Postcards from Tokyo - don't look down!

Mr Frenchie is cursing under his breath . He's trying to rebuild the Tokyo Tower before breakfast and on only one coffee and it seems he missed a crucial piece somewhere in the middle of the structure.  <merde> 

Yesterday we zoomed up and down Tokyo Tower (as much as you can zoom in a long, loooong queue) and enjoyed 360• views of Tokyo laid at our feet. Camera's and smart-phones snapped all around, but mine and Pinkster's favourite was the viewing windows in the floor. Not so for Mr Frenchie and his vertigo

During a  brief stop in the strategically placed souvenir shop, (the  'down' lifts stop actually inside the shop) we conceded to buy on something small and educational for Pinkster. Turns out it's educational for Mr Frenchie. It is leggo-esque, but the pieces are microscopic and of course the instructions in Japanese. Here comes another <merde>.

Post Script:

Two mornings and another city later...

Postcards from Tokyo - Hello Kitty

Harajuku, Just off Omtosande- must be Tokyo's answer to London's Carnaby Street. It's just bigger, busier, noisier crazier.. 

Japan's fashion edge often incorporates vintage Chanel meets Hello Kitty, with a little Betty Boop thrown in. If thats not enough 'edge' you can throw on some bunny-ear muffs or a sequinned Alice band with a bow.

The Canine couture is even funkier than the humans' high fashion. 

We found a store with the most incredible selection of formal and casual canine clothing. 

There was of course a canine costume section as well. Most of the dogs we come across on the streets of Tokyo are dressed to the nines and a few of them wear their embarrassment on their furry little faces . 

But 'Onesies' for dogs? 

Seriously? 

Even with its generous pooh and pee holes, this poor greyhound did NOT look comfortable. He also walked like he was holding on :0(

Postcard from Tokyo

Seeing in the New Year in a dark Tokyo hotel room (shared with sleeping Child) drinking Asahi and eating unidentifiable but oh so tasty something or other. No room service on NYE  so Mr Frenchie had to hit the streets to forage but we were guaranteed a hang-over free start to 2014. 

Yesterday we visited the technology museum or tried to because turns out it's closed on Tuesdays. Shame; I so wanted to play with robots.  We took Miss Pink to Joypolis a couple of blocks away as a consolation prize. Joypolis is NO JOY for parents or pockets; think Luna Park (or Coney Island) on acid, given a nightclub make-over.  Strobe lights, shrieking vendors, blaring teen-pop music and add that to the indoor roller coaster and it's screaming passengers. Just take three Paracetamol and tick that one off the list - forever.

We did manage to get in some grow-up sightseeing- taking in the Imperial Palace and a good wander around the streets of central Tokyo which is not exactly what I expected.

What did I expect?

Something like New York's Times Square full of noise and neons, and it's actually more mid-town Manhattan sort of Lexington and Maddisson-ish.   

But cleaner.

 The super- hi-tech toilets should have given it away- the sparkling subways surely do - you are even given a disposable bag to put over you head when you're trying on a sweater!. 

These Japanese are major Neat- Freaks!

Speaking of which; I have some laundry to do..

Dumb Dog?

Our Orange Dog has given us ample opportunity over the years to suspect that he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. This week I've had a rethink on that one..

 

Every night I wrap a few more presents and put them under the tree. Santa will surely come too after receiving She-Who-Worships-Pink's letter, but we like to give each other presents because Christmas is about giving too.

 

Except if you're a dog.

 

Every morning The Orange Dog sniffs the new parcels under the tree, the large ones get a more enthusiastic going over. He comes to me immediately after with the most tragic expression.

Our Orange Dog understands about 'presents' and he can smell which ones aren't his.

 

When my nieces and nephews were small we used to make movies of Buddy collecting and opening his presents. They thought it was hilarious. 

He would pluck them out from the pile by their string, take them to his bed, unwrap them, then parade around the living room, tail and head held high in a lap of honour- his gift in his mouth for all to see.

