This morning Claire finally reacted to sleeping in three cities in as many nights by turning into Veruca Salt on angel dust. This will sound odd, but my parents aren’t really kid people, so her relentless klaxxon was a bit wearing on their nerves.

“You might want to watch that show Supernanny,” said my dad gently. “Not criticism, just a bit of friendly advice.”

I expect they were well relieved to leave us in the rear-view mirror, but I miss them already.

We hiked (bushwalked) down to the Pool of Siloam under Gordon Falls. It’s the most insanely beautiful spot, a little golden sandy beach in a rainforest with a fifty-foot waterfall trickling into the clear shallow pool. It wasn’t exactly tranquil, though, as there were two National Parks rangers working on the trail (track?) One had a leafblower.

“A leafblower?”

“You bet! If I had to sweep it, I’d be here for donkey’s years!”

“…I guess.”

He said that thirty years ago the pool had been so deep, you couldn’t swim to the bottom. The golden sand is all sediment from the human settlement up in Leura.

An uncomplicated drive home. Jules woke up as we drove up Bellevue Road, and bleated in a professional manner.

“She’s drawing up a request for milk. She’s a growing concern, and needs venture lactation.”

“The investment is earmarked for cells and marketing.”

Two more stories about various brilliant children. I asked Kelly if she believed in God, and she said:

“It all seems a bit far-fetched.”

And Julia, after carefully examining the cat Kashmir’s white paw, laid it down carefully and picked up for the purposes of comparison her own fat pink foot.

Oh, how busy we have been. Yesterday we dropped in to see my awesome Auntie Barb and Uncle Ron; they’ve renovated their house and it’s now beautiful and sleekly modern with hardwood louvres and a Balinese porch and automated sunshades and a garage door that slides sideways.

“This is an awesome lair for a supervillain,” I said to Uncle Ron.

“It all works beautifully, as long as my passenger pushes the garage door button at the right time,” he said.

“I’m the passenger!” said Auntie Barb.

“You’re the henchman,” I said.

As we were boarding the flight to Sydney, Mark D. popped up and gave me a kiss. See, this is the sort of thing that makes Americans think Australia has a population of sixteen. There are maybe three people I particularly wanted to bump into here, out of a population of twenty million, and Mark was one of them. (Psyke and Mel, mail me please!)

Monday night’s dinner was glorious – Auntie Jan came over, and Uncles Rob and Barnaby, and both girls fell asleep so I had a free hand for my wineglass and Richard served a white Peter Lehmann Stonewell wine, to bookend that amazing Shiraz of Max’s. Auntie Jan and I gossiped at length about horsepeople; it turns out that my wonderful jumping instructor Vivienne Lander is an old friend of hers. I think Auntie Jan met most of the important people in my life before I did.

Rob and Barnes told us how they met.

Rob: “I thought, what the hell, I’ll go to this ridiculous party, and he was the only person there I hadn’t already met.”

Barnes: “And there was chemistry, so we swapped phone numbers – but somehow we each managed to go home with our own phone number!”

Rob: “So we both called the friend who’d thrown the party, to ask for the other one’s number.”

Barnes: “At the same time.”

By noon on Tuesday we were packed and pulling out of Cooper Park Road; we reached Katoomba in a record two hours. The girls slept all the way, waking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on arrival. Claire bought some pretty flowers for her Gemma, and there was a great exchange of hugs and presents when my parents arrived. I’d been very worried that Mum wouldn’t approve of the hotel I’d booked, but it turns out she and her friend Joy had stayed here twenty years ago! Score.

Dinner at Chez Amis, a nice French place in a church across the road. Salome, forgive me, I had the pork and trotters, and it was amazingly good. Dad bought a couple of bottles of a French Syrah called Aimery, which was our third great wine in as many nights.

The girls slept through the night! And the hotel provided a hot breakfast! This is a recipe for great cheeriness on my part. The buffet is under a painted-on proscenium arch, which lent the meal a merrily theatrical air. The Goop server was down when I tried to get mail this morning, but as we were finishing our bacon and eggs Jeremy answered his phone and walked Salome through rebooting the server.

“Don’t you have a remote reboot?” asked Dad.

“Sure,” said Jeremy. “I get a friend to walk over and hit the button.”

