My Own Clean Up Australia Day

Yesterday was Clean Up Australia Day. Last year Yu-Jin and I went to the foreshore in South Perth and helped clean up and we have certificates to prove it. It was fun and Yu-Jin tried really hard to beat me.

This year I had my own clean up Australia Day - I had a garage sale. It cost this Frugal Bastard $29.15 to advertise in The Sunday Times for just such a sale. Pretty much all of the baby gear we had was for sale - pram, stroller, baby car seat, ride on fire engine, rocker, bathtub and a ride in push car. I did leave a few things until the last moment. Once I realised that I only had a fifty dollar note I decided to get some change from the deli. That meant purchasing a couple of mini pizzas and some ballons. When I got home I created a sign and put it out the front. My friend Bill came to help with the sale.

I advertised the sale from 9-12 and had two women pop in just before 9. One woman bought the push car and that was it for the morning. I think only two people came because of the ad in the paper and I had more success from my free sign. The car sold for $20 and so I didn't even recover the costs of my ad! Thank goodness Bill only has a mobile phone and it's too expensive to have a long chat. Otherwise we would have had nothing to talk about for three hours.

Everything had to go back from whence it came. The backyard looks so much cleaner without the bubble car in there.

Miky made chicken soup for lunch after I downloaded a recipe from the Internet. And a damn fine job she did of it. Following lunch Bill, Yu-Jin and I went to Bunnings to check out the concrete slabs you use for paving. Looks like it will cost me $66 to deliver the ones that I want as they will weigh 2200 kgs. Next weekend we are planning to do the paving along the side of the house and out the back. This is going to be backbreaking work. What am I getting myself into?

Lock Up The Kids

At Bunnings Yu-Jin wanted to go on the playground. I thought it was interesting that you locked your kids into the playground enclosure. When they get a little bit older, and wiser, they know that they can't be locked up (if they are under 18 and break the law), but as soon as they are 18 we can lock them up again.

There was a 17 year old recently who lit some fires and a TV station was videoing him and he said that they couldn't show his face because he was 17 and that they would be sued if his identity was revealed before giving them the finger.

Why can't we lock up anybody over 12 and not have to wait until they are 18?