Please note:  this post probably contains more swearing than even my worst cursing posts, but honestly the trotskyites have driven me to it.  

Quesera

Yes I am still on about this and in fact I have been hard pressed to think of anything else all week.  I think it is driving some colleagues and friends bonkers.

A colleague and I had a meet and greet with a client on Friday – you know, where you make small talk and try and appear, well normal. For lawyers.  Well conversation was flagging and my colleague seemed to be struggling so when the client said “do you get down to Canberra much?”  I immediately said, “Well yes, I am going next week.  Hopefully to meet President Obama”.  My colleague jiggled a little bit sort of in embarrassment.  But the client seemed very enthusiastic.  In fact he even said that he had worked with the Clinton team’s advance party when they came to Australia in 1996 so I really felt that good be a good omen.

Lord knows we need it.

These are the people who are fucking going to RUIN Quesera's embrace with President Obama and - TROTS

Initially I thought that crowds were being excluded because of the intense admiration for President Obama and the Secret Service was worried that it might be like Beatle-mania.  But with 40 something liberal women, not teenage girls.  But tonight I read that there are going to be people staging protests outside Parliament House (lord even Julian Assange’s freaking mother is planning to protest outside Parliament House against what exactly is not clear to me, given that her son is still holed up in a Sussex mansion arguing about who is going to comp his legal fees, last I heard).  Honestly.  Fucking TROTS.  Truly they are fucking RUINING this for me.  In fact, I think one of the protest leaders was on the Sydney Uni Students’ Representative Council years ago.  And is still organising protests and boycotts.  Full-time.  Just saying.  (Chip doesn’t see it this way and said “what, he didn’t sell out to big end of town corporate interests.  Like you?”, when I scoffed upon seeing this man on TV at the “Occupy Sydney” protests, waving his placards menacingly at passers-by.)

Anyway, despite the risk that we now may be encountering a hostile crowd of aromatic sandal-wood hippies in our Barack family t-shirts and possibly US flags (if I can locate one between now and then), the party has now grown to include my niece, Fred Ex’s cousin.  She is very excited and even called me last night to ask when I was going to drop over the Barack pop quiz I had compiled for them to complete before we leave.  I sort of said to Fred Ex’s teacher that it would be educational for him, but I don’t think completing a formal quiz is the sort of thing he had in mind.

2004 DNC keynote - Fred Ex was forced to watch this in its entirety - but the WHINING, honestly.

Anyway, he has largely completed it, except for the question “What did Barack Obama study at Columbia?”  He has given up on that one.  But has added quite a bit of detail about the madrassa Barack attended in Indonesia, so god knows what Tea Party website he has found as the source of his “information”.  Anyway, no way are they going to leave Sydney until they have both watched the 2004 Democratic National Convention speech.  And can answer basic questions such as “Where was the Convention held?”  And “what colour was his tie?” (Checking for visual and aural acuity).

I printed out 6 copies of the pop quiz because as I have told them both, “I don’t want shoddy work with nonsensical answers.  And your writing must be perfect”.  Fred Ex has given up writing on the actual pop quiz piece of paper itself, because he says he can’t write without LINES and instead I caught him writing on some paper scrap he had torn out of a book.  So fuck knows how he is going to keep up his pen-pal correspondence with Malia.  Anyway we have agreed tonight that I will reprint the pop quiz.  With lines on it.  Look, I think that’s in everyone’s best interests.

So 2 days out and Erin Brokovitch is now being asked for twice daily updates.  And is supplying me with every piece of media she can find on the itinerary, together with handy hints.  And from what the media is reporting, we can work out where he might be at certain times so we can put together a game plan.

So I have a broad sketch of what is going to happen and that is (1) 9am War Memorial possibly for “brief” (Embassy’s word, not mine) meeting with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott (who hopefully will not have a near aneurism moment and glower at the President if he asks a question that Mr Abbott doesn’t like, like he did some months ago with a Channel 7 reporter) (2) addressing Parliament at 10:15am  (3) public school visit (4) midday US Embassy to meet with embassy staff (5)  wheels-up at 4pm (Australian Eastern Summer time  (AEST) (6) arrival in Darwin 4:30pm (Darwin time) (6pm AEST).

The difficulty with that plan is obvious.  Unless Air Force One is supersonic, there is no way that President Obama can make it from Canberra to Darwin in 2 hours.  It is more like 3.5 hours (according to another colleague. The one who vigorously opposed the extra judicial killing of bin Laden and who used to live in Darwin).

