Because you asked...

Ah....Nature.

Holiday Statistics

Days spent at Beach Shack so far: 8

Mornings Mama has spent Sleeping In while Dadda takes baby to beach: 8

Oysters consumed so far: 60

Bottles of wine consumed: 5

Dolphin Sightings: 1 (but was in fact pod of about 20 spotted from loungeroom window leading to hurried rush down to beach, allowing exciting and quite close range viewing)

Kangaroo Sightings: 2 (one during bush walk, the other was FIVE KANGAROOS SUDDENLY APPEARING IN OUR BACK YARD)

Minutes of Fascination for baby provided by Kangaroos In Back Yard Incident: 2

Minutes of Fascination for parents provided by Kangaroos In Back Yard Incident: 15

Minutes of DVD filming of KIBYI before realising that Kangaroos eating grass, while exciting in real life and happening 2 metres away from you, is actually extremely dull footage: 15

Number of Digital photographs taken during KIBYI: Too Embarrassed To Say

Number of Individual Kangaroo Turds discharged during KIBYI: 80 to 100

Number of Individual Kangaroo Turds picked up by baby in attempt to eat: 1

Number of Individual Kangaroo turds picked up by Mama with plastic bag and unpleasant look on her face: 80 to 100

Number of Loud Shouting Incidents between Parents: 3

Number of Near Poisoning of Baby Incidents, via previously unnoticed cockroach bait (and leading directly to one of the Shouting Incidents above): 1

Number Of Loud Shouting Incidents Averted By Sudden Viewing Of Pictures Of Baby on Computer Screen Saver: 3

Level of Satisfaction with Special Magical Grownup Time while on Holidays: Very High (but have decided to not share this statistic with Other Parent so as to guard against complacency)

What OvaGirl Did Next...

Sleazy hypnotists and dancing chickens, pagan weddings and costumed sheep, oversexed guinea pigs and the smell of boiled wet dog. IVF, infertility and family…
It’s a love story...

I started blogging in January 2005. The year before that my partner C and I had discovered, via a series of unpleasant and embarrassing tests, that we were infertile.

The discovery came after a very long period of “casually” trying to conceive– since if we admitted we were actively trying then we would also have to admit that we were actively failing. And so the years rolled on by in a great flurry of work and travel and generally doing all the things one does when one is not with child.

“No no,” we would say jovially, “we haven’t quite got the knack of making a baby yet, but we’re having a lot of fun practicing.” And that was funny for about, oh, six months.

In 2004, finally, we had to face the fact that there was something amiss with the plumbing – either mine or C’s or both, and a trip to my GP saw me coming away with a referral to the fertility clinic at a nearby hospital.

This was us on the official first stage of The Great Big Fertility Ride. That day we came home from the hospital when the specialist told us we needed to go straight to IVF was a particularly special one and I rate it up there with the day my mother died and the day I was diagnosed with MS.

Everyone has different ways of coping and mine was to get onto the internet and randomly google terms like “barren”, “my uterus sux” and “dried up girly bits”.

And so it was that I discovered a hitherto unknown world of blogging. Not just a world of blogging but a very special corner of that world where People Who Can’t Seem To Have A Baby write about the way they feel.

I think I’d heard of blogs but I had no idea what one was and suddenly I was reading stuff by women who felt as angry, as hurt, as totally fucking ripped off as me, and it was like coming home. At the same time my husband, also hurt and bewildered, but also seeing the devastating effect this news had on me, had dug out the number of an alternative practitioner whom we would eventually come to know and love as the Chinese Fertility Goddess.

And then I started to write.

Years ago I had a friend, Simone, who used to refer to acts carnal as ‘legs up and laughing’. This seemed a cheerful descriptor of what was generally a funny activity (at least where C and I were concerned) and so I mangled it to give me “L’Eggs Up and Laughing”. At first I wrote about the hideous tests, the unhappy news, the weird smelly herbs we had to boil up for the Chinese Fertility Goddess, but quite quickly it became more than that.

In my efforts to make a family I had begun to examine my relationship with my own family, my childhood, my small nephews who had come from London to live nearby, and, my relationship with this man, my husband C, who sat beside me in the carriage of The Great Big Fertility Ride and indeed all the carriages of all the rollercoasters of our life together.

One day, looking back through some of the things I had written on this blog, I decided to send a few posts to my agent. She in turn sent these onto a publisher.

And they said…yes.

Well, actually what they said was that they wanted me to write a book. And it would be the blog, but also more again.

And so I said… yes.

And this September, two years after our first IVF cycle began, My Book is being released.

This means some things will change.

For instance, it may surprise you to discover that OvaGirl is a Made Up, Secret Squirrel, Clark Kentish sort of name. I know! Shock!

And also, this blog may seem to have slimmed up, since last you saw it.

That’s because I have deleted most of the early entries, ie those leading up to Tricky’s birth. (And let me tell you that caused me no end of heartache because of the beautiful comments people left for me.) I did this because the book contains nearly all these entries anyway, but polished up and with incriminating names and patently stupid bits removed.

But I have left some posts, including the start and the end, intact, because I wanted people (who don't read the book) to see that there can be a happy ending to the Great Big Fertility Ride, even though its carriages might get a bit skanky and scratched and pong of chucked up steak sandwich.

I’m having a wee little holiday now.

I’m also doing Book Stuff, launches and publicity guff. If you’re in Sydney and you want to come to a book launch on September 5th, let me know on the comments or contact me through my profile. There will also be one in Newcastle and hopefully Melbourne and other places at some stage.

Legs Up And Laughing will be available in the UK in October. And in the US?... well, I don't know. Ask your bookshop! It's published by Murdoch Books and it's a Pier 9 imprint.

And it has a pretty cover!

And finally, if you are from that Corner Of The Blogging World I talked about before, (and further afield too, the theatre people and the political people and the writerly people) then I want to let you know that at the end of my book, on the acknowledgements page is this:

Thankyou...

To all those who read and commented and supported me on my blog “L’Eggs Up And Laughing”, throughout the events of this book. You shared my grief as well as my joy. You made me feel part of a community who knew exactly how I felt. You kept me writing.

