The Flaming Sword On The Dance Floor Of Life: or Keep Your Eye on the Teen In The Tutu.

I'm not sure quite where to start this post. It comes from a conversation I had with the BA when things were at their lowest French ebb.

I know the teen years are the 'mating' years. We all know that. Being a teen is all about trying to find your place in the world and part of that involves exploring the people with whom you will share that world. I don't know about you but in my experience as a teen girl there are phases that you go through.

There are the physical changes. They can be daunting enough. At this time your eyes are on all the other girls: Am I the same as everyone else? Am I deformed???? Am I better than everyone else? What are my chances in the upcoming mating dance of life? What is my equipment like? Does ANYONE ELSE FEEL LIKE I DO???????? At this time, boys are interesting but they are aliens and it's your girlfriends that you look to, to help you carve out your place and define yourself as a woman. This is definitely where the BA is at the moment.

Once you are secure in your social circle, in your body and, to a degree, in your emotional development, the mating dance begins. Your girlfriends fall by the wayside as the important 'survival of the species' process takes place. Who will make the best mate? Whose genes are strongest? Who will be a reliable protector, provider and procreator? Once the animal instinct hormones calm down a bit there is also room for questions like: will he play board games with me? does he hog the remote control? and does his conversation extend past 'who will coach The Power next week'?

We all know that young girls will be obsessed with boys, music, fashion and socialising. It is part of growing up. It is normal, and its intensity ebbs and wanes around the ages of 13-16; however what I think is important for any young person is that they also maintain an interest in the outside world. What was their passion before the hormones began to roar? What are their natural interests? What are the things that make them who they are? In the end, if the only thing you are is' successful at the mating dance', by the time your peer group begins to move out of that phase you will be left with inappropriate skills and a sense of inadequacy as your equipment also starts to fail you.

Where am I going with all this? Well, the thing we couldn't find about La Jeune Fille was any sense of passion or involvement in anything outside the teen obsessions. Even her interest in surfing did not go as far as wanting to hire a wetsuit and dive into the freezing cold Southern Ocean. Sure, she likes sharks, but we had to convince her that a trip to the Shark Museum was worthwhile (and, typically, when we got there it had been shut for three years!). I am sure that she probably does have some interests that are hers but at the moment they are swamped by the teen experience. She mentioned tennis, but didn't want to play; she went for a run once but didn't want me to sign her into the gym; she was NOT interested in church and youth group although we hauled her along once to watch the BA play drums in a morning service; she liked movies but only horror movies and only if they had French language options! She expressed an interest in the World Cup but, during the match, spent the whole time surfing facebook on her phone. She did show a great deal of interest in shopping however.

As a parent of a teen, and one who is right on the verge of moving from girlfriend focus to mapping out the steps of the Sexual Gavotte, I think my role is to help her keep the whole person intact. It is too easy to allow our children to go completely down the path of teen obsessions. Meeting friends for shopping expeditions, downloading music or organising playlists on the ipod can take up inordinate amounts of time. Our job is to ensure they still attend training sessions for a beloved sport, they still practice the instrument they loved as a younger person, they still get out to educational and beautiful parts of the world and experience them with their senses, they still try new things, interact with real people and they still pass exams!

It's too easy for parents to say 'oh well, they're teenagers, this lifestyle is to be expected' and to drop the responsibility we have to keep them in touch with their roots. As I keep saying to Himself when he drops the Small Boy off at the skate park for a 4 hour stint.....children were not meant to bring themselves up you know.

La Jeune Fille: Chapitre Un (The Tough Part)

So, I gotta tell you about our Jeune Fille and how the whole 3 week exchange thing went down.
First, here's the makeover I did on Small Boy's bedroom.
Despite the passive aggressive resistance, I actually think he quite likes it.


Here's the girls from the BA's school waiting anxiously at the airport before the Frog contingent arrived. Most of these girls will be going back to France in the Christmas holidays this year.


Everything was good for the first week, although getting up in the morning was not her strong suite and her English was seriously worse than my French!!!!
We had been given a list of instructions and advice as 'host' parents and one of the things we had been told was to expect homesickness. We were also advised to give them access to the net to email home etc but not to allow them to spend too much time on the computer. Well, when our JF arrived, she came with her own iphone. Himself naturally hooked her up to our wireless network. Mistake number 1. She proceeded to spend inordinate amounts of time on facebook on her iphone and of course we had no control over that whatsoever!


