We usually come to Brisbane in summer, when the jacaranda and bougainvillea are blooming and the city is full of flowers. It’s late autumn now and there’s no sight of the brilliant flowers, just green against more green. My niece and nephew have grown like weeds and would be unrecognizeable, if they didn’t look exactly like the rest of my family. Kelly is basically me with brown eyes and a pointier nose; Ross is a grown-up, boy version of Julia.

These kids set the bar impossibly high. They have green belts in jiu-jitsu. Kelly is an accomplished cellist and Ross is about to start playing flute. In terms of physical fitness and manual dexterity, they kick my ass three ways from Sunday. Lucky I have mass and cunning on my side.

We had fantastic coffee at Cafe Do-Da. Sarah told a story about her new job, obviously a far better match to her personality than the old one. Her boss demanded a phone number from “a resume on my desk”. It wasn’t on his desk, or his boss’s desk, or the owner’s desk, or in his email, but eventually Sarah checked his voicemail and found it there. He texted back “Ta.”

She sent back seven texts.

“What”

“do”

“you”

“mean,”

“‘Ta’?”

“It took me three hours to find that number, and all you can say is ‘Ta’?”

“I quit!”

Ross said: “You should have done one letter at a time.”

(Kelly made a good joke, too. We pulled up outside her neighbour’s house, and I said “They don’t know it’s you in this weird car.” Under her breath she added: “With these weird people.” “Hey! I heard that!”)

Sarah says her boss gets nervous if she doesn’t quit two or three times a week. The job is clearly mad. The last n people in her position, for some unfeasibly large value of n, only lasted a few days. Rather than having to remember names, the company started referring to people by the day of the week on which they started work. Sarah was Tuesday for three weeks before they accepted that she was probably going to stay.

Next we drove up to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens on Mt Coot-Tha for a picnic. We spread our blanket on a peninsula in the lagoon, and were serenaded by Pacific black ducks, dusky moorhens, sacred ibis and an Eastern water dragon.

The cousins interviewed Claire. “What’s your favourite animal? Do you like cats? Do you like dogs? Do you like horses?”

The roast chicken came out of its bag.

“I like chicken!” said Claire.

Ross ran all the way around the lagoon (crazy!) and we all applauded when he arrived back. Later, in that shy way she uses when talking to a new crush, Claire said “Very good running.”

We tried to get some pictures of all four cousins, but there’s at least one cousin squinting or sticking its tongue out in every shot.

As we were packing up, I asked Claire to put on her shoes.

“She can put her shoes on! I’m very impressed,” said Uncle Al.

“I can put my shoes on,” said Kelly.

“You’re ten!” said Al. “She’s only three! I was impressed when you were three, too!”

“It’s the miracle of velcro,” I said.

“There is no article of clothing known to man that can’t be improved with velcro,” said Uncle Max.

My sister and I each thought for a minute, then said with exactly the same rhythm and intonation: “A… g-string?”

It took us a good ten minutes to stop laughing. In unison. You’d think we were related.

Oh, and talk about the HONOURED FREAKING GUESTS. Last night Uncle Max split a bottle of 1991 Peter Lehman Stonewell shiraz with us. YUM.

I rented the car in Sydney from Borat, “from former Yugoslavia”. Croats say they’re Croatian, Bosnians say they’re Bosnian and Serbs say they’re “from former Yugoslavia”. Anyway, Borat – a fiscal conservative with a strong stand on human rights – seemed charmed by my sleep-deprived, free-associative thoughts on geopolitics and the uses and abuses of American power, so he upgraded me to a Toyota Avalon, which is the biggest car I’ve ever driven. It’s seventeen feet wide and two hundred feet long. We drove out of the airport with the emergency brake on, because it’s where the clutch would be on a manual car – by your FOOT. The HANDbrake. Right. That car is Frankie, because he’s an Avalon.

We spent Friday in Sydney mostly sleeping, although Woollahra Council has thoughtfully installed a brand new playground in the park across the road where Jeremy and I were married. Claire was mostly delighted by this, but was trying to play barefoot, and the bark groundcover pricked her feet. She came sadly to the bench where I was sitting and reported: “Sticks are sharp. I cannot play.”

On Saturday morning we had breakfast at Petit Creme with three shifts of friends: first Pesce and Big and Rachel, then Pesce left when Kay and Kelso and Mark Bennett and Peter the Rocket Scientist arrived, then Kay and Kelso left when Adrian and Sam and Korbin turned up. Claire greatly admired Rachel’s blue motorbike, and announced that she wanted one. I explained that she’s not even allowed to date anyone who rides a motorbike, but she seemed unconvinced.

I had a joke I was going to tell Big, but I forgot: now that we’re Americans, we’re amazed that there are no kangaroos hopping along the street!

