OK. So we're into the second week of my Lean Cuisine style of living (making sure I'm looking after myself). And I thought it was going smashingly well. On reflection, this is because a) the LGBB was gracing me - most days - with at least a 1 1/2 hour sleep in the morning, with the usual "don't expect more than 40 minutes out of me" nap in the mid afternoon, and b) there was a three day weekend in there where Steve was terribly helpful and I relaxed. A. Lot.
Lucky I did do all that relaxing so I don't feel totally melted down already because we're into a new week and, uh..... I'm back to feeling guilty for not spending lots of time with the LGBB when she's awake and yet she hasn't slept more than about an hour and 20 minutes for the ENTIRE day.
Took her to occasional care when she woke up from her sleep (read: when she'd wailed for 20 minutes after having a 10 minute bit of shut-eye, but at least I managed to gulp down half a coffee and go to the toilee in that time). She wailed there the entire time as well, except when her very nice carer carried her around the room. Still, better them than me. Just for 20 minutes.
We're home now and I just want to know how many others think it's unreasonable of me to just want some time to myself. Without feeling guilty. The LGBB is currently listening to her friends in the stereo (it's a Play School cd, dammit she loves it and I'm a slave to anything that soothes the beast lately) and I am hiding(?) in here. We've been home 15 minutes and I literally plonked her there and myself here.
Just. Need. A. Breather.
It's not like I'm in her face all day, she gets loads of time to amuse herself (and she's only been happy to do that again these past four or five days - before that, it was the whole Greek tragedy thing every time I left her side for the previous 2 or more months and that was difficult in itself to balance). I've no idea what other people do in terms of leaving their babies to "it" - I have tended to do the 50/50 thing, splitting her awake time into part play and/or reading with her then the rest on her own. But now she's awake for such a long time..... there's no way I can do that. It's not healthy for either of us, for one thing.
The nurses way back at sleep school told me one of my long term goals would be to try to find ways to assimilate the loss of my first baby with living with my living second one. It's difficult to explain just why it is that I feel so obliged to stay by her side, or at least allow her to see me, from wherever it is she is sitting. And I know the day will come when there is nothing I will be able to do and she'll be off into this room and that, then friends' houses, school, leaving home, yada yada. It's a very strange thing to live with this dichotomy between feeling desperate for space and yet needing to insure we are getting "enough" of each other. I think in all this, my cellular memory is calling out desperately for Ellanor. And I cannot hold Lolly to that flame.
But what am I to do? I do feel despairingly isolated. It's not something I wish to keep bringing up. It's not something I try to find in everything. And yet... it is in everything. It's only when I try to work through and peel back the layers to the source of why I am doing some of the things I am - and even when I don't see it, I've had professionals, like those nurses, gently suggesting it could perhaps be because we lost a daughter - that I discover it's sought me out again. I feel trumped constantly by this interwoven grief.
And I feel so, so, very guilty about the LGBB having to bear witness to my healing as I go. It's like a Painting By Numbers picture.
More physically pressing, though, someone recently asked me if she's dropped her morning sleep "yet". I think I weed my pants at the thought.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Tell me no lies, am I like Lorelai?
Gilmore, that is.*
That was the question Steve had to struggle through an answer for last night.
Me: Do you think I am like Lorelai?Him: *looks over, confused*
Me: I mean, you know how sometimes people have said I remind them of Lorelai? Am I really?
Him: *unsure how to answer, a little exasperated but amused and frowning* Wwwha... umm...
Me: *continuing without hearing the attempted reply* I guess if I talked a bit faster I might be. But I just don't see that I might be. Do you think I'm like her? Isn't she annoying though?
Him: *laughing now* Lenny. Yes. You are like Lorelai.
Me: Is it because she'd ask a dumb question like this?
Him: *sighs and turns back to the telly*
* So I still miss them, what of it? They were friends, no matter that they were fictitious, I truly believe I've missed out big time by not being born anywhere near Stars Hollow.
That was the question Steve had to struggle through an answer for last night.
Me: Do you think I am like Lorelai?Him: *looks over, confused*
Me: I mean, you know how sometimes people have said I remind them of Lorelai? Am I really?
Him: *unsure how to answer, a little exasperated but amused and frowning* Wwwha... umm...
Me: *continuing without hearing the attempted reply* I guess if I talked a bit faster I might be. But I just don't see that I might be. Do you think I'm like her? Isn't she annoying though?
Him: *laughing now* Lenny. Yes. You are like Lorelai.
Me: Is it because she'd ask a dumb question like this?
Him: *sighs and turns back to the telly*
* So I still miss them, what of it? They were friends, no matter that they were fictitious, I truly believe I've missed out big time by not being born anywhere near Stars Hollow.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
She's a maniac, maniac on the phone
Ok, so there's not much time for back-stories. I'll just have to put in as much as I can to bring you up to speed. The main points are:
• Old, old friend's mum became my friend by default over the years.
• When I say "friend", I mean like I felt obliged to continue to use her services (House de Beauté type stuff) even after it was most inconvenient when she moved about a 30 minute drive from me - heaven knows I can get anyone within a 5 mile radius to tear hairs off my legs and nethers without having to drive so far for the privilege.
• So really not a friend at all. But more like, yeah... an old friend's mum.
• Not even friends with the old friend anymore.
• Relationship, for what it was worth, with the mum got reeeeeally scary for me. Particularly after Ellanor passed away and she began to call when in an obviously altered state and tell me all sorts of strange things that were very confronting to me (in terms of my ability to conceive/carry a child and what we were "doing wrong" to lose so many).
• After I contacted aforementioned long-ago friend (and we were very very close, but years ago) just out of the blue in 2005 to see if the old familiarity was there, it was very soon apparent it was not. In fact, I was a bit confused that she seemed not to even know I'd had a daughter, despite the mum telling me she had and even going so far as to say my old friend had been upset for us.
• The mum moved two states away at around the end of 2005, a sea change I guess, and I admit to feeling very relieved for even though the contact was sporadic (and always instigated by her), she seemed to be one of those people who had assumed a place for herself in my life that I'd never invited her to take up - that of "mother" to replace a bit of a gap I had (willingly, consciously) made.
• I didn't get any more than one or two of those uncomfortable kinds of telephone conversations that seem to be her forté, while she was away.
• She doesn't have any clue about the LGBB, although I think I did mention I was pregnant again (which could mean "anything" has happened).
• I'm now stuck like a bit of a slave to the answering machine-slash-caller ID. I find her calls bordering on the side of harrassment, she was verbally rather confrontational and certainly there to push her points across last time we had any decent length of conversation and I would have thought my lack of returning her messages, which have been alarmingly frequent lately and getting a bit haughty, should have indicated to her that I didn't want her to contact me anymore.
• I'm too big of a wuss to answer and tell her just that. I am still, despite everything that has gone before, not the kind of person to state my needs and where they're not being met - not with someone so distant from me but who still assumes to know all about me (oh yes, she's one of "those"). But still, I think I've been creating these monsters in my life all along. With each occasion that it hits me out of the blue, I realise that sometimes certain types are going to assume that because I don't verbally state each time I disagree with them, that I am right behind whatever they're saying - it's my nature, I accept whatever's being said to me because I believe that that's the other person's opinion and I take it as nothing more than that.
But this is all besides the most important point:
• The last rather terse message was more detailed - she's a "grandmother" now, which I assume means my old friend has had her first child. This is possibly the sole reason the mum was trying so hard to contact me and in hindsight (the nasty thing that it is sometimes) I feel a touch dreadful and selfish that I didn't return any of her umpteen calls over the past couple of months. See, the mum and I share a bit of a blaring similarity - we both lost our babies, at the same NICU no less. And I can only imagine the kinds of skeletons that are flying out of her closet at seeing her daughter with a child now.
She also mentioned she is moving back home.
And now I'm shitting myself she's going to knock on my door. The one thing that keeps going through my head, somewhat annoyingly and nowhere near helpful, is that St John's Ambulance ad woman.
"Would you know what to do? Know what to do." See? Not helpful. Any suggestions?
• Old, old friend's mum became my friend by default over the years.
• When I say "friend", I mean like I felt obliged to continue to use her services (House de Beauté type stuff) even after it was most inconvenient when she moved about a 30 minute drive from me - heaven knows I can get anyone within a 5 mile radius to tear hairs off my legs and nethers without having to drive so far for the privilege.
• So really not a friend at all. But more like, yeah... an old friend's mum.
• Not even friends with the old friend anymore.
• Relationship, for what it was worth, with the mum got reeeeeally scary for me. Particularly after Ellanor passed away and she began to call when in an obviously altered state and tell me all sorts of strange things that were very confronting to me (in terms of my ability to conceive/carry a child and what we were "doing wrong" to lose so many).
• After I contacted aforementioned long-ago friend (and we were very very close, but years ago) just out of the blue in 2005 to see if the old familiarity was there, it was very soon apparent it was not. In fact, I was a bit confused that she seemed not to even know I'd had a daughter, despite the mum telling me she had and even going so far as to say my old friend had been upset for us.
• The mum moved two states away at around the end of 2005, a sea change I guess, and I admit to feeling very relieved for even though the contact was sporadic (and always instigated by her), she seemed to be one of those people who had assumed a place for herself in my life that I'd never invited her to take up - that of "mother" to replace a bit of a gap I had (willingly, consciously) made.
• I didn't get any more than one or two of those uncomfortable kinds of telephone conversations that seem to be her forté, while she was away.
• She doesn't have any clue about the LGBB, although I think I did mention I was pregnant again (which could mean "anything" has happened).
• I'm now stuck like a bit of a slave to the answering machine-slash-caller ID. I find her calls bordering on the side of harrassment, she was verbally rather confrontational and certainly there to push her points across last time we had any decent length of conversation and I would have thought my lack of returning her messages, which have been alarmingly frequent lately and getting a bit haughty, should have indicated to her that I didn't want her to contact me anymore.
• I'm too big of a wuss to answer and tell her just that. I am still, despite everything that has gone before, not the kind of person to state my needs and where they're not being met - not with someone so distant from me but who still assumes to know all about me (oh yes, she's one of "those"). But still, I think I've been creating these monsters in my life all along. With each occasion that it hits me out of the blue, I realise that sometimes certain types are going to assume that because I don't verbally state each time I disagree with them, that I am right behind whatever they're saying - it's my nature, I accept whatever's being said to me because I believe that that's the other person's opinion and I take it as nothing more than that.
But this is all besides the most important point:
• The last rather terse message was more detailed - she's a "grandmother" now, which I assume means my old friend has had her first child. This is possibly the sole reason the mum was trying so hard to contact me and in hindsight (the nasty thing that it is sometimes) I feel a touch dreadful and selfish that I didn't return any of her umpteen calls over the past couple of months. See, the mum and I share a bit of a blaring similarity - we both lost our babies, at the same NICU no less. And I can only imagine the kinds of skeletons that are flying out of her closet at seeing her daughter with a child now.
She also mentioned she is moving back home.
And now I'm shitting myself she's going to knock on my door. The one thing that keeps going through my head, somewhat annoyingly and nowhere near helpful, is that St John's Ambulance ad woman.
"Would you know what to do? Know what to do." See? Not helpful. Any suggestions?
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Is it a bird, is it a plane, no it's...
Peter Pan?
Lolly enjoys the late afternoon sunshine reflections in the kitchen
Lolly enjoys the late afternoon sunshine reflections in the kitchen
So simple it's childs' play
The poor LGBB.
Playing on the floor with Daddy this morning, he noticed that she doesn't have that same innocent "If I do A, B happens" mentality. It's not that she doesn't know how. She just doesn't want to. Wild horses couldn't make her. There's not much delight happening with the whizz-bang showy toys (not that we have many), she's happy to watch us play with the ball-down-the-slide giraffe flashy lights and music toy. And we get a rather pained smile from her when we say anything about the music or where the ball has gone, etc. You get the picture.
I tied one of her prized wooden bees on a string. Now, if there's one thing the LGBB will do anything (or try her damndest) for, it's her bees. I read somewhere that if you tie a toy to a string or ribbon, then put it under the couch and let your baby pull the string til the toy becomes visible, joy and rapture will ensue. Well, it worked insofar as she was gleeful that she saw her bee again (after all, it had been so long since she'd seen him, 20 seconds at least) but only if I was the one doing all the work.
So back to this morning. Steve tried the same "trick" with her and he observed that she has a bit of a challenge... well, looking at things like a regular, 'excited by the little things' baby. Instead of sitting there going, "Oh LOOK! My cherished bee is moving", her look more says "Oh I see, that string is attached to my toy so when forces are applied to said string, the force must be greater than the force of the friction and gravity holding the toy in position. Hence, a light tug on the string is not enough to break this force and the toy remains stationary. However, a greater force allows it to move. How quaint of Daddy to show me."
Playing on the floor with Daddy this morning, he noticed that she doesn't have that same innocent "If I do A, B happens" mentality. It's not that she doesn't know how. She just doesn't want to. Wild horses couldn't make her. There's not much delight happening with the whizz-bang showy toys (not that we have many), she's happy to watch us play with the ball-down-the-slide giraffe flashy lights and music toy. And we get a rather pained smile from her when we say anything about the music or where the ball has gone, etc. You get the picture.
