I May Not Know Art But I Know What I Prefer My Child To Paste.

We have visitors at the Big House.

Because there can never be enough Naughty Nephews under the one roof, we now also have the French/English cousins: Le Nephew(8) and...just to be completely wild...La Niece(6). I last saw these two three years ago, in the month before C and I began IVF. They lived in London then and were both cutely bilingual and still carrying the nightmares of the London train bombings.

Now they live in Bulgaria. They're taller. They're still cute.

On Friday Tricky and I accompanied Le Nephew and La Niece (and La Auntie V) to the museum. Here we had a fine time frolicking amidst the dinosaur bones and butterfly displays.

Tricky and La Niece settled down in the children's play area to make a picture of a wide mouthed frog out of paper plates which they were encouraged to paste over with coloured squares of paper.

Le Nephew frowned at this, knitted his half Gallic brows, and informed me that he was "much too old" to even be in this area which was for children. He went for a quick huffy walk around the space and glared at the dressup dinosaur tails and plastic starfish dotted here and there for childish amusement. Then he sat down and started pasting his frog with much dramatic sighing. This provided my own little childish amusement.

La Niece sat quietly and carefully stuck the correct coloured pieces of paper onto the correct areas of her frog picture. Blue for the water. Green for the frog, and so on. She even managed to curl up the red paper tongue that she had pasted inside the paper plate mouth.

Tricky meanwhile had discovered the pastepot. This pleased him far more than the actual frog. Despite my best efforts he gave all the love he had to the paste. Not to the actual frog. This puzzled me. Disturbed me even. I could almost hear his inner monologue as he worked steadily on his masterpiece.

What this sucker needs is a good coat of paste. Maybe two coats. Wait...what is the motherperson trying to do. Tongue? Why is she trying to stick a paper tongue into my frog. My frog needs no tongue. It needs paste. That's all. Leave it alone woman! Do you think Mrs Picasso kept hanging around her son, criticising? Being "helpful"? "oh Pablo...those eyes are pointing in the wrong direction, oh Pablo why must you make the woman weep like that. Make her smile, everyone loves a smile"....argh! Now she is taking the paste pot away. She's making me "share". Why must I share? Did Leonardo share? Did Modigliani share? I need paste! Give me the paste! It's not about the damn frog, I don't give a shit about the frog, the frog is merely a vehicle for the PASTE. Wait! Dear God in heaven! Now she is sticking COLOURED BITS OF PAPER OVER THE PASTE! MY PASTE! MY PASTE! MY BEAUTIFUL PASTE...

Yes, I did all those things.

I made him share.

I stuck on a tongue.

I tried to mop up the half inch layer of paste with bits of coloured paper.

The truth is that I was enviously watching La Niece and her calm quiet green frog in the blue water. I wanted my child to calmly paste a green frog in blue water.

I was tempted to leave the resultant monstrosity on the drying rack but French Auntie V would not have le bar of it and all three frogs came home to the Big House.

And even then I am ashamed to say I could not leave the thing alone. That night, quite absent mindedly I picked up a thick blue texta.

AND I DREW IN THE EYES.

Mrs Picasso would be rolling in her grave.

(Late) Letter to a 24 Month Old Potential Best Friend

My darling Tricky,

Lo you are Two.

This makes me want to sit very very still and gaze off into the distance for a good hour or so.

And also do some heavy sighing. Two. Yikes.

There’s a sense of graduation here, a lot of the how to baby books I inherited when you were born seem to be finished with you and your ilk. Your kid’s two years old already? Then we’re done, move along, nuthin’ to see here.

You’ve already been moved along in Target. Instead of fruitlessly searching Baby wear for clothes in your size that are not emblazoned with trucks, rockets or The Wiggles, I now get to extend my pointless and endlessly frustrating quest amongst Boy's wear.

And of course there’s the potty, use of which really sorts out the tots from the men.

We introduced the potty in a fairly ad hoc manner, by which I really mean: lazy but cunningly disguised as being casual about where you chose to put your wee.

In our laid back, Gen X way, we were all: ‘sure you can sit on the potty if you want but like…it’s cold…and boring…and you’re wearing nappies anyway, why wouldn’t you just wee in them, god knows we probably would if we had the choice.’

But you, you of the two years of age and of the driven, environmentally aware Gen Zeds, you’re all: wee in the potty, wee in the potty, wee in the potty… and frankly that was hard because we found the whole thing very cold and very boring, even with all the stickers I bought to decorate your potty whenever you managed a little offering.

You would sit at stool, but then you would get up to inspect the three drops you’d managed and when we tried to praise you fulsomely and encourage you to get dressed and let us go back to the computer already you would fix us with a look of distain and announce: “more wee wee”.

This can’t be good for his bladder I would mutter to your father and then try and body tackle you as, for the tenth time in as many minutes, you got up to stand at the toilet and rest against the porcelain and proclaim grandly: wee wee in the toilet! But there was no wee wee in the toilet and so after a minute of cold resting it was back to the potty to sit it out.

There were times, I have to admit, when both your father and I even forcefully removed you from your beloved plastic throne and attempted to attach the clean mumpy (your version of 'nappy') to your shrieking writhing body and both those times we broke and took it off again and let you sit back down and concentrate on the business.

And both times you came up with the goods and we felt like mean, impatient, bastard parents and now we’ve learned our lesson and if you need to sit there then fine, sit, and I’ll get on with my reading. Or sort the washing. Or have my shower. Or write my second book.

This past month saw you make a very long and arduous plane journey full of tears and teeth gnashing and extreme discomfort. Oh wait no, sorry that was me. You had a fine time. And once we got to Perth you threw yourself into the coffee culture and fine dining and fish admiring and all that comes with a visit to Gramma and Papa.
You are fearless, a trait you share with Naughty Nephew the 2nd, and unfortunately we have fed the fire by giving you the plastic push round motorbike for your birthday.

Love is not too strong an emotion for the affection with which you greet the plastic motorbike each day. During the first few nights it even had to be placed near your cot at night where you warmly wished it a “Doodnight Moderbike”.

Riding the motorbike has also extended your vocabulary you now say “Go Fast!” which is both an observation and a demand.

You also say “Go Down The Hill” which is both a demand and a cold gripping vice like hand upon my heart

Now that you are Two, you are also developing a certain formality in the way you address us.

Yes the old imperious command is still there, but there is now nuance in your commands which I put down to you realizing that actually we are people too. People whose glory days may well have been back in the eighties but people nonetheless.

I casually mentioned to you one day, somewhere between watching an old episode of Seinfeld, playing Twister and humming a classic Duran Duran song (Girls On Film if you must know) that though we, the motherperson and the fatherperson, are your Mumma and Dadda, they are not actually our real names.

And…it’s not my preference at all but I have to admit it is very cute when now and then you call out: “Nessa!” “Tisstafer!”

Although it loses its appeal somewhat when you follow that with: GET UP! CHANGE MUMPY, WEE WEE ON POTTY.

Current fave book is Duck In The Truck which Aunty AJ gave you and which you seem to have mostly memorized and Raven which is a book that Gramma and Papa brought back from Canada and is about tricky old Raven who wants to bring the sun to the poor people who live in the dark and the cold (obviously waiting for their toddlers to finish on the potty) and so impregnates the Sky Chief’s daughter in the form of a pine needle (same old same old assisted reproduction in indigenous mythmaking etc) and then when reborn as a toddler, is given the sun to play with… ahem. You love this book which you call: Waven.

Green Eggs and Ham, (Gineggsahum) also, still kicking goals.

This morning, when you got into the Big Bed with us, as you do every morning, we had a good old rave, you and us, about…oh…why we have snot in our noses and why we don’t kick people in the face or do wee in the bed and why we should have lots of cuddles and kisses and how the puffing billies are waiting at the station and where is the moon when the sun comes up.

That’s what I notice most about you and Two. We’re speaking the same language. I mean, we’re even on a first name basis now.

I just need to get you hooked on a bit of New Romantic music and watch some Seinfeld together and I reckon we’ll be best friends forever.



So Much Love (No really!)



Your very own
OvaGirl (aka: NESSA! WEE WEE ON POTTY! GET UP!)

