Bringing Up Baby

Already?

2008-08-08T15:14:00.000+10:00

I thought that I was safe from this feeling for at least another nine or ten years. But no, it seems that I was wrong, and that heartache is mine already.

Last Sunday I went to the Sunday evening service at church. Now in the mornings Sweetpea goes to Sunday School and I go to the worship service, so the idea of having her sitting with me at the night service was one that I was actually looking forward to. All the way to church Sweetpea was chattering away in the back seat about how her Sunday school teacher is her best friend, and would she be there tonight? Obviously I had no idea and couldn’t answer her, so there was great rejoicing when she saw Rosita in the main hall before church started. There was numerous cuddles and telling Rosita what we had done during the day and then the question that felled me.

“Can I sit with you?”

Such an innocent question. I laughed, because I didn't really expect Sweetpea to want to sit with Rosita if I went to another area of the church to sit. I honestly thought that she would follow me (after a moment’s hesitation of course) and sit with me. I hate sitting in the crowded part of the church, I like to sit apart. Not because I don’t like people, but because I suffer dreadful claustrophobia and cannot stand the idea of being trapped. Heaven knows I've tried to sit with other people to try and make friends, but the panic rises in me in every growing waves and I cant breath, the world swims before my eyes and I end up biting my bottom lip until it bleeds in an effort to cope with my discomfort, and I hear absolutely nothing of the service. I thought that Sweetpea would follow me to the safety of my back row where I can escape if I need to and be happy. I was wrong. Sweetpea happily tripped after Rosita without giving me so much as a backward glance.

I spent the first ten minutes of the service feeling the hot salty sting in my eyes as I came to the realisation that my three and a half year old child would rather sit with her Sunday school teacher than me. That she is already exerting her independence. I felt ridiculous to be fighting back the tears... but there I was, none the less, begging God to stop me from crying, because I didn't want to make a scene or have anyone notice that I was crying. My biggest fear if someone had seen me cry was what would I say to their questioning? “My daughter *sniff* loves her Sunday school teacher *snuffle* more than me... boo-hoo-hooooooooooo!”? But I can’t tell you how it ripped my heart out to watch her talking with Rosita, swaying with the music and then cuddling into her during the sermon.

At one point Rosita sent Sweetpea to me and my heart soared to the heavens. Thoughts raced through my head as she ran along the back walkway to my open arms - she did love me, she missed me and wanted to sit with me after all. No. She needed to go to the toilet. And after taking her, she did not want to sit with me again. She sobbed when I tried to take her to my seat. Her little face scrunched up in a ball of grief and her eyes spilt tears of frustration. So with a heavy heart, I sent her off to go and sit with Rosita once again.

I have always known that one day she would spread her wings and fly. I've always known that if I do my job well, she will grow up confident in her abilities and want to fly the nest and it will be a sign of a job well done if she leaves me to go and forge relationships on her own terms. I just didn't expect it so soon.

First Embroidery Lesson

2008-06-30T15:38:00.003+10:00

In recent months Sweetpea has seen me stitching away with more passion than I have had for a few years. Actually I just cant imagine being able to stitch before a new child hits about the age of two and a half... it just seems too daunting to try and get all the needles and threads set up and then have to shove it out of the way to get up and attend to a crying child.

I digress. I've been getting back into my embroidery and Sweetpea often sits next to me and watches her TV shows and we chat and relax. I never really thought she was taking it in, but a few weeks ago I casually suggested when Sweetpea was older (thinking when she was five or six years of age) that I would teach her to embroider with me if she wanted. Her attitude was one of eager happiness.

So on Saturday, having had a quiet day (by my life standards) I thought I would ask if she wanted to have a go (what on earth was I thinking?) and boy oh boy did she respond positively. I cut out a piece of calico and threaded the largest needle I had with six strands of embroidery cotton, we sat down and blow me down if the child didn't sit there for 40 minutes concentrating, getting each stitch just right. I wish I could upload the video of her sitting there, legs crossed on the bed, staring intently at her work, and then asking if she had stitched a spider. Sure, why not I said,to which I was rewarded with a rendition of incy wincy spider. Pure joy I tell you, pure joy.

And after the hard work of embroidering was finished, Sweetpea followed me around the house, thanking me repeatedly;

"Thank you Mummah, thank you! Thank you for embroiderme."

I cannot believe that my three year old daughter is sewing, with real needles and thread. I always have suspected she was gifted, but now I know for sure!

So, So Much More....

2008-06-17T20:42:00.001+10:00

Whoever coined the phrase that “speech is silver but silence is golden” has probably never had the pleasure of being told by a child that they were loved. Listening to children learn to speak is a wonder, listening to my child learn to speak has been a privilege that has filled my head with memories that I want to cling to forever.

At first there are simple sounds that come out of a child with no rhyme or reason; just exploratory events and discovering the mastery control over the vocal box. Then comes the stage in which the child starts to imitate words that they hear around them. Often this stage is a parent only stage... as in, parents only will ever understand wheat the child is attempting to say, and they often have to act as translators to outsiders. Then comes the stage in which words become much clearer and the real art of communication can begin.

It goes without saying that I often whisper words of affection to Sweetpea, and over time, she has picked up the meaning of these words, and loves to voice them back to me now. I can’t begin to share with you the thrill, the sheer heartache of overwhelming gladness I feel when she wraps her small arms around my neck and says in that voice of hers that is thankfully devoid of saccharine, little girly sweetness,
“Mummah, I love you so, so much.”
And of course, it has been even more special to be able to return her vocal outpouring of love to reply with a river of adoration,
“And I love you so, so much more.”

The other night, as she was falling asleep, she repeated the statement several times. And because I was tired after a long day of being attentive to everyone around me, without thinking too much I simply replied that I loved her too, but still she persevered, until I realised that she was expecting the ‘correct’ answer.

“And I love you so, so much more Sweetpea.”

With the ever so slight hint of a giggle and a contented sigh she curled up in my arms and fell asleep. I'm not sure why God has chosen to bless me with this child, but I am grateful each and every day for her. Sometimes I fear that she will never fully know how much more I love her, but the love I feel for her is more encompassing than I ever imagined possible before I was a parent. I love her so, so much more than I ever thought possible.

Model in the Making

2008-04-10T22:40:00.004+10:00

I think I may have unleashed a monster today.

I don’t know how many times people have left me messages that they want to see photos of Sweetpea, and I know that its been an awful long time since I've put anything up – but believe me, its not for lack of trying. I cant count the number of times I've snuck the camera out of my bag, turned it on behind my back, lined up the shot – only to have Sweetpea scream hysterically at the last minute when she spies the camera out of the corner of her eye and realise that I'm about to – Oh.My.Gawd. – take her picture.I swear that Sweetpea is channelling the Indigenous peoples of this homeland, as she seems to think that having a photo taken is akin to stealing her spirit and she loses the plot each and every time I attempt to take her photo.

And I swear she has supersonic hearing ability. It’s the only explanation I can feasibly come up with to her ability to suss out when a camera is being trained on her. I can turn it on in the kitchen, with the Kenwood mix master going at maximum speed, with the T.V. blaring in the family room, and be attempting a conversation with Driving Miss Daisy, who, having not taken the time to get new batteries for her hearing aides, is pretty well deaf as a door post resulting in me repeating the same sentence five times in a row in steadily rising volume to an effort to get the sentence “weathers good today isn’t it?” or some other piece of importance and still, Sweetpea will know that the camera is whizzing through the air and being aimed in her general direction.

I have a 2 GIG card filled with photos of Sweetpea in various states of avoidance. Hands up in front of her face. Turning her head. Running out of the frame of the photo. Spinning her body around so that I have only her back. And let’s not forget the ever precious “Mummah is torturing me to death” wobble of the bottom lip and welling of tears in the eyes photos. Oh Lord, I could fill a photo album with such photographic misfits. And yet I find myself unable to hit the DELETE button, and for the record, its a very good reason. I want to prove to Sweetpea one day down the track when she is a sullen wretched teenager, who quite rightly believes that the world really is against her, challenges me as to why there is a gap in her photographic history from the age of 2 years 9 months to 3 years 2 months (so far). I will, with great flourish pull out the photos from this time frame and show her that it was HER behaviour and not my sudden lack of parental interest in recording her life that resulted in a complete and utter lack in pictures.

Today the kinder rang to remind me that it was photo day and did I want to bring Sweetpea down? With a pitiful laugh I shared the misery that is my photographic life at the moment, and that I didn’t think that it was worth the effort to dress her up for her to produce professional grade photos of her hands in front of her face, her head swinging away, her body swirling away from the lens or the ever popular crying in front of the camera. I got off the phone to Sweetpea sidling up to me and asking what the conversation was about.

“That was the kinder asking if I wanted your photo taken, but I said no.”
“Yes Mummah, photos. Yeah.”
“Really.....?,” I asked hesitantly, “You wont cry or be silly, you will let someone take your photos?”
“Yeah!” came the innocently pleasurable voice that only a three year old who is about to push her mother over the edge can produce.

The next 20 minutes were spent dressing, combing out hair (and ‘discussing’ which hair clips she should wear – her choice of the big, bold stars with three pink diamantes won over my choice of ribbon spirals) and racing down to the kinder.

“Now, are you sure, you really will let someone take your photo Sweetpea?” I asked for what must have been the umpteenth time.
“Yes Mummah!”

So the photographer comes in – and it was a man, which is not a good start, as Sweetpea isn’t all that fond of men, being that there is a rather large shortage of them in our household and life in general. He perseveres and takes a few shots, but Sweetpea refuses to smile, no matter what tricks the photographer and his assistant pull. They get really worried because there isn’t one usable photo in their minds so far. The very fact that Sweetpea is sitting still and they are capturing a photo image of her at all impresses the bejebbies out of me, so I'm not worried. She has the whole “Princess Di” deal of looking at the photographer through her eyelashes down pat; scarily. But in the end, sensing the growing despondency of the photographer, I take pity on him and resort to complete mothering trickery and as the guy snaps shots of Sweetpea sitting at a table, I lie down and tickle her legs and tummy, resulting in bright happy smiles on both the three year old and the photographer. I dare not contemplate what it must have looked like to the five teachers and the twenty other three year olds in the room to see my body rolling around on the floor. Some things are better left alone, I think you will agree.

By this stage the guy has proven he is nothing to be scared off and Sweetpea has warmed up to this game of photo taking. Then we go outside and take photos of Sweetpea riding a trike, complete with her throwing her head back with glee, laughing and, I swear to you, posing like a model with arms out in the air, fingers outstretched, legs off the ground that inspires people to think of movement, golden hair glistening in the sun. She plays in the sandpit, directing him to take photos of her from this side and that. He says ‘smile’ and she beams out a 240 watt smile that light up the whole playground.

And suddenly, it’s all over. Photographer man has at least three shots out of the 40 he must have taken that I'm going to want to buy and its time for him to move onto the other classroom. I take Sweetpea out to the car and as she gets into her car seat, she comes out with;

“More photos Mummah.”

Stunned I pull out my fabulous camera from my handbag and turn it on. She spies it and the little face turns from radiance to overcast in a fleeting moment.

“No Mummah, not you - him” she says, voice bleating, pointing in the general direction of the playground.

Even as I write this down, Sweetpea brings up the memory of the photos and I hopefully ask if I can take her photo.

“No!”
“Go away!” is my very mature, I'm the adult and I don’t take things of this nature too personally reply.

Say it with me peoples - I'm ready for my close up Mr. Deville.

Some Numbers

2008-03-08T17:02:00.002+11:00

Zero- the enthusiasm I feel towards my university work this semester

One – the number of red tomatoes that have ripened on my plants that I have grown from seedlings this season (thank goodness there is a spate of warm weather this week or I will be forced to look up a recipe for fried green tomatoes)

Two- times I've baked chocolate cup cakes with milk chocolate ganache icing (once for the kids at kinder to celebrate Sweetpea's birthday and once for my disabled aunts 53 birthday a few days later)

Two- the number of books I've bought in the last two weeks on French cookery: two called “The Food of France”, but as Driving Miss Daisy says, they’re French; they don’t have to worry about originality!

Three – is how many years I have had the incredible joy, privilege and responsibility of my daughter life on this planet, which I celebrated on Wednesday 27th February

Five – the average number of hours of sleep I'm getting to enjoy on a regular basis, which isn’t enough by far, but is better than four

Seven – is (somewhat surprisingly) the number of years since I started my diary at Open Diary

Ten – days until I have to complete an assignment which I have barely started, don’t fully understand the question let alone the content and I have to work out how to upload via a Powerpoint presentation

Thirty-Five – the number of cupcakes I wish I had the room in my tummy to eat in one day

Thirty-Three – the number of minutes I got to talk to a friend whose husband has just gone on record in a very prominent newspaper and revealed private medical records about her leaving her feeling exposed, blind sided and betrayed

Thirty-Eight – the number of cupcakes I can get out of one batch of batter

Sixty- the number of photos that the Fisher-Price camera takes that I bought Sweetpea for her birthday present

100’s & 1000’s – the name of the colourful sprinkles that I put on the cupcakes for decoration

Infinity and Beyond – the joy I feel inside when I think about how much I love being Sweetpea's Mummah

The Marching Onwards of Time

2007-11-24T01:34:00.000+11:00

Sweetpea has grown up. I keep hoping that I'm wrong, that time will stand still where she is concerned, but alas, she keeps growing faster than a weed. The other day I was cruising down the freeway, windows open, with music playing quietly in the background as I talked to Sweetpea about the different things we were seeing along the way.
Look! Mummah! A car.
What colour is the car precious girl?
Red.
What is that in French darling....? Rouge?
Rouge. Look... a cyclebike!
Is that what is making all that noise Sweetpea? You mean a motorcycle?
Yeah, a cyclebike.
Yes my darling, its a cyclebike.
Suddenly there is a commotion behind me, as Sweetpea states, “Music Mummah”. I don’t understand so she has to repeat herself several times.
Music Mummah.... music.
Oh darling, do you want me to turn up the music?
Yeah.
So I turn the radio up to hear James Blunt singing his song “1973”. But I watch in the rear vision mirror as she sways in time and I and turned the radio down again slightly to better hear Sweetpea singing along with James. Suddenly I knew that I had a little girl and not a baby in the back seat of my car.

What Should I Write About?

2007-10-29T00:52:00.000+11:00

So here I am with no university homework to do (I sent off my Journal and the Third assignment together on Friday) and I have free time and I cant think of anything interesting to write about.

I could share my latest quest in my attempt to win the “Worst Mother in the Whole World Award” in which I sit at the computer trying to re-enrol in university and allow my daughter to shut herself into the shower, turn on the hot water and start screaming because she couldn’t get the door open to get out again. The only reason I didn’t get top score for my score card on the Worst Mother judging system is that our hot water system is really slow to heat up and so by the time I reacted instantaneously (that was where I fouled up in the scoring obviously) to Sweetpea’s distressed cries for help (she was scared that she couldn’t get the door open) the hot water was just starting to come through and it was my arm that got burnt as I reached in to turn it off, and not her whole body. It was a close call to getting the highest score for the Worst Mother, because she was soaked to the skin along her left side. But I think if this story tells us anything, it’s that I have real potential to reach the dizzying heights of the Worst Mother in the Whole World.