Flight to Brisbane went reasonably smoothly, and then our car rental got upgraded again, to a red Commodore, which is twenty three feet wide and five hundred feet long. This car is Jack, because he’s a Commodore. Fortunately the handbrake is where it is supposed to be, give or take the steering wheel being on the other side. Unfortunately we missed a turn on the way to Sarah’s house; fortunately, we had a map and got ourselves unlost.

So, Ferny Hills. Claire fell into the thrall of her cousin Kelly, where she remains. Ross loves the game we bought for him. Sarah and Julia bonded instantly. Oscar the cat is now a gigantic prey animal, as beautiful as the day. I bought a couple of bottles of cold white wine and got deliciously drunk.

See you on the other side.

Our hot water heater went into a bit of a decline last week. Its output shrank from a healthy cascade to a sad, rusty trickle. We’ve been reduced to having London-style showers – that is, shivering, blue and goosepimpled under a tepid mist.

Scary thing is, this morning I didn’t completely hate it. It was kind of …okay.

Anyway, we had two plumbers round. The first one was a very nice chap, and quite useless. He completely misdiagnosed the problem, ripped out our beautiful old brass shower and replaced it with an ugly modern stainless steel one. This accomplished exactly nothing.

The next plumber was a recommendation from the Cole Hardware home repair referral service, and like the roofer we got from them, he’s absolutely great (Frank Brown from Frank’s All-City Plumbing, in case you spring a leak of your own). He’s prompt, generous with his time and patient with my completely inane questions. He was both amused and appalled by our existing hot water heater, which was made in 1989 with an expected life of 10-12 years. Unfortunately, he’s not going to be able to fix it for us.

This is Jeremy’s fault. The hot water heater lives in our kitchen cupboard. Jeremy’s bright idea is to replace it with a tankless or instantaneous model, a fifth of the size so freeing up priceless kitchen real estate, much more fuel-efficient and earth-friendly and very widely used EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WESTERN WORLD, much like the METRIC SYSTEM or NATIONAL HEALTH. Here in the US of A? Not so much.

Of course it’s going to cost twice as much up front, and we need a special fitter to come in, and there’s some dire issue with the gas lines that out of pure weariness I have chosen not to inquire into… Small wonder, in short, that I am almost starting to like being rustily wee’d on.

I realize I should be posting about Segway polo or Temple Grandin’s terrific book and her theories on neoteny or SOMETHING, but all I can think about is the plumbing. I am a simple people.

Image(442)

Originally uploaded by dob.

Clairecita and Ada Boo take a well-earned forty winks.

…wildly successful. Couple of hundred people must have come by to play with Jeremy’s beautiful stars. Very long day. We’re going to bed.

Fitzchalmers Family Shoot

Originally uploaded by quinnums.

Quinn is the bestest photographer ever, except for Jeremy, who is equal bestest.

Leonard is awesome!

So is Sumana!

Congratulations you crazy kids! WOOO!

Today would have been my grandma’s 101st birthday. It’s also the 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

Like all the women in my family, my grandmother Doris could be (ahem) very difficult. She was particularly hard on my mother and my eldest brother. But she loved Al and me, and we loved her. She baked us wonderful scones, read us stories and loved to sing and play the piano for us. She painted china in her last years, pretty roses with a wavering line that was somehow very characteristically her.

That makes her sound very little-old-lady, and she wasn’t. She was thin and sharp, rather like Maggie Smith, with long, elegant hands holding perpetual cigarettes, and a splendid beak of a nose. A strong, prejudiced, devout, strange, imperious old Englishwoman, who never recovered from the death, the year I was born, of her beloved husband Jack. She outlived him by more than 25 years, a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

When she died in 1996 I was in Ireland with Jeremy, so I didn’t go to her funeral. I still miss her.

Drum parade all morning, right outside my office window, to celebrate San Francisco’s resurrection. Very bittersweet, because we all know this beautiful city will shake and burn again.

When we decided to have kids I was pretty clear on two things. I wanted them to be kind. And I wanted them to be happy.

Yesterday, Claire rocked my world.

We went to the just-reopened Nene’s for breakfast. It was a bit chaotic, so they under-poached my eggs and my plate went back to the kitchen just as everyone else chowed down. It was eleven am; I was hungry and grumpy. Claire had a giant mound of home fries.

She took a few onto a small plate for herself, then pushed the rest over: “Here mummy, these are for you.”

Later we drove past UP13. We’d dropped by the night before: Marc had made calamari and squid steaks with an incredible, dense, creamy chocolate veloute.

“I had fun at Marc’s house,” said Claire.

“Me too,” I said. “I like Marc.”

“I like Mummy!” said Claire.

“Thanks!” I said. “I like you too.”

“I like me,” said Claire.

