Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Jan. 27th, 2020 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capn_n_pyeWhile 3/4 of our country burns down, we did our best to enjoy our summer holidays.
The first important thing to do was to get the Star Wars movie out of the way. Frankston’s Village Cinemas have most excellent reclining seats as standard, which makes having a nanna-nap in an interminable standard fight/chase seem very agreeable (and even when Star Wars isn’t very good, it’s still Star Wars in a cinema, which is rad). The heart-warming drama continued at lunch in the café which has quite given up on trying to keep the sparrows outside. Look at this good mama and her hungry baby birbs!
Chuckles was very naughty and snuck them a few bits of her chips, because mama birds have to stick together.
Rounding out the excursion always means popping into TX Max, even though they have grown increasingly weird since our last visit…
Hot on the heels of New Year’s is D’admiral’s birthday (an auspicious date he shares with James Dean, Elvis Presley and David Bowie). It’d been ages since we have done Lunch at Red Hill Estate, so it was the lucky winery who received our patronage. They’ve got all tight-arse on their wine tasting…
… and smoke from the world being on fire confiscated the normally interesting view of Philip Island…
… but they did their best to make up for it with creative and aesthetically-pleasing food. Hooray!
D’admiral didn’t get a proper present separate to his cool marine relief map, and instead had to make do with a plaque to remind future generations who is really in charge of Westernport.
That, a literal cheesecake, and a charming old friend from 2008 rounded out the celebrations…
… while outside, Philip Island kept up its Brigadoon impression.
We tried to get the children to head across on their stand-up paddle board and go and check on it, but they wouldn’t, would they!?
… meanwhile, the sun dressed up as a moon that had recently become a woman…
It really was like a prelude to the apocalypse (except for of course man-made climate change isn’t real, is it, and we should all just shut up and trust our political leaders who care about us more than they care about profits and the fossil fuel industry and all that other stuff). We were barely able to see the navy ships scooting past to deposit evacuees from Mallacoota at Hastings/Cerberus.
I mean, yeah, we got some spookily atmospheric images like this “Carnies in the Smoke” (featuring Cousins Aimee & Mark’s converted-van-tiny-house that has intrigued the neighbours for a month)…
…Stinky and all the kids who went to Sumatra last year could say to everyone, “THIS is what it’s like in Indonesian REALLY OFTEN!”, and everything outside kinda turned into a Turner painting…
… and the metal kookaburra did some interesting things with the sun…
… and there were some ridiculously fake-looking sunsets…
… but at what cost?! Everyone in Melbourne started cheating on the Bureau of Meteorology weather with the EPA airwatch just to see if it would be okay to go outside…
… so at least we were at D’admiral and Chuckles’ nicely sealed up modern enviro-rated home, rather than the leaky-breezy Spinster Pad! At least the international attention should make it all harder to ignore, right? … right?
Anyhoo, in a brief, breathable patch, a nice day emerged and Belrog popped by…
… bringing the actual moon with her!
Nonetheless, there was a lot of huddling inside keeping the doors and windows closed, which is at least prime jigsaw conditions. Pye secured the famous ‘ANUS’ piece on the satisfying 2000 piece-r that made us think back with even more bitterness and rage on the Neuschwanstein Castle one that took us two years. The ‘pull my finger’ fart noise pen that the avid jigsawer pulls to announce the location of a piece got so tired it might be on its way out #EndOfAnEra
There was some unbridled craftiness, because metallic paint is pretty and sea urchins are treasure…
… the Cabin Girl got some reading in…
… and we did God’s work by turning the boring animal version of Guess Who into a deluxe family edition. Whoo hoo!
Now you can ask questions like, “Have you ever ruined Christmas?” instead of boring old, “Do you wear glasses?” Much, much better. Except maybe avoid asking questions like, “Jesus Christ, whose giant pube is this in the sink??”, people find that upsetting.
(all right, it’s not actually a pube, but come on, that’s funny).
