capn_n_pye | Hilariously Puntastic Title

Once upon a time, a Year 12 VCAL class was given the task of choosing a skill (or a talent) to teach the rest of their class. One boy - let’s call him ‘Aiden’ - decided that he would teach his peers the art of procrastination. He was pretty excited, but never got around to preparing it.
It would probably be better if that was a joke. It’s not a joke. VCAL!

Still, we should never underestimate the impact that we, as teachers, have on students’ lives. Why, just this term gone we were at a pub trivia night and were approached by a man who appeared to be in his early 30s. “You don’t remember me,” said he (it’s true, we didn’t), “But my name’s Ricky and you taught me Indonesian in year 8.”

Now, we’ve both taught a lot of Year 8s over the years, but then we realised this one was special - he was the time we were both still at uni and the now extinct James Harrison College was desperate enough to ask us to share the burden of the junior Indonesian program. At the time, all of the kids (who were nice enough) couldn’t have given two shits about learning another language.

“Aww,” said we, “It’s nice of you to remember and come over and say hi.”

“Well,” said not-so-young Ricky, “What I wanted to tell you is that I live in Indonesia now and run my own business and I use Indonesian every day - high five!”

And it’s true - a lad from the bluest collar school in blue-collar G-Town now lives and works in Bali (it’s not actually because of anything he learned in year 8 and the business is a pub crawl bus, but let’s not dwell on that aspect. Anyway, it's a good pub crawl, because they don't go to the bars that serve methanol!).

We're pretty sure Ricky is the kid stuffing around in the front row, not the super-excited poppet standing next to Stinky. See that incredibly trendy salmon velvet jacket Stinky is sporting? Well, the day before the trivia night, Stinky decided to resurrect it. Inspired by her genius, Pye wore it to the trivia night, just in time for Ricky to see one of us still sporting it.

Not long later, we went for dinner with some work-mates. In a fascinating chain of events, we had recently preserved the bounteous fruit of our little olive tree, leading the Home Eco teacher from Stinky’s school to say she wished Stinky had documented the process (she was teaching ‘process’ at the time), meaning that Stinky had been speculatively eyeing a pair of laden olive trees growing outside a shop down the road. After some delicious Thai food and a refreshing Sav Blanc or two, she shared this scintillating story. Long story short, a few minutes later, three stealthy teachers and a librarian were collecting all they could reach (which was about 1.5 kg worth). This is more or less what went down:

Other people were a lot busier than us during the term - Adele and Carlo went ahead and made a whole new person! While she was cooking, they referred to her as Mazinga, while they were trying to choose a real name (other suggestions included ‘Lupita’, but we were holding out for ‘Gallivantia’, in honour of the gallivanting her parents like to do), but eventually they settled on Martina.

We posted the review on Facebook of meeting the little one for the first time:

User Review - Meeting Martina Mazinga Lupita Gallivantia Oreglia DiVirgilio. I had high expectations going into this meeting. Alas, I was to be disappointed. Martina didn't bother standing up to greet me, and her efforts to maintain conversation were indifferent at best. She was remarkably cuddly, although I do believe she soiled herself at least once during the course of my visit. Overall star-rating: 2 out of 5 stars - poor parenting has obviously resulted in an antisocial and poorly mannered young lady.

We got no comment or acknowledgment at all! What is an attention-seeking first cousin once removed to do? I know! Troll Mazinga’s parents with their worst baby-girl nightmare - hot pink baby hair-band with matching ugg boots!! They were so appalled, they put them on a rubber crocodile and fed the baby to it.

Speaking of new things, we have grown tired of having an ugly concrete front veranda, so summoned the chap who made our lovely shelves to do something about it.

We would have been more pleased if it hadn't caused us to notice ~~one~~ ~~two~~ three out of four of our veranda posts had rotted out at the bottom (leading to further discoveries about the types and prices of heritage veranda posts - guess who has the most expensive kind?), but in the long run it's probably for the best.

And if we’re still speaking of peoples’ birthdays (which we weren't but whatever), Moose happened to turn 16. He’s very pleased that he is now eligible to get his Ls and has made plans to go back to Germany where he is now legally allowed to drink. He won’t listen when we tell him that drinking just gets his stuffing soggy and makes him bad(er) tempered.