I could tell you that in the last week I have spent around $100 on skin care stuff to try and stop the eczema that seems to cover Sweetpea’s every inch of skin. Bath oils, moisturisers, special creams and potions, and none of them seem to be working. I just started washing her hair for the first time since she was around 8 months old because the bottle of Mustela cleansing gel that Nurse Friend gave me some samples of (from a nursing round she did) doesn’t seem to dry out her skin and is leaving her hair shiny and curly. Until this point all I've been able to do is rinse her hair with bath water (with bath oil in it) because anything else (even baby shampoo) left her scalp covered in raised scabs and left her back (where the soap would run down her back) and any other part of her body it came into contact with covered in angry red welts. Its been really nice to see Sweetpea's hair all soft and shiny and smelling so yummy. I spent around two hours searching the interest to find a store that sells the stuff, but in the end had to buy some from an internet store because I am the world’s worst researcher on the internet. What makes its a little easier for me to justify all this spending is that it is lovely French stuff, so I'm being tre cosmopolitan!! I cant tell you the guilt I feel when I touch my daughters body and feel dry patches everywhere despite being slathered in skin lotion that the pharmacist recommend. And the grief I feel when she is covered in heat blister spots... and everyone tells me I'm doing everything I can. Yeah, I'm supposed to just let my little girl scratch herself to bleeding because her skin is dry and itchy and hurting her. Can I just say that doctors and pharmacists are full of shite and don’t give a damn about a child (and mother) in distress because its “not that major a condition now is it?”

But no, those two items seem like such boring things to write about that I think I will leave my blog un-updated and spend some more time thinking about what to write about.....

Long Overdue on Memories

2007-09-10T16:06:00.001+10:00

1efdzzrrtrgtfcccxz x cvdsxzzzza76tyytffgvddxxd65t6yt7onmgtyfnmq i7 uyuYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYu UuuuuuUUuUIIUaKIUkj,k

That is Sweetpea’s contribution to this entry- and a mighty fine contribution it is. My only snarl at her is that she was doing it whilst I was out of the room. I will tear her limb from limb if she breaks my new computer, cheeky little bugger. She knows she isn’t allowed to touch the computer but she couldn’t help herself. Note to self: if you have another child, do not teach them to open doors to get into rooms by themselves, in fact, do not teach them anything. Let them lie quietly in a corner and only move when I move them! (How Fraudian is this, I typed “l”ove instead of “m”ove?)

The past week I had a stomach bug from hell, and better yet, the Matriach and my aunt had it at the same time. Seriously, as I hugged my big green bucket and hurled yet again, I thought that the pain in my gut I felt in labour was easier than what I was going through; the throwing up continued for 12 hours – a very long time, and I never throw up. I can be nauseated to all hell, but I never throw up. I started throwing up at 5am and I couldn’t hold water down until around 10:45pm. Now I’ve been sick and still had to look after Sweetpea before, but Tuesday was one out of the box. I lay in bed and hoped that I would die. I didn’t even really know what Sweetpea was getting up to – but I found out the day after. Whilst I was wishing my life away, Sweetpea was pulling out every item of clothing from her drawers, she was opening tubes of shoe polish and squeezing them over everything, she was pulling books apart, she was a nightmare. Lordy, I wanted to die on Tuesday, but I'm pretty sure it was Sweetpea who wanted to die on Wednesday, each and every time I discovered a new mess to clear up. Now I was still pretty iffy with my tummy on Wednesday, but the Matriarch and aunt were chowing down on KFC Wednesday night. I could hardly keep an apple down, and they were hoeing into burgers and wraps and chips and gaaaaag. Just the smell was enough to send me scurrying back to my big green bucket! It wasn’t until Saturday that I woke up and thought ‘Hey! I think I feel better!” Trust me when I tell you that you DONT want to catch the tummy bug that is going around. If you hear people saying anything about it, run away- fast!

But in the midst of dying on Tuesday something pretty amazing happened. Sweetpea was lying next to me and pointed to a photo I have of her on the wall. Then she pointed to herself and said “Seetpea”. She has started saying her name. OK. This might not sound like a big deal to you, but to me, it was magical. Its not that she doesn’t know her own name, but to hear her say it, “Seetpea” sent sighs of happiness all over me. She is starting to give me three word sentences now, her favourites being “I got it!” and “Mummy do it!” and the good old standby of “Me do!” can be heard all over the house still. She climbs into the bathtub and she can clamber up on the toilet to do peescor all by herself. I'm pretty sure that by summer she is going to be out of nappies.... yippie! She still snuggled up against me as she falls asleep at night and in the morning she will wiggle into my arms and suck on a bottle of milk contentedly. Yes, I know I should have broken her of the bottle by now, but she just loves it so, and I swear that if I take the bottles away she refuses to drink for the day. If I have the bottles around, she will drink out of cups, but take the bottles away, and wham! No drinkies for missy. And I figure that soon enough she will make the connection herself (like she has with the whole toilet training deal) that she doesn’t want to drink out of a bottle and that will be it. No more baby.

And speaking of no more baby, as Sweetpea sits on the toilet she has had ample time to really study my pink stripe of hair, to the point she was asking constantly “Pink please” as she pointed to her hair. So now guess whose child has her own stripe of pink? Of course,(leave out the O and you get curse) my mother was outraged and said that I was mad and a bad mother and that for someone who was so afraid of having her child snatched at the mall I was making her a prime target. By having pink hair? Yes, because that proves that I don’t take notice of my child and keep my eyes on her. I'm too worried about pink hair. “Yeah right, bullshite mother. “

Sweetpea, for the record, is very proud of her pink hair. And no, there was no bleach involved, what do you take me for? A bad mother?

Peescor

2007-08-29T01:10:00.000+10:00

I adore the way my daughters sense of humour is starting to reveal itself. This moment happened a few weeks ago, but with the insanity that is my mother’s health crisis right now, I really haven’t had a chance to write about it.

I was busy with loads of laundry and work that comes from being the general dogs body that I am in this household. Sweetpea started to eagerly tell me ‘peescor, peescor’. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but there was no mistaking that walk. It was all too clear to me that she needed a nappy change.

“Do you need a nappy change Sweetpea?”

“Yeah! “ nodding her little head, she agreed immediately and raced off to our bedroom to grab a clean nappy and clamber up on the bed.

I opened the nappy and there it was in all its glory.

“Oh baby! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, what a mess... !”

“Peescor! Peescor!” she began to chorus again in a sweet singsong voice.

And then it all came back to me, with perfect clarity.

Flashback a few weeks when I was sitting in my Matriach’s family room with Sweetpea playing with her toys and my sharing too much information with The Matriach about how really full a particular bowel motion had been with Sweetpea.

“Matriach, I swear, you could see the peas and corn she ate for dinner last night.”

Peas and corn. That’s what my daughter was telling me so joyfully in the laundry to let me know it was full of merde!

I don’t mind telling you that I laughed myself silly as I realised her joke, clever thing that she is.

You Can Hire Me

2007-07-14T09:11:00.000+10:00

So the ultrasound results are in. Yes, its already the half way mark of SisterLaw’s pregnancy and today she and SpikyMan went to have the big ultrasound in which generally the doctors want to know the size and measurements of every internal organ in the body of the unborn child and generally the parents want to know what the sex of their child is.

It’s a girl.

It just about ripped my heart out. Until this point I've been so sure it was a boy and I could cope with my jealousy, because, well truthfully, I would love another daughter. And boys run strongly in SpikyMan’s family. We were all so sure it was going to be a boy, but it’s a girl. SisterLaw and SpikyMan are having a daughter. I did cry when The Matriarch mouthed the words “It’s a girl” and pointed to Sweetpea. I was so shocked. I was sure it was a boy.

But that wasn’t the last of the big news events for my sister today. Oh no.

My sister was offered a new job today and starts for a bigger law firm that came and head hunted her in four weeks time.

“What are you going to do with the baby? How long will you have for maternity leave?” I asked.

“Well the company has several mothers who work part time and they are more than happy for me to do the same.”

“Yes, but how long will you get with your baby?”

“Oh about four or five months. I guess I will have to look into childcare centres.”

“Oh no.” I replied, because, what else can you say in that situation?

I could hear a small quiver of sadness in her voice, but much like her, I understood that this company had made an incredible offer that really, wouldn’t come up again and she had to grab it with both hands. We talked about childcare for a few more minutes and I was sure of her hesitation about putting her child into care.

“You can hire me.” The words tumbled out of my mouth before I allowed my self-censoring to stop them.

“What?”

“You can hire me. You can hire me,” pause, “you can hire me.”

I cant even begin to tell you the courage that took to say, even though at first I said it in jest. Because with SpikyMan being a bit of a control freak, generally anything I suggest to SisterLaw is rejected by him and my offers to help with almost anything are rebuffed. But I forget that even though this child is only 20 weeks old, SisterLaw has already turned into a Mama Bear and a Wild Tiger ready to protect her young from any threat – even the threat of disapproval from a control freak.

“You can hire me. I could do with the extra money and you know that I would look after your daughter the same way that I look after Sweetpea, and you cant ever really be sure that in a child care centre they can give the one to one time that I could give her. And maybe on the days you don't work, you could look after Sweetpea and I could work a couple of days teaching. You could hire me.”

“Can I admit that I wanted to ask you that desperately, but I didn’t want to cross the line and I didn’t know when the right time would be to ask if you would look after my baby?”

“You can hire me.”

Of course, it’s a long way until April next year, so time will tell if this works out, but there it is. I have a niece.

In-Noo-Shook

2007-07-12T23:19:00.000+10:00

I have to tell you that this studying stuff is for the birds… the birds I tell you! I am exhausted from spending three hours studying solidly today. I am currently doing a post- graduate course for professional development (meh), so I can wax lyrical all about gifted education and definitions and things that are factors in the fairness of training or the discrimination of not having specialist teachers for gifted students. Yes, I just knew that would prick your ears up and having you positively panting for more! For the first assignment (reports on the first five weeks worth of work) that is due in four weeks, there is the minimum of 3000 words for the whole five weeks. For week one I wrote 2600 words and I could have said much more, but I decided I had to stop and start week two. I don't think that I will have any trouble fulfilling the word count portion of this course. In fact, I'm finding it really interesting so far, but of course, by week 10 I could be bitching and whinging and you will be able to say “I told you so’s” all over the place. Just remind me that when I'm whinging that at the end of week 12 I have two assignments due, shut up and get on it with!

There. Does that count as a blog update? Because I truly cannot think of anything entertaining to write about.

Do I really want to write about how damn hard it was to leave Sweatpea with my friend Nurse today so that I could go out and study? Hell no. I want to forget that darling little face, screwed up in grief. I really don't want to write about the wails of “Mummah! Mummah! Mine!” that broke my heart and had me driving away in tears as I walked out the door and Nurse having to cuddle Sweatpea in her arms to stop her from running after me. I do not know how mothers can leave their children every day to go to work. I can only imagine how much of an emotional drain it must be to leave your child every day in the care of someone else if or when the maternal instincts are kicking and screaming madly to go back, wrap your arms around your baby and never walk away again. I'm not saying that there is anything bad with women who do it, either because they have to for economic reasons or they really, purely enjoy their jobs and want to keep their careers on the up and up. I just can’t imagine how you deal with the leaving of the child when they clearly don't want you to go away. I'm just really glad that I don't have to do it, and despite the financial hardships, despite my career being screwed around, I'm glad I get to spend the next few years with Sweatpea. And my respect for mothers who work outside of the home has grown. As I said, I'm thankful that I can be a stay at home mother for now. Having said all that, I'm also glad that I can study part time at university so that when I'm ready to go back to work, I will have better qualifications. Of course, by the time I finish my courses (at one subject a semester!) I could be too old and ready to go onto the old age pension making my studies worthless, but it keeps my brain active, or shattered depending on how much study I've done for the day! :)

Seriously, there was nothing exciting that happened today, but I have to get back into the habit of writing here rather than the paper diary that I've been working on. Actually, its part of my life coaches homework for me. I have to write ‘morning pages’ every morning (fancy that!) and I am finding that after writing them (by hand no less) I have pretty much purged out most of my thoughts and have nothing left to rant and rave about here in the online diary. Not that that’s a bad thing. I would love to have this diary filled with things that are lot more upbeat, positive and happy. The morning pages come from a workbook that I fear is going to take me positively years to work through called “The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron. Its supposed to be a book on how to reconnect with the inner artist we each have inside us. At least, that is what the book suggests. All I know is that I really struggle to call myself a writer, I don't believe that I have any talent whatsoever and I don't value the talent and the gift that God has bestowed upon me with my writing. I'm not sharing this with you simply to solicit notes of “but you arrrrrrre deeply talented” in a Holly Golightly manner. I'm sharing this with you as a mental inukshuk, (meaning "image of a man's spirit" in the Canadian Inuit language of Inuktitut). of where I have been now so that in my future I can look back and see that I've moved forward. Now that was a truly profound sentence. But I will, in the interest of full disclosure, admit to you that the first word I wrote initially was illicit, rather than solicit. Talented wordsmith am I not?

More Diary than Blog - Meandering Thoughts

2007-06-14T02:01:00.001+10:00

Its strange what hits you emotionally sometimes. Tonight I realised that I had 6 white Christmas’ and that I wish I had treasured them more. I thought I was going to have the rest of my lifetime of white Christmas’, but I only had 6 and that realisation has reduced me to tears. I so desperately miss my life in Canada. Who would have thought that possible?

I got the official offer (and congratulations) letter from the university today – finally. The sad part is that I don't feel like opening the bottle of champagne to celebrate. I just want to curl up and cry a bit more. I'm exhausted just thinking about what subject(s) I am going to study the next semester. The subjects of offer are a wee bit (read extremely) boring but I have to get this fourth year out of the way. Ugh. I wish I hadn’t accepted that teaching job straight out of third year and opted instead to complete the forth year way back when dinosaurs walked the earth and I was in university for the first time.

I've been baking like a mad woman lately. All kinds of slices and biscuits to be exact, although I did make a flourless chocolate cake for one of mum’s friends who is allergic to wheat. I have discovered the most Devine chocy fudge biscuit that had over 500g (almost two pounds) of three different types of chocolate in it. Calorific or what? But totally worth it. I should take a photo of the biscuits they are that damn good. They have Cherry Ripes in them and I am thinking that Peppermint Crisp would work just as well. *drool*

Spoke to Game Boy for around 43 seconds last Sunday night. He said he was off to church, but it was 8am his time. I'm not sure that most churches are even open at that time let alone have a service then…. I think he was trying to blow me off. I have repeatedly asked him to get Sweetpea’s health records out to me because the Aussie doctors wont give her any immunisations without knowing what she had in Canada and she is now a year behind. He kept saying “Find somewhere for me to fax them to you” and I kept telling him it isn’t a option, snail mail them to me. I swear he repeated the fax issue three times in 28 seconds (in a 43 second conversation). I want to scream at him, “This is your daughters health you are wasting arguments on”, but what would it achieve? Nothing. All I can hope is that he gets the records to me. And yes, I have rung the health clinic personally, but it still didn’t come through. I think they are now demanding payment and Kathy (the receptionist for my doctor there) didn’t know it and the paediatrician is being stubborn. Either way, my daughter’s health is being compromised and when I go to enrol her at school I will be up poop creek because children here have to be immunised or go through a million hoops to prove why they aren’t. I still really like the idea of home schooling but I fear the government will stop my single parent pension and demand I go out and work to support my daughter and myself. Being a single, stay at home parent isn’t an option with this government, which puts an end to the home schooling option. That option is only for the super rich or the child lucky enough to have two parents.

