aka R’acquel

It’s moments like these where i think that kids on the spectrum seriously do know what’s good for them. Jatz’n'Cheese & BBQ Shapes aside, i think that the classic chicken nugget diet has some potential merit that’s worth investigating further.

My family experienced a strange phenomena recently where we ended up on a diet of chicken schitnzel (almost non-stop) ever since our trip to Werriberri Lodge. I ended up purchasing about 2kg of chicken breast, so …there was a lot left over from this adventure that got stored in our freezer when we came back home. I was up to my neck in trying to juggle work along with homeschooling preparations, so Chicken Schnitzel became the primary staple in our diet for quite some time. My brain didn’t have the space to forward plan with much creative ‘variation’ 10 days in advance as it usually does, so while we didn’t eat chicken every single night - we did eat a more-than-usual amount of it for the period of about 4-6 weeks.

We noticed Aidan going through some significant cognitive leaps during this period. It could’ve very well been a natural growth spurt or just from the removal of school-stress being out of the picture as well …but significant enough for my husband & i to really see a marked shift. I also noticed that i experienced a whole menstrual cycle (and a half) without my skin breaking out as well, where yeah, it really did feel like i had tapped onto a potential “something”. There was something in our family’s dynamics during this time, that was causing a shift of some kind, and the only thing that i can think of ~ was that we were eating more chicken than usual. The ‘results’ or noticeable change i felt, seemed a lot more in-my-face compared to this stuff:

…so I’ve put my hand up to indulge another round of this chicken schnitzel diet in the name of science, to rule out whether or not this was just simply, a pure co-incidence. I can mark my son’s improvement in behaviour as a wild card, but not the condition my skin. Worth giving it another shot, nothing to loose.

Now the processed stuff you get at the supermarket ~ ewe, there’s something not quite-right about them for me - so this is how we make them over here at home from scratch.

Ingredients for a Basic Batter
2 cups flour
1 T salt
1.75 cups of water (more or less)

FRESH Chicken Breast - the batter is enought to cover about 2kg’s worth
375-500g of bread crumbs in a separate bowl
[more if you’re not too dexterous &or have sensory issues ..and more if you’re getting the kids to help out]

Easy ~ flour + salt into a mixing bowl, add water and mix it until it turns into a gooey paste. I’ve tried this with beer in the past with good results too. While it’s sitting there in the bowl and the batter is starting to coagulate together, move on with preparing the chicken.

The kind of knife you shouldn’t use for this task, but my $75 psycho knife from The Essential Ingredient wanted to make an appearance tonight. Normally ~ i use the $45 filleting knife from the Nelson Bay Fish’n'Tackle shop. The reason i fillet them thin is because if the slab of breast is too fat, you risk the meat not cooking in the middle if you fry it. I experienced sensory meltdown during this process because the chicken was so cold and it’s the middle of winter here in the mountains. Calmed down ok after placing traumatised chilblain-prone hands under warm water ~ because i’ve learnt how to get used to that pain - with practise. Yeck! Should’ve prepared the bastards during the morning when it wasn’t so freakin cold. =P

So ~ about 3-4 fillets per portion of a chicken-breast (half) …and yeah, you can make nuggets too, but it’s such a pain in the ass for me to turn them all over in the frying pan which is why i do fillets. If your kid has major sensory issues with food, yeah ~ go get that cookie cutter that’s in the shape of a faux-chicken nugget and work your butt off to make sure it looks EXACTLY like the processed ones (and still risk having your hard efforts in the kitchen getting screamed at). Hooo yeah ~ I’ll share some tips i’ve acquired over the years with regards to dealing with my own uber-picky eater in another post.

Start plopping the fillets (or nuggets) into the bowl of batter, mix thouroughly with hands or a wooden spoon to make sure each piece gets evenly coated. Another moment where temperature can cause sensory irks as well - it helps when i opt for using a bit of warm water with that batter instead of chilling Blue Mountains tap water that’s cold enough to keep butter hard.

I do understand why my son finds getting his fingers all gunked up with glue to be so frustrating. It’s a seriously unpleasant experience for me as well and it can get awfully messy with battered chicken if you’re not accustomed to the art of how to do it without messing your fingers up so much. I have to pull each piece of chicken breast with the very tips of my fingers of the left hand like this all the time to avoid getting it all over me. They are usually the only parts of my body that ever get into contact with it.