Back Soon (honest)

Your Very Own OvaGirl...

Vanessa xxx

Speak My Language

I’m glad I don’t understand One Yr Old Speak because as I write this my ears would be scorching, nay, scalding, nay, dripping red hot molten flaps of ear flesh.

According to the Screaming Tomato, Mama is variously a pppptttaka! and a bubababagh! And also, I am ashamed to say, a mmmmmmemmmmgh.

It seems that “sleepytime” at 11am is a completely rubbish idea.

Mean (Ova) Girls

Tonight, HRS (our live in youth worker) and I were preparing to watch the DVD of Mean Girls.

This is a film that has been repeatedly recommended to me by HRS (as well as other friends, including Mysterious George) following my recent, rather late, appreciation of the cheerleader epic Bring It On.

For weeks now, in the frosty environs of Country Town, I have been chanting happily to myself: “I say brrr it’s cold in here…”

HRS being the glorious age of 21 and hence a source of knowledge that I can only dream about is generally kind to me, answering my questions with great patience and minimal eye rolling.
Yes, I can set up facebook for you.
No, you can’t krump to Enya.

But tonight, the tables were turned.

As I turned on the tv the screen seemed to explode with action and mayhem. Strange pigmen in jumpsuits were running amok, David Tennant was popping his neck veins in an effort to hurry Everyone Out Now and several ominous silvery upside down funnel shapes with protruding metallic plungers and hysterically nasal robotic voices were in hot pursuit.

"Ooh goody," I said and sat down in front of the screen.

"What are…those?" The voice was HRS’s and the confusion was legion. I looked around and noted her wide eyed horror, her ‘does not compute’ stare.

"Those are Daleks," I said.

"What are... Daleks?"

I snorted. "How can you not know the Daleks? It’s Doctor Who!"

HRS was visibly shaken but she attempted to rise above it.

"Hello?" she said sniffily, employing the classic young person’s verbal riposte of the upward inflection. "I was born in 1985? Doctor Who started before my time?"

"Have you ever heard of World War Two?" I asked her. "That was also before your time."

"Wait," she said, "is there a character in it called Smith?"

I sighed heavily and gave her a withering look. "That’s Lost in Space," I said. "Dr Smith is nothing like Doctor Who."

"Well it’s like Twin Peaks," she protested. "I had never even heard of Twin Peaks before you told me about it last week. I never knew it existed."

I turned back to the tv, holding my hand up in her face as I did.

"Whatever," I said.

Letter To A One Year Old Afterimage

Darling Tricky

A year? Truly? Are you crazy?

Surely it’s actually been ten years?

Or three seconds?

Or the blink of a curious eye fringed with long dark lashes?

But there it is. You are One.

Despite early promising signs, including your freakishly brilliant ability to stand…and then sit…there has been no walking.

To be fair, it’s been a busy month, social calendar duties, visits to family, preparations for anniversary of Squirty Out The Clacker Day (as opposed to Squirty Up The Clacker Day, being anniversary of transfer of your embryonic self from ice cube tray to …well… to me.)

And of course, you are my child after all and anyone who knows me can reliably set their clock by the hours I shall be late for any appointment, meeting, milestone or (ahem) wedding they may have arranged with me.

Of course, as if to prove that all you required was the correct encouragement, you managed to take a step or two for Aphwa (Grandmother) in Newcastle and then you practically skipped around the room for your Aunty N in Sydney. Still, I am absolutely confident that in the next week and a half the Real Walking Shall Begin.

This is because for some stupid reason your father and I decided to leave the video camera back in Sydney. Yes, that camera that has been dogging your every move, recording your crazy rock and roll bouncing, your obsessive twirling of the loungeroom chairs, your nude, après bath racing in front of the heater. IT IS NO LONGER IN THE HOUSE. Feel free to bust some moves and then laugh at your silly sad unprepared parents.

Perhaps in compensation for non-walking, you do like to sit with your legs outstretched and then spin yourself around on your bottom. It’s as if you hate to miss out on any action and hence the 360 degree viewing. You also love to clap hands, you love to shout eh! Eh! EH!, you love to roll a ball and indeed be helped to kick it and you deeply deeply love your grandparents' dog Jimmy.

Of course you love Aphwa and Poppy too but they don’t let you pull their tail or poke your finger into their eyes. Jimmy seems to allow all this, sighing a little and perhaps rolling over if the fingernails get too sharp. Gentle with Jimmy, we cry, GENTLE! And you laugh quietly to yourself and then gently taste his toenails.

On the day of your birthday you were in Newcastle visiting Poppy and Aphwa and of course Ever Patient Jimmy. It was bitterly cold but the sky was a brilliant blue and the sun shone all day. You hung out in cafes and played with your Aunty K and also Nanny Annie who bought you a yellow puppet which was both alluring and deeply deeply creepy as puppets often are.

That night we had your first birthday party, just a weeny one. Nanny Annie’s daughter and baby grandson came to play and Aunty K brought a birthday cake which doubled as her trial wedding cake. Aunty K, who is undertaking an extensive investigation of the mudcake genre, decided that white chocolate mudcake with raspberries was a lovely birthday cake but not a suitable wedding cake. Her gruelling search continues.

You however, enjoyed it immensely.
Your second First Birthday Party was in Sydney, amongst the loving rough and tumble of your Three Big Cousins aka the Naughty Nephews. I could tell they were delighted to see you because NN1 softly ruffled your hair and gave you the sweetest and gentlest of cuddles, NN2 pointed his Harry Potter wand and at you and invoked all the Unspeakable Curses but then later was spotted hugging you, quite firmly, which effectively counters all Evil Spells, and NN3, he who has loved you since you were a bulge in my belly, allowed his new mouse to crawl over your head.

The mice are newish pets for the nephews who dote on their every sniffling whisker. In this moment, NN3 brought together two things he loved very much. It was a beautiful moment indeed, but a little short lived, due to Nutino’s natural agility and your mother’s slight squeamishness at the sight of a rodent running over her baby’s hair.

