Diary Of A Really Prissy Teenager

For various reasons I have dug up my high school diary. 

It is a truly frightening document that begins at age 12 with the words:

"A few days ago I met v down at the Hostie. She seemed delighted to see me and told me that I was invited to her party. It was to be from 7.30 to 11.30 and C was coming too.

Judging from V's past social experience, I'd say there were boys coming..."

and ends at 17, the night before the HSC exams, with:

"Who's afraid of V Woolf?"

and in between: sheer undiluted ghastliness. 

I love  it!  

Anyone else want to share?

MOTHER'S LITTLE HELPER

"You see my problem."

I was talking to my pal Annie about the forthcoming BOOK WEEK demands. Pick a character, any character, and then dress your child up like them. Or suffer the consequences. Preschools are notable for being cold and hard like that.

"It's not fair," I whined. "The girls can come as princesses. They'll in be pink. They'll wear frocks and maybe a plastic tiara. It's easy for those parents." I was generalising but I didn't care. I had a scant few days to whip up Tricky's cozzie and the pressure was wearing heavily on me and my feminist ideals.

Despite his love of Charlie & Lola, Tricky had decided to be neither Charlie nor Lola, plumping instead for that cuddly feline denizen of the Hairy McClary books: SCARFACE CLAW aka TOUGHEST TOM IN TOWN. It was an unusual choice because Tricky was actually scared of Scarface Claw, insisting we not read the relevant pages when he cropped up in the 'Hairy' books. It made it hard to maintain the tension when Hairy McC and his doggy mates encounter a strange pair of eyes in the undergrowth and then...with a clatter of claws and a scatter of paws... suddenly and inexplicably decide to bugger off home.

I had already scoured the Big House dress-up box which contained the evidence of many a fine Halloween for the Naughty Nephews, not to mention the ghosts of Book Week past, but there was nothing to conjure up a mangy tomcat with a Very Bad Attitude. Nothing except the remains of Naughty Nephew 1's hairy black and white teddy bear suit. A rather rustic looking jacket and trousers as whipped up by my designer friend MarkyQ, one balmy summer evening, many Book Weeks ago.

Now, I found myself (as I so often did) in my hometown Newcastle wandering the aisles of a rather depleted Spotlight with my old theatre pal Annie. And whining. Lots of whining.

I had hoped that I'd find a fully formed tomcat costume, Pret A Porter, with minimal fuss (and obviously maximum cost but I was prepared to give up sustenance for a few days in return for peace of mind). I was wrong.

There was nothing left on the shelves except  a handful of 'Bubblebee' and 'Fifties Boy' outfits.

"This is like the Chernobyl Spotlight," I snarled. "I expect better from the city that gave us The Castanets and Yahoo Serious. All I want is a fecking cat. Where are all the decent costumes?"

 

As I spoke a harried looking woman marched past with three darling little girls in tow. 

"It doesn't matter, I can make them," she was feebly insisting,"three princess dresses. In Pink. Easy." 

"I have to be Belle," one of the darlings snapped.  

"They must have full skirts and fitted bodice," trilled another.

"And a twain," lisped the third who didn't look as if she was old enough to be out of nappies let alone into the traditional salmon tinted garb of the female minor royale.

"What about the tiaras?" the eldest darling called mercilessly as her mother rushed weeping towards the home welding section.

Book Week, it seemed, was not limited to one solitary Sydney preschool. At every fabric display, at each shelf of water soluble paint I could hear the same two words hissed between gritted teeth.

Annie clicked her clickable glasses together and regarded me with the wisdom born of both long term friendship and being producer/director/writer/actor/stage manager and, crucially, wardrobe department of her own theatre company.

"I have three words to say to you," she said firmly. "Hot. Glue. Gun."

Several hours later, back at my parents' house, it was done. 

Before us lay a cut-to-size hairy black and white coat, a long and satifyingly tomcatty tail and a pair of twitchily realistic Scarface Claw ears. These last were my own particular invention, cobbled up from triangles of the same faux fur fabric used to construct the tail and a "Sexy Red Devil" headband, snatched up from a Spotlight bargain bin, which featured demonic horns emerging, oddly enough, from a base of soft fuzzy black feathers. 

Costume construction had taken less than half an hour, most of the intervening time between Chernobyl Spotlight and Scarface Claw Central pleasantly spent sipping coffee and eating macaroons amidst the gourmands of Darby Street.

Once we set to it, Annie wielded the Hot Glue Gun (low temp) like a woman possessed.

Clicking her reading glasses together over her nose, she upended the Spotlight bag and rolled the faux fur like a pro. She sealed and glued and spot stuck the tail, she was a chick with a gun and she wasn't afraid to shoot. "I have put together whole productions with a Hot Glue Gun," she shouted happily, "Feathers, fur, braiding, leather...I've hot glued them all! I use it at home too! Soft furnishings! Decorative blinds! Whole sets of sequinned cushions!  All made up without a single stitch! lord knows I can never wash the things!"

At this point she had spotted the disaster that was Mach#1 of the Scarface Ears. "You've cut that fur exactly the way the shopgirl told you not to," she tutted. 

It was true and so they looked like a couple of neatly trimmed if slightly greying lady hedges, rather than a pair of scruffy feral cat ears. 

"Start again," Annie demanded and ruthlessly ripped the hairy triangles free. Luckily I could no longer be trusted with fur cutting and so Annie did them herself. They looked magnificent.