Then with the tips of the fingers, I kind of toss it into that bowl filled with bread crumbs and sometimes, i need to wash the goo off my finger tips because i can’t stand it. Hmm… it’s looking superbly delicious for me already even though it’s raw-ass in this shot. If i allow my brain to get too stir crazy, it could freak me out if i visualise the crumbs as sand from Bondi beach. Sand-crumbed chicken… ewe. I can almost taste the grit of sand in my teeth that’s found it’s way into my mouth during a trip to the beach.

The fun bit that’s bound to inspire a narcotic high for some kids on the spectrum who do that classic sprinkle thing with with dirt & sand all the time. I swear man, it’s so cool to just watch those little tiny bits of sand go sprinkle, sprinkle. I could do this forever man. Yeah… if only i had 3 hands, so i could use the other two to just take photographs of this all day long. Wanted to get Aidan involved tonight, but he said he was too busy with his Mario Brothers research on You Tube.

If only i could get this shot with one of those Matrix 360 degree “Bullet Time” shots …man, it’s making me feel high just seeing all those tiny little gains suspended in mid-air - how cool would it be to do a 360? This is how i avoid getting the “goo” on me. I have to make sure that the battered chicken is coated with heaps of bread crumbs on the top…

…so that when i press down on it like this with my left hand that’s been allocated as the “get gunky” part of my body, it reduces the chances of excess gloop permeating through the bread crums and ending up on my skin. Each time i feel that gloop manage to get through and it touches my skin, it makes my body go ick ~ especially if it’s cold gloop. That contrast of wet vs dry ~ it’s not pleasant, but i’m used to it. It upsets me, because if i get gloop on my hands, it will make other bread crumbs stick to it, and make my hand turn into a crusty fingered gloop monster.

First piece of crumbed chicken complete and it looks so much like a slab of Bondi beach. Potentially annoying or delicious, depending on which way you look at it, but i found it somewhat amusing tonight.

Every time i prepare this dish and finish crumbing everything, it always reminds me of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind mashed-potato mountain and i sometimes get that theme song running through my head when i attempt to cover it all in glad wrap and hurl it into the fridge to cure for an hour or two before i start portioning pieces that are going to get hurled into the freezer. No ~ i won’t apologise for the absence of commas in that paragraph.

Now ~ the temperature setting on the stove if you intend to shallow-fry in 1cm of oil in the pan ~ it’s such a tempramental thing. At this house, i know the oil is just-right if i’ve set the dial to 8 and time it for 15 minutes. To test if the oil is hot enough, I use a small piece of crumbed gloop. If it bubbles with anger, the oil is hot-enough. If the best it has to offer is a constipated & fairly flacid kind of a fizzle, the oil is not ready.

The first batch of anything fried, always seems to be either too-hot or not hot-enough. With schnitzel, the first run is almost always going to be too-hot because the oil is just learning how to get acquainted with chicken consistently cooling it down. If it’s getting too dark, too quick ~ it’s time to turn the dial down a tad until you find it’s sweet-point. I almost always end up turning it down to 6 over here ~ but that’s just the bitch of owning one of these bloody electric stoves. Heat-induction - cooking with gas ~ it’s a whole new learning process for me each time we move to another house and i have to learn the temperament of the next new heating element. We have the exact same stupid Chef oven as the former one, but this current one is a different kind of stupid beast. Chef & Blanco ~ brands i don’t trust and will never own in a kitchen of my own.

Oh yeah ~ it was tasty - but if you can’t stand the taste of chicken, you will find this picture absolutely revolting. Have to take care when you’re dealing with the excess frozen chicken that gets locked up in storage tho. Very important to make sure that the meat is properly thawed all the way through or you’ll end up with chicken that’s too-dry - and for some people, that can be a matter of life or death at times.

Anywayz… looking forward to seeing what happens with this experiment of consuming more chicken-than-usual for a whole month or so again, and i’ll follow up with another post if i do see anything interesting at this end.

