Letter to a 28 Month Old Mover and Shaker

My darling Tricky

As I write this I am hacking and spluttering away like some plague ridden feudal serf.

Most unpleasant.

The source of this latest bout of nastiness I am afraid to say is…you. Last Monday after we got back from visiting One Legged Grandis in Newcastle you had a blazing fever and then the coughing started. Soon after that my coughing started too. We have been a vicious circular Petri dish for at least the last six months and I estimate we get about three weeks break between bouts. Every one of which is of course different and special and it’s Own Thing.

Not unlike you, my darling boy.

As well as our Virus Du Jour you have also picked up from somewhere an alternative to your previous yes and no answers. This alternative is ‘maybe’ and it is usually in response to an adult like me asking a sensible question like “Would you like breakfast?” or “Have you done a poo?”

Maybe. Not particularly helpful but quite amusing, this month anyway.

I think one of your big achievements over the past two months has been sleeping in your big boy bed through the night. This is a shared achievement of course, many people are involved, many books consulted, many sacrifices made, and it is ultimately an ongoing project.

So when I say ‘through the night’ I mean give or take the mandatory curtain calls at the start of proceedings. Last night it took several returns by both the motherperson and the fatherperson and finally a fakely stern Uncle K to put you back and keep you there – it seems he told you that we had “popped out” for a few minutes and so there was no use getting up anymore.

Horrifying, yet effective.

Over the last few weeks since your introduction to Big Boy Bed-dom we have experienced the soliloquies, monologues, ballads, confessions and loud agonised calls for water/back stroking/doona adjustment. Over the weeks, as your vocabulary has grown, so too have your demands become more sophisticated.

MUMMY! MUMMY! MINE WANT A CUDDLE! PEEEEEEASE! AND KISSES! MINE WANT KISSES PEEEEEASE!

Very hard to resist but resist I must if we are to get any sleep at all.

It seems however that once you are asleep there is no more waking in the night and making your way to our bed.

I combined a number of sensible strategies to achieve this small miracle, but the one that stands out is bribery.

Some weeks ago I identified that you have a great love for ‘little people’. Not the dwarven variety per se, but the toy or ornamental variety. I have some of these “little people,” Chinese thimble like figures made out of clay.

When you asked to hold the little people I gave you a couple, thinking they would be a good distraction while I changed your nappy (still known as a ‘mumpy’ most days).

When you gaily flung them to the floor and smashed them I twigged that a plastic version of little people was a damn good idea, but where to find them?

And when, one morning, bleary eyed, sick with lack of sleep after yet another officially Worst Night Ever I piled you and your cousins into the car, got shat on by a bird as I was arguing with the Naughty Nephews about who got to sit in the passenger seat, took them to school and you to daycare, stopped for a coffee on the way home and then wandered, still bleary eyed, still shat upon, into a local toyshop and saw gasp! A Box of Little People! I knew then that the Sleep Goddess had willed it to be so.

If you can sleep in bed ALL NIGHT I told you that evening, I will give you ONE of these Special Little People in the morning.
Your eyes grew wide.
Mine people, you intoned, MINE SPECIAL PEOPLE.
Only if you stay in your bed ALL NIGHT, I insisted. Will you stay in bed?
Maybe.

And lo the first of several all night miracles occurred. Will it last? Maybe…

I now have a ziplock bag of additional Little People I bought for five bucks at a market in Newcastle. They are not as shiny, nor special as the original Little People, some of them are actually animals, not people, but they seem to do the job.

Your tendency to covetousness would not be complete if I didn’t mention the other Special Little Person in your life. Well alright yes, there is new cousin baby L who is 8 weeks old now and whose feet you love to stroke but I don't mean her.

Instead, I am talking about that eternal friend to all mankind, the one you refer to as MINE PEEEEEENISSSSS.

Indeed you are such great friends that mumpy changetime has become a great feat of strength and control often needing two parents, because you don’t want your little friend to be locked away under your nappy. You want him to have the freedom to watch tv, play with your Lego and, as you told me this morning, have breakfast. You want to run and skip and jump, unhindered, calling loudly as you go: peeeeenisss, peeeeenisss, peeeeenisss...

As you escaped from me yet again this morning and went racing across the floor and into your cowboy tent I said to your father, I will check this but I am pretty sure that neither I not my sisters ever used to run around at this age shouting vagiiiiina, vagiiiiina, vagiiiiina at the top of our voices.

Your father smiled quietly to himself. My boy.

And you are a boy. A loud, joyous, shouting little boy who loves building towers at 6.30 in the morning with his blocks. Who adores ‘dumping’ on the trampoline with his cousins and little friend S. Who eats his porridge each morning accompanied by yet another rendition of Goldilocks by one or t’other of his clueless parents. You remember things, we drive down a street and you tell us your friend Dood lives nearby, we pass your friend S’s flat and you point it out and then excitedly reminise about the cake you had there on his birthday. You like to go into tunnels and luckily on the way to Newcastle there are several.

But you are still my baby and you still insist on certain baby habits I haven’t the heart to break. Like your milk in the mornings. We heat it in the microwave and sit on the couch and you insist on curling on my lap (or your father’s if he is doing the first shift) and you get me to hold the sippy cup to your mouth like a bottle and we sit there watching early morning birds and clouds and trees through the big windows and I watch your beautiful eyes and stroke your soft curls and feel you gulping down your milk, “nice and warm Mummy” and it is just lovely lovely lovely.

No maybes about it.

I love you.

Your very own

OvaGirl

xxxxxxx

Just one more thing about my feet...

My darling friend Lucy(amusingly i had a little typo then and wrote 'fiend', also apt) in London has sent me a late birthday/early xmas present.

It is a voucher for a massage, manicure and (lovely feet ahoy!)pedicure.

Which, i think to myself as I drool over the beribboned certificate and brochure, is exactly what I need in present circumstance.

Then I get a grip on myself, because who am I kidding , isn't this exactly what everyone needs in any circumstance? Unless perhaps you hate this sort of thing and shy away from the thought of getting your tense muscles kneaded smooth and your horrid dry feet pummelled and polished and your nasty misshapen fingernails filed and painted.

In which case, I suggest chocolates.

But the thing is, another friend lent me a copy of Elizabeth Gilbert's much lauded Eat Pray Love and I have spent a few enjoyable hours lolling on my bed and massaging my feet and reading while the emails pile up and up and up... and in this book, 'Liz' goes through much to recover from what sounds like The Most Horrible Divorce In The World (with bonus new relationship breakup) and travels to Italy, India and Bali to...well...to basically fulfil her book title.

And the universe works for her in mysterious ways, perhaps due to her insanely rigorous chanting and meditating, perhaps because this is after all a book, that she has written, and so in this story she actually is her universe, as it were.

But let's say it's because she has opened her channels etc and allowed the right things to happen/manifest and money, jobs, people, gelato and other necessities for healing fall into her lap when needed.

And so yesterday when out of the blue Lucy's voucher with the word PEDICURE standing out like a beacon appeared in my letterbox, I was shocked and delighted but also quite pleased that I was managing to manifest the things I need for myself and the universe was coming to the party.