Book Week came twice for Tricky this year, the Preschool had scheduled parades on Monday and Friday-both days he attends. Scarface Claw had two performances. 

Each day he was shy and nervous, each day I had to hold his hand and walk alongside thirty knee high pirates and pink clad princesses with one little Miss Giggles, one Snow White and one Angelina Ballerina and two mermaids ("Because Ariel wears different clothes on different days".)

Each day his costume was stroked lovingly by Angelina, Belle, Snow or Ariel. 

Each day his face crumpled as we started to leave and he had to be hastily handed over to a Teacher for cuddles and reassuring words as we skulked out the gate.

And each day he had a completely fantastic time

I

Where The Wild Things Buy Their Book Week Costumes

Today, these words caused my heart to leap into my throat:

ON MONDAY AND FRIDAY THE CHILDREN CAN COME DRESSED UP AS THEIR FAVORITE BOOK CHARACTER

I am quoting above from Tricky's preschool newsletter which I will of course use in scrapbookish fashion or at very least keep shoved in memorial shoebox because it is our VERY FIRST PRESCHOOL NEWSLETTER EVER. 

In years to come we will look back with warm hearts and moistened eyes to see that one of the teachers is having a holiday! Lucky her! And, soon it will be Father and Grandfather's morning! Welcome all old blokes related to students! And, A Very Special Thankyou to the Mother who donated two CDs! No one likes a smug miss.

But, it is the can come dressed as fave book character that has me tapping my fingers in an anxious fashion. This of course is merely the latest in a whole series of Preschool related anxiety-tapping moments. He has attended less than ten times and already I have worried about him 'having no friends', 'playing all alone', 'wearing distinctively weird trousers' and 'Suzie ate my cheese.' This last came directly from Young Master when I asked if he enjoyed his snack box. Despite the fact that there appears to be no Suzie in his class I still feel slightly anxious because what if he's being bullied by an imaginary friend? 

We all know what happens to kids that are different, I told my husband. 

They grow up to be leaders and artists and imaginative thinkers, he responded. 

Perhaps, I  nodded, and perhaps the other kids peck their eyes out.

Re Book Week and dressing as fave character, it seems obvious to me that firstly there is no "can" there is only "will".  Tricky must go dressed as something bookish because otherwise he will be different and, as we know, different is dangerous.

Problem is, Tricky's fave books just now are The Gruffalo (orange eyes, black tongue, poisonous wart on end of his nose), The Waterhole (various non-extinct and extinct animals), The Very Hungry Caterpillar(two choices, caterpillar or butterfly) and various Charlie and Lola adventures.

I have a scant couple of weeks to solve this and while I am confident in the papier mache sphere I do not have stitching abilities. Butterfly wings for instance are probably right out.

If worst comes to worst, I told C, I could just write Charlie on a tee-shirt and he could go as "Charlie". 

C was unimpressed. "He likes Where The Wild Things Are," he said "why doesn't he go as Max? All he needs to do is wear that hoodie."

I stared at him. 

"Max wears a full body suit with hood and ears", I said. "We don't have anything that looks even vaguely like that."

"Yes we do", C insisted. "It's grey and sleeveless. There's a picture of a bear on the front."

"And...that looks nothing like Max in Where The Wild Things Are." 

"He could have gone really wild," C insisted, "and cut off his sleeves."

I gave him the patented Mother Knows Best frown. "And screenprinted a design on the front?"

C turned back to his computer, slightly offended. "Well," he said, "that's who I always think of when he wears that shirt."

Father proving himself no help at all, I am left pondering butterfly wings and Charlie tee-shirts. Oh and poisonous warts. I'm pretty sure I could papier mache one of those up, no trouble.

An Australian Girl In Paris

I need to write about Paris. I know that sort of comes from left field but it's always been in the back of my mind.

And I have a certain distance from it now.

I remembered this morning that I started a blog about it, years ago and it's still wheeling round the blogosphere. And sadly, I've forgotten the password so I can't change it or add to it or even delete it and start again. It's just...out there.

I need to write about Paris.

Soon.

The Sticking Point

Tricky's third day of preschool today. C is taking him in and also doing the schoolrun with the Nephews and I've stayed behind to do exciting stuff like write and de-ant the sultanas.

I went along on the second day and basically had to be dragged away by C who is now able to ascertain when the right moment to exit has occurred. Boy, isn't that a skill and wouldn't you think after a year at daycare, I'd have acquired it too? No, because in preschools, everything is bigger and there are a billion more kids and there are so many more shiny, glittery, moving, colourful things to look at. It's distracting! And also alluring! 

Me, I could have spent hours looking at the dinosaurs and the pirate ship and the plastic turtles and look there was a big couch with comfy cushions and some teeny tiny Ally McBeal toilets for everyone! Anytime! Gather round! Let's wee together! If they just put in an espresso machine I could be there all day.

Of course my biggest fear is that Tricky will be a lonely, grim faced child with no friends except for the plastic turtles and we will have ruined his life forever, because I'm neurotic like that.

Last night we put photos from his birthday party into a scrapbook and I realised he had gone quiet. It was not because he was overcome with delightful memories, nor was he stunned into silence by his mother's artful placement of pictures.

No. 

He was eating the glue stick.

Ahhhh! I shrieked at him and wrenched it out of his hand. Stop that! YOU WILL NOT BE THE TYPE OF CHILD WHO EATS PASTE.

