Leah: you're 26 months, not 26.

At 26 months, I worry about Leah's language. She speaks wrong. I worry that because she's far from immediate family, she doesn't really get how families work, namely that we're the parents and ultimate figures of control, and she is the subservient minor. 


She speaks to us exactly as we speak to her.  


It's a problem. To illustrate:


While Katie was in conversation, politely ignoring Leah's attempts to interrupt:
- "Mummy.. Mummy... (no response)... Katie... Ka-tie! ...  Hey, BABE!"


Sitting on my shoulders on the way back from the doctor, passing the video shop.
- "Hey, Dougs! Let's go get a movie!" 


"That's a not." This has become a catchphrase, as in:
- Parent: "Leah, would you like some fruit?" 
- Leah. "That's a not."


- "Come on, Leah, it's bed time." 
- "That's a not. (Lies down, starts kicking feet in the air) "I'm doing pi-la-tes."


Woke up at 2:15am to hear Leah, sounding ominously wide awake, shouting: 
- "Daddy... Daddy"
I wander through to her room 
- "Leah, do you know what time it is?"
- "Yeah... It's Party Time!"


It was so not party time. 

Mugs and BP

I am a bit nervous at the thought of walking in to work tomorrow.

I borrowed someone else's mug on Friday.

I say 'borrowed', but really I just used it without premission, and then got busted trying to sneak it back into the pack as the cleaning lady came along to take them away to the cleaning cupboard, and wash away, amongst other things,  my incriminating finger prints.

How bad can it be, you ask? How scary can a tired, caffeine deficient Home Economics teacher be? Let me tell you.

For starters, and you can have this for free, always fear a teacher: a teacher is a professional sponge, soaking up teenagers' insecurity at 30 projections an hour, a shining target for bullying, for around 20 classes a week.

So yes, you should fear that person. Never more than an eye blink away from doing a Peter Harvey. That's a whole lot of repressed anger.

The mug acts like the cap on the well. Once removed, it's not the simple act of replacing it, undetected. Remove that, and those years of sacrcastic comments ignored, graffiti scrawled insults, names shouted down a corridor, all those 'it wasn't me, Sir' and 'don't got a pen, do I?' and missing homeworks and worksheets dumped on the floor and feet on the desks and switch your phone off and why're you late again... out it all comes, spewing more vitrioil than a Tony Hayward press conference, spilling into the staff room.

OK, the difference is around $17 billion (ok, $1,600,999,996.50), but still, I've a right to be nervous. No one wants to be the cap the goes back on the well.

Tramites: Round 2

It's possible we're finally getting to grips with this place.

Two years ago, we took Leah to get her Argentine passport. A summary of the blow by blow account was on the blog here. An interesting comparison: here's Passport Tramites: Round 2.

2008 we left the house arrived at 10:59 and walked out at 13:32. Two and a half hours. There were about 10 people in the special 'Mothers and Babies Under 2' section. Comparative bliss, but no fun at all, and that was a 10 people process.

2010, we arrived at 11:17, and walked around the corner to find the 'Every Mother and Baby Under 2' room. I swear to God I have never seen so many little toddler and parent-like people in the same place, such a small place, in my life.

But we're learning. Watch.

11:17 Arrive to giant queue, snaking left and right like the Medusa. Also like the Medusa, this queue appears to have 3 heads, and upon removing one... two grow in their place.

11:21 Face to face, but avoiding ey contact, with Medusa-lady no1, we pass Stage 1. We receive our number: we are number 99.

11:26 Forms filled out, we move to Stage 2: handing in the forms to Medusa 2. Done!

11:38 We sit down, and start chatting to our sleepy looking neighbours.

- What number are you guys, we chirp?
- 42. You guys? 
- Er... 99... Um, how long have you been here?
- About three hours. 
- What number is it now? 
- 35 I think. 


Doing the Maths, I made that about 5 hours waiting time.

Furthermore, the office closes at 16:00, and if you are not seen today, you have to come back another day.

What's more, if you are no.99, and no.98 is the last person to be seen that day, you are not no.1 the next day. You have to start the whole process all over again.

Approx five hours to kill in a stinking, overheated airless Medusa queue filled with crying babies, bored toddlers, irate parents and exhausted pensioners, with the chance that you might not even be seen that day?!?