Totally Shallow but

It is over a month since I turned 40 and, sadly, the most profound thing I've been able to come up with in terms of celebrating and honouring such an important milestone is the decision to no longer limit my best earrings to special events only.

And in quite good news, the Very Hard First Draft having been, like the Three Musketeers Bar: whipped and whipped a thousand times, has finally been (re)submitted and KICKED ASS.

My face is glowing with the smile of the exhausted but satisfied.

And my ears are sparkling with the twinkle of tiny lights.

Wat Up

A few years back I went on a silent retreat at a Buddhist Wat with my friend Annie.

It was my first time at such a place but Annie had done it at least once and her familiarity with the silences, the cold morning walks along moonlit bush paths, and the two story drop toilets, was a comforting presence.

It wasn’t entirely silent of course, Annie had arranged for me to share a cabin with her - usually one would be placed with strangers or in a separate cabin or caravan to ensure non-engagement. As it was, a stray fart or burp or snore led to a stream of giggles hastily muffled lest any nearby meditating monk should be disturbed.

Early each morning, and it seemed very early indeed but was probably around the same time I get up now, we gathered in the wat.

Here, on the stone floor, we folded our legs beneath us and began to focus on our breathing, in an effort to still the mind and eventually attain enlightenment or a bladder of iron whichever came first.

It was here that the first awkward attempts at what would become the infamous OvaGirl Breathing Technique (as used in HSGs, blood tests, horribly painful egg retrievals and um…childbirth) appeared. Breathing through my nose and out my mouth, half asleep, concentrating, drifting away, coming to with a jolt only to discover a thin line of drool hanging from my chin - I think it was the glamour that initially attracted me to the retreat.

I never went back to the wat in the mountains but I did learn some things that have stayed with me.

The joy of sweeping for instance, and raking, and other such jobs where one moves dirt or leaves about with a long stick device, all the while realizing that the dirt or leaves will simply be moved somewhere else and that each day more dirt or leaves will appear.
The joy is simply in the moving.

I also learned about loving kindness and the necessity of spraying this towards others as well as towards oneself. Much like some projectile vomiting demon child.

And finally I learned about mindfulness; that we need to be mindful in all our tasks and to be present and in the moment, so that, for instance, when one is eating, one must be present in the moment of eating, and aware of the taste of food and the slopping onto the white shirt etcetera…

And all these are good lessons, but frankly, just at this stage of my life, unattainable.

The joy of sweeping for instance has been replaced by the joy of sponging a full sippy cup of milk out of my mattress and quilt, where it has been spilt, nay flung, by a screaming tomato at 6.39 in the morning. Being a deliberate act, this immediately plays havoc with my loving kindness and instead inspires my frothing rage which must of course be suppressed and instead can be directed at my husband three hours later when he forgets to take the pooey nappies downstairs and throw them in the bin.

And the mindfulness.
Please. I seem to have entered the world of the Eternal Multi-tasker.
I cannot remember the last time I did one action in isolation.
If I am eating, I must also be reading my emails.
If I am talking on the phone during a meeting with several other writers in our guild about various state issues, I must also be picking up toys. At the same time I will be hiding to avoid my toddler, who is being minded by his aunty downstairs, actually realizing I am still in the same house.
If I am doing the washing, I am also attempting some lame-arse exercises for my sagging butt.

And I’m not even going to bother telling you what I was doing when I started composing this email. Because it’s probably where you do yours.

I think back to that weekend where all I had to do was rake and sweep and meditate and be in the moment. It was freezing cold and I was scared of snakes and the toilets didn’t flush. There was no coffee and I missed C.

But sometimes I dream about the silence.

Must Wear Socks

Here is a picture of hell.








And here is a picture of the place I took Tricky to last Friday when it was cold and wet and we couldn't go to the park.

This establishment has soft climbing equipment, things to slide on and slip off, a free coffee included in the price of entry for accompanying adults and one million screaming writhing toddlers and under fives in a very small enclosed place.

In addition there were two hundred and fifty thousand adults all desperate for their free coffee and a small cushioned place to sit, and five hundred thousand prams/strollers/push chairs all requiring parking and each one the size of a small bus.

Approximately 79% of the above sported a snotty nose and/or a hacking cough. Including the prams.

There was also a ball pit. Tricky liked this as he could finger the balls and fling them about the room along with the other million children. I however saw the balls as colourful, larger than life replicas of all the new bacteria and viral diseases about to be introduced to his system.

The highlight of our visit was either pouring the contents of my free coffee down my jacket and all over the crotch of my trousers, the plastic lid having been incorrectly attached to the cardboard cup by the coffee lackey, or actually managing to escape this hellhole and getting a free balloon on a stick.

Next wet Friday I plan to top this experience by sticking a pencil through each eye.

The One Where I Rave About My Son's Birthday And Also Swear Way Too Much

The birthday thing was not entirely unexpected (oddly enough last year he turned one at this exact same time) yet still The Day seemed to creep up and take me by surprise, shouting loudly in my ears, stamping on my school shoes, and then running away, laughing meanly.

And so, plans were made for a party for Tricky and toddler pals. This in turn meant horrible night sweats for Mumma and waking in panic over THE BIRTHDAY CAKE.

CUE: LOUD STING OF ‘SPOOKY’ MUSIC

Last year, my sister in law N made the birthday cake and it was a triumph. The N does not stand for "Nigella" but frankly it may just as well. She used a Nigella Lawson recipe (as she does for all the birthday cakes for all her children) featuring the magical ingredient buttermilk which made it more robustly able to bear the weight of what appeared to be a tonne of bright red icing and several gazillion Smarties. This was then scoffed by everyone and in the case of the adult friends present, washed down with beakers of champagne.

It was, we all agreed, a simply marvelous party.

CUE: LOUD STING OF ‘CELEBRATION’ MUSIC

But that was a year ago and now my sister in law is gainfully employed and totally run off her feet and so if there was going to be home made Nigella Birthday Cake for Tricky the finger bun was pointing well and truly at me.

CUE: LOUD STING OF 'HILARITY' ENSUES' MUSIC

But see I don't make cakes.

Well I have made some extremely heavy fruit cakes, suitable for diabetics and people with MS who are not supposed to eat saturated fats, but certainly not things containing an entire stick of unsalted butter that must be creamed with half a sack of castor sugar.

I did toy briefly with the idea of buying a cake but the cloying chemical scent of a bought caramel mudcake which C purchased for my own birthday celebration (one of the three such events) was still lingering in my senses.

No, I told myself sternly. There is a well thumbed copy of The Domestic Goddess just waiting for me on the shelf downstairs. There are traditions in place, sacred rituals, and how rare is that in our secular, busy, just-buy-the-frigging-cake-mentality lives? And also, bearing in mind my current wrestles with Nietzsche, what would he say on the matter? Surely he would encourage me to climb that Nigella Cake Mountain?

And so, on the afternoon before The Day, I set aside my actual proper paid employment despite the fact that I am under the Deadline Hammer and had two murders, a mass drowning, an unhappy wife and a stalking barista to whip into submission ( that's right Nigella, try licking your pouty lips over that little recipe), placed All My Ingredients on the bench and took down Her Book.

Thence began The Muttering. I know about the muttering because my brother in law was working in the room next to the kitchen and he could hear me the whole time. Apparently it went like this:

Ok ok ok….plain flour, yes yes, big eggs, got them, vanilla extract, ha yes, castor sugar, butter milk, bi carb, bi carb, bi carb, baking pow......der. ...oh no...castor sugar, castor sugar...how much?...that's nowhere near enough....god! No No No!

Muttering briefly stops while I dash down to the corner stop for more castor sugar.

Muttering continues as above until I manage to compact the wussy beater thingys of the hand held mixer with hardened butter and sugar.

As the motor overheats I rush into brother in law’s room because, being married to N, he will surely have absorbed some cake-making wisdom via osmosis if not actual cooking practice. Luckily K has both and I learn that when one creams butter and sugar together one is aiming for a light fluffy cream like consistency, nothing like the greasy mess I am now waving about hysterically in the air.