 Tricky sucked on his fingers. I like it, he said thoughtfully.

At preschool, Day 2, Tricky already knew to put his bag into the locker marked with a koala and put his drinkbottle on the tray with all the other trays. His dad showed me where the fruit goes and where the lunchboxes go and where the Extra Snacks go. Tricky held my hand tightly until he saw his teacher and then he went and held hands with her. C gave me a nudge. There was a place for everything and everything has its place.

And now, for a few hours, my place wasn't with my baby boy anymore.

Now We Are Three (and on antibiotics)

Last Sunday. Birthday Party. Lots of Nigella led cooking. Cupcakes. Number 3 Biscuits.

Buttermilk birthday cake. Home made sausage rolls are to be made in morning.

Night before: Eat entire bodyweight in smarties, clinkers, jelly babies and chocolate logs in bid to decorate Train Cake To End All Train Cakes. 

Possibly all birthday cakes. 

Possibly, when we are 4, he will get a birthday pikelet.

Drink copious amounts of wine with parents in law, husband and sister in law, all of whom are working and drinking steadily in effort to get cake decently iced and decorated.

Mission accomplished before midnight.

Day of party. Festivities start at 11am. Panic starts earlier. Suddenly list of tasks for morning seems enormous. In good news, the celeriac has been grated. But in bad news the thawing mince is revealed to be TOTALLY STINKING. Husband despatched to buy more mince. Note that even at this late stage he is not despatched to buy FROZEN SAUSAGE ROLLS.  

Arriving guests. Luckily there are only a handful. Because this guest has gall to be on time she is given chores to do. Mince returns and through serious Kitchen Wizardry is mixed into puff pastry and tucked into oven. And we all know that if the sausage rolls are cooking then all will be right with the world. Sister in law whips out enormous platters of sandwiches all minus crusts.

Around this time things start getting slightly fuzzy for me. Yet I have not even cracked open one of the bottles of champagne. Hmmm.

Guests arrive. There seem to be hundreds of adults. There are 5 guest children. 

Pass The Parcel is played. I have bowed to pressure from every other parent on earth and slipped a chocolate frog between every layer of paper so all participants will, bah humbug, win a prize.

Much shrieking, laughter, screaming and running up and down stairs. Meanwhile, children play on trampoline and assorted pedal car things and trampoline.

Food eaten. Cupcakes have pink icing eaten off top. Number three biscuits seemingly inhaled. Sausage rolls proclaimed great success. Adults manage to fight off anyone under two feet and scoff lot.

Children are as angels and play so nicely parents end up staying. Brother in law makes loaves and fishes type pasta and manages to feed entire group, despite fact he has just come off 3 weeks of shooting still photographs on film set. 

Everyone collapses when last guest leaves at 8ish. I manage to finally recall that there are luckydips to go with the party bags as the last child leaves.

Think that he is three. Imagine many more birthdays to come. Imagine making number 4 biscuits and then number 5 etc etc. Remember woman in toyshop saying that we were "brave" having a birthday party at home. recall self scoffing at the very idea of having a party at a commercial venue. Feel very ordinary. Put self to bed.

Afterwards there is probably one or two day's grace before flu hits and what a corker it is too. Culminates with sad scene of Myself, Tricky and C at the local doctor's in "family" appointment. Not swine flu, something much less famous. We leave with various antibiotics for various secondary type lung and ear infections (having antibiotics for flu being, of course, pointless, as flu is a virus) and I get a delightfully quaint purple puffer to help knock over a horrible prolapse inducing (well that's what it feels like)spasmodic cough. 

Purple puffer will work in a week maybe but on the other hand, can also cause mouth thrush. Hoorah. Only good thing is that I have had my alcohol free 'dry july' after all. Well for a week at least.

And Tricky had a simply marvelous party.

"When I am 3 I can go on the Monorail"

Next Saturday is Tricky's birthday. His friend Sebastian is flying back into Sydney that day and so we are having our party on Sunday.

The plan is to play Pass the Parcel and to eat a cake shaped like a train. There are five days to make and assemble said train and so I am not without anxiety. 

(I'm not without anxiety at the best of times really. The trip to Los Angeles I won as part of the playwriting comp, I still have not organised. Anxiety. Planes. Long distances. Meetings. Potential failures. When i get round to booking a seat I will need to have one extra just to accommodate my fears. One ticket with anxiety. Economy please.) 

Luckily there will be enough time because this is not one of the weeks just gone, one of the incredible weeks of writing, listening and creating that have punctuated June and July so far. 

I think it started with that weekend away, that weekend of not being woken every four hours and being able to pop in for a film or a spot of shoe shopping or a long browse in a bookshop. 

And then there was this two weeks of astonishing brilliance; a workshop with theatre legend Edward Albee  (Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Three Tall Women, Zoo Story etc etc etc) and (concurrently, curses) a workshop with the resident actors of the Sydney Theatre Company to explore and develop the written "shards" that playwrights gang 7ON had created.

I twittered some of this stuff, not blogged it because I was unable to string more than 140 characters together at a time, and frankly it's a bit gushy and embarrasing but since I've already written quite publicly and at length about IVF, birth, dildocams, my lala, breastfeeding and various ups and downs of Special Magical Grownups Time with poor old long suffering C, I think I can handle admitting to a playwright's crush on Mr Albee. At one point I offered (via Twitter) to cut the plot of my play AND do his laundry, such was the strength of my feeling. 