At the party there were people we hadn’t seen for a while, babies who had all grown since we disappeared to Country Town and….an enormous Number One Cake iced in pink and studded with FOUR PACKS of Smarties made by Aunty N with decorative assistance from nephews, Uncle K and Dadda.

Alongside the iced ducky and Number One biscuits, it was an impressive spread, almost frightening. I didn’t think that such an enormous cake could disappear in a few hours but of course I had not factored in the combination of grownups, champagne and a Nigella Lawson recipe.

Finally, after a lengthy drive, we returned to Country Town and a third First Birthday Party. The loungeroom was decorated with streamers and birthday flags, the back yard held more surprises and an extremely excited little Girl, three year old Miss P, helped with the proceedings. There’s a SANDPIT she squealed. A SANDPIT! Shhh said her parents, it’s a secret. She nodded and pressed her lips firmly together for a second. And there’s a SWING!!! There was also another beautiful birthday cake for you to blow the candle out (or to be assisted…It’s a CANDLE!!!) and because it was very late in the evening, a piece set aside for the next day for you to sample.

It really has been a year.

A year ago I saw you for the first time and it shocked me, your bright peering eyes searching my face across my still swollen belly.

I remember asking your father to take you and watching him carry you around the room, his face aglow.

I remember the heavy rain as we tried to leave the hospital with you wrapped up, warm and sleepy.

I remember the fairy like ambience of our warm house as we arrived with three excited little boys, freshly bathed and waiting with bright eyes and smiles to see their tiny cousin for the first time.

I remember how, in those first days, my body heavy and exhausted with the aftermath of your arrival, I kept seeing your face around me, in the pattern of light on the ceiling, the swirl of blankets on my bed, the two eye shaped marks in the wood grain on the cabinet that holds your clothes and nappies.

It was like an afterimage of my first sight of you, the image of your face burned into my brain, a sudden bright flash after all those waiting years of darkness. I’m so glad that I wrote about this at the time because now, a year later, the blankets are just blankets, the pattern of light on the ceiling is just that. But when I look at those two marks in the wood, I remember, and I see your eyes staring back at me and I see your face again as it was, in that miraculous, extraordinary moment when you finally came to us.

It has been one year of broken sleep and mush brain, one year of fighting for time… to write, to work, to heal, to exercise, to love your father, to do all the things that scream to be done. One year of feeling my body age and stretch and recognizing that it has changed forever and not in a good way either.

But it has also been a year of joy, and of love, of watching you grow and laugh and reach out for your Mama and Dadda, of hearing your voice and feeling the incredible softness of your skin and your hair (as well as the incredible sharpness of your fingernails).

And it has been, above all the crazy events of this year, all the stress and heartaches, the worries and struggles, a Year Of You.

And what that really means, when it comes down to it, is that it has also been the Best Year Of My Life.

Happy First Birthday my baby boy.

May this next year be full of magic and happiness...
... of joy and of learning
....and always, always, of love.

Your very own
OvaGirl
xxx

Sicky Tricky...

Tricky, or Mr Snottles as he has come to be known, has been sick again. We've got the coughing, we've got the slimy nose business and one horrid night we had the very high temperatures and judicial dosing with Baby Panadol.

It was obviously stupid of me to think that I could get away with just the one nasty upper respiratory infection this winter, especially in Country Town where apparently RI's are the disease de jour. C thinks it has something to do with all the chemicals that get sprayed onto various crops around the place. Yay. I think about all those crisp sunny wintry days when I walked into town pushing Tricky in the stroller and lustily breathing in lungfuls of bracing country air.

At least in Sydney you expect it to be horribly polluted and chest infection inducing.

And of course this means that we've all got the lurgy, parents, filmmakers (including the ones living with their 3yr old in a caravan in our backyard). Welcome to the House of Phlegm.

(*pauses blogging a moment to cough and hack loudly*)

(*blows nose*)

(*drops tissue on table*)

(*notes heavy "thunk" sound*)

(*feels mildly disgusted*)

The doctor is very nice and sensible and doesn't prescribe anything at all except more of what I'm doing which is mostly breastfeeding on demand and lots of cuddles.

Which makes a nice change from the last doctor we saw here who prescribed antibiotics and steroids and then gave me a fistful of repeat prescriptions. "I tend to overprescribe," he muttered as he did so. Um, yes. Quite.

A few days later we've still got the snot and the coughing but the happy little bubba boy is back to business. And the business is learning to walk. He's microseconds away, I'm absolutely sure of it, all the standing and the balancing and yesterday we both saw him take a step.

In less than a week he will be one year old.

When I think about where I was a year ago

And then the year before that...

It's enough to make me reach for the tissues again, but this time it's not about the snot.

Ovagirl’s Tips for Helping You and Your Baby Sleep.

#32 Try Putting A Toy In Baby’s Cot For Him To Find In The Morning.

Somewhere near the crack of dawn when you are desperate for just ten minutes more sleep and you can hear that your baby is starting to wake, it may occur to you to sneak into baby’s room and lob a couple of toys over the side of the cot without being seen, thus cunningly distracting him and providing potentially even half an hour of quiet amusement while you sneak back to bed.

This is not a good idea.

This is in fact, a stunningly bad idea, especially if you are half asleep yourself and pay no mind to the weight or size of the toys you are lobbing into the cot.

From bitter experience I can assure you that even a small stripey monkey with a little jingly thing in its tummy falling unexpectedly from the sky will cause sudden terror, and ensure the rapid progression of your offspring from slightly whingy baby to full blown Screaming Tomato.

Monkeys. Light. Stripey. Not Suitable For Cot lobbing.

When Country Town Becomes Funky Town

So last night was a special kind of night because HRS, the funky youthworker who lives with us, offered to babysit Tricky while C and I went Out.

To a place where there would be live music. And wine. And jolly little tables to sit around, bearing platters of olives and small electric candles which were oddly effective.

At first I thought I wouldn’t go because frankly I was tired and it all seemed a bit of a fuss, having to get changed out of the same pair of jeans and blundstone boots I’ve been wearing all week.

