North by Northwest (or how to clear a doctor's....part 3)

Do you remember that movie? Cary Grant trying to convince James Mason that he really wasn't who James Mason said he was? I sort of had that experience today. When I received the mail there was a letter addressed to Mike from the Children's hospital where he spent the night in late August last year. It went something like this:

"Dear Mst Mike Q, A appointment has been made for you to attend the Young Adult Diabetes Clinic. Your appointment details are as follows:.....Your doctor has already sent us this referral. etc"

Well I rang the Young Adult Diabetes clinic to say we'd received the letter and that Mike was 5 (I don't think this qualifies as a young adult). They informed me that Mike was therefore too young to attend the Young Adult clinic. I assured them that this wasn't really a problem as Mike had not been diagnosed with diabetes. After a bit of investigation by the receptionist (whilst I listened to some canned music) it was discovered that a Mike Q had been referred to the Young Adult clinic but no one had thought to check that someone with the same first, middle and last name as Mike did not have the same birthday as Mike (2003) and therefore was a completely different person. Hubby and Lloyd thought the part of the letter asking if an interpreter was needed was rather appropriate. At times it is hard to make out what Mike is saying.

It's not the first time this has happened. A person with exactly the same name as Hubby lives just a couple of streets away from us but he's about 20 years older. When I went to the library one day with Hubby's card to get a book on hold for him I was told that the computer said that Hubby had two cards so they wanted one back please. I've come across a mix up with this other Mr Q at the pharmacy also. Likewise the library had not checked that the birthdates were different. When my sister-in-law was in hospital having one of her babies there was a lady with exactly the same name as her in the maternity ward at the same time so across the top of the chart was written in red, "Please check patient's birthdate as we have two patients with the same name."

Then, just this week when we attended a college orientation for Lloyd (where he's doing some part-time study whilst completing his high school), it seemed that there were three students in his sub-group of 13 with the same first name as Lloyd. Hubby commented, "I knew that we should have named him Judas Not Iscariot." I don't think there would be too many people in the world named that.

First day of school for 2009

It seemed strange today not having to check whether Anika needed tutoring help with maths but with three boys back into the school routine I think I was busy enough. Mike is up to learning to read this year but he seems to want to run ahead a little. On Sunday we had this conversation with Mike:

Mike: What does four mean?

Me: Do you mean the number four?

Mike: No, like, "for dinner"? What does for mean?

Me: (slightly stumped) Er?...

Hubby: It's a dative meaning....

Me: Maybe we should teach Mike to read first before teaching grammar.

Mike also wanted to offer his wisdom on solving one of our weekly puzzles which goes like this:

"A woman sat at her kitchen table with her two sons. She spoke to each of her sons and they replied to her, but the sons never spoke to each other. The boys had not fallen out and did not dislike each other. Although they conversed freely with their mother, they never addessed a word to one another. Why?"*

The Q family were offering their bits and pieces of thought on this when suddenly Mike piped up with, "Maybe they didn't talk because their mouths were full." At least he was thinking of good manners. And here's his first wobbly letter "a"s (I think he was getting tired at the end):

*page 14 "Lateral Thinking Puzzles" Paul Sloane, Illustrated by Myron Miller, Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. New York 1991

Showers of money

This morning a strange thing happened. I had hundreds and thousands of dollars pour down on my head. No, I'm not a gambling person. No, Kevin Rudd's possible economic stimulus package has not been officially approved or handed out yet.

I was literally reeling in shock but perhaps that had to do with the box of very heavy Meccano that also came raining down on my head at the same moment.

There's a few lessons here:

1. Don't overstack the tops of bedroom cupboards.
2. Update the Monopoly game so it has a decent lid - as well as picking up the raining money I also picked up the houses, hotels, chance cards etc.
3. Store the Meccano on a lower shelf - OUCH!!

Chinese New Year

The other day I decided on a good resolution. I'm too late for Jan 1 so it looks like it will have to be one for Chinese New Year, which Wikapedia tells me is Jan 26 (this is also Australia Day). Mike inspired my resolution on Monday after I got up after a short rest on the bed:

Mike: You look older Mummy.
Me: Why is that Mike?
Mike: Your hair is all messy.

Resolution: Always brush hair ASAP after getting up off the bed.