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Cooking is one of the focus areas in my homeschooling ‘program’ for Aidan becuse it’s one of those important skills you need to acquire for learning how to live independantly as an adult. We’re working together on a recipe book by taking photos & documenting the process of making food.

I picked up the skill of making pasta many moons ago before-child, during the days i had the luxury of time to indulge my serious hobby for cooking. So anywayz ~ PASTA. We don’t each much pasta these days, it’s pretty much out of our day to day diet but i figured that pasta-making would be a fantastic recipe to indulge because it’s so dead easy to make. I also find that home-made pasta tastes much better compared to the commercial stuff as well - it feels much better on the digestive system.

The ingredients, are dead simple. All you need is some eggs & flour - that’s it. As it’s been quite some time since i last made pasta, it panned out i needed an extra egg.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
3 eggs

Crack the eggs into a bowl ~ it’s great for fine-motor skill practise for the kids - so is peeling boiled eggs as well.

Next ~ dump the flour into the bowl, not too hard!

Then basically ~ you have to mash it all up with your hands and form it into a dough. Aidan found this challenging because it recquires strength in the fingers but he also has sensory issues with sticky-things ending up on his fingers too. It wasn’t overtly distressing for him, but he was getting frustrated because he couldn’t form a dough. Not a problem for mum to take over while he washed the gunk off his hands because there’s no way he was going to say “no” to the “pasta mill” - as he was *really* looking forward to using that one!

So finally, the flour has been moulded into a dough and it’s ready to get passed through the pasta mill on a clean table. If you don’t have a mill, you can simply use a rolling pin to flatten it out and cut into strips with a knife.

You need to pass the dough through the mill a number of times before the pasta sheets become nice & even, slowly progressing to a smaller dial on the machine to create sheets which are thinner. It helps to lightly coat each side with a bit of flour to prevent it from sticking. We made about 4 long sheets in total. It’s amazing how looooong the sheets can become.

Picture of the final product hanging on the clothes horse to dry. If you have nothing to hang it on, you can use a broom or a dowel suspended in the kitchen somehow.

You can create alternatives to this recipe by incorporating things like mashed spinach to make ‘green pasta’ ~ but you need to be really careful because the excess “water” will make the dough too “loose” without enough “glue” - important to squeeze as much water out of such ingredients as you can.

The beauty of fresh pasta ~ it doesn’t take long to cook ..and we enjoyed eating “Makaka with Paprika Sprinkles” for dinner that night …which is Aidan’s name for this Turkish dish.

I was so surprised by just how good the pasta tasted, that i look forward to attempting some stuffed raviolli with Aidan for the next round.

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Received a very patronising letter attempting to inform me about the provisions of the Education Act 1990 by a robot the other day, so this is my tongue-in-cheek reply ~ to that robot:

My typography teacher @ uni tried to fail me in the subject after these infamous words were submitted in a very naughty piece that broke all the rules and totally shitted all over the design brief. Rewarded with high distinction by another lecturer who happened to agree with it’s sentiment in this music video. For now ~ I am content with allowing this post to remain as it was originally intended to be.

A poem from 1997, which i’m now using in response to another stupid robot from 2008.

You Are A Robot

In negative philosophy,
time passes.
A lingering bad smell,
is stained upon the university walls.
Vacant stares,
evaporate into silence….

Tuberculosis,
on a hot
neon sign,
yearning for a good wank
in opulent water.

Sorrow burns tenaciously,
in an everlasting bubble of rushes.
I hate this so-called “God”.
Syphilis on him!

An absolute waste of copious time.
Of all that money has to offer,
I’m presented with this,
pathetic lecturer!
émigré?!
So what!

You are a robot.
Simon Says…
Doubt Yourself.

A seductive tool,
to remind us of time
and how distorted it becomes.
Away…. Away!
..at how the nadir darkens onto a
burnt-out pool of vomit.

Idiot!
Outrageously uncreative,
stupid,
little,
so and so.
Yearning to bring back to life,
dead old ways.

I close my ears,
to drown out your insipid notions.

FUCK YOU!
…I quietly scream.
Tolerating what I can…

You are a Robot.
Simon Says…
Confuse Yourself.