And still is, frankly. 

This is the second workshop i have done with Edward Albee, the first was nearly three years ago when i was heavily pregnant. 

Last time was a much larger workshop. There were a lot more people involved, directors and and actors, it was hard for shy people to spend much time with Theatre Legends but this time, this year, it was just a small group of writers. Shy people could get a look in.

But here's the terrible thing, the really embarrassing thing; i told myself before the fortnight started that there was nothing I could learn from Edward Albee. That there wasn't anything he would say that I hadn't heard before and that it was all old school playwrighting anyway. 

And it was, and it was and yet it so wasn't. 

 I had heard it before, but it was only now, still sleep deprived, amazed and grateful at the chance to have two weeks worth of time spent studying and writing and reading, not snatched hours between naps or other jobs but two real weeks of 8 hours a day, that I heard what he was saying. 

And the Big Thing he said, that I grasped and held onto (and really this is what gave me my playwright's crush) was that we have lineage. Because I had always felt kind of alone, scribbling away, that's one of the things that brought 7ON together. And I reckon most playwrights do feel like that, especially when your work isn't being produced or performed. But what we were learning was that as a playwright, as a writer of story and character, we are all connected to a huge and ancient river of writing that goes back in time through  (Albee's big four;) Brecht and Chekov and Pirandello and Beckett and back to the Greeks and back to whoever first told the first story by a fire. 

So that I have a tiny but vital connection to playwrights like Caryl Churchill and Mark Ravenhill and Simon Stephens just as I do to the Australian playwrights I admire like Ross Mueller and Lally Katz and Suzie Miller and Caleb Lewis and the 7ON gang. 

And, Edward Albee. 

And that's why, even though the plan was a week with Albee and then a week at the STC, I had to keep going back. Even though the second week was all film scripts and I could only make the afternoon feedback sessions,  I kept going back and I kept writing it down. And I wasn't the only one. We have a small small theatre industry and it can be very easy to become disheartened and jaded and hardened. And I can whinge with the best of them but this time when people started to complain about the usual gatekeeper tactics I wanted to say let it go, just write, if you have a story to tell then you need to write it down and if you listen you will learn more about ways of telling that story...

I asked if Albee would sign my copy of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf. It's an old version, one of those beautiful Penguin Plays, and it belonged to my mother which made it already precious.

He wrote: From one playwright to another. Courage!

And because I wanted to give him something, I gave him a copy of my book, which made me laugh to myself, because, honestly, what was he going to make of that? Luckily it made him laugh too. I am enjoying your very funny book, he told me at the prize ceremony on the last night of the workshop.

The first thing Edward Albee said to me, three years ago, was you must be about eight months pregnant and I laughed nervously because of course i wasn't eight months pregnant, lordy if I was due to have a baby in four weeks I would not be at a writers/actors workshop doing all that improvising and carrying on, I would be at home getting ready. 

As it turned out, I was due to have a baby in four weeks. Tricky came just under a month early. And I wasn't ready. And in some ways I have never really caught up. Nor do i expect to.

And now, he is about to turn three. 

And I have just turned forty one.

And he is old enough to go on the monorail (with his Mummy and Daddy).

And I am old enough to listen and to learn about writing again. 

And to go to Los Angeles. 

With or without anxiety.

The Heaving Underbelly of the Perpetually Sleep Deprived.

So the other day I was meeting another writer for a coffee in an area recently made even more famous by the Convincingly Fake Chk Chk Boom Girl. 

It's an area that's been in my mind a bit of late because it also features in a lot of the research I'm doing with playwrights gang 7-ON on Sydney crime in the early 20th century. Kings Cross does celebrity crim very well, there's lots of seedy corners and shabby chic buildings and various spots of interest where you can almost see thirties Bordello Queen, Tilly Devine striding up to the corner shop to get her milk. 

In short, it's a little distracting, all that crime history and myth and colourful racing identity stuff and one can, if one is a bit unsure of where one is going, end up...say...the wrong way up a one way street.

I'm not the best driver in the world, I think I may have mentioned before that reverse parks do not feature highly on my list of sensible grownup skills for instance. When I am trying to do a 180 degree turn in a small laneway squeezed between a refuge for the homeless and a delivery van for one of the million or so coffee shops nearby (none of which is the one I am trying to find) and I am being hassled by a feisty baglady, I do what Tilly wouldn't do, which is, I have a panic attack.

The previous weekend C and I had spent in The Rocks which is another area soaked in history, myth and colourful racing identity stuff. In this case The Rocks, being older had the first colourful racing identities, even though of course when the First Fleet sailed in there were no racecourses as such and it's debatable who those first criminals really were; the convicts or the military who sailed alongside them. 

This was not a fact finding mission, this was A Break From The Screaming Tomato. Aunty N very generously offered to look after Tricky for the weekend and after some humming and ha-ing (about three seconds worth) we went. Initial pfaffing over where should we go, mountains? central coast? south coast? led to...let's just stay in posh hotel in city (wotif.com you rock) and sleep. 

But C and I have both been reading John Birmingham's excellent Leviathan and so it was just a bit of gravy to dress in our posh clothes and head up to our posh restaurant and say...ooh look, that's where the previously pure and uncorrupted Tank Stream ended up a filthy cesshole of turd soup and dead goats, and hmmm I think these may be the houses that kept filling up with raw sewerage and...around here would be where those larrikin push gangs attacked innocent bystanders and hit them with socks stuffed with sand... and ook look what Brian Eno's done to the Opera House, talk about colourful racing identity...