“And you don’t even have to call them!” said Dad, impressed. “They call you!”

We drove down to Echo Point, and Jeremy and Claire walked down to the Three Sisters while Mum and Dad and I had coffee and chatted and admired the view. The grandparents bought the girls matching hoodies with kangaroo ears, in which they look mightily adorable.

It’s very windy, so we decided to visit the Toy and Train Museum. As we drove there, Mum told me about a house she and Joy had visited. It was the childhood home of Doc Evatt, and it had reminded her very much of her own childhood home, Victoria House in Warrington.

We pulled up at the Museum. It’s the same house.

Mum was a little disappointed that the toy museum made the house feel less like her own home, but you can press buttons to make the trains go, so Claire had no complaints whatsoever. And the gardens were just right for rambling around, all pines and lawns and fountains, like the gardens at Withycombe where Jeremy and I stayed on our honeymoon.

Have I mentioned how many happy memories I have of the Blue Mountains? Dad grew up in Hazelbrook, the next town over. Back when I was a sullen teen, Mum and I had a great weekend here. This is where Jeremy and I met, and where we came after the wedding. And now we’re sharing it with the girls.

Rachel Honnery couldn’t get us a table at Solitary for the big lunch on Sunday, so we went there today. It was so delicious we stayed past Claire’s nap time. There was a tremendous meltdown, but both girls are now asleep at opposite ends of the child’s bed, in their matching kangaroo hoodies. Jeremy took a picture.

Oh, and did I mention how beautiful the stars were as we staggered back to the hotel last night? The sparkling Southern Hemisphere constellations, brilliant against an inky sky.

We usually come to Brisbane in summer, when the jacaranda and bougainvillea are blooming and the city is full of flowers. It’s late autumn now and there’s no sight of the brilliant flowers, just green against more green. My niece and nephew have grown like weeds and would be unrecognizeable, if they didn’t look exactly like the rest of my family. Kelly is basically me with brown eyes and a pointier nose; Ross is a grown-up, boy version of Julia.

These kids set the bar impossibly high. They have green belts in jiu-jitsu. Kelly is an accomplished cellist and Ross is about to start playing flute. In terms of physical fitness and manual dexterity, they kick my ass three ways from Sunday. Lucky I have mass and cunning on my side.

We had fantastic coffee at Cafe Do-Da. Sarah told a story about her new job, obviously a far better match to her personality than the old one. Her boss demanded a phone number from “a resume on my desk”. It wasn’t on his desk, or his boss’s desk, or the owner’s desk, or in his email, but eventually Sarah checked his voicemail and found it there. He texted back “Ta.”

She sent back seven texts.

“What”

“do”

“you”

“mean,”

“‘Ta’?”

“It took me three hours to find that number, and all you can say is ‘Ta’?”

“I quit!”

Ross said: “You should have done one letter at a time.”

(Kelly made a good joke, too. We pulled up outside her neighbour’s house, and I said “They don’t know it’s you in this weird car.” Under her breath she added: “With these weird people.” “Hey! I heard that!”)

Sarah says her boss gets nervous if she doesn’t quit two or three times a week. The job is clearly mad. The last n people in her position, for some unfeasibly large value of n, only lasted a few days. Rather than having to remember names, the company started referring to people by the day of the week on which they started work. Sarah was Tuesday for three weeks before they accepted that she was probably going to stay.

Next we drove up to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens on Mt Coot-Tha for a picnic. We spread our blanket on a peninsula in the lagoon, and were serenaded by Pacific black ducks, dusky moorhens, sacred ibis and an Eastern water dragon.

The cousins interviewed Claire. “What’s your favourite animal? Do you like cats? Do you like dogs? Do you like horses?”

The roast chicken came out of its bag.

“I like chicken!” said Claire.

Ross ran all the way around the lagoon (crazy!) and we all applauded when he arrived back. Later, in that shy way she uses when talking to a new crush, Claire said “Very good running.”

We tried to get some pictures of all four cousins, but there’s at least one cousin squinting or sticking its tongue out in every shot.

As we were packing up, I asked Claire to put on her shoes.

“She can put her shoes on! I’m very impressed,” said Uncle Al.

“I can put my shoes on,” said Kelly.

“You’re ten!” said Al. “She’s only three! I was impressed when you were three, too!”