Another group of filmmakers have come to stay with us. They’re a couple and they’re very environmentally conscious and have brought their own caravan to sleep in which runs on yakfat or some other form of non polluting home made fuel. It’s parked in our backyard and it reminds me of the caravan my grandparents used to tootle about the Central Coast.

I have very fond childhood memories surrounding that caravan, including the time the local Christian group came into the caravan park and rounded up all the kids who were there for the school holidays and made all the boys hold onto one rope and all the girls hold onto another rope as they went round and round the park.

My (then) littlest sister, whose name is Toni, and who had short hair and was wearing jeans at the time, was put onto the boys’ rope and neither I nor my second sister AJ noticed. Poor Toni was trapped on the boys’ rope all morning until finally we saw her being led away, crying bitterly, with all the other boys to whittle sticks or light fires or do something equally manly. AJ and I had been concentrating very hard on making brooches out of magazine cuttings and plaster of paris in plastic spoons.

Anyway the thing is that the Caravan Filmmakers who are living in our backyard have a child as well, a very sweet three year old little girl. And last night HRS very kindly offered to babysit her too and so the CFs decided they would also go to see the show and drink wine and eat olives too.

And so we went and it was a fun old time indeed.

The venue was new and tres groovy and utterly foreign to the general ambience of Country Town, being more suited to a dingy corner of Melbourne or Sydney. Also, I can’t remember the last time I saw live music and although they were mostly covers, they were covers of 80's love songs like Bizarre Love Triangle and Throw Your Arms Around Me which made me feel a great wave of youthful nostalgia and also made me pick up the little table candle and wave it solemnly in the air during the choruses. However that may have been the several glasses of wine I drank which also made me feel youthfully nostalgic because I also can’t remember the last time I drank more than two glasses of wine in an evening.

“We must get up and dance”, I muttered fiercely to C at one point.
“Ah…no, we must not,” C muttered back. I pouted and thought about our many nights out together in the past, the drinking, the dancing, the hijinks in the toilets (ahem). In the cold hard light of day though, I’m quite relieved.

I actually did wear the same jeans I wore all week, but in the spirit of going out I also wore my new coat and beret, my sparkly earrings and a pair of black zip up boots I bought in an op-shop last week for six bucks.

If only I knew how much I would enjoy myself, the youthful nostalgia and the waving electric candles in the air, I would have made a bit more effort.

Clean jeans perhaps, or just maybe a plaster of paris brooch in the shape of a spoon.

That Beautiful Game Called Life

In the country one experiences the rawness of life and death. Without all the chatter and hoo hah of city life, suddenly one sees things as they really are, one can truly experience both the joys and the tragedies of human existence.

Thus, joy was experienced a few weeks ago when C was trawling through a second hand shop for furniture so that we would have things to sit on in our new home and he discovered for a paltry sum of money an old foozball table. (We originally called it babyfut, as taught to us by our French friends during a long ago holiday in Spain, but our funky youth worker HRS who has her thumb firmly on the button of all things fashionable laughed scornfully at us.)

Whatever the name, it is truly fantastic.. There are little red men. There are little blue men. There is a little ball that gets slammed from one end of the table to another via the turning of handles on the side. You can keep score of your goals via a series of numbered cubes!

What need us of foolish fripperies like, say, chairs, now we had entertainment, and more importantly for a couple of sleep-deprived parents, a suitably exciting substitute for sex.

Yet, and here was the true joy of the foozball, it was not just for the two sad old people vicariously reliving their youthful European travels, but for everyone, arts workers, youth workers, visitors, the man who delivers the Australian Post express mail. All who gazed upon the pleasingly marked out mini soccer field, with its two teams of equally matched little plastic men, would be smitten with its charms, would be aching for a match, and then another, and then a best of three.

And, as the great wheel of life turns, so too did we experience tragedy. A couple of days ago when a new arts-worker, a younger, more vigorous, need I say male, arts worker, was playing against C, he managed to snap one of the little red men in half.

And lo the cries of grief were legion.

In vain did C say “let’s pretend he committed a foul and got red carded off, play on…”. Without a little red men to guard that exact spot it was too easy for all the little blue men to concentrate their efforts and play the ball into that area and then, how deeply frustrating that proved to be for the human being who was playing red and twirling the rubber handles to no avail.

And like a drought stricken paddock, the foozball field was left fallow and proclaimed to be “stuffed”.

But then, another few days passed, and time brought perspective and calmness and also an opportunity for judicious googling. And the company who made the foozball table was discovered to still be in existence albeit in a completely other country ie the US which may just as well have been the moon. But also, on the instructions for the foozball, an email address was discovered. And a plaintive plea for help was emailed. And replied to.

And this morning as I made myself a coffee I heard a whooping in the loungeroom and went out to discover C and HRS jumping for joy. The company had emailed back with a phone number for their supplier in Melbourne. And the supplier in Melbourne said that they could replace the sad little broken red man. In fact they could give us a few of each colour in case of any more overly enthusiastic arts worker accidents. And they would be sent in the post today. For free!

It remained to be seen whether our small plastic team mates would arrive. But for now, the promise of renewal was enough. New energy flowed through our wrists, new games were played by disabling the little blue man that corresponded with his broken opponent. Round the wheel spun again, much like a little plastic foozball man determined to kick the bejesus out of a little plastic ball, and life was good.

Letter To An Eleven Month Old Birthday Present

My darling Tricky

You are now A Month Off Being One Year old.

How can this be? It’s impossible, ridiculous, incredible, exciting and just a wee bit sad all at the same time.

Over the past few weeks we have gotten into the habit of bringing you into bed when you wake in the morning and we lie you down between us in the hopes of getting a precious few extra nanoseconds of sleep.

When you’re still half awake you keep your eyes tightly shut and you wail and pound your tiny fists and thrash your head from side to side and carry on a real treat and there’s no more sleep for any of us. Your father and I are looking forward to this particular phase being over but I happen to know that I’m exactly the same before I’m properly awake except for the head thrashing.

