Anyway, yesterday we dropped of Elf and Michael (we would have had to pay whether he attended family day care or not, so we let him go as he really loves it). Then we went to see Jill who does our tax each year.
While Jill depreciated and so on, and I sat like a stunned carp as usual, Marcus did a beautiful series of drawings of bugs. After Jill somehow wrestled my tax bill to half what I thought it would be, we went back up to the car.
We had parked on the 6th floor of the car park, so after we dropped off our stuff we went up a couple of floors to the top storey, and looked at the view from each corner. For some reason, only the parts of city buildings that are visible from ground level are maintained. A building may be surrounded by vantage points for viewing its little weatherboard rooftop shack, but do they put money into painting the shack and fixing its broken windows, or restyling the ground floor? Guess.
When we got home we scanned Marcus's bug drawings and emailed them to everyone. With dial-up it was taking a long time to send, so we left the computer doing its thing and went exploring.
We went for a walk up the bed of the Hobart Rivulet. It was a great thing to do with just Marcus - I tried it with both boys a few weeks back and it was hair-raising and awkward. I was happy for Marcus to trust his own instincts and forge ahead. Sometimes we tried to step from stone to stone, and sometimes we just walked with water swirling around our boots. Occasionally we would stop, sit on an "island" and pour the water out.
We got as far as the brewery, then the course was too narrow, and the banks were too overgrown. One day we might try another stretch a bit higher up.
The rivulet was actually pretty yucky. There were plastic bags and lolly wrappers and so on. The part we were in runs through the Cascade Gardens, so picnic and barbecue rubbish is always drifting into the water. There was a lot of slimy mud.
We squelched home, quickly changed out of soggy stuff, and went to pick up Michael a little early. It was still really warm so we went down to Kingston Beach. I dug a shallow hole in the sand for each boy - Marcus needed to fetch and carry water to fill his (after which it would all drain away), while Michael's filled with the tide. Michael was very happy just jumping in and out of his pond. Marcus was happy running up and down with completely futile urgency. It was all very satisfactory.
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