The break was fantastic, of course, for all the reasons you may suspect, but equally good was being able to buy half price shoes in a shop you couldn't swing a toddler in and then going 'fuck it I'm going to buy two pairs'. Because, when was I going to get the time to shoe shop again before he starts school? The last time I bought a pair he was about five minutes old and strapped into a pram. Also asleep. 

It was very nice to actually have time to talk to each other and to look at each other while we're talking, instead of shouting over one shoulder whilst buckling tiny shoes or changing tiny underpants or combing out tiny nits. It was nice to be reminded that, oh yes, it's you, my best friend, my biggest fan, my partner in crime. I remember you. I love you.

Returning to the real world we have taken on some of the Aunty N/Uncle K modifications in place and they seem to be working well. Star charts to reward Sitting In High Chair and Eating Food are going great guns but I fear the Speaking Quietly and Politely may need a little heavier artillery. The biggest change is to bath Tricky before his supper, not after as we used to do. It makes the transition to bedtime so much quicker and I think the 7.30 bedtime is doing a lot to head off some of Darth Toddler's more criminal behaviour.

Back in Kings Cross, stuck between a van and a hard place, I was attempting yet another billion point turn. The baglady was now informing me that my licence had come from a soap box (cornflakes box! I wanted to tell her, it was a fucking cornflakes box! but at that point I was beyond speech. I didn't dare look over at the wayside chapel residents gathered in the yard, I felt I was doing my bit providing the morning's street theatre.

At that point, a figure stepped out on the road, a little shabby, a little shady, brandishing a large broom. It was a guy who had been sweeping unmentionables from the road. 

Thissa way! he beckoned me towards him and then reverse thatta way! And he pointed his broom in the right direction. It was as if pure beams of light were shining from the handle piercing the darkness of ohfuckfuckhowdoigetoutofhere. I turned the wheel and moved thissa way.

A car started driving up the lane towards me, the right way.

Oh dear, I said.

Don't worry! He can wait!

And up went the broom in the international signal for Stop And Wait For The Idiot Woman Who has Other Skills To Make Up For Crap Reversing.

Thank you, I said, and it was sincere and heartfelt and just a tad wobbly. Thank you for being so kind.

He waved.

And with a final swing I was out, past the van, past the appreciative Chapel chaps, past the baglady with the impeccable driving record and past the guy with the broom, the angel in the fluoro vest, who swept me and my unmentionable driving skills clean from the streets of King Cross.

lovely opera house pic from here smh.com.au

A galaxy far far away from Darth Toddler

C and I have just returned from a weekend away. 

It involved lots of sleeping, shoe shopping, spontaneous swimming in hotel pool and ducking into miniscule decidedly child unfriendly cafes for quick coffees. It also involved posh dinner eating, walking for miles about the city and harbour and champagne at 4pm.

It did not involve pushing strollers, changing mumpies, sitting on tiny stool and encouraging eating of porridge, marathon teeth brushing sessions or tantrums.

Friday was the first night I have ever had without Tricky sleeping more than one room away. I wish I could say on Saturday I slept in till ten but sadly, both mornings, I was awake by seven.

It was the first time ever I had gone out for coffee without a matchbox car in my handbag.

It was fantastic, once the bottom lip stopped wobbling. His and ours.

But I believe it was wobbling far longer on our side of the galaxy.

Crossing the streams

Ack it's true there has been a significant amount of slackness in the House of Ova (sudden image, eek sorry) but that's because there has been a significant amount of tension. 

I remember in the eighties, early eighties, when people used to talk about 'biorhythms' and there were three lines representing your health, your...god I don't know, two other Important Things, but these three lines went up and down like waves and it was something about when the three lines met then kachow! 

Either that or I'm thinking of Ghostbusters and how you DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS! 

Deadlines large and small to be met (or not), Stuff to be researched and written, conversations to be had, toddlers to be bathed. This last should have its own post except it's part of the Hellacious Triumvirate of dinner, bath and bed. I whined about just this to Screenwriting Mummy about this the other day and she said...yes I remember that phase, it goes for quite a while. 

Cruel words but then her own toddler boy, previously an utter angel, is entering the shout and hurl phase himself. Great screaming tantrum in the bath can only be a few short weeks away. Surely. At least it's stopped me drinking wine at dinner. There is nothing more horrendous then winding down with a nice glass of crisp white to be almost immediately wound up again by a Screaming Tomato.

It has been a strangely disturbing time these past couple of weeks and I include swine flu and the horrific disappearance of that Air France plane. Maybe strangely disturbing things happen all the time, of course they do, I know they do, but for some reason my wobbly consciousness is stringing them all together. 

So friends and loved ones have dropped their bundle or been under attack at work or had cancer scares and tasks seem difficult and stodgy and I feel fat and unhealthy. 

And some of the writing and research I'm doing, murder scenes and mug shots from Sydney's inglorious past. Baddies, like the guy above. And page after page of broken bodies and bloodstains. It's disturbing and unsettling and slightly haunting. The playwrights' group I'm in (7-ON) is doing a 2 week workshop with the Sydney Theatre Company in a couple of weeks time and the photographs are prompting the writing which will in turn become a show. 