But the thing is, once you are awake, you smile and sit up between us and look around with curious bright eyes and clap your hands and chat away about oh nothing in particular, syllables mostly and how ridiculous they are, and then if we fail to pay proper attention you gently lean towards us and thrust your fingers up our nose or pull our hair. And that one you get from your father.

I’m still nursing you, but only just, mostly at night or in the evening and in the morning “comfort feeds” my GP called them, as if they were nutritionally less essential than other feeds we’ve shared, and perhaps they are but you’re still a little baby, still my little baby, and comfort is essential still, for both of us. But I can see that as the weeks go by that time is also passing.

The other night I held you in my arms and we stood staring accusingly at your father as he typed Just One More Email and then I said: Tell Dadda it’s Bath time. And you did. Because you are a genius. Or at least you said: gnuugagang Ba Ba. True, your diction was poor. But your tone was firm and assertive with exactly the right amount of nag and you only had to say it three times before Dadda finally pushed Send.

Dadda is the King Of Bath Time. I realised this a couple of weeks ago when I went to put you in the bath and I knelt beside you to hold you up and your father said: no no, let him sit up by himself you don’t need to hold him, it’s fine.

And then, and I don’t quite know why, seeing you unsupported sitting up by yourself, caused me to have some kind of horrible anxiety attack, it was as if a giant foot was squashing me down to the bathmat and I just lay there and cried and had to crawl my way out of the bathroom. But thinking back on it, it was possibly the first time I had bathed you since the Foot Under The Hot Tap Incident which had obviously scarred me even if it hadn’t scarred you.

In about two seconds I think you are going to walk which really means you are going to run. Even now, while crawling, you achieve speeds that no baby should be able to reach, one moment I look up to see you playing by your fabulous fifties style tent as gifted to you by Uncle Marky the next you suddenly appear at my feet with my computer cord firmly clamped between your incisors. You’re even faster after bath time, when we allow you to scamper in the nuddy on the lounge room carpet. And there’s that standing hovering business…three seconds….ten seconds…. before you drop down onto your bottom with a very smug expression on your face.

It has been a big month for you, a month of travel and new faces, and old faces when you don’t expect to see them, which has caused a certain amount of sleeplessness and concern. When you saw your Aunty N for the first time after a few weeks away from Sydney and the Big House you burst into tears and the same thing happened in Newcastle when you saw your grandmother again, even though you adore both these women. I think it was the first time you realised that people go out and come back into your life. You knew these people but you hadn’t seen them for a long time and you had forgotten them until that moment they held you in their arms. It’s a pretty freaky reality jolt for a small person but just one of many your mind will have to wrap itself around.

I myself remember being about eight and having to get a tooth pulled and waiting in the dentist’s chair for the anaesthetic to kick in and thinking to myself…this is now…and this moment will soon be gone forever…and next week this moment will be a memory and so will the tooth pulling moment…and now this moment has gone forever etc etc which was also a freaky reality jolt and funny how all these years later, that recognition is crystal clear in my mind but the tooth pulling that came after is a blur.

Your eleven month birthday was actually a few days ago on the 18th of June but today, the 22nd is my actual birthday.

This morning your father brought you into bed and whispered “happy birthday Mama” and to my surprise you gently kissed me, lovely soft wet kisses, and put your cheek against my face and we lay like that for a moment and it was a beautiful birthday present.

And then you pulled my hair and stuck your fingers in my nose.

I love you.

Your very own
OvaGirlxxxxxx

Rural Lessons

Now that we are living in the country and now that we have finally bought me some Proper Boots, we felt it was time to introduce Tricky to the rural life, ie the life that smiles upon the working dog and fresh air but looks askance at requests for macchiato or organic chicken.

Because we are not ones to do things by halves (and frankly, if Tricky sleeps in for instance, I am inclined to not do them at all) we have visited not one but three farms in the past week. Not simply for Tricky's edification, it's all part of an ongoing arts project that C is running, but it certainly has opened our eyes to the benefits of air seeders, drenchers, and silage, none of which are apparent in the picture below but which I included because I thought it looked quaint and picturesque and exuded a certain rustic charm.

At one farm Tricky got to see chickens. We stood in the door of the skanky floored pen to watch as the farmer shooed them through a cunning little spring loaded hatch in the side of the fence so that they could peck at the sweet grass on the other side.

I stared and wrinkled my nose at the vast floor of trodden in chook poo and Tricky stared and wrinkled his brow, faintly perturbed at the sight of these short strange feathered people with their beady eyes and sharp pointy noses and scaly feet, but also deeply fascinated.

I thought about the chickens my sisters and I nurtured all those many years ago in Penang, and how we had enjoyed their gentle cluckings and funny sideways leapings, right up till the moment they appeared as miniature drumsticks alongside the french onion dip and devils on horseback at one of our parents' authentic, irony-free, 70s parties.

And Tricky laughed, and I smiled, and the farmer shooing the chickens started to tell me a long story about needing a new chook pen because there were far too many chickens and it was all a bit crowded and just then, almost as if someone was listening, someone with a slightly cruel sense of humour I might add, the spring loaded door suddenly snappped down shut on the neck of an unfortunate chicken. Her body flapped about on our side and her head unseen, wailed unhappily on the green green grass side of the hatch and Tricky stared and I said..oh oh dear, I think you better....oooh...oh dear..oops.... and finally the farmer came out with a shirt full of eggs and cursed the hatch and released the chook on her way and it seems there was no harm done.

And, I hate to say this, but I think I will anyway because it might be a milestone event that I look back on in the months to come when I become properly countrified and Do Things Differently...even though I was carrying Tricky in one arm I know I could have released that chook myself but I didn't because firstly I was freaked out by the wierd headless way the body was flapping and writhing and secondly because I didn't want to get poo on my new boots.

And then there were the sheep.

(*cleverly segues to avoid guilty chook inspired ramblings*)

At another farm Tricky was lucky enough to be present for the feeding of the poddy lambs. These are the dear little orphaned lambs, the sweet little woolly motherless lambs, the darling little white faced long legged creatures who must be fed from a bottle and very cute it is to watch, I am told.

