I often get in trouble from my wife for leaving lights on in rooms i’m not occupying.
Last night I was about to walk up the stairs to go and say good night to wife and I thought ‘Oh i should turn the lights off, that will make jenny happy’. So I turned around and turned the lights off then went upstairs.
Jenny came out of the bathroom and said ‘What did you turn the lights off for, you’ll fall down the stairs”
Yes it’s Sunday again so that means another story about a father son adventure using the $2.50 family funday ticket.
Oscar loves planes, he gets super excited whenever they fly over our house or of he sees them when we are out walking. So I thought I would take him to the airport to watch some planes up close. Just like last week It was all planned out thanks to my trust iPhone.
So with lunch packed and pram folded Jenny drove me and the O man to the station.
We trained it to Central on an express and Oscar spent the trip looking out the window and staring at fellow passengers. Close-ish to Central he tensed up a bit and began making a deep groaning noise, Thanks to my great parenting skills i know that this noise means one thing and one thing only. He is pushing out poo. He groaned for a while and then as fellow passengers quietly moved away to other seats it was quite apparent that his groaning was successful.
The smell was pretty bad, so I assumed it was a biggie!
I knew there was a 12 minute gap between when our train arrived at Central and when the Airport one leaves, so I had 12 minutes to find a baby change room, change him and get to the airport platform. It’s a tight schedule as we need to be home for his 2pm nap. So putting the stink bag back in the pram and packing up the various segments of vegemite sandwich sprayed across the seat we dashed for the ticket barriers. Eventually the man near the gate opened it for us and we headed for the baby change room / disabled toilet.
Just before we got off the train I had a bit of a peak down Oscars pants and could see that the peanut-butt-er was very close to escaping out the sides of his nappy. We went into the change room and it was disgusting, there was blood smeared all over the toilet seat, the change table was dirty and the floor was covered in toilet paper. But I had no option I needed to change him, It was at this moment I also realised I didn’t have any of the alcoholic hand gel stuff and that this was one time that some antibacterial assistance would be greatly appreciated.
I got his little change mat out from under the pram and laid him on it on the change table. The change mat also has pockets where we keep spare nappies, creams and wipes. THERE WAS ONLY 2 WIPES!!!!!!And when I opened up the nappy of doom it was obvious 2 wipes was not going to help me much. Meanwhile Oscar began crying and the smell and image of his mud pie was making me nauseous and I began gagging a little.
I did what I could with the 2 wipes, then had to think quick what to do next. Toilet paper and water was my thought. But the toilet paper and sink where over the other side of the room, If I go over there whats to stop Oscar from painting the walls or rolling off the change table. There was a sign on the change table that said ‘Always use the safety strap, you guessed it, the safety strap was missing.
As quick as i could i ran to the other side of the room, grabbed a clump of toilet paper, we it by turning on the tap with my foot and dashed back to Oscar who was still crying but luckily not painting or rolling.
The toilet paper idea didn’t go according to plan, it was cheap government issue one ply that kind of disintegrated when it was mixed with water and fecal matter.
so a few more dashed and clumps i got him clean enough to put on a nice fresh new nappy.
Then it was back into the pram (still crying) so i could pack everything up and wash my hands.
All that in a 12 minute window???? You bet, we got to the platform as the train was about to close it’s doors!
Now because the Airport rail line is a private venture they have ridiculous prices for using their stations and access is not covered in the $2.50 funday ticket, I knew this well as Jenny and I when we need to go to the airport often just get the train to Mascot instead of the airport as it’s an easy walk to the airport and you save a lot of money. It’s only one station before the domestic station. At the airport the station access fee is $18 if you want to go out and back in again, at mascot it’s $4.20.
So we got off at Mascot and walked to the airport, Oscar had cheered up a bit at this stage but still not super happy.
walking with a pram took a little longer than expected, I guess you can be much more careless when dragging a suitcase. During the walk Oscar did some more groaning which in our wipe-less situation was not a good sound. I remembered that in the virgin terminal there is a chemist under the escalators so that was our first priority.
Eventually we got to the airport and lined up to go through security so we could go to the chemist then find a good window to look at planes.
I picked Oscar up and he was happy then, but I had to hold him, fold up the pram, empty my pockets and try not to look suspicious as i was sweating a lot, and sweating is not something you want to be doing when going through a security checkpoint.
The security guards where trying to make the pram fit through the x-ray machine. They worked it out and I walked through the metal detector, it beeped. In my sweating state this drew the attention of all the security on duty. I had just forgotten to take my belt off.
We got through, I unfolded the pram, put my belt on and headed for the lift, strangely 3 security guards joined us in the lift. Turns out they where just off to the foodcourt.
In the chemist I got some wipes and antibacterial stuff.
Due to the longer than anticipated walk, long lines at security and an unscheduled chemist stop we only had about 5 minutes of plane watching time before needing to hot foot it back to Mascot. But Oscar had been such a good boy and we both had post cityrail facilities trauma that I decided to spend a bit longer watching planes and just get the train back from the airport.
Oscar loved all the planes, he was super happy and that made me happy.