To you,
it’s all nothing!
Your idealism,
lacerates
every drop of inspiration.
A rancid reflection,
of eclectic lost causes.

How invigorating,
to see Neolithic half-witted dorks,
show their intolerance!

How do we fucking escape these contradictions?
Riot?!!
Stuff their mouths with
Kellogs Cornflakes?
~ Why not?!!

You are a robot.
Simon Says…
“Hate Yourself”

I know what lies ahead,
you have to find,
The Brain.
Only YOU,
can kill the brain!

Yes,
some of us just may disagree with your arguments.
Keen to attack it,
with our own opinion.
Then I think…
What good ~
…would that do?

Our own opinions,
are underrated,
and rejected ~
because having to listen to,
New Ideas,
don’t correspond to your own fucking idea of,
“evergreen design” ~
I fucking hate you!

Go on and forcefully insert your
foul iconoclast contradictions,
up into the air,
and hear us laugh at two baboons.

You people,
are the tyrannical rats,
of evolving dismemberment.

A long wait it becomes,
to complete the instructed tasks.

Buzz off,
Angel from Below.
I curse and will,
enjoy to see your stupidness
become further outmoded,
and DIE!

~

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A long time since I’ve been in blog world. Our whole family has experienced great relief since we made the decision to pull Aidan out of school and take up the direction of homeschooling as the alternative for our son’s education. The weeks leading up to this decision were acutely stressful for Mitch & myself, Aidan included. The school wasn’t able to manage things well. My maternal instincts were screaming out loud within the second week of school, but i’m glad that bulk of the nausea I endured throughout it all is greatly over for now.

We opted to schedule a break for much needed rest & relaxation over at the Werriberri Lodge in the Megalong Valley, which is about a 20 minute drive from our place. According to the documentation at the lodge, Werriberri was the name of the last Aboriginal chief of a tribe that was located in this area.

This place is known as our ‘home away from home’. We even had the same cabin as last time, No.4. The Smith’s have conglomerated at this place for weddings, funerals in the past. After this adventure - for ‘everything else’ as well, so I couldn’t help but have that Weddings/Funerals & Everything movie run through my head every now at then during out stay there.

As usual with any getaway, I always have to do a toilet review first for Newtown Mums (because this kind of information is very important to them).

This toilet, was impressively sealed for our protection. From what? Boogie Monsters? I still don’t know.

A very b-grade performance on the presentation of the toilet paper, which didn’t come with a neat triangle fold and it was also going ‘under’ instead of over. I wasn’t too disappointed by this at all, because it is budget accommodation after all – but it would have been very problematic if I faced something like this in an expensive 5 star hotel.

The most unusual presentation of the mini-shampoos I’ve ever come across to date, but the bottles were very nicely branded.

I’ve always loved the design of these cabins because it’s a very efficient use of space which can accommodate 6 people with one double bed in the master bedroom,

and 4 bunk beds in the other bedroom.

It gets very cold in this area at night, Mitch turns into an axeman by the shed to help gather the firewood.

Aidan gets busy riding his bike called “Huffy” in the name of exercise amidst oodles of fresh air to get the cheeks all red & rosy. Lots of great bike-riding tracks in this area. I can’t believe it’s been a whole decade since i rode my first-ever 2-wheeled bike off the edge of a small cliff in the more daring drik-bike tracks of this area.

I get distracted by the local flower.

Aidan starts multi-tasking with Huffy by helping to carry the firewood back to the cabin.

Most of our time indoors was spent playing with the open fireplace and telling stories.

Too busy relaxing to take any photos of the delicious home-cooked meals I enjoyed making away-from-home, but that is a left-over plate of chicken schnitzel on the coffee table! For breakfast, we enjoyed grilled bacon with eggs, char-grilled cherry tomatos & home-made pancakes.

Landscape shot from the base of the Megalong Valley – there’s obviously many wonderful look-outs from the cliff tops that looks down into this area. Very fortunate to have lovely weather during our stay.

Father & son go in search for the horses, which made me think of Mrs.Lifecruiser’s childhood!

Saying hello to the local donkey. It was wonderful to see Aidan so happy & peaceful, glowing from the inside.

He was glowing even more when he finally got to ride the horse who’s name was “Hound”.

