Christmas!

On Friday our Chrisco hampers arrived just before I had to pick up the boys from school. I put the frozen food away (a large freezer full!), and left the pantry stuff for the boys to unpack after school.

They took it very seriously, cutting the tape carefully, unpacking carefully, and checking everything off the lists. There was a box for each of them to unpack, and Chrisco put a notepad-and-pen freebie in each box, so both boys got one. It doesn't sound very exciting, but if you knew how many times I hear "Mum, can I have a piece of paper?"......

Today we put up our Christmas tree, complete with two elves (see below). I put the date on this photo because I had a frame decoration to hang on the tree; now it has this photo in it.

**100th Post!** All about kids, drugs and gnomes

From the title, you might be assuming something along the lines of "Kids use drugs, then see gnomes" - no! You will that the opposite is true.

I read one of my old books to the boys a few days ago. The book was first published in 1976 (perhaps influenced by hippy gnomes?), and my Grandma gave it to me for Christmas in 1981. I was about five-and-a-quarter - the quarter is very important when you're five - and I loved this book. It has fascinating cursive writing, lots of pop-ups and moving parts, and watercolour illustrations including gnomes helping cute fuzzy animals. My favourite page is the last one where the whole scene pops up, complete with thread "chains" on the swing and "rope" for the tug-of-war.

When reading to the boys, I turned to the second page where the son gnome pops up behind the table cloth, the toilet door opens and out comes the daughter gnome, mother gnome is at the pop-out stove, and father gnome is there in all his 3D glory - alas! - having a bong!! The accompanying text says "After breakfast the father gnome lights his first pipe and waits until his wife has cleared away the breakfast things." Apart from smoking while his wife does the work, what's this about "first"?!

My five-and-a-quarter-year-old eyes never took any notice of the father gnome having a pipe, and certainly didn't think it was any fancy sort of pipe. However, I couldn't believe my ...er... 31-year-old.... ahem! Eyes. Couldn't believe my eyes is all. So I did the academic thing and cross-referenced with another gnome resource, albeit a resource with the same publisher, author, and original publishing date as the first one. In fact the second one is based on the first. Anyhoo. The second book is not pop-up and goes into much more detail on many gnomular matters. It's also easier to scan than a pop-up book - here is father gnome and his first pipe of the day, accompanied by similar text to the first book:



As I said, when I was five I didn't even notice. I have not grown up into a junky (mostly grown up; just not into a junky). Believe it or not, I've never even smoked a legal cigarette let alone try anything that gnomes apparently might try (insert "parents breathing sighs of relief and resonating slightly with pride in their respective parenting skills" sounds here).

Maybe society is now over-protective of children and what they might see in various media, because I saw the above picture numerous times in my childhood and did not rush out to try that activity. In fact, what these two books did encourage was reading, because they are such beautiful and fascinating books that I could study the curly writing and detailed pictures for ages; so much so that I still have them 26 ... er... some years later. Maybe we should consider that when censoring children's texts.

What we should be concerned about is those gnomes. Yes, the book says the average gnome lifespan is 400 years, but surely it is obvious that smoking has stunted their growth! And whatsmore, there are several references to gnomes seeing and even talking to humans! Again it's obvious, this has to be drug induced. They are speaking to figments of their gnomly little imaginations. They see big people! Don't be worried about us using drugs, because we are only drug-induced figments of gnome imaginations! They get stoned ... and end up in gardens... if we were to conduct a census on how many garden gnomes there are, we'd see that stoned gnomes are a widespread problem.

And so you see, it is not the human kids using drugs we should be worried about. Kids who don't use drugs still see gnomes (and monsters under beds); however, and more importantly, gnomes who use drugs see humans.

No doubt if they can use bongs, they've already discovered those mushrooms too...

Out of respect to two of my favourite childhood books, which discuss drug use far less than I have here, here they are:

The Pop-Up Book of Gnomes; Abrams 1979; Art Director Chuck Murphy, designer John Strejan, paper engineer Tor Lokvig, handwriting Diane Kosowski; Adapted from Gnomes by Rien Poortvliet and Wil Huygen.

Gnomes; Abrams 1977; Poortvliet and Huygen.

They really are beautiful books; text, handwriting, illustrations, paper engineering and content.

The croc in my yard

Yesterday was Steve Irwin Day. I was distinctly not commemorating it just because I'm so tired of hearing about him, but the local reptiles had other ideas.

I went out to see what Buster was barking at, to find this massive croc in my yard. I shut Buster in the laundry and went out to try to catch it so I could relocate it, possibly to the local park which is large and includes vegetation and a creek.

Here is the massive croc hiding in a flowery bush:


Oh, alright then, it's a young blue tongue lizard, probably a bit less than a foot long. But it's still a reptile on Steve Irwin Day.

Because it was a hot day, Neddy - that's what I called the lizard when it started running away - "I'm panicking, Neddy!" ... from The Simpsons.... anyhoo... it was a warm day so Neddy could move fast. He slithered around trying to look like a snake, moving his legs as little as possible. I said "I can see ya legs ya know", so he got a bit embarrassed and went under the fence.

I know there aren't any croc-hunting-dogs on the other side of that fence, so I sprayed Neddy with a spray bottle. He was most offended, hissing at me, then running away, hissing over his shoulder some more as he went. That's what I wanted. I wanted Neddy to think my yard is not friendly, because it isn't - Buster has been known to play roughly with Neddy's type and then wonder why they won't play anymore.

To kind of quote a famous niece: "and that's the end of the yittle cwocodile yizard stowy".