Mum keeps telling me to cut Sweetpea's hair because its getting in her eyes. I have told her in no uncertain terms that I am NOT giving me child a mullet hair cut to get the hair out of her eyes. I suffered years with short (boy length) hair and I will not make my daughter suffer likewise. Mum swears it was to thicken my hair. Bullocks. You have as many hair follicles as you will ever have and you cant change anything but keeping the hair super short for years. It was only when people kept calling me a boy in front of her in shopping centres that she finally relented and allowed me to grow my hair long. I am simply wanting Sweetpea's hair to grow from the crown of her head to near the nape of her neck so that I can have to cut into a bob of sorts when she finally has enough hair for a first hair cut! Mums constant nagging has meant that now every morning I have to beg Sweetpea to let me put her hair up in a piggy tail to keep her face hair free, which, I have to tell you, she does not appreciate at all. We have fights (lord, she is only two!) of me saying “Pleeeeeeeeease Sweetpea?” and her saying “No!” repeatedly. All I can hope is that her hair grows quickly. When I look back on Good Friday photos her hair wasn’t as thick as it is now, so there is hope! I want to get my hair cut.

I watched the movie “The Family Stone” tonight. In words of a great Scottish lass I know around this OD joint, it sucked big hairy donkey balls. Boring doesn’t come close to describing it. Equally disappointing was the movie “Little Miss Sunshine”, which is really frustrating because I spent $16 on the damn thing. Barrrrrr-humbug. Which makes me miss the pawn shop that was a 15 minute walk from my home in Ottawa, which had DVD’s for $5. I miss my life in Ottawa.

My sister has officially popped at 15 weeks. It isn’t easy to always be happy for her. Its my own issue of overwhelming jealousy. I had to tell Mum that she was ripping my heart out every time to started to talk about how she hoped it was a girl and that I should be handing over all my stuff to Laywer Girl. I told her that if she knew my prayers were to have another child somehow, why would she ask me to give my stuff away. That you only give baby stuff away when you have finished having babies. I hope that she shuts up about it, because I am not ready to hand over any of my things (my memories and hopes) to Laywer Girl and BIL. I want to hang on to them for now.

Its become a routine that when I go into the shower and have my hair wet and plastered to my back Sweetpea opens the door and puckers up for a kiss. I think its really because she likes the fiant feeling of water showering over her, but it could also be because she wants to kiss me. I’ll take the second option.

Thrilling the Reader Within

2007-05-03T08:45:00.000+10:00

I think every writer is a person who wants to impress the reader within themselves. Anyone who wants to tell a story has been a person who has read other peoples tales and been filled with amazement at the magic simple black shapes on a page can form words that can alter a person forever.

By my own recollection, I have been a reader all my life. Some of the best Christmas presents my mother ever gave me were piles of books, tall misshapen packages, wrapped in decorative paper ready to be ripped open by my eager hands. There are pictures of me on birthday mornings celebrating another year of my life, engrossed in a new book. Weekly trips to the library punctate my memories. I love the smell, the feel of a new book in my hands. I love the promise a new book holds for a reader. Within the pages of a book, you can go on a journey to anywhere, at any time and learn any number of things. And from a young age, I too wanted to be part of the magic that I believed an author was part of when they wrote a book.

If a person writes words that nobody reads, can they still call themselves a writer?

Like all writer wannabes, I use my diary and my blog to practise the craft of writing. I may pretend that, to all intensive purposes, I really don't care whether people read my entries. I may pretend that I am writing a record of my life for me to enjoy in years to come. And to a certain extent, its true. I love going back over my diary to the start of my writing journey to see how far and what I have learnt from life so far. But there is another, possibly more selfish reason I write and put my words up on public display in cyber space. To deny this would be to lie. I put my words up for the world to see because I yearn for the encouragement from other people. I long to gain praise for the way I have strung words together to make my meaning clear to others. I want to be told that I do have a gift, that I'm not kidding myself that eventually, with perseverance and a thick skin, I too will see my name in print as a by line. That my stories will be written on thick creamy paper bound together in the wonderful tablet form of a book that will have my name on the spine.

But as naturally as writing appears to come to some, for me, the continual ease of writing often remains elusive. Certainly there are days when my fingers seem to fly over the keyboard, the words rise up out of my soul in the effortlessness of a bird in flight. There are days however, when pulling the words out of my head and getting my fingers to translate the thoughts onto the keys of the keyboard is much like watching a one year old child learning to feed themselves spaghetti. In their determination to do “me do”, you end up with noodles all over the family room floor, in their hair, down their clothes and (if your lucky) in the tummies of two ever hungry, helpful and happy to oblige dachshunds. My writing is messy, my thoughts jumbled and my ego battered as I come to the realisation that I still have a way to go in learning to fulfil the artistic call of my soul.

To this end I have, some would say finally, enrolled in my first writing workshop. I'm not sure what to expect exactly, but the mere fact I have put my hand up to a stranger in the real world and admitted that I too want to join the ranks of ‘writers’ has been a journey of discovering courage for me. I have finally acknowledged that what I really long to do is write and see my name in a library catalogue and a book shop shelf. This Sunday I will meet a real life author Cath Crowley who has two published books and a play accounted to her name.

I hope to learn (or even just catch a fragment or two) of her wisdom on how to turn ideas into actual chapters with characters that hold a reader spellbound. I want to learn how to get past the annoying 3000 word boundary that I strike so often, unsure of how to take my tale to the next place, despite knowing the story I want to weave. I want to walk away and believe that I too, can use the title writer and that the words I write will thrill the reader within me.

Money Well Spent?

2007-05-02T01:57:00.000+10:00

The great thing about living in a country with universal health care is that everyone, eventually gets access to all kinds of health practitioners. The down side to living in a country with universal health care is that the government places limits on how often you can access different areas of medical treatment, because of the need to keep total governmental spending down.

October last, when I first received the (tres classe) e-mail from Game Boy that he was ending our marriage, I confess to spiralling into kind of despair that would leave most people suicidal at best. Fully aware that I was the only stable parental figure in Sweetpea's life, I hotfooted it to the doctors to request counselling help. I was referred to a mental health specialist and informed that the government would pay for a grand total of six sessions for me to get my act together. Talk about putting a band aid over a open heart surgery wound.

In three weeks time I will have used my six sessions, and I have to say that I am fairly unimpressed with the whole system. Not that my psychologist isn’t caring; she truly is. But the whole time I have felt like she has had a list on her mental clip board of all my problems that she is duty bound to report as fixed to receive her government pay packet.

Insomnia – I sleep depending on my ability to keep fears at bay – check.
Midnight comfort eating – I haven’t eaten past 9pm in the last 8 weeks – check
Wanting to kill myself – I now want to kill him – check

Check. Check. Check. Its hard to not notice the small smile of self congratulations that plays on the psychologists lips as she sees that my presenting issues are resolved, in a manner of speaking. So has the money the Australian government poured into my health care been well spent? Have I really gotten anything out of the sessions I've spent with the psychologist? No.

Well to be really honest, that isn’t completely true. After four sessions with the psychologist I decided that the only way I was going to heal my heart and get my life back on track was to run back to the (often tough) loving arms of my life coach and take charge of things myself. Its thanks to my life coach that I have come so far in the course of four months. So maybe the government hasn’t wasted its money after all. After all, I'm now working with a Canadian life coach, and I'm not suicidal with grief. Its all good in the end. Now if I could work out of my system the murderous thoughts I harbour towards Game Boy I would sleep even better at night.

Changing Wardrobes.

2007-04-03T23:15:00.000+10:00

I spent the early part of the evening sorting out your clothes last night. The changing of the season signalled the reality that I could avoid the job no more. No longer could I dress you in several layers of summer clothes, hoping that your lips would not turn blue and that bare legs would not be frowned upon by supposedly superior beings when we went out in public. No, it was high time that I broke out the thicker clothes that I had stored up magpie like in plastic bags, bought over the past summer sales period that I hope will keep you warm during the autumn and winter seasons.

It was time, I knew in my heart, to sort out the clothes that were too small for you and pack them away. I had been dreading this task, as I knew that it was going to be hard sentimentally for me. For with each item I put aside as too small, an image of your father and I flashed before my eyes. The moment that he held up the pair of jeans that he had found with small love heart shaped pockets played out fully in my minds eye. My heart endured the surge of emotions of joy and fulfilment. I could hear his voice as he sighed with the pleasure of simply buying something cute and girly for you to wear. The day I found the cardigan with the multi-coloured strands of yarn which was followed by a simple lunch of burgers and chips where we talked and laughed and enjoyed the newly renovated shopping mall with the skylight roofing that allowed the thin winter sunshine to fill the atrium. The dress that I bought on a trip downtown to a store that no longer exists, that had hung on the canopy railings of our bed, that you were photographed in for a major daily newspaper article about an entrepreneurial exploit of mine.

This task was more than saying goodbye to old favourites of clothing simply to make room for items waiting to become the new favourites. This task made my heart ache because it was saying goodbye to the shared parenting times I had with your father. Officially, I have now been a single parent longer than I was a parent with a partner. Your well being, your upbringing has been primarily my job, my burden to carry. Burden because each and every day I second guess myself and worry that I am making bad decisions that will fundamentally change who you will become at the end of your journey to adulthood. I lie awake at night and wish I had another voice in the dark to whisper my fears to. I miss the camaraderie in sharing this parental load with your father on a daily basis. I know that your father supports me from across the distance and when prompted he will tell me that he trusts me completely with your life. But I long to hear comfort and confirmation that my best is enough and that you will be who you are meant to be despite my parenting attempts.

I put away the items that I had clung too in these recent months, because it was my last link with the man I had chosen to move to an adoptive homeland that I discover anew each day I am missing so desperately. The simple task of clothing your body is no longer a shared pleasure. Now we choose items alone for you and hope that the other will approve, or at least accept. Dealing with the certainty of your growth towards maturity has me crying still with a strange mixture of grief and pride. But as I went through your clothes last night, I put away another piece of my heart.

Is there a Doctor in the house?

2007-03-20T11:43:00.000+11:00

It often amazes me how much young children take in when you don't think they are aware of the situation at all. Its been several weeks since my mother was in hospital and one would think it was enough time to forget the things that Sweetpea saw and the people she came into contact with.

Not so. Just this week Sweetpea pulled out one of those tacky cereal box give away gifts that kids will see at the supermarket and nag you senselessly for three isles to have. It was a cheap blue plastic wallet with a Velcro strip to snap it shut. Somewhere out of the murky depths of her toy box Sweetpea unearthed this cheap and nasty give away and revealed to us her future.

Unwrapping the whole length of the wallet, she then went up to The Matriarch, pulled up the sleave of her shirt and then wrapped it around the top of her arm.

“Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhhh” came the sound from my daughter’s pursed lips.

It dawned on my mother and I that Sweetpea was using the wallet as a blood pressure cuff and she was taking her grandmothers blood pressure, just as she had seen so many times in the hospital.

“Oh you good girl,” said my mother. “Are you going to be a nurse or a doctor?”

“Doc,or” came the certain reply.

My mother and I stared at each other open mouthed. Never had that word passed her lips before, but the resolve in her voice was firm. Of course, I laughed and joked to my mother about if only it were true. But then Sweetpea did something that nailed the coffin shut in my mind.

She took the blood pressure cuff off my mothers arm, opened it up and sternly said, “Money.”

“Oh yeah. You're a doctor alright.” I've been searching for a toy doctors kit ever since.

Who Me? So What!

2007-03-08T22:40:00.000+11:00

Nervously I walked into the building, clutching my daughter’s hand for courage, although I'm sure I'm supposed to say it was to comfort her. This was the first of many days that I knew from the very first moments I had held her, as a newborn child that would come into my life. Yet I had successfully ignored the reality of it for two years.

I signed the enrolment forms, paid the fees and after taking a deep breath to calm my nerves, took Sweetpea into her first Mainly Music playgroup. Of course, as the universe would have it, earlier that morning there had been a major accident on the freeway, so what would have been a perfectly timed journey had turned into a 20-minute late entry. Everyone was sitting in a circle on the floor, having been given homemade maracas filled with dried rice dyed blue studded with gold flecks of foil to shake to the beat of the song. Sweetpea wasn’t really into the maracas, bar clinging onto both hers and mine and refusing to do anything with them.

After a shared snack time of cut up cubes of the next-to-last fresh summer fruit of the season it was free play time. Those of us with toddlers and small children herded them outside to the playgroup shaded by giant eucalyptus trees and the shade sails that are so hugely popular in this country. Standing around making small talk with strangers is my idea of perfect torture. Still, I knew that if I was going to make this a regular part of my daughters educational opportunities, I was going to have to swallow my fears and talk to the other women that seemed so at ease with each other.

“So is this your first time here?”

“Yes, how can you tell? Is it the deer caught in the headlights look on my face that gives it away?” I replied.

Laughter followed, which I read to be a good sign.

“Is she your only child?”

“Yes, she is, and she is my pride and joy. How many children do you have?”

“Two here and one at school already” she replied, managing to drop the name of the exclusive boys school into the conversation.

Out of the corner of my eye I had been watching a group of three boys (‘da thugs’ as I christened them in the later retelling of the event to my mother) purposely refusing to allow Sweetpea to join in their games, even though she was truly innocent about what was going on. She had been standing outside a cubbyhouse, wanting desperately to join the little boys, and they had been shouting at her to go away, that there was no room for her. Oh how my heart ached. Yes, yes, yes, I understand that this is the law of the jungle and this is how children work and yadda yadda yah. I'm a school teacher. I know how it works. I've made a career for many years out of knowing how it works. But we are talking about my Sweetpea here, and all the protective passion of a mother lion wanting to guard her young cub came to the surface. Obviously, my face hides nothing well, as the mother I had been talking to jokingly shrieked,

“Look out! Over protective mother on the loose!”

It was like a knife to the heart. My already shaky self confidence in my parenting skills crumbled to the ground as if hit by a 6.8 Richter scale earthquake. Squaring my shoulders I went and redirected Sweetpea to another activity and kept my distance from the shrieking harpy as I had now named the ‘didn’t give a damn’ mother. But the words “over protective mother’ were burnt into my mind.

And several hours latter I was still considering them. I had sworn up and down as I underwent fertility treatment year after year that I wouldn’t wrap my child up in cotton wool if I was ever so lucky to be blessed with a child, I would allow my child to deal with the real world knocks and scraps and let her grow up to be free and strong. Could it be true that I was over protective? Was I holding Sweetpea back because of my own fears and inability to allow her to be roughed up a bit by the real world?

