If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?

Sometimes when you have small children, you can go a little mad. Small children - sweet as they are - can get so annoying that you'd be forgiven for wishing that you had a long break from them.

A teething baby, however cute and regardless of how much he smiles, still has a tendency to wake up every hour-and-a-half. You know, that starts to get to you after a while. That said, you can be very forgiving of a baby. A baby is just a baby. A toddler, on the other hand...

Well, a toddler is a toddler. A toddler can be a quite engaging chap. A toddler - a bright one, anyway - can put together simple sentences. A toddler can answer questions. A toddler can get out some play dough, bring it across to you and plead, "Daddy make little balls please".

That might not impress you, but when said child didn't say much more than shouting "MORE!" at you for months on end, I guarantee that you'd find it extraordinary too.

Yet at the same time, this little person will refuse to tell you when he has soiled his pants, despite

a) him knowing full well what soiling one's pants means; and

b) producing such a god-awful stench from the trouser department that any denial is rendered superfluous.

The actual scenario does not worry me too much. I understand not wanting to admit that you have crapped in your pants again. I would imagine that it is a difficult thing to share with somebody. What I don't understand, and what I find most frustrating, is why this embarrassment translates into a supreme difficulty in getting that nappy off, wiping away the offensive substance, and then getting a fresh one on.

The best way that I can explain what exquisite torture changing Henry's nappy is at the moment is by sharing the fact that one looks forward to the trip to the laundry to scrub human faeces off the nappy to prepare it for soaking. At least the shit does not wriggle while you are scrubbing at it.

Then there are the tantrums, the constant destruction, the picky eating, the sticky fingers, the hidden caches of food, the contradictory impulses, the mixed messages, the common assaults, the cruel emotional judgements; life with a toddler can be like life with a bi-polar, menopausal invalid with learning difficulties.

With this in mind, you'd be forgiven for thinking that a time away from the gruesome twosome would be a blissful respite from the tempest that home life tends to be at the moment.

But oddly it isn't. All you can do is think about Henry's sad little eyes as you waved goodbye to him, Ezra's tired face as you stepped out to the plane and the lovely Jennifer, who be left alone to manage two very strong-willed future superstars while I have to be in a place as abominable as Sydney.

Who would believe me when I say that the absence of the pugnacious pair would result in a hole in the heart (that goes all the way the Chinatown)?

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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