A week in September

It's been so long since my last blog, but I feel compelled to write tonight and don't want to bombard Facebook. This week has been momentously busy and I am exhausted by the thought of it but inspired by it's potential. On Monday a vigorous session of chair movement, inspired not by a new exercise craze but a compulsion to volunteer. Amadeo and tolddled off to the fabulous Meatmarket venue, where with mixed feelings we wheeled, stacked-on-ute, drove, unstacked-from-ute, wheeled and unstacked  an incalculable (by us) amount of chairs.

SEGUE 1. 
Our school is a great space for learning but can be (read is) pretty white and middle-upper class aspirational. This makes it easier for me to come across as crass, rude, overbearing, bossy (middle class white people play emotions pretty cool - a life time of mad Italian relatives has spawned me a critical outlook on cool), a bit of a know-it-all (no defense) and basically avoidable at best.   

Moving chairs the other volunteer white person asks (and this is all paraphrased, I'm nearly 40 my memory is not as good as it was)
'who are your children'?
As I respond unintentionally cryptic 'Michelle Grade 5 and Jill grade 3, no 2' (my children's names are Iggy and Quinn not Michelle and Jill. The farce continues...)

We unstack another huge grouping of chairs.

'It looks like it will be a great show'
'yes' I respond 'Iggy complained at first and now he's really into it';
her face is puzzled for a moment
'Iggy?' she queries 'is that the name of one of your girls?'
I look at her incredulous
'no Iggy is my son's name';
'do you have a son as well?' she says
'no just Iggy and Quinn'
'Oh, I thought you had daughters, I thought their names were Michelle and Jill?'
'What? That's their teachers names'

And then Amadeo steps in with 'when you said their names were Michelle and Jill I wasn't sure why so I didn't say anything, I didn't know what you were up to'.
The white lady looks hard at the dodgy wog duo and walks as quickly away as politeness will allow.

About 20 minutes later, all is forgiven; Amadeo and I have sweated profusely (being unsuited and unused to physical labour of any kind, ever) and eaten an entire, massive $7 bag of Cheesels from Costco and frankly I'm flying on a fake cheese high. We start counting the chairs 16 x 8 for the top isle section and another 200 or so on the floor - Amadeo hears 16 x 8 and quickly calculates it to 332 and I chime in with absolute certainty - that is actually far from absolute, 'oh yes 332, he's very good at maths'. 16x8 is 128, and she knew it. 

Well, that was Monday.

The BEPS school choir

Tuesday was the school concert. It was brilliant, the kids were enthused, excited, and inspired and it showed in the performance. The heightened state led my two emotionally unstable gems to either side of the emotional spectrum, but as we were in school hours I tactfully avoided my own children and maintained my dignity as the choirmaster. The initial performance during the day had the practice backing track behind it that was slightly flat, and the flatness was evident to me immediately. Mortified we battled on and by the time the evening performance the backing track CD was nowhere to be found, I think the principal kindly disposed of it for me and the children's voices were allowed to shine. The initial choir performance in the matinee session consisted of approx 12-15 children as the preps were in their own performance at the time. By the last session at the evening performance the choir had expanded to approximately 45-50 children and we barely fit the stage. Some of the children I had never seen in my life and I asked them 'have you been to choir before?' and innocently some would respond 'I did once' and I think that was enough really. I commend enthusiasm and live on it like oxygen so I was easily swayed - and the sound was tremendous, the faces shone and 'Yonder come day' blared from the interestingly positioned mics and blew the audience of proud mums and dads away!

And that was Tuesday.

Wednesday morning Quinn was booked last minute to go under anesthetic and have two teeth pulled making the fortnights worth three teeth in total. The cost $1400; though we were more worried about the anesthetic and it's effects. However, I was booked on an 11am flight to Sydney and left home at 9am to make it through the horrid morning airport traffic (been there before).  Dad was in charge and I was off.

What happened next is best in list format:
LOVELY taxi driver
Made the flight no problem
Didn't get paid, so had no money
Stupidly caught train instead of cab, therefore arrived at random station got lost and caught a cab on George street fro approx. two minutes infuriating cab driver
Credit card didn't work so hotel was going to abandon booking
Hotel kept booking and let me stay on promise from bosses PA to pay via work credit card
Hotel lift broke down and trapped me for twenty minutes then deposited me on ground floor
I carried heavy suitcase back to reception on second floor and cried
Hotel room right near smokers exit, bathroom smelled like smoke the whole evening
A bottle of water was $4.50
Got to conference - was wrong day - wasn't supposed to be there til Thursday - so I pretended I meant it
Had to wait 3 hours on Darling Harbor, where the food sucks and is super expensive  
Forgot to bring my book and became physically ill after reading Sydney's equivalent to the Herald Scum.
No one spoke to me at the cocktail dinner, left early
All canapes were dairy and I'm severely lactose intolerant.

Me at Darling Harbour - the only part of Sydney I saw in three days.

That was Wednesday.