Scott Family Christmas Message 2005

Every year as I unpack the Christmas lights and prepare to waste megawatts in true American style I cannot help feeling that the interval between packing and unpacking grows shorter every year. I would swear if you asked that according to my internal time clock I only put the darn things away about 6 months ago. Now I will be the first to admit that while it would not be out of character for me to put off such a post-New Year task until June (and indeed there are some houses who leave them up all year round, unplugged), I don’t believe I have ever left them out past the end of January. February tops. So it has to be at least 10 months. Apparently one’s perception of time really does move faster as one gets older.

When our children were small I was often advised to enjoy it while I could, because ‘they grow up so fast’ (bring it on, I used to think). But in the last couple of years I have begun to see what they meant. In 4 days it will be Christmas again, which means that in 3 days our daughter Merinda will turn 7. Edwin is already 5. We have been here for seven years when we only meant to stay for five. The interval between putting up and taking down the Christmas tree grows shorter every year. Where once I was reasonably good about sending thank-you notes (my Mum’s politeness training and my own pet hate being people who do not acknowledge gifts), in recent years I have found to my shame that I am using this year’s Christmas card to thank relatives (whose kindness frankly deserves better), for a gift they sent last Christmas. Of course that’s assuming I get around to writing the cards at all.

My theory to account for this phenomenon (aside from the possibility that procrastination increases exponentially as you age, which I’ve discounted until I can consider it more fully when I have more time) is that your brain pays little attention to supervising activities that it has done many times before. We have all experienced the odd sensation of driving home on autopilot and only realising when you pull into the driveway that you have no recollection of the actual trip (driving home from the pub does not count for purposes of this example). I theorise that as you spend most of your adult years performing tasks that you have done ever-increasing numbers of times before (cooking, shopping for groceries, doing laundry, picking up toys, vacuuming, tidying, ad nauseum) your brain eventually learns to do them on autopilot too, so that large chunks of your day (week, month, year) slip past unnoticed. Or perhaps that’s just me.

Jonathan doesn’t seem to suffer the time slippage as badly – of course he gets to do exciting new things at work on a regular basis. He has several patents pending, and ‘Phaser’, a ‘universal’ microwave measurement instrument, won the Macquarie University Innovation Award 2005. Sadly this is more recognition than his employer, Agilent Technologies, has given him for it, but such are the harsh economic realities of the industry at present. At least his position has survived several rounds of layoffs and selloffs. Job prospects further afield begin to look more appealing, especially after our visit to Australia in July made us remember what a great place it is. Jonathan said how wonderful it must have been to grow up in Cronulla and spend holidays on Cabbage Tree Island.

This year Jonathan spent many hours tinkering around creating a revolutionary new model train controller which he would love to commercialise, so that other train loon… oops typo, sorry… lovers will part with their hard earned cash to have the privilege of using it. He also built a new train layout, the Pizza N (Feb), started the Wollomi (Sept) and completed the n-scale "Journey" begun years ago to commemorate our first trip together by rail through the French countryside. He rode his first Segway in August with Kent and flew in a glider for Mathias’ bachelor party.

Merinda got her first 10 out of 10, lost 3 teeth during the year and gained 2, had her first pony camp in June, and weekly riding lessons since Sept (she can now canter… or should I say the horse canters, and she can stay on). She is halfway through 1st grade with Ms Dorinda, and is doing language/arts and math at a 2nd grade level. She is a skilled artist and writer, and can read simple chapter books. Her best friend at school is still Kaia, both of them horse-mad, and she claims to have 6 boyfriends. Recently when I remarked on her skillfully applied makeup and how she would be in 10 years time, she replied that perhaps she’d be a hooker. After I’d got back on my chair, delicate inquiries revealed that her other best friend, Mary (13) next door, had told her a hooker is "a pretty girl who wears lots of makeup and nice clothes and walks around meeting boys". I’m glad she sanitized it but I wish she hadn’t made it sound so appealing, given that Merinda’s other career choice - veterinarian – requires much more homework!

Edwin lost and gained 1 tooth, got his own super-duper slot car set courtesy of special 5th birthday money from my Aunt Stella and Uncle Ron, and is still mad about trains. (Like father, like son.) He is in Kindergarten with Ms Mara and his writing has improved greatly since he agreed to hold a pencil properly. He seems good at math and is beginning to read small words. His hair refuses to be tamed and his ambition is to be a driver of trains or fast sports cars (nice work if you can get it).