And that's great, that's tops, but the other thing that's happened is that I've won a playwright's prize which will see me doing a two week workshop with Edward Albee here in Sydney and also at some point jetting (!) off to Los Angeles. (!!)

And that's great, that's tops but the two week STC workshop and the two week Edward Albee workshop are THE SAME TWO FUCKING WEEKS. 

And that's a little, you know. Poor.

Anyway, that's how I've felt a bit this past couple of weeks. Ultimately I'm good, I'm happy. I'm lucky. But it's just all this Stuff swirling around that I'm noticing and collating and examining and feeling affected by. Which is not the same as feeling infected.

More like, someone, somewhere, crossed the streams.

Storytelling

So I went to the theatre on Saturday evening with Screenwriting Mummy. 

My playwatching quota has plummeted since Tricky was born and that's just pants really, what with me being a playwright and all. 

Years ago I remember seeing a postcard that said: "Why are there no great women artists?" 

The postcard had a drawing of a woman in a long medievally type frock standing in front of a canvas. She had a paintbrush in one hand which was outstretched towards the canvas and a soup ladle in the other. She also had two kids dragging at her skirt and was unable to see anything much because there was a whopping big saucepan over her head. 

I guess, thanks to the Jolly Big Funshop that is infertility, I had plenty of time in the past to put brush to paper and be a 'great woman artist', if only I hadn't spent all that time rolling about on my bed crying because I couldn't get pregnant. And now, look! I've got the baby and I'm complaining that he takes up so much time. Sheesh. Ungrateful or what.   

Anyway, it was great seeing this play, Inside Out which was about a mother and a son. The son is funny, witty, arty and has a great relationship with his mother. Except, early in the play we realise there's something wrong. That something turns out to be him having schizophrenia and the play moves through a horrific nine month period with, thankfully for the audience, a glimmer of hope at the end. The writer (Mary Rachel Brown) interviewed carers, health professionals and people living with mental illness and you could hear that in the work, it rang frighteningly true. 

I looked around the audience at times and I could see shoulders shaking and hands rubbing at faces and I realised that these were those people, not necessarily the ones the writer interviewed but others, parents and friends who had lost people, and even here and there the lost ones themselves. They were seeing their story, and the story of those they loved.

And for me watching, with my tiny boy tucked up in bed, and for my friend with her even tinier boy, it was also like seeing One Of Your Greatest Maternal Fears playing out on stage, not just the illness but the way it affected the relationship between mother and son, the heartbreaking accusations and abuse, the enormity of patience, the depths of fear. 

In this story, this story made up of lots of stories, the mother got her son back. A woman I met a couple of years ago was not nearly so lucky and I will never forget her description of walking the backstreets of the city and finding the sad little corners and nooks where he had sheltered for a few days before moving on. Her only son. Her only child.

After the play we went out and had dinner in a noisy Thai restaurant where we ate squid and betal leaves and drank wine and shouted over the table at each other. It was a good night with lots of talk, not just about the play and what it meant to us, but about writing and mothering and finding a way to bridge the two without being a shitty writer and/or a shitty mother.

It could be an attitude, I decided later. It could be that the word "great" is too much baggage anyway and once you get rid of that baggage, the job's so much easier. 

And maybe we just do what we can, and take time off where we can and meet friends where we can and watch as many plays as we can and that will be enough.

But also I thought I might get rid of that big heavy saucepan, replace it with a colander maybe. 

Then at least I can peer through the holes.

boys things

C and I are at the local council getting a directory on kindergartens in our area and I see a poster for a kids' writing competition. 

It's for 12 to 18 years and you can win an iPod and so i think Naughty Nephew 1st might like to have a crack. Also you have to write about Inspirational Women and I approve of that, I think that's rather good.

So then I pick up an entry form and I see that it's for GIRLS ONLY and I'm a little torn here. 

On the one hand I think it's good for girls to be given opportunities and special events. 

I think if I was a 12 to 18 year old girl again, I might feel a bit shy and lack the confidence to enter something like a writing competition. I might also appreciate that fifty percent of the competition has just been knocked out of the ring and I might say that after all there are plenty of activities dominated by boys.

But why is it only girls who get to write about inspirational women? Boys can be inspired by women too. God knows we get to hear about a helluva lot of male heroes that both boys and girls can be inspired by. 

And actually i think it rather good if boys in particular are encouraged to think more about the inspiring qualities of women.

Thanks to some rather ghastly Australian football player shenanigans, there has been a lot of discussion recently about respect and attitudes towards women, but this is an old argument, an old discussion. I just think this competition missed an opportunity to encourage respect and positive attitudes.

The entry form says things like: Have you ever read a story about a woman's bravery and thought: "What an inspiration."?

and

Is there someone in your family who has had a profound impact on your life?

And these are good things for all kids to think about, genitals aside.

But in the end I think what really threw me was the literary quote on the front of the brochure. 

Sadly, competition organisers had chosen a quote from a male writer which seemed contrary to the whole girlpower thing.

And bizarrely that quote was this:

"The pen is the tongue of the mind."

And agreed at first i just glanced at it, and also I am one of two sleep deprived, overworked parents, but i cannot be the only person who looked at the quote on that page and read dick.

Scurry faster Bloody Mary elves. Faster!

I feel I have to add this because otherwise it may appear to the untrained eye that events described in my last post, written just after Tricky had finally fallen asleep, may have ended peacefully.

No, they did not.