At some point in the day C arrives home which is good as once the butter and sugar is properly creamed it has to be added to the sieved flour/baking powder mixture and alternating with the buttermilk/vanilla extract mixture and FOR FUCKS SAKE NIGELLA I ONLY HAVE TWO HANDS.

But finally, finally the cake is cooked and looks quite presentable.

Cut to next morning when C and I now have to do more butter/sugar madness to create delightful ‘butter icing’.

Except Nigella, whom I am beginning to hate, has thoughtfully not bothered to include the actual method of making butter icing in her book. She has the ingredients and some wonderfully charming anecdote about Barbie’s bosoms or somesuch but it seems that butter icing is like breathing or indeed breast feeding (ha bloody ha) and everyone is born knowing how to do it.

Eventually we do discover how to do it and yes it is easy but how much stress would we have avoided if she had just thoughtfully included these six simple words:

BEAT THE FUCK OUT OF IT.

And now we must put aside our cake making hat and put on our cake decorator floppy beret.

A word on birthday cake decoration and shape. The Naughty Nephews kindly took me through both versions of the Women’s Weekly Cake Decorating Book and pointed out all their fabulous birthday cakes of the past: the train, the rocket ship, the caterpillar, the Sydney Opera House, the great fucking wall of China (some slight exaggeration here).

Yea verily they are all brilliant but require much sculpting and shaping and scalpel precision type shaving of the very cake that one has already lost sleep over the making thereof. Also, it seems, one needs a shitload of coloured popcorn and chocolate biscuits to adhere to the sides.

So the shape I decided on was a T.

And simple though that shape may appear, even this required C and I to sit down with pieces of paper and ruler and scissors and tumbler of whiskey, cutting and recutting, sipping and resipping, just to create a template that would ensure the correct T shape.

The next decision to be made was colour.

Last year was red. This year….what?
We could go blue or green or take a cake out of Nigella’s tea tray and go white on white. (Except of course we wouldn’t because that’s just ridiculous) In the end I decided to follow on with a theme (ie the chakras) and go for orange. This means that while last year’s cake honoured the base chakra ie the genitals, this year’s moved up the ladder a bit and would honour the bowel.

In years to come we shall go through things like heart(green) and throat(blue) chakras and eventually hit the final third eye/top of the head chakra (one or t’other, I’m a bit sloppy with the boundaries). The obvious benefit of basing your child’s cake on chakras is that the first seven years’ colours are pre-determined, all the way up to… violet.

Just to cover my bases I had a few weeks back bought every possible variety of food colouring, sprinkle shapes(including stars, moons, dinosaurs, flowers and internal organs) roll out ready made icing, tubes of garish ‘write on’ icing, little candy animal faces, smarties and mini marshmallows.

C did the icing, based on his experience with plaster rendering (which he declared to be easier) and I did the decorating based on my impatience.

At last we were done. A proper birthday cake, made from a Nigella book, iced orange, studded with smarties and marshmallows and decorated with a plastic tiger.

We gazed at it with almost as much pride as we had first gazed at Tricky and I looked at the enormous amount of left over butter icing and felt a sudden surge of Nigella directed energy and then immediately whipped up my sleeves and DASHED OFF TWO DOZEN NIGELLA FAIRY CAKES.

I added extra colouring to the orange icing and ended up with a plate of lurid pink and camouflage green cupcakes. Sadly this is the only proof I have that they existed.

This story began as a stressful and worrying experience but ended happily with eight bottles of champagne and seven home delivered Turkish pides many hours later after the children had been put to bed.

And I realised that Nietzsche was right all along with the mountain and the suffering and what makes the most fulfilling experiences and the good things coming from bad. And he was almost right about alcohol being the scourge of civilization and how we should all just avoid it like the plague except miraculously, the next day, apart from a slight seediness, there was NO HANGOVER.

It was, simply, a marvelous party.

CUE: LOUD STING OF ‘VICTORY’ MUSIC

CUE: MUSIC DIRECTOR STRANGLED BY STALKING BARISTA

And then he was two

Tricky turned two today.

And it was glorious.

What do you think of, I said to his father, the fact that he's turning two, what does that make you think of?

I think...that time goes so fast, he said, that I can't believe it's two years already.

I think that, I said, But also I think of this day, and the days that led up to it, giving birth to him and what a strange and extraordinary time that was.

And then I think of the years that led up to that day.

The waiting and the hoping and the wishing and the counting and the medicating and the testing

and then he came.

And even now, two years later, sometimes I can't quite believe it.

Tiny tinkles

"Can you remember your potty?"

I was washing up as I asked this of C who was finishing one of his one million reports on the computer.

"No." He didn't even look up.

It occurred to me that having spent his early formative years in a caravan in the frozen tundras of Gloustershire in the UK during the early 60s, C probably had to make do with a hole in the lino but I didn't suggest this. It made my own nostalgic glow for my big plastic elephant potty, with the happy smile and the oddly formal bow tie, seem... indulgent.

But after all, small people do spend a lot of time on their potty, I thought. Why shouldn't they be pleasant, or even comfortable?

Friday is Tricky's 2nd birthday and so on the weekend we did a little shopping at K-Mart.

I was actually after a motorbike, just a chunky no-frills plastic motorbike that he could sit on and zoom about the place. I have very strong memories of my youngest sister and her no frills plastic motorbike and the joy it gave her for many years. I know this is simply stting myself up for disaster ie. why should a toddler in 2008 necessarily enjoy what another toddler enjoyed in um 1982 simply because they're related and also um...toddlers, but I liked the simplicity of the concept.

It's not one of those ride on things that play nursery rhymes (he has one of those) or has a spinning around thing under the handles (his little friend Toby has one of those) or plays a succession of big band instruments (his little friend Jude has one of those), it is Just A Plastic Motorbike and all you can do is sit on it and use your feet to propel you along. If one wants, one can make brrrrm brrrm noises as well. Or as in my little sister's case wooof wooof noises because she was obsessed with puppy dogs.

And so the search began but of course it is always difficult to find exactly what one wants in a K-Mart. They are not designed for exact purchases they are designed to suck you into a vortex and barrage you with bright light and shedloads of stuff in the hopes that you may accidentally buy yourself a rice cooker and a microwave potato capsule when you only wanted a grater.

Also, I find the staff elusive and timid, shy of eyecontact with potential customers and fearful of giving actual advice on where anything the fuck is.

C and I planted young Tricky before a shelf full of exceedingly ugly plastic dinosaurs (that roar when you press their temples together) and ducked and weaved from aisle to aisle around him looking looking looking for non-fancy motor bike.

There were minor victories. I found the motorbike section and was jubilant for about 33 seconds until I realised it was was chockablock with fancy motorbikes, the musical, big band playing revolving sort as described above but also alternative pink ballerina versions of same because...I don't know... some advertising genius has realised that girls will only endure toy motorbikes and bikes in general if they are pink. And festooned with flowers. And tutus. God knows how I ever made it through childhood with a green dragster.

Luckily as we were leaving with our collective tails between our legs (and a god awful plastic T-Rex with squeezable temples ) C spotted exactly what I wanted, stacked amongst the (real) barbeques. I have no idea why the non-fancy plastic motorbikes were stacked with the barbeques but there you go. In some shy, retiring, staff member's mind it made perfect sense.

As we were leaving the inevitable happened and we were sucked into the "that's right I needed to get that" vortex emerging out the other side with... a potty.

Tricky has seen a potty in use at childcare by a couple of his fellow small people. A couple of times he has managed to wee in the toilet before a bath. We are not by any means rushing to potty train but it seemed like as good a time as any to purchase essential equipment. And we were in the vortex.

There was much head scratching and murmbling to ourselves as C and I discussed which potty/toddler toilet seat would be best. It became increasing clear that this was actually a conflict between his memory of the potty (ie. nothing) and mine (ie. Elly my friendly ride on wee on poo on elephant, with the bow tie and the raised trunk).

We seriously discussed all the pros and cons of each model. We struggled to separate stacks of potties that had been far too firmly wedged into place by some doe-eyed tightly wound staff member.

Not the blue Wiggles potty - too ridiculously expensive, not the padded Dora The Explorer toilet seat - too ridiculous to bear.

