crazybrave

After 28 months on the public hospital waiting list, I’m off to have a new ear drum fashioned out of something or other tomorrow.

It is some consolation for the delay that any rousing huzzahs! for ten years of Howard and his government will be inaudible through surgical wadding and Schedule 8 drugs.

I bought Sage some sneakers today from a new shop in a new part of Canberra, lots of aspirational houses and plenty of kids. The woman was lovely, and chatty, and the shop is only six weeks old so she still seems excited by it all.

In the course of our chatting, she said she’d lived near where I do, but had moved to send her daughter to an (Anglican) school out there. It hadn’t worked out, so her kid’s back at a Christian school in this part of town.

She was a paleontologist before opening the shop, and said she has significant trouble with Bibilical timelines. “Would you believe,” she said wide eyed, “they’re still teaching Creationism there?”

I find that a lot easier to believe than why a scientist who is un-Christian enough to live in a de facto relationship would send her kid to be educated in creationism by a Christian school.

It’s a very good thing for a child to become more independent over time. Joyously, Sage is now out of nappies, only wearing pull-ups at night. For the blessedly ignorant, pull-ups are disposable absorbent undies that are way cooler than nappies and heaps easier to get your toddler into. (Of course they cost twice as much as the fanciest disposable nappies.)

I picked Sage up from day care this afternoon and found some mysteriously stained wipes in his bag. Then I took out his lunchbox and some undies and a poo fell out. Bless him, he’d had “an askident” and instead of telling one of the carers he’d gone to his bag, wiped his bum, changed his pants and chucked the disgusting ones and a turd in for Mum to deal with later. It’s a good thing he’s so cute (and affectionate):

I tell you this only because – judging from past experience at crazybrave – everyone loves a poo story.

* and I had to change the post title after my sister came out with this one. Too good to waste.

It’s a bit rough to have spent a week telling your little guy he’s GOING TO THE CIRCUS, only to get a call from the Circus the night before telling you that a performer has been injured and the show is NOT going on.

On the other hand, it’s a whole extra week of pointedly asking “Do you want to go to the circus…?” every time that evil whingey tone makes an appearance.

RU 486 Bill passes the House of Reps.

Please extinguish your torch Tony, and leave the tribal council area immediately.

A big “thank you, sister!” to Senators Nash, Moore, Allison and Troeth. Email them your love like I just did. Email addy syntax is senator.surname@aph.gov.au

Clarification for the wilfully dense: last night at LP, Currency Lad accused this post at of demonstrating “what this is really about”, ie getting up Tony Abbott. My reply on that thread is here.

But in case someone is cruising by and forms that impression, please be reassured that the only reason Abbott’s face is up there is because he pushed himself front and centre into the debate, and characterised the result as a reflection on him.

Gillard was right – “It’s not all about you, Tony.” It’s about reproductive medicine not having more regulatory burdens than other types of medicine, and about enabling the choices of women.

Shorter clarification: IT’S THE WOMEN, STUPID.

Dateline: Canberra

“I don’t hold the view that you should work hard, get into Parliament, cop all the opprobrium when something goes wrong but when it comes to decisions you hand it over to a bureaucrat.”

The wrinklies were in town over the weekend, which means vast quantities of newspaper flooding the house. I’m more of an online newspaper reader these days, so it’s very unusual for me to read the Monday Canberra Times. I’m glad I did, because I discovered bookcrossing. Trust me to find the one little article that was about an online community.

Bookcrossers leave books in public places (releasing them “into the wild”) with a ID sticker which has a unique number. They ask for the book to be found, and read, and passed on, or not, as you wish. About a quarter of the released books are “captured” by people who leave journal entries at the site, and there are designated drop zones and of course some Serious Fans. They leave them in parks, and laundromats, on benches and in bookshops.

If you want to go hunting near you, have a look here .

I tried to find one released yesterday near my house, but there was only an empty wine bottle and a single sneaker. Sad, because I had great plans for the copy of “Thank God I’m An Atheist – The Religious Origins Of Expressions, Customs” by Rudolf Brasch which had been left outside the Dickson Baptist Church.

I filled up a carton of books a little while ago for a joint garage sale Duck and I are going to have, but I think we might have to set some of them free. Perhaps for Valentine’s Day I will liberate “Guide to Sexual Success” by W F Robie, MD. But it’s hard to part with a book that prescribes masturbation as the cure for the world’s evils, though, unless there’s a particularly brilliant suggestion where I should leave it? I’ll give you an idea of the tone to get you in the mood:

“We must either see to it that all normal people have sex manifestations in sleep, varying in frequency, perhaps as a rule from once a month to three times a week, or we must provide some other remedy for those who have none, or practially none, of these manifestations. I have no hesitancy whatever in naming autoeroticism as the only possible remedy consistent with morals, health, self-respect, and social betterment, for this latter class”

You see why I like him, huh? Only writer in the world more wedded to the comma than I am.

“From about the time of her marriage she had a feeling of curiosity and repulsion in regard to male genitals. She told her husband of this, and he was careful not to expose himself before her. If her husband or one of her boys or a male guest went to the bathroom to urinate, she had a feeling of disgust and a strong erotic feeling. At the age of seventeen, she awoke one night having violent sensations immediately culminating in an orgasm.”

Can that man segue or what? This next is from the good doctor’s sexual history survey for his patients:

“5. Did you, as a child, masturbate? If so, was the habit taught you or was it done of your own volition? If taught, under what circumstances? If not, what led to its beginning? Did threadworms, friction of clothing, sliding down bannisters, itching of prepuce, or any other irritation of glans penis or clitordis [fully sic], or any other ascribable cause other than instinct lead to it?”

Freaky! I totally started masturbating as a result of a threadworm infestation – but let’s talk about you.

Finally, some serious advice:

“I have talked with but three married women out of several hundred, who did not delight in having their husbands gently hold their breasts and kiss or titillate their nipples. This is often a sufficient preliminary to intercourse if followed for ten or fifteen minutes, but the majority of wives also wish their husband’s hands in gentle dalliance with their more private parts before intercourse.”

Doctor knows best, right ladies?