Either that, i decided, or Lucy read my blog.

Just in case it was the first, I tucked the voucher into my bag and ducked down to the corner newsagent for a lotto ticket.

I'm thinking, ok universe...today pedicure, tomorrow three million bucks.

And though I haven't written about wanting three million bucks or needing three million bucks, i reckon it's just like that everyone, any circumstance voucher.

And/or chocolates.

two feet under

It was Grumpy Grandad's birthday yesterday.

Only my youngest sister, K, was there to visit him. I feel bad about this but a couple of days earlier he had told me that he was sick of people reminding him about his birthday. Funny, I remembered him asking my father a few days previously if he thought he would make it to his next birthday. It was important then, when he was scared that he was not going to survive the amputation.

K told me that he mostly dozed through her visit except when he woke to grouchily accuse her husband, a sensitive and gentle man, of 'wanting something' because he had the audacity to say earnestly "Pat you're looking so much better, it's really good."

This is a young man who came in alone to the hospital on the night of Grandad's operation, after he finished work, to sit quietly by his grandfather-in-law and hold his hand.

Good God, I said to K. Did Grandad really say that?
Yep, said K. And in a really loud voice too so everyone in the ward heard and T went bright red and felt humiliated.

So... Grumpy Grandad in fine form, really.

A director I worked with once told me that the human brain is like a waiter carrying six bowls of spaghetti on a tray.

He can only balance six at a time and if he tries to load on a seventh the whole thing tips and crashes. Pasta disaster, as it were.

And so this week, juggling my six bowls plus the salt and pepper and a wedge of parmesan and one of those microplane grater things and a bottle of very rough red on my emotional tray, I decided to quit. Grandad was in a short term better place, my surfie-traditional-chinese-medicine-masters-student sister had flown back north, my dad resumed his holiday down south and that left me and my youngest sister K holding the babies.

And I felt exhausted and sick and on the edge of tears constantly and so it seemed a good time to head back to Sydney and the warmth and noise and exuberant energy of the Big House and the (not so) Naughty Nephews. But also I decided that I can't actually work during this time, that I had to let go of the Monday new play deadline and the eleven script assessments and the meetings for next year's productions and just sleep and rest and mother my son.

And to see my friends and their children.

And eat better.

And look after your feet, T the surfie TCM sister told me sternly. We die from the feet up.

She is not speaking literally, I don't think, although for diabetic one-legged Grumpy Grandad, it is almost true. These latest events began with an evil little ulcer on one toe, unseen, unfelt, untreated.

But the real beginnings, the diabetes, the lifestyle choices, the crappy diet that lays the foundations and points the way for our life journeys... he was a slum kid from Elephant and Castle in London, he was a soldier in the army in WW2, he moved to Australia in the fifties with his wife and kid. My sister-in-law N tells me that the first generation of children born to settlers and convicts alike in this country were significantly taller and larger and healthier than the equivalent aged children back in the mother country. And that was despite being malnourished.
Sadly for Grandad he was already too old at thirty-something to benefit from the miraculous air and sun and water of his new country.

Yesterday when I caught up with Operasinging Mummy and Screenwriting Mummy I saw how they had lovely neat feet with polished toenails. Whereas mine, with their split nails and hairy toes just looked uncared for and unhealthy.

You should massage your feet every night before you sleep, said T. And even pedicures are good, she added, because it draws your attention to your feet and makes you mindful.

And so I mindfully defuzz my toes and massage in the L'Occitane cream and think very seriously about booking a pedicure as a little Christmas present to myself.

And I laugh to myself as I hear Tricky playing hide and seek downstairs with his cousins and shouting wuntoofee coming weddy o nott!

Tricky and I go back to Newcastle today, refreshed and rested and with much nicer feet. Hopefully C will be able to meet us there after a big week in Country Town. I will be encouraging him to massage his feet too. And to briefly just...stop.

Sometimes it is very good to put down the tray, and maybe just dance around the tables a little and juggle the cutlery.

good bad good

My dad arrives in the middle of the night and then the next morning he heads off to the hospital with my sister T.

I stay at home doing various toddler related duties. The last time I took Tricky to hospital, the last time I saw Grandad conscious and sporting both legs, I had to bribe him with half a bag of jelly snakes to sit nicely and be quiet. Toddler, not grandfather.

When they get back they tell me that there's no need to override the full active care decision at this point because, actually, he's um...better.

What are you talking about, I say? How can he be better?

But later, when Tricky is having a nap, I go into the hospital and the young intern pulls me aside. He is doing really well, she tells me. We had a horrible night but now he is having two other painkillers as well as the morphine and so the pain is much better managed, he's less yellow and we think that we have got all the infection.

She is an extremely beautiful woman with quite delicate features and as she smiles at me, delighted, I think that she could easily have been a very successful actor. Film even.

You know how they have that flawless skin?

She seems to be waiting for me to respond and so I say..."oh, isn't that great?" And I think she sees my confusion or my cynicism or maybe my close scrutiny of her perfect tiny pores and so she adds...but he is still a sick man. A very sick man. And I still don't think he will necessarily leave the hospital. But for now he is doing well.

And my face twists to register this good bad good news.

I like him, she tells me. He's feisty. And he gives us a hard time. but then...he's been through a lot, allowed to.

And so when I finally go in to see grandad and he reaches for my hands and asks if they are going to chop any more of him off I can say without a lie that they think they have all the infection so there will be no need to chop other bits off and that he has made the doctor smile because she thinks he is doing very well.

And that makes him happy, for now.

I am typing this on one of the pay internet computer thingies at the hospital. For some reason the wireless at dad's place is up the shit and I can't get online without extreme effort on my part. Everything seems to be so hard. Driving from Sydney to Newcastle I got round the corner to discover that some arsehole had smashed in part of the front of my car while it was parked on the road and the wheel was rubbing against metal. My car that was once my grandad's car, I add. And I'm tired and it's so hard doing this with Tricky.

This afternoon my grandad told me with annoyed surprise that he has been informed he will no longer be allowed to use his walker. I nod and raise my eyebrows as if the thought had never occurred to me.

And...he told me, it took four blokes and a woman to wash me today. So...how they expect me to do it, I don't know.

Hmmm, I nod.

They couldn't take my blood, he tells me, so I told them what to do and now it's good.

That's good, I say.

He grimaces and I wipe his face free of some orange liquid and then clean out his nose, by request.

Is that good? I ask.

That's good, he grunts. Now what I really want is for somone to cut my hair. With the clippers, so that I don't have to bother combing it.

There are no black and whites in this dying malarky are there? I remember with mum it changed hour by hour, good news, bad news, good news, fucked news.

He's not in pain so that's good and the tube is out of his nose and now he will be able to eat slowly and that's good too. But then, he's got bedsores and that's bad, and the boss from his retirement lodge is coming to see him this afternoon and tell him what happens next. And that's going to be bad because it will be the nursing home. But then that's only if he makes it out of hospital and no one can tell us how long he has to stay before then. They don't think his body has what it takes to properly heal after the operation and so that's bad isn't it? Isn't it?

