Mum stuff

Today is my Mum's birthday. We live a LONG way away from each other, what with her outside of Sydney and me in Denve. We don't talk as often as I'd like to. We don't live as close as we'd like to. She doesn't get to see her only grand-daughter as much as she'd like to. It's not all my fault, but I'm the one that move a million miles away so... you know... what did I think would happen?

I've always admired my Mum. I adored her as a youngster (minus some of the teen years when, according to diaries I kept at the time and read YEARS later, were filled with teen vs Mum fights and drama that I had all but forgotten once we stopped living together when I was age 18) and always, always thought that she did a wonderful job being a Mum. By the time that I was the age that my daughter is now, my Mum had another toddler and was pregnant with the third... or damn close to it. Can you freakin' imagine?? I sure as hell can't. Urgh, dear lord, the diapers. The diapers!!

Anyway. All of this is to say that a) it's my Mum's birthday today and b) it's Mother's Day on Sunday and c) my Mum is aces. That's all, really. I mean, sure, she's as nuts as they come and I'm well aware of various levels of crazy that I've inherited, genetically or by learned behaviors, directly from her... but I love her guts none the less. She's my Mum, for godsake. Sure, she's nuts, but only I'm allowed to say that. Not you. You shut up.

I love you Mum. Happy birthday! Happy Mother's Day. Thanks for being my Mum, you crazy kook. xoxo

Oh dear Lolly I'm hopeless at this.
I've come to realize that the only time I have to update a blog, being a full-time working mother with a 20 month old, is during business hours when I am at work. That's a problem.

How do people do it? By the time the child goes down to bed at 7:15pm or so, and we scarf down some dinner and do dishes and maybe a load of laundry, and park our asses on the couch for some desperately needed relaxation and 'brain goes dead in front of glowing box droooooool' time the very LAST thing on my mind is turning on the computer and making an attempt at some kind of thoughtful, funny, interesting blog entry. TERRIBLE AT THIS, is what.

I resolve, yet again, to do better. Maybe during my lunch breaks? God knows I'm sitting at my desk anyway, right? Certainly not outside doing anything vaguely resembling 'exercise', or 'errands' or other worthwhile endeavors.

BE BETTER AT THIS. That's my resolution. 'This' includes a lot of things. Blogging is one of them.

Every day.

When I was younger than, say, 12, and the bossy older sister of two other girls, I wanted to be a teacher. Playing "Schools" at home was my favorite way to while away the hot Aussie summer days during school holidays. All the stuffed toys (fully dressed, of course, because only babies get around nekkid), and my two kid sisters, would get assigned a seat in the classroom and be handed out tests to complete while I strolled the aisles between the imaginary desks and answered imaginary questions from Big Ted, and various knock-off cabbage kid dolls.



Me: No, you may not go the toilet, you're in the middle of a test.

Kid Sister #2: MUUUUM!!! Lucy won't let me go to the toooiiilet!!!

Mum: (makes a life-long point of not responding to screams from across the house, so does not reply, but you better bet your ass that if Mum yells 'GIRLS!!' from anywhere in the house or surrounding suburban property and we don't drop everything and head in her direction sooner than later, there would be trouble.)

Me: (in my best 'stern teacher' voice) FINISH. YOUR. TEST. (in my sweetest, I-want-to-be-your-favorite-teacher-in-the-whole-world voice) Does anyone have any questions?? Big Ted? You okay?



I eventually came to the realisation that I didn't actually want to be a teacher at all. What I REALLY wanted was to be able to boss people around all day. Later, I came to realise that what I really wanted to was to be able to boss people around specifically within some sort of creative-outlet type of environment (I was VERY into drama class at the time). Even further down the road, almost to the end of high school, I realised that I wanted to boss people around within some sort of video/television/media production type of environment.

Nowadays, I work for a marketing/advertising agency in a SOMEWHAT 'boss people around' kind of capacity. What I've recently realised, though, is that the 'creative-outlet type of environment' actually needs to serve two purposes in my life... and my current situation is only serving one. I work with some very creative type folks, and play a part on a team that produces some creative type work, but my contribution to that team? Not creative, for the most part. A fair amount of diplomatic bossing around, but not a lot of creativity on my end. That's alright though. I've found that, since having a kid, my need to feel fully fulfilled in my day job is not so strong. I don't want to feel SO terribly invested in my job that I end up feeling like I'm short-changing the kid in some way. I also don't want to feel like I'm short-changing my job too badly either.

The creative outlet, however, needs to be discovered. I feel that. I've done some graphic design, I've done some writing, I like to think about interior designy type crap way more than I probably should given our current financial constraints. And now? Sewing. More specifically? Sewing. Cloth. Diapers. I know. I can't even believe it myself.

Point of all this, of course, is that I'm going to keep up this writing thing because, if nothing else, I can do it with my ass firmly planted on the couch with a glass(es) of red wine nearby at all times. But I also sew, and use on my kid, cloth freakin' diapers. These are not your mama's cloth diapers, of course, and it sounds way more domestic than it really is. But there it is. Ridiculous! I'll save the teaching for the people that actually have good-hearted and well-intended thoughts about educating the youth of (insert country name here). I really only ever wanted to do it so I could be a relentless nag and get paid for it. When I found out that corporal punishment was frowned upon, I lost interest. Quickly.

Parenting Firsts

Two words: Caddyshack. DOOOOODIE!

Ye olde, dreaded, poop-in-the-tub.

As I uttered the words, aloud, 'Are you pooping??', I saw it.
I lunged for her, and hefted her out of the water fast as lightening. Then held her by the armpits, slippery and dripping, over the tub as I evaluated the scene. Poop. Lots of it. Lots of little bits of it. Floating all over the place. Dear lord, how did she just get all that done so quickly?

