Probationary Nirvana

I am a genius. And I’m modest. But mostly I’m a genius.

Something that gets my goat (and the goats of every other P-Plater I am sure) is the fact that when fully licensed drivers drive our cars, they rip down, with reckless abandon, our precariously placed temperamental P-Plates.

Scenario 1: Mum gets into the car, realises Cecelia has been driving so leans across and rips off the P-plate, completely apathetic to which nooks and crannies the plate and suction caps land in. With this thoughtless act at its close, she drives away legally.

Scenario 2: Cecelia gets in her car and settles herself into place ready to drive. On final check she realises the person who last borrowed her* car has not had the courtesy to put back up her P-Plate. So Cecelia has to lean over, unlock the door, unbuckle herself, get out of the car, go around to the passenger side and begin frustrating task of searching for miniature suction cups. Once the suctions and plate are located, then comes the painstaking process of getting the cheap-skate suction to JUST STICK. Adding on the plate once this is complete can often send the process spiralling backwards as the suctions pop off from the pressure of the plate. Once Cecelia has finished this process and is well and truly late for wherever she was going to drive, she gets back into the driving position and begins her journey. Without a doubt, at some point into the journey, the P-Plate will dislodge and either half fall and hang threateningly for the remainder of the trip. Or, it will enthusiastically leap off the windscreen into the nether of the passenger side forcing Cecelia to; A, Drive illegally for the rest of the trip, or; B, Pull over and make her self even later by starting the whole sticking up process again.

So I have been struggling with this issue for the past year or so and Have tried numerous things to find a remedy for it.

1, drive without Plates and rely on the fact that I won’t get pulled over because there are no P-plates on my windscreen begging the police to pull me over.

2, shove the P-plate in the crack between the dash and the windscreen. Its not very visible and I would probably still get in trouble from the cops

Or 3, Use sticky tape to keep the plates up. This works at treat until Mr/Mrs Full licence comes along, pulls it off, and throws it onto the floor for it to get covered in lint and grime and lose all its stickiness. And it uses Bucketloads of sticky-tape.

So Behold! The P-Plate pocket!

A clear Pocket made of laminate that it stuck to the windscreen permanently. The P-plate is then able to slide in and out of the pocket with ease. It is Transparent, which means that there are no blind spots created for the full licence driver and No distractions around the plate for other drivers on the road.

New scenario A: Mum gets into the car, leans over and pulls the P plate out of its pocket, placing it carefully on the spare seat beside her, or, if it is occupied, into the top of the glove box.

New scenario B: Cel gets in the car, leans over to the glove box/passenger seat, grabs the P-plate and slides it with ease into its pocket, where it will remain for the whole journey.

**Please No-one steal this idea and earn millions of dollars from it. Or if you do, at least give me a decent cut of it**

*Yes Dad, I know It is not MY car, But I use it every single day.

Warning: See you next tuesday.

I have been working with a special needs school these past two days.

I was talking to a teacher today about one of the kids who attend the school not because he has any severe physical or intellectual disability but because of his behavioural problems. The teacher was telling me how they try and give him good role modelling but his home life is putting him at a massive disadvantage. He was telling me that he went to pick up this kid for camp and as left the house his dad yelled “just fuck off you stupid cunt!*”

I had a near physical reaction to this story not because he dropped the C-bomb at school but because it broke my heart.

During the 2 days working with disabled kids it consolidated to me that that is definitely not something I want to do, but when the teacher told me this story I realised that working with teenaged boys in this circumstance, no matter how heartbreaking it could be, is something that I am really passionate about.

It was a good experience because occasionally I wonder if I am sure about what I want to do. I most definitely am.

* Sorry Patto if you are reading this, and everyone else who finds the C-bomb offensive- but the remark is less cutting when it is watered down.

So sue me. No, please dont.

Rockclimbing is a pretty scary thing for most primary school kids. When you are leading a session of rockclimbing, it is vital that you make the children feel safe and encouraged. In order to aid future leaders in this endeavour I have compiled a list of things NOT to say when a child is either on, or about to climb a Rockwall:

-Im not very good at tying knots

-Ive dropped the rope, like, 700 times today

-Oh shit!