What is good? What is bad? What is hope? What is best?

He is talking and complaining and shouting and being "feisty".

His nose is clean.

His hair needs cutting.

He made the intern smile and there is no more chopping and so, for now, he's happy and that's enough.

Last legs

Poor old man. These are the words that flash into my mind when I walk into the ward this afternoon. 

Poor old one legged grandad, draped in his crisp white sheets, mouth open, tongue cracked and dry. Up his left nostril is a tube that will provide all nutrition from now on, above his bed is a new green sign announcing NBM.

 

Within the tube I see greenish liquid floating in and out his body like the tide.

 

Morphine is his friend. Morphine could be a much better friend but we discover this evening that “his family” and indeed himself have said they would like “full active care” meaning that he will have to endure a considerable amount of pain as various obstacles and setbacks present themselves.

 

My sisters and I flutter like angry sparrows. Who was the “family” who said they wanted full active care? It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. It must have been dad and grandad, that first night when the doctor said his leg should be amputated.

 

But we realize that the only person who would know what that actually means, minimum pain killers, intrusive procedures in response to the litany of organ failings, would be youngest sister K, the nurse.

 

Grandad’s eyes flutter open and shut. The whites are still yellowish but the centres are clear pale blue.

 

Last night I dreamt that I was trapped in a room and my big toes were bitten off and I tried to run through a shopping centre with blood splashing underfoot.

 

He said he wanted to be alive for his birthday which is in a few days. I don’t think he will be. Or maybe he will but he will wish he wasn’t.

 

My dad is six hours away. He is driving back to Newcastle as I type.

 

I ask them to correct the name on the whiteboard above his bed. They have James written there, they call him James and indeed James is his official name.

But the name he prefers is Pat. And finally I ask them to correct the name and they do.

“Pat” It is like a suggested action for comfort.

 

There are three other patients in the room and I realize this afternoon that they are all amputees. Except for one man who sits, fully dressed, on the bed with his knees drawn up to his chin. I think he is saying goodbye to his legs. Nobody else in the room seems to get visitors but one lady is surrounded with loads of flowers.

 

They are talking about ventilators. Pat’s chest is wheezy. But if he has a ventilator that will be curtains. Curtains with a ventilator.

 

I stand and stroke my grandad’s hair just like I stroke my toddler’s hair when I am trying to get him to sleep, just like my mother used to stroke my hair when I was a little girl, just like I stroked her hair when she was dying.

 

Yesterday when my sister T left the hospital after seeing him, her last look at two legged granddad, a man walking on the footpath in front of her collapsed and died. He was talking on the mobile phone and he dropped like a stone and my sister grabbed at him and shouted DUDE DUDE WAKE UP. I think this was the surfer in her talking and then the Chinese medicine masters student with a recent first aid certificate took over and she thumped away at his chest while another woman did mouth to mouth until one of the passing ambos came and took over.  It was full on, she said as I gaped at her story. But in some ways it helped me to take my mind off things.

 

He has said that he doesn’t believe in any sort of life after death, does not believe he will be reunited with my dead grandma, does not even think his essence will be dispersed Harry Bliss style and he will float up and up, spreading thinner and wider, until he is absorbed by the trees around him. This is a shame because just outside his window is a veritable forest of beautiful tall roughbarked eucalypts and anyone of these would make a pleasant receptacle for one’s soul.

 

This evening it is made clear to me that my granddad will die.

 

The doctor tells me that she doesn’t think he will leave the hospital. She tells me that she told him the same thing when he was deciding whether to have the operation or not. He could succumb to the infection and just be kept comfortable on painkillers or have the operation to remove the source of infection. At the time I thought, well what would I choose, of course I would choose a shot at life, one legged though it may be. But now I learn that he will die anyway. He was always going to die anyway, there are too many things wrong with him. And so why did he have to have his leg cut off my sisters and I ask each other tearfully. He is in such terrible pain, why can’t he just be comfortable?

 

Because he made a choice, our youngest sister, K says. And we have to respect that. As a family we can override his choice but we have to understand that it’s what we will be doing.

But he didn’t realize…

But he thought it would do him some good…

But he’s in so much pain….

But it is his choice.

 

Then just as we think maybe he will drift off in a hazy sea of friendly morphine K tells us that if he does, they will administer Narcan to revive him and that will negate every trace of opiate in his system and so he will be hit with the full force of his post op pain and it will be like being hit by a bus. Worst case scenario, she adds hastily as T starts to sob and say we have to ring the hospital and tell them he has to be comfortable, we want him to be comfortable…this is just inhumane.

 

But his choice…

 

And so now we wait for our father, now three hours away, and we see how Pat is tomorrow. And as a family try and make a decision for a poor old man, a poor old grumpy man, rude and cantankerous, stubborn and abrasive. But loved.

Yellow

Grumpy grandad has turned yellow.

I have mixed feelings about yellow. It can be sunny and jolly and once I had a study painted yellow because I felt it was very condusive to creative writing but in clothes, for instance, it's a big no no (me being a winter and all) and in my grandad's skin it's all wrong.

But then it is all wrong, all this, getting to this point.

It was diabetes in the beginning but now it's Body Packed it In Disease which includes dodgy bladder, numb legs, dicky heart, several falls and (perhaps) a half tumbler of whiskey a night to get to sleep.

As well as being yellow (not exactly sure but I think medical term is "his liver=fucked") it seems that he will also need to have his leg amputated up to the knee. That would be that creeping infection in the bone.

They do that to you every time, those creeping infections. Start off as an ulcer, hidden in a pair of bedroom slippers, casually whistling, don't mind me I'm just going to loiter around and...fester.

Give them two toes and they take a limb.

Two weeks ago my grandad was already feeling that life deserved the big finger after day after day of botched and buggered up catheter business. The old feller was getting more action than it had ever seen in his tours of duty, except of course having a catheter inserted and reinserted and readjusted and repeat is very fucking painful.

At the hospital I looked at my grandad, helpless and yellow in his hospital bed minus his clothes, and teeth and glasses. And two toes. He is scared. If he survives the operation he will be in great pain and the lodge where he has a little roomette of his own will move him into the high care facility, the nursing home.

"You only come out of there in a chute," he told us once.

He is a big heavy man my grandad. He won't be able to walk and he won't be able to put himself into a wheelchair so there will be hoisting required and cunning bits of machinery...but the staff will be busy, said my youngest sister K, a nurse herself, and so they will end up leaving him in bed.

I stroke his hair, picking little pieces of flaky scalp off as I do and letting them flutter over the side of the hospital bed.

I rub his arm and note how his tattoo, the one he got after D-Day and the Liberation of Paris, is stained with blood.

My stepmother has been given a book on death and dying and I looked at it before I went into visit Grandis. It is a very good book (and when I get back to Newcastle I will note the name) with some very good things to think about. I took some photographs with me to the hospital, of the family, of my long dead grandmother, of my younger smartly dressed grandfather.