 

Well the other morning he came out from his under-tree investigations, covered in strips of red tinsel wearing his most serious heart-break-face. I caved and promised him there would be parcels for him tomorrow and I added his gift wrapping to my 'to do' list.

 

The next morning, as promised, there were carefully wrapped chew toys and treats under the tree. 

He came, he saw, he sniffed and the tail started to swing. He reached out and grabbed the closest one and I told him; 'NO. You must WAIT'. If his expression came with subtitles they would be along the lines of; 'you gotta be kidding?'

 

He waited all right. Until we were sat down in the other room having breakfast. Then we heard the sound of tearing paper.

 

He had removed his three parcels from various points under the tree, pulled them aside and started unwrapping the first one.

 

So I conclude: he's not the dumb dog he makes out to be. In fact I suspect he's smart enough to play dumb when it works to his advantage. Which is often.

 

His Christmas presents are now hanging out on a high shelf till Christmas day. Naturally he hasn't touched anyone else's.

Not so dumb our Orang Dog.

 

Happy and safe Christmas everyone 

 

 

Trolls

I am livid.

I am furious.

I'm out for blood.

In the past twelve hours some filthy spamming trolls have made a dozen attempts to publish comments on my blog all of which  included links to child pornography.

This is despite my adding word recognition as a requirement to posting comments. This being the case, I can only assume that someone is paying live people rather than software to post vile comments on mine and I'm sure other peoples blogs.

These trolls are favouring one particularly innocuous post which I've had to rename because I suspect they are targeting the words Teen and Toddler.  Nice huh?


But after renaming the post and removing all the labels, the trolls kept posting. So now I've deleted and  re-posted  this entry, which is the only way I can change the URL still containing the original title.

The English in these things would be laughable if what they were trying to do wasn't so insidious;

"I've read this submit and if I may just desire to suggest you few interesting issues or tips. I wish to learn more things approximately it!"

(Hey Trolls, that's happens when you don't speak any English and rely totally on Google translator you numb-nuts.)

The titles on the links they post however are perfectly clear and perfectly deplorable.

At this point I would like to send a whopping big thank you to Blogger.com for their excellent spam filters that protect my readers from this filth.

And a message for you  Troll Spammers:

 Crawl back under that rock you came out from and don't let your Karma hit you on the way down.

Driving Miss Daisy

Originally published on  November 12 2009, short of deleting my work altogether I'm republishing this post in an attempt to shake off the Trolls who are targeting it heavily with their filthy spam comments. I still like this little day-in-the-life, I hope you do too.

It takes ten years or so for your toddler to turn into a teenager and there’s a reason for that. You are NOT meant to have teenagers and toddlers together. It’s like trying to shovel snow off the footpath during a blizzard.

Kid wrangling disaster of the day..

We have our adorable niece staying with us from France us as a temporary exchange student and today, my temporary teen  took the last day off school to meet with some friends to have a farewell lunch from 11am. Unfortunately one of these friends cancelled last minute (the one who was going to take her there) poor lamb had no idea what to do and I didn’t have time to formulate any sort of plan B.

So after rushing back from the health centre I put on my Chauffeurs cap again and drive her to Manly through the planet’s most hideous traffic, we didn’t so much drive as we oozed to Manly – right through the Toddler snack and wind-down time and guess what?

Nap time happened in the car.
First cardinal rule of toddler taming: NEVER EVER put your child anywhere near their car-seat within 45 minutes of nap time.

Second cardinal rule, NEVER leave your toddler alone in a locked vehicle. OK so I left buddy with her.. – does he count? :0(

I stormed into the house like a one woman SWAT team on a drug raid, wrenching blinds closed, grabbing sleeping bag, dummy, bottle and teddy, before taking her out of the car seat under a minute later. 40 guilt-ridden seconds to be exact.