This potty wouldn't match the bathroom.

That potty was just a study in stupidity.

Tricky patiently filled his nappy waiting for us to make up our mind about which pot he would eventually crap in and attempted to shoplift a toasted sandwich maker (stacked carefully just near the heated toilet seats) out of sheer boredom.

Eventually we settled on a plain white one with a high back. Nothing fancy, nothing extravagant. Comfortable but not cushy.

And that night, while road testing it, Tricky managed the tiniest wee in the world. Cue ticker tape parade and dancing girls to celebrate.

Somehow, we've started potty training. In a very gentle, casual what-ho sort of way...

"This is a perfectly good potty," said C. "He's very happy with this."

It was true, he was happy, but it occurred to me that I could always apply a few stickers to brighten things up a little.

Attach some sort of music playing device to entertain him during those long waits. A big band music playing thing, say. Or a thing that spins around.

Or at the very least, a bow tie.

Before Sunrise

While I was on holiday, the rest of the playwrights in the group finished Thus Spake Zarathustra and their various written responses, and next Tuesday we meet to mull over Nietzsche's life and argue over whether he ever really got laid (which will obviously be a pivotal moment in our theatrical intepretation).

I, however, am only up to part 3 of The Z-Man which means the bit where Zara praises winter, goes in hard with various townspeople and their silly other prophet related beliefs, and puts the boot into such things as involuntary bliss and mediocrity.

To these irritations I can't help wishing that Nietzsche had included things like Having One's Toddler Chuck A Tantrum That Lasts For Well Over One Hour and Husband's Uncanny Ability To Keep Reading Newspaper During Said Tantrum.

This last 'irritation' of C's was almost enough to see me collect up every philosophical text in the house and batter him about the head and shoulders in a blind rage, but (despite having lived here for over two years) we still don't have a reliable book cataloguing system in place and it would take me too long to amass such texts into anything solid enough to be capable of violence.

The exception to the book cataloguing disaster is (of course) my precious collection of Books Of My Childhood and frankly the energy I'd be forced to expend to draw blood with my paperback copies of (say) The Borrowers series just wouldn't be worth it.

In the land of the man with the ridiculous moustache I can report that the mountain motif is getting a steady workout, I've just read a gory bit about a shepherd with a snake caught in his mouth, there's some mad dwarf action, and I just know it's all going to end badly, what with it being so based on the writer's experiences and him dying insane and from syphilis. (Or was it a brain tumour? See, the getting laid question is important after all.)

Alain de Botton talks about Fred and his writings in The Consolations Of Philosophy which I started reading to help understand more about Nietzsche and have continued to read to learn more about myself. It may well be Philosophy Lite but it's all I can handle right now and frankly any insight, even if it's simply that drinking hemlock is a health hazard, is a bonus.

Alain de Botton's version of Nietzsche tells me (I still don't have a fucking clue what Zarathustra is saying) that all these difficulties are necessary, that we must keep climbing the mountain to achieve worthwhile happiness (as opposed to that lightweight involuntary bliss) and that we should allow that lofty inspirational joyous things can and mostly do develop from base moments and urges and actions.

So I try not to get depressed about having to go back to the beginning with my tv script draft, I try to see that it's ok to have failed to get it right so far, that in failing and starting again I am learning to get it right.

And I try not to give up on actually reading Zarathustra, being so far behind the others, and wishing I could fling it out the window and do some comfort reading instead.

And I try very hard not to get down about Tricky being so upset and out of sorts since our holiday return, his screaming and hitting and his furious face clawing (have I mentioned the furious face clawing? No? That would be because it upsets me then.) and just keep on doing the best I can with him, speaking calmly and putting him down when he claws or hits me and loving him with all my heart.

And that keeping on loving thing goes the same for his father too, even when we seem to be emotional strangers who happen to be sharing a bathroom sometimes, because we are after all, both climbing this particular mountain, this parenting mountain and I know how hard it is for me and therefore how hard it is for him too.

We both feel tired and old and angry at times, we both have disappointments and challenges in our work that knock us down, we both feel helpless and stupid and useless when Tricky cries for an hour and can't seem to be calmed.

We may not always understand each other, all the time, we may feel tired, old, angry and completely fucked in general but we're still climbing, together, and hey there's something in that.

And so often it's more.

And it's not all climbing, I keep reminding myself.

Sometimes it's stopping and breathing deep and admiring the view.

Home Again Home Again Jiggety Jig

He looked like this. But at an airport. And screamier. And more tomatoey...

We made it home intact but it was a very near thing. The cracking point came, funnily enough, at the very end of our journey as we waited for our luggage to be delivered via 'carousel'.


As I waited with Tricky by our small mountain of hand luggage I had the brilliant idea of amusing my over-tired, over-sensitive toddler with a couple of blown up balloons.


Yes, I'm one of those organised clever mothers who tuck little toys and balloons into their handbag for just such a moment when one's child needs distraction. So there I was, blowing up balloons (not too large) and tying knots in the end and trying to explain why there were no red balloons left, only yellow and blue.


Cut to...balloon suddenly being blown away and drifting down one end of the airport with my toddler in hot pursuit as I stood by the small mountain of hand luggage and my husband waited up the other end of the terminal for our larger mountain of proper luggage.

And, call me stupid (because I certainly did) but I expected Tricky to get the balloon and come straight back to me.


But he didn't. Because he is not quite two. And he had been restrained in a small space for five hours.


And I had to leave the hand luggage, all the computers and cameras and brand new portable dvd player and leg it after him and then when I caught him and started heaving him back to the seat because god forbid he should happily walk hand in hand with his MOTHER, he let go of the balloon and started screaming the place down.





It is gone I shouted. Let it go. I will blow up another one.


More screaming.


I will blow up another one, I shouted. Can you hear me? I WILL BLOW UP ANOTHER ONE.


It dawned on me eventually that this was not quite the thing to be shouting in the middle of Sydney Airport. And it didn't work anyway. It didn't matter that I had a fistful of yellow balloons in readiness.





He wanted the one that drifted away past the airport security guy who sternly ignored it.





He wanted the one that drifted past the backpackers who tried to kick it as it went by.





He wanted the one that drifted past the family, who saw my loudly shrieking little boy and failed to put two and two together so that when they finally saw the yellow balloon and the woman picked it up she handed it to her little girl as they disappeared through the doors.





Another yellow balloon hastily blown up and return of C with luggage. Now we had to make it onto a taxi. With a child seat. The taxi queue guy took pity on us and called us forward through the crowd that had suddenly appeared alongside us.





Tricky dropped the balloon and it sailed back into the airport.


Cue screaming tomato.


Cue quietly hysterical mother attempting to drag enormous backpack plus toddler plus baby backpack behind ridiculously cheerful husband dragging two small wheely bags, suitcase, two computers and camera bag towards taxi at front of queue.





Taxi queue man sends minion into airport "to get kid's balloon."





Korean tourist retrieves it and carries it out to us.





Three steps later Tricky drops balloon again.





Amidst new screaming hell, not so cheerful husband drags back all baggage to say that taxi at front has no child seat.





Mother begins to weep inwardly.





Delightful blonde woman from taxi queue leaves own bags to get balloon and hand it back to us. Mother weeps openly.





Enormous semi trailer type taxi appears, seemingly from clouds. It has child seat. We get home and fall gratefully in front of takeaway chicken curry.





Tricky wakes at screamy ten minute intervals during the night.





Holidays.





Love 'em.

Message To The Management

The Screaming Tomato would like it to be known that he does not approve of airline travel. 

To begin with there was promise of "aeroplanes", it was all aeroplane this and aeroplane that as we set off from home in the (smelly) taxi. But when we boarded said "aeroplane" they disappeared. Despite numerous loud requests for "aeroplane" and visits to the window, no aeroplanes were forthcoming. This is not acceptable.

The Screaming Tomato does not approve of seatbelts. 

Just because he is under the age of 2 and entitled to free airfare (but not his own seat) that does not mean he should be harnessed to the mother person. Especially during loud noise and strange vibrations. The Screaming Tomato will make his displeasure known by shouting and kicking his legs. He will also arch his back in an unpleasant manner. The father person's attempt to restrain the Screaming Tomato shall be useless. The mother person's attempts to "sing little songs" and produce trinkets wrapped in paper shall be useless.