It’s like a bomb going off in your heart. But in a good way.

I read Cintra Wilson’s Colors Insulting to Nature and enjoyed it immensely, until she mentioned Web sites appearing shortly after the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989.

This eight-month anachronism immediately punctured my suspension of disbelief.

I am such a frickin nerd.

J: Julia was so pleased to see Bebe that she tried to crawl over to her! But she went backwards instead!

R (disbelieving): Julia crawled?

J: It was just the commando-style belly-wiggle.

R: She’s four months old!

At that point Jack and Milo turned up with Daisy M. Dog, and Bebe Dog Bane did her best claw-skitter-fluff-tail-and-wyrd-yowl routine. The intruder dog was driven hence!

Later:

R: Claire, do you like Daisy?

C: No.

R: Oh.

C: Ran into the forest, dark.

R: You ran into a forest?

C: No. Belinda.

Back when Jeremy and I were courting, the Australian telecommunications carrier Telstra was phasing out its analogue mobile phone network, so you could buy the service for cheap. The deal was very popular with the feckless young, such as I. There was just one drawback: my first cellphone was the size of a brick. (Ask Jeremy about it some time. And ask him about my first car, the beloved Martika.)

These days the feckless young are younger than ever. This morning, after breakfast:

C: I want a GREAT BIG ENORMOUS… TELEPHONE.

J: Claire, that’s so unhip!

R: You want a LEETLE TINY PHONE, like Ben Stiller had in Zoolander!

I hold my fingers a quarter-inch apart.

R: Leetle tiny telephone!

C: No! I want a GREAT BIG telephone, like THIS!

She holds her hands three inches apart. The room explodes in laughter.

Eight days?!? That’s probably the longest I’ve gone without blogging since Yatima started. Bet I can’t even remember what we did…

Actually, I can. Sunday morning we had bagels with the Locke-Chungs while Hedwig failed her smog test. We drove up Bernal and passed Carole and Jamey coming home from the dedication of Alex and Stacey’s bathroom, so we called and arranged to meet them on top of the hill. The Yerba Buena volunteers were out in force. I chatted to one who has been working on the same piece of the park for twelve years.

“When I started, it was radishes up to here,” she said, gesturing at chest height. “Now it’s mostly native grasses.”

I spent Monday and Tuesday struggling with an unusually prickly story at work. Tuesday night Jamey picked up the kids from school and came to dinner – there’s some talk of making this a semi-regular event. I made mac and cheese, but Ro was deathly ill and the Moores had to flee. Wednesday I was in Santa Clara all day; by about 4pm it was obvious I had what Rowan had. Jeremy looked after the girls while I went to bed, but I spent half the night awake wondering if I was going to throw up anyway.

Got up early again Thursday morning and combined Hedy’s 50K service and successful smog retest with another conference for work. By about six on Friday it was obvious Jeremy had what Ro and I had had, so the girls and I went to dinner with the Moores and Shannon and her boys while Jeremy tried to sleep it off.

By midnight it was obvious that Claire had what Jeremy, Ro and I had had, and she had it worst. She threw up on and off for about three hours. There was further involvement with some dental floss she had eaten. On the bright side, her teeth are completely free of plaque!

Saturday was very sketchy, even by the standards of this sick and sleepless week. We made it to the evening without damaging one another. Jeremy insisted he didn’t want to go to Shaun and Dana’s farewell party, but as soon as he got there he turned into a social butterfly with Julia peering adorably out of her sling. I followed Claire around hand-feeding her. Except that Shaun and Dana are leaving, it was a terrific party. We saw people we hadn’t seen since before we were married!

When I got home I made the blitztorte from Joy of Cooking, doubling the quantities and baking it in a slab. This morning we woke up after enough sleep(!), mashed some roasted butternut squash and made an exquisite soup, set out bread, salad and cheese, iced the cake with vanilla cream and used blueberries to draw Wallace & Gromit’s moon rocket on it, with strawberries for the flames. Then everyone came over for soup, Uncle Ian painted the toddlers’ faces and we all sang Happy Birthday to Claire and ate the cake. It was a good cake!

The interesting thing about writing it all out like that is that while my perception at the time was of strain and illness and exhaustion, I look back and am amazed at how much I got done and how much fun I had.

Nothing in my adolescence – with the exception of owning Alfie the splendid Arabian – prepared me for the substance of my adult life. It seems to me that getting ahead in a late industrial Western democracy is partly a matter of staying on top of details (car registration, visa applications) and partly a matter of being able to improvise (asking intelligent questions in an interview coming off of two hour’s sleep.)