Towards the end of the week I felt we were losing touch with her but we cheerfully hauled her off to a family Quiz night with a group of friends (including a friend of ours who is French) thinking it would be a cultural experience, a way to connect and a bit of fun all round.
Oh dear.
Firstly, Himself, the notorious games hater did not really want to go.He had loads of work to do and was late in. I suggested he didn't come and he nearly took me up on it, but Small Boy wanted to go and so he came. When we got there, late as usual, it turned out the table bookings had been mucked up and there wasn't enough room on our table. This put Himself in an even worse mood. So, when my dear, but incredibly tactless (well, she is French), friend announced in French to La JF, not to get too excited about our impending trip to Kangaroo Island because it was boring and the food was rubbish, Himself just about exploded. La JF was witness to himself telling our friend to stick it where the sun don't shine and storming out. I'm not sure she really understood what it was all about but it had to be a bit uncomfortable for her.
Well, from there it went from bad to worse.

She spent a huge amount of time in her room. She didn't even attempt to speak to us in English. She wouldn't get up in the morning. She cut classes. She looked bored at everything we suggested. Poor old BA and I were stressed to the max. We were desperately trying to figure out where we were going wrong and coming up with ideas to try and engage her, to no avail."I don't think she thinks I'm cool enough," my beloved BA bemoaned.
"Sweetheart, we are what we are and we have no reason to be ashamed of that," was all I could offer as comfort. Pretty cold comfort for a 15 year old.
From what we could ascertain, La Jeune Fille had five main interests: surfing, sharks, boys, shopping and parties. Unfortunately, in southern Australia in the winter you only surf if you are really keen.; seeing a shark is usually a bad thing; the BA goes to an all girls school and, at 15, parties are something you have on your birthday!! I don't think we were what she had in mind when she embarked upon her visit..

Towards the middle of the second week, she emerged from her sulk long enough to type a request to attend two parties into the google translator. It was the first time I had seen her looking animated in days but as I made inquiries it became evident that the parties coincided with the weekend we had booked to go to Kangaroo Island. :-( Her face fell like a ton of lead. Quelle dilemma!!!!! I was really looking forward to our trip to the island and the last thing I wanted to take with us was a sulky teenager who wanted to be somewhere else!!!!

I will spare you the agonising and arguing that ensued. Himself figured that was the death knell on an already fated trip and wanted to call the whole thing off; but eventually I convinced him to try and delay our departure until the Saturday morning so she could go to the Friday party. Fortunately our friends on the island were kind enough to reschedule us. Then there was the problem of the BA. She had been invited to the party too, in a 'token' way which left her feeling very uncomfortable. She didn't know any of the other people going and didn't really want to attend. Thankfully, one of our fave bands, British India, was playing at The Gov on the same night so I organised to drop La JF at the party, take the BA and her friend to the gig and pick up La JF on the way home.

The following morning, whilst all these compromises and alternate arrangements were still being confirmed, La JF woke up with severe period pain. She moaned and groaned and sniffled all the way into school and I glanced sideways at the BA, rolled my eyes and mouthed 'Her misery is complete'. I escorted her to the Nurse's Station and interpreted for her as they applied heat bags and then left her curled up under 2 quilts listening to her ipod.

That night when I picked her up, she was the most cheerful and communicative she had ever been. She asked lots of questions about the BA and her social life and I used my high school French to explain that the BA did not go to clubs or have parties with her friends as she was only 15 and still a bit young. As we were chatting a huge lightbulb exploded over my head. I think our JF had been pre-menstrual! Imagine having PMT in a strange country with a strange family and very poor grasp of the language! Explained a lot.


When Friday came and we were set to drop her off at 'the party', she had a little panic attack and wanted to come with us to the gig!!! She didn't want to go inside until her (better English speaking) friend arrived and we ended up coaxing her out of the car and introducing her to the charming and caring mother of the house so we could get to the gig on time! Funny!

La Jeune Fille, in a rare smiling moment, briefly stops looking at her own facebook page long enough to look at....the BA's facebook page.

Speaking of the gig, here's a few shots.

This is not La Jeune Fille. And this is not British India.

Still, it's a better photo than the ones I DID get of British India ....

Hmmmmmmmm.