But this is what we've learned. Solution.

11:59 Phone ever-willing-to-eat-and-talk friends Silvie and Henry, who live in nearby San Telmo. Arange to meet for lunch.

12:00 Arranged!

12:01 - 12:45 Idyllic wandering in the sun around San Telmo which has never looked more beautiful for spending an hour in the traumites office.

12:45 - 14:30 Lazy lunch. Bread, olive tapenade, steak, wine, good company, good cholestrol, waiter like Javier Bardem in No Country (yup, that's the one where he's the serial killer).

14:30 Jog back to office to check the progress. 83 is up. Perfect. Phone in order of coffee and go to pick up Katie and Maia.

15:17 Pay bill, head back to the office.

15:23 Walk in to hear no.95 Struggle to hide the smugness.

15:24 - 15:59 Queue with fascinating dude from Los Polvorines, the town of the school where I work. He's the first person I've met from the other side of the wall. Top guy.

16:01 Done and dusted, home in time for tea and medals.

Now THAT's what I call Tramites.

Oh. I should mention that in two years there are two obvious improvements to the system.
1. There was a bar of soap in the men's toilets (although still no running water in the sink)
2. There are now more computers.

Gay BA

Might not stop you behaving
like an asshole though. Pity. 

Gay is OK in BA and this is a good thing. Gay marriage is now legal in Argentina, a giant step for co-habiting same sex couples everywhere, but specifically in Rainbow Nation Argentina.

In spite of strong, consistent, vocal and numerous protests galvanised by the Catholic Church in capital the week before the vote, symbolised by banners proclaiming that the 'traditional family' should be protected, the senate passed the law, the first of its kind in Latin America. The symbol of the marches, by the way: baby girl pink baloon tied to baby blue boy balloon.

If there was a march against the reductive categorising of girls into baby pink and boys into baby blue, I'd be all over that.
- Whatdawewant? I'd shout.
- Gender equality, they'd reply, as manifested by girls who slay dragons with swords!
- When do we want it? I'd say.
- Now, they'd retort, so we can pop those ridiculously reductive baloons.

Not catchy, but I'd be there like a bear. Or a march to burn at the stake - well, at least hit with a stake - the author's of Preventing Homosexulity, which actually is not a hilarious spoof but a hideously well selling text for 'gender-disturbed' children, helping parents to know when and how they should intervene.  

Legalising the life choices of a minority group that affects no one outside of their own lives seems an entirely civilised and groovy thing to do. I don't, can't and won't listen or respect those who oppose gay marriage, or gay adoption. Sorry, but the counter arguments are... well... just too dumb to listen to.

Those who state that a 'child deserves a mother and a father' must thereby ban any form of marriage that could in any way damage the child. But, as Philip Larkin once put eloquently, every mum and dad messes up their child. That's what a parent is. If your parents did everything right, who would one complain about during one's adolescence? And what would you do with all those spare therapists, consellors, psychologists, psychoanalysts and landlords?

Exactly. Think it through. But seriously, the arguments against a same sex couple adopting are identical to those once raised against couples of different races adopting, and how out of touch and ridiculous do those arguments sound now?

Well, yes, as ridiculous as they did at the time.

They'll get bullied at school. No. You get bullied at school based on a projection of other's fears onto the target. Those fears (homosexulity, different cultures, ya mum) are only going to be reduced by being made more visible and backed up by the state's laws. So you get less bullying. Be a winner; not a sinner.

It doesn't happen in the animal kingdom. Yes it does, when animals have free choice over 'partners' and, really, are you frikkin' kidding me, are you shooting with that? At least give me a challenge.

The Holy Book. It is an abomination according to the Bible. Well, lots of things are adominable, some fair enough, like 'murder', some of them just bonkers, like 'planting two different crops in the same field' (Lev 19:19). Plus, it's ok according to lots of other books. And, on religion... the Catholic Church... sexuality... morality... do you really want to take the moral high ground there? Thought not.  

When gays get married in BA and it is not news, that'll be even more progressive, but for now, let us celebrate the following victory for LGBT, common sense, decency, human rights and the YMCA.

... oh, and if you really want to get angry, click this.