I tied one of her prized wooden bees on a string. Now, if there's one thing the LGBB will do anything (or try her damndest) for, it's her bees. I read somewhere that if you tie a toy to a string or ribbon, then put it under the couch and let your baby pull the string til the toy becomes visible, joy and rapture will ensue. Well, it worked insofar as she was gleeful that she saw her bee again (after all, it had been so long since she'd seen him, 20 seconds at least) but only if I was the one doing all the work.
So back to this morning. Steve tried the same "trick" with her and he observed that she has a bit of a challenge... well, looking at things like a regular, 'excited by the little things' baby. Instead of sitting there going, "Oh LOOK! My cherished bee is moving", her look more says "Oh I see, that string is attached to my toy so when forces are applied to said string, the force must be greater than the force of the friction and gravity holding the toy in position. Hence, a light tug on the string is not enough to break this force and the toy remains stationary. However, a greater force allows it to move. How quaint of Daddy to show me."
Friday, June 08, 2007
Too little too late, sunshine
Today marked a most auspicious occasion: one hour of care in the hands of strangers without tears being shed. Mind you, there were tears at the beginning and while I waited just outside the door in Reception, a carer had to stop, drop and roll to the LGBB, perch her on her knee for the next 50 minutes and do nothing (that was one smart worker - if there is one thing I learnt whilst working in child care, it is that you always go for the kiddie who "needs cuddles", as it means the other poor sod has to do everything else including rescuing babies from themselves and each other, not to mention attending to any whiffs of anything unsavoury-smelling).
The good thing is, it means I can get something resembling a life back again, I'm aiming for around three precious hours a week. I plan to use this time, at least initially, to clean the house to within an inch of its paintwork.
I've been building up to this relief for weeks. Things just got in the way - my things at first - and then I realised the LGBB was playing the situation (they were all coincidences, of course, but I prefer to think she's smart enough to know I've threatened occasional care outside of the home and that's why she suddenly started to sleep longer in the afternoons and throw sicky fits, etc. etc.).
It seems now, after the change in sleep routines didn't work for her, in one afternoon all of a sudden she has come ahead leaps and bounds in her development. All from one hour at child care?
Today, I have witnessed the following for the first time:
• A pointed index finger, pointing at things.
• A pointed index finger poking things, mostly my nose.
• Constant stream of verbal chit-chat rivalling a teenager on the telephone (she could babble before now, but not like this).
• Scooting around on her belly - I wouldn't go so far as to say commando crawling, however if anyone needs a new spinner for their Twister game, she's your girl.
• The closest she's come to sitting up on her own from a prone position I've seen.
• Marley being given her dummy to "suck" when tucking her in to bed for the night (oh dear LORD, could the cuteness factor be any higher? My breath was taken away) - usually it's me who has the stinky thing put in her face to "suck the dummy", but no apparently now it's Marley's turn to go along with the game.
It's as if she was saving it all up for such an outing. See, I can do all these things, you don't have to send me away for me to do them. I wanted her to do something, anything, new for what seems like months - her frustration and certainly my patience couldn't take much more of the inaction and snail's pace slowness of the motor skills stuff. And yet, I'm feeling like I've been told to put the book down for the night, in the middle of the most exciting chapter. I wanna know what happens tomorrow! Today!
The good thing is, it means I can get something resembling a life back again, I'm aiming for around three precious hours a week. I plan to use this time, at least initially, to clean the house to within an inch of its paintwork.
I've been building up to this relief for weeks. Things just got in the way - my things at first - and then I realised the LGBB was playing the situation (they were all coincidences, of course, but I prefer to think she's smart enough to know I've threatened occasional care outside of the home and that's why she suddenly started to sleep longer in the afternoons and throw sicky fits, etc. etc.).
It seems now, after the change in sleep routines didn't work for her, in one afternoon all of a sudden she has come ahead leaps and bounds in her development. All from one hour at child care?
Today, I have witnessed the following for the first time:
• A pointed index finger, pointing at things.
• A pointed index finger poking things, mostly my nose.
• Constant stream of verbal chit-chat rivalling a teenager on the telephone (she could babble before now, but not like this).
• Scooting around on her belly - I wouldn't go so far as to say commando crawling, however if anyone needs a new spinner for their Twister game, she's your girl.
• The closest she's come to sitting up on her own from a prone position I've seen.
• Marley being given her dummy to "suck" when tucking her in to bed for the night (oh dear LORD, could the cuteness factor be any higher? My breath was taken away) - usually it's me who has the stinky thing put in her face to "suck the dummy", but no apparently now it's Marley's turn to go along with the game.
It's as if she was saving it all up for such an outing. See, I can do all these things, you don't have to send me away for me to do them. I wanted her to do something, anything, new for what seems like months - her frustration and certainly my patience couldn't take much more of the inaction and snail's pace slowness of the motor skills stuff. And yet, I'm feeling like I've been told to put the book down for the night, in the middle of the most exciting chapter. I wanna know what happens tomorrow! Today!
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Yes, sir, that's my baby
There are certain signs that the LGBB has more than a physical resemblance to yours truly. The things Steve is alarmed with most are (in no particular order):
• The way her entire highchair tray must be devoid of crumbs that have fallen before she takes another mouthful (I hate when my highchair tray is dirty.... I also have to eat every shred of lettuce, sesame seed - and I mean EVERY - or hair that falls out of my burger before I take another bite, don't ask me why, I just do).
• The way she locks her feet together at the ankles, intertwining them like some gnarled trunk.
• The rhythmic slow rubbing of one foot against the surface of whatever she's lying on, for comfort (I do this at night and I believe it was only because Steve accepted I do this not to annoy but to fall asleep that we're still sleeping together).
Sleeping, people, sleeping.
• The way her entire highchair tray must be devoid of crumbs that have fallen before she takes another mouthful (I hate when my highchair tray is dirty.... I also have to eat every shred of lettuce, sesame seed - and I mean EVERY - or hair that falls out of my burger before I take another bite, don't ask me why, I just do).
• The way she locks her feet together at the ankles, intertwining them like some gnarled trunk.
• The rhythmic slow rubbing of one foot against the surface of whatever she's lying on, for comfort (I do this at night and I believe it was only because Steve accepted I do this not to annoy but to fall asleep that we're still sleeping together).
Sleeping, people, sleeping.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Wishful thinking
*harnessing his inner geek and at the point in the conversation where I was reminded that geekdom is never far from the surface, even if it's covered over with staff-speak, pithy side anecdotes about whose birthday was today and recounts of the day's events*
K: But why did you move your old computer in there? I thought the screen on the new was was bigger.
S: Nah but once I installed Teleporter...
K: You don't work across two screens now?
S: *not listening* ...I can move my mouse to the edge of one screen and keep typing in the next.
K: But why?
S: *more to self than me* I want to eventually set eight screens up and work across them in Filemaker.
K: But why?
S: That way, I'll be able to set each screen up on the wall, each with a different run. And colour code them once it's away and...
I think he may still be dreaming. I can hear talking in there. I've walked away.
K: But why did you move your old computer in there? I thought the screen on the new was was bigger.
S: Nah but once I installed Teleporter...
K: You don't work across two screens now?
S: *not listening* ...I can move my mouse to the edge of one screen and keep typing in the next.
K: But why?
S: *more to self than me* I want to eventually set eight screens up and work across them in Filemaker.
K: But why?
S: That way, I'll be able to set each screen up on the wall, each with a different run. And colour code them once it's away and...
I think he may still be dreaming. I can hear talking in there. I've walked away.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Think I'll go and eat worms
It's official. Apparently a general consensus is forming that the LGBB loves Justine Clarke so much because she looks like me. Or I look like her. I wish I was the pre-pregnancy, so without the thunder thighs in very fitted pants (nasty wardrobe lady) but with the later natural wavy-haired era, Justine.
Today marked the worst day yet in terms of my patience with her. Lolly, not Justine. Though the try-hardness of Ms Clarke got under my nails like slivers of bamboo today too. Now I'm even psycho-analysing this, suspecting my disdain for her is because I recognise bits in her that are so chirpy, so giddy, that hell yeah I want to smack her down a size. Because I wish I was that "happy" - not for one second is the irony lost on me that apparently she is how some people obviously still see me (or perhaps they just can't let go and accept that that once-chipper, innocent me has long chirped her last cheep... might be time to stop holding out hope, people). Though I do admit to unashamedly overanimating when singing countless songs a day and making up stupid ditties and pointing out the most mundane things in simple words, all because I delight in the wonder I see in her face. Lolly's, not Justine's.
In my now crazed state, I am actually thinking I'm taking out on her some of the anger I've been carrying for years. Lolly, not Justine. Indignant anger stemming from the fact that I've put others first so much in my time, anyone I've constantly given an inch to who then gaily assumes a mile or 10 - it still happens, although rarely now. I tend to discern my friends more wisely since the experience with Ellanor.
And yet, of course I know it's right and it's a given that the LGBB would take so much of me - I had so much I was prepared to give a baby, any baby - but here I still find myself grappling for any morsel of time to be me and starting to feel deeply resentful about it. And just when I thought I was just starting to reach the precipice and choof merrily down the other side of the slope into parental bliss too. Tra-la.
I realise there are things I can do to ease the load, within reason. For instance, I'm still attempting to organise occasional care, that blissful mecca that still eludes me because a) they ask that new babies come after 2.30pm the first couple of times while the parent waits in Reception, "in case the staff can't settle her" (wow, gee, instills a lot of hope), and b) the LGBB changes her pattern and time of afternoon catnaps anywhere from 1-3pm and I daren't take her if she isn't well rested or the whole exercise might prove futile. But the wily little minx isn't going to get out of it tomorrow, ho no. Not after today. Tomorrow, she will be woken from her sleep (yes it's that important to me - I've made it an unspoken rule that I never wake her once she's down, and nor have I had to, she has an uncanny internal clock that wakes her even if I was going in to do so) and taken down to the place where I've chosen to drop her off. So that I can come back home and ... do anything else other than attend to every whim of Ms Whinge-a-lot.
I could also drop the work I currently do in the one decent block of sleep Lolly takes, usually in the morning anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. Usually somewhere in between. But paid work, in the name of my business, is too important to me. It's essential in terms of not only some financial independence, but moreso because I honour Ella by doing what I can to make the business thrive. It's a tough call. Of course, I'll never deny the LGBB's needs to feed the business side of my life. But I don't underestimate the power and the pull of what the business means to me, on a much deeper level, than simply earning money and making it work. It replaced the daughter I wasn't raising, for three years now. It will be a very hard one to ever let go and I hope that time never comes. That even if I am not strictly doing what it is I do under that banner of ERW Design now, and I'm not taking on much new work lately as I simply do not have a moment to dedicate, I am at least hopeful of retaining it as a working entity.
And now, to sleep. Perchance (not) to dream, because I want an uninterrupted comatose kind of experience. In order that I am refreshed to confront tomorrow.
Today marked the worst day yet in terms of my patience with her. Lolly, not Justine. Though the try-hardness of Ms Clarke got under my nails like slivers of bamboo today too. Now I'm even psycho-analysing this, suspecting my disdain for her is because I recognise bits in her that are so chirpy, so giddy, that hell yeah I want to smack her down a size. Because I wish I was that "happy" - not for one second is the irony lost on me that apparently she is how some people obviously still see me (or perhaps they just can't let go and accept that that once-chipper, innocent me has long chirped her last cheep... might be time to stop holding out hope, people). Though I do admit to unashamedly overanimating when singing countless songs a day and making up stupid ditties and pointing out the most mundane things in simple words, all because I delight in the wonder I see in her face. Lolly's, not Justine's.
In my now crazed state, I am actually thinking I'm taking out on her some of the anger I've been carrying for years. Lolly, not Justine. Indignant anger stemming from the fact that I've put others first so much in my time, anyone I've constantly given an inch to who then gaily assumes a mile or 10 - it still happens, although rarely now. I tend to discern my friends more wisely since the experience with Ellanor.
And yet, of course I know it's right and it's a given that the LGBB would take so much of me - I had so much I was prepared to give a baby, any baby - but here I still find myself grappling for any morsel of time to be me and starting to feel deeply resentful about it. And just when I thought I was just starting to reach the precipice and choof merrily down the other side of the slope into parental bliss too. Tra-la.
I realise there are things I can do to ease the load, within reason. For instance, I'm still attempting to organise occasional care, that blissful mecca that still eludes me because a) they ask that new babies come after 2.30pm the first couple of times while the parent waits in Reception, "in case the staff can't settle her" (wow, gee, instills a lot of hope), and b) the LGBB changes her pattern and time of afternoon catnaps anywhere from 1-3pm and I daren't take her if she isn't well rested or the whole exercise might prove futile. But the wily little minx isn't going to get out of it tomorrow, ho no. Not after today. Tomorrow, she will be woken from her sleep (yes it's that important to me - I've made it an unspoken rule that I never wake her once she's down, and nor have I had to, she has an uncanny internal clock that wakes her even if I was going in to do so) and taken down to the place where I've chosen to drop her off. So that I can come back home and ... do anything else other than attend to every whim of Ms Whinge-a-lot.