“It’s the miracle of velcro,” I said.

“There is no article of clothing known to man that can’t be improved with velcro,” said Uncle Max.

My sister and I each thought for a minute, then said with exactly the same rhythm and intonation: “A… g-string?”

It took us a good ten minutes to stop laughing. In unison. You’d think we were related.

Oh, and talk about the HONOURED FREAKING GUESTS. Last night Uncle Max split a bottle of 1991 Peter Lehman Stonewell shiraz with us. YUM.

I rented the car in Sydney from Borat, “from former Yugoslavia”. Croats say they’re Croatian, Bosnians say they’re Bosnian and Serbs say they’re “from former Yugoslavia”. Anyway, Borat – a fiscal conservative with a strong stand on human rights – seemed charmed by my sleep-deprived, free-associative thoughts on geopolitics and the uses and abuses of American power, so he upgraded me to a Toyota Avalon, which is the biggest car I’ve ever driven. It’s seventeen feet wide and two hundred feet long. We drove out of the airport with the emergency brake on, because it’s where the clutch would be on a manual car – by your FOOT. The HANDbrake. Right. That car is Frankie, because he’s an Avalon.

We spent Friday in Sydney mostly sleeping, although Woollahra Council has thoughtfully installed a brand new playground in the park across the road where Jeremy and I were married. Claire was mostly delighted by this, but was trying to play barefoot, and the bark groundcover pricked her feet. She came sadly to the bench where I was sitting and reported: “Sticks are sharp. I cannot play.”

On Saturday morning we had breakfast at Petit Creme with three shifts of friends: first Pesce and Big and Rachel, then Pesce left when Kay and Kelso and Mark Bennett and Peter the Rocket Scientist arrived, then Kay and Kelso left when Adrian and Sam and Korbin turned up. Claire greatly admired Rachel’s blue motorbike, and announced that she wanted one. I explained that she’s not even allowed to date anyone who rides a motorbike, but she seemed unconvinced.

I had a joke I was going to tell Big, but I forgot: now that we’re Americans, we’re amazed that there are no kangaroos hopping along the street!

Flight to Brisbane went reasonably smoothly, and then our car rental got upgraded again, to a red Commodore, which is twenty three feet wide and five hundred feet long. This car is Jack, because he’s a Commodore. Fortunately the handbrake is where it is supposed to be, give or take the steering wheel being on the other side. Unfortunately we missed a turn on the way to Sarah’s house; fortunately, we had a map and got ourselves unlost.

So, Ferny Hills. Claire fell into the thrall of her cousin Kelly, where she remains. Ross loves the game we bought for him. Sarah and Julia bonded instantly. Oscar the cat is now a gigantic prey animal, as beautiful as the day. I bought a couple of bottles of cold white wine and got deliciously drunk.

See you on the other side.

Our hot water heater went into a bit of a decline last week. Its output shrank from a healthy cascade to a sad, rusty trickle. We’ve been reduced to having London-style showers – that is, shivering, blue and goosepimpled under a tepid mist.

Scary thing is, this morning I didn’t completely hate it. It was kind of …okay.

Anyway, we had two plumbers round. The first one was a very nice chap, and quite useless. He completely misdiagnosed the problem, ripped out our beautiful old brass shower and replaced it with an ugly modern stainless steel one. This accomplished exactly nothing.

The next plumber was a recommendation from the Cole Hardware home repair referral service, and like the roofer we got from them, he’s absolutely great (Frank Brown from Frank’s All-City Plumbing, in case you spring a leak of your own). He’s prompt, generous with his time and patient with my completely inane questions. He was both amused and appalled by our existing hot water heater, which was made in 1989 with an expected life of 10-12 years. Unfortunately, he’s not going to be able to fix it for us.

This is Jeremy’s fault. The hot water heater lives in our kitchen cupboard. Jeremy’s bright idea is to replace it with a tankless or instantaneous model, a fifth of the size so freeing up priceless kitchen real estate, much more fuel-efficient and earth-friendly and very widely used EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WESTERN WORLD, much like the METRIC SYSTEM or NATIONAL HEALTH. Here in the US of A? Not so much.

Of course it’s going to cost twice as much up front, and we need a special fitter to come in, and there’s some dire issue with the gas lines that out of pure weariness I have chosen not to inquire into… Small wonder, in short, that I am almost starting to like being rustily wee’d on.

