Every chick needs a shed

We purchased a garden shed from Bunnings, one of those kit thingamies. We figured, between us we have an Honours Degree in Biochemistry and an Honours Degree in Textile Design – so we should be able to put up a shed!
Have you ever read about those experiments that were done where the corpus callosum in the brain has been severed? It is radical surgery for people who suffer severe epilepsy and other seizer type afflictions. It severs the connection between the left and right side of the brain. The people who have had this surgery suffer some weird consequences, almost split personality type symptoms. Giving them a written question and having them respond in writing gives a totally different answer than if you ask them the same question and they respond verbally. One brain, two totally different ways of thinking.
I am, of course, almost completely left brained. The husband, I think, doesn't actually have a functioning left brain at all. Sometimes we have communication breakdowns of momentous proportions, simply because I can't understand what on earth he is trying to say. For example, the other day we were driving to the market and I asked which way at the roundabout, he said "you go szhut, szhut" waving his hand in the air. From this I was supposed to understand that I needed to go into the roundabout and take the second left. Frustrating to say the least.
So I armed myself with the instructions that were at times vague and other times downright contradictory, the husband wielded the screwdriver and two days later we have a functioning shed. At one point the neighbour, probably sick of listening to the continuous flow of profanities, leaned over the fence and handed us his cordless drill. This sped things up immensely. Now, it's not that we don't own a drill – I have a cordless one that can barely put a screw into pre-drilled plasterboard (a chick's drill) and the husband has an electric one that will rip your arm out of it's socket (a bloke's drill). He refused to use the drill initially because it was "too much trouble to muck around with extension cords". He also refused to let me square anything as we went, exclaiming "it'll square itself as we go". I was, of course, going nuts. It is a fundamental part of my nature to read instructions, measure and double check everything as I go. He is more inclined to wing it. Fortunately, after the initial teeth grinding and swearing we managed to see the funny side of what we were doing and by the end of it all were even managing to work together. So as far as I am concerned our marriage has passed one of the more trying tests – prefab kits. Read more!

The Husband

My husband does social type work, looking after the disenfranchised youth of Blandberra. The other day one of his regular clients, a rather colourful person, arrived at the service and demanded to know "is it fucken' true what they say about you?". My husband, not being one to ever admit ignorance shouted back "FUCK YEAH!". The young person responded "yeah, I fucken' thought so!" and promptly left. My husband is now left wondering who "they" are and what he has just admitted to. The array of crimes or personality traits to choose from are mind boggling. The punishment for being a smart arse.
One of his favourite jokes is…what do you call a youth worker who wears a full length leather coat and drives a Mercedes? A drug dealer. Hee Hee. (He's not, by the way. He looks very cute in his leather coat and the Mercedes is 33 years old).
He does an incredible job, deals with traumatized young people all day, five days a week, looks after them, solves problems. Then comes home to a basket case wife and a demented four year old and continues to take care of us.
Back in the olden days when I worked for a living I would be having a bad day at work because I'd misplaced a data file. He would ring, listen to my ranting and moaning. Eventually I would get around to asking how his day was going and he would tell me about a teenager who he just had to have admitted to the psych ward, or a girl who wanted an abortion because she had been gang raped. I would be instantly humbled; it is so easy to become self absorbed, to think your problems are earth shattering. More often than not they are trivial and not really worth getting so upset over.
At the end of my first year at uni, a year of drinking, drugging and shagging and not very much study I was faced with the prospect of failing. I was scared, upset, mad at myself and worried about disappointing my family. One of my housemates gave me a book of writings by Krishnamurti. I read it cover to cover in a single sitting. It wasn't earth shattering revelations or the secret to the meaning of life – just a reminder that life goes on regardless. It actually didn't matter if I failed Uni or if my local chemist stopped stocking my favourite lipstick colour – life goes on. I stopped worrying. I didn't fail, not very badly anyway and I was able to sit supplementary exams over the summer. I did fail physics, getting a measly 38 to be exact, so I needed to make up a subject. I ended up doing English Lit, quite an unusual thing for a science student to do, in fact the admin computer had to be adjusted to accept my enrolment. But it was brilliant and probably one of the better things I ever did academically. It never paid any bills, like biochemistry ended up doing, but it got a few of the cobwebs out of the right side of my brain, made me grow a few creative neurons. It was the silver lining. What was the point of this rant? Oh yeah, my husband is ace. Read more!