The Screaming Tomato does approve of a little tap in the wall that provides water. 

The Screaming Tomato does not approve of being told "no more water" and "oh dear we have accidentally splashed this poor man." 

The Screaming Tomato will continue to show his displeasure in appropriate fashion.

The Screaming Tomato does approve of Papa and Gramma...so far.

The Screaming Tomato does approve of taking a trip to the Little House In The Bush.

The Screaming Tomato does approve of being allowed to watch Charlie and Lola on new portable dvd player whenever he damn well likes.

However there is rumour of another so called "aeroplane trip" in the near future.

The Screaming Tomato should like the management to know that they are hereby put on notice.

Letter To A 23 Month Old Music Hall Star

Darling Tricky

This month you decided to try putting toys into your cot.

From very early on you have been a nay sayer of the toys in bed movement. I find this hard to understand, I was a toy packer from way back and indeed have many memories of being swamped in bed by a variety of dearly loved teddies and dolls. But any attempt to pop a teddy by your pillow say, or introduce your extravagantly expensive toy monkey from Aunty AJ in New Zealand to a cot corner, would be met by fierce resistance and much shrieking, and the offending item would be quickly ejected over the side.

Sometimes this might get you started on a freakishly efficient de-clutter of your cot, and then your doona and pillow would also go over the edge..

Imagine my amusement when one morning you took every single stuffed toy out of the toy box in the bedroom and, one by one, talking to each in turn, threw them over the rails and into your cot.

Cut to later that evening when I went to bath you and discovered the plug had disappeared. And half an hour after that when I discovered the recalcitrant plug, plus three bath toys, plus a red watering can and my shower cap, all safely stowed in your cot with the rest of your toys.

It was a one off I'm glad to say. Toys (and bath accoutrements) have since been rebanned from your cot.

Like mushrooms, new words and phrases are appearing where new words and phrases have never been before. Or maybe they were always there and we just weren't listening.

So for instance, a couple of weeks back when we were in Newcastle you suddenly started saying “What’s this one?” while pointing at the mystery item.

It’s not just words, it’s songs. R tells me that when you lie in your little cot for a nap at daycare you spend at least the first half hour singing to yourself and “making up new songs”.

Making them up?

Possibly, or possibly R does not have the finally attuned ear of your father and I.

Witness the brilliant translation effort we did when we were driving to the shopping centre and you sat in your car seat merrily singing “pennia peeeessss” over and over to yourself. If this wasn’t cryptic enough you also alternated this with “bowl a bowl a bowl a bowl a bowl”.

Your father and I knitted our brows and made little mmphing noises as we tried to work out what you were saying.

“What is bowl a bowl a bowl?” I asked. “And why a pennia peeesss?”

“Bowl a bowl a bowl a bowl!” you shouted gleefully from the back.

“He does love balls, maybe he’s saying ball a ball a ball” I suggested.

"Pennia peeesss!” you trilled. It was all sounding way too genital for me and I was ready to suggest a rousing chorus of Old McDonald Had A Farm when your genius father put it all together and mumbled: “….bowl a bowl a bowl a pennia peeeesss…”

Suddenly, the pennia dropped.

“It's Roll or bowl a ball, a penny a pitch!” we gasped. To test our theory we both sang loudly: “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts!”

To which you immediately gave the traditional reply: “ava a bana.”

But this isn’t, say, a Wiggles song, or a traditional nursery rhyme, or even a made up Mummy song, it’s a funny old song from Grumpy Grandad’s era which we have sung in the car maybe twice since you were born. It makes me shudder to think of all the other stuff you may have absorbed, not nearly so quaint nor as tuneful, and will no doubt come oozing out this week when we have taken you to Perth to visit your other grandparents Papa and Gramma.

This month you have told me many things: that Charlie has a little sister Lola, that your friend T can be a bit rough, that B at childcare did a poo in his pants, and that Poppy drives a red car. You stroke Daddy’s chin and say loudly that Daddy has a beard and then you stroke my chin and I hurriedly rush for the tweezers. You ask me to walk with you and to blow your nose and to jump on the trampoline and to give you another biscuit. Sometimes you say please and thankyou. You said happy birthday to me this month and hip hooray.


I love you so much, my little boy. Your bright eyes and your naughty face and your soft curls. You are nearly two years old and so much has changed in such a short amount of time.

Except time isn't that short, is it? Time twists and stretches, splinters and compresses.
When we have story time just before bed, it could be three books, or two and a song. And always a cuddle. And when you weren't here we had all the time in the world.

And we're often tired, or stressed with work, or pressed for deadlines.

But truly, this time, with you, has been the very best.

I love you.

Your very own
OvaGirl
xxxxx

Oops

I have blocked this from my subconscious so effectively, wallowed in nostalgia and ooh hoo I'm turning 40 drama so completely that I have forgotten to say that we are going away for a couple of weeks. This will be lovely of course but it is the five (is it five? Is it more?) hour plane trip with Tricky on our laps that will take us there and back.

Help me. You who have travelled long distance in planes with under twos. Give me some guidance. My sister in law has suggested bubbles for take off and landing and any other time child must be kept still. But then someone else said, no, they won't let you take liquid on the plane? To Perth? Really? WHAT ABOUT THE WINE?

It's My Party And...

It was lovely, it was lovely, it was lovely.

It may well have been the best birthday ever.

And it was sunny all day and I didn't completely lose my voice overnight and I received many many lovely thoughtful gifts and felt very much loved.

And my baby said "'appy burrday mumma."

And my nephews made me cards.

And the digital camera that was doing the rounds at the restaurant taking ridiculous pictures of everyone turned out, the following morning, to be my digital camera, being my present from Tricky and C.

And Naughty Nephew the 2nd, spent at least two hours (which is a very long time when you are a busy 8) yesterday working out how to play Happy Birthday on his trumpet.

And when the cake was brought out after a lovely family dinner, he played it beautifully.

And of course it made me cry.

The Last Day Of Not Being 40

So today is the last day of Not Being 40 and I have marked this special occasion by walking in the park with C and Tricky, eating leftover pumpkin soup, gargling with ti-tree oil and water to try and make my viral ridden throat fit for conversation, and having a nap because I am an older lady now and such things are right and proper. Also because C has arranged a special posh dinner out tonight and I don't want to be tired.

And of course a certain special quiet time of the day was dedicated to reading through Part 2 of Thus Spake Zarathustra (ie. on the toilet). If it wasn't for the upcoming meeting with the other six playwrights on Tuesday night I could happily dedicate all my Special Quiet Time to reading more of Mr N's marvellous words but I simply cannot produce enough poo between now and then to get through the whole of Part 2 and so I foresee much of Monday and Tuesday being dedicated to Philosphy. (Sunday obviously being spoken for.)

I also read through some of my old notebooks which is always cringeworthy and sometimes quite illuminating. (Dare I compare it to a certain prophet baring cupcakes? No, not really.)

In one book I write about a trip to Spain with C, staying with a couple of actors (she was Australian, he was French, they met when she did a play in Paris oo la la etc). This couple were incredibly poor, living on theatre gigs and translation jobs and him being a waiter on a boat restaurant, but his stepfather was filthy rich. He owned this beautiful villa on the Mediterranean coast and so we had, all four, flown there (them from Paris, us from London) for a week together.

They lived the most extraordinary bohemian lifestyle, I remember, in a tiny one bedroom flat in Montmartre, overlooking cobblestone streets and growing blue geraniums in their windowbox (everyone else grew red ones), all their friends were actors or painters, they had a transvestite prostitute as their concierge and they lived on cigarettes, coffee and wine and they were passionately in love.

I wrote about one long game on the huge old baby-fut (foozball) table at the villa, with rows of leaden men in faded red painted jerseys (goalies in yellow) heavy wooden handles spinning frantically and the blip bling blam of the ball as it pinged into place. In between the pings are snatches of our experiences in Europe (this was a six week long trip) like leaving Edinburgh after the festival and hearing the news that Princess Di was dead and then listening to snatches of Elvis and reports over and over all that long drive back to London. I could hear their voices shouting excited ly as I read on, the swearing, the taunting, the laughter of the game.