And then it dawned on me, bright and clear and the early morning rays of sunshine that banish the darkness of the night. Even if I was ‘over protective’ according to the views and opinions of some people, it was OK by me. Because if that mother had had her world pulled from under her as mine has been in the last year, left with nothing but three suitcases of holiday clothing and a small baby, I would be willing to bet my bottom dollar that she too would be a smidge over protective of her children. She would be desperate to hold onto what little she had left to provide some kind of stability for her child, she would do whatever it took to make sure that the most precious thing left to her – her child – was safe and happy. She would hover and worry and feel stupid for it all at the same time.

But its OK. I wont be this way forever, it isn’t a natural part of my personality and its not how I want to bring up Sweetpea. But this is a healing period in both our lives. This will be the first of ‘one step at a time’ experiences until it feels normal to be a single parent with my daughter. So tomorrow is Mainly Music playgroup day for Sweetpea and I. Want to join us be over protective and shake some maracas?

Making the Choice

2007-02-19T23:28:00.000+11:00

For better or worse, I have decided to live a part of my life open to public viewing by way of writing for a blog about my life as a newly single parent. Choosing to put my thoughts and choices on a public domain such as blogspot opens a Pandora’s box of possibilities – all of which are virtual. Being open about things I'm considering can leave me wide open to judgement and attack or applause and support according to personal whim. But as I choose what to reveal here and what I keep close to my heart, you only get a limited version of my life and if you don't know me personally, then the person who is the writer behind the internet page will always be hidden.

Writing has always been an effective method in helping me clarify my inner spirit. It has always been the most effective way to my soul. Writing has helped me come to serious decisions, work out problems and formulate plans for my future. Writing helps me work through the reflections of my heart and clarify what are true for me and what can be discarded as unimportant or unnecessary.

So here is a card I have held close to my chest. Here is something I've been mulling over in my heart for a long while. I'm still not completely sure that this is the right direction to take, I've decided that I have to at least try to push on the door to see if it will open. If the door doesn’t open I will assume that a window will open elsewhere for me. But here it is, in writing. This is as real as it gets for me.

I have a consultation with the Melbourne IVF group next month to see about the possibility of attempting to have a second child. The law in this state, being an ass, has made it so that a woman without a male partner has to prove that she is infertile before she can be accepted onto the program for IVF. As luck would have it, I was a patient for several years with my first husband, thus proving my infertility, so it has been relatively easy for me to get to this point of the journey. Most women in my position have to battle just to get here, but in a matter of weeks, if all goes as smoothly as everything has so far, I assume I will be doing through the counselling required for a single woman to choose donor sperm and attempt IVF.

Do I think that single parent families are the ideal? Who can say? I don't think that God really planned it this way, but for better or worse it’s a possibility for women now days. And for what its worth, I think that a lot of single women who choose parenthood do a fantastic job at it, because they want it so desperately. I don't want to have the regrets in later life that my mother has. She still talks about her desire to have had another child. She wishes that she had listened to her inner voice and tried her luck again instead of worrying about what others would say. I don't foresee the right man waltzing into my life in a timely fashion for me to attempt having another baby with him, so I have to make choices now. This is my choice.

Yes, I would much prefer to try to have a second child with a husband by my side. I still wish that my marriage was alive and that this whole IVF route was memory that made Sweetpea all the sweeter in my life. But its not an option. My husband has decided that we make better friends than spouses, and he doesn’t see a point in even attempting to work on what we had. In his mind, its over, so for me, there is no other option. I'm turning thirty-seven in a matter of months. The biological side of things wasn’t running smoothly to begin with, and now that my biological clock is chiming the midnight hour on my ability to have a child, I'm not sure I want to waste any more time wondering if it’s the right thing to do because I fear what some members of society will say about my choices. So there it is. Mine and mine alone - my choice.

Speech is Golden

2007-01-24T12:11:00.000+11:00

It only takes a look on a book shelf, a glance through website message boards on the internet or eavesdropping on a conversation between people surrounded by little children to know I'm not the only parent to second guess my parenting abilities and wonder silently to myself if I am doing a good enough job raising Sweetpea.

You know how it goes. In an effort to convince them that they are doing OK on the parenting issues, parents compare what one child is doing against another’s development. Not normally are such comparisons meant to be competitive, but there are times when you wonder if the parent telling you how fabulously advanced their child is, is really doing it for reassurance or if they are doing it to gain a feeling of superiority against other adults struggling with the same feelings of inability.

One issue that had been lying heavily on my heart was my fear that Sweetpea’s language development wasn’t what it should be. It seemed that so many children were far more highly developed than my daughter when it came to speaking that I honestly began to fear that my daughter was possibly autistic because of her apparent refusal to communicate with me. Rather, she would point to whatever she wanted and grunt. Up until 18 months of age this system worked wonderfully well. I knew exactly what Sweetpea wanted and there was hardly ever a breakdown in understanding.

But as her second birthday approaches and I heard people boasting of the words their two year old children were coming out with and the panic set in. Why wasn’t Sweetpea talking to me? What was I doing wrong? I had been speaking to her since her birth using full language; there was to be no baby talk for my little girl. I went as far as to purposely look fully into her face and asked her opinions on things I went shopping for at three weeks of age. Hadn’t I done what all the books, all the professionals exposing their wisdom, all my years at university studying the development of language in young children taught me? Why was there a absence of words falling from my child’s lips?

I started putting voice to my worries with other people, and the truth came surging forward like a tidal wave of proof against my fears. Sweetpea has been talking ten to the dozen – to everyone but me. Dozens of examples of words were given to me that she had been speaking. I was stunned, unable to take in what I was being told. Sweetpea was a chatterbox, not a mute. Upon hearing these testimonies, I decided to start writing down the words that I heard or that others told me about. In the space of one week, I had a list of 25 words. After reaching that number, I stopped worrying and decided that my ability to understand Sweetpea’s grunting was at a level so highly developed that she didn’t feel the need to use words with me. I chose to believe that we were so in harmony that words were unnecessary. I tried hard to not take it personally that other people got to hear her sweet voice saying words and all I got grunts.

But joyfully this week I got to witness Sweetpea’s language development first hand. This week Sweetpea started putting two word sentences together. The first was “Mummy look”. She was pointing to photo of us at the beach together and we talk just about every morning about the memories of that day as it is above our bed. I was so excited to hear this sentence, but I did wonder if it was a fluke, or if it was the beginning of something bigger and better. I had my answer within a couple of days. “Me up!” was said, as she demanded to be lifted onto the bed of my mother as we visited her in hospital. My sister was there, so that makes two witnesses to this new development.

I think that maybe I need to cut myself some slack, stop comparing my child to others and just enjoy the ride of growing up with her. Because without a doubt, Sweetpea is going to be all grown up and these precious childhood days will be but a cherished memory. And I don't want my memoirs to be of self doubt, but of enjoyment and pride of a job well done.

Self fastening tabs and toilet training.

2007-01-16T02:32:00.000+11:00

Don't get me wrong, I understand that on the large scale of things such as famine and disease in third world countries, environmental, poverty and human rights issues, this really isn’t a huge issue. But I dare you to find any mother of a child who uses nappies and ask her if she is calm when the self-fastening nappy tabs break. And at what point she will break and start to think wild thoughts of self destruction.

Nappy producers have paid marketing companies immense sums of money to make a big song and dance about the self-fastening tabs that encase a baby in said nappy. The ease of use and the ability to open and close a nappy several times in the never ending battle of keeping a baby’s bum clean, dry and inoffensive to the adult nose are high scoring issues. One company even calls its self-fastening tabs ‘koala grip tabs’. Ostensibly because they grip the fuzzy stuff at the front of the nappy with the determination only a koala who is being uprooted from its ancestral homeland to be moved 14kms west to better feeding grounds can grip. I bet the marketing whizzes never took into account that koalas snarl a lot, sleep most of the day and are, in fact, not that cuddly when they sat around that big meeting room table, brainstorming ways of selling more nappies to the choir that sings nappy praises in the first place. There is a marketing war being waged out there right now folks, over the size and width of the tabs used to keep a nappy attached to a child. But the war is being waged on the wrong battle front. I would pay $1 a nappy (which if you worked out how many nappies you use in a week would equal an awful lot of money) if I knew for sure that the tabs wouldn’t rip apart on me, rendering the nappy useless. Even gaffer tape, supposedly the most useful tape in the whole world cant keep a nappy on a baby with wandering hands and a fixation on her belly button like a self fastening tab can. Except when the tab rips off.

Let me paint a picture for you. Your child, whom you love and adore more than life itself starts to emit a noxious odour. You desperately pray its because they have simply broken into the bathroom cupboard and sprayed that hideous perfume that your great aunt Esmeralda gave you for Christmas but after a few moments you know that you are failing at hoodwinking yourself. One quick snatch of the child, lying then across your lap and check for excrement confirms that it is indeed nappy change time. Your child, however, has other plans. Lord knows what, but they are intent on doing anything but cooperating with you as you change the offending nappy. Heaving the child up and over your shoulder, you stagger (due to the proboscis being so close to the primary source of the lethal smell) to the room where the equipment required to change the nappy is stored. Opening the nappy and seeing the offending slush up close is enough to make strong men weep, but being a mother, you find a super human ability to wipe up the offending mess and wrap the used nappy up in a ball. You place the nice, clean nappy under the bottom of your child and grab one of those self gripping tabs and wrap it around your child, to attached the nappy to the body. And then you hear it. Riiiiiiiiiiiip. Actually, its doesn’t even take that long. Its more a Riiip and you are left with a tab in your hand and a child finally succeeding in their attempt to escape and do a nudie run through the house; which we all know will result in a puddle of pee-pee on the floor, somewhere in the house, to be found later. Hopefully only resulting in a foot needing to be washed, and not a full on slide and whump on the bum.

Today - today it happened to me again. I had almost managed to wrangle Sweetpea into her nappy when the tab ripped off. Amid much internal dialogue which alternated between cursing the nappy producers and praying that there was no yellow puddle being left somewhere in the house I made a decision. No more would I spend my day chasing a bare tushied baby around the house because of a broken tab. I was going to embark on one of parenting’s greatest joys: toilet training.

I even went as far as going to the store to buy a potty. When I was a young child, my potty was a pink thing (see, the pink fascination started even then) that served me well. Not that I recall my potty training all that vividly. But I still manage to sit on the toilet and pee and poop in the appropriate manner without embarrassing family or friends, so something must have worked. I honestly thought it would be a quick trip of walk in, grab potty, pay check out chick and go home. HA! Boy was I wrong. Did you know there are potties out there now that not only have flashing lights, but play different tunes to reward the child when they pee or poop? Think about it, as if its not traumatic enough for the child to see the most trusted people in the world (that would be the parents) throw their pee and poop into the toilet and flush it away, now they have lights and music giving away the exact moment they choose to pee and poop.

I ended up buying the bargain basement potty. After careful analysis of the whole topic, I realised that as Sweetpea's mother, it was my job to give her plenty of issues to talk about with the psychologist when she gets older. It might as well start with the fact that I didn’t buy her a $50 potty with lights and music. But in the cool calm of the evening, when I contemplate the actual teaching of peeing and pooping in the potty deal, I realise that I have set myself up for more of what I already have. Chasing of a nekkid bummed baby around the house and attempting to talk logic to a not quite two year old about the virtues of using a potty rather than just dumping and running from the scene of the crime. What the hell was I thinking? Do I really hate my life so much that I'm willing to engage in such insane activities?

Suddenly a broken self-fastening nappy tab doesn’t seem like such a big issue. Until the next time it rips off in my hand.

Cleaning Before the Cleaner Comes.

2007-01-08T23:25:00.000+11:00

“Ceylon, don't forget that the cleaner is coming tomorrow morning. The toilet and the bathroom need to cleaning. I don't want Karen to see them dirty.”

Do other people who use the services of cleaners do this too, this cleaning the rooms before the cleaner gets to them? Is it to avoid the possibility of the cleaner twigging to the fact that the rooms were, indeed, used during the past week by the very inhabitants living in the house they have been hired to clean? Can cleaners really be fooled so easily? Tidying up I understand, it makes a persons job much easier if they don't have to sweep up toys and fold piles of clothes left lying around; but cleaning the rooms, scrubbing hard to make porcelain sparkle, is that not just a wee bit irrational?

Is there, what amounts to literally a small army of people, who are hired as house cleaners in the world labouring under the false idea that really, houses (bathrooms and toilets especially) don't ever really get dirty? Do they not have bathrooms and toilets in their own homes they use, making dirty over the course of a week? Or do they secretly laugh to themselves as they drive in their cars and vans on their way to work, knowing that the night before someone has scurried around like a mad thing, cleaning the aforementioned rooms, under the heavy burden of fear of being found out to actually use the bathroom and toilet. On the other hand, do cleaners hire cleaners themselves, and on the eve of the hired help coming, find themselves manically cleaning the bathroom and toilet before their hired help comes to clean their homes?

The possibility of my thinking about this possibility is making me feel quite dizzy. So much so that I think I might go and clean a toilet and flush those spiralling thoughts away before Karen gets here. I wouldn’t want her to see that our toilet had been used this past week.

The Beginning of Empowerment.

2007-01-02T23:46:00.000+11:00

In the quest for personal independence, I finally sat down and looked at all my Superannuation paperwork. Which in actuality is envelopes stuffed with reports and balance sheets and reams of paper that would equal at least half a tree’s worth of waste. I'm not sure about you, but Superannuation is all about retirement, which is so far off in the future that I really don't think about it. I would have to sit down and mentally figure out when I would be eligible to retire…. 2030. I will be eligible to retire in 2030, and that’s so far away I don't think many people my age are thinking seriously about it at all. All this thought about retirement, superannuation and the future makes me feel as if it would be easier to put my hands over my ears and sing “La La La” off key and pretend that its not real.

But today I opened the many envelopes from the superannuation fund companies that have cluttered my desk with thoughts of ‘someday soon’, pulled out the balance sheets and really looked at the figures. I looked at the fees the management funds deducted from my account. I looked at the average growth of each fund and the returns on the money they had invested on my behalf. To my horror, I saw that one fund was so out of date with my identifying information that it had me with my former husband’s surname, that is, the husband I had before Game Boy. A name that I haven’t used since mid 2000. A quick phone call and now I know what I need to do to fix that minor oversight.

Sadly for me there isn’t a whole lot of money in the accounts that I do own. That’s the downside of being a casual teacher and having worked in a foreign country, not having a regular pay cheque to put towards my super. I also inwardly fume at the advice that the so called lawyer who handled my divorce from Pondscum told me, to forget about fighting for the superannuation from him, that it wouldn't be worth the fight. Nevertheless, I do have several small amounts that when rolled over into one account gain me around $1300. Over the course of one year, given the figures from the past year of 16% growth, that $1300 will grow to $1500. In ten years, that figure would be around $5700, and that isn’t so bad for money that I'm not allowed to touch under Australia law until I retire. That doesn’t factor in that in a few years when Sweetpea will be at school and I can return to the workforce and start really adding money to the mix.