January specials

At this time of year I enjoy not having the school routine but there's still some jobs that have to get done inbetween holiday activities:

1. Try to find places to store all those wonderful presents given to the Q kids from family and friends.

2. Organise optometry/orthodontic/dental check ups.

3. Order some books for school so we are ready to start in a month.

4. Check the 'back to school' catalogues for stationery needs and

5. Repair earthquake damage.

There's been three major earthquakes causing damage but none of them in Australia. The first one started in Yukon Territory and extended down in a pretty much straight line to the equator. The second started in the North Pacific Basin and likewise went in a roughly straight line down to the equator, passing through the Hawaiian Islands. The third originated with a huge crater in the North Pole. Considering the time of year we've just had I can imagine the conspiracy theorists are getting excited. The third one then extended down but with a rather huge bend to pass through the International Date Line and then to the equator again. The last quake threatens to put the whole earth off it's axis so it's crisis time.

Mike thinks that everything can be repaired with sticky tape and we've tried but I think it's beyond redemption. What do you think?:

The last part of our holiday

It was Sunday and the weather was sunny but it was still blowing a gale. At breakfast, the owner of the motel came to our table and said he was doing a radio spot on the local radio. He said he'd "better mention the family". We thought he meant his family but then he asked us exactly who we were and where we were from. We tuned in as we sat in the car waiting for church and sure enough he greeted us.

We met some really great Christian people at the local church. That afternoon we decided to explore Wentworth Falls. The walk to the lookout was fairly short but we found that in the gale the falls were not falling but going up:

You can't see it from the picture but there's a walkway across the top of the falls so after quite a long hike we got there. A couple of times I had to hold onto Matt so he didn't fall down the steep cliff on one side. It was a little wet on the walkway with the wind blowing the water onto us:

Very pretty! The next day we packed up and headed back to Port Macquarie. This time Hubby drove and I had the map (no glasses needed) and we discovered the detailed map of Sydney on the other side. We avoided the toll roads and found our way out without any hassle so made good time to Port Macquarie. Once there we went to pay the motel owner who said we could have a big discount because we'd left the place so clean when we were there a week ago.

It was still in the afternoon so we went exploring. There's an old lighthouse there and we took this great view of the beach from the lighthouse (the lighthouse pics had Q family in there):

We also found some historic graves. In Australia the first European settlement was in 1788 in Sydney so to find graves dated 1822 and 1823 is not common. Port Macquarie was settled not too long after Sydney:

The next day we made good time getting home. My Mum had house sat for us saying that she'd have a nice holiday. When I got back she had cleaned the windows, vacuumed, mopped, cleaned the oven until it was sparkling and made ice-cream Christmas cake! I'm glad at least that I'd bought a present for her at the science shop.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Lloyd and Matt tallied the P plate drivers for New South Wales: 501.

More holiday

Happy New Year!


Part 5 of our holiday starts with Friday. Friday was wet and cold and not good for sightseeing at all. But, by then, a family of 6 who has been out of home for 5 days has one pressing need, to find a laundromat. We stacked our car with 5 days worth of dirty clothes and found an open laundromat with machines available (this was a rare find - there were only two in the district and the other one was flat out busy). Thanks to three industrial sized washers and dryers our clothes were washed, dried and folded in an hour and a half. For the washing part Hubby and the Q family went exploring the bookshops in Katoomba and Anika found a gem on English composition. Once I'd loaded the dryers I went in search of a great hot chocolate. Then everyone (except Lloyd with the broken wrist) helped out with the folding.


We then went to explore a science shop not too far down the highway. The boys were happy with exploring the hands-on puzzles and holograms put out for their entertainment, I went in search of things to buy and Anika was amused with this piano which is just a regular piano but has been engineered by the owner to play by itself. It was merrily playing Christmas carols:

I found some great "lateral thinking puzzle" books which helped to entertain us all on the trip home. I also bought "Rush Hour" and we returned to the motel for lunch as there was no hope of finding a nice picnic table in the pouring rain. We played Rush Hour and relaxed a while then went out again to visit the chocolate shop. You could see through glass windows to where they were making chocolate Christmas trees. The chocolate was horribly expensive, but we just bought a plain bar of chocolate to share and all agreed it was very nice chocolate.

Saturday was clear again but blowing a gale. This time we went to the Echo Point and got a bit closer to the Three Sisters:


We then got really up close to the first sister:

The trek down onto the sisters was extremely steep and we decided against it in the gale. We didn't want to be blown all the way into the Pacific Ocean. Instead we went walking along the cliff walks and at one point the scenery along the path looked like the "get off the road" scene from a famous movie trilogy. Anika, Lloyd and Matt all got into role and I filmed a little segment. (At this point Hubby and Mike preferred a trip on the double decker bus rather than being blown away).

That night it was hard to sleep with the wind howling around the motel and the electricity went off for a few hours. The locals didn't take much notice of the changeable weather with the son of one of the motel workers shrugging his shoulders and saying, "It's the Blue Mountains."