Yesterday we came back to Sydney to pick up Byron Bay sister T who has flown in to see him too. Later today she and I and Tricky will drive back to Newcastle while C drives for 6 hours to Country Town where he is working on an exhibition. Life continues.

As does death.

He won't be able to recognise these photographs, I thought. His eyes have been bad for a while and he's not wearing glasses, he won't be able to see a thing, but I was wrong.

That's Alma Louise, he pointed out. My wife. And there's old Pickles! Our dog! Now she was a ...um...boxer, that's it. And there's the girls when they were little. And there's us in Penang when we went to visit them...there we are sitting outside the Snake Temple...

Funny old photographs, faces long changed or gone, full of stories and memories of the past.

The colours had changed, I noticed, but they do that, old photographs. Too much time or maybe a reaction to the plastic sheets in the old photo album. And I saw how those long ago people, the woman in the hat and the smartly dressed man wearing glasses posing happily by a stone temple wall seem bathed in a sickly yellow light.

hope

A few years ago I tried to write a one-woman show for a well known Australian tv and film actress. I had done some work with her on another project and she was someone I knew to have integrity and compassion. I liked her work and I liked her personality.

She was one of the people I thought of yesterday, at 3pm, as I hurried to pick up the Naughty Nephews and the Toddler Tyrant, with the radio up loud, listening to the announcement of the new President of the United States of America.

I was late because I had been watching the webcasts as well as making zuchini muffins and I was of course sleep deprived - the night before being officially the worst Night Of Living Hell ever (Toddler screaming starts at 3am, Parents' screaming starts at 4.30 am. All fall into exhausted sleep at 5am).

We had talked a little about the sort of play it could be, this actress and I, and she told me that when she looked at new scripts she looked for stories of hope.

There is too much darkness in this world, she told me. Too much anger, too much hate.

I can't be part of something that simply adds to the despair. For my children if not for me.

There has to be light.

Yesterday, I felt like the whole world was reading the same script and hoping for the same light.

For our children if not for us.

don't stop now

God it's hard... doing this... trying to write...with half a brain...

I was talking to Screenwriting Mummy as we lolled over cups of tea and our various offspring/spawn of Satan/toddlers were raising tiny person hell nearby.

She nodded slightly, too knackered to actually expend energy on words.

We were trying to talk about the work we had been doing on a television series - both of us having written an episode- and this was a chance to catch up but also to debrief some of the process. Instead we slumped about, talked in half sentences, ate junkfood and yawned a lot.

Tricky, now seemingly entrenched in his big boy bed, is playing his parents for the mollycoddling amateurs they are. When, in some desperation, I turned to Christopher Green's excellent study in the area; "Toddler Taming", I discovered that C and I are textbook suckers for toddler related sleep deprivation mainly due to our willingness to fetch water, replace doona and spend hours stroking his back on demand. As well, we have let him sleep in our bed although in the wee hours I will generally struggle to carry him back.

Another playwrighting friend told me recently that her daughter still sleeps in the parental bed - at the age of five and a half. It was an improvement as far as my friend was concerned. Previously her daughter would cry loudly in the middle of the night until carried into her parents' bed, now she gets up and climbs into their bed herself.

And quite soon, I thought, she'll also be able to get herself up and pop over to the bakery for morning croissants.

The edit section on this blog is littered with the corpses of dead posts I half wrote before the mushbrain hit.

In the same way my Leunig wall calendar is crossed with never-made deadlines and opportunities lost because I've been too tired or fuzzy headed to knock up a proposal.

Which made this news so entirely miraculous:

Congratulations on your successful application to the New Work - Developing Writers grant category of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. Please find attached your letter of notification and the contract for your grant...

This is a grant for me to write a second book, next year, which I am calling as a 'working title' (except I really like it): The Unreliable Observer's Guide To Pond Life.

And am I happy?

I tell you, I'd be jumping up and down like a mad thing, in celebration, except that I'm too frigging tired.

Revisiting

Last weekend we returned to the Parental Home to have our last few days of fun with my sister AJ and the Nephews/Niece. My sister and her family live in a small, picturesque corner of New Zealand; a country seemingly made of nothing but small picturesque corners and the occasional large flightless bird. They were due to return this week and while I had detected a certain weariness amongst my parents, I could also see that they would be sorely missed.

AJ, being the mother of an 8 yr old boy, a 6 yr old girl and a 4 yr old gorilla, seems perpetually tired but in a sort of gentle, gracious Earth Mother-ish sort of way. Whereas I, mother of a screaming tomato aged 2 and three months, am also perpetually tired, but in a thrashing, writhing Earth Worm-ish sort of way.

On Saturday night AJ, our surfy naturopath sister T, our stepmum D and my husband C went off to one of the local pubs to watch a rather grumpy Australian singer play her 90's hits. Meanwhile, my dad and I fed the all kids, bathed them and put them to bed.

With Tricky's new jack-in-the-box style of sleeping and the NZ cousins' own sleep related pecadillos, it meant some clever tactics for the grownups.

For me it meant attempting to be more calm, more zen about the whole sleep battle thing. One of my friends has a pre-schooler and she described the crucial period when she would lie next to her toddler, patting her back, until she fell asleep. It took about twenty minutes and this particular stage lasted for six months.

"Six Months!" I had exclaimed in horror.

"It's ok," she reassured me. "Once I accepted that there was nothing else I could do I just lay there and came up with script ideas. I wrote two animation scripts in my head during that six months."

So as I lay next to Tricky on the Big Bed and stroked his back (more doking Mummy) I tried to ponder script ideas and exciting new plays. Instead, all I could think about was the frightening news my producer had shared with me last week when she told me they were making a 'behind the scenes' thing to go with the television series and the writers would be filmed talking about their episodes and also their 'process'.

What could I say about my episode, I wondered. What could I say about my process? And most important of all, what should I wear?

Give or take a few false sleeping alarms (Tricky can be practically snoring but has his eyes wide open and ears alert for any sound of escaping parent. Mummy! More Doking!) I was out of the bedroom by 8.30.

My dad, I noted, had set up a chair between the bedrooms of the NZ nephews/niece and was sitting there, keeping guard and growling if anyone dared to sit up. Which was not dissimilar to the technique he used on my sisters and I when we were kids.

The NZ kids aren't naughty per se, but like most kids they are...well... intense in small spaces.

Also quite adventurous and selectively deaf.

These two things combined can be fairly gutwrenching for a gentle soul like AJ. My sister took her kids on an outing to the Sydney Aquarium. After a good hour or so of examining the sharks and octopi and multitude of brightly coloured reef fish, their little group emerged blinking in the sunlight and stood for a few minutes by the edge of the wharf. When AJ stopped blinking she found that her youngest, the gorilla, was missing.

After calling his name in more and more desparate tones she decided he must have fallen over the edge of the wharf and into the harbour. As she flung her bag onto the ground and prepared to leap into the water she heard an answering call - naughty gorilla child had wandered back into the aquarium and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.

