My mum and my sister are the kinds of people that like buying presents. They like it when we come up as they go a bit nuts spoiling the grandkids rotten which makes for a nice full tree. Every year they ask me what I want for Christmas and every year I’ve told them the same thing: get something from Oxfam Unwrapped or contribute some money to the fyn’s New Cintiq fund (my Old Faithful 12WX is getting a bit jittery in its old age, but I need a replacement sometime in the not-too-distant future). So whenever I come home for Christmas I usually end up with a little pile of stuff.

And on goes the love/hate relationship with Linux. Setting up my Cintiq is one of the things that makes me really loathe it and want to go jumping back onto my iMac and ignore the possibility of art on Linux forever. My first attempt was an abysmal fail (I blew up Unity and had to spend a bit of time fixing it and it never completely recovered, and due to the nature of the child who owned that particular machine it ended up with Win7 on it). If I didn’t need a Linux server for web dev (which is why I got the laptop) I would have just bought a MacBook.

7yo (about one of 9yo’s friends): He always chases me when I don’t want to be chased and doesn’t chased me when I do want to be chased! Boys are just like that! me: It doesn’t get any better as you get older. 9yo (watching the Speed Racer movie): It’s really bad. me: Why are you watching it then? 9yo: I’m just watching it so I can go “WHAT?!” at it.

7yo: I’m an acrobat Mummy! I was born to acro! This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

[following a discussion about vampires and zombies and what times they’re active] 5yo: Mum pretend you’re a zombie! me: I’m too smart to be a zombie. 5yo: Stop blinding me with science! [not much later] 7yo: I can tell the future! I predict Daddy will be home soon! me: Will he be wet? 7yo: Maybe a little bit…unless there’s an unexpected thunderstorm. me: If you can tell the future then it shouldn’t be unexpected! 7yo: I can’t predict thunderstorms! me: But you can tell the future! 7yo: …now you’re blinding me with science! me: It’s not science it’s just logic.

9yo: Why is there a giant spiderweb there? It’s really bugging me. Or arachnidding. Or something. This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

[overheard from the kitchen] JJ (to 5yo): Don’t squirt that. Don’t squirt that. STOP GRINNING LIKE THAT YOU’RE GOING TO SQUIRT SOMETHING. This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

I told 7yo and 5yo they would have to wait a couple of hours for a box of frozen raspberries to defrost. 5yo: How much is a couple? me: Two. Dua. re. 7yo and 5yo: Doo-wop! Doo-wop! Doo-wop! me: [laughing too hard to correct them] This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

JJ: Ahh you’ve got some crackers there! 5yo: Freshly stolen from the English! 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.