Australia

Forgive me for not posting in a while.

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‘I’ve been a bit, well, distracted.’

I was on the phone with a friend the other day (remember phone calls? remember friends?) when she said, “Gosh, you haven’t posted a story in a while!” Which is how I knew that A) She was, in fact, a friend, and a very good one at that, and B) that gosh, I haven’t posted a story in a while.

Well, I have a very good excuse. I mean, besides the fact that Dude Man and I were in Australia for five weeks. (That’s right, folks — five weeks. Four in Australia, plus one in Tasmania.)

Five weeks, people. Five weeks. But we sure covered a lot of ground. (And air)

My excuse? His name is Alexander Whitmore Leakos, and he was born on October 5, when we were roaming Little Desert National Park somewhere on the Southern half of the Australian continent. The New Parents were in San Francisco. (In spite of the time difference — it was 5:00 AM for us and noon the previous day for them — we were able to participate in a very satisfying Facetime call.)

The photo that greeted us at 5 AM

Needless to say, Dude Man and I are thrilled beyond measure to be grandparents. As I told The Child, “Now I can die; I have fulfilled my biological imperative. My genetic material (such as it is) has been passed on.”

My genetic material (or some of it, anyway) made flesh (fresh flesh, at that)

Of course, there isn’t much of my genetic material that’s discernible in this tiny person. This grandkid (shorthand for whom is to be GK) bears an uncanny resemblance to his father. It’s like someone took the SIL and put him in the dryer–on high.

I rest my case. All that baby needs is a teensy little beard

But who knows? Maybe he’s inherited my sparkling wit and/or engagingly hilarious personality. Heaven knows I’m glad he did not get my Swedish Head. (In case you don’t have one, and/or don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, read “What’s that in the road — a head?”.)

Baby doing his Thinker Thing. Note nicely-shaped noggin

Anyway. One of the first things The Child did (after our Facetime, that is) is invite us to join a shared photo album, where she’s been posting photos of our little GK practically every day. I’ll shut up and share a few:

Baby meets Grampa Wayne

Baby meets Uncle Scott (make that great-uncle) and Susan the Great

Baby meets Halloween. We weren’t there for this, but they still had the Mama, Papa and Baby Bear costumes

And one of the first things we did after we got back from Australia — well, actually it was the first thing we did — was visit all three of them in San Francisco. Quite literally it was the first thing. We got on a plane in Hobart, Tasmania, at 6:00 AM, then flew 14-some hours to SF, landing at 6:30 AM and Lyfting our way to their Haight-Ashbury pad in short order.

Baby goes out to dinner

More about our visit — oh, and some stuff about Australia too — when I can catch my breath. And when I can stop scrolling through that shared album.

Can’t resist sharing just this one more. Till next time!

Amagansett, New York. November 2024

Crocodile Dumdee

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‘What you don’t know can hurt you.’

A couple of years after The Dude and I got married, we took a trip to Australia. This was a very long time ago. So long ago that when I googled ‘Crocodile Dundee’ after coming up with that groaner of a title, I found out the movie came out after we took our trip. So we weren’t familiar with lines like ‘That’s not a knife…this is a knife’, much less with the fact that practically everything in Australia can pretty much kill you.

Speaking of my punsterific headline, let me say right off the bat that I don’t mean to pick on The Dudeman. It’s just that the photo of him in his Crocodile hat looks, well, more ‘DundeeLike’ than mine.

Me, sporting my Crocodile Dundee (er, ‘Dumdee’) hat. And not much else. I’m perched by the pool that had all the snakes in it, soon to be described in horrifyingly hissy detail

Because, let’s face it. We were both pretty dumb on this trip. Granted, this was long before TripAdvisor or (probably) even the internet itself. (Not sure; I’ll have to ask Al Gore.)

At any rate, we were young, we were naive, and we were game for pretty much anything. We were also pretty poor, but I had oodles of frequent flier miles from all my work-related plane-hopping for Ogilvy. (See ‘Around the World in 80 Shoots’) So we cashed ’em in and flew Qantas to Cairns. Where, before we could even grab a rental car, we were ourselves grabbed — right there in the terminal — by a couple of guys who said “Hey, wanna go diving on the Great Barrier Reef? Come with us!” (Use your imagination for the Australian accents.)

No, we didn’t buy the Brooklyn Bridge. But yes, we did hop right on this dive boat

Nope, we were not certified divers. In fact, I had never even tried diving before. But we strapped on that gear and dove right in. There are still marks from my fingernails etched into that boat’s wooden sides. Continue reading