For me creative writing took a backseat to running in July, when I began preliminary training for a December marathon (26.2 miles), and ran a half marathon (13 miles) in San Francisco with my friend Lisa in October (the lengths to which one will go to get a weekend off from housewife/mothering). Over several months I was running 25-35 miles per week and still didn’t manage to lose any weight – in fact overall I gained this year. My blood pressure remained borderline high throughout so I’ve begun taking a prescription diuretic. I volunteer 1 day a week in the classroom and continue to publish the school magazine. 18 days ago I suffered a severe blow to the thigh when the cart we were using to move a very heavy frozen yoghurt machine at the school suffered "spontaneous rapid disassembly". Good job we dropped the full marathon idea – it would have been the next day. For over 2 weeks I have had a bruise which wraps half my leg and a large hematoma. A week of antibiotics and warm compresses have had little effect, so today I underwent minor surgery in the doctor’s office. Merinda was unfazed by the gore (vet science looking good) but it was a bit much for Edwin, so she took him out to the waiting room and read to him. What a great kid. Lisa and I plan to run another half early next year if the leg comes together. I love running with my iPod shuffle and my Garmin Forerunner 201 (a wrist-fitted GPS receiver which tracks mileage and calculates pace).

Home projects this year included building a bat house (still unoccupied 11 months later, although 2 years vacant is not uncommon), replacing the open fire in the rumpus room with a wood burning stove, replacing the kitchen nook window with sliding glass doors to allow easier access to the garden for entertaining, building new steps for same, de-wallpapering and painting the rumpus room, kitchen and upstairs bedrooms, and constructing a cage for the kids’ newly acquired guinea pigs Carrot & Pippi. Just in time for Christmas, the men came today to rip out the downstairs linoleum and replace it with laminate tiles. The exposed dusty floorboards look very ugly!

We enjoyed visits by Jonathan’s best friends Warwick and Andrew, and MU graduate student Peter, and in August welcomed Japanese exchange teacher Yuki Matsuzoe. We’re her host family until the school year ends in June 2006 (assuming we’re still here – more on that later. Read on.)

Some social events were the school’s fundraising Wild West Auction, camping trip, and mandatory pre-Halloween pumpkin patch field trip. We attended the Caminschi’s excellent annual cocktail party as Mrs Fiona Charming (aka Mrs Shrek) and Doc Emmet Brown, and danced at Mathias and Delia’s wedding, where Merinda and Edwin hit the dance floor in true Torvill & Dean style.

Family outings included a June weekend in Ft Bragg to ride the famous Skunk Train, where we found the tiniest striped hermit crabs eking out an existence in whatever half broken, holey shells they could find on that rugged wave-smashed coastline. We went kayaking and paddle boating on Spring Lake, and saw unprecedented numbers of Canada geese migrating overhead this Autumn.

We pocketed $650 and said farewell to the faithful old Subaru by putting it into state government-sponsored retirement (wait a minute, you want to pay us more than it’s worth, to get a "polluting vehicle" which passes its smog test every year, and which we hardly ever use, off the road? Sure!) After all we do live in the eco-green and liberal heartland of California.

The highlight of the year was definitely the 5 weeks in Australia in July/Aug for Dad’s 80th birthday and Amelia’s 18th. We loved spending time with Dad and visiting the beach in the warm winter sun, seeing Pam & Murt on Cabbage Tree Island, going to Ballina to stay with Nick & Kerry and their kids Libby & Max, with whom our two got on like the proverbial incendiary domicile. Edwin and I spent a week in Canberra with Jane & Sebastian. Back in Sydney we all enjoyed a nostalgic visit to the Chinese Gardens where we were married 8 years ago (is it that long ago, really?), a chance to catch up with old friends at a bash thrown by Eric & Brenda, got more wildlife than we bargained for on the way to Taronga Zoo when Merinda discovered she had a tick, and were amazed by how good the food was everywhere. We saw flocks of parrots, mobs of kangaroos, and even some whales and dolphins. We were left with a strong feeling that we were missing out on something good and that perhaps it was time to get serious about not staying in America forever.

So we come to the big news. Jonathan has just returned from New Zealand where he was offered the position of Foundation Professor of Electrical Engineering at Waikato University in Hamilton, south of Auckland. He describes Hamilton as having cafes like Newtown and more farms than Santa Rosa. If Santa Rosa’s claim to fame is Charles Schulz and Peanuts, Hamilton’s is Richard O’Brien and Rocky Horror. It would be lovely to be only a 3 hour flight from Sydney instead of 13, and to have the possibility of no mortgage and room for horses. On the downside, Jonathan is not sure if he wants to return to academia, and the climate is very English! Agilent is ‘encouraging’ Jonathan to stay (as are all our American friends – "Oh crap, we don’t want you to leave!"). It will be 2006 before a decision is made and the odds are even.

Now as another year draws to a close I am contemplating the future of the Scott family. Do we want to leave our good friends and lovely home here, in a beautiful country whose politics I abhor, not to go back to old friends in Sydney, but to start the settling-in process all over again in yet a third country? I begin to appreciate the Chinese blessing/curse, "may you live in interesting times".
Stay tuned.

Wherever we live you can be sure that friends and family old and new, Australian and American, Japanese and English, will always be welcome in our home and hearts.

Wishing you joy this holiday season, and happiness and good health for 2006.

Love from Kay, Jonathan, Merinda and Edwin Scott.