Going “solo” – it was amazing to see him so happy. He had another turn riding the horse known as “Coin” the next day. We’re hoping to make horse riding lessons as regular feature in Aidan’s life – something for him to master in an area which his parents are completely clueless.

Ah yes, the final dishwashing detergent review. A classic 1-2 star, predictably – very heavily “diluted” with water, so you need to use even more in order to clean the dishes up!

Looking forward to doing this sometime next month to “get away” again. Will be sure to go on a bush walk to check out the waterfall/creek for the next round and i’ll get more snappy with the camera when it comes to the food!

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The weather is foggy & damp, but there are no thunderstorms in Leura. Without warning, the computers shut down – and it’s another blackout. The mother finds her body in a state of shock. Her insides are silently taking a while to digest the fact that she’s just lost a shitload lot of data that didn’t get saved, whilst her son displays a more overt version of being scared by screaming out loud. He runs up to her with his ears covered by his hands, crouching into her to seek protection like an animal cowering for shelter in a cave. He pleads with his mother to go into the bed so they can hide under the covers for safety…

Mum & an almost 7yo boy called Aidan, race to grab the flashlight from under the kitchen sink, and run into the bedroom. They are hiding underneath the doona covers. The following conversation evolves during the 19 minutes of their lives that are spent together without any power in the house…

Aidan: I’m scared we’re going to die!
Mum: Why do you think we’ll die darlin’?
Aidan: Because our fridge doesn’t work.
Mum: How is that going to kill us?
Aidan: Because our food won’t be refrigerated, they’ll rot away.
Mum: Do you understand that there are some foods that don’t need a fridge?
Aidan: Huh? (he cheers up) Toast?
Mum: Yeah. Toast doesn’t need a fridge.
Aidan: but… the toaster doesn’t work.
Mum: That’s right, but you still have bread. Sometimes you have sandwiches, don’t you?
Aidan: Aha!
Mum: You don’t need a toaster to make a sandwich …and there’s tinned tuna. That doesn’t need a fridge. There are still foods that don’t need a fridge…
Aidan: Tinned Tuna?! That needs a fridge!
Mum: No it doesn’t. I put it in the fridge because I like it cold.
Aidan: Why?
Mum: Tuna doesn’t have to stay in the fridge because it’s a preserved food. Food in tins can live on the shelf. Does that help? To know that we won’t starve?
Aidan: Hmm, mmm
Mum: Another way to get food is to go to the shop.
Aidan: but those shops, none of the shops registers will be working. They’re all destroyed. They’re all… what might have happened for that lack of power?
Mum: I don’t know, our electricity supplier always has constant blackouts, it’s a problem – isn’t it? It is a problem, I agree. We’re not going to die.
Aidan: I think we’ve been using too much electronics!
Mum: I think you’re right. We’re very dependant on electricity.
Aidan: It makes more greenhouse gases and an angry mob will come here any minute now.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: because….
Mum: An angry mob might come to our house?
Aidan: but they’ll breathe all the greenhouse gasses.
Mum: Huh?
Aidan: They’ll smell all the greenhouse gasses. The greenhouse gasses will make people sick and they’ll call the angry mob.
Mum: The angry mob? Who’s the angry mob?
Aidan: It’s a crowd of people with flame torches.
Mum: A crowd of people with flame torches huh?
Aidan: aw…. In Newtown, I wished I lived on level 3.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: Because it’s not so high.
Mum: But we’re living on the ground now.
Aidan: But an angry mob can go to our house on the ground.
Mum: Oh… well you don’t have to be scared of the angry mob because we won’t have an angry mob attacking our house. We’re not the one’s responsible for power supply, it’s Integral Energy that is. I think I’d be more worried if I was Integral Energy living on the ground floor don’t you think?
Aidan: What’s Integral Energy?
Mum: Integral Energy, that’s the business that supplies the power in the Blue Mountains. It’s their job to give us the power supply and they’re not doing a very good job.
Aidan: Well I’ll throw their butts in COURT!
Mum: or… you could write a letter, and tell them about the problem. We also live in the mountains, so there might be a reason for why this area is more prone to blackouts compared to the city. Perhaps it’s time we wrote them a letter and asked them why it’s happening, and what they’re doing about it to fix the problem.
Aidan: They can’t do anything about it.
Mum: Are you ok? You look very sad.