I gave her a sleepy bottle and transferred her to bed and waited and prayed she'd get back to sleep, so I could work through the mountain of chores I had planned to do during her long nap.

That 40 minutes it took her to re-settle, I spent pacing, grouching and cursing my lot – working myself into a tizz (and neither my mum or my husband would pick up the phone for a moan or a bit of reassurance.)

Thirty minutes later I heard the pooh song on the baby monitor. Nap time was over before the second chorus but somewhere in my depths of pissed-offedness I’d lost all motivation for the chores anyway. Hey don’t think I’m some kind of Martha Stewart – my living room floor is actually crunchy, (except maybe I should be under house arrest for leaving my baby and dog in the driveway.)

Wow, This is how exciting my life has become – I might write a memoir so I can share it with the world.

Making Mr and Mrs Frosty

I've been looking at Styrofoam craft on Pinterest and I realise this is far from a new idea.

There are a lot of people out there getting wildly creative with Styrofoam balls, but these two lovely snow people where actually designed and made by a five-year-old.  Based on her only real snow people she left outside the Paris airport hotel, She-Who-Worships-Pink wanted to give them all the things she didn't have to hand in Paris..

Paris Airport's hotel entrance had no sticks, scarves stones or carrots.. 

Pinkster was hell-bent on authenticity, rather than fancy which is a quirk about her that I rather fancy. She hunted for just the right size and shaped sticks in our garden, to make their arms, and she rolled up tiny bits of card and coloured them with an orange felt pen to make teeny-tiny carrot noses.

I helped with the structural issues like getting the heads and noses to stay on (with he help of barbeque skewers and a hot glue gun) and I knitted the scarves. We made the hats together under her critical guidance and my glue gun. Pinkster was in charge of hat painting, googly eye gluing and all the finishing touches; most of which involved a black felt pen!


So our Christmas craft project number two is completed; using 2 sizes of Styrofoam balls, a BBQ skewer, empty coffee capsules, toilet roll centres, common garden variety sticks, googly eyes, heavy paper and a bit left-over knitting yarn.

Deck the Halls with boughs of loo-rolls

Fa la la la la, la la la lah!

We do love a good toilet roll, Miss Pink and I.
But paper towel rolls can be even better seeing as theyre longer..

You may have seen my previous post on making an orchard out of toilet roll centres; I don't know who came up with the idea of doing a Christmas tree, but here it is in all its glory.

Because of our craft-obsession, She Who Worships Pink  and I save everything: bits of wool, ribbon, old un-sticky stickers, pretty stuff we peel off greeting cards, pipe-cleaners, feathers, you name it. I also regularly hit the craft shops to stock up, and all of this stuff gets stored in old take-away containers in her desk.

This kind of stuff comes in handy when youre into toilet-roll (or paper towel) tube make-overs.

To start your Christmas tree, make three vertical cuts through both sides, to about half way down the cardboard tube. But to get the staggered effect of the branches, you need to have these finish at different points. These three snips spaced out and at different depths give a better 3D effect. Using various shades of green paper also adds to the effect.

For a stencil, I used this basic Christmas tree outline I found on the web and stretched it a bit to allow room for the tube in the centre. But you can also draw your own straight onto colored paper and cut them out. I cut three of these shapes.

These paper branches then slide down into the slots you've cut in the tube.

The final stage is the fun part for the small and crafty; taking  the glue stick and sticking stuff all over the branches. 

You can either cut another piece of paper branch to glue on the front of the tube or paint it green as I've done.

Pinkster stuck pretty much everything shiny in her craft boxes to the Christmas tree branches. She even cut out shapes from foil chocolate wrappers, but I drew the line when she was applying glue to a button that had come off the fly of my jeans.

We're both quite happy with the result, and hey we only have five Christmas trees in the house.. If you count the big one in the living room.

We'll be doing more Christmas Craft projects in the next week, so keep checking in for more ideas. Pinkster is keen to make some snowmen so they will likely be next..