I could also drop the work I currently do in the one decent block of sleep Lolly takes, usually in the morning anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. Usually somewhere in between. But paid work, in the name of my business, is too important to me. It's essential in terms of not only some financial independence, but moreso because I honour Ella by doing what I can to make the business thrive. It's a tough call. Of course, I'll never deny the LGBB's needs to feed the business side of my life. But I don't underestimate the power and the pull of what the business means to me, on a much deeper level, than simply earning money and making it work. It replaced the daughter I wasn't raising, for three years now. It will be a very hard one to ever let go and I hope that time never comes. That even if I am not strictly doing what it is I do under that banner of ERW Design now, and I'm not taking on much new work lately as I simply do not have a moment to dedicate, I am at least hopeful of retaining it as a working entity.
And now, to sleep. Perchance (not) to dream, because I want an uninterrupted comatose kind of experience. In order that I am refreshed to confront tomorrow.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Same
Same clothes.
Same routine.
Same hair.
Same pattern to the day.
Same walls.
Same view.
Same mess.
Same work.
Same complaints.
Same cry.
Same pain.
Same arguments.
Same ailments.
Same silence.
Same rejection.
Same husband not motivated to go out on days that SHOULDN'T feel the same.
SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME
Same routine.
Same hair.
Same pattern to the day.
Same walls.
Same view.
Same mess.
Same work.
Same complaints.
Same cry.
Same pain.
Same arguments.
Same ailments.
Same silence.
Same rejection.
Same husband not motivated to go out on days that SHOULDN'T feel the same.
SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME
Friday, June 01, 2007
It's my birthday in a few short weeks
And if you love me, dear reader, you will get me Wing Sings Carpenters. Namely, the hauntingly beautiful Yesterday Once More.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
What I know
• The LGBB will drink anything. As long as it passes her lips via a syringe.
• A doctor named Paulo is destined to be cool.
• Trotro is a whiney little bore.
• I have officially lost 28kg. And heading ever south again after hitting a plateau of late, funny how you get a sort of second wind after reaching a milestone (which for me was getting under 90kg..... fark that sounds heeeuge).
• Who knew reducing portion size and doing 300+ skips and a walk each day, plus personal training and some boxing every week *pant pant pant* would actually begin to pay off again?
• 117kg (at my peak in July last year, the day before induction) is way too much for my frame to handle.
• If I ever get pregnant again, I need to somehow hire a stunt double to take on my extra fluid (for Shirley that is mostly what it is).
• And stop calling me Shirley.
• Some of us, however hopeful, will never do the skinny Minnie thing simply via breastfeeding. I take it on good authority from a former champion breastfeeder of two who is now super slim (as opposed to super sized) that she was one who, like me, retains the chunk while doing good for the bubba.
• A few sips of a nice wine is so relaxing right before the final writhing breastfeed of the night, especially when that feed is coming after a now-regular marathon 5 hours awake time through the roughest part of the day: the dreaded witching hour leading up to DINNERTIME.
• Remember that game? At primary school? "What's the time, Mr Wolf?" Whenever Cameron was the wolf, he was always too quick to yell DINNERTIME. Never caught anyone, of course, because we were always only three steps from the safe line.
• Cameron was a dork.
• Me and my friend, Lisa, also saw him and his mates drop their dacks in a one-in-all-in pact to show off their willies to each other in the main room of the abandoned School House that they'd broken into by way of a loose floorboard. So we got Mr Jacobs to come see. And got them all into trouble for flashing their nethers.
• Though, now I'm thinking about it, they must've been doing it more than once if we saw them do it, had enough time to run up to the staff room, dob, come back with Mr Jacobs (who was wearing a wry, knowing smile as I now recall) and lay in wait for them to do it again.
• Justine Clarke of Play School (formerly Roo) is far too watchable for my comfort level.
• A win on Ebay is always so much sweeter when you sniper bid.
• Yes, that person you hate on Ebay is MEEEE.
• If you jump rope in front of a 10 month old Lolly, she will bob her head up and down (just the head) like a cocky.
• And if you watch this whilst performing said skipping, you may just be thankful you're wearing your Tenas.
• A doctor named Paulo is destined to be cool.
• Trotro is a whiney little bore.
• I have officially lost 28kg. And heading ever south again after hitting a plateau of late, funny how you get a sort of second wind after reaching a milestone (which for me was getting under 90kg..... fark that sounds heeeuge).
• Who knew reducing portion size and doing 300+ skips and a walk each day, plus personal training and some boxing every week *pant pant pant* would actually begin to pay off again?
• 117kg (at my peak in July last year, the day before induction) is way too much for my frame to handle.
• If I ever get pregnant again, I need to somehow hire a stunt double to take on my extra fluid (for Shirley that is mostly what it is).
• And stop calling me Shirley.
• Some of us, however hopeful, will never do the skinny Minnie thing simply via breastfeeding. I take it on good authority from a former champion breastfeeder of two who is now super slim (as opposed to super sized) that she was one who, like me, retains the chunk while doing good for the bubba.
• A few sips of a nice wine is so relaxing right before the final writhing breastfeed of the night, especially when that feed is coming after a now-regular marathon 5 hours awake time through the roughest part of the day: the dreaded witching hour leading up to DINNERTIME.
• Remember that game? At primary school? "What's the time, Mr Wolf?" Whenever Cameron was the wolf, he was always too quick to yell DINNERTIME. Never caught anyone, of course, because we were always only three steps from the safe line.
• Cameron was a dork.
• Me and my friend, Lisa, also saw him and his mates drop their dacks in a one-in-all-in pact to show off their willies to each other in the main room of the abandoned School House that they'd broken into by way of a loose floorboard. So we got Mr Jacobs to come see. And got them all into trouble for flashing their nethers.
• Though, now I'm thinking about it, they must've been doing it more than once if we saw them do it, had enough time to run up to the staff room, dob, come back with Mr Jacobs (who was wearing a wry, knowing smile as I now recall) and lay in wait for them to do it again.
• Justine Clarke of Play School (formerly Roo) is far too watchable for my comfort level.
• A win on Ebay is always so much sweeter when you sniper bid.
• Yes, that person you hate on Ebay is MEEEE.
• If you jump rope in front of a 10 month old Lolly, she will bob her head up and down (just the head) like a cocky.
• And if you watch this whilst performing said skipping, you may just be thankful you're wearing your Tenas.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Nee-nah nee-nah
My impersonation of an ambulance.
Eventful day for us yesterday. Took the LGBB to dr's because she wasn't right at Playgroup (couldn't breathe properly, was inconsolable, started burning up, etc.). The drive from PG to the dr's was terrifying. She passed out in the car and looked like all the blood had drained from her. Did a quick exam and checked over by two doctors, they got an ambulance for us and I tell you, I did very well if I do say so myself... was cool as a cucumber because I didn't want to upset my girl but holy frig, it was frightening. She was very listless, super sleepy (still is today) and incommunicable. They don't know what happened, suspect something viral, sent us home telling us to keep her fluids up (she hadn't had a wet nappy in about 5hrs)
After a dose of Panadol and 90ml of fluid administered via syringe by Mummy (very fun game, for any babies reading - apparently it's da bomb), our poor wee Poorly was allowed to come home. So we shrugged, went "Wwwwwwhat the hell happened?" and came home. With a bear from the ambo's who we've named Amber. Or Ambo. We haven't decided if she looks dero enough for the latter.
Am currently chasing down alternative doctors to take a look at her (and when I say "alternative", I literally mean GP's who use alternative/holistic methods to treat and diagnose. Also waiting on a call back from a Network Chiropractor (one of the most blissful treatment experiences I've ever had and I've had a plethora) - who knew my sister in law was such a boon for contacts?? There's one in the clinic where she works. Too coincidental for me not to make an appointment for the LGBB. I suspect it's something with her immune system, the Dear One who phoned today to check up on us suggested nervous system (6 o' one, and all that) and possibly looking into chiropractics for children. I didn't mention to her at the time, but my mind immediately thought "Need to find a network chiropractic practitioner" and lo and behold, not ten minutes later, The Lovely SIL called with all her information.
So onward and upward for my poor Poorly Girl. Haven't a clue what's going on with her, just going to ride out the next few days as we wait to get in to see these new care providers.
More later. Duty calls. Doesn't it always?
Eventful day for us yesterday. Took the LGBB to dr's because she wasn't right at Playgroup (couldn't breathe properly, was inconsolable, started burning up, etc.). The drive from PG to the dr's was terrifying. She passed out in the car and looked like all the blood had drained from her. Did a quick exam and checked over by two doctors, they got an ambulance for us and I tell you, I did very well if I do say so myself... was cool as a cucumber because I didn't want to upset my girl but holy frig, it was frightening. She was very listless, super sleepy (still is today) and incommunicable. They don't know what happened, suspect something viral, sent us home telling us to keep her fluids up (she hadn't had a wet nappy in about 5hrs)
After a dose of Panadol and 90ml of fluid administered via syringe by Mummy (very fun game, for any babies reading - apparently it's da bomb), our poor wee Poorly was allowed to come home. So we shrugged, went "Wwwwwwhat the hell happened?" and came home. With a bear from the ambo's who we've named Amber. Or Ambo. We haven't decided if she looks dero enough for the latter.
Am currently chasing down alternative doctors to take a look at her (and when I say "alternative", I literally mean GP's who use alternative/holistic methods to treat and diagnose. Also waiting on a call back from a Network Chiropractor (one of the most blissful treatment experiences I've ever had and I've had a plethora) - who knew my sister in law was such a boon for contacts?? There's one in the clinic where she works. Too coincidental for me not to make an appointment for the LGBB. I suspect it's something with her immune system, the Dear One who phoned today to check up on us suggested nervous system (6 o' one, and all that) and possibly looking into chiropractics for children. I didn't mention to her at the time, but my mind immediately thought "Need to find a network chiropractic practitioner" and lo and behold, not ten minutes later, The Lovely SIL called with all her information.
So onward and upward for my poor Poorly Girl. Haven't a clue what's going on with her, just going to ride out the next few days as we wait to get in to see these new care providers.
More later. Duty calls. Doesn't it always?
Monday, May 28, 2007
Whoopsy daisies
Why is it only after the "fact" that I went "oh shiiiiiiit, I'm roughly on day 15"? Actually, don't worry, I can answer that one myself.
Calculating this current cycle, I initially thought I had miscounted and that actually there was no chance. But uh.... given that Miss LGBB was a CD17 conception, I'm going to be doing star jumps and lots of skipping (like that ever helped, as with the reverse of that with legs up the wall, etc., never assisted if it just wasn't gonna happen that month).
Talk about tempting fate. I've been musing on and off about what the hell I'd do. Not ready, soooo not ready to head back there - even though all the while, a strange (perhaps primitive? more likely just habit) sensation of hope and anticipation is lingering.
I have decided I would probably go into the foetal position and rock back and forth, mumbling like Rain Man as I recalculate the dates out loud, over and over.
Calculating this current cycle, I initially thought I had miscounted and that actually there was no chance. But uh.... given that Miss LGBB was a CD17 conception, I'm going to be doing star jumps and lots of skipping (like that ever helped, as with the reverse of that with legs up the wall, etc., never assisted if it just wasn't gonna happen that month).
Talk about tempting fate. I've been musing on and off about what the hell I'd do. Not ready, soooo not ready to head back there - even though all the while, a strange (perhaps primitive? more likely just habit) sensation of hope and anticipation is lingering.
I have decided I would probably go into the foetal position and rock back and forth, mumbling like Rain Man as I recalculate the dates out loud, over and over.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Feedback invited
I had a thought in the shower this morning. And then another. And another. Had to go and write ONE sentence, which I thought would be enough to help me retain and remember for later. I really didn't have time to keep writing.
But ummmm..... my single sentence turned into the following, and I'm assuming it's also for this book I'm toying with. I'm finding that I am tending to write and put aside, write more and put aside. Obviously, it's all unedited and as it was a pretty steady stream of thought, it is bound to jump around a bit which I'll have to fix. But for now, any thoughts or questions would be mucho appreciated (as I don't really remember what I actually wrote and I just can't go through it again now).:
Her birth was indescribably uplifting, peaceful, quiet. A truly positive experience. Despite the urgency after her birth - the whisking away to the warming bed, the gastric tube, the EEG stickies on her chest, being wrapped in plastic to retain body heat, splinting of her arm to keep the drip secure – I felt nothing but humbled and completely awestruck by her, by my body, by my brand new emotions. There was a huge amount of fear at the alienation put upon us and our unnatural meeting, due to the intervention that would keep her here long enough for us to properly make introductions and which ultimately forced her to succumb. And yet, even with the presence of this enormous fear and the tiny part of myself that wanted to keep at a distance “just in case”, I couldn’t deny the immense maternal pull and it was this that pushed through in the first hours and ignored all the goings on around us in the NICU. To me, there were only the two of us (and three, when Steve was in) in the whole world.