At which point AJ felt her knees buckle as she fell to the ground and howled.

This was probably the lowlight of her holiday, there were a few sleepless nights and shouty mornings, one rather badly hungover day which she couldn't really blame on the kids, but give or take some conflicts over eat your dinner! brush your teeth! and stay in bed! I think they all had a great time.

This was perhaps measured best by the intense reaction that occurred on Tuesday when, AJ enjoying her penultimate day in Australia with a relaxing hair treatment and a final jolly catch up with our younger sisters (and newest Tiny Niece) before her return to NZ on Wednesday, discovered rather late in the morning that she had in fact got her dates arse about. She had drifted onto T's computer to check her bank balance and called out in a perplexed tone: why does your computer say today is the 28th? Answer of course being: because it is.

It seemed that in fact, Tuesday, ie the 28th, was the day she was meant to vacate the country.

Not Wednesday.

Cue a lot of frantic and hysterical packing of two and a half weeks of collected holiday shite into three too-small suitcases. Also some handwringing over failure to properly farewell Aphwa, visit Grandad etc. Also, just sort of random non-copeyness. My dad described her as looking like a rabbit in the headlights as she stood in the middle of the bedroom staring, helpless, at first one suitcase and then another while T and K packed like demons around her.

I was in Sydney at this point but discovered the situation when I rang to find out how Grumpy Grandad was faring - another post - and then, while dad drove AJ and the kids two and a half hours to Sydney Airport I got online to try and check them in (only for domestic flights) and failing that, try to find the right number to call someone and explain the problem (you want to speak to a human, are you joking?).

The plan was for C to drop me at the airport so I could be there to help wrangle the kids (and my sister) to the check in counter and help keep them together until they could be shepherded onto their flight. This worked reasonably well, although there was one horrid moment when I tried to find my 8 year old nephew who had suddenly gone AWOL and I stood in the middle of the airport searching for a glimpse of curly black hair and thin running legs and thought:

Maybe one really is enough.

But then he was found (I told you I was going to the toilet! I did!) and all was forgiven and Crispy Cremes were selected and packed into handluggage (you can only eat these when you are sitting in your seats on the plane, with your seatbelts on!) and then my sister was in floods of tears again and mumbling about her wonderful family and how she must be insane...

And then they were gone.

Later that night as I sat by my toddler, doking his back, and trying to think of script ideas, I thought about how close my sisters and I have become as we have gotten older, how much we like each other as adult women.

And I remembered how, when I first caught sight of her oldest son, dripping wet from the pool, face split with a huge grin as he ran up to say hello, I nearly laughed out loud because his face was AJ's face but her face as a child - a face I hadn't seen for more than thirty years. It was like being in a time machine and being taken back to Penang and Werribee and Carlingford and all the little corners of our childhood.

A new stage worth toasting... nightly.

Today I picked up Tricky's little friend, Midget Vampire Boy, from daycare along with Tricky and they had a nice play together at home with Naughty Nephew the 3rd on our new trampoline. Tricky calls it 'dumping' and I find it hard to contradict him because it makes me laugh when he asks if he can dump on the tam-peen.

I say 'new' because we bought it last Christmas, or at least Santa did, but after having four boys dump up and down and wrestle and fling themselves from mesh wall to mesh wall, the trampoline is looking a little on the sad and saggy side.

Not unlike me.

When Midget Vampire's mother turned up, the very beautiful and talented Opera Singing Mummy, she looked at me with concern and said I looked drab and weary and a small vertical frown had developed across my forehead. OSM can say these sorts of things because we have been friends since first year drama at Newcastle University, when she was a buxom virgin in wholesome gingham and I was still learning to draw my eyeliner on straight.

Anyway my point is that the two of us sat down and watched the toddlers at play and OSM saw how Tricky soon tired of innocent dumping and instead took to wicked flinging all the wooden train tracks off the table and onto the floor, all the while with an evil little smile playing across his lips.

And then I explained about the hellish no-sleep nights we'd been having and she nodded. Midget Vampire Boy has just turned 3 and indeed has been responsible for many a hellish night himself. So she knew and was sympathetic.

She leaned across and patted my arm.

"Tricky's just going through a stage but I'm concerned..." she said and her voice was warm and caring, "that you won't have anywhere near enough alcohol in this house."

Interestingly I had thought the very same thing - not that there wasn't enough alcohol because I knew there certainly was - but that as the mother of a toddler it would be so easy to become a complete lush.

And then tonight, I put Tricky into his bed, and led him back twice and stroked his back and sat on the floor beside him and tried to be calm and not think about a glass of wine and by 8.30 he was asleep.

By coincidence (and not because of OSM's observation) I am having my First Ever Facial tomorrow. I am taking my other friend from uni, Screen Writing Mummy, for her birthday treat. She rang me tonight and we discussed plans and lunch and clothing to be worn.

And my big tip, said Screen Writing Mummy, re the facial, is this: Don't Fall Asleep.

And I swear I'll try not to, because obviously one wants to experience one's full money's worth and also one doesn't want to do that embarrasing snorty snore thing where you just catch yourself dropping off, but lordy if I'm horizontal and even just vaguely comfortable without a toddler screaming in my ear for water, I don't really hold out much hope.

Night Terror

We are just back from visiting the family in Newcastle and potentially the most appalling nights' sleep ever.

Not just us, the motherperson and the fatherperson, but also grandparents, two aunties and three little New Zealand cousins. And not just the one night, but three, although to give Tricky his due he made sure that the nights got progressively worse.

Last week, after a couple of harrowing nights where Tricky had managed to throw himself out of the cot several times in an hour, C rolled up his sleeves and transformed the cot into a Big Boy Bed.

Cue much delighted shrieking from Small Brown Toddler and insisting that it was bedtime at 3 in the afternoon.

Mine Big Boy Bed! Mine have seeping! Mine seeping now! Doodnight!
On that first night he curled up in his big boy bed with a grin. C and I put an arm around each other's waist and simpered at each other. So adorable. So sweet.

Too easy.

He must have been chortling into his gingham doona cover.

One night and one night only of uninterrupted sleep. The next and the next and the next saw Tricky imitating a jack-in-the-box and us re-enacting a scene from Groundhog Day, probably one that hit the cutting room floor.

We had been advised that the best thing to do was to take him by the hand and firmly lead him back to bed without speaking or making eye-contact.

This worked well the first time. I led him back to bed and he obediently climbed back in. I did the same thing about 4 minutes later. Then C did it a couple of times. We were both aware that we were trying to instill good sleeping habits in our child, essential healthgiving skills that would ensure the wellbeing of all, and also we were gagging to watch the next episode of The Wire (series 2) in bed (with headphones).

C and I were quite calm and grownup about the leading back, taking it in turns, tipping each other off as we spotted him approaching our computers, muttering out of the side of our mouths like a couple of bad ventriloquists.

Ooh, here he comes, I can see him in the window.
Is he looking at us?
Yup.
Who's he heading for?
You.
Ok, both ignore him and then when he gets close enough I'll grab his hand and take him back.