Asleep, maybe an hour tops. 

And then...sweet mother of god... the crying started. But not crying as we know it. Whining moaning crying with eyes firmly shut. The kind of crying that cannot be shushed or cuddled or comforted in any way. 

What is the matter little boy? I would ask him and he just cried and cried and seemed to be trying to say something important but was impossible to decipher. Is it your ear? Is it your tummy? Do you have a sore tummy?

Sore tummy he mumbled back but then he also mumbled sore ear...

Should we go to the hospital? C and I looked at each other, worried, tired and then... Tricky seemed to settle.

For about ten minutes.

And repeat until 4am. 

There were slight variations on the theme. At one point he really did need to poo and this was done (in his nappy) standing up, clinging to my head and crying in my ear. When C changed him Tricky shouted THE LIGHTS ARE TOO BRIGHT. There was slight relief here, I understood this kind of shouting/crying.

DOONA ON... TAKE DOONA OFF...I WANT A SHEET...SHEET OFF... eventually I was too slow to respond and he just lay in his bed shouting DOONA ON DOONA OFF. For the sake of the rest of the house I tried to calm him and quiet him and interestingly, despite the horror, I never lost my cool. Yay me.

Around 4 he was crying for milk and saying he was cold. I put him into our bed and told him to stay there while I got his milk and when I came back in he was asleep. Asleep and outstretched over my side of the bed. So then, the constant gentle shove routine so I could claim a few inches for myself and...we all slept. Till 7 when C and I woke because my car had to be taken to the garage (massive 4 wheel drive ute backed up on my bonnet, all ok but man that was some crap day yesterday.)

This morning, I stumbled downstairs to talk about the night with my sister in law. She said that Naughty Nephew 2 displayed similar strange sleeping-crying behavior that could go on for hour. What worked for them was taking him into the bathroom with the lights on and giving him drinks of water until he woke, often with a start and the grumpy demand: "Bed!"

Hand me my Bloody Mary pronto.

It is bed time. Past bed time.

The Screaming Tomato is back. 

The Screaming Tomato is angry. 

The Screaming Tomato wants his DIZZZZORT NOW. This should be YOGHURT or ICECREAAAAAAAM.

The Screaming Tomato wants his mother to GET AWAY FROM ME. Hang on, wait, are you actually leaving the room? Then in that case I WANT MY MUMMEEEEEEEEEEE. And also WHERE IS MY DADDDEEEEEE? Here he is making the shushing noises and trying to give me cuddles and saying in a soothing manly tone: here's your daddy. In which case DON'T TOUCH ME DADDY, JUST GO AWAY.

The Screaming Tomato does not want his bath.

The Screaming Tomato does not care to be placed in the bath when he has made his displeasure known.

The Screaming Tomato shall make his parents rue the day that ears were invented.

Cunningly, the Screaming Tomato suddenly transforms into smiling curly headed infant and bat eyes in fetching fashion. This shall be called: Story Time.

Story Time ends after a selection of fine toddler literature.

Screaming Tomato promptly returns.

Parents attempt to wrest Screaming Tomato into bed.

Screaming Tomato plays Trump Card. This shall be I NEED TO DO POO POO.

Parents have already caught themselves on previous nights crying wearily; "But it's so late. Can't you just do it in your nappy?" This makes them feel like Crap Parents. 

So once again Screaming Tomato is perched on potty. Pyjama trousers must be completely removed and preferably placed in another room, or state. More stories must be read to hypnotise the Screaming Tomato digestive system into, the much shouted about, motion.

NO POO POO. MORE STORY. GIVE ME MAISY.

Mummy of Screaming Tomato tells Daddy of Screaming Tomato that "that's it." 

Mummy then does something nasty to her back. 

Daddy attempts to re-clothe infant son and must suffer indignity of being told at top of voice: NO DADDY, GO BACK TO WORK.

And later, when he falls asleep, I think about different things we could have done; fed him earlier, bathed him earlier. I didn't smack him but maybe I should have, I didn't insist that he brush his teeth but maybe I should have. I wonder if we're spoiling him or if we're giving him confusing signals, or if he's going through a stage of temper tantrums that are only worse because he's bigger

And I think about his curls and his eyes filled with tears and his red straining face, and his soft kisses when finally finally he relaxes into his bed.

This just in (or out)

Potty Drought Officially Broken! 

Thanks go to:  fibrous diets, big boy underpants, Charlie&Lola stickers which enliven any small person's toileting and chocolate frogs- the official bribe for Number Twos.

I waited all those years for a day like this...

...cuddles in bed and appy muzzahs day mumma and what would you like for bekkfuss mumma and daddy pancakes and oh oh change of picnic plans cos its pouring outside and more cuddles proper ones with arms around necks and one thousand proper kisses or at least five with love and real coffee with frothy milk and hallo misselle appy muzzahs day hallo cordia hallo morgin hallo hallo and muffins and sandwiches eaten on the carpet and running up and down and up and down and up and down the hall and a break in the weather sends us scurrying to the playground and running up and down and up and down and up and down the playground and oh dear that little boy is drinking tricky's drink and home for dumping on da tampoleen and champagne for mummies and dadda and babycakes for small people and more dumping and dinner with nephews and more running up the hallway but with nephews this time and all in the bath and all out of the bath and bye bye and I DON'T WANT TO GO TO BEEEEEEEED and mummy use her firm voice and no more stories bedtime now and oh all right just one I mean just six and the gruffalo is the very very very last one cuddle cuddle night night kiss kiss...