It took several months for that feeling of lightheaded euphoria to dull. Ellanor died during this time. And yet, I still retained the feeling of “coming back down to earth” like some giddy thrill ride. Only, I was actually hurtling down and landed with a thud, met by the rising feelings of despair and body-numbing grief that will forever remain familiar to me. I still feel like I can’t shake them totally and wonder now if I ever will.
I was still finding my way as a childless mother. I wrote and wrote and wrote. My writing, seeing my words, became a Healer of sorts to me. After 12 months of diary-keeping, I came across a support website where I could not only chat about this further with kindred people, I found some sense of profound, perhaps bizarre, comfort at seeing others’ words of grief and in them, so many touches of my own feelings. It was a huge turning point for my healing.
But what also occurred was, little by little as my sadness gave way to anger, a growing cynicism I had never had before. This new me, on the other side of my specific rite of passage surrounding motherhood, was someone I had never known before having Ellanor. It was unfamiliar for me to not find joy in things, mostly the little things, to not wish people well always, to not care about them and what was happening in their lives. I was completely self-focused and didn’t notice.
As the anger then subsided and acceptance came over me, sometime in 2005, I remained somewhat more spiteful and harder than I had ever previously been in my life. I wanted to prove (pretend) I was the same person, that I was unchanged by all that had happened to me. But all the while, a little voice deep inside kept struggling to be heard and accounted for. My soul, I now believe it was, was telling me to get real – get a grip, basically – and it is only through writing now and being aware and accountable that I am giving the real, new and improved version of the old Me her voice and stripping away some of the defensive barriers that were inherently present, protecting me at my most sensitive time.
I had Lauryn in 2006 just as I was getting used to this new person I was finding. It sent me reeling backwards and I was depressed (if not sleep deprived) during the first months. Much like any new parent, I know, and yet so totally different to most new parents. Suddenly not given the enabling free time, alone with my thoughts which had become my solace and my lifeline to process whatever came up virtually straight away, I was thrust into a new world yet again where the very reason why we had struggled so hard was alternately filling empty voids in me with rapture and also making me want to scream “You’re stifling me!” as I literally had no time to think.
But it wasn’t just the time and space that any parent craves. I had not realised how much my survival had come to depend on the moments of solitary I had instinctively surrounded myself with. To suddenly not have that space whenever my thoughts took me there, I felt like a wedge was being pushed in between me and my firstborn. A wedge I had also given birth to, with her very own set of needs and an agenda that was totally alien to me, my life and that of my “understanding” with Ella. I am most relieved I did not notice this until just recently, where a more satisfactory balance has been reached for now.
If I had analysed it too much, things might have been very different for me and my little girl. I have often felt very guilty since Lauryn was born, wondering why I couldn’t look at her and “just be happy and thankful”. Of course, I was extremely thankful and spent almost every night shedding a silent tear looking down at this baby with the uncanny resemblance to her older sister. Thinking a steady stream of wild thoughts as I slowly succumbed and fell into feeling love again – “she’s so peacefully unaware of what she’s brought to us”, “will she ever know how much she has helped?” “I am amazed by her” And then, “Is Ellanor watching us right now, is she a 2 ½ year old peeking around the corner quietly instead of being in bed?” “If she was here, would she be a handful, God imagine all the operations she would have had to go through by now already, would she be frail, sick…” And then I would start to feel guilty about thinking things that had never actually come to fruition, like being thankful in a way that we had not had to endure all the operations and all that time and energy, of how difficult and different it would have been to manage a new baby if Ella had been in and out of hospital with her heart condition.
Some might say that I should not bother myself with these things, but by doing so, by wondering all the what if’s and could-have-been’s, I keep a glimmer of familiarity and connection alive in me with Ella. People might do well to remember that for some, and of course maintaining a healthy balance so that fantasty does not overtake day to day realities, it is most important to give that space of allowing the questioning and wondering because it is one of the only tangible ways to ensure that the baby or child actually “grows up” with the rest of the family. Ellanor will forever be oldest. Big sister. The first. She will also always be a baby, asleep in a photo, never coming home to introduce herself (in the usual sense) to her sibling/s. And we feel most strongly that one way to bring her into the fold, however big it grows, is to consider her and what age she would be at any given time, thereby somehow normalising her death and at the same time releasing the event from the shroud of taboo.
But ummmm..... my single sentence turned into the following, and I'm assuming it's also for this book I'm toying with. I'm finding that I am tending to write and put aside, write more and put aside. Obviously, it's all unedited and as it was a pretty steady stream of thought, it is bound to jump around a bit which I'll have to fix. But for now, any thoughts or questions would be mucho appreciated (as I don't really remember what I actually wrote and I just can't go through it again now).:
Her birth was indescribably uplifting, peaceful, quiet. A truly positive experience. Despite the urgency after her birth - the whisking away to the warming bed, the gastric tube, the EEG stickies on her chest, being wrapped in plastic to retain body heat, splinting of her arm to keep the drip secure – I felt nothing but humbled and completely awestruck by her, by my body, by my brand new emotions. There was a huge amount of fear at the alienation put upon us and our unnatural meeting, due to the intervention that would keep her here long enough for us to properly make introductions and which ultimately forced her to succumb. And yet, even with the presence of this enormous fear and the tiny part of myself that wanted to keep at a distance “just in case”, I couldn’t deny the immense maternal pull and it was this that pushed through in the first hours and ignored all the goings on around us in the NICU. To me, there were only the two of us (and three, when Steve was in) in the whole world.
It took several months for that feeling of lightheaded euphoria to dull. Ellanor died during this time. And yet, I still retained the feeling of “coming back down to earth” like some giddy thrill ride. Only, I was actually hurtling down and landed with a thud, met by the rising feelings of despair and body-numbing grief that will forever remain familiar to me. I still feel like I can’t shake them totally and wonder now if I ever will.
I was still finding my way as a childless mother. I wrote and wrote and wrote. My writing, seeing my words, became a Healer of sorts to me. After 12 months of diary-keeping, I came across a support website where I could not only chat about this further with kindred people, I found some sense of profound, perhaps bizarre, comfort at seeing others’ words of grief and in them, so many touches of my own feelings. It was a huge turning point for my healing.
But what also occurred was, little by little as my sadness gave way to anger, a growing cynicism I had never had before. This new me, on the other side of my specific rite of passage surrounding motherhood, was someone I had never known before having Ellanor. It was unfamiliar for me to not find joy in things, mostly the little things, to not wish people well always, to not care about them and what was happening in their lives. I was completely self-focused and didn’t notice.
As the anger then subsided and acceptance came over me, sometime in 2005, I remained somewhat more spiteful and harder than I had ever previously been in my life. I wanted to prove (pretend) I was the same person, that I was unchanged by all that had happened to me. But all the while, a little voice deep inside kept struggling to be heard and accounted for. My soul, I now believe it was, was telling me to get real – get a grip, basically – and it is only through writing now and being aware and accountable that I am giving the real, new and improved version of the old Me her voice and stripping away some of the defensive barriers that were inherently present, protecting me at my most sensitive time.
I had Lauryn in 2006 just as I was getting used to this new person I was finding. It sent me reeling backwards and I was depressed (if not sleep deprived) during the first months. Much like any new parent, I know, and yet so totally different to most new parents. Suddenly not given the enabling free time, alone with my thoughts which had become my solace and my lifeline to process whatever came up virtually straight away, I was thrust into a new world yet again where the very reason why we had struggled so hard was alternately filling empty voids in me with rapture and also making me want to scream “You’re stifling me!” as I literally had no time to think.
But it wasn’t just the time and space that any parent craves. I had not realised how much my survival had come to depend on the moments of solitary I had instinctively surrounded myself with. To suddenly not have that space whenever my thoughts took me there, I felt like a wedge was being pushed in between me and my firstborn. A wedge I had also given birth to, with her very own set of needs and an agenda that was totally alien to me, my life and that of my “understanding” with Ella. I am most relieved I did not notice this until just recently, where a more satisfactory balance has been reached for now.
If I had analysed it too much, things might have been very different for me and my little girl. I have often felt very guilty since Lauryn was born, wondering why I couldn’t look at her and “just be happy and thankful”. Of course, I was extremely thankful and spent almost every night shedding a silent tear looking down at this baby with the uncanny resemblance to her older sister. Thinking a steady stream of wild thoughts as I slowly succumbed and fell into feeling love again – “she’s so peacefully unaware of what she’s brought to us”, “will she ever know how much she has helped?” “I am amazed by her” And then, “Is Ellanor watching us right now, is she a 2 ½ year old peeking around the corner quietly instead of being in bed?” “If she was here, would she be a handful, God imagine all the operations she would have had to go through by now already, would she be frail, sick…” And then I would start to feel guilty about thinking things that had never actually come to fruition, like being thankful in a way that we had not had to endure all the operations and all that time and energy, of how difficult and different it would have been to manage a new baby if Ella had been in and out of hospital with her heart condition.
Some might say that I should not bother myself with these things, but by doing so, by wondering all the what if’s and could-have-been’s, I keep a glimmer of familiarity and connection alive in me with Ella. People might do well to remember that for some, and of course maintaining a healthy balance so that fantasty does not overtake day to day realities, it is most important to give that space of allowing the questioning and wondering because it is one of the only tangible ways to ensure that the baby or child actually “grows up” with the rest of the family. Ellanor will forever be oldest. Big sister. The first. She will also always be a baby, asleep in a photo, never coming home to introduce herself (in the usual sense) to her sibling/s. And we feel most strongly that one way to bring her into the fold, however big it grows, is to consider her and what age she would be at any given time, thereby somehow normalising her death and at the same time releasing the event from the shroud of taboo.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Jelly Cheek To Cheek
The LGBB is a sucker for the jelly. LOVES it. Could live on it (though that is technically debatable). The nightly home-made jelly and yoghurt routine goes like this (to the tune of Cheek To Cheek):
Jelly
I like jelly
I like it so much that I can hardly speak
I like eating it as I stamp both my feet
I love jelly after finishing my tea
And you know I sing it once more (and once again) with feeling until the bowl's empty.
Jelly
I like jelly
I like it so much that I can hardly speak
I like eating it as I stamp both my feet
I love jelly after finishing my tea
And you know I sing it once more (and once again) with feeling until the bowl's empty.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Cut me some slack, Jack
The universe spat out the clothes I bought for the LGBB.
Apparently a scarlet coloured A-line dress and a couple of fleecy Bonds skivvies are not to its liking. Not to mention the little card that's now en route to its intended recipient *wipes brow*
And when Steve heeded my SOS last night (through sobs and a constant stream of berating of myself, I'm surprised he managed to understand what I was saying - something about checking the "third last trolley in the bay closest to Safeway"), he had the good sense to juuuuust make a last-ditch effort and see if anyone had handed the bag back to the store, seeing as the tags and docket were still in the bag.
Lo and behold: some blessed soul had handed it in.
Of course, I cried more when Steve filled me in. He said something along the lines of "Oh, and I asked if anyone had handed in a cute baby girl with it and they said no so I assume Lolly's with you."
That's funny, Steve never makes jokes at home.
Apparently a scarlet coloured A-line dress and a couple of fleecy Bonds skivvies are not to its liking. Not to mention the little card that's now en route to its intended recipient *wipes brow*
And when Steve heeded my SOS last night (through sobs and a constant stream of berating of myself, I'm surprised he managed to understand what I was saying - something about checking the "third last trolley in the bay closest to Safeway"), he had the good sense to juuuuust make a last-ditch effort and see if anyone had handed the bag back to the store, seeing as the tags and docket were still in the bag.
Lo and behold: some blessed soul had handed it in.
Of course, I cried more when Steve filled me in. He said something along the lines of "Oh, and I asked if anyone had handed in a cute baby girl with it and they said no so I assume Lolly's with you."
That's funny, Steve never makes jokes at home.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
It was an extremely dark and stormy night...
...when the single solitary brain cell in my head left the shopping bag of (beautiful) clothes I'd just purchased for the LGBB with a returns docket - so, like, clothes for free which of course made me falsely think I had not spent $47 but only $24 - and the birthday card I'd pored over painstakingly in order to post off tomorrow for a little lad who's turning 2 on Monday, in my trolley.
You will be relieved to know I managed to remember to remove Lolly from the trolley and bring her back home.
Needless to say, a desperate call to the store has netted nothing. Someone (else) has had a lucky day. Bastards to them for not handing the bag in.
Very, very cross at my error. Not so much because of the waste of money (but hell, yeah, who wants to fritter it away? If I did, I'd be at the pokies) but because they were so cute. And I just cannot be fagged going back there again to purchase them (again) and now I also don't have a card to send me little friend.
Could the week get any more crap? I've just stuffed up all over the place. With friends, with work, with me fair-haired bairn. Fark, fark and blast.
You will be relieved to know I managed to remember to remove Lolly from the trolley and bring her back home.
Needless to say, a desperate call to the store has netted nothing. Someone (else) has had a lucky day. Bastards to them for not handing the bag in.
Very, very cross at my error. Not so much because of the waste of money (but hell, yeah, who wants to fritter it away? If I did, I'd be at the pokies) but because they were so cute. And I just cannot be fagged going back there again to purchase them (again) and now I also don't have a card to send me little friend.
