change in the weather

We had some quite hot weather last week (high 30s), but today the temperature has dropped 18 degrees in comparison, and tonight we're heading back into single figures. It's no wonder so many people have been sick lately - I hate to think what these sudden changes do to one's immune system.

Funny day today - a little work (and more tonight to catch up with what I should have done - oops!), some shopping (mostly back to school items, plus a new monitor because my old one was dying a slow and painful death), some playing with children and encouraging them on their new bikes (we've been very lax parents, and they're still on training wheels because they've done so little riding, but we're making up for it now), and some talk about how things have changed since I was a child.

It started off with one of those lines that most new parents swear they will never utter: "When I was your age ...". When I'd finished my little story about how easy kids today have it in comparison to *ahem* 35 or so years ago, Miss Tizz asked for more stories, and promptly fell about laughing hysterically when I obliged with a description of how I learned to ride a bike, at age 12 (hey - they're only 6 and 8, I'm not doing so badly after all!), and how all was going well until I wanted to stop but had no idea how. They wanted more and more snippets of my personal history - I had no idea they'd find it so interesting.

So I dredged through the memory banks for all sorts things - the first boyfriend (a younger man, in primary school, and my first kiss in the little cotton play tent in the backyard, with my brother watching - because it was his mate!); the sachets of free flavoured milk in infants school, left in the sun until recess, which 5-7 year olds were almost universally incapable of holding so the milk didn't squirt out everywhere when the corner was snipped off (mmm ... warm cinnamon milk all over you for the rest of the day); the treehouse in the oak tree in Wyong, the same tree another of my brother's friends fell out of onto the concrete driveway below - not a good day, especially for him); the kamikaze goldfish that would leap from the tank in the middle of the night; the time when my sister convinced my brother to teach her to ride his motorbike in the back yard - she figured out the throttle, but not the brakes, missed the trees, but not the shed, and dislocated all her knuckles.

Eventually I packed them off to bed with one final story of my then 3 year old brother, stark naked and escaping from the bathroom when mum let him go to turn the taps off - out the front door and down the footpath out the front, much to the surprise of a passing businessman on his way home.

They want more tomorrow - will have to see what I can come up with!