-Thank-goodness the new ropes have arrived, these ones are terrible

-Is your harness done up properly?

-Hold on

-Stop climbing for a second!

-Wait, im confused

-Huh? oh yeah ive got you

-On belay climb when… wait on..

I hope all future rockclimbing leaders find this list very useful and I categorically deny saying any, or all, of these things to children in the past two days.

Happy climbing!

B-Boys Fly girls Put your hands in the air!

When I was little, I decided that it was high time our family went on a holiday. I ran the idea by Mum and she asked me where I wanted to go. I thought about my favourite holiday destination ever; Siesta Resort.* Mum said if I could organise it then we could go. So I looked up their number in the phonebook and called to get a quote about how much it would cost a family of five to stay for two nights. Much to my anger, the woman on the other end seemed to think that, due to my 8 year old voice, I wasn’t actually serious about booking a holiday. Incensed, I decided that I wasn’t going to waste my time and (mums) money on a place that treated me so dismissively. Then I got distracted and forgot about my quest for a holiday.

The point of the story was that when I was 8 years old I wanted a holiday and I wasnt taken seriously. Now I am 19 and I am organising a holiday and everybody’s taking me seriously and it is SCARING THE FREAKING PANTS OFF ME! For example, Today I bought a ticket around the world. Yep, around the whole wide world. Now I have to book plane flights in between cities and I feel like I am doing something naughty or I am going to screw up the whole thing. I sit for 10 minutes staring a ticket on my computer screen knowing that it is what I want but struggling to grasp the fact that it is an ACTUAL ticket. Maybe if a ticket shot out of the big card slot in the side of my computer then it would help me make the connection between real life and the clicks of my mouse.

*It transpires that Siesta Resort is not a glamorous, ritzy resort in a far away land, it is actually in Albury and about two minutes drive where I play soccer. It really put a hole in the magic of it.

The song that is the title of this post always reminds me of Siesta Resort, my Siesta memories have a soundtrack.

NEVER let go of your T grip!

So, one of the days rafting I was in a boat with Pat and Luke. What a fantastic combination! It was by far my favourite day of rafting and I absolutely smashed the guiding, which is an amazing feeling!

I cant give a blow by blow account of the day but I will relay in a somewhat disjointed fashion my favourite parts of the trip.

The day started out with the funniest error of judgement that I have seen in a long time. We (me and Pat as crew, Luke guiding) were floating on some flat water above a rapid and Luke decided that he needed to get a better look at the rapid so he stood up on the pontoons (blown up edges of the boats). Its not hard to balance on these as long at as no-one is paddling. So Luke decides on the route he would like to take and calls a forward paddle. Pat and I respond with one strong forward stroke and hear a loud splash. Luke had forgotton to sit down! Now he was bobbing in the freezing water furious at his own stupidity. Pat and I couldn’t help him back in because we were debilitated with laughter. So we sat a roared with laughter while Luke ungracefully seal flopped his way back into the boat.

So when it was my turn to guide I was having a wonderful day! Nailing every rapid (It is important though, that I give lots of credit to my super strong, in sync, wonderfully funny crewmen.)

The following encounter demands a little prior knowledge on the readers part.
So the rapid is called the gobbler. It is aptly named because it you fall out on the gobbler then the big arse stopper will gobble you up and funnel you under an undercut rock and once you are there it is all bad news. When approaching a rapid you can either you backwards, or forwards. Don’t EVER go sidewards! It is a one way ticket to spectacular flipping footage.

So Myself, Pat and Luke are heading for the gobbler basking in the immense success of the previous rapid called waterfall (fairly self explanatory). When I accidentally hit a submerged rock. At this point it is worth mentioning that we are really quite close to going over the gobbler. So we hit this rock and it spins us backwards. I had two options: A, call a left turn to try and make the boat go forwards down the fast approaching rapid which probably wouldn’t work because the time it takes for the crew to react would mean that we would go down sideways; or B, Politely inform the crew that we would be completing the rapid backwards. I chose option B- Terrifying but slightly less likely to get us killed. Despite being the guide and thus maker of all decisions I addressed the crew in a very democratic manner..