After about 10 mins of watching planes we headed for the airport station. We got in the lift to head down to the station concourse, just as the dorrs where closing an arm swung through the door and in came a lady holding her stomach with vomit on the front of her shirt. It felt like the longest lift ride in the world, my stomach doesn’t do well with that smell.
At the station I didn’t have enough money for the station access fee so had to take some money out from the ATM, then found that you cant buy the station access from the ticket machines so had to line up at the window, this lining up meant we missed the train which meant no more being home by 2.
It had been a traumatic adventure so I treated myself to an overpriced airport vending machine coke, it was soo good.
We ended up getting home at 2:20pm so not too bad, and this week instead of writing a blog post i had a nap.
I hope next Sundays adventure is not so crazy.
The moral to this weeks story is, Don’t go to the airport without a flight booking, it hurts too much looking at the planes but not going on one.
I want to be like Lezalee and Thomas,
This is where I work.
first i get in the lift.
Then press 4
a corridor, stairs, another corridor and a couple of doors later you hit my desk. You will notice a small piece of blue paper on my wall above my screen.
At a staff conference we did some warm and fuzzys and the blue paper is one I received.
sweet.
I discovered today 2 things that are a sign the world is about to end.
that sucks!!!!!!!!!
As I have told you before, if you have a child with you It’s only $2.50 for train, bus and ferry fun on a Sunday.
And being a bit of a train / transport nerd I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go on an adventure on the launch day of the new ticketing system. So Oscar and I went on adventure.
Our walk to the train station was interrupted by a parade that almost meant we missed out train!! I was going to yell abuse but they where all old so probably wouldn’t hear me.
We made a dash in between 2 scout troops and just made our train.
The train makes you pull strange faces apparently
sometimes just sitting on a train is boring so you have to spice it up by standing in your pram and bouncing up and down.
Eventually we made it to Meadowbank where we walked down to the ferry.
On the way to Meadowbank in between giving Oscar his lunch and ensuring his pram surfing didn’t cause bruising I looked up a route on my Iphone and timed it down to a T. We could get a ferry to the city then a train to Central before the express back home. arriving home just before the scheduled nap time.
What was I doing?????? My stupid stupid brain, I forgot to factor in the unreliability of Sydney transport and the fact that nothing runs on time.
The ferry was late, this was going to ruin everything!!!
Not that Oscar would notice, at one point I thought he was going to explode with excitement, there was a boat going past, a train on the bridge and a helicopter flying above!
Eventually the ferry arrived, and boy oh boy was it packed! I ended up having to hold Oscar over his pram with people squished around us on all sides all the way to the city.
I was a good Daddy and covered the O man in sun cream when we got on the ferry. which really is a good thing because later in the voyage the suncream tube decided to jump ship and is now floating in Sydney Harbour somewhere.
Becasue the ferry was so packed and more and more people got on at each wharf it was getting later and later. All hope of making out train was gone, then the ferry decided to make a swing into darling harbour so I decided to get off there and walk fast up to Wynyard. Not Town Hall because the ferry stopped a bit further north than the aquarium.
We got off the ferry pretty quick and made a dash for the new bridge over the expressway. There was a lot of steps! I picked up the pram and carried it up the first flight, then paused for some lung refilling and to remove the litres of sweat trapped under my sunglasses.
It was after making it to the top of the stairs that I noticed the lift.
eventually we made it to Wynyard.
There was a few minutes until the next train so I got out Oscar’s water bottle to give him a drink. But for some reason the water bottle was less than half full??? It was full when I put it in my bag!
So i put my hand in the bag and felt around, it was all a bit damp, I swore internally so I didn’t look like a bad father.
I opened the bottom section of the bag where my DSLR and Lens’s and other camera stuff are, they seemed fine so I was a bit relieved. I put my bag in the pram and carried Oscar on to the train.
2 Stations from home I took my bag out of the pram to put the O man in it. The pram was soaked!!
This time my swearing was not so internal!
I quickly took out the camera and lens’s and flash to find them all a bit damp and the inside of the bottom pocket was drenched!!!
Good thing I have one of those little moisture absorber things in the bottom of the bag!!
Once home I took out all the pockets and bits and pieces and it’s all outside drying now.
The moral to this story is, Don’t try to document your Sunday adventure as soon as you get home as by the time you have posted it the baby will be awake again and that means no nap for you!!!!
$%&@
Does anyone know how long my side bar has been busted??? for some reason it has my page footer at the bottom of the sidebar…I can’t work out why or more importantly how to fix it.
I keep meaning to publicly congratulate David and Andreana on their engagement.
I dug up this picture from the archives, unfortunately I don’t know Andreana well enough yet to photoshop her, but I’m hoping come weeding time that will be rectified.
We ran out of cans of coke at home.
So today in the office i had the last can.
My plan is to switch to solo and lemonade for a while, not giving up coke but not having it every day.
how long will I last?
This sign is at a school I’m doing stuff at this week.
I’d like to come back after the holidays and watch kids being dropped off at 10km/h that seems quite fast. I guess this school is finding ways to fight child hood obesity. In my day mum used to stop the car.