Aaaaaaanyway, things were still a bit marginal when we embarked on our trip to Kangaroo Island the following morning. We had to prise her out of bed and, despite the morning being so beautiful you could have framed it, she slept the whole way in the car and most of the way on the ferry.

And if you want to know how it went down on the island...stop by tomorrow! :-D

Happy Fifteen Years and Two Months Birthday BA

As you know, I was officially a 'fail' as a mother after the BA's rather 'lame' birthday this year. In my defence I must say that she had been to see her first major gig as a present and as she had to work on her actual birthday I don't think the lack of festivities was entirely my fault.

But now we are on holidays. We are relatively stress free since the JF left last weekend and after 4 shifts this week at McDonalds, the Baby Angel was ready to party last night. She had organised a sleep-over for 4 friends from her old school and I had decided that the 'theme' was to be 'Working Girls'....in the nicest possible way of course. I figured that, at 15, they are all now eligible to have part time jobs and make valuable contributions to society ( 'hem hem' as Nigel Molesworth would say).
I had planned a whole raft of games and activities on the 'working ' theme.

• Guess your occupation. (like Celebrity Heads except with an occupation on your forehead)
• Race for Work: In teams dress in a suit, run to a table, sort some files into alpha order then run back and change clothes with the next team member.
• Pack the Bag: since working in supermarkets is a common p/time job this game tests your ability to quickly and efficiently pack groceries whilst following some essential rules: eggs on top, no detergent next to fresh foods etc....points are awarded for speed and lost for breaking the cardinal rules.
• Explain the gadget: based on the occupations given to the kids in game 1, they must each select a strange object or gadget from a range on a table and explain how it is used/essential to their occupation. Points awarded for creativity and credibility.
• OH and S quiz. Kids work in pairs to answer questions on basic OHS!
• Maths Challenge: given that maths skills are important in many jobs, kids are challenged by a 'story' of investment and loss with the key question being 'do I have enough left for a pie and a milkshake?' (eg: I put 60% into short term investments and earned 10% then spent half the proceeds on a huge celebratory party)

and so forth. I also rented 'Working Girl' (I was trying to find 'Nine to Five' but it wasn't in our local video store) for us all to watch as a culmination of events. For prizes I had all sorts of items of stationery, erasers, pencils etc. I also based the cake on the BA's place of work.


I was pretty pleased at the way this one turned out. I used a golden buttercake mix in two 9" pans for the 'bun' and a chunky choc brownie mix in a single pan for the 'meat'. The veggies I made with fondant icing coloured red for tomatoes, green for lettuce and yellow for cheese. I left some white and cut it in rings using two different sized glasses for the onions. I stuck Rice Bubbles on top with a bit of buttercream icing to represent the sesame seeds.

Whaddayathink?

As it turned out, we didn't get to do half the activities as I started off the evening brilliantly by dropping a full bottle of olive oil on our concrete garage floor. I think I have some idea of how BP must feel, except I also had glass shards to deal with!!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, by the time I had cleaned that all up and washed all my shoes and slippers which had tracked through it >:-( .........the girls were already settled in for the duration.

Himself made them homemade pizzas and I did a chocolate fondue with apples, bananas, strawberries and marshmallows.

The movie was a wonderful trip back in time for me and raised lots of issues over class, equity and even the workings of the share market and business. (What exactly are 'acquisitions and mergers' mum?)

At 2.15am I finally abandoned them to try and get some sleep.


I think we can now safely say that the BA's 15th birthday was a success.

Team Up Thursday: Celebrate

Following along with Melody and Megan's theme : Celebrate, JoLyn and I bring you 'close up' and 'distant' celebrations.

Look at the stunning photo JoLyn took! She was at a birthday party where they were blowing bubbles and she caught this one just as it popped! Bubbles are such a lovely celebratory thing nowadays aren't they? So much less messy than rice or confetti! I am constantly awed by the way JoLyn can get so close to things like this and freeze minute moments in time.

My photo is from our January home fireworks spectacular. I think we were celebrating the fact that we had actually organised to have people over for a BBQ! I'm afraid my husband's work hours and demands mean that he is not often available for socialising. I personally think he prefers it this way :-) Still, when I do pin him down, he makes the effort and this is the result. He scrapes off dozens of sparklers and packs the powder into metal tubes which he then tapes to the pool fence. Another sparkler on the top as a fuse and then we retire to sit back and enjoy the show. I was pleased with the reflections I managed to capture here.