Could the week get any more crap? I've just stuffed up all over the place. With friends, with work, with me fair-haired bairn. Fark, fark and blast.
If you're happy and you know it...
Well, I dunno. Despite this being the shittiest week with the LGBB (and other stuff) that I can remember in a very long time - she's teething for all the babies in Australia and passes on her deepest condolences to Baby Schmoo for jinxing her too - it seems even in sleep, old Lolly keeps on truckin'.
Stealthily creeping into her room last night to turn down her music (God that kid plays her stereo loud during the day) and rescue an angrily-flung dummy from the folds of Teddy's arm at the head of her cot, Steve paused mid-pad on the carpet because she stirred.
Arms up. Arms down. Fast. Staccato. Like she was making deranged bedsheet angels.
Then all of a sudden, up came the arms, eyes still tightly shut in sleep. Hands, pert and straight as boards, met in mid air to make three sharp claps. And then her arms fell back down by her sides as if she hadn't moved a hair. All the while, an amused beam on her face.
I don't care anymore that she only slept for two 10-minute powernaps between 10am and 7pm.
I don't care that my previously busy, planned day was reduced to rubble because of those sleeps.
I don't care that she's started getting the shits up - how did my father tactfully, tongue-in-cheek, put it in his email: Stick with the teething business. I’m not surprised she gets her paddy up – family trait I’m afraid. Means that she will have a fierce independence when she grows up * - whenever I haven't understood her heart's desires.
Because she claps and grins in her sleep.
* Good God, help us. And I love a bloke who can use "paddy up" in a sentence.
Stealthily creeping into her room last night to turn down her music (God that kid plays her stereo loud during the day) and rescue an angrily-flung dummy from the folds of Teddy's arm at the head of her cot, Steve paused mid-pad on the carpet because she stirred.
Arms up. Arms down. Fast. Staccato. Like she was making deranged bedsheet angels.
Then all of a sudden, up came the arms, eyes still tightly shut in sleep. Hands, pert and straight as boards, met in mid air to make three sharp claps. And then her arms fell back down by her sides as if she hadn't moved a hair. All the while, an amused beam on her face.
I don't care anymore that she only slept for two 10-minute powernaps between 10am and 7pm.
I don't care that my previously busy, planned day was reduced to rubble because of those sleeps.
I don't care that she's started getting the shits up - how did my father tactfully, tongue-in-cheek, put it in his email: Stick with the teething business. I’m not surprised she gets her paddy up – family trait I’m afraid. Means that she will have a fierce independence when she grows up * - whenever I haven't understood her heart's desires.
Because she claps and grins in her sleep.
* Good God, help us. And I love a bloke who can use "paddy up" in a sentence.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Breathe
I'm writing a book. I didn't think it fitting to mention it until I had accepted it myself. But it's fact now, I've started. And I've got around 20,000 words. I'm compiling bits and pieces from things I've written in the past three years and I'm trying to make it all work together now. It's hugely intense and emotional, gives me searing headaches sometimes when I read certain things and yet I can't deny the messages any longer. I had to get going on it. So last week, I did.
Not entirely off-topic, as I've been surrounding myself with all this over the weekend and it's put me in a funny (not ha-ha) place. I believe that being in a place of acceptance that all is as it is for a universal reason (the end-point of which no one knows until it goes sailing past and then another life lesson comes up, they're like waves) is the main key to the healing I've made over the death of Ellanor.
I was struck again last night by correspondence from a dear friend that had me thinking all night. She has inadvertently helped me realise where all my energy is going (not that it helps me curb the drain, that'll take some work): I have been hellbent on "fitting the mould". Seeing my words through her eyes - the sucker for punishment read my entire blog in one sitting yesterday, can you imagine? - really helped me bring it all back in again.
Quite coincidentally, yet perhaps not at all (the symmetry of universal process never ceases to excite and delight me), I was also trawling through my whole blog yesterday for a different reason. I was struck by not only how much more light-hearted yet deep my writing used to be *sob* but the positivity that innumerous people have thanked me for in the past was actually evident to me. I've not seen it before. It was a sombre realisation. It showed me in black and white just how far down I've come, if I could see it for myself and think of it as the "me" from before - strange then, that this has come at a time when I *should* be so much happier.
But therein lies the issue. And what a biggie it is.
I'm placing an ideal on myself subconsciously. It's one I've actually made mention of here and also to various people as the conversation arises IRL. I'm going to Playgroup this morning, for instance. I could choose to let them in on where I am today (in a different headspace totally, surrounded by thoughts of Ellanor), I could vent a bit about how hard it is to try and juggle being Mum to two girls, one of whom is obviously not here; I could shut up about all of that and just focus on Lolly and get carried up by the day to days of all their lives; or I could just as easily not go, so avoiding the predicament altogether.
I say it's a predicament because I've done (and am living) the "get on with it" method, prescribed by family, friends and wider community alike. Why did I rush to get to this point though? Did I do it to reassure people I am capable, I was ok, I could do it all after I had Lolly? I recall telling various friends, relatives, health professionals, that I was NOT ok. When mention of Ella was made by me, I was moved along by and large (not by all, but when it comes from those you highly respect the opinion of, and you're feeling on the back foot, out of your depth, sleep deprived and very lost, hell yeah you use someone else's "trusted" judgment).
Yet, as this friend last night confirmed it is for her too, to live this way is to deny your lost child. And what would ANYONE who gave me the suggestion to move along know about that?? It's proven to me I still haven't quite got the balance right and maybe I never will. Days and weeks go by and I don't even notice that I haven't mentioned my dear cherub. I know on another level, though, that our connection is on a far more organic level. It's almost cellular. I don't always need to mention her or bring her into conversation now, as I used to (especially just after the LGBB made her entrance to the stage), because to do so and have conversations changed or be offered polite but very clear messages that I needed to "move on" and "let go" now that I had another daughter was actually more painful than the realisation that if I didn't say her name out loud, nobody would. Certainly they weren't mentioning (and don't mention) her to me. Here, right here in this blogspace, is about the sum total where consistently I've had only thoughtful, encouraging back-rubs from readers. That and a tiny online "mothers group" of my four non-blood related "sistas" *index and middle finger tap to heart* which has been my life blood for a couple of years now. I really have wound it right down, though, my expression of thoughts about Ellanor and the tough gig I've got keeping myself buoyant (no easy feat with an extra 20kg still to go, let me assure you) for Lolly day to day.
We just went on holiday. Every single day, I was thinking of Ella. This outdoor balcony would have been an issue with a 3 year-old, getting the LGBB off to sleep would have been hard with Ella here too sleeping in the same room, what would she have been like - would she have been into all the drawers and cupboards, would we have had to pack far more frugally in order to take her favourite toys (answer: Yes, undoubtedly). I could go on and on, the wonders I had in my mind. I do it all the time. Often, when I'm not talking and sitting feeding Lolly, I will be thinking about Ella. Wondering about her like she's still on her travels, wondering how different our house would be, my relationship with Steve would be. Would we be happier now if we hadn't had the struggle we had with Ellanor?
Yet, still I don't want to see her death as a tragedy. Her not being here as a gaping empty hole in my life. To do that is to negate the time she spent here.
And what of the LGBB? How does how I am with all of this affect her? I never want her to feel she is living in the shadow of a baby, an older sister, who can do no wrong. I need to do right by her too. How do I properly compartmentalise my ongoing healing and growing and accepting that Ellanor is not here, how do I weave that into my life, our lives, now, all the while maintaining an honest balance? How do I do it and keep the impact on Lolly to a minimum? When do I even get the time to regularly take my thoughts and energy to a space where I can continue this healing?
Therein lies another pressure not familiar (thank God for them) to most other mothers. No Playground floor play talk would ever be able to touch on how you balance giving yourself a break about giving in some days to the immense yearning for a child you will never see change in those photos, while still trying to put on a happy face for the achingly gorgeous grizzle-bucket now asleep (finally, damn those goddamn teeth - about 8 of them I can feel coming all at once, oh my poor Lolly!). How do I manage sitting here reading the diary I kept each day while looking after her sister in the NICU, keeping myself together even though my head feels like it's exploding? And then I have to go in to her when she wakes but it's like trying to flip a switch in my brain: this is not Ella. This is another baby.
Oh that's right. This is the Bliss Bomb. This is a totally different, unique person. I know that. But because Ella will always be a baby when I physically put myself back in time to where I was with her in the physical, it's still difficult while Lolly is also a baby to separate the two girls.
Feel a tad nauseous. Better stop and regroup before my young charge takes charge and yells out.
Not entirely off-topic, as I've been surrounding myself with all this over the weekend and it's put me in a funny (not ha-ha) place. I believe that being in a place of acceptance that all is as it is for a universal reason (the end-point of which no one knows until it goes sailing past and then another life lesson comes up, they're like waves) is the main key to the healing I've made over the death of Ellanor.
I was struck again last night by correspondence from a dear friend that had me thinking all night. She has inadvertently helped me realise where all my energy is going (not that it helps me curb the drain, that'll take some work): I have been hellbent on "fitting the mould". Seeing my words through her eyes - the sucker for punishment read my entire blog in one sitting yesterday, can you imagine? - really helped me bring it all back in again.
Quite coincidentally, yet perhaps not at all (the symmetry of universal process never ceases to excite and delight me), I was also trawling through my whole blog yesterday for a different reason. I was struck by not only how much more light-hearted yet deep my writing used to be *sob* but the positivity that innumerous people have thanked me for in the past was actually evident to me. I've not seen it before. It was a sombre realisation. It showed me in black and white just how far down I've come, if I could see it for myself and think of it as the "me" from before - strange then, that this has come at a time when I *should* be so much happier.
But therein lies the issue. And what a biggie it is.
I'm placing an ideal on myself subconsciously. It's one I've actually made mention of here and also to various people as the conversation arises IRL. I'm going to Playgroup this morning, for instance. I could choose to let them in on where I am today (in a different headspace totally, surrounded by thoughts of Ellanor), I could vent a bit about how hard it is to try and juggle being Mum to two girls, one of whom is obviously not here; I could shut up about all of that and just focus on Lolly and get carried up by the day to days of all their lives; or I could just as easily not go, so avoiding the predicament altogether.
I say it's a predicament because I've done (and am living) the "get on with it" method, prescribed by family, friends and wider community alike. Why did I rush to get to this point though? Did I do it to reassure people I am capable, I was ok, I could do it all after I had Lolly? I recall telling various friends, relatives, health professionals, that I was NOT ok. When mention of Ella was made by me, I was moved along by and large (not by all, but when it comes from those you highly respect the opinion of, and you're feeling on the back foot, out of your depth, sleep deprived and very lost, hell yeah you use someone else's "trusted" judgment).
Yet, as this friend last night confirmed it is for her too, to live this way is to deny your lost child. And what would ANYONE who gave me the suggestion to move along know about that?? It's proven to me I still haven't quite got the balance right and maybe I never will. Days and weeks go by and I don't even notice that I haven't mentioned my dear cherub. I know on another level, though, that our connection is on a far more organic level. It's almost cellular. I don't always need to mention her or bring her into conversation now, as I used to (especially just after the LGBB made her entrance to the stage), because to do so and have conversations changed or be offered polite but very clear messages that I needed to "move on" and "let go" now that I had another daughter was actually more painful than the realisation that if I didn't say her name out loud, nobody would. Certainly they weren't mentioning (and don't mention) her to me. Here, right here in this blogspace, is about the sum total where consistently I've had only thoughtful, encouraging back-rubs from readers. That and a tiny online "mothers group" of my four non-blood related "sistas" *index and middle finger tap to heart* which has been my life blood for a couple of years now. I really have wound it right down, though, my expression of thoughts about Ellanor and the tough gig I've got keeping myself buoyant (no easy feat with an extra 20kg still to go, let me assure you) for Lolly day to day.
We just went on holiday. Every single day, I was thinking of Ella. This outdoor balcony would have been an issue with a 3 year-old, getting the LGBB off to sleep would have been hard with Ella here too sleeping in the same room, what would she have been like - would she have been into all the drawers and cupboards, would we have had to pack far more frugally in order to take her favourite toys (answer: Yes, undoubtedly). I could go on and on, the wonders I had in my mind. I do it all the time. Often, when I'm not talking and sitting feeding Lolly, I will be thinking about Ella. Wondering about her like she's still on her travels, wondering how different our house would be, my relationship with Steve would be. Would we be happier now if we hadn't had the struggle we had with Ellanor?
Yet, still I don't want to see her death as a tragedy. Her not being here as a gaping empty hole in my life. To do that is to negate the time she spent here.
And what of the LGBB? How does how I am with all of this affect her? I never want her to feel she is living in the shadow of a baby, an older sister, who can do no wrong. I need to do right by her too. How do I properly compartmentalise my ongoing healing and growing and accepting that Ellanor is not here, how do I weave that into my life, our lives, now, all the while maintaining an honest balance? How do I do it and keep the impact on Lolly to a minimum? When do I even get the time to regularly take my thoughts and energy to a space where I can continue this healing?