As part of the celebrations, Moose got taken to the zoo to enjoy their new lemur exhibit and meet new friends…

He kept banging on about the legal drinking age in Germany, though, so in the end to shut him up we took him to a Good Beer Week event - ‘Craft and Craft’ they called it. Crafty beer-lovers were treated to some boutique beer while making beer-related crafty things, like bottle cap earrings, origami hops flowers and six-pack-box notebooks. It’s like someone goggled us and created an event specifically for our interests!

Eventually Moose realised he needed more attention, so one weekend D’admiral and Chuckles came to visit (they had other things to do in G-Town, it wasn’t just to feed Moose’s ego, but don’t tell him that). We took them for dinner at a newly-opened restaurant down the street, that just so happened to have the aforementioned olive trees growing by their back door. We feasted royally (though discovering a millipede in the boutique olives was a shock for one and all - they were very sorry and we got some free cheese out of it) and Stinky had resolved to not scrump any more olives than she already had. Then we realised D’admiral was a good bit taller than all the previous poachers and there was much left within his reach. In retrospect, what happened next was inevitable.

Moose was so pleased Chuckles paid attention to him that down the road he made sure he got her some flowers for Mother's Day.

It seemed really sweet, but again, in retrospect, what happened next was also inevitable.

We left the little bastard behind to look after the Spinster Pad when we headed down to Somers for the Unseasonably Warm Winter Wine Weekend - it seemed like he needed to calm down. Good thing, too - when we arrived, we realised that D'admiral and Chuckles had spent the last couple of days teaching their grandspawn to spell 'diarrhoea'. Moose would have been very, very cross to discover this, since it’s more than they ever did for him (or their own spawn, come to that). In an odd coincidence, the next week we came upon this splendidly useful mnemonic for spelling it - Dash In A Rush - Run Harder Or Else Accident. How have we dwelt in darkness all these years? Then Pye got to play with Camel’s new claw and...things happened.

Speaking of things that like darkness (hey, nice segue; I agree, thanks), we noticed this poor bat down the road from the Spinster Pad. We're pretty sure he was flapping around shouting "I AM THE NIGHT! FEAR ME, I AM THE NIGHT!" then it turned into this "I AM THE NIG-ZZTTCTTTfuckZZZTCHHTTZow"

Or Moose might have been encouraging it to do things and get itself killed - we know that he was encouraging the dinosaurs to new lows while we had our backs turned.

The holidays were eventually and finally upon us (none too soon). We like to think of term two's break as being the one where you get all the admin and fiddly house-jobs done (hold on to your seats, so exciting!!). As part of it there was a hair-removal appointment. Stinky settled herself down, ready to rock and roll, when the machine in the corner went *clunk* *PSSSSHHHHHHHH*
"That's odd," thought Stinky, "Wonder what's going on there? Oh look, there's a small green puddle spreading. Wait, it's spraying...everywhere. Well, shit."

Long story short, antifreeze sprayed all over the room like a scene from The Exorcist, no one had their appointments honoured that day and it’s all Stinky’s fault.

When not sabotaging expensive machinery, we briefly dashed down to Somers, long enough to teach the Cabin Girl and Powder Monkey how to make their friends say “HOOF HEARTED / ICE MELTED” out loud (then double over and slap their knees in mirth) and patronise the Peninsula’s delights, such as the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park...

... and Balnarring’s newest (dare we say only) French restaurant. It was delicious, but Pye struggled (and failed) to not laugh in French all the time ("Ohonhonhonhon"). We wish that was a joke, but no.

We headed home after a funeral service for a friend's mum (*hugs*), to find that the chippy had replaced the verandah post and knocked off a bit of weatherboard to fix the rotten one we found when the new deck went in. That guy is the best house sitter - he doesn't drink all our wine and he fixes stuff! And he's so ethical that he wouldn't take payment in unmarked bills passed under the door of a public toilet, bless him! Only problem is that he notices things like our perilously-close-to-falling-down brickwork fence and suggests that the way we've been dealing with it (covering our eyes and ears while shouting LA LA LA NOT LOOKING) might not be the best way and that he knows a decent brickie. At this rate, we might not accidently kill a passing child on a windy day.

With dispiriting inevitability, the holidays ended and we headed back to work (to pay for all the things we're fixing around the house, apparently). Work also helps to fund our yarn problem, which Grandma helped contribute to by letting us stay over in Bendigo for the annual sheep and wool festival. We shall be ladies and not post more pictures of giant woolly sheep balls. Wait, who are we kidding?