One of my resolutions for the coming year was to start working towards true independence for myself. Today I took a step, albeit a small one, towards being responsible for my money: it feels empowering.

Taking My Home On the Road.... Maybe.

2006-12-29T12:05:00.000+11:00

I've been thinking, dreaming really. The idea that consumes my every waking moment (well that isn’t strictly true, but it sounds better in the writing) is the idea of packing up what little I have and whilst Sweetpea is young enough, go travelling around Australia.

Originally I thought if hiring a campervan for six months and just taking off. But hiring even from the cheapest, oldest, clapped out 1975 combivan dealership was going to cost me a small fortune, and lets not talk about if I wanted the luxury of a built in bed space! I was quoted prices that ranged from $6,000 to $12,000. Uh, yeah, sure right. I'm going to hire a van for six months for $12,000. BANG! Goes that dream.

Or so I thought. I started looking into buying my own little travelling home. Nothing flash of course, but a place that would give me some security on the road as I travel with Sweetpea and see this big beautiful land of mine. I would have preferred my first car to be a car, but if it turned out to be a snail-truck so I could follow an adventured filled life for a while, it wouldn’t be so bad would it?

Just thinking of the freedom of travelling where ever I wanted, staying as long as I wanted – or picking up and moving on sounds so appealing to me right now. I'm sure there will be people who will think I'm just running away from my reality, but so what if I am? What’s to stop me? Nothing but my own fears really.

All of this will have to wait until I work out what is happening with my life in Canada. I will be returning in a few weeks. I have to take my Citizenship test. I didn’t come this far with Immigration to loose that dream now. But if and when I return, the call to the gypsy life, will that be for me?

It will be her's one day....

2006-11-30T00:22:00.000+11:00

FINALLY went to see the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” yesterday. Whilst not the most scintillating movie to watch (Power Point demonstrations aplenty) the knowledge shared was justly intense. The whole time Al (Gore) was talking, I kept thinking, ‘what kind of world am I allowing, am I creating for Sweetpea’s children?’ Sobering thought indeed. The lifestyle that I think I'm entitled to is going to destroy the planet that my great grand-children are going to have to survive in and try to clean up. I don't think that I can be so selfish in my choices any more. And even if I'm not making a lot of bad choices, I cant be complacent and not try to make my voice heard by politicians. When I think about just one example – breakfast cereal – I have to wonder about the society I'm living in. Is it necessary for the cereal to be packed in a plastic bag and then put into a cardboard box? Wouldn’t the cereal keep just as well in the plastic bag without the box? Oooooh… but the cardboard box makes it easy to stock on the supermarket shelf, and the box can have all kinds of fun logos and pretty pictures and groovy fonts to make it more appealing, thus pushing up the financial gains of big multi corporations. Its just too bad that the planet is groaning under the pressures that we in the Western world are putting on it to make our lives easy to manage. Even though I was dead tired and it would have been the easy option, I chose to walk the 2 ½ km home from the train station rather than get my mum to use a toxic emission petrol car. Small steps make a big difference. The trick is to keep taking the small steps and not loose the faith that its making a difference.

Mirror, Mirror

2006-11-25T01:21:00.000+11:00

I really admire the way little children are free to admire themselves in the mirror with no shame and total rapture. I'm not sure who it was in my own past, but I distinctly remember one of my friends telling me that she didn’t have a mirror in her bedroom because that was a sign of vanity. I quickly gathered from her tone of voice and the look on her face that vanity was a bad thing indeed. Apparently, there was a mirror in the bathroom that everyone in her home had access to, but no other mirrors were to be found in the building. Even as a child, I thought it strange that a bedroom could exist without a mirror.

Sweetpea’s favourite game right now is to use our bed as a trampoline. As luck would have it the bed is situated directly in front of the dressing table that comes with a three piece mirror. The centre panel is huge with two smaller curved wings coming off the sides; it’s a fabulous piece to look at your self in. Sweetpea will spend minutes (we are talking about a 21 month old here!) jumping up and down, staring at her own perfectly mirrored reflection before her. She never ceases to be thrilled that there is a baby in the reflection each and every time she looks for it. She is amazed and enthralled at her own reflection. Pulling faces, watching herself laugh, twisting and turning as she jumps are all reasons to never shift her gaze from the mirror.

I have to confess that I certainly don't spend the time looking at myself in the mirror like my daughter does. And sadly for me, I don't seem to have the peace with myself to look with no other emotion other than acceptance. I will look at the lines that are starting to permanently etch themselves into my forehead and wonder what cream in a jar could magically erase them. I look and groan with misery every time I spy a grey hair among the dark auburn mop of curls that I am crowned with. And I know without a doubt that the first time I see distinct lines around my eyes is going to be reason enough to run to a psychologist and invest in some seriously deep therapy to deal with the reality of getting older.

What is it that happens to people as they get older that they generally don't spend hours looking at themselves in the mirror with complete acceptance and joy? What happens to us as we grow up into adulthood that loving our own face (and bodies) is something akin to climbing Mount Everest. Sure, there are a lot of people who have done it, but the majority – the vast majority- couldn’t even begin to imagine completing such a task, much less actually pulling it off. Now if you are in the ilk of Elle McPherson, then this piece isn’t going to mean a hell of a lot to you. But if you’re like me, then recalling the complete acceptance from your childhood of your face for what it is (a mirror to your soul) is an odd sensation.

Recently on television I watched a woman interviewed on the Oprah show that had been the victim of domestic violence. As with most women in abusive situations, she wasn’t blessed with a great deal of positive self esteem. One night her supposedly loving boyfriend in a fit of unwarranted jealous rage shot her at point blank range in the face. There was almost nothing left of her face, just a gapping hole where the features we expect to see were gone. Even the best plastic surgeons in the land are not going to be able to recreate what she had been blessed with naturally. She will never look the same again. What stuck me about this woman was her courage in finding the truth that Self isn’t made up only on what is visible to the outside, but that Self comes from the knowledge that we are what we think and do. But I bet there isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t wish that she could turn back time and have one more hour to look at her face and marvel at its beauty.

I'm sure that there will be people who will consider me a bad mother for allowing my child to gaze upon her reflection for as long as she desires and smiling my approval to her when she turns to me, but I don't care. There are plenty of people in the world who will love nothing better than to try and steal her joy at accepting herself away from her in times to come. But as long as possible, I am going to encourage my daughter to reveal in her own features, to see them as a fabulous gift and accept herself as perfectly and wonderfully made.

Take Your Two Cents and Shove It!

2006-11-17T00:11:00.000+11:00

Since giving birth to Sweetpea, it has never ceased to amaze me the numbers of times that complete strangers feel that they have the right to tell me what I'm doing right or more often wrong in her care and upbringing. It can be something as simple as complimenting me on her outfit or her behaviour. Those are the comments from strangers that I can handle. In fact, if I'm being honest, I welcome those comments. Its positive feedback that I'm doing a good job and that I'm getting it (more often than not) right. But occasionally – more than I care to admit, a total outsider will come up to me and inform me of their completely unsolicited opinions which will be in the negative realm of experience.

Yesterday was a prime example.

The southern states of Australia are experiencing a cold snap of weather that quite honestly, has left most of us bewildered at best, and thoroughly disoriented overall. We have had snow not more than 90 minutes drive from Melbourne, we had hailstones that piled up around the pot plants here and of course, there has been rain, glorious rain and storms (lets not forget that Australia is currently gripped by a drought of 10 years duration and water supplies are in serious shortage). Of course, being that its so damn cold, The Matriarch had an appointment at the diabetes clinic. And it goes without saying, that because she didn’t want to go (“its so boring in the waiting room”) and refuses to drive in adverse weather conditions, it was up to me to take her. Normally her attitude towards her health issues would make me roll my eyes up into the back of my skull in frustration, but that would have been it. But yesterday, on top of that usual frustration level was the cold weather. Its the style of cold that makes one want to curl up in a quilt with a good book or a movie, cuddle a baby girl with her bottle of milk whilst having a steaming hot cup of Dilmah tea and defiantly not going outside where the inhospitable elements leave your skin feeling brittle and raw.

Being such a nasty day, and keeping in mind that Sweetpea had woken up not once, but four times during the night (meaning Mummah had four wake up calls and four breaks in her already hazy sleep patterns) I made the decision that visiting the hospital was going to be the ONLY event of the trip. I'm not sure if its a truth across all hospitals of the western world, but hazarding a guess based on experience in both Australian and Canadian hospitals, they are always over heated, and I assumed that the temperature in the building would be no different yesterday. So I dressed Sweetpea accordingly in clothes that were warm inside a car or a building, but were a tad underdone for the outside. For the short fifteen steps that I had to take Sweetpea and The Matriarch from the under cover sheltered disable person drop off point into the hospital building, I had a quilt to wrap around Sweetpea's body. When they were safely in the warmth, I took the car to the car park and walked the trip back to the entrance (in the rain) alone.

When I got inside The Matriarch had a face on her as black as thunder. Apparently she had been accosted by some old biddy who had taken it upon herself to berate The Matriarch about the fact that Sweetpea didn’t have a hat on. But instead of getting angry with the old crone for being a an interfering busybody, The Matriarch got angry with me. It was, in her opinion, the perfect opportunity to let loose with her inner hostile rage about my parenting choices and mothering abilities. Her motivation was that if outsiders were willing to put in their two cents worth of opinions on Sweetpea's upbringing, then they must have a valid point and I should take keen notice.

I'm pretty much a passive person, not because I don't get angry, but because I prefer to be the person who smooths the waters rather than whip up into a complete storm of negative emotions. Do you remember the part where I wrote that because Sweetpea had a bad night’s sleep I had had a bad night? Smooth waters were not to be found yesterday around my spirit. I flared up at The Matriarch.

“My baby is clean and well cared for. She has baths every night; she has clean bottles and is fed good food everyday. I am a disciplinarian and yet my daughter comes running to me whenever she wants comfort or when she wants to share her laughter. She is in a warm bed every night. She has clean clothes and is never ever left in a dirty nappy. When she was sick and we took her to hospital, the doctors told me what a great job I was doing keeping her well hydrated and clean and free from rashes. She is happy and by your own admission, is advanced in her behaviour and understanding from the other kids you know. So how can you tell me that I'm a bad mother? How dare you even speak the words – you are totally out of line. If you’re pissed off at the old hag who spoke out of turn about Sweetpea’s lack of hat (which she refuses to wear at the best of times!) you should have had a go at her, not me. ”

With that I snatched up my baby and stormed out of the family room. I am so beyond sick to death of strangers (and The Matriarch) feeling that they have a right to talk about anything I do with my child. If I was abusing her I could understand, but I'm not. She is a well cared for child with the biggest issue in her day to day life being told off for taking off her socks when its cold. Ugh! Does any other parent go through this kind of crap? I'm sure (at least I'm comforting myself with the idea of it being true) that I'm not the only one who has felt this way.

If only I had been the one to which the old bag had said something to. On less than four hours sleep I think I could have savaged her but good. So instead of the relief and release of biting the head off that stupid old woman, I am left to sit here in front of my computer and fume as I write out the fact that I'm pissed. Humph. Better stay away from me for the time being, there is a grumpy, confidence shaken Mummah on the loose.

Lock Up the Guns!

2006-11-02T13:09:00.000+11:00

OK, its been a while. I guess everyday woes and pain have overwhelmed my usual writings and its about time I pulled myself together and got down to writing about topics other than The E-mail and the break up of my marriage. Not that I can promise that those topics wont raise their ugly heads again. To think otherwise would be naive and ridiculous of me. But I think I have to make a choice of pure will and start to concentrate on other things. Things like rants and raves. Because I feel that its high time I had a good rant in my diary. And if I know anything about myself, its that I can rant and rave with the best of them. And especially at the moment, when I am an irrational, hormonally unbalanced, broken hearted soon to be twice divorced basket case. Yeah… that should make for a good rant.

So for topic number one, I want to talk about false advertising and the fact that I got my hopes all high about having broadband internet and then I had the hopes dashed. I was so excited over the prospect of broadband internet that I was positively dizzy. Broadband internet as compared to this pathetic ass internet service that I have right now via dial up. Dial up that I have to dial up…. And dial up…. And dial up because it keeps crashing out on me. Not to mention that the fastest access speed I can achieve (and it’s a rare event) is 36k. Although more often than not I'm getting a truly pathetic 34.6k. Which, as anyone knows, is pure torture when you want to download a video clip or some music, because what would take around 14.2 seconds on broadband takes 47 minutes with dial up. Just the idea of broadband internet sent me into spasms of joy. Unwired Internet, you are in my line of vision, and I'm telling you that the guns are out and the command is fire at will. And I will.

HUMPH.

Because another thing I want to discuss is why men in their 50’s who work in big electrical department stores who have no damned idea of what they are doing but because they are men and have peeny-weenys, are obviously more capable than I am with my vaa-gi-gi. It stands to reason that having a peeny-weeny makes you capable of anything, and having a vaa-gi-gi means you cannot do anything for yourself. Although trust me when I say many a woman has had to do Any Thing for themselves because the peeny-weeny owners have no clue what they are to do when faced with a vaa-gi-gi.

Oh. My. Lord. Please let my prayers be answered with a gun totting madman who is on the same wavelength as me and listens to my mental telepathy commands. With a special gun that fires small bullets that wont make a huge mess (I'm shopping with my 20 month old daughter and she gets into every mess within a 2km radius and I'm trying to keep her clean after all) so I can gun down every man who gets in my way today.

This old fart, who was ultimately only interested in the commission from a sale, comes over to see if he can help me. Seeing I have been surfing the internet for over 10 years now, I'm really rather pretty savvy when it comes to researching topics and things of interest. I know how to read a computer screen and I can control a mouse pad – even those groovy ones that are fingertip touch controlled. So don't damn well nudge me away from the computer that has been set up especially to provide information for the ISP company that I want to join and pretend that you know what you are doing when its patently obvious that you don't have a freaking clue.

Don't stand there in front of the computer and type in an address that jolly well doesn’t exist and expect to come up with an answer that makes any sense to me.

“Did I say I lived at XYZ Street, Un-named Suburb? No… I said I was looking to see if XYZ Place, Un-named Suburb was covered.”

There is no XYZ Street in the Un-named Suburb you dimwit. Of course there wont be any coverage from the ISP company, will there? Noooo. Well done. You followed a bit of logic there, and it didn’t hurt a bit did it? Well, it didn’t hurt you did it? I, on the other hand, am starting to feel my blood pressure rising.

“OK. Lets try ringing the company and ask them directly.”

Cue more fumbling and stumbling in front of the computer screen by the dolt pretending to serve me. No clue. No clue at all. Serve me? Bloody hell, I end up explaining the screen information for him. Its pretty easy I tell him. After all, its that big button on the left side of the screen that say CONTACT US that is a bit of a give away really. If you want to talk to a representative of the company, hit the CONTACT US button, and wow! Magically the screen image changes and there is…. No, wait for it….. contact information there. Isnt that amazing?