Therein lies another pressure not familiar (thank God for them) to most other mothers. No Playground floor play talk would ever be able to touch on how you balance giving yourself a break about giving in some days to the immense yearning for a child you will never see change in those photos, while still trying to put on a happy face for the achingly gorgeous grizzle-bucket now asleep (finally, damn those goddamn teeth - about 8 of them I can feel coming all at once, oh my poor Lolly!). How do I manage sitting here reading the diary I kept each day while looking after her sister in the NICU, keeping myself together even though my head feels like it's exploding? And then I have to go in to her when she wakes but it's like trying to flip a switch in my brain: this is not Ella. This is another baby.
Oh that's right. This is the Bliss Bomb. This is a totally different, unique person. I know that. But because Ella will always be a baby when I physically put myself back in time to where I was with her in the physical, it's still difficult while Lolly is also a baby to separate the two girls.
Feel a tad nauseous. Better stop and regroup before my young charge takes charge and yells out.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
There were three in the car and the little one said...
"PULL OVER! There's a fucking MOTH in here!!!!!!!!"
We never did find it. But it's the reason we got home at 2am instead of 1.30am.
We never did find it. But it's the reason we got home at 2am instead of 1.30am.
• If we coulda stayed more days we woulda.
This is Lolly being "funny" because she's sitting in the car next to her usual carseat. Hi-laaarious good times. Just ask her.
Suck it up. Ok, yep, we're all a bit over it now.Driving since 2.45am on Day 1, we were just outside Sydney at about 2pm when Steve took this.
Lolly does her Missy Piggy impersonation• Night 1: I honestly thought we had broken the LGBB for good, such was the screaming like I've never heard her scream. Nobody could soothe her, not Marley, not Cutie Pie (a new little soft-dolly fave friend), not Mummy doing the usual distractions like blowing her hair (met with a "get the F out of my FACE and stop BLOWING on me" from her) or pretending to bite off her toes (similarly met with screeching an octave higher than that heard by dogs).
At that point, my own resolve completely shattered, all I could do was speedily snap up those goddamn snaps (who the hell can put one of those suits on a kicking, convulsing, desperately tired baby??) and put a boob in her mouth - sorry Paul, if you're reading, for the visual. And the feed didn't calm her like it normally would either. There's a bedtime story that has now become part of her nightly ritual. It's called Say Goodnight and it's four pages long, contains about 20 words and big faced babies having a play before falling sound asleep. The LGBB looooooves it. And when overtired, as I discovered, instead of not wanting to read it, she just turns the pages angrily, like a baby possessed. It's so bloody funny. But I daren't laugh, oh no. She's frightening in those moments when I am between her and her dummy and sleep. Far out *takes short shallow breaths*
So before I could leave her "holiday bedroom" (for everything we saw and encountered was prefaced with the word "holiday" so she could understand what the biiiiig drive in the car had been for), I had to first read Say Goodnight. Three times. I'm unsure if I needed to read it more than once. But she kept groping at the pages so I kept reading. Like the obedient girl I am. And then, God bless 'er, I tucked her in, said "Night-night" and turned around for one last look.. and she'd fallen into a coma within the three paces I'd taken to get to the door.
"Forget the damn merry go round, this plant is SOOOOO exciting!" (for some reason this bush caused shrill squeals of delight from the LGBB)• After that first night, sleep times were again easy-breezy Covergirl. She is SO like me in that regard: anywhere strange, you get yourself to sleep pronto lest the resident boogyman come and scratch your eyes out. No. I'm sure that in her case it was more that she was knackered from all the new sights and sounds than any deep-seated fear of the dark like yours truly.
Being silly with the camera, having lunch and waiting for Daddy.• Our land ladies were anything but ladies. But oh, how they were very hospitable and in love with their investment (it was indeed a gorgeous apartment with an even nicer outlook - ocean and lake entrance, both kinds!). This place was stocked with everything. And clean? As a whistle.
• Why do places along the Hume have such strange names?
• I met up with someone I've known for a few years now but never met in person, who is truly. Wonderful. You know those people you meet sometimes and you just cannot believe your "luck" that they are in your life? And equally, that they are in it by their choice (as much as yours)? I want to say something syrupy like, I wish she was part of my family or some similar sucky thing. Except... it's better than that. She is part of my family. My spiritual one. Which somehow is the more real to me these days? (and that's not to say my blood relatives are not part of that family of choice either, it's just very refreshing to make a selection in order to surround oneself with people who give and take in equal amounts). It's the one that has become my reward for the place I have come to for now, and not merely the one bestowed on me at birth.
Each encounter I have with her is like turning another page in this amazing book. And of course, I was ashamedly unprepared (as I mostly am when people see me in person, I never have the words I want to say, I get stage fright and shy in equal amounts) yet came away wishing I could have spent so many more hours with her. It was the icing on the trip.
And thanks for the socks, again, by the way. SO gorgeous.Lolly is rapt with them.
Especially the box they came in.
• What the hell is going on with Pizza Huts around the country?? Do the youth of today have no respect for the black, red and white? I saw a gutted, graffitti'd, very sorry-looking old Pizza Hut of yesteryear as we were leaving Gosford (another lovely bit of the world up the coast there) and I swear, I could have been back here at home looking at the one just over the hill from us - literally and figuratively - shaking my head at the disrespec' of the hoodlums who have vandalised what was once a very, if not healthy, mouth-wateringly smelling establishment. Remember? Oh surely you all have memories of birthday parties or at least family outings, sitting in those red padded seat booths, with the sticky tables, the watery "Coke", the pizzas dripping grease down your arm?
• It seems a huntsman thinks nothing of being on the 7th floor. For the entire. Five. Days. Outside our door. Oh and yes, there was another one on the car. A pretty grey and white striped one. Bless.
"I can see through tiiime!" The LGBB thinks she's going at warp speed• There was this man we saw sporadically while we were there and DAMN I didn't get to take a photo because I wasn't fast enough. He was impossibly tanned, a retiree we guessed, on a motorised cart. But not any old cart. Oh no, this was like a Rolls Royce of motorised carts. I swear, I reckon it had a better engine under the hood than the Tardis. And he had one of those plastic expressions, it didn't change. I decided his name was Bernie. And he had probably died about a week ago but his friends had tied him to his sweet ride and put it in gear and let him go off, in order to stay at his beach house. But the funniest part was, aside from the tinted glasses, the George Hamilton tan, the old-man bling (you know, watch, strange gold chain around neck, etc etc), he had this slicked-back white hairdo that, I swear, looked like he was clocking about 180kmh. His hair belied the fact that he was actually gadding about doing roughly 2kmh.
Bootiful. And the view in the background's not bad either. Boom-tish.• If I never take another photo of the LGBB again (get off the floor, stop rolling about, it wasn't that funny), I am satisfied with the shots I got of her at the beach. Oh my. I think my heart exploded.
"I'd tell you if I liked the beach, Mother, but you've done this chin strap so tight I can't actually open my mouth"
"Ahh! Lolly Miyagi know trick or two about Karaté, Danyo-san"
"Mmmm, yes, that was a good summer. Must do my nails when I get home."
"And then I clapped and the sand went eeeeeeverywhere!"
"Ah, yes, Daddy, but if I go like.... THIS... really suddenly, can you stop me from falling in?"• Sometime around midnight driving home, the only car on the Hume surrounded on all sides by trucks, is when the madness kicked in. We started musing about whether truckies' wives insist on them being "safe" by ensuring the cabins of their trucks are adorned with every fairylight they can get their hands on. These were known to us as the Party Trucks on the way up (you could see them from miles away and some of them had all the colours of the 'bow on them) but on the way back, they were past contestants on "Bulb My Ride" - a new reality show not unlike Pimp My Ride, for truckies to turn over their tungsten-challenged rigs into glowing princesses of the highway.
• I told you we went mad.
Somewhere around Benalla, just after midnight, still two hours from home.Thursday, May 17, 2007
Cap in hand, farewell friends
NOOOOO!
The last Gilmore Girls aired in the US on the 15th May. I am gutted. Through the power of technology and a caring and sharing global audience, I watched the ep just now.
I feel ripped off that I didn't realise until the final credits that I had actually just seen the last of the people of Stars Hollow (shuddup, they're real if you've been following them for 7 years - hell, many of my past friendships haven't lasted that long).
I feel like I should... I dunno, mourn or something. So much of the relationship I watched between Lorelai and Rory (mum and daughter) really deeply affected me in the months after we lost Ella. Steve and I would both sit here crying over it, often. And it's a funny show (is it pertinent here to also confess I even shed tears when Izzy from Neighbours lost her baby back in '04 though? That's when I knew I had to back away, I was becoming too dependent on it to distract me and oh my God I just managed to admit to you all that I actually watched Neighbours to help fend off depression... little wonder it didn't really cut the mustard).
Ok, but anyway, where was I? Oh that's right. Crying. Over shows that reminded us of Ellanor. Or at least, rather, the potential of what could have been that would never become. Yeah. It's more than an important show for me. It became like a strange sort of extension of my family. It's no secret I love Lorelai (Lauren Graham) to the ends of the earth. I want to be her friend. Why can't I live there? Why isn't it real? Why isn't there a Luke's I can walk to for coffee (and a Luke), where's my Suki, the witty reparté, all of it? Oh and of course... the clothes and hair. Never saw so many good looking, well groomed people in the one small town. BUT that's not the point.
The point is... it's gone. Finished. Whatever will I do?
The last Gilmore Girls aired in the US on the 15th May. I am gutted. Through the power of technology and a caring and sharing global audience, I watched the ep just now.
I feel ripped off that I didn't realise until the final credits that I had actually just seen the last of the people of Stars Hollow (shuddup, they're real if you've been following them for 7 years - hell, many of my past friendships haven't lasted that long).
I feel like I should... I dunno, mourn or something. So much of the relationship I watched between Lorelai and Rory (mum and daughter) really deeply affected me in the months after we lost Ella. Steve and I would both sit here crying over it, often. And it's a funny show (is it pertinent here to also confess I even shed tears when Izzy from Neighbours lost her baby back in '04 though? That's when I knew I had to back away, I was becoming too dependent on it to distract me and oh my God I just managed to admit to you all that I actually watched Neighbours to help fend off depression... little wonder it didn't really cut the mustard).
Ok, but anyway, where was I? Oh that's right. Crying. Over shows that reminded us of Ellanor. Or at least, rather, the potential of what could have been that would never become. Yeah. It's more than an important show for me. It became like a strange sort of extension of my family. It's no secret I love Lorelai (Lauren Graham) to the ends of the earth. I want to be her friend. Why can't I live there? Why isn't it real? Why isn't there a Luke's I can walk to for coffee (and a Luke), where's my Suki, the witty reparté, all of it? Oh and of course... the clothes and hair. Never saw so many good looking, well groomed people in the one small town. BUT that's not the point.
The point is... it's gone. Finished. Whatever will I do?
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
She poops, she scores
I ask you, could the LGBB get it any more *juuuuust* off the mats? Frankly, I'm impressed with her aim.
(For those of you with the constitution, click on the image for the enlarged version of Mr Hanky hanging with Lolly just to her left.)
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Another piece of trivia for those playing along at home
Don't worry, this is not another entry where I divulge yet another lusty crush on some scary actor (sorry Dani, I know you're faint of heart about these things).
No. This is the post where I excitedly share the soundwave I just came across in our exhaustive iTunes library. It's a TV show theme tune which we used to play all the time in order to send our new puppy, Jazz, mad. We'd while away the hours, as couples awaiting the arrival of their children often do, sending her crazy and spinning in circles, desperate to hunt out what was making the zany-whacky-crazy-hyper noise.
I must try it out on the LGBB. Because actually, if there was a theme for our house, I think this'd be it.
People, I give you....
Happy Tree Friends
No. This is the post where I excitedly share the soundwave I just came across in our exhaustive iTunes library. It's a TV show theme tune which we used to play all the time in order to send our new puppy, Jazz, mad. We'd while away the hours, as couples awaiting the arrival of their children often do, sending her crazy and spinning in circles, desperate to hunt out what was making the zany-whacky-crazy-hyper noise.
I must try it out on the LGBB. Because actually, if there was a theme for our house, I think this'd be it.
People, I give you....
Happy Tree Friends
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Holiday Road
Five days out from our pending First Family Fun Trip to sunny somewhere in Oz (don't worry, we know where we're going, even if we don't know where we've been)* I surprise myself at the lax approach I have to packing.
Step 1: Six weeks out, start to fret when you get it into your head that you have to take just about every toy that the LGBB looks at in the past month, just in case she has a hankering for it while we're away.
Step 2: Consider telling Steve we should fly. WITH the portacot AND the highchair AND Lolly's three suitcases of toys and stuffed animals. Because you don't think you can stand hearing That Noise** she makes for more than an hour.
Step 3: Three weeks out, booking made at Apartment Of Choice, console yourself with the fact that, as you have done away with the notion of flying (because what if her ears don't pop or your ears don't pop or she hates it or you hate it or Steve wants to sit somewhere other than next to you because you're bleating on about the fact that you don't know if the LGBB's ears have popped), decide that the most important things only must come with, because despite having the roomy Tardis as your transporter there really isn't room for the playgym and the pram and her cot. And your vodka.