Speaking of God’s Work, the best love song of the century, “Dear Baby Yoda” came into our lives. If you watch, you can see a bit where one of them replaces a picture of his actual son with a picture of Our Son. After Chuckles watched the Mandalorian, she agreed that baby Kevin is Our Son and the best, so of course we therefore replaced a bunch of pictures of Andru with Kevin.
The hardest part was keeping quiet long enough for other people to notice it of their own accord! If they haven’t noticed already, reading this might prompt them…
Pleased with herself, Stinky shared a Coke with Nanna (according to the can, which is weird because we thought Nanna’s ghost was stuck in the Spinster Pad)…
…and we did sneak outside into the smoke for ill-advised swims. Ooh, a fun way to find out how stupid someone thinks you are is to say that you’re going to bring a snorkel, because it’ll be less smoky under the water! If someone explains to you that you’re still breathing the same air, you know they think you are really, really dumb!
This eel probably died of natural causes, but was appropriately mourned anyway…
…and the experience of an ex-student inspired a blossoming young woman and proved that if you’re swimming around in a wetsuit, tampons are a waste of time!
It’s nice to feel proud of ex-students. Pye rather wishes a particular kid who was once in her Year 12 homeroom had gone down a different path…
She is rather more proud of one who she once had in a Year 9 homeroom (you do you, girl). Ooh and hey, did you know that if a kid who was once in your homeroom has a baby, you are a Homeroom Grandma? Literally no one knew that Erin from 2007 was going to be the first to make one out of Pye! Whooo, Best homeroom grandma story ever!
When the news of fires and axe attacks got too much for us, we set aside one evening for the annual Milky Foot ritual. You begin by soaking your lil tootsies in warm water for a minute or two…
… then you get your champagne and colouring books….
… then you put on a cool af facial mask…
… wait until everything is ready to come off…
… rinse your feet again…
… then just wait to see how many shoe sizes you go down! Alas, this year we made the mistake of going with a cheaper brand, so the results were much less ‘snake slithering out of its whole skin’ and more ‘quietly coming off in respectful flakes’ which is stupid, and definitely not what we’ve come to expect.
The weather wildly veered between ‘eff you hot’ and ‘eff you cold’, sometimes within ten minutes…
… and tensions sky-rocketed, as diametrically opposed t-shirts vied for supremacy.
Somewhere in there we popped off to Melbourne to catch the live show of My Dad Wrote a Porno. It wasn’t a terribly great beach afternoon anyway…
Donna joined us as we happily didn’t get struck by lightning on the way to the Palais, joining a few thousand other perverts in enjoying the woefully awful writing that is Rocky Flintstone’s trademark.
How was the show? Well, this sums up the atmosphere:
The chapter that they read had ‘choose your own adventure’ moments, and for one the audience had to shout for whether we wanted to choose between ‘Pass the P45’ (the document you receive when you leave a job in the UK) and ‘Pin the cock on the employee’. Joining nigh on 3000 people all chanting, “WE WANT COCK! WE WANT COCK!” was not exactly what we thought we’d be doing, but to be honest, we weren’t all that surprised.
That evening we dashed back to G-town, fully expecting to find that the storm which dumped at least 18mm of rain in five minutes had flooded the shed and maybe something new and unexpected – at the very least the new mulch should have floated off down the road. Imagine our surprise when everything was fine! It probably means next time we’re completely fukt, but for now, we’ll take it.
Now, speaking of completely surprised, Robyn and the Cabin Girl were strolling down the beach when they espied something lurking in the shallows. It was an Aerobie! The Cabin Girl and her mother were all like, “Huh, cool, a new Frisbee!” We, on the other hand, were a lot more excited…
25 years or more ago, Cousin Adrian had a Aerobie that was a lot of fun. One day we were all playing with it on the beach – it was a cool day and the tide was high. Cousin Adrian somehow managed to yeet the Aerobie straight out to sea, and we never saw it again – however, we never, ever forgot, nay! For all these years, we have all incessantly bullied Adrian by shouting, “Look, there’s the Aerobie!!” at anything vaguely Frisbee-shaped.
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we have decided to 100% believe that this is actually THE Aerobie and if you want to convince us otherwise, you’d better come at us hard.