But Tricky seemed to think that the silent treatment wasn't really working and on about the fourth or fifth curtain call he decided we needed a good prompt.

Come on, Mummy, he said, as he grabbed my hand and led me back to the bedroom.
Time for bed. Tricky's big boy bed. Seepy time. Det into bed. Shhhhh!

There was no Wire that night. Instead, C and I, finally, beaten, turned off the lights and got into bed only to hear the ominous patter of little feet, followed quickly by the rabid scrabbling of little paws.

And yes I got out of bed and led him back to his Big Boy Bed. And again and again. But at some point in the night, half asleep, I got confused and put him into our bed and so The Toddler won, at least until about four in the morning when I awoke to find his feet jammed into my stomach and I picked him up and carried him back to where he belonged.

Which leads us to our little holiday in Newcastle to meet lovely little cousins/nephews/niece and to see Aunty AJ again and Aunty K and newest Tiny Niece and, bonus: Aunty T down from Byron Bay. Aphwa and Poppy's house was full and so Tricky had to sleep in his travel cot in the same room with us and so the nightmare began again. Except this time, although he could climb out of the travel cot he couldn't get back in and it was hot and the walls were thin...

Yerk.

Last night, the worst of all, Tricky woke (in travel cot) suddenly, at 11pm, and started screaming about...oh look who knows. There was something about Mummy and Big Bed and quite a lot of Water and I think there was something about the Global Financial Crisis...but really, when you are wrenched from your sleep by a howling monster of a toddler who arches and kicks in your arms and then tries to hit you across the face and then when given a sippy cup of water throws it on the floor because you haven't held it to his lips as he expressly told you listen when I am screaming, how many times do I have to tell you my hands do not touch the loathsome sippy cup and then finally when you do hold it to his lips he bites down and uses his teeth to rip the lid off ensuring he and you will be doused in water and now he really will scream because I am wet dammit, change my trousers this instant!

I am sort of laughing about it now but in that moment, knowing that everyone, adults and kids alike had also been rudely woken and were lying there, wondering what the hell was happening, and water dripped through my pyjamas and my child howled and bucked and kicked and slapped, I felt like some evil fairy had slipped through the window and replaced my darling little bubba boy with some horrendous mythical monster.

I shouted at C through gritted, I Have Had Enough, teeth and he leapt up and grabbed Tricky and dragged him out into the loungeroom where I would find them ten minutes later curled together on the sofa, Tricky's eyes large and dark as he silently drank cup after cup of water.

But before then, I got up and turned on the light to get a towel and dry myself and the bed off, and I saw my angry face in the mirror and my ugly clenched-jaw scowl, and who, I wondered, was the real monster now?

Having Your Cake And Eating It (also the icing and sprinkles)

This attractively garish and slightly fuzzy array of anti-oxident rich cupcakes was the product of a few hours of quality time between Tricky and myself.

Yes they came from a packet.

They were (gasp) sans buttermilk. That's despite my previous cupcake making experience.

Nigella would be turning in her rose petal infused milk bath.

No I don't know if Nigella has a rose infused milk bath. I do know that she's not lactose-intolerant so she may indeed enjoy le douche de la vache-juice .

(Please feel free to correct. I have decided to continue to apprendre le francais via blog comments only.)

Like Nigella to milkbaths, so too Tricky to this nutritious blue icing.

Especially on the big spoon.

No I didn't eat any cupcakes. The very sight of them disgusted me.

Yes they were eaten by a selection of children.

Yes those children are all related to me in one way or another.

While Tricky is enjoying the remainder of his health-giving green sprinkles (strange that he won't eat his broccoli with such enthusiasm), I shall just add that the title of this post was originally going to be:

Contracting Yet Another Flu Virus And Hacking Tiny Droplets Of Phlegm over Your Toddler Ensuring He Bears Your Infection, Spikes A Fever, And Has A Meltdown Just As You Walk In The Door At Daycare.

But, it didn't really have much of a ring.

Plus... no photos.

Scenes from my life...

Last week exploded like an egg in a microwave.

It started when I got The Phonecall from my producer-bosses asking me for the new draft of my episode within a matter of hours.

This was followed by another meeting with notes for rewriting over the next 48 hours.

Day then followed night in the strange floating world that is Rewriting Scenes Very Fucking Fast. It was uncomfortable and I consumed way too much coffee and chocolate but in a strange perverted way, I enjoyed it.

'You were in The Zone' one of my fellow writers observed, and yay verrily I was there, I did the tour and I bought the postcards.

I didn't even get the Second Phonecall, it went straight to messagebank but the gist was: my baby sister K (aged 29) had gone into labour 4 weeks early.

The baby was breech, she went to have accupuncture on Monday afternoon to try and turn the baby and within a couple of hours she had a foot in her birthcanal and a nightmare car ride to the hospital ending with an emergency c-section and...a divinely beautiful little tiny girl.

Cue Tricky and I dashing to Newcastle as soon as I had submitted my script, seeing Tiny Niece, blubbering over baby sister K and her husband for good measure and all the other things one does when a new baby comes into the world.

Our sister AJ is coming from New Zealand on Monday to stay for two and a half weeks. She is bringing lots of sensible sleep advice and her three kids meaning Tricky will be well and truly clubbed with the Cousin Stick...he will have met four in a fortnight.

In between the arranging and the phonecalls, the photos and the release drafts, the show and the baby, I find myself musing over how unpredictable life can be, my life for instance, and how that's not such a bad thing at all, although can be difficult if one wants to schedule a legwax say or an apppointment with the dentist - which may explain why I've never done the first and the second was two years ago .

As I held Tiny Niece and marvelled at her tiny ears and imagined nibbling off her tiny fingers (oh come on, don't say the thought has never crossed your mind) my sister K said to me...'do you feel like doing IVF again?'

'Of course I do,' I said, 'of course I do.'

And of course I don't, the last thing I feel like doing at the moment, in this crazy all-at-once dreamworld is pinch an inch and date the dildocam (and if I can't schedule my dentist how will I schedule Dr Lovely Accent) but I do, yes, feel like holding another tiny dancing baby that I call mine, and of course that sad soft yearning will never really go away.

Return to the scene of the crime...

No lasting trauma it seems.

waterbaby

Tricky is a water baby, born in July, Cancer, like the motherperson, much to her concern. (Oh dear, that means two over sensitive, moody as all get out, easily enraged, fiercely loyal, grudge bearing, easily spooked, crab people in the family. )

Thank God that C the fatherperson is a jolly Sag.

Tricky has not yet learned to fear water but that may come. His mother has nearly drowned twice thank you very much, Penang and Phuket, and every year when she joins her extended family at the beach be it Fremantle or Bronte, Newcastle or Byron Bay, she stays just that bit closer to the shore.

The water laps pleasantly at her knees and the fatherperson tries to entice her further in and when enticing doesn’t work, attempts violent abduction, but she is very good at the stern voice and the prune mouth and so he laughs and lets her go and stands on his head and waves his feet at her.