The Bliss of Motherhood

A day like Friday (previous post), in which the girl puts me on trial, wears me out. Days like that leave me feeling physically exhausted and emotionally gutted. I am constantly wracked with guilt over the fact that I am not a "natural" mother. I find the whole business hard work. I always considered myself a very maternal person, there was not a stray animal or human that I have ever come across that I haven't rescued, befriended or eventually slept with. I look after people; I am a nurturer by nature. I predicted that this nurturing instinct would be ten fold for a child I had borne. Not so.
Don't get me wrong – from the minute the girl was born my protective instinct was fierce. When she was a few days old and I was still in intense pain from the damage I had sustained during her birth I leapt across a room to rescue her when she did her first mega spew. I was actually unable to move without an extraordinary amount of pain and normal activity was performed very slowly and carefully. But the instant I saw her spew I was up and across the room and had her in my arms (ripped from the arms of another) and was tending to her in less than two seconds. It was only later when I realized my sudden burst of activity had burst something else and I was bleeding more heavily. I guess that story is to illustrate that from the beginning I was protector and carer extraordinaire, but I felt no love. I actually didn't feel any connection to her at all. I was waiting for her real mother to show up on the doorstep and take her back. There was certainly no correlation between the screaming, demanding baby in my arms to the little friend I had carried and loved passionately for 9 months. This disconnected feeling remained, interestingly enough, until I chucked her father out of my home. From that point my relationship with her on an emotional level began. She was two years old.
From that time I started to relax, grew to love her and started to allow myself to believe that she loved me. I still carry an enormous amount of guilt over the fact that I didn't actually love her for a long time. When I hear about women who fall in love with their babies the instant they see them I feel a mixture of disbelief, confusion and jealousy. These days I am passionately and blindly in love with my daughter. She is the most precious and wonderful thing in my life. But still I struggle. I just don't like playing Barbies and colouring in and playing hide and seek (which I am very good at – she never finds me even though I always hide in the shower). I have to force myself and feel hypocritical and fake the whole time. So on days when she really puts me to the test, takes all of my patience and tolerance and kicks the shit out of them, I feel an emotional and physical exhaustion that overwhelms me.
The husband made me stay in bed for most of Saturday. He has gaffa taped a TV and DVD player to the rail over the foot of our bed and I watched my newest DVD: Frederick Mitterrand's version of Madam Butterfly. It is a masterpiece, but in hindsight probably not the best thing to watch given my psychological state as I howled for ages. Cathartic perhaps.
I ran away from home for three hours on Sunday and today am feeling much better. It is almost 4pm and the girl and I have not had a single argument. We are pottering about, doing the laundry (first rain free day in weeks), trying to fix up her room which is in constant chaos and waiting for an electrician to come and fix the mess I made trying to wire in our new chandeliers. Whoops. Read more!

An outing

Yesterday I took my little girl to the zoo. There was nothing there but a dog. It was a Shi tzu. Read more!