Meanwhile, in supermarkets, Back to School ads warred viciously with Australia Day merchandise, which in turn was busy trying to fight off Easter Eggs and hot cross buns. Then some weird shit went down.
No one:
Literally not one soul:
Shapes: Did someone say you want ‘Meat Pie’ and ‘Sausage Sizzle’ flavoured Shapes?
The Meat Pie ones are actually pretty compelling, and while we wouldn’t exactly kick the Sausage Sizzle out of bed, they are a bit weird. If Shapes want to pay us money for providing that detailed review, we’ll take it.
Do you know what else gets a five-star review? The Noble Botryotinia Fuckeliana. A+ naming practice, and a lovely little drop.
Moose gave a very positive review for the respect paid to him when we found him a chair that befits his position.
He enjoyed lording it over us, and things got worse after a wander through the Coolart shop and Pye acquired a pipe. Not to smoke, you understand, but for emphasis. It was very popular.
Things got… arty.
In a happy coincidence, Pye also managed to notice that the anniversary of the handprints we made in 1985 had arrived. We’ve grown a bit…
Chris came back for an evening and we were standing on the mole admiring the sunset. We were joined by a random guy from the camp. Chris was holding her wallet and car keys, and casually said to Stinky, “Gosh, can you imagine how bad it would be if I dropped these down the rocks?” Five seconds later, the random guy’s (prescription) sunnies slipped from his hand. They didn’t just fall into a gap, they were sucked into the abyss and were lost forever. There is memorial plaque on that rock, so we assume that Dot’s ghost has added the specs to her collection.
Soon it was the Australia Day long weekend and we were staring down the barrel of a return to wo-*cough* wor- *ack*, can’t say it… Anyway, D’admiral and Chuckles put on a non-Australia Day BBQ and with the help of Andru and Robyn, we got to eat kangaroo, emu and crocodile. Aussie Aussie Aussie!
Before we left, Stinky unleashed some kraken upon the house to make sure that everyone was kept in line. I wonder if that will work at school…
Only one way to find out! *sobs inconsolably into our beards*
The first important thing to do was to get the Star Wars movie out of the way. Frankston’s Village Cinemas have most excellent reclining seats as standard, which makes having a nanna-nap in an interminable standard fight/chase seem very agreeable (and even when Star Wars isn’t very good, it’s still Star Wars in a cinema, which is rad). The heart-warming drama continued at lunch in the café which has quite given up on trying to keep the sparrows outside. Look at this good mama and her hungry baby birbs!
Chuckles was very naughty and snuck them a few bits of her chips, because mama birds have to stick together.
Rounding out the excursion always means popping into TX Max, even though they have grown increasingly weird since our last visit…
Hot on the heels of New Year’s is D’admiral’s birthday (an auspicious date he shares with James Dean, Elvis Presley and David Bowie). It’d been ages since we have done Lunch at Red Hill Estate, so it was the lucky winery who received our patronage. They’ve got all tight-arse on their wine tasting…
… and smoke from the world being on fire confiscated the normally interesting view of Philip Island…
… but they did their best to make up for it with creative and aesthetically-pleasing food. Hooray!
D’admiral didn’t get a proper present separate to his cool marine relief map, and instead had to make do with a plaque to remind future generations who is really in charge of Westernport.
That, a literal cheesecake, and a charming old friend from 2008 rounded out the celebrations…
… while outside, Philip Island kept up its Brigadoon impression.
We tried to get the children to head across on their stand-up paddle board and go and check on it, but they wouldn’t, would they!?
… meanwhile, the sun dressed up as a moon that had recently become a woman…
It really was like a prelude to the apocalypse (except for of course man-made climate change isn’t real, is it, and we should all just shut up and trust our political leaders who care about us more than they care about profits and the fossil fuel industry and all that other stuff). We were barely able to see the navy ships scooting past to deposit evacuees from Mallacoota at Hastings/Cerberus.