And now the fatherperson has a smiling toddler to ferry through the waves and carry on his back.

It is not quite swimming time here, the water is icy but already there has been fish and chips on the beach with the Naughty Nephews and sandcastle making at the beach and digging of personal puddles with new plastic spade and fork.

On the weekend there was a trip to Newcastle and that led to an excursion to the wetlands which was almost educational and may well have been if Tricky could read, say, or pronounce ‘catchment area’ or ‘biodiversity’. But instead it was all about walking with Aphwa and Poppy, the east coast grandparents, (as opposed to Gramma and Papa on the west) and a certain amount of dip netting aka “bishing”.

Despite many an effort with the dip net, the bishing was unsuccessful, in that no bish was actually caught although shoals of the things could be spotted weaving and darting through the swampy waters.

I didn’t bother taking pictures of the menfolk and their earnest, bloody-minded attempts to catch a fish for Tricky, I simply laughed.

The point with the dip net was really just to dip and empty into a basin to see if there was anything in the net such as weed, water beetles, leeches or damselfly nymphs.

The basin started embarrassingly with a bit of bark but as the day wore on a succession of sucking, wriggling, biting insect larvae were caught, examined, prodded and returned.

Back at Poppy and Aphwa’s house, the swimming pool (fenced yes, poster demonstrating CPR, yes) is also a great attraction, what with Poppy’s regular skimming (which is really just an oversized dipnet) and Jimmy the dog leaping in and dogpaddling from side to side.

And Tricky found a small broom and did some serious dipping and skimming with that. And it was good. Which is why, early on the morning before we left, with the fatherperson half asleep, and an extremely alert and cheerful toddler quite determined to dip the other side of the pool, there was a sudden splash and a roar and a very very loud and long cry for Mummy.

I did not see him fall and for that I’m quite grateful but I held his frightened trembling body and kissed his salty wet face and also the pale cold face of his father.

And that night, snuggled up together, C woke suddenly with a start and a gasp and the image seared into his head of his baby blithely stepping over the edge and sinking and rising to the surface and starting to sink again as C reached him and pulled him out.

Letter To A 26 Month Old DareDevil

My darling Tricky

26 months…wonderful yet terrifying.

“He (or she) is a real little person now!” others exclaim, as if, up till now, you have been another species. Possibly a meercat.

Perhaps this is because others now understand more of what you are saying. While we have delighted in your imperious commands and stern retorts for some time, not to mention your enormous repertoire of nursery songs, other folk have heard only a succession of goo goos and gah gahs with a few tinkle tinkles thrown in here and there. But now, when you sing ‘appy bir’day dear gamma,’ gamma does actually hear and understand.

You sing, you dance and jump on the spot (“I’m dumping! I’m dumping!”) And how you enjoy taking up new words, rolling them about your mouth and chewing on them eagerly as if each word was a warm tasty chunk: Avocado! Tomato! Medicine!

It's like we have gone back in time with the books because you are back in love with Commotion In The Ocean, not for the crappy poetry but for the hidden starfish that adorn each page.

"Where is the TarFish?" you demand of us. "It is somewhere here," and you swirl your chubby hand in an imperious circle over the page, helpfully allowing us to find the tarfish for the billiontieth time.

Just as we get excited about your language so too you kindly let us know when we have managed to correctly identify an item.

"Tricky is that your avocado you threw on the floor?"
"Yes mummy, it IS mine avocado!"

"Tricky is this your toothbrush in the bath toys?"
"Yes, it IS mine toosbwush!"

Of course along with all the rights of morphing from meercat into Real Little Person come the responsibilities. Frequent spontaneous expressions of joy for instance. (Tick) Also kissing of parents without being directed. I’m giving you a tick for this one too even though I note that your most recent version of giving a “diss” is you pushing your open mouth against my face, and rolling your own face from one side to another.

It’s like I’m a lump of shortcrust pastry and a small damp rolling pin is preparing me for a citron tart. I can handle it because you have the softest skin in the world whereas if your father decided to adopt this style of kissing I could be in danger of being grated to death.

And your other responsibility of course is to take frequent risks. Tick tick tick.

My heart went a little cold when the father of an 19 year old party animal (“I think she’s doing her degree in hard liquor”) told me last month that he could tell who among his toddlers was going to be Roger Responsible and who was going to be Petunia Puke In The Plastic Bag.

Even at such a tender age, he insisted, the seeds of Caution and the seeds of Bloody Minded Risk Taking were firmly dug in and already taking root.

I filled him in on your plastic motorbike exploits and he nodded grimly and went on to talk about his daughter’s early quest for thrills which seemed to involve rolling herself headlong down the stairs.

It made me go quiet and think about you and the way you seem to be utterly fearless and I wondered whether it will mean in years to come you’ll happily indulge in various self-destructive activities just because you can/it’s there/you’re bored.

There’s no fanfare around your stunts, no ‘look at me’ as you rocket down a concrete drive on your motorbike with your legs outstretched, or leap off the edge of the couch, or run full pelt up the hallway and throw yourself down so you go skidding on your knees like a rockstar.

I see you press your lips firmly together and take on an expression of great concentration (which I usually associate with you filling your mumpy) just before you launch yourself into the unknown. And when the thump comes, as it inevitably does, there are surprisingly few tears.

You’re not a wuss. Not with that sort of stuff. You laugh and bounce with your three big cousins on the trampoline and I dance around the edge of the net saying “gentle jumping boys,” “please don’t keep trying to make Tricky fall over,” “yes I can see he’s laughing but…I think it might end in tears”, “come out now Tricky that’s enough..” and you tell me loudly MORE DUMPING. MINE WANT MORE DUMPING.

See here’s the thing, I was/am the complete opposite to you. Fearful, cautious, responsible, wilts under stern gaze of authority. And these things were evident when I was two. I had a little sister I adored and was constantly reminded that I was mummy’s helper. And with all my meek, cautious ways, I still had accidents. I dropped bricks on my toes and had prangs on my bike. It happens.

I don’t want to be the mother who says No all the time, the one that says be careful darling and that’s enough and slow down. Because I think maybe I had a mother like that and while I can’t remember her telling me those things, in my mind that voice is still there.

Except, that distant voice has been superceded by my own booming foghorn: Don’t show your work, Don’t put yourself out there you’ll only be humiliated, It’s better not to do anything than to fail, You’ve been rejected and that’s your fault for trying in the first place…

And so while I don’t want you to be hurt or injured, I also don’t ever want you to be afraid of trying things, of taking risks, of embarking in a struggle, of putting yourself on the line.

Somehow your father (who was almost the complete opposite to me, with the scars to prove it) and I have to teach you how to weigh up the risks involved, how to value the potential wins and assess the potential losses.

And how to get up and try again no matter what the outcome.

And bugger me that seems a hard lesson because I don’t even know that I’ve learned it yet.

Wonderful, yet terrifying.

Love

Your very own

OvaGirl

xxxxxx

Every Second

Last night was my play reading and WOOO FUCKING HOO IT ROCKED!!

