Yesterday after church, we had lunch at this eat place serving good Malaysian food in Forrest Hill/Brentford area. It was pretentiously called Shangri La but the closest this joint came to resembling paradise was the special laksa, which has wonderful yong tau foo in it. We were there with some church people and after lunch, Theresa went with Auntie Hooi while I sent Raymond home. Elysia and I then went to the Glen Waverley library for a while. It was there the first of a series of mishaps took place, which were to make our weekend a lousy one. I had reserved Geoffrey Robertson’s “Tyrannicide Brief” and was going to pick it up. Elysia had however, used my card the previous day and had given the card back not to me but to Theresa. Never mind – we could still use Theresa’s card, which was with Elysia, to check out the book. We then went home and on the way home, we discussed what we would do when we reached home. It was about 3.30pm only and we had more than a couple of hours to go before it got dark, so I suggested we either do some gardening together or go for a walk in the park. We thought also of buying a basketball to go and play in her school yard, provided the advertised special for basketballs was on. It wasn’t, so we decided to work the garden. I suggested she walked around the block while I mow the lawn, and she worked herself into a bit of an excitement, probably happy she was getting some physical activity in and pleasing me while at it. We changed our clothes and I started mowing the lawn and she went for her walk. She was all excited when she came back, I was still doing the garden, and we also had a good chit chat with Therese, the elderly neighbour just across the road. So it was all turning out to be a pretty good afternoon. I continued with the mowing and Elysia went into the house. Two minutes later Elysia stood in front of me and made a door opening motion with her hands. She had closed the house door and locked ourselves out. She asked if I had the keys, probably knowing what she had done. I immediately good hot under the collar, walked around the house looking for any unlocked window, even considered climbing in through the roof. Of course the only real option for us was to get a locksmith, something I didn’t want to do for the obvious reason or avoiding costs. In the end we had to – went to another neighbour’s house (Yan’s) and called a locksmith. Cost us $100 and I didn’t have enough cash. I drove to the nearest ATM machine and before I knew it, was desperately looking at a screen saying I had entered a wrong PIN. After the third time the card was retained and I was wondering what had happened when I then realised I had fed my credit card into the ATM machine instead of my ATM card. So I lost a hundred bucks and my credit card. Hmmm… went home, put away the mower, cleaned up the garden and just sat on my front steps and opened a cold one. I needed this. Elysia came home from the Yan’s, sat with me, and we had a chat. Really. It was just a quiet chat. I didn’t want her earlier enthusiasm to be dampened by a common but costly mistake. I told Theresa this morning, of how tricky it can be for a parent to strike the balance between constantly teaching our children but not doing it so much or in ways which would discourage them or make them feel inadequate. Elysia is a bright and intelligent girl who occasionally does juvenile things, because she is one! We need to build her up and we need loads of wisdom and patience, to do it well. Anyway the lost credit card wasn’t the last mishap for the day. I put a clear iron mark on my pants when I did the ironing in the evening, capping off a wonderful weekend… and it was Father’s Day here in Melbourne yesterday…