Sadly, on this day, we missed this Spectacle Of Extreme Darling Cuddliness because three of the lambs had had their throats ripped out by foxes. This news was delivered to their mother by two of the young children who live on the farm and had been sent out "to feed Poobah and Lucky and Lambert and Rose."

"Only Poobah's alive now Mum," intoned the little boy cheerfully as he handed back the bottles of unsupped milk. Mum and the kids and C went out to inspect the damage but Tricky and I stayed indoors and peeked out the window at the sad little piles of white wool just beyond the wire fence.

"And crows pecked out their eyes," the little girl helpfully added when they returned.

At the end of the week we head oh so briefly back to Sydney and then to Newcastle, my poor storm damaged home town, and then back again to our house in the country for a few days rest in our own beds before we hit the road again.

And are we tired?

Let's just say there's no need to count sheep.

A Perfect Tricky Day

Back in Sydney courtesy of a hire car (damn you anonymous truck with your loosely attached heavy metal twirly thing), we spend a wonderful Sunday walking in the National Park with the Naughty Nephews and their mother.

As is right and proper the day ends with icecream and here is where Tricky has a little fig flavoured taste of Paradise.

Just a tiny spoon, mind you.

But oh dear, he loves the fig icecream, deeply. Oh so deeply. And there is much sorrow when no more tiny spoons are forthcoming.

Followed by Impending Screaming Tomato impression...

And because his parents are weak, spineless jellyfish who know too well what it is to taste of the fig icecream and want more, they succumb...

And bugger the spoon, thankyou very much.

Now, heavily sugared up, Tricky looks for a little wrestlin' action.

Aha, what is that in the distance? Why it's my cousins, the Naughty Nephews, just crying out for a little hell raising...

First, I lunge for the floppy hat of NN3, causing NN1 to scream in terror...

Tee hee.

Next I manage to get in a sly kidney punch to NN2...

Then I do a little stalking round the outside, so I can pick off any stragglers with my four razor sharp teeth...

And finally, a little weeding. I find it relaxes me.

Red Hot Truckin' Mama

And so we're driving driving driving down the freeway towards Newcastle. It's a brief hiatus from Country Living, a quick return to Sydney and a day or two in my home town to catch up with family and friends.



We're going at 110 kms an hour and making pretty good time for once. Tricky is quiet although we're nearing lunchtime and he has the potential to become a Screaming Tomato at any moment, and then I see something on the road ahead of us, something heavy and metal, bouncing and skidding with a twirly tail thing flapping in the breeze from all the 110 km an hour vehicles driving around it.



And then suddenly crack! and smashety smashety tinkle tinkle what the fuck was that and next thing we know we're on the side of the road with watery stuff pouring out of the engine and a cracked bumper bar that's now half hanging off the car.

C thought it had fallen off a truck and indeed there was a truck parked suspiciously on the side of the freeway with a couple of fellows hovering nearby and gauging the traffic so that they could nick out and pick up the evil metal twirly thing. It was a fair way back from us but there were two more trucks stopped just ahead.

I began to steam, just as I was sure our radiator was about to do.

In my mind I put the whole story together...three trucks tooling along the freeway, crass burly drivers chatting on their radios, making jokes about drivers of small cars, counting up their Shell dockets, sipping on their coffee thermi, suddenly a swerve, a bump and whoops there goes the Metal Twirly Thing. And now here we were about to be stuck on the side of the freeway wth a potential Screaming TomatoTime Bomb and late to Newcastle, where my Dad was waiting and where we're always late and originally we looked as if we were actually going to be on time and we only had about 48 hours in the city anyway.... and...

Before I knew what I was doing i was stomping up the freeway with a very cross face.

Excuse me! I shouted up at the first two truck drivers. Are you waiting for that third truck down there? Because a Metal Twirly Thing seems to have fallen off and we've hit it and now our radiator seems to be FUCKED.

They looked down at me, a little surprised. Also, not particularly burly.

Mmm no. We're not with that truck, the first driver explained. See...we're carriers and he's a...well looks like he's a tray top...(or similar)...
And indeed yes, these trucks had a number of cars being "carried" on their double decker trailer thingys. And indeed the third truck was much smaller and had a tray type thing and no cars at all.

Also it looked as if the two fellows had finally picked up the Metal Twirly Thing and were getting back into their truck.

Right I said. And then I added pathetically...we've got a baby in the back and it makes things a bit hard...

Well it wasn't us, said the second driver, sorry love.

I walked back to our car and described the conversation to C who was looking glumly under the bonnet.

Did you really say "fucked"? he asked. I waved that aside.

It's come off that third truck, I said, knowledgeably. That...traytop truck. See, he's not with those other two, they're carriers. And I think he's going to stop for us, I added, as it slowly drove up towards us....

...and then began to pull out onto the freeway. Once again the Cross Face appeared and this time I stomped across to the side of the freeway and energetically waved at the truck.

To my surprise it pulled in again. Yes? asked a pleasant faced young man in the passenger seat.

Did you drop a Metal Twirly Thing on the road? I asked, less beligerently than before. Because we hit it and now our radiator is...failing.

Oh no, said the young man. It wasn't us. But we stopped because it's a truck tie. And they're worth eighty bucks!

Oh, I said. Right. Lucky you.

See ya, he said, and off they went.

I took a breath. In the back of the car Tricky was playing happily with his toes.

Sometimes, I thought, i don't need to be instantly angry about a situation. Sometimes I need to just relax and stop expecting the worst and also do as the Buddhists do and just, you know, pull my head in.

I felt a little light headed, as one does when one realises that one has had a lucky escape, no one was injured or killed after all, and also as one does when one's stereotypical attitudes are shown to be incorrect.


And then, because cars are not C's strongpoint, I followed my natural instincts and rang my Dad.