Damned kid

I should have known it was going to be a bad day when I backed out of the driveway this morning and knocked over the recycle bin. The recycling only gets collected every two weeks here so it was full to the brim with wine bottles. As I picked them all up out of the gutter I managed to cut my finger. At kinder I was sitting on the floor with the girl doing jigsaw puzzles, as is the routine, when we noticed my finger was bleeding. I asked her to get me a tissue, instead she ran to the teacher with the dramatic story of her mother's injury and bleeding finger. So we had to go through the whole band-aid thing.
Once I got home I ran through the list of things I had to do – gym, grocery shopping, fix the heater in the car, put the training wheels on the girls bike. The husband had snored all night long and no amount of prodding, shaking or yelling could rouse him so I had ended up on the couch. Needless to say, I had slept badly and I was very tired. The husband looked at me and told me to go back to bed and get some sleep, which I grateful did after setting the alarm on my mobile. At 12:30 the husband rang to wake me, thankfully, otherwise after having slept through the alarm I most likely would have slept through kinder pick up time.
Now I had promised the girl that if she made it through this week without night-time nappies and without wetting the bed I would buy her a Prince Eric doll ( the ponce from little mermaid). This is her second week without night nappies and she has done brilliantly. She did wet the bed on Monday night, but she was mortified and denied doing it. I asked her why I had changed the sheets and her pyjamas in the middle of the night if she hadn't wet the bed and she insisted that I just did it without cause. I realized she was so desperate for the damn doll I let that one go. She has been really good for the rest of the week – even getting up of her own accord to go to the toilet – so I am very proud. And I think she had earned the doll. So when I picked her up from kinder we headed out to the big shopping centre where Target is as I figured that I needed new gym gear and she needed a doll and it was the most likely place to get both.
We entered the shopping centre through Myer, the toy department, which happened to be having a 25% off sale. The desired doll was sourced (actually the prince from sleeping beauty, but for now I can get away with that sort of thing since Disney princes are fairly generic and she can't read) and purchased. We then headed for a 'chino – mine a large and hers minus coffee. She wanted a large 'chino so I actually ordered her a small white chocolate. While we were waiting we ripped the prince's box into ten thousand small pieces in an attempt to liberate him from the ludicrous amount of packaging that they insist on putting children's toys in these days. By the time the coffees arrived the prince was parading up and down the table. Ten second later three quarters of the hot chocolate was all over the table, the child and the floor. This was cleaned up and ten seconds later the remaining drink was following the previous. So here I am, all I want is a coffee – my first for the day at 1:30pm – I am tired, I've got my period and my finger hurts. I started getting cranky.
"Do you want another drink?"
"NO! I didn't like it!!" (How do you know? Did some of it actually fall in your mouth??)
"Well then can we sit while I drink mine?"
"OK".
The prince, meanwhile, continues to parade around the table, eventually finding the wall, the chair and the chair of the girl (young woman) sitting at the next table…
"Stop it. Leave that girl alone. Turn around. Sit on your bottom. Now wait while I finish my coffee".
Ten seconds later…
"Get back in your chair".
Five seconds..
"Get the prince out of the puddle of milk".
"Clean him with the serviette".
"BUT THEY'RE ALL WEEEEET!!!"
I get more serviettes.
Five seconds…
"Pick up the princes crown off the floor".
Ten seconds..
"Get back in your chair".
Ten seconds..
"I'll get it".
"I said I'll get it, get back in your chair, sit on your bottom".
Fifteen seconds…
"If you drop his crown again I'm not coming back for it".
Ten seconds..
"Get back in your chair".
"Can I finish my coffee?"
"OK, let's get out of here."
The staff (and other customers) at the café breath an audible sigh of relief as we leave.
I attempt to get to Target….
"Stay with me".
Ten seconds…
"STAY with me".
This goes on for several minutes. Our progress is hindered by the child being distracted by every single thing she sees and wandering off and me having to chase her and convince her to come with me. We eventually reach Target. Out the front they have a sale table with black chandeliers on sale for $18.43. I ring the husband, discuss it, agree to get three. Find a trolley, load it up with chandeliers. All the while retrieving the child from various places. I attempt to shop for gym gear. After a few minutes of arguing and nagging at the child I give up and struggle with the stupid trolley to the checkout. At one point the child looked at me and said "Is that trolley giving you the shits mummy?". I agreed and laughed. It's not ALL bad.
On the way back through the shopping centre we go past a shop that is selling Le Creuset saucepans for 50% off. I recently paid off my credit card. I decided I deserved it, went in and bought a HUGE pot for $200. All the while running in and out of the shop, between signing sales dockets and such, trying to get the child to stand with the trolley at the front of the shop. After her almost knocking over their window display and ramming someone with the trolley I had my saucepan and get her out of there and into the car.
We then went to Bunnings where I shoved her in the playground and relaxed for five minutes.
On the way home we stopped at one of the local schools to pick up enrollment forms. Once we were in the school building she decided she was scared and started making a fuss while I'm trying to explain what year we are applying for – I'm still not quite sure about terminology in this state, I think they may call prep kinder. I dunno.
Then on the way back to the car she cried she was cold, so as soon as we got to the car she of course buggered off up a hill.
Finally we needed to go to the local supermarket to get a few things for dinner. She wouldn't get out of the car. I had to yell and threaten and behave like a psychopath to get her to come with me into the shop. She was vaguely helpful in the supermarket and even helped me find the chillies. At the checkout, however, they have the ice cream freezer so of course she wanted an ice cream. I refused - not after the afternoon's behaviour. She screamed while I was paying for my groceries and screamed all the way home.
By the time the husband got home I was almost ready for a straight jacket.
I acknowledge my mistakes: the doll should not have been purchased until we were leaving the shopping centre, that way it could have been used as a bargaining tool. Also, I shouldn't have gone back to bed, I should have sucked up my tiredness and gone out, done what I needed to do and left the afternoon clear to devote to the child. I should also have brought in the washing that has been on the line for a week before the rain that is currently pelting down commenced.
The heater in the car is still not working, the bike still doesn't have training wheels (but it's raining so it doesn't matter) but the girl is asleep, no night nappy, Ariel and Prince Eric are lying in the bath together (nude) and the husband has given me enough wine to help me calm down and relax.
Does anybody ever get the hang of this parenting gig? Just as I seem to have one type of behaviour under control a new one appears. Before I know it I'll be dealing with bras and periods and boys and drugs and booze and contraception. For now, Barbies and tantrums are enough.
When I put her to bed tonight she cuddled me, told me she loved me, kissed me on the cheek, cuddled me again, and made all of today's dramas fade into nothing. Read more!

Indulge me

Cute things my kid does....

Yesterday at the park we were playing hide and seek, she jumped out from behind a tree and yelled "you'll never find me" then jumped back again.