I realize I should be posting about Segway polo or Temple Grandin’s terrific book and her theories on neoteny or SOMETHING, but all I can think about is the plumbing. I am a simple people.

Image(442)

Originally uploaded by dob.

Clairecita and Ada Boo take a well-earned forty winks.

…wildly successful. Couple of hundred people must have come by to play with Jeremy’s beautiful stars. Very long day. We’re going to bed.

Fitzchalmers Family Shoot

Originally uploaded by quinnums.

Quinn is the bestest photographer ever, except for Jeremy, who is equal bestest.

Leonard is awesome!

So is Sumana!

Congratulations you crazy kids! WOOO!

Today would have been my grandma’s 101st birthday. It’s also the 100th anniversary of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

Like all the women in my family, my grandmother Doris could be (ahem) very difficult. She was particularly hard on my mother and my eldest brother. But she loved Al and me, and we loved her. She baked us wonderful scones, read us stories and loved to sing and play the piano for us. She painted china in her last years, pretty roses with a wavering line that was somehow very characteristically her.

That makes her sound very little-old-lady, and she wasn’t. She was thin and sharp, rather like Maggie Smith, with long, elegant hands holding perpetual cigarettes, and a splendid beak of a nose. A strong, prejudiced, devout, strange, imperious old Englishwoman, who never recovered from the death, the year I was born, of her beloved husband Jack. She outlived him by more than 25 years, a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

When she died in 1996 I was in Ireland with Jeremy, so I didn’t go to her funeral. I still miss her.

Drum parade all morning, right outside my office window, to celebrate San Francisco’s resurrection. Very bittersweet, because we all know this beautiful city will shake and burn again.

When we decided to have kids I was pretty clear on two things. I wanted them to be kind. And I wanted them to be happy.

Yesterday, Claire rocked my world.

We went to the just-reopened Nene’s for breakfast. It was a bit chaotic, so they under-poached my eggs and my plate went back to the kitchen just as everyone else chowed down. It was eleven am; I was hungry and grumpy. Claire had a giant mound of home fries.

She took a few onto a small plate for herself, then pushed the rest over: “Here mummy, these are for you.”

Later we drove past UP13. We’d dropped by the night before: Marc had made calamari and squid steaks with an incredible, dense, creamy chocolate veloute.

“I had fun at Marc’s house,” said Claire.

“Me too,” I said. “I like Marc.”

“I like Mummy!” said Claire.

“Thanks!” I said. “I like you too.”

“I like me,” said Claire.

It’s like a bomb going off in your heart. But in a good way.

I read Cintra Wilson’s Colors Insulting to Nature and enjoyed it immensely, until she mentioned Web sites appearing shortly after the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989.

This eight-month anachronism immediately punctured my suspension of disbelief.

I am such a frickin nerd.

J: Julia was so pleased to see Bebe that she tried to crawl over to her! But she went backwards instead!

R (disbelieving): Julia crawled?

J: It was just the commando-style belly-wiggle.

R: She’s four months old!

At that point Jack and Milo turned up with Daisy M. Dog, and Bebe Dog Bane did her best claw-skitter-fluff-tail-and-wyrd-yowl routine. The intruder dog was driven hence!

Later:

R: Claire, do you like Daisy?

C: No.

R: Oh.

C: Ran into the forest, dark.

R: You ran into a forest?

C: No. Belinda.

Back when Jeremy and I were courting, the Australian telecommunications carrier Telstra was phasing out its analogue mobile phone network, so you could buy the service for cheap. The deal was very popular with the feckless young, such as I. There was just one drawback: my first cellphone was the size of a brick. (Ask Jeremy about it some time. And ask him about my first car, the beloved Martika.)

These days the feckless young are younger than ever. This morning, after breakfast:

C: I want a GREAT BIG ENORMOUS… TELEPHONE.

J: Claire, that’s so unhip!

R: You want a LEETLE TINY PHONE, like Ben Stiller had in Zoolander!

I hold my fingers a quarter-inch apart.

R: Leetle tiny telephone!

C: No! I want a GREAT BIG telephone, like THIS!

She holds her hands three inches apart. The room explodes in laughter.