Step 4: So, having made your way through steps 1-3, at T-5 days swan about in your pj's, procrastinate as much as you can, live in denial that you're going to get in that car and not get out again for a very. Long. Time. And remind yourself to remind Steve that if he dares do a man-sneeze*** within the confines of the Tardis, his life just may not be worth living anymore.
We're gonna have a ball!
* thank ewe, Talking Heads.
** this surely has been The Noise of a bored, frustrated baby through the sands of time - you know that one, it's whingey and whiney and any mother/female close to the child actually feels physical pain stabbing in her chest if it goes on long enough.
*** possibly the loudest sound in the world, usually carried out when a baby is asleep.
Step 1: Six weeks out, start to fret when you get it into your head that you have to take just about every toy that the LGBB looks at in the past month, just in case she has a hankering for it while we're away.
Step 2: Consider telling Steve we should fly. WITH the portacot AND the highchair AND Lolly's three suitcases of toys and stuffed animals. Because you don't think you can stand hearing That Noise** she makes for more than an hour.
Step 3: Three weeks out, booking made at Apartment Of Choice, console yourself with the fact that, as you have done away with the notion of flying (because what if her ears don't pop or your ears don't pop or she hates it or you hate it or Steve wants to sit somewhere other than next to you because you're bleating on about the fact that you don't know if the LGBB's ears have popped), decide that the most important things only must come with, because despite having the roomy Tardis as your transporter there really isn't room for the playgym and the pram and her cot. And your vodka.
Step 4: So, having made your way through steps 1-3, at T-5 days swan about in your pj's, procrastinate as much as you can, live in denial that you're going to get in that car and not get out again for a very. Long. Time. And remind yourself to remind Steve that if he dares do a man-sneeze*** within the confines of the Tardis, his life just may not be worth living anymore.
We're gonna have a ball!
* thank ewe, Talking Heads.
** this surely has been The Noise of a bored, frustrated baby through the sands of time - you know that one, it's whingey and whiney and any mother/female close to the child actually feels physical pain stabbing in her chest if it goes on long enough.
*** possibly the loudest sound in the world, usually carried out when a baby is asleep.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Today's random thoughts
• I thought Gene Wilder had died. When I saw him on The View recently, I saw apparently he was not. I don't know why I thought he had died. It's like There was an old lady who swallowed a fly... "I don't know why she swallowed a fly" (and if I have made that stick in your head for the next two hours, over and over and over, then you can welcome yourself to my world today).
• Saw that old clip, Telephone Booth, today. Ian *Mossy* Moss was as attractive as my adolescent glasses assumed him to be. Amoir, Sparker's Daughter, shut your traps.
• Yes. I once had a crush on Ian Moss from Cold Chisel. And Diesel. And Gene Wilder. Guess the odd one out and no, I am not making a word of this up.
• A Stevie Wonder film clip came on just as we were getting the LGBB ready for her bath. Steve mused out loud that he reckoned the gig to do any of Stevie's film clips had to be the best in the world. "He wouldn't know what it looked like, you could say 'Yeah, yeah, it looks good Stevie', 'yep, it's got the whizzing, flashing lights you asked for', 'now that'll be $2 million thanks'." Steve is such a simple bloke when it comes to cause and effect.
• Did the actor who plays the (apparently single solitary) policeman on Neighbours finally get his big break recently? He's been given much more of a storyline than I've ever seen. Over the years, we've dipped in and out of keeping abreast of the goings on at Ramsay Street. This copper pops up in any scene that requires the hand of the law to be present and accounted for. But now he's shagging that Timmins woman.
Oh God. Did I just say that out loud?
• Saw that old clip, Telephone Booth, today. Ian *Mossy* Moss was as attractive as my adolescent glasses assumed him to be. Amoir, Sparker's Daughter, shut your traps.
• Yes. I once had a crush on Ian Moss from Cold Chisel. And Diesel. And Gene Wilder. Guess the odd one out and no, I am not making a word of this up.
• A Stevie Wonder film clip came on just as we were getting the LGBB ready for her bath. Steve mused out loud that he reckoned the gig to do any of Stevie's film clips had to be the best in the world. "He wouldn't know what it looked like, you could say 'Yeah, yeah, it looks good Stevie', 'yep, it's got the whizzing, flashing lights you asked for', 'now that'll be $2 million thanks'." Steve is such a simple bloke when it comes to cause and effect.
• Did the actor who plays the (apparently single solitary) policeman on Neighbours finally get his big break recently? He's been given much more of a storyline than I've ever seen. Over the years, we've dipped in and out of keeping abreast of the goings on at Ramsay Street. This copper pops up in any scene that requires the hand of the law to be present and accounted for. But now he's shagging that Timmins woman.
Oh God. Did I just say that out loud?
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Thinking positive
On the advice of a dear inlaw who really knows what they're talking about, I'm practising the art of looking at the upside of everything.
Take today, for example. Spending 20 minutes vacuuming thoroughly in one neglected corner of the living room is not cause for berating oneself about the lack of attention to housework. Instead, it's cause for high praise due to having increased the size of the room because now we're not afraid to go into it.
There.
This is easy.
Take today, for example. Spending 20 minutes vacuuming thoroughly in one neglected corner of the living room is not cause for berating oneself about the lack of attention to housework. Instead, it's cause for high praise due to having increased the size of the room because now we're not afraid to go into it.
There.
This is easy.
Boogie Wonderland
If ever I was doubting that the LGBB was anything like me, this past fortnight I have taken comfort in the knowledge (although some amongst us would not advise I take comfort, as such, rather accept condolences) that she apparently has at least some of my taste in what constitutes foot-tapping music.
I was becoming excited to watch her burgeoning musical fancies, seeing her all-over-body unstoppable jiggle-wiggles, replete with the cutest Walk Like An Egyptian-style neck wobble. That was until I started to pay attention to exactly what kinds of sounds were causing this newfound desire to move.
The first sign that she was indeed her mother's daggy sentimental daughter was during the Top 100 Aussie Rock countdown on Music Max....
• Tuckers Daughter
• My Baby
• Great Southern Land
and countless similar others of the same era all got a rating of Too Hard Not To Groove Along from the LGBB. And then, in the days that followed, a plethora of vastly different others:
• Follow You, Follow Me (Genesis, while never that popular to admit to liking, remains a staunch fallback in this house for "stuff to play when you can't be bothered putting any effort into what you want to listen to" and it looks like the LGBB has caught that bug)
• Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
• Voulez-Vouz
• Magic Carpet Ride
• Sweet Child O' Mine (don't even ASK how I feel about Steve announcing he wishes he had that album because he'd love to hear it again)
• the tinkly music on her musicbox (never fails to entice the inner desire to boogie)
• Closing credits of The Simpsons (that's our girl)
...still all gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside to see her shimmying uncontrollably. She was shaping up to like what I like!
And then, as Steve swept out the garage a few days ago and the LGBB was in her swing just outside, I caught her boogying along like a mad thing to the "tune" of Daddy beating cobwebs off the inside of the garage door with a broom. The beat, and not necessarily rhythmic, of the sweeping was enough to set her off apparently.
So it looks like my little Dancing Queen isn't so discerning (yet) after all. Though I will hold firm to anyone who challenges me, that there is definitely a leaning towards the rockier of the rock tunes. Oh, well, that and *very sheepish tiny writing* for some reason she has a penchant for The Pussycat Dolls (which I can assure you she only hears by absolute accident if I haven't raced for the remote fast enough during Video Hits).
I was becoming excited to watch her burgeoning musical fancies, seeing her all-over-body unstoppable jiggle-wiggles, replete with the cutest Walk Like An Egyptian-style neck wobble. That was until I started to pay attention to exactly what kinds of sounds were causing this newfound desire to move.
The first sign that she was indeed her mother's daggy sentimental daughter was during the Top 100 Aussie Rock countdown on Music Max....
• Tuckers Daughter
• My Baby
• Great Southern Land
and countless similar others of the same era all got a rating of Too Hard Not To Groove Along from the LGBB. And then, in the days that followed, a plethora of vastly different others:
• Follow You, Follow Me (Genesis, while never that popular to admit to liking, remains a staunch fallback in this house for "stuff to play when you can't be bothered putting any effort into what you want to listen to" and it looks like the LGBB has caught that bug)
• Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go
• Voulez-Vouz
• Magic Carpet Ride
• Sweet Child O' Mine (don't even ASK how I feel about Steve announcing he wishes he had that album because he'd love to hear it again)
• the tinkly music on her musicbox (never fails to entice the inner desire to boogie)
• Closing credits of The Simpsons (that's our girl)
...still all gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside to see her shimmying uncontrollably. She was shaping up to like what I like!
And then, as Steve swept out the garage a few days ago and the LGBB was in her swing just outside, I caught her boogying along like a mad thing to the "tune" of Daddy beating cobwebs off the inside of the garage door with a broom. The beat, and not necessarily rhythmic, of the sweeping was enough to set her off apparently.
So it looks like my little Dancing Queen isn't so discerning (yet) after all. Though I will hold firm to anyone who challenges me, that there is definitely a leaning towards the rockier of the rock tunes. Oh, well, that and *very sheepish tiny writing* for some reason she has a penchant for The Pussycat Dolls (which I can assure you she only hears by absolute accident if I haven't raced for the remote fast enough during Video Hits).
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Somewhere tonight, heads are bowed in mourning
I was out having a "picnic" with the LGBB today, a thing of daily ritual now as her grizzling periods have escalated to incorporate much of the daylight hours.
I did as I normally do: spread out the plastic dropsheet, layered the next plush blankie layer, topped that with a colourful baby quilt, followed by a permanently borrowed kylie from the sleep school I went to last year (shhhh they're bloody handy for nappy-free time, 'kay?). Propped it on all sides with pillows in case Melady did her typical flamboyant "I shan't be sitting any longer, m'mah, I am swooning with the exhaustion of it all" and flailed backwards onto the waiting concrete.
Then I sat her down and proceeded to shoo away all the pests. Namely, Jazz, various late-season bugs. And ants. Scads of ants. Scurrying for cover from the pending rain, no doubt. I swatted, I scraped, I batted. And not just the dog. In the midst of my windmill arms (it sounds like we have an insect plague, the way I'm describing it, but really it was just a steady stream of militant ants), I happened to glance down and notice just as I flicked, a double ant.
A double ant?
Rather, two ants on top of each other. I thought, in that millisecond before my unmanicured nail* flicked it off the drop sheet, "What the hell kind of hump-backed ant is that?" And then my finger had projectile flung the offending ant, who was headed straight for Lolly, I saw him rooly trooly, clean off the rug and into .... somewhere over there.
When I looked down, I was truly humbled. There, lifeless on the clean white blanket, was the body of the fallen ant that the Catapulted One had been carrying home. For an honorary burial, I imagined, replete with National Ant Flag and weeping widow and President. Ooops. A big, Bill Murray a.k.a. Carl from Caddyshack creeping away after the gopher hole sprinkler system incident oops.
Seriously though, I felt so bad! Me, a big scary oaf like a Gorg from Fraggle Rock, swatting away a tinsy little ant. And now their Homecoming was marred all because of me.
I did console myself with the conclusion that that ant was actually carrying back a body that it was going to feast on. Not a mate it was going to bury respectfully.
*ever notice how in novels, it's always a manicured nail? Do writers use this description to imply the woman is kept? A floosy? Flamboyant? Well.... seeing as I'm none of these *unladylike sniff* I felt the need to clarify. Most definitely. Not. Manicured nail.
I did as I normally do: spread out the plastic dropsheet, layered the next plush blankie layer, topped that with a colourful baby quilt, followed by a permanently borrowed kylie from the sleep school I went to last year (shhhh they're bloody handy for nappy-free time, 'kay?). Propped it on all sides with pillows in case Melady did her typical flamboyant "I shan't be sitting any longer, m'mah, I am swooning with the exhaustion of it all" and flailed backwards onto the waiting concrete.
Then I sat her down and proceeded to shoo away all the pests. Namely, Jazz, various late-season bugs. And ants. Scads of ants. Scurrying for cover from the pending rain, no doubt. I swatted, I scraped, I batted. And not just the dog. In the midst of my windmill arms (it sounds like we have an insect plague, the way I'm describing it, but really it was just a steady stream of militant ants), I happened to glance down and notice just as I flicked, a double ant.
A double ant?
Rather, two ants on top of each other. I thought, in that millisecond before my unmanicured nail* flicked it off the drop sheet, "What the hell kind of hump-backed ant is that?" And then my finger had projectile flung the offending ant, who was headed straight for Lolly, I saw him rooly trooly, clean off the rug and into .... somewhere over there.
When I looked down, I was truly humbled. There, lifeless on the clean white blanket, was the body of the fallen ant that the Catapulted One had been carrying home. For an honorary burial, I imagined, replete with National Ant Flag and weeping widow and President. Ooops. A big, Bill Murray a.k.a. Carl from Caddyshack creeping away after the gopher hole sprinkler system incident oops.
Seriously though, I felt so bad! Me, a big scary oaf like a Gorg from Fraggle Rock, swatting away a tinsy little ant. And now their Homecoming was marred all because of me.
I did console myself with the conclusion that that ant was actually carrying back a body that it was going to feast on. Not a mate it was going to bury respectfully.