PS Just home from the school run and guess what all the kids in her class made today to bring home?

Make that six. :0)

Roughing It

I am on a farm. 

I will be camping the night on this farm. 

There are no mini bars,
No room service,
No showers.
 

Apart from that it's heaven.

I've been moaning and groaning about going camping for about two weeks and that was before I found out about the "oh, and there's no showers.." bit.  Just as well because I might have aborted; considering that my idea of 'roughing it' is no turn-down service or a poorly stocked mini-bar. But no showers?  Are they serious?

OK I'm being a Drama Queen.  Calmsley Hill Farm is only an overnight stay and just over an hour out of Sydney so what's the big deal? We are with Pinkster's French School group organised by her teacher and apart from flirting with divorce over how to disassemble the tent, and being thrown into a social situation unwashed and with furry teeth..it was a surprisingly pleasant.  

Our personal mini-bar was VERY well stocked and there's nothing quite like emptying a couple of bottles of good red beside a campfire while Farmer Ryan (or was it Brad?) keeps the kiddles busy toasting marshmallows.

When we arrived, we had to hit the ground running because She-Who-Worships-Pink was late for the Working Dogs show,right after that was the Koala Cuddling, Baby Animal Petting, Sheep Shearing and Cow Milking followed by a Tractor tour of the farm.

Of course, with all this on offer, our Pinkster went into a melt-down because she wanted to find some cats. Yes, we brought her camping on a farm surrounded by every imaginable exotic (and not-so) animal but she's on the hunt for house-cats.

But that's a good thing about this overnight camping package: you can always come back to the petting shed etc. in the morning, if you're obsessive offspring is hung up on kitties. And since you haven't had the benefit of a shower, you wont feel any grottier for the experience.

Well the two cats she found were cute but  I was totally hung up on Kevin Bacon here:

Although you can rent tents at the farm, we'd decided to dust of and try out our oh-so-very-complicated but very nice tent that was stored in the attic immediately after its purchase18 months ago. The meals provided were very basic, but they were cooked for us, so you gotta love that.

And yes, if there was a little parental squabbling, as Mr Frenchie and I tried to undo and pack our elaborate parachute-silk-palace in the baking morning sun, we weren't the only ones. Fortunately (and thoughtfully) Farmer Ryan (or Brad?) had removed all the kiddlets out of earshot of the expletives in a well planned 'walk-about' to cut and collect leaves for the koalas.

Chez Nous

I never thought I would say this but - I like camping!  
It's been one of those pleasant surprises I just know we'll do again. :0)



 

sharing the love

Another Sock Rescue

 Poor Buddy has been in the wars lately.

First there was the football in the eyeball debacle, then the Totem-Tennis racquet in the face incident and then some idiot drunk goes and breaks a beer bottle against his favourite tree to pee on.

He needed several stitches in his back paw AND it neeed to be bandaged and kept dry, clean and un-licked for ten days.

OK, keeping in mind - He's a DOG.

But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention and being a keen up-cycler of my child's socks, I came up with yet another puppet-sock rescue..or should I say puppy-sock rescue :0)

The vet suggested I buy some of these at the local pet store; but I was warned, "..theyre not that cheap."

But why would I do that when I have a drawer full of toddler socks and an attic full of scrap fabric including several colorful vinyls?

So I sewed a vinyl patch onto the bottom of several socks which saw him through his recovery.  As the vet promised; they kept the bandages on, kept the wound clean and dry and prevented him from licking the thing to death.  Besides all those endless hours of licking can keep a person up at night, not just a dog.


If he is already a minor celebrity in Kindlyland, this made him an even bigger hit than usual during the school run. Most of the kids thought he was 'soooo cuuuute' with his little sock and he got lots of sympathy cuddles.

But just when I was about to up-cycle a set of these Tippy Toes,

..his paw went and healed.

Bit of a shame in a way.