Bombproof Pie and a Jobby Job.

After smacking her head, or any other appendage for that matter, on anything hard or potentially-damage-dealing, my little girl reflexively squeaks out, “I’m aw-wight!” It’s something we get used to hearing after any louder-than-average crash from the other room, though not near as much as any stock excuse starting with “I was just wookin’ at it…”

When a crash is followed by a sharp cry, followed by silence that eerily resembles the calm before the storm, and is then followed by a DNA-splicing shriek, one can safely assume there’s actual trouble.

I’d been outside finishing the yard work, was covered in dust, dirt, and grass clippings, and was just shutting down the edging device that Aussie’s call a “whipper snipper” when I heard the command from the kitchen, “Go get Daddy NOW. He’s out the back! NO, Out The Back!” I crossed the backyard in two paces while my boy came running out to find me to inform me that “Pie cut-ted her head on the cahstle!”

In the middle of the kitchen was Wife holding our little girl, who was dressed Mowgli-style in only her knickers, and was sprinkled down her left side with fresh blood. Wife had a rag on her head and had stopped the bleeding almost straightaway, giving a clear view of a bloody cut right on the top. It didn’t look terribly bad, though head wounds bleed a shit load, so we calmed her down with a Chupa Chup, which turned out to be barely necessary as she was merely whimpering a bit at this point. A closer look revealed two gashes along Pie’s skull whose distance apart was exactly the same width as the spikes on the top of their Christmas present, a castle siege kit complete with knights and catapults, and the longer of the cuts was gaping.

We called the closest vehicle-owner we knew, The D?d, and rousted him over to our place in the merest of seconds. We loaded up both kids and ourselves and headed over to the Doctor’s Surgery to find that there was no line and no waiting. Haste wasn’t exactly necessary as our little girl was basically fine, though she made a perpetually scowlly face and whimpered whenever we mentioned her “ouchie.” Drawing attention away from the wound was her brother’s job, and he was a champ at it. Far better than The Dud anyway, who I remember as saying something along the lines of “now your head’s gonna be all gross.”

After getting settled on the robo-table and pulling the little curtain a bit, we were greeted with SpaceyDoc, the brillo-haired, Amazonian, pill-popper (I can only assume), who wandered in and began squeezing my little girl’s wound investigatingly. I suppose I wouldn’t have minded this had she informed us that she is the freakin’ attending physician, though I imagine that I’d still have felt the strongest of urges, upon witnessing her squeezing the wound for the third time and causing my little girl to cry AGAIN, to punch her directly in the side of her fuzzy head.

She absently trimmed some surrounding hair and squeezed the wound again, nearly driving me into violent action, and then began working like an actual Doctor of the Healing Arts. Despite the Pie’s request that the doctor “doesn’t gimme the sharp thing” she barely made a peep when she got stuck not once or twice, but three times, and she did nothing more than whimper once when the actual sutures were being sewn in.

While this made both Wife and I immensely proud, it also gave SpaceyDoc enough suspicion to question us on exactly how far our baby fell and what her normal behaviour is like. As she examined Pie for a concussion, we tried to describe that the kid is simply freakin’ bulletproof and that there isn’t any great cause for concern as the fall to the castle/floor was less than 2 feet. SpaceyDoc was barely buying it, but we explained to the nurse that we’d probably be as cautious too, if we’d seen a kid that small make that little of a fuss while getting 3 stitches to her noggin.

She was walking and talking normally enough for us, and her silence during the stitching was also attributable to the fact that she’d missed her nap in all the excitement. We cleared the Surgery, Pie finished her lollipop, and happily told everybody about her “poor li’l head booboo,” eventually getting her Poppy to take some pictures for historical documentation’s sake.

Her only comments in the last two days concerning her head both involved the pointiness of the “spikes” sticking out of her skull, and didn’t have anything to do with any pain, and the wound has been clean and healthy so we snipped the stitches out today. The parallels between what had happened to his sister’s head at the Doctor’s and what “Daddy does to his shirts and Mommy’s pants” has kept my boy’s highly inquisitive and intelligent mind occupied while I’ve been writing this.

He’s about to show me how to get the freakin’ DVD player working again, but his little five-year-old brain doesn’t quite understand why I giggle and say to myself, “but they didn’t tear her head off with their teeth at the Doctor’s did they?”


Job Recruiters and Job Placement Organizations certainly have their place in this society, I have no doubt, but when it comes time to guarantee results, the only truly reliable place to look is in the mirror.

I sat and I Googled, and I came up with a list of about 25 emails for Web Firms here in Perth, and then I sent each one a short greeting, my resume, and an extensive cover letter. After 3 days, I had heard back from 3 of them.

So I wrote ’em all again. I apologized if I was being perceived as obnoxious, but made it clear I wasn’t going to quit until I received a response. Most wrote back with, “Sorry, we don’t have anything, but we’ll keep you on file” and one even wrote “You don’t want to work here dude” and nothing more.

My favourite though, was the one that simply said, “Okay, you’ve got my attention. Let’s talk.” An amazingly Ocker bloke picked up the phone, and a few minutes later I had my first interview scheduled. Though he hadn’t advertised for the job, he was looking for a PA, as he’d just lost one to a company in Melbourne, and was hoping for somebody with just the right amount of experience, technical savvy, and managerial skills. We both agreed that it’d be difficult to specifically search out that kind of person unless you knew exactly what you were looking for.

I got my Businessly Sexy on, borrowed Poppy’s car, and cruised to South Perth. We talked formally and interviewingly for somewhere around 4 minutes before we were both sitting on the other side of the desk in front of a monitor and bullshitting like we’d gone to grade school together.

Turns out, I’m exactly what he was looking for.

I told him that with the product that he’s got and the skills and tools at his disposal, he could retire by 40. He told me that the job pays about $30K more than I was asking and quite frankly, if I make the company more money I will get paid accordingly.

We’ll finalize the deal tomorrow, I’ll most likely start next week, and it may honestly be the last job I’ll ever have.

Wish me luck.

Oh yeah, you'll hire me

Because the lack of fundage can raise the ambient stress levels of any household by 78%, I slapped sunscreen and shoes on our little ones and dragged ’em across the street to the park last week, giving Wife time to get some writing done. She got a quiet house and I got some pleasant conversation involving why clouds rain, why dog poo smells the way it does, and why sunshine burns our skin by shining and our bums by heating up the metal seesaw.

I snapped a few pics of our beautiful chidlers, and caught a good one before I could say, “Holy Public Indecency Batman!”

Sigh, just like Daddy... 'cept Wife reckons my butt's cuter.??And she's right, though mine is now a bit hairier than my boy's

Is that my boy or what?


Since I’m all about linking my family members and shit (though one of them is a bit of a c*nt about updating) I want everybody to go read sis-in-law, she’s freakin’ awesome lately and I’m looking forward to exploitin… I mean JOINING that band soon.

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