technonaturalist

[9yo was carrying on like a pork chop about doing his maths workbook.]

9yo: Do I haaaaaaave toooooo [bleat whine moan etc]
me: It’s on the way to stuff you’ll have to know to be an engineer.

[9yo’s eyes light up]

9yo: Oh in that case it’s okay!

[9yo hits the books]

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

This is my 7yo and her dog Angus (aka “Angillian and “Ningle Nangle Jangaloid” and permutations thereof, don’t ask, I don’t know).

Yesterday (5th of August) at about 7:40pm JJ took both dogs (Angus and my dog Tali) for a walk as he normally does. As he was walking past the Gosnells Football Oval a “stray dog came out of nowhere” and grabbed Angus and started shaking him. The dog was halfway across the road before JJ saw it coming and had grabbed Angus by the time Tali noticed. JJ started screaming at and kicking the dog as hard as he could while Tali bit at back of it. A passer-by pulled over and called the police (who then posted it on their Facebook timeline) and after JJ finally succeeded in driving the dog away, carried Angus to our gate while JJ called Tali (who had broken his collar and was running around naked, fortunately he’s obedient) in. JJ came racing to the door yelling for me and after telling me what happened in one sentence appended “Angus is fucked” and racing off. Our neighbour had come out having heard the commotion and went to the emergency vet with JJ to try to staunch the bleeding.

5yo: Mum when can I play the old Minecraft that we used to play?
me: …? …tomorrow after bookwork.
5yo: Mum when can I have computer?
me: When you can show me that you’re responsible enough to have one.
5yo: When can I have a third eye?
me: …I guess when medicine and technology advance enough.

This was all part of the same conversation.

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

[5yo is sitting on my lap watching Youtube, he watches a clip I have a very low opinion of]

me: That was really, really dumb.
5yo: There’s so much dumb things on internet!

As he said it in a rather sing-song voice I’m wondering if he is parroting that from somewhere and if so, where :)

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

We binged out on history recently. I can’t remember if I mentioned instating a docos-only-before-bookwork rule to stop the kids from gluing themselves to screens and routinely refusing to come do the bookwork, but it’s been working reasonably well. Horrible Histories was the recent favourite, I think they’ve watched every dvd we have now as well as anything on iView at the time, and favourite dvds have been repeated with them singing along. As well as watching Horrible Histories, 9yo has also decided to have me read him the books for bedtime story. We’re also still very slowly working our way through the very thick Ned Kelly book.

While building this gallery for this client, I ran into an issue where if you clicked on the next page in the navigation block and selected a project on the second page, when the new project loaded the block would reload back on page 1. The Designer and I thought that pagers really needed to remember what page they were on but as of four years ago it was a feature Views and the core pager didn’t support, so at the bottom of an issue someone else opened up four years ago asking for this to happen some kind soul provided this code:

We’ve had a couple of days going semi-rural this week. The first was a picnic at a friend’s 12 acre block in Bullsbrook where a great time was had by all children and I caught an awesome photo of my friends’ kids and pretended to be closer to a master of iPhone camera composition.

Pretended to be closer to a master as it was a very, very quick “whip phone out of pocket aim try to get horizon lines and vague rule of thirds thing happening press button before kids move” kinda photo.

From writing and art not really being his “thing”, 9yo recently had a sudden explosion of doing a bit of it without me yelling out that it was bookwork o’clock and him coming and doing some or not as he felt like.

He made a new character which is supposed to be a roleplaying character (though I have already told him I’m not sure how well it would fit into the WoD Changeling system we have but I can usually make things work and if there is a next time maybe it can be after Winter if I ever get my paws on and head around the new version) and spent a couple of days writing notes and a backstory:

9yo hopped into my bed in the early hours after The Linux Geek left for work. After chilling for a bit he asked me: “Is this real or is this a dream?”

“I think so,” I replied after a moment’s hesitation. “There’s a creation myth, can’t remember whose, maybe one of the Native American tribes, about how the entire universe is the dream of some god and when that god wakes up we’ll all stop existing.”

Last time we were out this way was a few years ago for a Truffle Festival. This time round we came out this way on the weekly excursion (which he hadn’t done for a couple of weekends due to some major works including replacing the fence out the front and helping friends lay some cable to a shed) and because 7yo heard there was an art gallery.

We stopped by the “village” to pick up maps and things for 7yo’s collection and she also bought a butterfly spotter’s book and to hit up the bakery for lunch. We took the food to the Sculpture Park and the kids had a play at the playground before we checked out the sculptures, read and followed the track up to where there were some rail switching levers and an amphitheatre. 7yo put a performance on the old platform (now a stage).