Today in the supermarket carpark a man said to me "that's a lovely car you have, ma'm". My little girl, all pink and golden ringlett 4 year old cuteness looks at him and says "it's a SEXY car!". Read more!

Career vs Motherhood

My life as a house wife…
Yesterday I got up at 7am, switched the telly to ABC kids, made a peanut butter sandwich and went back to bed. At 8:20am the husband told me (rather forcefully) that I should get up NOW and get my kid organized. I did. I got her to pre-school dressed, hair brushed, clean teeth and face, lunch made and totally organized. I however, walked in the gate (in my track pants and polar fleece jacket) and realized I hadn't brushed my hair. Got the kid settled and came home again.
Over breakfast, listening to Cat Stevens who is banned in this household, I decided what to do for dinner. I packed my bag and headed off to the gym.
10 minutes on the Stairmaster and 20 minutes on the cross trainer and I figured I had done my penance for the previous day.
Then I went and got my eyebrows done, then had a coffee. Luxury.
Came home, had my lunch – left over chicken tom yum – then went and got the little kid from preschool. She reprimanded me for being late (almost 2 minutes!!) and we went home and watched half of The Princess Bride.
I adore the fact that she likes Princess Bride, along with The Addams Family (old and new) and Edward Scissor Hands. For this I can forgive the Barbie as Repunzal and Little Mermaid faff I am forced to endure.
Just as Buttercup and Wesley headed into the Fire Swamp the little kid and I headed off to collect the stepson from school. We deposited him at music school and then went to The Warehouse (looking for a mat for the laundry, didn't find one) and High Country Meats where I mistakenly purchased a kilo of sirloin. I thought that at $10 a kilo it was a bargain. It turned out to be rubbish – very grisly and fatty. You get what you pay for.
Collected the stepson and headed home. Did some housework while the little kid trashed her room and the big kid watched telly.
I cooked dinner for the little kid and got her fed and into the bath. Cleaned her room while she was in the bath so she would have a bed to sleep in – she complained she wanted to sleep on the floor. Finally got her dry, pygamad, storied and tucked in.
The husband arrived home and took the big kid to Tai Kwando (he's on his red belt now – the little thug) and I started preparing the grown-ups dinner.
I wanted to do mash potato with parmesan, rocket and semi-drieds to have with our steak and red wine jus. I was informed that it was too fancy and just do plain mash and veg and no sauce for the steak. Which I did, albeit with a certain amount of resentful teeth grinding, and I made a creamy mushroom sauce for the steak to spite them.
Dinner was eaten, TV watched and the kitchen cleaned. I burned a couple of Velvet Acid Christ cd's for the husband, who is going through an electronica phase at the moment, and at about midnight fell into bed.
So my days go by. Today preschool is cancelled due to the teacher being ill so my morning gym class didn't happen. We are about to head to the supermarket to buy ingredients to make biscuits to take with us to our play date this afternoon.
Do I miss working? When I reflect on my previous life I am in awe of how I coped with working full time, parenting and juggling a social life and a long distance relationship. I was constantly stressed, tired and run down. I perpetually had cold sores and headaches. My house was a disaster, I ate badly and rarely exercised. The kid was always well cared for, always had clean clothes and good food and ample attention, but there was rarely enough care left for myself. I guess the answer to that question is I wasn't coping and it was probably only a matter of time before I fell apart.
Prior to giving birth I had always been totally independent and self-sufficient. I could cope with anything and was more than competent with anything I decided to do, whether it be making croissants from scratch or cleaning out the car's carburettor. I expected to deal with motherhood in the same efficient, competent manner. The problem is that motherhood isn't a task like fixing the car. There is no workshop manual to consult. It is an emotional, physical and psychological challenge with almost no discernable rewards for quite some time. It's hard work, harder than anyone who hasn't done it can imagine and impossible to describe accurately. Previously I was so tired and stressed that when the rewards did come – babies' first smile, her little arms reaching for me – I couldn't see them. Now when my little girl climbs onto my lap and we snuggle up to watch a movie I can relax and enjoy it. I don't have to be worried about washing or cleaning because there is time for that later. And if I run out of time my husband will pick up the slack. I have the luxury of being able to enjoy time with her. It's far from utopia; when she is lying on the floor in the supermarket screaming I would happily swap her for a biacore, but only briefly. The shopping centre dramas are usually forgotten the instant we are back in the car and she starts singing "my mummy wears black and her hair is black and white but her favourite colour is red.."
So my days are filled with mundane, seemingly trivial things. But all of these things add up to a constantly strengthening relationship with my daughter and a sense of self worth and achievement that is worth more than journal articles or pay rises. Read more!