If We Could Have a Holiday...

Actually, we can!

As of 5.00pm this afternoon, I'm on holidays! For a whole week.

Tomorrow night, Imogen, Toby and I fly out for Perth, where we'll spend the week with our respective families.

The reason for this little jaunt is that my sister, Sue, who lives in Texas with her family, is out visiting for a few weeks with her two little girls, so it's a great opportunity to get all the kids in the family together in the one place with some of their grandparents. They arrived in Perth yesterday, after a marathon 28ish hours on planes, all the way from Houstin to Perth, via L.A and Sydney. It makes tomorrow night's flight for us look like a doddle. (Especially when you consider that Sue did the trip solo, travelling with a 3 year old and a 1 year old and no sedatives.)

It's one of the difficult things about this modern world, actually - my poor parents have three grandkids at present - two who live in the USA and one in Canberra. Actually, in part this is the nature of life in Perth - it's one of the most lovely places in the whole world, but also one of the most isolated, and as a result, young people tend to move away from it, especially when they're building careers and /or families which can often take them to far-flung corners of the world. Or Canberra. And as much as I love our life here in the nation's capital, especially during election season, I do regularly regret the fact that my folks don't get regular 'Toby time'. If nothing else, we could use the free babysitting.

Luckily, though, there's always skype, and so Toby does at least get to see and talk to Grandma Margie and Poppa Dave (they picked the names, not me) regularly. And my mother has become an absolute master of the "Skype Toddler Game" - the things she can come up with to play across a computer link have to be seen to be believed.

So it'll be a lovely week. We've got my youngest niece's Christening, the booklaunch for Daywards, a trip to the zoo, and just a lot of general hanging out and being a family to look forward to.

And, of course, blogging. (Now that Trish has put the pressure on for me to see this thing through properly.... ;)

I'm also going to fire a handgun. But more about that next week.

In any case, we're just about ready to go. This afternoon I downloaded an entire series of 'The Wiggles' onto my iPad, which I'm hoping will help all of us get through the flight. (We generally enforce a 'no screens' rule with Toby, so this should be a real treat. Or at least enough to stop him trying to climb onto the other passengers. Fingers crossed.)

So wish us luck. I won't be blogging tomorrow - screen free and intracontinental saturday and all that - but I'll shoot a few posts in from Perth.

Cheers, everyone.

Screen free saturdays

Now, I'm certain that the astute among you a have noticed that already, just three days into July, and I've already managed to break my commitment to post something here every day. This is because I forgot to factor in screen free Saturdays. This is something that Min and I have been doing (well, attempting - with various degrees of success), for the last month or so. Simply put, we try, on Saturdays, not to use any screens. That means no computers, no iPhones, no television, and this week - to my horror - no brand new iPad. (Alright, I'll admit right now that I did cheat a couple of times yesterday, and steal a few quick moments with my new toy while Toby was asleep, but for the most part I did okay)

We got the idea from hearing Susan Maushart talking about her new book at the Sydney writers festival in May. She and her family went "off the grid" for six months, and this got us talking about the degree to which various forms of screen time have imposed themselves, by degrees, upon our day to day lives. Those of you who follow this blog will know that, for some members of this family, at least, our relationship with screens - of various types - is really something close to an obsession. Especially since someone introduced me to the products of the evil empire that is Apple Corporation. And so I'll admit that I came to the notion of screen free Saturdays with just a little trepidation.

But you know something? I really like them. Saturdays have become my excuse not to check my email, and in doing so to completely get all work-related matters out of my head for a while. They've re acquainted me with the pleasures of working in the garden and around the house. Of taking the dog out for exercise. Of board games. Of reading for pleasure, rather than work. It means that we do stuff together as a family. Not that we didn't before, you understand, but it just takes one major distraction and timesink out of our days.

Screen Free Saturdays have also driven home to me the degree to which this new, ultra connected age in which we find ourselves (and I know that if my grandkids ever read that last sentence, they're going to piss themselves laughing) imposes an odd, subconscious, sense of obligation upon us, just as much as it connects us. The first time we did screen free saturday, I felt guilty for not checking my email at least a couple of times. What if one of my students had a question about something? What if somebody had emailled me with an urgent query about an upcoming event?

But, of course, when I did get to my email on Sunday morning, neither event had occured. And if they had, it wouldn't have mattered. It was all in my head, and that's - I think - the most useful aspect of screen free Saturdays for me; they remind me that I don't need to be connected all the time. At least, not to the rest of the world. And in not being connected to the rest of the world, I get time to work on my connections with my nearest and dearest, which is far more important. No offence intended.

So while I'll have to hold my hand up and plead guilty-as-charged over my lapse yesterday, I won't be apologising for it. Yesterday we took Toby and Chelsea to the local dog park for a run around. We went to the farmer's markets and did our shopping for the week. We did some cooking. We did a little work around the house and in the garden. All in all, it was a good, screen free day.

Of course, it has to be Saturdays, because tonight is "Masterchef" night.

And, after all, you have to have priorities ;)