So plainly what is being released through the media is, to some extent, a decoy schedule.  Probably because of the fucking trots.

Meanwhile, I have Googled all the public primary schools around our sketchy itinerary and studied what their particular attributes are.  Researched the type of school President Obama and Prime Minister Gillard attended in Virginia, US, to see if that yields any details (it didn’t).  And I have come up with a short list of about 4 schools.  People keep coming into my office with the lists of Canberra primary schools and maps of Canberra I have printed out – and sort of just hand them to me, shaking their heads.

But yesterday presented a whole new set of problems.  Fred Ex started coughing and claiming he couldn’t go to school, so I took him to the Doctor, just in case.  She rather officiously insisted he have a WHOOPING COUGH swab just to be on the safe side.  And this is the hippies’ fault as well I verily believe, given they won’t have their children fucking IMMUNISED.  I figured I don’t mind him coughing all over me in the car, but as my niece is now coming I have to wait to get the all clear so that we can go.  And the Dr is INSISTING that we return Wednesday morning to get the results as they can’t give them over the phone.  Either that, or Fred Ex is home alone and will have another complaint to file with DOCS [UPDATE:  this morning I cajoled Dr into releasing results over the phone in a pathetic and plaintive wail that if she didn't tell us we would miss our chance to see President Obama.  NEGATIVE.  HURRAH].  Then Fred Ex repeatedly claimed he couldn’t find his Obama t-shirt and sought to lay the blame at the feet of our cleaning lady.  He routinely attempts to frame her for everything:  lost school excursion backpack, lost school sports socks, lost library books.  So each time he returned from his room, coughing, I would send right back in there.  Until finally I resentfully marched him in there so he could assist me, but he kept coughing and asking for water (and I think at one point actually moaned “whooping cough”) but I wasn’t buying it.  And I found HIS Barack t-shirt in about 30 seconds.

But then when I went to find my Obama-girl t-shirt, she TOO had disappeared.  (Truly, she says “Obama-girl”.  She is wonderful and Mariska has a matching one.)

I am now rethinking Fred Ex’s accusations.  I believe that the cleaning lady may well have located my Obama-girl and is now wearing her at Penrith Panther pokies lounge shovelling her winnings into Fred Ex’s school excursion bag.

Me?  I am left with a Commander-in-Chief t-shirt which we ALL know could have been purchased for George W Bush’s 2003 visit.  I am going to have to take along bobble-headed Obama doll, which was one of the most lovely wedding gifts I got. And just generally wave him in the general direction, like “I come in peace”.  And hope that the Secret Service doesn’t think it a cleverly, albeit ironically, disguised IED.

Before Erin notified me of the latest update on Saturday, which included the actual time of school visit, I had already extrapolated that of course President Obama was going to be visiting a school after Parliament and therefore the school had to be somewhere en route from Parliament to US Embassy.  And concluded that of course it was going to be near Yarralumla (which is where the US Embassy is and near where Fred Ex and I used to live AND just down the road from the cake shop that sells the best meat pies in Australia).  And realistically, I think that’s the only real option.  But yet another colleague piped in today with his school forecast and that made me rethink.  Yet again.

Thank god I have Erin.  While she is forwarding me schedules and hints, she has also taken a less lawyerly approach to the construction of my schedule.  She has concluded that road closures will need to be notified in advance to the public.  And has undertaken to tweet the roads authority to see what she can get.  Tonight she came through with ALL road closures and they have some interesting hints.  And I am certainly not revealing what we have both now concluded is  the “chosen” public school.

These people are going to get it in the head with Quesera's bobble-headed Barack if they get between her and President Obama

So I have 2 last resorts: (1) email someone whom I believe is going to be at the formal dinner on Wednesday night – but as I haven’t seen him in a few months, that’s a bit opportunistic, so I am contemplating going through a mutual friend.  (I was actually going through the fantasy conversation with him while Fred Ex and I were driving home the other day: “Would you like to be my date for the State Dinner and possibly meet President Obama?”  Me:  ”Well, I think that would be wonderful”.  Except I was saying it OUT LOUD.  Fred Ex was mystified – “what would be wonderful Mum?”  And then when I told him he just looked wearily out the car window) (2) persuade Chip to start following the fucking trots on Twitter. It seems to me that it is highly likely that they have their sources as well.  And unlike me they intend to publicise it far and wide.  One thing is certain  - if I find out the name of that primary school there is no way I am going to tweet it and possibly have other liberal women lunging at President Obama.