(tears are beginning to well in Aidan eyes, he’s doing “the wavering lip”)

Mum: My poor boy – are you ok darlin’? We’re not going to die. We’re not gonna die. We have food at home. We have blankets to keep us warm.

Aidan starts to cry…

Aidan: I’m not very sure, I think it’s very sad. All the power plants might be destroyed.
Mum: Destroyed? By what?
Aidan: Some evil Japanese, Japan. The Japanese. they must’ve been destroying the power plant to stop Australia defending the whales so they can kill Australia’s whales. When I join the army or the air-force, I’ll have to drive an aircraft bomber. When I’m over the Japanese ships, I’ll drop bombs on them and BOOM – that’ll kill some of the Japanese.
Mum: To stop them from killing whales?
Aidan: Yes!
Mum: So you’re not happy about that… You’re not happy that the Japanese are killing their whales?
Aidan: Yes, and here’s something more for you. They destroyed our power plants.
Mum: What makes you say that?
Aidan: To stop Australia guarding the whales.
Mum: But ships don’t run on electricity. They’ve got petrol and generators on the ship. If the Japanese destroy a power plant on land, it’s not going to affect the power on a ship. The Australian ships can still do their job. They’ve got separate power supply units on the ship.
Aidan: and after the war at Japanese, I’ll have to go over to the country of Japanese and send all the soldiers out and then drop bombs on Japan.
Mum: Why? Why do you want to go war with Japan?
Aidan: Because they’re bad, they’re bad people.
Mum: How are they bad people?
Aidan: They tried to kill Australian whales.
Mum: Do you realise there might be some Japanese people living in Japan that aren’t happy about the whales getting killed?
Aidan: No. All of them want the whales, because they want to eat them.
Mum: …but there are some Japanese people who are vegetarian. They don’t eat meat, so they wouldn’t want to eat whales.
Aidan: What’s a vegetarian?
Mum: A vegetarian is a person who only eats vegetable foods, they don’t eat any animals. There are Japanese who are vegetarians.
Aidan: Vegetarians die…
Mum: What makes you say that?
Aidan: Because they don’t any nutritious, more nutritious foods. No nutritious.
Mum: Vegetables are very nutritious…
Aidan: but they’re not very calciumful… They don’t have much calcium.
Mum: Vegetables have calcium in them.
Aidan: How much?
Mum: :O I don’t know… some vegetarians drink milk, that’s a good source of calcium. They don’t kill cows to get milk. So that’s why some vegetarians are ok with drinking milk and eating cheese.
Aidan: ..and milking cows?
Mum: Well, not many people milk cows these days.
Aidan: Why not?
Mum: Because it’s done by machines. You saw the You Tube video on how to milk a cow, do you remember?
Aidan: Yeah Well – the machines are, they break down!
Mum: What machines?
Aidan: Cow milking machines.
Mum: How do they break down?
Aidan: Maybe the suction device gets broken. It can’t work without electricity!
Mum: Are you feeling a bit better about the blackout now?
Aidan: No… (very sad) This electricity problem is going up. Awwww… no! You know, Japanese ships are stronger than our war ships. We’ll be defeated easily.
Mum: I don’t think the power supply problem here is caused by the Japanese.
Aidan: What is it caused by?
Mum: I’m not exactly sure, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with people bombing the power plants. It’s another type of problem, it’s a local problem.
Aidan: Did someone cut the electricity wires?
Mum: Um.. I don’t know, but I do know that these problems usually occur when there is a storm.
Aidan: Oh no. A tornado will suck up our house and destroy it to bits. Then we’ll be killed…
Mum: Hmm… We don’t get tornados in this region. Not in this part of Australia. The tornados are called cyclones here, and those tend to occur in northern parts of Australia. Up in the top parts like of Australia like Darwin and northern Queensland.
Aidan: But tornados could go all the way to here.
Mum: Um… there might be the odd tornado or water-spout that happens in Sydney but they usually don’t come to the NSW area, not where we live.
Aidan: Which is Darwin region?
Mum: Right at the top of Australia.
Aidan: Which is DARWIN region?
Mum: Northern Territory.
Aidan: Is it “NT”?
Mum: Yep – that’s right. It’s NT
Aidan: What is – Olympic Park?