It was a fantastic week of wine and games and talk and bright pink blossoms and shouting at the moon and walks along the beach, and reading about that week today I thought about how, years later, after two babies in that wee one bedroom flat, still living on not very much, it all finally fell apart and that dream was over.

And I went on to read about more trips, more people, more experiences, some of which I felt the resonance or the irony or the satisfaction that comes from looking back.

I spent my 30th birthday in a cabin in Tasmania.

It wasn't a rustic log type cabin out in the wilderness it was a prefab thing that was built in the grounds of a pub in a very small very dull town in the middle of nowhere whose heyday was sometime in the 1800s. (This would have been fine except a few whopping great bushfires had completely flattened the place and it was rebuilt quickly and cheaply in the 1970s, an era well known for its marvellous architecture. ) Also it was fucking freezing of course.

I remember having a bit of a mini crisis as 30 approached and I think one of the main reasons was that we were so isolated, no friends or family, although on the plus side it was the work of a moment to nip across the yard for a beer.

Schmutzie whom I need not link to as you will find her in the list opposite is doing something very beautriful for her 40th year, writing about people who have touched her life, one for each day of this year. I thought about doing the same but maybe something different will present itself. After all, the end of not being 40 starts tomorrow really, when I am 40, so I still have a few hours to think something up. Some way of using my writing to acknowledge the passing of those years. When I whinged about being 39 for only a few days more to one of my playwright friends, H, she said that the years with 0 or 1 or 2 are always good, it doesn't matter about the digit before...it's those 8s and 9s that make you fret about what you've achieved or not. So actually, 40 is a fresh start.

I'm on for that.

And so now, while my husband takes my baby for a walk along the beach, in an attempt to exhaust him before the babysitter arrives, I am going to do my nails and pick my dress and get ready to say goodbye to what went before and hello to what comes next. With my friends. And my family.
And with my darling C who I hope will be planning my suprise 80th another 40 years hence.

3 days left of Not Being 40

Yesterday, hooplah!, I got the first draft of my tv episode in to the script producer.

This is only a small hooplah! because frankly I have no idea how it will go, it may well hit her computer and come bouncing straight back to me tonight with WE HAVE TO TALK emblazoned on the bottom in red.

No actually it won't do that because that sounds a bit threatening and spooky and she is neither of these things which is, you know, a pleasant surprise.

From her it goes to the producers and then to the network and then I get more notes and on I go to the second draft. But at any point WE HAVE TO TALK (the non spooky, non threatening version thereof could blink up on my screen (receive notes, insert notes, submit again).

I have actually very much enjoyed writing (and rewriting and rewriting) thus far. And how nice to have it in with 3 days left of Not Being 40 to play.

So far I have spent my non-script writing time farting about with my blog and putting this thing on the side that lists about forty blogs that I enjoy at various time. The 10 most recently updated show up on the list otherwise you can click to read more.

Having a blog roll is something I have meant to do for a while but I am a stupid fuzzy headed sort of internet person. I did manage to once put one on as a sort of example but it all seemed a bit hard. Luckily, blogger likes to keep up with all the stupid fuzzy headed people and so now they have this new...thing...that makes it very easy to do a list such as you see here. And in about seven and a half months I predict they will develop a "blog post generator" which will make blogging even easier.

Computery business is one thing that makes me feel stupid and another is Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra (what a fucking brilliant segue.)

I am part of a sort of magnificent seven of playwrights (a playwrights' alliance we actually say) who like to gather and write stuff as a group, it's a sort of reaction to the whole playwright in the garret sort of thing and the sad little lonely person one is at those times (also the terrible tracksuits one seems to slop around in all day) but also we are pitching for projects that seem a Bit Big and suited for 7 people to have a bash at, together.

And so, we are having a bash at Nietzsche.

Some of us playwrights already know a bit about Mr N, some of us, for instance had not only read Thus Spoke Zarathustra but also attended courses on said fellow.

But others of us had not and our whole experience of Thus Spake(or spoke) Zarathustra was recognising it as the book that the sullen teenage brother is reading in Little Miss Sunshine.

Hello, that playwright was me.

Because, as I told the others at Tuesday's meeting: I would not pick this book up in a pink fit.

Kicking and screaming is perhaps an exaggeration of my reaction to having to closely read things like: Of The Despisers Of The Body or Of The Bestowing Virtue which are but two of the little chunks of creative wisdom Zarathustra likes to spread around to his ever increasing disciples in Part One. Each segment contains a little homily or lesson and now and then a tightrope walker or perhaps some dancing beast or floating butterfly and each pithily ends with the line:

Thus Spake Zarathustra.

"It is not dissimilar to GodSpell," I said brightly at our meeting and this seemed to please some and concern others.

Like individually moulded cupcakes with brightly coloured icing and special little sugar doodads upon their sugary peaks, Zarathustra passes out his special thoughts and words although by the end of part one he seems to have run out of cupcakes and told his now rampant followers to piss off for a bit.

There are so many questions to be answered.

Is God really dead?

Is the Superman actually better than the Batman?

What will happen in part two?

Will there be more cupcakes?

Will I compare it to the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Can there be another tightrope walker please? (I bet not, because that first one fell off and died a horrid death)?

Why did no one tell Nietzsche to do something about that ridiculous moustache?

There was a moment during my wrestling of Thus Spake Zarathustra when I was vividly reminded of a nasty moment in Honours at Uni. Midway through my James Joyce class after having written three HD essays about JJ and various chapters of Ulysseus I said jovially to the small class of Joycean Fans: "yes but how many of you have actually read the whole book?"

I shall never forget the strange brittle silence that followed those words.

Apparently Nietzsche sees struggle as a Good Thing, afterall his hero seems to wander up and down mountains to make a point and so I grimly perservere (because a) the team is depending on me and b) I have already spent the grant money) and c) I think I am learning something.

To my suprise, I have found some revealing and rather resonant thoughts and moments.

Stuff seems to glimmer for me and every now and then I find myself murmuring...ooh I do that...

Will I be a better person after working on this project? I don't know. But I think I could be a different one. We shall see.

I think that this is a pretty good project for a Person About To Turn 40.

Zarathu himself went into the mountains and kicked about on his own for ten years when he was thirty and now, ten years on, he's back, baby, he's back, and check out his cupcakes.

Thus Bakes Zarathustra.

Cheese and Whiskey

Life seems soupy just now or perhaps just broth-like but with added chunks thrown in for taste and texture.

All of us are at various stages of the current winter illness; hacking away merrily and filling our tissues and handkerchiefs with gay abandon. Tricky's latest command to us is "Blow Nose!"

We spent the weekend with my parents in Newcastle which delighted Tricky who had long given up his daily mantra of Aphwa, Poppy, Jimmy (respectively his grandmother, grandfather and their dog) and spent many long happy hours following Aphwa and cuddling Jimmy and a few scant minutes kicking a miniature soccer ball with Poppy.

My poor dad, all those years he wanted a son and now when finally he has a grandson in the same country as him, he has to stand third in line for affection after the staffordshire terrier.

This weekend I celebrated my soon-to-be-40th birthday and my how my fingers skip trippingly over the keyboard as I write that. 40 40 40... I shall have to write more on this but it will be a work in progress I fear. In the meantime there were cocktails, champagne and pizza and I lost my voice which is generally a sign that I am having a good time and in the other meantime I still have 4 days left of being 39.

This weekend also, I cut my grandad's hair. This sounds an easy enough task, after all he has special clippers for the job, but actually it's not that easy a task if you haven't done it before and his only advice is to "cut it in a line from the top of my ears" and if you express a little nervous doubt to say tersely: "a good soldier never looks behind." And lucky for me, I say.

Add to this a considerable amount of custard coloured scalp matter and a rather irritable request for whiskey and cheese and you can see the sort of pressure I was under.

I did try to strike up a sort of 'ye olde worlde barber' type conversation by saying loudly "So how bout this weather?" as the locks began to fall and to my surprise he took me up on this and suddenly we were right back to the war and the little motorised bicycles and the gas cylinder things on cars and the ration books and his wedding suit. But things went a little awry when he gave me the aforementioned shopping list as the clippers were still whirring loudly:

"I want whiskey and I want some CHEESE."

