Crumpled Home

(at the dinner table)

Dad: So what happened at your school today, RJ?

RJ: I took my whip scorpion into school and showed it to everybody.

Dad: Great! Did you teach the class all about them?

RJ: Yep! But it was terrible. No one asked any questions! … except for Harry.

Dad: What did he ask?

RJ: He asked if whip scorpions lived in England and I told him, “NO! They only live in Perth. There are lots of them and live in the roof of your house.”

We’re expecting the phone calls from the other parents to start any day now…

Your child is having nightmares about giant insects living in your roof?

What a surprise!”

Despite the hot weather, we made it up to Gingin for the grape harvest, but Grammy, Poppa, Kath and Brad had already picked all the grapes and crushed them the day before we got there! We made the most of it anyway, picking a lot of figs and table grapes that were ready to eat. Mum cooked up some fig jam and we had a big sewing ’sesh’ during the heat of the day, before going for an explore out in the paddock.

Our incredibly brave**, heroic** and good-looking** dad rescued us from this marauding beast** that had been ransacking the countryside and was intent on destroying the farm.

We found this guy having a drink from the dog's water bowl. He's a bobtail lizard which are pretty common around here.

**Hyperbole employed as official privilege of the author

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(over breakfast)

LR: Hey! Why is there peanut butter in my dice cup?

Dad: Did you squeeze the dice too hard? The peanut butter might have squished out the edges.

LR: (sighing) No, Dad. I don’t think so.

RJ: Those dice are from peanut town! Everything is made from peanuts there. Houses. Clothes. Trees. The cars.

Dad: Anything else?

RJ: Yes, everything… (horrified) Even the breakfast cereal.

Something that comes up from time to time is RJ’s previous life. It almost always starts out with, “When I was a little kid…” and describes a time “before he came to live with our family.” Apparently he lived only with his grandma, because everyone else in the family died. Today, I discovered a little more…

(over breakfast)

RJ: When I was a little kid… I got stabbed.

Dad: Stabbed? You mean before you came to live with us?

RJ: Yeah. When I was living with my grandma… in Malaysia.

Dad: Malaysia? Okay… How did it happen?

RJ: I was playing with a pen and I stabbed my knee. I still have a little sore on my knee from it. See?

Dad: And that’s also why there’s ink all over your knee right now?

RJ: Yeah.

Dad: Strange that I’ve never noticed that before.

RJ: Yeah.

I had to stop at the quarterly photography market to try to find some filters and LR came with me. I left empty handed, but she walked out with this monster!

LR shows off the camera gear she picked up on the weekend.

(The reason the picture looks weird is that I shot this on film that expired 10 years ago, on a 30 year old camera, and I don’t have a scanner.)

(in the car on the way to school)

Dad: (starting an imagination game) So you two head down to the park one day and there’s something strange there that you’ve never seen before.

RJ and LR discuss exploring it, identifying that it’s an alien rocket ship, and finding the door.

Dad: You can’t find a door handle on the outside.

LR: So we run home and get some saws and come back.

RJ: And we grab an axe too!

LR and RJ: And we SMASH and CHOP the door open and run inside and steal the spaceship and fly it home!!!

(An unfortunately chirpy RJ appears at the counter ready for breakfast, with a dinosaur entourage.)

Dad: (blearily rubbing eyes) What is this? RJ and the breakfast full of dinosaurs?… Okay, what do you want to eat?

RJ: This dinosaur wants flies. You’d better get to work; they’re hard to catch and he needs a lot of them.

Dad: Okay. I’ll see what I can do. How about the others?

RJ: Meat. Lots of meat.

Dad: And you?

RJ: Just rice bubbles…

(half an hour later, RJ wanders past, arms still full of dinosaurs)

Dad: RJ, wouldn’t it be easier to carry them in something? A bag or a basket or something?

RJ: (yelling back) No! I don’t need to. They all get around on rocket boosters.

Dad: Wow! That’s so cool. Dinosaurs with rocket boosters.

RJ: No. It’s not really great, because they don’t have legs. That’s why they had the rocket boosters put on.

RJ: I want some medicine too!

Dad: What’s that RJ? Medicine?

RJ: Yeah. I want some deer medicine too.

Dad: Do you mean… venison?

RJ: YEAH!

(Looking at LR’s new learning-to-draw book)

LR: That werewolf is really scary, daddy. I don’t like it.

Dad: Yeah, they made him pretty freaky looking.

RJ: I love werewolves. I like it when they hide.

Dad: Have you seen them hiding around here?

RJ: Yes. In the… in the kitchen.

Dad: In the kitchen?

RJ: Well they use their magic and turn into a tortoise, or vegetables, or magnets, or a picture… and… and…

Dad: Yeah?

RJ: (whispering) One time I saw him turn into a fridge.

RJ and Dad took a trip to the aquarium on the weekend. Lots of exploring, ten rides up and down in the lift, and a bit of confusion over which of the 10 sharks is really called, “Sharky”.

RJ introduces me to one of his best mates at the aquarium, "Sharky".

According to RJ, the most interesting thing in this tank was the equipment the staff uses to feed the fish.

Surprisingly, the lift is a big attraction with our kids. (Insert elevator music here).

The sea lions have gone! No more sea lions! We now have a HUGE coral reef tank instead.

Okay, we've seen everything, we're outta here, bye!!!