“CAN WE TAKE THIS BACKWARDS??!!”

Luke was fairly opposed to the idea and responded succinctly with what we were all thinking

“NAH FUCK THAT!”

And we all simultaneously did the most powerful left turn I have ever seen and proceeded to fly down the rapid forwards, whilst screaming like 12 years olds at a sleepover (well, I know I was and I couldn’t hear anyone else.)

Once we were safe out of the Gobblers clutches Luke apologised for his momentary mutiny (a mutiny which I wasn’t at all opposed to) and blamed it mostly on the fact that he was too chicken to go down backwards. Thank goodness is all I can say, I personally was excreting bricks from my rear end at the thought of going backwards.

Previously in the day Pat was guiding us down a boulder garden when we hit a rock. The raft tipped sideways up the rock and, seeing that it might wrap, I jump/fell away from the boat to try and stop it wrapping (don’t question the logic, as I'm not sure I was right about it). So as I white water floated I managed to grab both Luke and My paddles, then I tried to swim to towards the eddy where there were other boats waiting. Do you know how immensely difficult it is to do an effective freestyle whilst holding a paddle in each hand.? Very very difficult, is the answer. So I somehow got to the eddy and was pulled up into the boat and a minute later a very shaken Luke also got pulled in. Pat, the bastard, had somehow managed to stay dry in the boat and we saw him raft on by to the next eddy with his abandoned ship. What happened during this incident that I wasn’t aware of at the time was while I jumped away from the raft, Luke got trapped between it and the rock as it started wrapping.* By the grace of god Pat managed to manoeuvre the boat off the rock before it wrapped and, in doing so, set Luke free. Had he not been so lucky.. sorry I cant continue that train of thought, my psychologist told me I’m not allowed to indulge in thoughts of ‘what if?’

Anyway, Everyone was safe so It was all ok.

With that in the back of your mind tune into the next story:

I was guiding and the boys thought it would be a fun Idea to stand up down a rapid, Being the guide, they asked for my permission. I was all for the idea- it is a nuts amount of fun standing up whilst going down a rapid. So we hurtle down this gorgy wave train and get to some calmer water at the end. Luke enquires as to how deep the water is. It wasn’t that deep and we continued to tootle along. At one point I ask if they want to sit down, (being my minions they have to follow orders until I relieve them of their obligations) Luke enthusiastically suggests we continue to stand. At this point we have arrived at a deep open pool of water. We stand around soaking up the serenity and waiting for the other boats to come down the rapid when Pat observes how deep the water is. “oh. Yeah.” Says Luke and he steps across the boat and pushes Pat out. Such a provocative act was so calmly executed that Pat had no defence. The other boats, who were following on behind us, came down to the scene of the crime and started yelling and demanding to see an act of retribution. Pat, with the help of his attacker, climbed back into the boat and told the hopeful onlookers that it was a perfectly legit move considering that he, Pat, had almost killed Luke a half hour ago.

And so the score was evened and we harmoniously continued (STILL standing) down the river.

That is all that I can write at the moment and Hopefully it has sated your desire to know how my holidays were.

*When you think about a raft wrapping imagine getting a rock, now get a little raft made out of plasticene. now carefully mould the plasticene raft around the grooves of the rock. That is what the water does to a real raft. It is a very painful, time consuming process trying to get it unstuck.

Glad that bout of separation anxiety is over.

I have my baby back! My computer was in Melbourne I was at home which is why there have been no blog updates even though HEAPS has been happening. It feels weird trying to write a blog from someone else’s computer. The sad thing about the amount of time that has elapsed is this: all the good stories that were in my head about the holidays have now decomposed into mere good memories. I will give it my best shot to remember and relay them.