Mum: Olympic park? That’s in Sydney.
Aidan: What’s an Olympic Park?
Mum: It’s a big space with lots of sporting facilities. Venues to do sports like archery, cycling, swimming, gymnastics, boxing, weightlifting
Aidan: Errrrrrr I hate those trams.
Mum: Trams?
Aidan: I hate them running and going in the streets because they disturb the traffic!
Mum: They’re usually co-ordinated with the traffic Aidan.
Aidan: What does co-ordinate mean?
Mum: Work-together. I think some have to follow the traffic lights as well.
Aidan: Why do some trams have traffic lights?
Mum: So that they can work together with the cars on the streets. When one direction of cars needs to stop, the tram can stop or go.
Aidan: You know? Trams are very boring.
Mum: Why are trams boring?
Aidan: Because they’re such a slow, low train that goes on the road.
Mum: They’re faster than cars sometimes, because cars can get compacted in traffic jams whereas the trams are on a rail system…
Aidan: But it might accidentally crash into a car that’s passing!
Mum: A car might accidentally crash into one, maybe… are you feeling a bit better now?
Aidan: But when a car accidentally crashes…police will arrest… stop the tram running… Australia’s power supply is not very good. I think I’ll have to leave I’ll have to go to another country… I think I have to go to another country.
Mum: mmm
Aidan: We will have to go to another country!
Mum: Well… are you feeling a little bit better now? A little bit less scared?
Aidan: Ohh no, I’m getting more scared.
Mum: Why?
Aidan: Look – the sky is getting darker. When it gets darker, evil monsters come.
Mum: We can light candles… would that be fun?
Aidan: No thanks.. No thanks! nononono, I’m not good at handling flammables.
Mum: You don’t have to handle it, I can handle it. Listen, how about I check the fuse box, to make sure it’s not a problem with the fuse box? If we can get the electricity back on, then it’s probably not a blackout.
Aidan: No! Don’t do that to the fuse box, you might get killed! There’s spiders hanging around the fuse box! (concerned, because his mother was bitten by a female huntsman whilst opening the car door recently, it was hiding under the door handle)
Mum: I can use a broom to sweep them away.
Aidan: But they’ll run up the broom and bite you.
Mum: That’s alright – I’ll use karate!
Aidan: No! That don’t work! If you use karate, that will never work. Spiders will.. when you try to punch the spider, it will bite you. The spider will bite you if you do karate.
Mum: (laughs) I can bring some fly spray.
Aidan: But it’s poisonous!
Mum: Yeah. It’ll kill them, if there’s any there.
Aidan: But you’ll have to run away quickly.
Mum: I can do that.
Aidan: But you can’t run through the gate because it’ll take too much time closing it.
Mum: Well I need to check the fuse box anyway. I need to check the street to see if we actually have a blackout or if it’s a fusebox issue ok? So, I’ll check it out.
Aidan: Are you going to go far from my house?
Mum: No, I’m just going to check the houses. There’s no lights in that house out the bedroom window over here, so I’m just going to go to Daddy’s workroom to see if the lights are off in the other neighbours house. Because there’s no storm, there’s been no signs of thunder so it’s very unsual to have a blackout…

Mother and son exit the bedroom. The power returns.

Mum: It’s back. The electricity is back!

Windows plays it’s start-up music on the computer, startling both of them.

Aidan: I hate that windows start up music!
Mum: Me too! I don’t like it either!

The End

…of a very interesting 19minutes of life together with my son, and no power.

Like, I think we’ve clocked more hours without power in Leura compared to “Earth Hour” this year.

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Happy Easter, from Aidan…

Aidan & I were watching this Dr.Who song that appeared on ABC’s ‘The Chaser’ via You Tube a few times before the Dalegg evolved… my whole family was mesmerised by this song when it first appeared on the TV. My son was very excited to see it again. Lots of giggles…

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Queen sums it all up in a nutshell for today.

Time for me to decompress at the gym.

Pray tomorrow, gets me higher.

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