I mean, yeah, we got some spookily atmospheric images like this “Carnies in the Smoke” (featuring Cousins Aimee & Mark’s converted-van-tiny-house that has intrigued the neighbours for a month)…
…Stinky and all the kids who went to Sumatra last year could say to everyone, “THIS is what it’s like in Indonesian REALLY OFTEN!”, and everything outside kinda turned into a Turner painting…
… and the metal kookaburra did some interesting things with the sun…
… and there were some ridiculously fake-looking sunsets…
… but at what cost?! Everyone in Melbourne started cheating on the Bureau of Meteorology weather with the EPA airwatch just to see if it would be okay to go outside…
… so at least we were at D’admiral and Chuckles’ nicely sealed up modern enviro-rated home, rather than the leaky-breezy Spinster Pad! At least the international attention should make it all harder to ignore, right? … right?
Anyhoo, in a brief, breathable patch, a nice day emerged and Belrog popped by…
… bringing the actual moon with her!
Nonetheless, there was a lot of huddling inside keeping the doors and windows closed, which is at least prime jigsaw conditions. Pye secured the famous ‘ANUS’ piece on the satisfying 2000 piece-r that made us think back with even more bitterness and rage on the Neuschwanstein Castle one that took us two years. The ‘pull my finger’ fart noise pen that the avid jigsawer pulls to announce the location of a piece got so tired it might be on its way out #EndOfAnEra
There was some unbridled craftiness, because metallic paint is pretty and sea urchins are treasure…
… the Cabin Girl got some reading in…
… and we did God’s work by turning the boring animal version of Guess Who into a deluxe family edition. Whoo hoo!
Now you can ask questions like, “Have you ever ruined Christmas?” instead of boring old, “Do you wear glasses?” Much, much better. Except maybe avoid asking questions like, “Jesus Christ, whose giant pube is this in the sink??”, people find that upsetting.
(all right, it’s not actually a pube, but come on, that’s funny).
Speaking of God’s Work, the best love song of the century, “Dear Baby Yoda” came into our lives. If you watch, you can see a bit where one of them replaces a picture of his actual son with a picture of Our Son. After Chuckles watched the Mandalorian, she agreed that baby Kevin is Our Son and the best, so of course we therefore replaced a bunch of pictures of Andru with Kevin.
The hardest part was keeping quiet long enough for other people to notice it of their own accord! If they haven’t noticed already, reading this might prompt them…
Pleased with herself, Stinky shared a Coke with Nanna (according to the can, which is weird because we thought Nanna’s ghost was stuck in the Spinster Pad)…
…and we did sneak outside into the smoke for ill-advised swims. Ooh, a fun way to find out how stupid someone thinks you are is to say that you’re going to bring a snorkel, because it’ll be less smoky under the water! If someone explains to you that you’re still breathing the same air, you know they think you are really, really dumb!
This eel probably died of natural causes, but was appropriately mourned anyway…
…and the experience of an ex-student inspired a blossoming young woman and proved that if you’re swimming around in a wetsuit, tampons are a waste of time!
It’s nice to feel proud of ex-students. Pye rather wishes a particular kid who was once in her Year 12 homeroom had gone down a different path…
She is rather more proud of one who she once had in a Year 9 homeroom (you do you, girl). Ooh and hey, did you know that if a kid who was once in your homeroom has a baby, you are a Homeroom Grandma? Literally no one knew that Erin from 2007 was going to be the first to make one out of Pye! Whooo, Best homeroom grandma story ever!
When the news of fires and axe attacks got too much for us, we set aside one evening for the annual Milky Foot ritual. You begin by soaking your lil tootsies in warm water for a minute or two…
… then you get your champagne and colouring books….
… then you put on a cool af facial mask…
… wait until everything is ready to come off…
… rinse your feet again…
… then just wait to see how many shoe sizes you go down! Alas, this year we made the mistake of going with a cheaper brand, so the results were much less ‘snake slithering out of its whole skin’ and more ‘quietly coming off in respectful flakes’ which is stupid, and definitely not what we’ve come to expect.
The weather wildly veered between ‘eff you hot’ and ‘eff you cold’, sometimes within ten minutes…
… and tensions sky-rocketed, as diametrically opposed t-shirts vied for supremacy.