I was concentrating on flaking some unsightly business over his left ear and I missed what he was saying.

"Whiskey..and what was the other thing? Cheese"

"I said CHEESE."

"Was that cheese?"

"No, I said CHEESE. CHEESE. ARE YOU DEAF?"

Frankly it made trimming his fingernails an absolute pleasure.

My grumpy grandad who loves whiskey and cheese and who is not allowed to have either has a bookcase in prime position, set up in his tiny room at the I Can't Believe It's Not A Nursing Home. He made this bookcase himself during the woodwork group and it took him several weeks of slow careful sanding and staining and loud shouting and cursing. It holds his entire family. All of us, his son and wife and his grandchildren and stepgrandchildren and great grandchildren and distant nieces and nephews. All of us smiling and neat from our rectangular black frames which are the only kind he will allow on the new shelves.

Each week "a girl" comes and dusts his photographs and each week he tells her over and over who we are.

My granddad's life is becoming soupy too but this is a soup that gets progressively thicker and cloudier. And each time I see him and he dips in his spoon and brings up fragments of his life they seem smaller and further away.

And soon, I think sadly, it will be quite quite cold.

All Aboard The School Bum

Now that Tricky attends childcare right near the School Of Naughty Nephews we take it in turns with N and K to do the school/childcare run.

These short morning cartrips can be very amusing indeed, with all the songs and small boy jokes and Tricky doing the animal noises in Old MacDonald Had A Farm.

Hilarity can always be had, for instance by simply replacing innocent words in songs with Bum, Poo and Sausage.

Old MacDonald Had A Bum EIEIO And on that bum he had a ...sausage EIEIO

or perhaps the less well known:

Put a bum over here, and a bum over there,
put a bum in your ear and a bum in your hair!
And a lot of little bums in the air, Everywhere!
It's a bummy kind of day!

There are also long meaningful discussions about climate change and the history of the boy scout. NN2 is always a good source of information, this morning he talked candidly about the art of tea leaf divination which was only slightly less impressive when I realised his research into this area was limited to his Harry Potter reading.

Now and then if the questions become probing or personal we might gently steer the discussion onto respect or manners or more likely start another rousing chorus of Put a bum over here! and then suddenly there we are at the school.

C and I have got into the habit of both doing the dropoff together and then going for a coffee on the way home. Ostensibly this is meant to be couple-catch-up time but in reality it is couple-reading-the-paper-and-eating-chocolate-croissants-and-barely saying-two-words-to-each-other time which is sort of fine actually especially if we're having, say, a bummy kind of day.

After a few days of having their dad take them in, yesterday C told NN2 that we would take him and his little brother to school.

NN2 looked at C, puzzled. "Both of you?"

C affirmed that indeed yes both he and I would be doing the taking.

"But you don't need to both go," NN2 pointed out.

"Yes we do," said C mildly, "there needs to be two adults because we want to CONTROL you."

NN2 was in a particularly helpful mood.

"You don't need two people for that. You could just threaten us."

I Have Never Not Ever Caused My Toddler To Become Addicted To TV And I Will Not Feel Guilty

As I write this Tricky is sitting on the floor behind my desk.

He is quiet, he is concentrating, he is sitting nicely and he is doing all these things because a couple of weeks ago he was introduced to the crack cocaine that is Charlie and Lola.

He is starting with I Am NOT Sleepy and I will NOT Go To Bed but will quickly progress to But That is MY Book and eventually end with You Won't LIKE this Present as much as I DO!

It's the dvd, not the book, shamefully enough. It's not even as if we had the cosy literary experience first and then the brightly coloured movable feast. We went straight to the made for tv version and now we're hooked.

Sorry, did I say 'we'?

Because the truth is that we're hooked too, that's C and I, big great grownups that we are.

It could be the pleasant musical background to our computery-work, it could be the amusing way that Tricky leaps up at the appropriate moment to get His Toothbrush or To Check The Bath For Whales but if I dig deeper I think it's because we're all deeply deeply in love with Lola.

Lola, for those who don't know, is Charlie's little sister. She is Small And Very Funny. In this series she is voiced by Maisie Cowell (seventy sorts of gorgeousness in the name alone) and in subsequent series by her sister Clementine (and they all live in a little thatched cottage with yellow roses climbing over the door, no not really, just, hello? the cuteness?).

And Lola screams with laughter and makes up stories and exasperates her kind hearted big brother no end but the world is a better place with her in it. I guess I don't have to dig that deep to realise that I wish we had a Lola too, a real Lola for her big brother Tricky.

And for me.

But in the meantime we have this dvd which we all love and Tricky most of all. He talks about 'big boy' Charlie and 'his sissa Owa' and checks for whales in the bath and now and then he decides to have a little break and post some plastic coins in Miss Piggy or camp out in his cowboy tent but he always comes back to his cushion for more.

And to assuage my guilt at letting him watch the thing each morning, every morning, while I tap on the computer I make him get up in the jaunty music between episodes and dance raucously, and I get up and dance too and we shout and throw our hands in the air and run once around the kitchen table and jump back down on our seats.

I have this toddler Tricky.

He is small and very funny.

And I am grateful.

Wet And Wildly Exciting

These days, a shower for me is a brief affair (not even an affair really - more of a quickie behind the photocopier) which allows me to wash myself, or shampoo, or condition my hair, but never all these things at once.

The shower ends when a small brown toddler appears on the other side of the shower door and shrieks for me to give him breakfast/milk/Charlie and Lola dvd/books.

Sometimes, as a variation, the father of the small brown toddler will also appear and try to drag the toddler away and this will result in tears. Mostly I try to put my head under the shower to block the noise but this is not always successful and then usually the hot water runs out.

Still, if the father has already taken the small brown toddler and his cousins to school/childcare then I may have a slightly larger window for showering.

And that's how I read this on the back of our new shampoo bottle:

Wildly Exciting Is Our Normal

I quickly checked that my husband hadn't made a mistake while shopping and accidently selected the shampoo made with real Bourbon or fragranced with crystal meth. But no, it was the same old chamomile and passion flower combination that we usually get - out of laziness rather than any real herbal preference.

I felt a wave of concern. Why did my shampoo need to be Exciting? Let alone Wildly?

I wanted to warn my shampoo that it was playing a dangerous game, that it was ok for Normal to be well...normal. Sometimes, Wildly Exciting is just another term for 'irritating discharge'.

Because time was not pressing and my shower was still hot, I read on, intrigued, to find I also had a rather coy invitation to "enter a world of botannical bliss."

There was nothing on the bottle about whether I had to snort, inject or simply meditate on my shampoo to achieve such bliss but once there I would find my shampoo "embracing like a meadow of fresh flowers.."

At first this freaked me out a little bit, the thought of that embracing meadow with all those tiny green stalky hands but then I thought: I'm never going to go to one of those swinger clubs - apart from anything else I find it hard to stay awake past ten o'clock- so this could be a good substitute.

And, then, as if all this were not Wildly Exciting enough, the shampoo would also take my hair "to a place it's never been before."

Rome, hopefully.

What have I got to lose, I thought. Bring on the bliss. The whole experience, the bottle promised, would leave me "deeply quenched".

I think truthfully my quenching of late has been feeling a bit, well, shallow.

I had put this down to an unpleasant but inevitable side effect of childbirth but now I realise it must have been the old shampoo.

The old shampoo was neither Wild nor Exciting and the bottle said nothing about orgies in flowery fields but it did ask me: "Does your hair have a mind of its own?"

My original answer to this was 'no', until I started getting emails from my server saying I had been downloading too much over the month and would I like to pay more for a 'top up.'
I then realised my hair had been surfing the net while everyone was asleep and downloading pictures of naked scalps and rom-com screenplays from Drew's Script-o-rama.

The shallowly quenching shampoo also claimed to be able to tame "rebellious" hair.

I had only just that day had a slapping fight with my ponytail over Saturday night curfews which ended with me uttering a few sharp words and my ponytail telling me to go fuck myself.

