Memoir Monday - Madmother: Stuntwoman Extraordinaire!

Aww, crap. Did it again. Forgot about memoir Monday until it appeared in my Tuesday blog feed! Ah well, on with the tale for Travis's little thing (his words, not mine. I would never call his thing little. I have no idea about the size of his thing, it is beyond the scope of my personal experiences...).

This is going to be a quickie. Kids, school, work, yadda yadda...

I am an exceptionally talented woman (well, you all knew that), but I bet you didn't know of my stunt spectacular side? Only those very close to me know this one. The tragedy is it would have won Funniest Home Videos hands down except we didn't film it. Well, I guess we didn't know the show was going to be on.

Scene: Beautiful late summer day. Balmy, light breeze, sun is starting to dip in the west. Birds are singing, crickets chirping, Madmother manically mowing large lawn (we have nearly three acres so mowing is a little bit of a time consuming chore). The monster I ride is a 42" Cox similar to this one, but bigger. Vroom, vroom.

Yes, I will admit to being a bit of a rev-head speed demon - hey, I am a busy woman with lots to do. Well, that is my excuse andI'm sticking to it. Not mentioning the thrill of 15hp throbbing between the legs, quickly changing thrust, manoeuvring through the bushy brush, no sirree, none of those innuendoes here.

On this particular day I am hurrying around, swiftly turning, forward, reverse, cut, cut, cut.

Big Boy is wandering around cleaning up the garden. He walks around to the front of our house, out of the line of vision as I quickly dart under and through the swing set area. Now, we do not have one of those piddly little cheap metal and plastic play sets, no siree. Ours is a solid steel construction with heavy metal chains and huge rubber swingseats. In fact, one was a full, heavy circular tyre.

Big boy claims I was doing around the twenty kilometre mark. Mind you, this incident left him stunned, worried, quickly hurrying to check... I'll come back to this.

SO. I was flying through the middle of the swings, which by the way, were not yet concreted in. Holes dug, legs in said holes, but no cement. Have you clever bunnies worked it out yet? You seem to always be one step ahead of me, so have you?

Back to tales of a stuntmother. I'm flying through the gap between the two swings. The rubber swing seat (not the tyre, but the flatter one) wraps around the hand brake lever. I am oblivious at this point.

Well, what are the theories. Do I flip the tractor? Do I come to a grinding halt? Do I fly off the mowing beast into the air?

I look up as the mower slows. Flying like a catapault over my head is the whole swing set! Luckily the chain length is around 2 metres, as it tautly flies past the tyre clips my left arm feeling somewhat like a sledgehammer blow. Now how do I paint this picture clearly. Me, sitting on mower now halted. Chain of swing taut, straight, stretched to the limit of its capacity. Full solid steel swing set top bar flying perfectly parallel two metres above the mower. And me. It lands, completely straight onto top metal beam. The impact is loud, as is my scream.

Big Boy comes running from front of home. Worried, quickly hurrying to check...

if the bloody swing set is damaged!

Yeah, you read it right. Forget the wife, worry about the expensive swing set. Wife decapitated, no worries. Swing scratched, oh my, what shall we do?

But. You must admit it. It looked absolutely FANfuckingTASMAGORIC! It was a spectacular spectacle. Unfortunately witnessed by no others. I wore the purple/yellow/black bruised band of honour on my arm proudly.

But hell, my heart was pounding for the rest of the day. As my friends say when hearing of my adventure:

"Only YOU!"

Confessions of a Childhood Minx

Aussie Waffler's recent post on the things her children have attempted to pull off has inspired me to reminisce a touch on my childhood adventures. I was on the surface a really good kid, so sugary sweet that one of the many nicknames my older sister used to use was goodytwoshoes (yes, you have to snarl it out really fast like one word). But what my sister and my parents didn't know was that lurking beneath was the heart of a sinner. And a very clever one at that.

It is the usual story, I had a willing partner in crime in the form of the boy next door. We lived next to a private hospital, he was the matron's son. We were best friends, inseparable until the day he moved when we were six or seven.

Poor boy, on the rare instances we were caught out he was the one who copped the blame. And good mate that he was, he never crumbled under pressure nor dobbed. Not even when getting a full on spanking (yes, that was perfectly acceptable back forty odd years ago).

We weren't truly evil, just adventurous and spirited. And I guess in my case, a little too curious and imaginative, or is the term creative more appropriate?

Like the time I decided we were going to be superheroes and jump from our front verandah railing OVER the concrete garden edging to land safely on the spongey lawn. A little sample of our flying super-abilities. Of course, I was not going first, oh no. I was the brainiac who had dreamt up the idea, it was up to him to lead by example. So up we climb, I do the countdown (always gotta be a countdown), ten...nine...eight...seven..."Do you think we should MC (madchild)?" "What are you a chicken?" "Nooo, I'm not a chicken!" ...six...five...four..."It was your idea, maybe you should go first?" "It was my idea, so YOU have to go first! Do I have to do everything?"...three...two...one...

At this point he hesitates so I give him a little push to help launch him over the garden.

*SPLAT* Faceplants straight onto concrete edge. Blood splatters in vibrant streaks across Wise Woman's gladioli as his nose erupts volcaneously. He runs screaming next door to the Matron.

Of course, I then climbed down. No way was I going to be stupid enough to repeat that test of flight. Not after the big failure to launch he had managed!

And no, he didn't dob.

Then there was the big campfire debacle. I was obsessed with fire when I was young. To be honest, so was he. And so one day we decided to build ourselves a little campfire. Underneath the old timber hospital. Now the hospital was an old hardwood construction, about 3/4 of a metre off the dusty ground, and surrounded by a yew hedge. We had many meetings and played lots of games under there, hidden away from prying eyes. It was our secret hideaway. Sorta like a clubhouse but without the walls.

Anyway, this day we decided to add a bit of spark to the old place. So we dug a small pit by hand, placed some largish rocks around the edge, put in screwed up old newspapers, and threw on some dry twigs and smaller pieces of wood I had surreptitously gathered from our wood pile. Quite a pile when it was all combined. We then lit it with my Dad's matches.

Woof - up she went. We quickly realised our error in judgement and like the children we were, panicked. Attempts at throwing dirt on failed to quell the raging inferno, though the flames did dim a little. By now the floor was showing huge scorch marks, and we could hear the staff starting to yell "FIRE!" So we did what all terrified culprits do. We ran.

The fire station was only a block away, and the engines arrived quickly. By this time we joined the onlookers, scrubbed clean of soot and dust. Thankfully the smoke in the air masked the stench of our clothes. And the bottom of the floorboards were only scorched. It could have been so much worse. But it is only after the fact a pair of six year olds even think of those things.

Now, I could go into the rotten egg planting escapade, or the toilet incident, but I think you have read enough to get the idea.


Boy 1 and Boy 2 have no hope of ever getting away with any misdemeanours, unbenownt to them they have the master of all mischief in their midst...

Oh, and Wise Woman has never learnt why from such a young age I renamed those flowers of hers.... Bloodioli.