*ever notice how in novels, it's always a manicured nail? Do writers use this description to imply the woman is kept? A floosy? Flamboyant? Well.... seeing as I'm none of these *unladylike sniff* I felt the need to clarify. Most definitely. Not. Manicured nail.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Where are you going, my little one, little one?
Where are you going my little one, little oneNote: *dirndl*--a full-skirted dress with a tight bodice. Diminutive of Old High
Where are you going my baby my own
Turn around and you're two, turn around and you're four
Turn around and you're a young girl going out of the door
Turn around (turn around)
Turn around (turn around)
Turn around and you're a young girl goin' out of the door
Where are you going my little one, little one
*Dirndls* and petticoats, where have you gone
Turn around and you're tiny, turn around and you're grown
Turn around and you're a young wife with babes of your own
Turn around (turn around)
Turn around (turn around)
Turn around and you're a young wife with babes of your own
Where are you going my little one, little one
Where are you going my baby my own
Turn around and you're two, turn around and you're four
Turn around and you're a young girl going out of my door
German “Dirne”-girl. Pronounced “DEERN-dull” in English.
This song always made me snivel thinking about when my Dad sang it to me. Not because he couldn't sing, but because it's so nice. I found myself softly humming it to the LGBB the other night as I was getting her ready for bed after a bath. She lay there grinning at the sentimental fool swaying along in her own little world.
I was thinking of all the things the LGBB has started doing in the past three weeks alone. To name a few:
• She learned how to do the peek-a-boo thing on her own - it's her first major cause and effect, over and over, achievement and boy, does she think her shit doesn't stink when she does it (I can attest that it does, in fact, still pong to high heaven) - it's adorable. In fact, if she does nothing else ever again, I've been satisfied by her cuteness. Sheets, teddies, rugs, hell even just her arms go above her head - that little straight-armed movement - and then she brings them down just far enough to poke her eyes over the top to see me. And sometimes it's not even her eyes, it's just her comical eyebrows.
• She's now very vocal. Her vocabulary has increased at the end of March from "thuh-thuh-thuh", "u-juh, u-juh" and "duh duh" to include "bvvvvf bvvvf" and some "k" and "r" sounds as well, with the odd "thhh! Thhhhh!" thrown in, very excitedly. This week, she started some almost discernible sentences of garbled noises and she looks so earnest that I find it difficult not to appear patronising and try to take her seriously so as to appear all respectful-like.
• During a particularly long set of speeches at my brother's recent wedding (they went for over half an hour), she amazed me by clapping. Copied what the crowd was doing and just started clapping for herself. Because I was holding her, I couldn't make the massive deal out of it that I wanted, and perhaps that more than anything gave her the space to do it for herself. She has now, of course, perfected the move and does it all the time. Spontaneously clapping so that it looks as if we've created a show pony, when in fact, as I discovered and was starting to worry, Steve and I aren't "clappers".... we weren't that big on clapping our approval to her, so it's either a natural progression thing or we've done it just often enough for the LGBB to pick up that it's a good thing, this clapping. Whatever the case, she loves it. Of course.
• That same week, the appearance of the 8-month-old boogy (dance) made me and her aunty squeal with delight. She was in her high chair the first time she did it and mimicked Aunty K bobbing in the kitchen. And I have to say, she looked for all the world like one of those chickens being hypnotised by getting their bodies moved in a circular motion, you know how their heads stay still? That's what she looked like. Bloody fantastic and so sweet.
• I checked my baby book and I didn't crawl til 9.5 months, wasn't walking til 16 months. Steve about the same. So will tell my MCHN to stick it in her derriére (or kiss mine) once more with feeling at the 12mth appt, esp. if Laidback Lolly still isn't moving about, regarding her "this child sits too much and will get frog legs" warning.
• She is teething again, could feel another tooth coming through on the bottom a few weeks back and can't feel top ones but she's taken to rubbing her bath toys on her top gums every night. But they are definitely giving her grief on and off and sometimes, I look at her cheeks and they appear so red that they are actually more purple than anything else.
• Her bedtime ritual, each time she goes to bed, now includes having to be hoiked up to my shoulders so she can "pat" the duck and frog on the wall just inside her door. This would be fine if she actually patted them with a flat hand instead of scraping her nails down the wall. I can confirm that it sounds every bit like nails down a blackboard.
• She's been turning pages of books since she was 7 months and she is now very adept at it. The stories I read often to her, she readily turns the pages appearing to know when she's meant to.
• Last week, she finally started saying "mum-mum-mum". God how I wished I wasn't going to grow tired of it, but I know one day in the future I may just get resentful of the title from time to time, despite myself. I'nt it good to know you're "normal"?
And finally, I made a diary note on Easter Sunday that says "You've been learning new mouth sounds rapidly this past week. You wake up every day (almost) with a new one. Today was mastering the tongue-click. Tonight, feeding you before bed, you were very busy drinking away, then chatting to my fingers in whispers and laughing, saying "Dada". You think you're sooo funny. And you are."
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Definitely something fishy going on
It's the week after Easter. All the hot cross buns have left the bakery shelves.
Today I go to buy more butter - Dairy Soft or something similar, as we don't normally justify butter, not even for hot cross buns - as the tub was practically squeezed out to gain every morsel we could from the container to spread on said buns.
And what do I find? Western Star Whipped Butter. The good stuff. On sale. $2.80 down from the usual $3.89.
I am telling you, people, it's a conspiracy. Like the petrol hike the day before Good Friday.
Today I go to buy more butter - Dairy Soft or something similar, as we don't normally justify butter, not even for hot cross buns - as the tub was practically squeezed out to gain every morsel we could from the container to spread on said buns.
And what do I find? Western Star Whipped Butter. The good stuff. On sale. $2.80 down from the usual $3.89.
I am telling you, people, it's a conspiracy. Like the petrol hike the day before Good Friday.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Points of view
The LGBB: See doggy. Point doggy. With my cruskit in my grip.
Jazz: She's got fooooooooooooooood!
The LGBB: Damn. Cruskit. Stuck. To. Hand.
Jazz: She's assumed the throw pozzy. Right, so if I sit, I'll get it. Fer sher.
The LGBB: *Struggling* Oh this bloody cruskit. Maybe if I use my ... other ... hand. Great, now they're both stuck to it. What a mess.
Jazz: She didn't throw it. She's messing with me. That's it, I'm standing to get closer, in case Pepper gets it.
The LGBB: Doggy, can you help me unstick this?
Jazz: Oh heck, I'll just eat it from your hand shall I? I know it's wrong, but it's oh so right *eyes glazing over*
Woe is the dog who is scolded for taking the food from a baby's hand and gets caught by Mummy.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Pardon me, but...
...has a chicken laid an egg under your nose?
Why, no. It's just a hormonal pimple.
Ahhhh, it's all pretty here in the House de Beauté when AF is imminent. And missing (did I misplace her under a chair, I wonder? I am bloating at an alarming rate, taking on water faster than the Titanic, I do declare. And no, before you all titter so, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that I might be what I can hear you thinking, o chart-obsessed audience among us)
Why, no. It's just a hormonal pimple.
Ahhhh, it's all pretty here in the House de Beauté when AF is imminent. And missing (did I misplace her under a chair, I wonder? I am bloating at an alarming rate, taking on water faster than the Titanic, I do declare. And no, before you all titter so, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that I might be what I can hear you thinking, o chart-obsessed audience among us)
Thursday, April 05, 2007
How remiss of me
I noticed while driving long-haul* last Wednesday that it was International Shit-Merger Day.
Hint #1: on a busy 3-lane road, there was an old codger in a massive tank - one of those ones you see the drug dealers driving round Queens in those 70's US cop movies - drifting into my lane. Now, I always give old people the benefit of the doubt just in case they're in the middle of dying so I wait to see if they slump over the wheel before cursing them and their pitiful driving. I'm patient if nothing else. He didn't veer into the median and clutch his heart as I watched him continue his "merge" in my rear view mirror, but he very nearly missed the Tardis as I went sailing past (a little faster as I saw his whale edging onto my side of the road). No checking his mirrors or over his shoulder, certainly no indicator - and he used it later to turn off behind me so it was working. Without so much as a buy your leave, he just decided he needed to be in the right lane. Invitation accepted, sir. Apparently.
Hint #2: just..... don't pull out onto a busy freeway in a 110 zone if you see any cars in sight and don't think your car is up to setting a cracking pace. Okay? (and no, it wasn't me)
Hint #3: the oldie but the goodie - a sorry-arsed attempt at merging via an onramp to join freeway traffic. Isn't there always someone who either merges almost before the point where the bitumen of the onramp has melded with that of the emergency lane on the freeway, or alternately (but just as dangerous) the driver who runs out of onramp lane and hasn't yet matched any of the cars in the adjoining lane?
This day, I saw the latter. And what resulted was *almost* a bad and unnecessary accident. Oh there was horn blowing and car shaking. And that was just me, stupefied at what I was seeing.
So I hope it was a Happy Shit-Merge Day for you too. I trust you all recognised the day with a piss-poor merge into the thoroughfare yourselves, wherever you were.
* this to me is anything over 30 minutes these days and was in fact a 4+ hour return trip with the LGBB, replete with the grumbles, so it felt like 15 hours.
Hint #1: on a busy 3-lane road, there was an old codger in a massive tank - one of those ones you see the drug dealers driving round Queens in those 70's US cop movies - drifting into my lane. Now, I always give old people the benefit of the doubt just in case they're in the middle of dying so I wait to see if they slump over the wheel before cursing them and their pitiful driving. I'm patient if nothing else. He didn't veer into the median and clutch his heart as I watched him continue his "merge" in my rear view mirror, but he very nearly missed the Tardis as I went sailing past (a little faster as I saw his whale edging onto my side of the road). No checking his mirrors or over his shoulder, certainly no indicator - and he used it later to turn off behind me so it was working. Without so much as a buy your leave, he just decided he needed to be in the right lane. Invitation accepted, sir. Apparently.
Hint #2: just..... don't pull out onto a busy freeway in a 110 zone if you see any cars in sight and don't think your car is up to setting a cracking pace. Okay? (and no, it wasn't me)
Hint #3: the oldie but the goodie - a sorry-arsed attempt at merging via an onramp to join freeway traffic. Isn't there always someone who either merges almost before the point where the bitumen of the onramp has melded with that of the emergency lane on the freeway, or alternately (but just as dangerous) the driver who runs out of onramp lane and hasn't yet matched any of the cars in the adjoining lane?
This day, I saw the latter. And what resulted was *almost* a bad and unnecessary accident. Oh there was horn blowing and car shaking. And that was just me, stupefied at what I was seeing.
So I hope it was a Happy Shit-Merge Day for you too. I trust you all recognised the day with a piss-poor merge into the thoroughfare yourselves, wherever you were.
* this to me is anything over 30 minutes these days and was in fact a 4+ hour return trip with the LGBB, replete with the grumbles, so it felt like 15 hours.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
The Sherpa
I think the LGBB has learnt to perfect a forced "for the camera" smile. She only does this when the camera is on her. It's one of those ones you do when you're faking a cheesy grin. I want to take her aside and go "Psssssst, did you know that you actually laugh and smile already?" It's as if she doesn't know that she knows how to smile and thinks about it too much.
And this is the result.
Almost as entertaining as teasing a dog, by putting peanut butter on its nose and watching it go mad trying to lick it, is watching your daughter try to compute why her head doesn't feel right *yes, thank you to those in the stalls, it could also be because she's my daughter full stop* Sigh.
But when you've got little arms that don't actually reach to the top of your head to find out what's on it, you end up just flailing and not touching anything but air. Like this.
And this is the result.
Almost as entertaining as teasing a dog, by putting peanut butter on its nose and watching it go mad trying to lick it, is watching your daughter try to compute why her head doesn't feel right *yes, thank you to those in the stalls, it could also be because she's my daughter full stop* Sigh.
But when you've got little arms that don't actually reach to the top of your head to find out what's on it, you end up just flailing and not touching anything but air. Like this.
Monday, April 02, 2007
The Piker
When you ask an 8 month old to be an "honorary flowergirl", you have to expect that she's not going to
a) know why the hell she's getting dressed up
b) understand that it's not terribly FCUK of her to accessorise with a pink dummy
c) care about staying awake during just the most important day in your life to date
d) have the good grace to actually stay present and accounted for during the ceremony at all, in fact.
And when Mummy has to drive you around in your chariot of choice to catch some shut eye (the 3-wheel buggy with the mostest room to guarantee an itchy-scratchy flowergirl dress nap), you might as well go out in style with one last flash of your divine blue oceans into the lens.
a) know why the hell she's getting dressed up
b) understand that it's not terribly FCUK of her to accessorise with a pink dummy
c) care about staying awake during just the most important day in your life to date
d) have the good grace to actually stay present and accounted for during the ceremony at all, in fact.
And when Mummy has to drive you around in your chariot of choice to catch some shut eye (the 3-wheel buggy with the mostest room to guarantee an itchy-scratchy flowergirl dress nap), you might as well go out in style with one last flash of your divine blue oceans into the lens.
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