It had been the promise of discipline but the scent of real fruit that sucked me in that time. Half a bottle of old shampoo still remained on the shelf in the shower.

Etiquette says that one uses up the old bottle before scrabbling for the new but surely in this case I could make an exception. After all, it wasn't about whether I was going to have clean hair or not, it was a choice between botannical bliss and mentally autonomous hair follicles.

I watched, vaguely aware that the shower was rapidly going cold, as my slender fingers wavered hesitantly, this way and that, over the top of each lid.


Not unlike an embracing meadow of wildly exciting camomile stalks, I decided.

Death To The Earworm

The Nephews have been singing a song this past month.

I have no idea what it’s about, it is a song in another language, something possibly Scandinavian, but it sounds like it has something to do with Picasso and fetta cheese and it’s annoying as all get out.

They love this song and after watching all the one billionty multiple versions of it on YouTube they sing it around the house and in the car on the way to school ad ear-bleeding-spontaneously-from-brain-nauseum.

(At this point I could link to this song or perhaps even plop it right here in the middle of my post but frankly I don't want to add to the power, so you just have to imagine the ghastliness, or, if you know it, you'll have started humming it already. Oops.)

The other day, despite all my best efforts with Old McDonald Had A Farm, Naughty Nephew the 3rd started singing what I call the Hellish Scandinavian EarWorm Song in the car on the way to school.

In vain did we beg him to stop.

In vain did I try to sing that Abba classic: Nina Pretty Ballerina back at him, hoping the euroclash of Scandinavian pop would cancel each other out.

Finally, I lied to him.

Do you know, I said, what you’re actually singing?

NN3 stopped a minute to consider… hello hello? he suggested.

Yes, hello hello, I said, yes. But the next bit goes like this:

I hate icecream Yes I do.
I hate it. I hate it.
Please will you never give me icecream again.
I hate it. I hate it.

And because the tune had been seared into my brain I actually appeared to make the words scan.

NN3 looked at me, slightly horrified. He loves icecream. I ruthlessly pressed on with the second verse:

I hate chocolate. Yes I do.
I hate it. I hate it.
Please will you never give me chocolate again.
Or icecream.
Ergh!
I hate them. I hate them.

I stopped. Do you want to hear the verse about sausages?

He shook his head. What’s that one about the ballerina?

HELLISH SCANDINAVIAN EARWORM SONG HAS NEVER BEEN HEARD SINCE.

*post updated: until last night. WHEN THEIR MOTHER STARTED SINGING IT.

Letter To A 22 Month Old Star Gazer

Darling Tricky


This month you boldly went where no Tricky had gone before.

This place was the zoo and because we have paid to become Zoo Friends you have boldly gone twice.

Your dad and I discussed this, how when we were children, the zoo was an enormous treat. An enormous and exhausting treat, perhaps once every five years - which means twice in total because after the age of 10 the zoo is BOOOOORING (until you're old enough to smoke a joint in the car with your friends before you wander in and then it totally rules again).

Going to the zoo, for us as kids, meant lugging our own food and drink in a backpack and spending hours trudging through miles of zoo poo, looking at every single bloody animal on the free map because the cost of getting three kids and two adults through the gate was so expensive.

But lo, see how things change.

We arrived with nothing but a small water bottle and immediately wasted precious zoo minutes lining up for espresso coffee and chocolate brownies (which we hid from you) and banana bread (your god-given right). Whenever you hear the word “coffee” you immediately counter with “banna bed” and if you are in a good mood you will qualify and say patiently “banna bed coming.” This is useful if we’re already sitting at the table and have given our order but if we’ve only just strapped you into the car seat then sadly we’re in for some pain.

But meanwhile, back at the zoo, post coffee, banna bed, brownie and…I’m sorry to say…tantrum, it was time to observe our fabulous furry friends. We saw the chimpanzee (Bobo!) and the gorilla (Other Bobo!) and the elephant and then THAT WAS IT, HOMETIME.

Our parents would have seen it as a scandalous waste of zoo time but actually the mini visit was marvelous. You lingered at the chimps, you clapped at the gorillas especially the big bosomed mama with her tiny baby, you stared with dull tired eyes at the elephants and you were asleep before we got back to the car park.

On your second visit you fitted in some red pandas and a grey gibbon and went back to see your gorilla pals. We hope for many jolly mini visits in the months ahead. We hope to be more than just Friends with the zoo by the time our money runs out. Indeed at the rate we’re going we'll be Zoo De-Factos by Christmas.

This has been a month of many words, much more clearly pronounced. Some of these occur very loudly between 6.00 and 6.30 in the morning. Those particular words go in this order: Mama, Daddy, Get Up! Big Bed. Milk! Poo poo in mumpy! Change Mumpy! Get Up! Get Up! Mummy! Daddy! Milk coming! GET UP!

The first time this happened I lay in bed, astonished at such a miraculous string of loud, clear, articulate demands. Then I Got Up! One morning I may even record your commands and use it as my ring tone, such is the thrill of having your toddler harangue you like a medieval slumlord, or alternatively a television producer.

Your grandmother in Newcastle showed you the stars the last time we were there and so now, each night you ask to be taken outside to look at the Tinkle Tinkles and sing their little song.

Sadly, there are not a whole lot of Tinkle Tinkles in our Sydney night sky, being so full of cloud or light or laser beams. When do we spot one or two or three, it’s a miracle and the cue for more singing and much celebrating. Mostly we see aeroplanes, lights blazing, engines roaring, and these are almost as a good as a tinkle…almost.

The other day we were walking by the beach and a cool busking dude was playing his saxophone and when we went to have a closer look he played Twinkle Twinkle for you. I tried to get you to sing but you just stared silently in amazement. I turned to the cool dude and thanked him saying, amazed, that’s his favourite song as in…cool busking dude how on earth did you know? He just smiled as I slipped him two bucks.
It’s actually quite a popular tune, he informed me.

Memo to self: nobody likes a smug busker.

This month your new best ever book is called Sleepy Pendoodle which you call “Slippy Pinddddddng”. It is a delightful tale of a little girl and her “wee pup!” which is so tiny that at first its eyes are shut fast, until her Uncle Hughie tells her the Secret of Waking. In your case it seems firmly connected to how little sleep your parents got the night before but in this story it involves stroking the pup’s back from floppy ears to fluffy tail. When this moment comes you turn and present your back for a stroke too. When the puppy finally opens its eyes, without fail, you say wow and smile with glee. And I just like saying Sleepy Pen DOOOOOODLE in a stupid voice.

So everyone's happy.

This month also, we have had to do emergency shopping on your behalf. Babies grow. Fast. Who knew? Your funky trousers, the ones that look like they’re made of fifties curtains (because they are) once naturally skimmed your fat little feet. Now they’re capris pants.

Those groovy yellow cord too-big trousers your dad bought you nearly a year ago are no longer too-big but sadly are still way too long and frankly are totally unrollable. Quite soon they will also be unwearable. And after weeks of wearing lovely soft leather booty things and then a pair of soft leather sandals you have finally graduated into big boy red boots. With laces.

Daddy bought these because it is cold and R at childcare was pursing her lips at us and making pointed comments about your poor cold feet in their socks and sandals. I was more concerned that they were making you look like a tiny German backpacker but hey, whatever it takes.

If you haven’t seen either of us for a few hours, being at childcare say, or a mini zoo visit with the other parent, you become Prince Charming when finally you do see us, coyly grinning and flinging yourself down the hallway and leaping into our arms.

It is the most wonderful feeling.

Sometimes you call me or you look across at me and smile and I wonder what I have done to deserve you. That sounds like some ghastly Bert Bacharach lyric but it’s true. You seem so happy to play with me or read with me. You take my hand and sit me down to watch Playschool with you, or alternatively gently guide me to the biscuit jar. And sometimes you put your arms round my head and kiss me or present your own soft cheek to be kissed and the thought he loves me flashes through my mind and I am astonished all over again.

Because of course I love you, love you till my heart hurts with the enormity of it all, but to have you love me back seems utterly miraculous.

A bit like finding stars in a cloudy Sydney sky.


Love
your very own
OvaGirl
xxxxx