It’s not easy to talk about improvisation, but details are another matter. I started learning them at university, and not in the substance of what I was taught. I’m still very passionate about red-figure Greek pottery and Petrarchan sonnets but they’re not particularly relevant to my day-to-day life. (Nineteenth century novels are, but that’s a special case.) I remember when I was in Year 12 and Corinne, a year ahead of me, described turning up to a lecture and everyone talking about an essay due that day which she had forgotten about. That terrified me! My first act as a university student was to buy an appointment book and write in it all the deadlines for all my essays for all my subjects, with warnings a week before the due date. It’s a habit that has helped me ever since.

Hitting deadlines was the first practical skill I learned at university; the second was probably filling out forms, an underrated and essential activity; the third lesson I learned, however, is the subtlest and most useful of all. It is deciphering what your readers expect (even as I write this I think about Doctor Stephen Bourke, my wonderful teacher of Near Eastern Archaeology), writing to meet those expectations, paying attention to feedback (he accused me of sophistry! justly) and refining your writing in the next assignment.

That skill turned into a career. And it is, incidentally, my dream career: a sort of literary critic of the software industry. I review companies the way other people review books. (I just got a call on my cellphone from Milo!) This year I am also taking a step back, paying attention to my methods and those of my colleagues, thinking about the larger dynamic – how the software industry actually works, where the money flows and why. And I find it completely fascinating. Like fiction itself (which it resembles in many ways), software is about debt and credit and exploiting opportunities and finding provisional answers to the question, How are we going to live?

I used to talk to my Dad a lot about getting a real liberal education that would be useful outside its putative field, and finding work that combined my love of writing and science. I did both.

I’ve been listening to the Long Now seminars on my iPod. As intellectual and ethical positions, the Long Now and the Big Here fit my temperament exactly. I’m committed to historical context and interested in posterity; I feel and try to act like a citizen of the cosmopolis, whatever my visa documents say. One offhand comment in a Long Now talk: “Computing is in its infancy”. I agree, and love Vernor Vinge’s description of a programmer as an archaeologist sifting through layers and layers of abstraction back to the dawn of time. Two observations here: this is already true of programming; and now is the dawn of time.

I live in the Long Now and the Big Here. Looking into the future is my job, but I’d do it for nothing. I want to tend the same piece of ground for twelve years. I feel like a redwood tree, standing still in the middle of all this chaos as my children grow and change in front of me like time-lapse photography. Toddler vomit on my pajamas? A very small price to pay for this happy, busy life. Quinn to me the other day, with respect to the recovered camera: “You must be the luckiest person I know.”

Yep.

Recheng called at a quarter to eight. We let the machine pick up, rolled over and snoozed, all five of us counting the cat, until twenty to eleven.

I called Re back. “We just woke up.”

“You’re joking!” she said: then, sympathetically, “bad night with the girls?”

Both kids have bad colds. They’re coughing up, and also swallowing, gallons of pale green phlegm; the coughing and the phlegm make them vomit. It’s very pleasant. It also makes it hard for them to sleep or eat, so Claire is on a hair-trigger, and even Jules is uncharacteristically cross.

We threw everyone into the car and met the Jaffe Tsangs at Strybing Arboretum. Glorious sun, white daisies in the green grass, cherryblossom. The Anarchist Book Fair had taken over the County Fair Building and there were lots of anarchists lolling around and gesturing meaningfully with red and black balloons. They wore old-fashioned hats and frock coats and so on; it looked like the music video for Safety Dance (ETA: OMG that thing is genius, go watch it and feel TWELVE AGAIN).

“Rachel, you can tell me,” said Jonathan, “Why aren’t anarchists allowed to wear white?”

“White?”

“They’re all wearing black.”

“That’s because they’re opposed to things.”

“I get that, but can’t they be opposed to things in pink?”

“She’s wearing white.”

“Yeah, and she’s carrying the gear for all the guys. She’s just a groupie.”

“She’s with the band!”

We were trying to figure out the quickest way to the carousel. There were three policemen on large horses stationed across the road from the book fair, apparently just watching the anarchists. The use of horses to impose order seemed weirdly appropriate to the general late-Victorian ambience. I wandered over and chatted to one of the policemen, then wandered back.

“What did he say?” asked Re.

“He said the horse is a Belgian Draught – Quarter Horse cross. I’d guessed some kind of warmblood, so I was sort of close.”

“Rachel! You didn’t ask where the carousel is?”

“Uh…”

Claire, who had asked earlier this week for a ride on a carousel with Knoa, was well pleased with our ad hoc adventure. It wasn’t until we’d parked at home that Jeremy realized he had left his beautiful, expensive camera hanging on the back of a chair in the picnic area near the carousel. A tense drive back to the park ensued. Jeremy was gone so long I was sure the thing had been stolen, but at last he came back in sight, waving the camera in one hand and in the other a sign: CAMERA FOUND HANDED IN TO SNACK BAR. I folded up the sign and am keeping it in the car, for more luck.