Oh no. Not amazing at all. Why bother taking down the phone number on the CONTACT US screen page when you can walk away shaking your head and muttering something about being able to find the information quicker and going off to ring the head office – of the damned electrical store that you work for? Oh of course, stupid me. I thought ringing the number provideded by the ISP company would be the way to go… but ringing the head office in Sydney makes perfect sense. I don't know how I could be so daft as to not think of it myself. Yes. I can see why you have a peeny-weeny, and I only have a vaa-gi-gi.

Yeah, so the adventure goes on. After trying to keep my very energetic child entertained for 20 minutes without actually standing on, climbing on or pulling apart boxes that have very expensive computer equipment in them (which are just scattered all over the floor because the store is in the middle of renovations and the store is, quite frankly, a bomb site) the idiot older peeny-weeny owner comes to tell me that the ISP company representative wants to talk to me directly. Because they cant find XYZ Street anywhere on the map.

Breath in. Breath out.

And let me warn you here and now that if you are the manager of a company so stupid to start advertising that you have unrolled coverage in Melbourne and that you are open for business – then bloody well be open for business for everyone. Everyone, by any common, readily available in even the poorest school in the district dictionary definition would mean ME! I'm an everyone. Me. So don't damn well waste my time putting your slick advertisements on television and have me go to not one…. No no no…. not one but TWO damn stores (because the first store is only a ‘B” store, and the range is only at “A” stores right now. Fine. Why not say that on the ad? Only available at larger stores? Is that a hard thing to put in fine print at the bottom of a television screen is it? Yes, I can see that would be a real nuisance to you to do.) to buy the equipment needed, only to tell me after tracking my baby girl around in 30+ degree heat in a car without air conditioning that you don't cover ‘country areas yet’.

EXCUSE ME?

EXCUSE ME?? What did you just say to me? Did you just call one of the biggest growth corridors of housing in Melbourne a ‘country area?’ Twenty minutes from the CBD? Fifteen kilometres away from the CBD constitutes COUNTRY to you? You're not serious are you? You have no idea where my suburb is do you? Even though you have a map in front of you, you have no flipping idea of what you're talking about do you? You're on day release from the Drongo Numskull Chump Ranch that they herd you into at night – for our safety. Because letting you loose in the wilds of suburbia would be way too much for your pea sized brain to cope with. Its obvious that you are flat out like a lizard drinking just trying to cope with the average call for assistance asking you what area of Melbourne you do cover aren’t you?

OH hang on. I bet you are based in Sydney. You are aren’t you? You are sitting in a call centre in Sydney and have no clue as to what the city of Melbourne looks like. Brilliance on the management teams behalf. Lets not hire local employees who actually live in the city they are meant to be servicing. Nooooooooooooo…. Lets not do that. Lets have a special program of call centre workers sit in a huddle of cubicles together in Sydney to serve the customers of Melbourne. Yeah. That makes total sense to me… NOT. I can just see the training program the said special call centre workers had to go through.

“Just ask the customer where they live, ask for their post code number and then tell them that the service will be rolled out soon, and that they should call back in a month or so. That’ll satisfy them, and what’s the worst that could happen? They’re in Melbourne. Its not like they are going to track down this building and come in with a AKA 47 and shoot us in frustration is it?”

All I can say is, “don't bet on it buddy!”

All Cried Out

2006-10-21T04:43:00.000+10:00

The worst part is that I still love him.

I hate him for this heartache. I want to scream obscenities at him. I want to hate him, because that would be easier than loving him and not being allowed to have him again. I am forever more held at arms length from him. By him. He wants nothing to do with me – romantically – for the rest of our lives. I don't know what happened to get us to this place. All I do know is that I'm hurting; bad.

Most nights are the same. I come to bed with Sweetpea around 7:30 or 8pm and by 9pm I'm asleep, overcome with exhaustion from carry the stone that used to be my heart around all day. Then I wake up around 2am and I cant sleep for the rest of the night. I could probably crash around 6am, but seeing Sweetpea wakes up at 7-ish, there is no point to lying down and sleeping. I miss out on all the good TV time and then there is nothing but infomercials and a weather map signal on and I get frustrated with myself. If I could watch interesting TV my mind wouldn’t continually watch, rewind and watch again the last moments we had as a couple in love saying goodbye in the airport those many months ago. I wish I could erase them from my memory. But I cant.

I remember having a meal together and sitting in a quiet corner, just trying to soak in the last hours together before I went on holiday for four months. I remember taking a stack of photos of Game Boy and Sweetpea together because I thought it was important for her to have pictures to look at. I didn’t take photos of us because we would still talk on the telephone, and it was only four months. We could still communicate, we wouldn’t loose contact, so there was no need to have stacks of ‘us’ pictures. God how I regret that mode of thinking now.

I love him. And my heart is shattered. Even typing this, tears are streaming down my face and I have to remember to not wail in grief. I cant even whimper because it will wake up that precious girl who sleeps next to me in bed. Today when I was crying, she was patting my face, and the look of concern broke my heart anew. I want to go home. And he is home. He always was for me. I felt safe with him, I thought I would be home with him forever. And now I'm homeless, in every sense of the word.

How am I ever going to get past this pain? When will I get to the place of acceptance? When am I going to get through the night without crying? And will I ever stop asking myself ‘why?’ Is he hurting as badly as I am? Or is he over me? Has his heart moved on and he is looking to the future with hope and excitement? Does he walk around the apartment that I created in love for him and feel nothing? I wanted to create an apartment that looked as wonderful as I felt basking in his (I thought unending) unconditional love. I wanted it to be a visual representation of what I felt inside, because I felt so complete, which is the complete opposite of what I am now. Now I feel nothing but pain.

I don't ask him to take me back. I've begged him so many times and he doesn’t budge from his decision. I have told him that he has made a huge mistake in breaking up our marriage. I would still go to marriage counselling with him and try to work this out – if he would but ask. But I know he wont. The man I fell in love with would have tried everything to get the marriage back on track. The man I talk to on the weekends isn’t the same person. I miss the man I fell in love with. I miss holding his hand on a cold winters day. I miss going to the movies and talking over the plot with him as we walked home from the theatre. I miss having chocolate milkshakes from Zellers with him. I miss the happiness I felt at seeing his face when he came home from work at the end of the day. I miss his kisses and how his arms felt around me when we hugged. I wish I could say he had no idea how badly I'm hurting, and that if he knew, it would change his thinking and he would ask me to come back home immediately. But he does know, and he doesn’t.

And now I've cried so much writing this that my eyes are dry.

Over in My Heart.

2006-10-11T23:58:00.000+10:00

I don't sleep with the plastic mail satchel that carried the slippers for our daughter and the computer cooler for me under my pillow anymore. I used to hold it close to myself because he had touched it when writing my new address on the outside and it was as close as I could get to him. But now – now I can discard it with all the other rubbish. Now I don't need to have pretend that it’s important or that it’s a link to him. Now its just something to be thrown away, it has become meaningless to me.

I confess that I was still begging him to take me back, asking for a second chance. As if I was the one who needed to ask for a second chance. He was the one who cheated with three other women (that he has confessed to), I never broke my vows of marriage to him, no matter what he did to me. I thought that if I begged enough, he would relent and allow me to come back. Back to try again. Back to try and fix things. I would have to change myself to fit around his needs; he would remain as ramrod straight and demanding as ever. And for a time I was actually seriously contemplating it.

But then it all blew away. Like ash from paper when its been burnt, caught in the warm air thermals that slowly waft it up to the sky and then far away: higher and higher until its out of sight, and even the vague memory of its existence will one day fade away. My love for him was burnt away and it was over. With a few words any secret hopes and desires I had of working it out, of fixing it, of making it right fluttered away and instead, in the place of a heart, became a lump of stone. Cold, hard, unyielding, unmoveable. I'm sure that in time, moss will grow over the rock, and soften the edges, but for now, there is nothing there to cushion the jagged edges. The hardness of the stone has taken the place of my heart and it feels heavy in my chest.

In one short conversation, where he blamed me for being too emotional for him to tell me over the phone months earlier that he wanted a divorce, suddenly I felt nothing towards him but contempt, and wanted no part in reconciliation. I felt I could sing with joy that my heart is free. I am no longer emotionally chained to him. My heart is free and I know that its time to move on. Its time to create a new life with my daughter and find happiness for myself. No longer will I have to work around his issues and his needs. Now its just Sweetpea and I. He does not figure in my future at all.

Sometimes this turn of heart that I can have scares me. It was the same scenario with Pondscum. After a week of desperately wanting to reconcile with him, I was able to say, “You just walked away from the best thing that will ever happen to you” and it was true. Within a week, I was able to shut my heart off to him and move on. Within a few years, I had created a successful new life for myself. And now I'm going to do it again. Admittedly it has taken a little longer to shut my heart off this time, but again something inside has snapped and I can no longer allow any love to flow from my heart to his. If anything, I have to say that I hate him for taking away my life. The life that I worked so hard to create when I had nothing to fall back on. I had a good life in Ottawa. And I want it back. I hate him for this whole situation. I want to shout “Welcome to the Era of Me”. Well, me and Sweetpea.

And the tears have almost stopped flowing. Until I see the wedding rings in the jewellery box and then all my hatred dissolve into tears of grief again.

The Rose Chandelier - The Day The Lights Went Out

2006-10-10T00:02:00.000+10:00

The light fitting was somewhat of an oddity. A chandelier of sorts, but rather than having hundreds of sparkling crystals drops (as was the considered norm) it had small pink roses. Two rows of perfectly formed, open bloomed roses that were seemingly perilously suspended from a tiny crystal bead and a wrought iron base. The centre of the light was a cream ceramic pendent that had a large opening for the actual light bulb to fit in. It was the only concession to modernity that it allowed. The delicate gold paintwork on the ceramic base further added to its fluidity and grace.

As a child, I had hated the light, or so my mother asserts. I would argue the case that it couldn’t possibly be true, that she must have misunderstood my true sentiments. But with ages comes the changing of tastes, and I have to concede that as a child my tastes ran more to the fairyland style of decorating, and as an adult, my understanding of the unusual and unique had become more refined.

I loved the rose tipped light that hung in the bedroom. It was the one room of retreat in the house that I was not quite a guest in, and not quite a member of. I shared the room with my young daughter, our meagre range of possessions fitting in easily around the mess that belonged to my mother and her diseased mind. At night, as I lay next to my baby in the queen sized bed I would stare at the rose chandelier, allowing it to fill my mind with sugar spun dreams and fantasies of living in times happier than the moment. It was the gateway to delusions that had the flawlessness of a life fresh and uncluttered with messy emotions, as if written in a romance novel that had the perfect happily ever after ending, rather than allowing the reality of life in the current period.

I lived there during the uneasy time of not wearing the wedding rings that had held such hope and promise and yet being married according to the legalities of society. It was the light fitting that I stared at as tears ran unchecked down my cheeks when I silently wept while I talked on a white plastic phone to the man I had once loved without reservation. As we argued about the rights and wrongs done to each other, I would stare at the roses, willing my imagination to transport me to a summer garden, away from the pain that I felt with the words that fell from his lips.

As the understanding of hopelessness by way of my recent history gradually bloomed in my heart, I turned to the muse of the rose tipped light fitting to encourage my heart to find other gardens of promise to fill my life. Hopes and ambitions long forgotten or ignored for being too worldly or impossible took root and start to grow.

The day when the drab yellow envelope with formal contracts to break spoken covenants arrived in the mail, it was as if the lights had gone out. No longer could the promise of yesterday hold me in stead, rather it was the rose tipped light that brought a level of calm to my body with a spirit still alive but crushed, forcing my mind to remember to breath. It was in the room with the light fitting I would fight to own when the original owner passed away, that I knew that I would find a way to survive and move beyond even the rose tipped chandelier.

Whumping and Splodging Ice-Cream

2006-09-15T00:12:00.000+10:00

In the end its all really rather very simple. After spending a few hours mindlessly walking around the shopping mall, Mum and I decided that a long sit down in some place comfy (a contradiction in terms when it comes to shopping malls and food courts), a spot of people watching and a sweet treat in the shape of a McDonald’s ice- cream cone was in order.

It must be said that Sweetpea is still learning to eat ice-cream. She hasn’t yet grasped the idea of licking the swirling coil of ice-cream around and around; rather she tends to whump her whole mouth down on the mountainous top of frozen sweetness and then refuse to close her lips – probably because the ice-cream is too frosty for her to manage. Rather than wasting a whole ice-cream cone on a child who, after two or three whumping attempts would refuse to have anything to do with said offending item, it was decided that Sweetpea would share whumping rights on an ice-cream with me.

And true to form, after several attempts at whumping mouthfuls of ice-cream and coming to the conclusion that the ice-cream was much too cold to try eating, Sweetpea wrinkled her little nose up and turned her head away, making it all too clear to me that she would not be endeavour to whump any more ice-cream that day. But of course, the wrinkled nose got to me, so adorable were the crinkly folds that she wore on the bridge of her nose as she screwed up her face. So I took my ice-cream and splodged her on the nose! Yes I did. She looked shocked for a mere moment and then burst into laughter that echoed through the cavernous food hall. Wiping off the offending food with a hand that could only be described as podgy and not be an insult at this time of life because all toddlers have podgy hands, she looked to me with such excitement and eagerness that I knew what I had to do. I splodged her again. It was such an uproariously funny thing to do that Sweetpea dissolved into peels of laughter once again. Cocky with my success, I went for a third attempt at splodging, but Sweetpea was too fast for me. She ducked out of the way of the oncoming ice-cream cone and burst into laughter at her own cleverness. For several minutes we played the duck and weave or be splodged game. And all the while, Sweetpea laughed so hard that she was gasping for breath, giggling wildly, looking to me to keep making her laugh. It was wonderful.

I wear many titles with great deal of pride in my life. Female. Daughter. Sister. Woman. Mother. Friend. Wife. All of them very important, each one forever altering my self-perception in ways that are not to be denied. They are the socially bestowed titles that everyone has a chance of gaining. However, it’s the newest title that I treasure, for I am officially the “Funniest Person Ever”. Yup. That’s my most up-to-date title. I am the funniest person ever because I splodge ice-cream. Just ask Sweetpea.

Coloured Stones

2006-09-09T00:29:00.000+10:00

Suddenly I was whisked down memory lane that stung my eyes with salty tears.

I can recall the day with perfect clarity when we went shopping for an engagement ring. How I dragged you through every store, looking at so many plain diamonds in bands of gold, and not one of them really inspiring me. We put a plain little ring on lay away and left it at that. On our way to the bus stop to go home we walked past a fancy schmancy jewellery store. I didn’t want to go in, because it looked much too fancy for the likes of us to afford anything. But you were undaunted. In you went, taking me with you, despite my protests.

With all the rings to choose from, I kept going back to one ring. The first one I tried on as it so happened. How I loved that ring. I hadn’t even thought of looking at coloured stones, which is odd, as I do love them. I guess I was just trying to play the part of the fiancée, and every girl wants a white diamond don't they? But this ring…. This ring was special. It was just under the price range that you had set, although I was still so forgetful when it came to the tax system that I totally forgot that the tax would be added on top of the price of the ring, and that you had given me a total, complete with tax price range. You knew that I hadn’t taken that into account, but you didn’t care. You wanted me to be happy with the ring I would wear for the rest of my life. So we put the ring at the fancy schmancy jewellery store on layaway and went back to the other store and cancelled the plain little white diamond ring.