Somewhere in there we popped off to Melbourne to catch the live show of My Dad Wrote a Porno. It wasn’t a terribly great beach afternoon anyway…
Donna joined us as we happily didn’t get struck by lightning on the way to the Palais, joining a few thousand other perverts in enjoying the woefully awful writing that is Rocky Flintstone’s trademark.
How was the show? Well, this sums up the atmosphere:
The chapter that they read had ‘choose your own adventure’ moments, and for one the audience had to shout for whether we wanted to choose between ‘Pass the P45’ (the document you receive when you leave a job in the UK) and ‘Pin the cock on the employee’. Joining nigh on 3000 people all chanting, “WE WANT COCK! WE WANT COCK!” was not exactly what we thought we’d be doing, but to be honest, we weren’t all that surprised.
That evening we dashed back to G-town, fully expecting to find that the storm which dumped at least 18mm of rain in five minutes had flooded the shed and maybe something new and unexpected – at the very least the new mulch should have floated off down the road. Imagine our surprise when everything was fine! It probably means next time we’re completely fukt, but for now, we’ll take it.
Now, speaking of completely surprised, Robyn and the Cabin Girl were strolling down the beach when they espied something lurking in the shallows. It was an Aerobie! The Cabin Girl and her mother were all like, “Huh, cool, a new Frisbee!” We, on the other hand, were a lot more excited…
25 years or more ago, Cousin Adrian had a Aerobie that was a lot of fun. One day we were all playing with it on the beach – it was a cool day and the tide was high. Cousin Adrian somehow managed to yeet the Aerobie straight out to sea, and we never saw it again – however, we never, ever forgot, nay! For all these years, we have all incessantly bullied Adrian by shouting, “Look, there’s the Aerobie!!” at anything vaguely Frisbee-shaped.
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we have decided to 100% believe that this is actually THE Aerobie and if you want to convince us otherwise, you’d better come at us hard.
Meanwhile, in supermarkets, Back to School ads warred viciously with Australia Day merchandise, which in turn was busy trying to fight off Easter Eggs and hot cross buns. Then some weird shit went down.
No one:
Literally not one soul:
Shapes: Did someone say you want ‘Meat Pie’ and ‘Sausage Sizzle’ flavoured Shapes?
The Meat Pie ones are actually pretty compelling, and while we wouldn’t exactly kick the Sausage Sizzle out of bed, they are a bit weird. If Shapes want to pay us money for providing that detailed review, we’ll take it.
Do you know what else gets a five-star review? The Noble Botryotinia Fuckeliana. A+ naming practice, and a lovely little drop.
Moose gave a very positive review for the respect paid to him when we found him a chair that befits his position.
He enjoyed lording it over us, and things got worse after a wander through the Coolart shop and Pye acquired a pipe. Not to smoke, you understand, but for emphasis. It was very popular.
Things got… arty.
In a happy coincidence, Pye also managed to notice that the anniversary of the handprints we made in 1985 had arrived. We’ve grown a bit…
Chris came back for an evening and we were standing on the mole admiring the sunset. We were joined by a random guy from the camp. Chris was holding her wallet and car keys, and casually said to Stinky, “Gosh, can you imagine how bad it would be if I dropped these down the rocks?” Five seconds later, the random guy’s (prescription) sunnies slipped from his hand. They didn’t just fall into a gap, they were sucked into the abyss and were lost forever. There is memorial plaque on that rock, so we assume that Dot’s ghost has added the specs to her collection.
Soon it was the Australia Day long weekend and we were staring down the barrel of a return to wo-*cough* wor- *ack*, can’t say it… Anyway, D’admiral and Chuckles put on a non-Australia Day BBQ and with the help of Andru and Robyn, we got to eat kangaroo, emu and crocodile. Aussie Aussie Aussie!
Before we left, Stinky unleashed some kraken upon the house to make sure that everyone was kept in line. I wonder if that will work at school…
Only one way to find out! *sobs inconsolably into our beards*