Letter To A Ten Month Old Nature Lover

Darling Tricky

You are TEN MONTHS OLD. TEN! Count ‘em, that’s all of your chubby brown fingers with the outrageously sharp fingernails! Now we go onto toes and we only get to do TWO of those and then you’re ONE WHOLE YEAR OLD and I spend the entire birthday kissing you all over and weeping with uncontrollable joy and avoiding photographs in case I have a snotty nose.

But let us not speak of that now because just now you are ten months and that in itself is cause for full body kissing and photographs and indeed also snot because you, me and your father have all caught some ghastly coughing, hacking, nose dripping chest heaving viral thing.

You have now officially Moved To The Country. In many ways, this is not dissimilar to your life in the city. You are still living in a share household, your parents are still ridiculously busy, they still get your meal times arse about (but less so) and you still have to gently remind them with your Screaming Tomato Impression.

You don’t have your cousins to knock about with and this is pretty sad really because you’re just getting old enough to really enjoy they’re company (although of course your love affair with Naughty Nephew the 3rd has pretty much continued unabated since…well since prebirth really when he was fascinated by your in-utero hijinks). But you do have the attention and adoration of our new house-mates, HRS and D. Both are in their early twenties so they’ve got all that… stuff, that…what do you call it, it seems so foreign to me now…oh yes. Energy.

You also have a backyard with that green pokey-out-the-ground stuff. You enjoy sitting and crawling and grabbing handfuls of the green pokey stuff. You also like very much to look at the birds. And the leaves.

In fact, You plus Nature. BFF.

I am less friendly with Nature since I encountered strange and enormous king hell moths in a public toilet at a railway station on our way to this new postcode. They looked like fat, blind, beakless sparrows. With feelers. They were also furry and motley and clinging silently to nearly every available surface which causes great unease as one tinkles and tries not to in any way disturb them. I suspect I was being punished for an evil moth destroying incident in my past. HRS took one look at them and got straight back in the car, and because she hasn’t given birth over a three day period and thus owns a Bladder Of Steel was able to wait for a service station loo at the next town along the highway.

This month I admit I have been (ahem) introducing you to television. I expect to read these words in five years time and regret them deeply but some mornings I put on a video of The Wiggles, or Teletubbies and I dance and smile and sing Hot Potato Hot Potato and Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car next to the screen and you just look at me like I’m a fucking idiot.

You stand holding onto the table I have cunningly placed in front of the tv to stop you touching the buttons and sometimes you deign to watch some small snippet – TinkyWinky wandering around with a cloud on his head, Jeff – asleep, again! But then seconds later you will drop down and crawl off stalking human prey, D or HRS or Dada, living, breathing, bleeding entertainment slaves that do all the singing and dancing and oh oh-ing of those flat 2 dimensional characters on the small screen but also pick you up and read you stories and give you finger food and take you out to look at Nature. You do like sucking on the power cord of the video player, though, so perhaps that’s progress.

Ten months means you have taken to finger foods with all the zeal of a person who has sprouted four teeth! That’s two down the bottom and two big muthas at the top. I’d take a photo of them but it’s very hard to force you to reveal the big mutha teeth. Still, you enjoy peeled fruit and cold broccoli and pizza crusts and one particularly bad evening when we were driving back from Melbourne after seeing the opening of my play and had failed to pack enough food for your dinner, you enjoyed a damp chunk of old panini which I had wrapped in a napkin the previous night and shoved in my handbag. Why I would do this is anyone’s guess, it’s not like we were kipping in a gutter and this would be our last meal for the week, but thank god I did because it released us from the grip of the Screaming Tomato for at least five precious minutes and by that time I had discovered (you see, there really is a god) a sealed package of mashed pumpkin and corn which I was able to feed you reasonably soon after the panini dregs and then you fell asleep, although not before shrieking YOU PEOPLE WITH YOUR INABILITY TO PROPERLY PLAN MY MENUS, YOU SUCK ARSE in Screaming Tomatoese.

You now use your fingers to point at baby bunting and the little black cat in your new favourite book Peach Pie Pear Plum (or whatever the hell it’s called). I have also been reading “Hairy McLairy” to you rather a lot. This is a book I seem to have loved for a great many years and to some of the more critical in our new house it even seems my sole purpose for giving birth to you was to have a captive audience for my rendition of Hairy McLairy. Top of the pops is still “My body plays music…” which always ends with a lively cha cha cha on your new maracas. HRS has adapted this tune so that the beginning goes “My parents are mental…” but she’s one of those cruel young folk with exacting standards and I know you’ll take revenge on my behalf by, say, dragging one of those hell moths in from the back yard and leaving it in her bedroom.

Oh my sweet bubba. How many times a day do your father and I look at each other and say “I love him so much.” You seem so patient and so gracious and so incredibly good humoured about the whole New Home, No Regular Meal Times, Who Are These People, Why Can’t I Suck That Power Cord scenario. Time seems to move so fast, one minute you were a squashy soft bundle who snuggled into your father every morning for a few hours extra sleep, and now you seem to be half a minute off standing by yourself and then walking and then getting a tattoo. And every half smile is a blessing, every soft wet kiss is a glimpse of heaven, every snuffly snotty laugh is music to our ears.

HRS is right, we are mental, but that’s because we’re your parents and we’re seventy sorts of smitten with you, our darling tricky boy.

Happy ten months.

Your Very Own

Ova Girl
xxxxx

Love

Dear Coffee

I love you. There I've said it and I don't care who knows. This morning I felt like such crap. Tricky was up five times during the night and I fed him every time because he has this horrid snotty nose and chesty business and I thought it was good to let him suck and also because we have people staying in the bedroom next to him and man he can cry.

And also, I was feeling the heavy burden of grant applications and manuscript corrections and changing dates for plotting meetings of tv shows I am writing (actually just one tv show, multiple meetings but one show) and also am a bit snotty myself.

But lo, I make one cup of your fragrant self and I feel magnificent! I ran skippingly down the Pubic Hair Hallway, I brushed my teeth with aplomb. (And also toothpaste) I made my necessary phone calls and I did it without fear! (To my agent, so she can deal with the multiple meeting scenario) and all this because of you, coffee, dear coffee, tasty coffee.