...and lucky and lucky and lucky and happy and glad and love.

Tricky and Smeagol in Conversation.

(Tricky playing nicely on mattress with armful of stuffed toys. Mother spies him and hearing delightful chatter thinks it might be nice to write down what he says and does.)

It goes...

Which way it goes?

(Leaps to his feet and waves fetchingly. Mother smiles at gobsmacking cuteness. Assured career as actor in the hugh jackman style)

That way it goes. 

On top of hill. 

(Heaps doona into hill shaped lump. Mother impressed at improvisation skills and also potential engineering career.)

Go top of hill. 

You push this one here.

(Picks up Snoopy, abruptly bites his face and then flings him away. Mother deeply shocked.)

Which way did that go?

Hmmm...

(Tenderly retrieves Snoopy. Mother relieved.)

...doggy.

(Flings Snoopy away again. Mother concerned)

Which way did that go?

Off a bed?

Why did we throw it off bed?

We didn't throw it.

(Much effort as he tries to wedge himself in corner between mattress and wall and arrange stuffed toys around him. Mother feels faint hope, perhaps he will be a social worker.)

This one here... (selects small sad looking toy.)

(Throws it)

...is having long long...

(retrieves toy, returns to position, throws toy. Mother trying not to make eyecontact. Wondering if she stopped breastfeeding too early.)

It falls off again.

But we did...too...much.

(Sits Snoopy tenderly in his lap as he speaks. Throws him away. Gets up to retrieve him. Back to first position. Throw. Repeat. Mother sees dreams of child joining Medicine Sans Frontiers as music therapist go up in smoke)

Throw it too much.

(Puts pyjama pants on knees.

Sits Snoopy on knees.

Bites Snoopy's face. Gives it a considerable gnawing with accompanying noises.

Throws Snoopy.

Retrieves Snoopy.

Mother creeps out of room, muttering my precioussss and clutching at notebook.)

I found my scroll bar!!!

It's back because Anna suggested I look in my Word Preferences! 

And I did!

And lo, there it was.

Hoorah!

Also I am back online. 

Also I now have a gmail account so i shall never have to rely on server again.

Now I shall go write.

And...anyone remember the last line of the book above?

oh i am so embarrassed

Home is where the heart is

This is going to be one of those dull, whining, self indulgent posts that various non-blogging people will think is proof that bloggers really are dull, whining, self indulgent...I was going to say "fucknuckles" here but then i remembered some of the people I know who read this post (but never comment, thanks lurkers) and I know at least one of them will think this language a little, well, strong, so tonight...for you...I'm just going to ask you to replace the f-k word with the word "plonkers."

To start with...my new computer. I don't understand how it works, I am ignorant and therefore I hate it with a cold, intolerant, irrational hate. It has infiltrated every part of my writing life - take this blog for instance: I don't know why for no apparent reason, a brush of my hand against the mouse pad will suddenly shoot the font size up like swine flu stats on a cold day. Or why I can't put more than one picture on a post. I hate that I can't just cut and paste a document straight into the template like I used to and also I hate that there seem to be way less commenters. Yes, I shall blame that on the computer. It's what we rednecks do.

I also hate that the spanking new cord on the new computer packed it in almost from day one. No reason, although the people at the computer shop bagged on about the incorrect winding of the cord. What sort of bollocks is that, computer shop people? I have have had several variations of computer over much of my adult life and wound cords merrily as required and never had one just flake out like this one did.

Now I move on to briefly mention the way that the new computers Word program creates documents that don't have a sidebar. No sidebar, sidebars are so last computer. Thus when I create a seventy page script for instance I have to tippy tap through the document if i want to go back to the beginning say, or skip to the end. And for some reason this keyboard has no Home button. Even tho pressing the Home button (plus some other shitey little buttons) is meant to take me Home. So this makes me grind my teeth and froth and STOPS ME WRITING and yes of course it's all in the Set Up or other folder or drawer or pigeon hole BUT WHO HAS THE FUCKING TIME? 

(Replace the f-word with "jolly". You know who you are.)

But finally, tonight, what made me completely sully my pretty toddler worship blog is OUR SODDING SERVICE PROVIDER. Our new service provider has not provided service. Our old one has dutifully cut us off. I have about ten scripts that are supposedly emailed to me today. I have one script, written by me, that I am meant to be emailing to others. I am using C's wireless modem and racking up his bill just to type this post and alleviate some frustration but cannot get my emails out of the black limbo they have been banished to. 

Also, we can't call so called "service providers", because it's night.

I have run out of words to describe my fury. I blame that on them too.

Apple, Iprimus, Telstra - you're a pack of CUNTS. 

(You, replace the C-Word with "fucking cunts".)

feeling much better...

Tricky has moved through the vomiting stage, and the floppy stage with lots of cuddles and sleeping and has now moved into what I like to call the "Camille stage" where he lolls back on his bed and demands servants to adjust his doona or bring his sippy cup to his mouth or carry him to the couch so he can better see Charlie&Lola. 

Also he makes small groaning noises in between begging for jelly dinosaurs. 

Also every one of his toys must be brought to his bed for his viewing pleasure and then no no what are you doing mummy take them away take them away and YOU GO AWAY TOO.

I can't continue this post, young master is waving one lily white hand and calling for pancakes.