And the ring we bought? A beautiful ring with a Ceylon sapphire.

I had hoped to wear that ring forever.

You Don't Bring Me Flowers

2006-09-05T22:25:00.000+10:00

(sung by Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond)

[Barbra:] You don't bring me flowers
You don't sing me love songs

During the day I keep busy pretending to be busy. It’s easy when I have a whirling dervish for a daughter. In days long past, men filthy in body and in language, on wind propelled sailing ships that were always referred to in a feminine fashion, that had been out to sea for months on end, would swear they heard the sound of a mermaid singing with a sound so sweet it couldn’t be ignored. However, listening to mermaids leads almost certainly to death, as the songs of the sweet chorus would compel the sailors to steer their ships dangerously close to the jagged rocks of the shore dragging their ships ever closer to complete disaster. Being ship wrecked was to die painfully slow deaths of hunger and thirst on a desert island in the middle of the ocean. No matter the dire warning to ignore the song of the mermaid, sailors would find themselves fatally drawn to the sound of their own demise.

[Neil:]
You hardly talk to me anymore
When you come through that door at the end of the day...

As strong, it would seem, is the lure of the closed cupboards in this house for my daughter. There is something so impossible to ignore in there for her, that no matter how many times I admonish her against it, no matter how many times I smack her little hand, she cannot help herself, drawn back into searching through the cupboards and drawers. I hear a strange metallic rattling and clinking and know instinctively that she is going through the cutlery drawers, pulling out all kinds of strange instruments that seem so essential for cooking the perfect meal. Conceivably, it is the odd shapes of the cookie cutters that glow in a polished manner of faux brass that fire her investigate nature up. Then again, it could be the weird and wonderful whirling machine with the red handle that makes a whizzing sound when the handle is cranked by hand. Of course, there is the undeniable attraction of the sharp knives that have sent me into a screaming hissy fit fueled by fear when watching her toddle out of the kitchen with one dangling dangerously from her hand. Alternatively, I will hear the sweet light tinkling of glass and the mental imagery leaps before my eyes of her smashing cupboards full of glasses on the cold tile floor.

[Barbra:]
I remember when you couldn't wait to love me
Used to hate to leave me

On the other hand, I will hear the sudden loud bang of a door where little fingers have been unable to maintain their grip on the entrance to laundry product heaven. The lure of the washing powder, the beaded texture that clings to the fingers so well, and the fragrance that gives the wrongdoing away so strong. The bottles and cans that spray a fine mist that leaves a slippery wetness to everything it reaches. The large brushes with the wooden backs worn smooth with the constant caress of a calloused hand and the bristles splayed out much like the legs of a streetwise whore are also undeniably attractive.

Or, if the bang is somewhat less intense, I know that the lure to the huge variety of potions and lotions that my mother hoards in her bathroom cupboard has pulled at her imagination again. I know that the longing to open bottles is to experience the tactile sensations of the liquids and creams held within. Sweetpea is already a sucker for a smooth cool salve with the faintest trace of pink colouring that comes in a shiny flip top tube that her grandmother leaves lying around. Her grandmother is always buying and never using the emulsions, creams and ointments that form the witch doctor treatments that are peddled every night on late night television. It’s as if owning the promise of youth and wrinkle free skin is more than enough for her; she doesn’t need to hold the manufacturers to their promises by actually using the products that promise to not only hold back, but reverse the hands of time.

[Barbra:]
Now after loving me late at night
[Neil:]
When it's good for you, babe
And you're feeling all right

I keep myself busy with other diversions during the day also; to not over burden my daughter with too much responsibility. I go to the supermarket, without real need. I wander the aisles and take 40 minutes to do what could be done in 15. Comparing the prices, I look at products with no real understand of what I’m looking at, the strange shapes of tins, firm boxes, plastic and paper are all lost in misunderstanding. I stand there, omitted from the present in thoughts of nothing of any real importance; just empty thoughts that take me far away from my now everyday reality. Even buying milk is different here to there. Here I buy three litres of milk in a rigid plastic bottle, inflexible and bulky. There, I buy four litres of milk in soft supple bags that yield to the touch, soft and silky, cool in it’s plastic bag packaging.

[Barbra:]
When you just roll over and turn out the light...
And you don't bring me flowers anymore

I’m living in a room, crowed with the evidence of sickness of my mother who can’t bear to throw anything away. Hoarding clothes in two vast cupboards, they spill out onto short term, portable clothes rails that clutter the room; clothes from 40 years ago, that will never again fit her age altered frame, and never be appropriate. All because she is trying to fill the hole in her heart that has been there her whole life. The more she owns, the more fully the hole will be filled is her obviously mistaken thinking. Therefore, this room holds tins of imported European biscuit’s, hopelessly out of date from a Christmas season long ago, and old toys never played with from her own daughters’ childhood still looking fresh. Photo frames, miscellaneous furniture and old electrical items that no longer spring to life with a taste of a live current are packet higgledy - piggledy. I have tried to impose our things, my daughters’ and mine on top of her mess, trying to create some order and not getting anywhere, in a room that should be big enough for my daughter to play in and for me to live in. I feel my life has shrunk down to a couple of suitcases again. If I had known that this trip would result in this heartache and chaos, I would have packed my bags very differently. I would have brought more memories and less clothing, more photos, books and personal treasure, less material that only serves to hide the emotional mess through It’s expansiveness. There are photos of happier moments on the wall. It only serves to break my heart over again when I realize there was such heartache hidden behind the captured moments.

[Neil:] It used to be so natural
[Barbra:]
It used to be...
[Neil:]
To talk about forever
[Barbra:]
Mmm...

In "Almost French" by Sarah Turnbull an old Greek man explains to her that it’s hard to have a life with your heart in two cultures. It’s almost unbelievable, but I am missing life in Ottawa. I find myself dreaming of the shopping malls, the look of the stores, the bus routes to get there, the food market where I would buy our evening meal supplies, the look of the Parliament buildings with the flame of remembrance on the hill, with it’s roof green with moss or freshly scrubbed sparkle of brass. I miss beavertails and poutine; I miss the sound of the French accent (even though I do not fully comprehend the words). I miss the friendships I built there. I miss my small apartment that I lovingly decorated and tried to create a welcoming safe haven for my loved ones. I almost feel sad that I might not get to see the first snowfall this coming Christmas season. I complained bitterly whilst living there about the dark days and the extreme cold, but I think I am actually going to miss the crisp feeling of freshly fallen snow under my feet. I will be sad if I never get to marvel at a snowflake on my gloved hand ever again. The experience of it being so cold that the moisture in my nose freezing instantly as I walk out of the heat of the apartment building to the outside world is something that cannot be described.

[Neil:]
But used-to-bes don't count anymore
They just lay on the floor
Till we sweep them away

I’m beginning to wonder why I build a life when It’s continually gets ripped out from under me and I have to start again. I don’t know if I've got the strength to create yet another life. But I acknowledge that I gave up the right to self destruct when I gave birth to Sweetpea. It’s to her that I owe every day my waking up and getting through the day. It’s for her that I claw my way through minute by minute at times. If I was alone, Id like to think I had the courage to just give up completely, to become an alcoholic, or find some other self-destructive method in which to loose myself completely, selfishly. But in all honesty I don’t even think I’m brave enough to do that.

[Barbra:]
And baby I remember all the things you taught me
[Neil:]
I learned how to laugh and I learned how to cry

I just don’t know how I’m going to start my life – again. First the Salvation Army, Pondscum, then Game Boy and now, finally alone I must start once more. It’s never like this in the movies. Sure, the heroine has to start over after a devastating revelation that her husband has cheated on her, but over the space of two hours, with a big payout from the previous life, a home is rebuilt, a career blooms and a life is healed. For me, it’s a constant battle to over come the fears of loosing it all, letting down the walls of suspicions and hurt, finally trusting and having it all yanked away from me. Again. And I just feel so old and so tired.

[Barbra:]
Well, I learned how to love and I learned how to lie
[Neil:]
So you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye

When the first signs of daylight disappear and evening arrives, I have no need to panic yet. There are still distractions to be found. I can even get to 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock at night if I watch the right television channels and have the right movies. It’s only in the gloomy hours of the blackest night when the so called reality of my strength, calmness, my ability to make my life over again is recognised the for falsehood that it is. I cant deny in the night what I can in the day. My heart is being broken, and this hurts more than I can put into words. The tears spill out unchecked and not one tear brings an ounce of comfort or consolation.

[Barbra:]
So you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye
You don't bring me flowers any more...

It’s at night when the ominous fingers of silence mysteriously slide across the bed, finally reaching the ill defended heart and mind. Great wracking sobs wrench themselves from my unwilling body. I stifle inner urgings to give voice to the low guttural, almost primal screams like an wild woman in the deepest sorrow, because my daughter is lying peacefully, innocently next to me, and I don’t want her to wake and let her see the wild tears splashed across my face again. Her pity is almost too much to bear. The guilt I feel when I see her distress at my distress is a cruelty of human nature. The one person who is deeply affected by my distress, whose concern could bring me comfort when no other comfort is offered, is the one person I should not allow my distress to show to.

[Both:]
Well, you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye...
[Neil:]
'Cause you don't say you need me;

The movie “Under a Tuscan Sun” reminds me that there is hope, that of course life goes on if love ends. Nevertheless, right now all I want is my life with Game Boy again. I’m loosing my hold on that life, and the faster I try to grasp at it to get it back, the faster I loose it forever. It’s like a bucket of thrashing eels in an Asian market stall, or freshly pulled fish from the sea, writhing this way and that, impossible to tell which move will be next, impossible to grasp a hold of and keep. Holding his hand, walking through a park, riding a bus, simply being peaceful in the same-shared space, all things that I now know I should have cherished much more than I did. Simple pleasures that I worry will never be mine again. I miss saying, “I love you” to him.

[Barbra:]
You don't sing me love songs;
[Both:]
You don't bring me flowers anymore...

Dreaming of Calcutta Weddings.....

2006-09-03T23:14:00.000+10:00

I received an open invitation to a friends wedding in India come this December. Rather than listening to the Should Do voice that resonated in my head constantly, I turned my attention to the little girl within, who would pour over atlas’ for fun, dreaming of the far flung places she wanted to go to, and decided that if there was anyway possible, I would make the trip. After all, apart from those living in India, how often do you get an invite to a traditional Indian wedding in India in a life time?

First port of call was a quick e-mail to Bogus Air Captain Mascot Centre. My immediate response to reading the reply left me reeling, the answer from an obviously overly cheerful travel agent (you would be cheerful too if you thought you were going to get a commission on a ticket sale that you didn’t have to have any actual human contact to complete) lead me to believe that they were insane, quoting me $1650 + $301 in taxes (lets not forget that added little extra of $1 on top of the magic number thirty!) which wasn’t immediately enticing.

Mentally add if you would, to the equation that I must buy Sweetpea a ticket also. If recent history is anything to go by, Sweetpea’s fare would be 10% of my fare with taxes on top = $466. All that money and the child doesn’t get a seat of her own, often doesn’t get a meal that she can or will eat and isn’t given a kiddie bag to keep her entertained. I guess infants don't warrant the onboard entertainment bags until they are over the age of two and parents are obligated to pay three quarters of an adult fare just to fly them anywhere. And for the record whilst working on this paragraph rant, can I just say how piss poor it is that an infant under the age of two can rack up almost as much in taxes as an adult when it comes to flying? How is that possible? The child doesn’t even earn pocket money yet.

Surely there has to be some kind of internet deal that could beat the Bogus Air Captain Mascot Centre offer I thought to myself. So I logged on to the net to begin my search to cheap flight fame.

The first offered air fare I discovered from Zoogee.com.au was over $3000 (tax out!), and it was going to take over 21 hours just to get there. Now I don't know about you, but the idea of being cooped up in a skinny metal tube, hurtling along at speeds that make the reality of what Formula One drivers experience in G-Forces every race with a child under the age of two is defiantly not something you would want to spend as much time as humanly possible doing and is not fun. Picking my brains out through my nose could be defined as fun. Watching re-runs of Captain Kirk getting the alien chick all hot and bothered in Star Trek original series over and over again could be defined as fun. Sitting opposite to a foul old man on a train in the summer time who obviously decided that going commando was the most comfortable style of dressing (don't ask) could be defined as fun. Flying a long haul trip with a small toddler could never fit within the definitions of fun. Who in their right mind would be willing to travel 21 hours or more to get somewhere? (And please don't ask about the 32 hours of travelling from His Hometown to My Hometown that I did with Sweetpea when she was 14 months old).

A second flight option found on Zoogee.com.au flying with Thai Airways (Calcutta via Bangkok) that was 13 hours flight to get there and 13 hours to get back home. At least that is a little more reasonable time wise, but sadly, it looks as if Zoogee were going to charge me $300 in taxes too and they are more expensive for the basic ticket ($1860) than Bogus Air Captain Mascot Centre. This came somewhat as a surprise to me as numerous people have complained to me (at me?) about the pricing policies of Bogus Air Captain Mascot Centre. Personally I don't give a fig; I just want to go to my girlfriends wedding in December without bankrupting myself. Peanut Satay airlines website offered me the bargain of a flight to Dehli (with no mention of how to get to Calcutta) for $3749.32 (I’m not even going to dignify that bid with a comment) and the flights that the Student Travel Agency website offered me was almost as laughable.

So now I'm beginning to wonder if my Bride to Be Friend wouldn’t mind moving her Indian wedding to late September when the flight there would cost a paltry $850 + taxes. Yes I'm well aware that its monsoon season, but after watching “Monsoon Wedding” a thousand times, I can persuade them with the idea that there is a undeniable Bollywood association to coolness there. I'm sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to alter the wedding plans that Bride to Be and Groom to Be have put in place. Yes, its just so obvious that that’s the answer… change the wedding date! I'm sure that it won’t be any problem at all for the bridal party to accommodate the wishes of one guest. Or maybe I should get back to Bogus Air Captain Mascot Centre and just book the tickets already.

Can someone tell the Should Do voice in my head to shut up and tell my bank manager to look the other way?

Whats the Technical Name for This?

2006-08-31T01:46:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, August 30, 2006
I always thought that it was an adult only domain, because lets face it, its really something only adults would (or ought that read should?) consider. Something that only people with rapidly ticking body clocks that sound as loud as the exploding firecrackers used by train line workers hoping to avoid being mowed down by fast moving trains could discern. I believed this theory because I had only ever known adults – women – who felt this urgency. This longing for, this overwhelming desire and very real need for a baby before the internal mechanisms shut down permanently. My thinking is altering.