Be a part of Team Up Thursday and see how people have interpreted their various themes: click over to Megan or Melody.

Bouquets and Brickbats

Now this doesn't happen much anymore because I have seriously curtailed my blog reading (and writing) of late; but I happened over to DJ Kirkby's site 'Chez Aspy' (heh heh heh, that cracks me up) via my friend Jill over at Twipply Skwood (btw: congrats on making 'The Guy Who Knows A Song About A Chicken' into an honest man) at the precise moment that she posted THIS. No, click over, really, you have to, it's worth it! (Especially you Unka Dick and Oscar Zed!)

Well, after picking up my jaw and trying desperately to work out what was actually going on in the picture, I realised it was a caption competition, so I threw my natty, nay witty, hat in the ring! Now, I'd love to say that I won outright but awwwwwwwww, WTH, any win is a win right? And it's nice to get a bit of blog love in a time of such miserable blog paucity on my part!

Anyhoo, if you want to read some of the captions people came up with, including the pithy and yet scythingly insightful witticism from moi.....click over to here.

Meanwhile, I am on HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!! So I am about to start working on my La Jeune Fille summative post, with bonus Kangaroo Island pictures. As per usual at Chez Arizaphale, nothing goes exactly smoothly and there are plenty of stories to tell.




WHICH reminds me!




Remember I told you I was up on the roof cleaning out gutters last week? Well, having found a number of problems, I called Gutter Man and he came a visitin' on Friday. As the two of us were sitting up on the roof, examining straps and ties and flashing and whatever, No2 Son (aka 'The Obnoxious Boarder Whom We Infrequently See and Who Never Contributes Anything to The Household in Any Way Shape or Form') wandered out into the garden and looked up at me.

"Hello," he said bemusedly.

I wondered whether this was a request for information and decided I couldn't be bothered trying to figure it out as I wasn't at work and didn't have to make allowances for any crazies on my own time. Even if he is related. I smiled and waved and he went away.

Later, as we looked at the collapsed gutter on the front of 'his' verandah (the one in front of his bedroom, that's it in the picture on the right) he emerged again.
"What's going on?"
This was more promising, a question I could answer.
"We're just looking at repairing some of the guttering."
"Ah! Well, now is a good time to mention this. I was wondering if you and Dad would mind if I did an extension to this verandah, to create an area out here to entertain my friends and to do my art projects. Don't worry, I'd pay for it myself...I'd get a few mates in to help put it up..."

The loud thud that followed was my jaw hitting my knees. For moments I was rendered speechless; and then, no......I was still speechless. The trouble was there was so many things I would like to have said.

1) Why on earth would I want a jerry built verandah extension on the FRONT of a property we are trying to fix up to sell? Or live in...if we don't sell....

2) Why would I want an art 'workshop' with it's associated cigarettes, beer bottles and unwashed youth congregating out the front of a property etc etc (see above)

3) HE would pay for it? He doesn't even pay board!

4) HE would build it?????? He doesn't even clean out the gutters or put up shelves!!!!

Sometimes I think that boy is living in la la land.

He then proceeded to tell me how paranoid I was about money, based on the fact that I am paranoid about my cooking. These two things are comparable. Apparently.

And on that note I'll leave you to go and take the BA off to the Salt Mines. And I MEAN the salt mines! When she's been doing fries she comes back with it encrusted in her eyebrows :-D

Team Up Thursday: On The Water

This week's offering for Team Up Thursday is indicative of my current health status: kind of washed out and damp.

For 'On The Water' JoLyn took this wonderful shot of her son in law competing in a triathalon. (No, I have NO idea which one he is :-)) The full shot is gorgeous. All those orange hats!!!I'm afraid I was less inspired and only managed to find some of the seals from the Kangaroo Island fur seal colony. I was inclined to cheat and put up one of Himself's stunning close up shots of a seal frolicking but I am too honest, and anyway, I've posted it once before :-). Still it would have made a great diptych.

For more creative Team Ups, check out Melody and Megan's sites as well as the flickr pool.

I Wonder If Being On The Roof In The Rain Has Any Connection With My Current Flu?

Sick.

Sick as a dog.

Full of gunk, can't breathe, feverish, coughing, having tomorrow off.

Just thought I'd share that with you all.

Got Lily on my lap though so that's all good.