I've been absent some little time, not least because of a trip to China, where the government doesn't let you blogspot. That's only been one week of the absence, though. It's also been end-of-quarter report season, and, hmm, what other excuses have I got? The truth is I still have a shitload of things to be doing right at this minute, this precious, nanny-bought minute, that aren't blogging, and I'm not doing them because the most urgent among them is doing my books, which fuck that.
Let me see if I can choose out a few things from the past - heavens - more than a month to go on about. Hmm. The trip to China was a good work trip and a great personal trip. Godzilla came, the F-word, who is out of holiday, didn't, and my eldest neice met us in China to take care of Godzilla while I worked. I didn't have high hopes for how well any of that was going to work out, from the long-haul flights without another adult to help corral the Megachild, to the neice - a smashing young lady but hadn't spent any time with him for about a year - taking care of the Megachild for up to 12 hours a day while I conferenced.
I was pleasantly surprised on all points, though flying Air China was penitential as usual. Godzilla handled himself as well as a 20 month old can in a plane for 12 hours (quite well, and awfully well in comparison to several other children who wept the whole way, poor things - the return to Melbourne was the second leg of a trip for a lot of people, and there were a good few dispirited parents dully staring at their violently crying progeny) and my neice handled him beautifully. We had a couple of tearful partings as I left for work in the mornings, and that was it - otherwise, not a single hiccup, not a single wrench. She has two brothers, five and twelve years younger than her, respectively - she knows what she's doing taking care of a kid like Godzilla better than I do.
It was beautiful - and not just because it was beautifully convenient for me. It was beautiful to spend so much time with my neice, from whom me being some sort of internationalist has precluded spending much time with since one of her brothers and she came to spend a couple of weeks with us at the tail end of my time in Belgium. (Does that sentence even work? I don't know. Too much German.)
And it was beautiful to see her with Godzilla and see them love each other, and form a bond independent of his bond with my brother, or her bond with me. Breeding really kicks your relationship with mortality into gear, I suppose since death ceases to be the worst thing you can imagine once you have a child. And it was beautiful for me to see the genesis of a loving relationship that, in the normal course of things, will be there for Godzilla long after I'm dead.
Let me see if I can choose out a few things from the past - heavens - more than a month to go on about. Hmm. The trip to China was a good work trip and a great personal trip. Godzilla came, the F-word, who is out of holiday, didn't, and my eldest neice met us in China to take care of Godzilla while I worked. I didn't have high hopes for how well any of that was going to work out, from the long-haul flights without another adult to help corral the Megachild, to the neice - a smashing young lady but hadn't spent any time with him for about a year - taking care of the Megachild for up to 12 hours a day while I conferenced.
I was pleasantly surprised on all points, though flying Air China was penitential as usual. Godzilla handled himself as well as a 20 month old can in a plane for 12 hours (quite well, and awfully well in comparison to several other children who wept the whole way, poor things - the return to Melbourne was the second leg of a trip for a lot of people, and there were a good few dispirited parents dully staring at their violently crying progeny) and my neice handled him beautifully. We had a couple of tearful partings as I left for work in the mornings, and that was it - otherwise, not a single hiccup, not a single wrench. She has two brothers, five and twelve years younger than her, respectively - she knows what she's doing taking care of a kid like Godzilla better than I do.
It was beautiful - and not just because it was beautifully convenient for me. It was beautiful to spend so much time with my neice, from whom me being some sort of internationalist has precluded spending much time with since one of her brothers and she came to spend a couple of weeks with us at the tail end of my time in Belgium. (Does that sentence even work? I don't know. Too much German.)
And it was beautiful to see her with Godzilla and see them love each other, and form a bond independent of his bond with my brother, or her bond with me. Breeding really kicks your relationship with mortality into gear, I suppose since death ceases to be the worst thing you can imagine once you have a child. And it was beautiful for me to see the genesis of a loving relationship that, in the normal course of things, will be there for Godzilla long after I'm dead.