As any woman who has been hit with the overpowering desire to procreate knows, every public place is a mine field of yearning filled with babies exuding that oh so fleeting fragrance of heaven that they can truly call their own. Women, like ripe fruit swollen with hidden precious sweetness of newborn hope waiting to be welcomed to the light are always within visual range, smiling because they know they hold the secrets of the universe within. Television and magazine advertisements feature chubby babies’ cherub of face and form creating yet another layer of futile resistance to imaginings and do nothing to stop the very real physical pain inside the reproductive system.

The sight of the baby section in a department store becomes the secret fairyland of dreams where admission is a gently clasped hand held over a belly in loving protectiveness. Magazines will have page after page of ideas for a bare room to be turned into a much needed nursery that sighs with longing to be decorated. Badly acted soap operas have a seemingly endless supplies of scrawny teenage actresses in storylines that routinely show them unhappily finding out they are pregnant and rejecting the offspring supposedly created miraculously within their body.

Admission to the secret society of motherhood requires at the very least a cursory role of a man. And for the single woman, it’s the deal breaker of acceptance. Because for a single woman, there is no way to get past the road block, as physical reality dictates that to create a child you need semen, which, as luck would have it, involves a man. No amount of wishful thinking can get past this reality. So what is the single woman dreaming of parenthood to do? Get drunk enough to ignore personal moral standards, go to a night club and take her chances with a stranger? Try to overcome the many legal obstacles that stand between her and artificial insemination? Or ignore the repeated callings to motherhood and find other distractions?

And what do you do as a possible (probable?), soon to be single woman when your 18 month old daughter starts to point out every baby smaller than herself to you? And how do you deal with her when she becomes ever more urgent in her efforts of gaining attention and praise for pointing out a different baby? How do you ignore the constant clamouring of your heart and body when your own child is making you more fully aware of the very thing you are desperately trying to ignore? And could I technically get away with saying that my Baby has Baby Fever, and that its not me looking at every baby with what could be described as baby lust?

A Little More to the Left... Rub Rub Rub.....

2006-08-21T23:43:00.000+10:00

Like most people, my child has discovered the sheer bliss of being massaged. She can be reduced to a pool drooling of dopey being, quietly guided to the Land of Nod if I spend the time rubbing her sweet little body. One of the places I've discovered works wonderfully well on her is if I stroke the top of her shoulders and the back of her neck. Just today as we watched television (advertisements that have puppy dogs are her particular favourite) I quietly started rubbing her shoulders. I love the feel of her smooth skin. Its no wonder advertisers sell creams, potions and lotions to adult women by using the example of soft as babies’ skin. Sweetpea’s skin is so supple it feels as sleek and smooth as spun silk. Gently I started caressing her shoulders with the back of my fingers. I noticed that she was arching her neck when my fingers strayed there, so I incorporated my movements to include her small neck. Little by little, her head started to dip forward. Her eyelids looked like they were becoming leaden and she was fighting the battle of nap time. I gently pulled her body closer to mine and felt her full surrender as she gave up and went to sleep. I stopped rubbing her shoulders and started to massage her tummy. A small sigh escaped her lips, followed by soft sweet snores, bringing a contented smile to my mouth.

Sweetpea has the most adorable way of telling me that she wants me to keep rubbing her body. No matter how often I turn her around to be in the socially accepted position of head on the pillow in the bed, Sweetpea generally turns her body around so that her head faces towards my feet and her feet are up near my torso. And if the quilts arrange themselves in just the right way, she will end up with her bottom up in the air, her little legs bunched up towards her torso reminding me of a frog. Since she was born, a familiar pattern of patting has been created to give her comfort when she is distressed. Pat. Pat. Pat. Stop. Pat. Pat. Pat. Stop. Pat. Pat. Pat. Stop. So naturally, when my baby girl is falling asleep, I fall into the habit of patting her on whatever part of the body avails itself, like her nappy padded bottom. I will keep the rhythm going for 15 or 20 minutes, and slowly stop, thinking that she will be fast asleep. But the other night sleep was not on the agenda. Sweetpea's head arose from the ruffles of bedding, with her hair standing up like the crest of a cockatoo to look at me. Annoyance registered on her face, as she looked around deliberately at my body. Spying my hand, she grabbed it with hers and as she tucked herself back into her frog like position, she firmly placed my hand on her tushie. It must have taken another 30 minutes of bum tapping to get her sleep which meant almost an hour of massage. Smart girl my daughter.

Well if there was ever a day that I needed it, today was the day!

2006-08-21T23:37:00.000+10:00

From the title of this blog I fear that I may end up painting this picture of my absolute brilliance as a parent and giving a visual on the halo of innocence around the head of my daughter. I must tell you that I am not a parenting master. I am just three steps from the edge of the cliff of madness that I think every parent dwells on, and dreams of jumping off from. I just won’t write about it very often. Because who wants to admit there are bad days when they can filter them out and focus on the good days? And who gives you kudos for surviving the horrible days, when the good ones are rewarded with people thinking you are a parenting god? Today was not one of these days……

Sweetpea has been told numerous times that she is not to touch the bathroom door. Reason being, that one side of the handle has been broken, so the door handle doesn’t so much as turn the knob that moves the little dooverlackie that slots into the hole in the wall, but just spins around in one place, doing nothing more than looking like a defective adornment. It is, to put it in layman’s terms and to all intensive purposes, a doorknob that is as useful as size DD tits on a horny bull. Most days the temptation is too great for Sweetpea to bear and she just has to attempt to close the door. But, being the ever vigilant mother that I am, I am normally able to swing around from the basin (looking very much like a rabid dog with a mouth full of minty tasting foam) and make a threatening enough face and growl that she stops touching the door immediately and turns to some other form of entertainment. Like pulling the used cotton buds out of the bin and trying to ram them into her ear. Or pushing her way into the shower closet and get locked in there so that she is forced to open all the shampoo and conditioner containers and smear the contents all over the newly cleaned glass walls. But not today. I wasn’t alert to the small movements behind me until I heard what I'm sure was a satisfyingly loud to Sweetpea sound of the door banging shut. Now I was the cool, calm woman of reason that you would all expect me to be. The remaining ornament of a handle is on the bathroom side of the door. Easy, I thought to myself, open the door, growl at Sweetpea for being naughty and get on with the day.

Yeah, did you catch that too? That overconfident thought of “easy” is where it all went wrong. I turned the door handle to watch it go around and around like a twisted merry-go-round horse, and felt the waves of nausea wash over me. Can we say claustrophobia? Can we describe Ceylon as a claustrophobic? Yes. I'm pretty certain that is a good term to describe Ceylon. So of course I start to scream to gain my mothers attention. Only its early morning and my mum hasn’t put her hearing aids in yet, so she is as deaf as .... well I cant think of a good analogy here, so make up your own. I was too busy bashing the door and yelling to get her attention. Finally she heard the ruckus and came to see what the matter was. Never one to stay calm when there is a perfectly good opportunity to panic, my mother preceded to panic in a manner that Henny Penny in all of her “The sky is falling! The sky is falling down!” splendour would have been proud of. “Oh my Gawd Ceylon, you will have to climb out the window, I cant open the door!” she cried, as she tried futilely to get the little metal bar to turn the insides of the dooverlackie. After snorting at the very idea of my even trying to climb out of the bathroom window I asked Mum to get a knife to see if I could move the door jab thingy. After ten minutes of pure, unadulterated panic on both sides of the bathroom door, I got the door hole to give up its precious prize of the metal tab thingy that could hold us prisoner until the cows came home, and sprang out of the bathroom will all the grace of a wilder beast racing towards her first meal after three years of hibernation.

And so we can move to the next moment of insanity that came upon the quiet moments in the early hours of a Monday morning. Somewhere along the busy morning of breakfast and milk and cuddles, I had moved an open cup of diced pears from the place it had been left (on Sweetpea’s high chair table) and onto a good dresser. And can I point out here and now whilst building my case innocence by reason of insanity that it wasn’t even me that opened the cup of pears for her? I had warned her when I spied the first time she tried to reach for the cup of fruit that I had stupidly placed on the good dresser with a, hmmmm, whats the word I'm looking for….? Strong? Firm? Resounding….? Bellowing! That would be it…. I was bellowing “NO!” as a highly ineffective deterrent to her reaching for the forbidden fruit.

I didn’t leave the cup close to the edge of the dresser and there is no way of God’s good green earth that she could reach it where I had placed it. Or so I thought. I'm sure the child grew an extra three centimetres over night, because as soon as my back was turned a little hand deftly made it way over the edge of the dresser, grabbed the open cup and split the contents of the cup with all its diced peariness and sticky nectar all over the softly polished wood of the dresser. Cue the insane screaming of “NO. NO. NO…. I bloody well said NO!” coming from my mouth as I threw Sweetpea onto the couch to get her away from me so that I would successfully resist the urge to smack her into the middle of next week. Clean up took fifteen minutes.

But the fun times don't end there….. ohhhh ho hoooooo no my friends. There was yet another event to come in the normally quiet home life of Ceylon. Whilst talking to Game Boy on the phone, I stupidly make the assumption that my mother would be aware of everything Sweetpea would be doing and keep her under control. She was, after all in the family room and I was in the bedroom. Can anyone tell me what the mistake was here? Put your hands up… no calling out. What’s the cardinal rule of looking after a toddler? Yes, I know you know the answer. Yes, that’s right. When a toddler is quiet for any real length of time, its time to panic. Because said toddler is defiantly doing something that he or she shouldn’t be doing. And it would behove the adult who is in charge of the care of the child to high tail it around the home to find the toddler and stop them from doing anything overly destructive. And after living here with a toddler for almost five months you would think that my mother would be aware of this rule. Obviously not. My mother tells me that she was extremely fond of that large African Violet; the only violet she will have you know that had ever bloomed for her in the 40-something years of cultivating and caring for African Violets. And it doesn’t help that we are still finding little furry leaves scattered around the family room.

So if there was ever a day for it…… this was it.

I received this in the mail.

Chocolate – lots of Swiss and New Zealand chocolate and a fabulous “Red Dress Ink” book!

So to my dear friends Julia and Robyn, I owe you a debt of gratitude… or at the very least, the vastly over rated in importance life of my daughter. … because it’s the thought of going to jail and missing out on eating the chocolate and reading the book that is currently stopping me from killing her for just now ripping the leg off a piece of furniture which I had screamed “NO – put it down!” five times before seeing that she was just holding the leg of the piece and no longer holding the whole piece of furniture.

Can this day end already? (5:17PM)

(And can you believe it took longer to post that darn photo than it took to write the entire post? I am so not computer and internet savy!)

Why So Soon?

2006-08-19T22:59:00.000+10:00

Sweetpea has taken to playing the strangest ‘game’ lately

She throws herself onto the floor, arranges her body ‘just so’ and then starts to grunt and groan as if she has fallen and hurt herself. She will keep up the grunting until I hear her and come ‘rushing’ to her rescue, which, if I am engrossed in my writing or reading, can take five or ten minutes. She will lift her face to me when she hears my reaction; I pick her up off the floor, sweeping her body to mine, and ask questions of “what happened baby girl?” and make soothing sounds with my voice. We then spend several minutes locked in a tight embrace as she whimpers in my ear and pats my arm in the same rhythm that I pat her back. After a while she will slide off my lap and go back to playing as if nothing untoward has occurred. Fifteen minutes later the same grunting can be heard with her little body in a different place, but the same arrangement obvious. We can go through this sequence of events two or three times in a row.

I've been thinking about what satisfaction this activity is providing her, and when the answer finally came to me yesterday it struck me quite forcefully. At 18 months my child has already learnt the game that she will engage in for the rest of her life. It’s the game that everyone who doesn’t have to fight for the basics of survival (food, water, shelter) plays. The game of ‘do you love me enough and will you be there for me no matter what?’ game that thanks to some doctor of psychiatry we call self actualisation. Sweetpea wants to know that the one person in her world that she counts on will be there for her no matter what. She is looking for Mummy to rescue her and keep her safe, to comfort her and be her safe place to fall. And aren’t we all searching for that safe place to fall?

As young children in a healthy home environment, it must seem obvious that the parents are the cushion between pain and self. It is the parents that will ease the grief and make things better again. Its only when we get older that the game becomes more confusing. As adults the uncertainty of when players on the field change and the utmost assuredness that we feel when we are babies with our parents is harder to recover. But our search for it grows more and more urgent, if not downright frenzied the longer it takes to find, if the people on pop psychology shows like Dr. Phil are anything to go by.

And somehow the fact that my Sweetpea has started this kind of behavioural playing makes me sad. As her mother I had wanted to shield her from what I perceived as the pain and nastiness of this world for as long as I could. I wanted to protect her from ever feeling that there might come a time when there won’t be anyone to save her and make her feel better. But she is already testing the theory of emotional safety for herself. And I dread the day I don't hear the play grunts and her little heart is broken.

So Its Not About Sex.

2006-08-17T16:18:00.000+10:00

The more I search the internet for interesting blogs to read, the more I am struck that they generally fall into one of two categories. Either they are awkward, tedious pieces that would make even a sanguine person want to commit suicide to escape the sheer mind numbing monotony of reading the many lives of humdrum out there in the world. Or they are about sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. There, did that get your attention? Sex is what all the good blogs are about. It seems to me that the most wildly successful blogs out there are popular because they are about sex. They are fast paced volumes of the so called real life adventures of wild (or not so wild) sex being had by extraordinarily well paid escorts all over Manhattan. And as luck would have it, I don't live in Manhattan, thus making my possible success in the crowded arena of blog sports already stacked up against me.

I’ve agonised for months over writing a blog. What would I write about? How would I create reader interest? I've questioned whether I should even write a blog, seeing as I had to research what the term blog was. And then it struck me that for all intensive purposes I've been writing a blog for almost five years with 1000 entries under the vastly uninspiring historical title of a diary. No matter that it holds generally the same information and is a written record of my life, seriously, how do you compare the mystique of a blog to a boring old diary?

But over the last few months I have been thinking of reaching a much wider audience that I have right now. I want a larger share of the market and just the word “blog” speaks of my being hip, current and happening baby! I know that blogs are where anyone who wants to be noticed are going to hide out, much like the beautiful people who hang out at the newest, thus being the latest bar or nightclub. I know that online blogs are where the book publishers are scouring for their next big blockbuster that will stay on top of the booklists for weeks, if not months. And I can admit that I very much want a six-figure deal (but would settle for a four-figure offer) from a publishing company for the books I’m writing, just like the deals some fantastically popular people get for writing their simple, day to day life stories. Because I can write about things that are every bit as interesting as morning sickness or being dooced from a job. I can write about the breakdown of a marriage and wax lyrical about dreams of the future. I can pretend to have it all together, just like other people do in their blogs.

But fame and fortune will only come if I write a blog that editors can find surreptitiously via Google and links from other diaries…er, I mean blogs. So after much consideration, I believe that I can write one of these fandangled contraptions called a blog.

I can see your not convinced…. FINE! I surrender and I’ll give you what you want .…. I’ll give you sex in my blog.

My sex – female.
The sex of my child – female.
The sex of my partner – male.
Type of sex – vanilla.

That’s it… that wraps up the sex in my life.

Phew…. Its warm in here. Think I might go and get a drink and dream of the day I get an e-mail from a publisher offering me a book deal on the subject of sex.