so I had to take it back. Hazel and Iris disagree fairly vehemently about whether the replacement is pink or red but they like that it shows quite a lot of skin, and I recognise the shape.

That Karen at Kirks, she knows her stuff.

Living in the future.

That family with the two little girls talking to each other on the cell phones across the cafe table? Yeah, that was us. No, they weren't faking it. You want to know why?

They can't type yet.

Break out a case of cheerleaders.

"How long have you been playing?"
"This is my first game." I say, shyly.
"Oh!" double-take from the A-grade player, "in that case you're playing really well!"

I'll keep her; what a sweetie.

Ultimate was off last night as the grounds were closed, but 28 people showed up all unknowing and so we played. Like the school dances of my teen years (we couldn't call them discos: that would have been so seventies), it was really fun considering I was anxious, confused and only touched the frisbee in passing a couple of times.

Transferable skills:

• Marking? It's like supervising a child in a shop of breakables really; you let them go where they want to go but don't let them do anything.
  
• Throwing when the person's in your face and counting "Stalling one, two, three..."? It wouldn't really be pressure unless they were also pulling your shorts down and hitting your team-mates.
  
• Keeping an eye on the frisbee, the gaps, team-mates, and trying to get away from my marker all at once? Well, it's not like I'm good at it yet, but it does seem rather like getting out the door when we have a baby-sitter.
  

New Things:

• On defense: watch your person. On offense watch the frisbee and look out for gaps.
  
• When the frisbee falls on the ground everybody runs past it and the last person of the newly offensive team picks it up and throws it to where everyone has got to now.
  
• A surprising amount is done without touching the frisbee. Stopping my person from what seemed to be her job of being able to catch the frisbee in the endzone. Making the other team think I might be a threat and run around after me.
  
• I'm fitter than I expected.