She screams. Irritated that her beloved tubby-time has been cut short so abruptly.

I rush her to her room, get her into a diaper and pj's, and close the door to the bathroom. I'll deal with that later.

We spend a few minutes playing on the couch. It's her new favorite thing. She runs the length of it, falls over, throws pillows, lays down and says 'night night', then jumps up and runs on the cushions until she falls over again. Lots of giggling, from both of us. In the back of my mind, I'm imagining what the bath tub looks like right now. Toys, letters, that stupid Rainbow Fish book, rubber duckies, and little bits of poo: all hanging out together, bobbing around in the rapidly cooling water. Geee-ross.

A few minutes of playing on the couch is enough time to make me realise that she ain't done yet. I put a clean diaper on her, for the second time in minutes. How soon is bedtime?

Tyler comes home. She hears the key in the front door, from all the way in the back of the house, and yells 'DADA!!!' in the same excited voice that is, lately, reserved only for exclamations of 'DADA' or 'ELBO' (the television). He's brought wine, bless his heart, without even knowing the horror that awaits in the bathroom.

We play a bit longer then brush teeth, and DADA! does the bedtime routine while I get friendly with a bucket, a pair of rubber gloves, a bottle of bleach, and a scrubbing brush.

Still not even CLOSE to the worst crap I had to deal with this week.

Yes, well. I'm a liar, aren't I. This isn't regular posting at all! Pathetic! LIAR, LIAR!

Of course, the minute I sit down to do this the dryer starts making that fabulously annoying 'buzzzzz' noise to tell me that it's finished the most recent cycle of not-really-drying-anything-adequately. The last of the 'zzzz' tells me that I'll probably need to set it to run again, if I wasn't kidding about wanting stuff 'dry', as opposed to 'warm, but still a bit soggy'. I wasn't kidding, dryer. Why can't you work better? Why don't you do what I say? Why am I being sass-talked by a freaking dryer?

Still determined to do this blogging thing, but right now I'm being distracted by the always-fabulous Real Estate Intervention. Folks are delusional, yo. Also: I can't believe how much houses cost in some parts of the country. And, conversely, how MUCH house you can buy if you are willing to live somewhere like Georgia or Texas. I'm not, of course, willing to live such places but were I in the market to own a huge McMansion in a sub-division of hot, sticky suburbs in the the South, I'm confident I could find something perfect. Hopefully with beige walls.

See? See what I did there?
I started up one of these not-so-new-fangled weblog thingies and then didn't write anything for months. I KNEW that would happen!
I read so many of these things. So inspired, and enthralled, and jealous of the incredible writing skills of the entries I read every day. "These people are so much funnier than I am. These people have a much bigger vocabulary than I do. These people have a far better grasp of basic punctuation and grammar than I do. These people amaze me every day with how their clever, funny words have allowed them to make some sort of a living for themselves and their families and there's no WAY I should even bother trying to compete with this.'
This is your brain on insecurity.

I've been talking myself out of doing things my whole life. Team sports, enjoying video games with friends/partners/whomever, adventurous cooking and baking, adventurous much of anything else, regular exercise etc etc. I'm not good at it, instantly, so I've lost interest and talked myself out of ever being interested in it in the first place. Safer that way. Less chance to embarass myself or risk rejection or, even worse, risk looking even a tiny bit silly in front of other people in a way that's beyond my control. Being the 'funny girl'? That's alright. I control that. I work pretty hard for that, actually. But being the cute, skinny girl? no. Being the sporty, athletic girl? no. Being the [insert skill I do not naturally posess skill here] girl? Probably not.
So what to do? I feel as though writing is something I'm decent at. People tell me I should have a blog. They enjoy my writing. We'll see, I guess. I'm not telling anyone about this thing. Maybe my super-hot-huz (SHH), eventually. Maybe not. He's got more than enough talents of his own brewing away to worry about this silly thing.

Might be theraputic though. Putting the words down, and not sending them to anyone specific? We'll see. I'll do better at this. More regularly at this. I think I need to.

The weather outside...

It's white out there. Very white. Very white, and very cold.
Every day, I'm torn between loading Ruby up into the car seat, tucking in the blanket, putting on the hat and hoodie and all the rest of it and getting her all rugged up before we go outside OR just carrying her on my hip and the car seat separately and loading her up once we're in the car. On the one hand, I know she's much snugger and warmer if I use the former method. On the other hand, that car seat, with her in it, weighs a freakin' ton and I'm worried about popping a hernia heaving her around in that thing lately.
I always thought that my super-Mum arm strength would just increase as the weight of the 'rig' increased with her in it but that hasn't happened. Instead, one day, I attempted to pick the whole shebang up with my left arm and nearly fell over on top of her trying to get some air between the floor and the bottom of the car seat. Good LORD that thing is heavy. I either need to bulk up or figure out a new system, clearly.

In other news: she's sprouted a second tooth over the past weekend, and it was a little rough for all involved. Sleeping and napping for crap, whiney and grizzly and generally fussy and out of sorts (and then there was the baby! hey-oh!). Poor kid. Last night was better, so we might have made it though the worst of it. She'll get to spend tomorrow hanging out at home with her Grandma Garn, so perhaps some time away from the daycare (and screaming daycare kids) will help calm her down to her normal lovely self? I'm still not in love with this daycare either, which bothers me constantly like a low-grade fever about which I feel compelled to do very little other than 'keep an eye on it' for right now.

Here's a picture I stole from Tyler's Flickr page, from the 6-month shoot. She's seven months old next Wednesday! Good grief!