You stain my teeth and you give me smelly breath but I wear these things like a badge of pride because you give me back MY LIFE. Energy surges through me like wild salmon swimming upstream in a turbulent river (no idea where this stupid metaphor is going) and ends in a pool of...Getting Things Done.

Now of course I have wasted precious precious Coffee Energy writing this stupid letter but I don't care. I LOVE YOU. Do you hear me, crazy brown brew? I love your shiny beans! I love your oily residue! I even love that it takes fucking forever to make just one cup of you because C hates the plunger and insisted on only bringing the tiny stovetop coffee-maker and also because he thinks you should only grind the coffee just before consuming hence we have the coffee grinder and a massive bag of beans.

It doesn't matter. You are still beautiful. YOU COMPLETE ME.

Love OvaGirl
xxxxxx

The most horrible motherhood moment so far

Living in a Different House means Different Bathroom means Different Bath Tub and, in this case, means Different Taps, aka Taps That Are Fucked.

When I say 'fucked' what I actually mean is: taps that are wrongly positioned so that the tap marked Hot actually produces cold water and the tap marked Cold actually produces hot.

I think you can see where this is going.

Bath time with Tricky is fun, he has a select range of floaty bath toys and a penchant for making with the kickaboo legs. Oh yes it’s all fun and games and chirruping giggles. C and I fight over who gets to have a bath with him and C usually wins because the combination of Bath and Milk Bar is just too much fun for young Mr Trickster and it becomes tiring for me to stop him both drowning and divebombing my nipples.

But on this night, this first night, this bath night in the Different Bath, I got in, holding my baby, and as I sat down and dipped his toes in the water I thought “hmmm, this water might be a bit too warm for him, and I wonder if that was too hot on his toes, I better put his foot under the cold tap just in case.”

And then came that moment I will remember forever as in one quick movement I turned on the tap marked Cold and held his tiny little foot under the stream...

...of scalding hot water.

As soon as I did it, I realised I'd got the taps wrong and as I pulled his foot out he started to scream. I threw on the cold tap (marked Hot) and shoved his foot under a stream of cold water and now he really did scream.

And so did I, but only on the inside, on the outside I was saying in a calming voice: oh darling, I’m sorry darling, it’s alright…and alternatively calling for C to come quickly, come quickly oh please hurry…

It was so quick thank God that there was not even a red mark, and once I had put Tricky onto the milkbar for a bit he seemed happy.

And C, with a shifter and a grim look on his face, exchanged the taps to their rightful place so that now Cold will always be cold and Hot will always be hot.

We even stayed in our tepid bathwater and played with the floaty dolphin for a little while longer before getting out and continuing on with the bath/bed ritual. And in the morning there would be no sign of that horrible horrible moment.

But all through the night I kept seeing my hand pushing his foot under that scalding stream of water and later, while doing the washing up and feeling the hot hot hot water on my hands, I cried.

Denial may well be a river in Egypt but it’s also a creek in Western NSW.

Hello.

Guess what?

We’ve moved Six to Eight Hours Drive away from where we lived the last time I posted here.

That's right!

I now live in... THE COUNTRY.

(*faints at realisation and then bravely picks self up*)


It’s still shocking to me too. And it goes like this:

C has this job.

It’s based in The Country for two years.

This means he’s based in The Country for two years.

Ergo, his wife and child are too.

When I say The Country, I should specify this means Country Town, not Isolated Homestead Surrounded By Dried Up Dams And Cow Skeletons, but as part of this job he (and we) will be visiting the above homesteads, discussing said dams and no doubt swooning over said skeletons.

When I was a kid, my dad was in the airforce and this meant that my family moved every two or three years. In one memorable year I moved from Penang, to Sydney, to Hoppers Crossing (you’ve never heard of it? Google and see!).

We moved from school to school and while that was a pain in terms of uniforms and exotic animals (hello, monkey raid) and saying goodbye, it was good too because if you made a dick of yourself at one school you always had the chance to start afresh.

But, being a grownup, it’s not quite as appealing.

There are all the same problems: the uniform (“I don’t have proper boots” I wailed to C, “I can’t move to The Country without proper boots!”), the exotic animals (Enormous Moths The Size Of Sparrows) and the saying goodbye (Naughty Nephews and their parents held Cricket Bat guard of honour as we sailed out through the gates of the Big House).

And of course now, as a sensible grownup, I realize that everyone makes a dick of themselves, constantly, and you never really get the chance to start again, you just have to get on with things and, ahem, love the dick within.

We are living in a big big house (no relation to the Big House sadly) with a garden, many bedrooms and wall to wall carpet.

Tricky especially enjoys this last bit because he now can do Proper Crawling and he slowly stalks up and down the carpeted hallway like a tiny Bantha.

I was going to say a tiny hairless Bantha but it seems the people who rented this house before us didn’t believe in vacuuming. They did, however, apparantly believe in rolling about naked on the carpet.

Let me say there is nothing that makes me run faster for the vacuum cleaner than the sight of my smiling baby coated in strange pubic hair.

You'll Never Walk Alone

So there I was standing around at a function and amidst all the serious discussion of Art and Culture, three of us grabbed a drink and peeled off to form our own discussion group.

It’s the broken sleep, one girl said and we all nodded and cradled our precious precious glasses of white wine. But it does get better, she added and we all brightened a little.

It really throws your body around, I said, it took me months to get over it. In fact I’m still not over it, I’m still not like I was before I was pregnant.

We all sighed at the truth of this and sipped at our wine and then as if at an unspoken command we put down our glasses and surreptitiously lifted our shirts to compare pouchy stomachs.

But I think most of all, it’s the sex that suffers, said the third girl and we all groaned and our faces dropped and we drained our glasses and looked around urgently for a refill.
But it’s worse for me, she added. Because my girlfriend and I were together for nine years before the baby was born so we were already suffering from Lesbian Bed Death and now it’s a hundred times worse.

There was an odd silence as the drinks waiter appeared at our shoulders and caught these last few words.

Fill her glass first, I said.