It was funny and people laughed and then laughed some more and one person was seen taking a sip of red wine and laughing and then having to SPIT THAT WINE RIGHT BACK INTO THE GLASS which is not just a sign of good gags but also a sign of serious fucking class and I think his mother would be very proud indeed.

But the things that pleased me included the fact that the audience was predominantly male and this was a story where the main character was female and talked alot about her feelings and some may have relegated this type of story to a sort of 'chick-lit' play but actually it appealed to blokes too and they laughed loudly (and in some cases hysterically) and I think that laughter is an instant sort of indicator that an audience is understanding what you are getting at.

Also...although this was not a play about infertility per se, it was a play where the four characters happen to be infertile. What I realised via the day long workshop, the reading and the discussion afterwards was that this play is actually about love and the dying of sexual intimacy and the resilience (or not) of relationships.

Not shiny sparky new relationships with all the rampant sex and giggles but the sort of relationship that's been going a few years now and for the four years previously has been subjected to the slow crushing glacial pressure of infertility which is starting to warp one character's general perception of what is normal, what is safe, what is suspicious.

And so these two people who fell into each other's lives and loved each other and adored each other and spoke the same language are essentially being wrenched apart but in a slow creeping insidious sort of way.

And then something happens. A terrible thing. An accident. And a secret. And the play begins from here.

And so again that kind of increases the universality of the play. Because...people have relationships, and secrets and things they want to tell their partner but just can't. And guilt.
And also, sometimes (perhaps more often than you might think) little hairy rat-like dogs who appear to be wearing eyeliner.

It is not Theatre In Education For The Barren as one of my friends observed.

But back to the jokes because as well as being tragic and dramatic, it's funny as well. In the feedback session one audience member noted that it was big laughs for three quarters of the play and essentially none in the last quarter. And that seems a fairly good equation to me.

Other observations:

Characters having sex on stage is reasonably interesting, but vastly improved by having one of those characters decide they don't really feel like it after all and the other character having to eventually scream: "But you've had quicker wanks in the shower. It's Day 14 and I'm ovulating so pull yourself together and give me some sperm!"

I do think the sperm ballet worked although I'm not totally sure why.

People who liked the monologue about taking long walks late at night to exercise your dog (but actually to avoid your wife) seemed to really like it and their faces became pinched and sad when other people tried to suggest that the dog monologue had no real place here.

Some people came up to me and said they thought the play was good to go. "Like now. On. Get it on stage. You will iron out any problems in rehearsal. Quickly go." Other people wanted to talk about "removing a subplot".

The actors were fantastic and made my lines funnier and sadder and more poignant and that's fine because THAT'S THEIR FUCKING JOB.

And finally, I got one of my characters to use the words: dildocam, foot long needle, trigger shot and lala in the same monologue.

It's the little things that count.

Cleanliness is next to Mummy-ness

My son threw me out of the bath last night.

Quite often Tricky has a bath with his cousin, Naughty Nephew the 3rd who is six. The two of them have great fun with the bath toys, both the purchased wind up variety and also the scavenged plastic sauce bottle variety. Oh yes, the laffs those two have. Possibly only bettered during the recent visit of le nephew and la niece.

La niece, NN3 and Tricky had several baths together where they perfected a game they called: crazy hairdressers. In this game, the two older children were the hairdressers (crazy) and the toddler was the unsuspecting but grinning like a maniac customer.

Squeals of delight, raucus chortles, fond parental smiles of watching adults etc etc.

Cut to last night when foolish motherperson suggested that it would be quite lovely for Tricky and Mummy to have a bath together. After all, Mummy has been quite sick over last week or so with ghastly hacking-cough, viral, sliceable-phlegm type thing and much of the childcare that hasn't been done by Marvellous Carer at daycare has been done by Excellent Daddy.

But now, the motherperson is feeling a bit more like her old self. Virus is gone with only unattractive yellow remnants in lungs and sinus cavities. She misses playing with her little boy. She wants to have fun. Here's a windup turtle weeeeeeee!

Tricky stares at me as if he can't quite believe what he's hearing and I naturally take this as a resounding, jumping for joy, yes!

"What japes we'll have," I tell him as I peel off my clothes and do a quick last hacking spit into the sink for good measure. "We can even play Crazy Hairdressers!"

I sink into the bath as C undresses Tricky, congratulating myself for sitting in front of the tap bit, as now there will be no annoying twiddling the cold water tap on, filling the sauce bottle and emptying it over the bath mat etc because my lumpen coughing body will form an effective, phlegm filled barrier.

The shrieking starts as C lowers Tricky into the water.

"What is it darling?" I say, wondering if I have made the bath water too hot.

Tricky's dark eyes fill with tears, his lips quiver, his face reddens.

"DET OUT MUMMY!" he shouts. "MINE BATH. TRICKY'S BATH! DET OUT MUMMY!"

"No darling," I say calmly. "This is Mummy's bath too. Let's play with these toys. Here's the sauce bottle!"

Tricky refuses to sit, instead standing over me, glaring and in full Screaming Tomato mode.

"WALKING MUMMY!" he kindly suggests to me, as a healthy alternative to a bath.

"Where should I walk?" I ask, idly pouring a bucket of water over myself.

It seems Tricky has no answer to this since luckily he hasn't yet learned the concepts of 'Hell', 'off a short pier' or 'up your own arse for all I care.' Instead he goes back to chanting his original mantra which involved me removing myself quickly from his bath.

I det out and dry myself off, a little sadly, I have to admit. Tricky is finally sitting down and calming himself by filling up the sauce bottle from a tiny trickle out of the coldwater tap. At some point in the next few minutes this will end up over the bathroom floor.

The clingwrap baby syndrome might be coming to an end, I muse, as I swab away at the sodden floor with C's towel. There was once a time when he'd scream if I dared to get out of his bath.

But of course once he's out, and dried, and dressed in his new big boy pjs, we have beautiful cuddles and kisses on the big bed and rounds of stories with his cheek against mine. So maybe it's ok not to have a bath together. And I feel a little emotional and blow my nose loudly and Tricky looks on with interest.

"Mummy dot 'not?" he asks casually.

"Mummy does," I say. "Buckets full. Will we have a bath together tomorrow do you think?"

He says nothing, instead diligently counting the starfish in his book.

And obviously, as his motherperson, I take this as a definitive yes.

Words Words Words

I missed writing a letter to Tricky last month, his 26th. First I felt bad and then I thought how ridiculous that was, with everything that's going on here. I write everyday and somedays that includes blogging but lately it hasn't because there's never enough time to write all the words I want to write.

The tv ep is going ok but slow, and the rewrites required are pretty huge. There are a lot of going back to the beginning moments and revisiting early notes and my desk aint organised at the best of times. But I'm still (mostly) enjoying this and everynow and then I remind myself that this is like my film and tv school and I'm learning an enormous amount... and I'm being paid.

Meanwhile the playreading is going ahead in a week. Even though I swore I wouldn't do this I had a quick look at the rewritten script and immediately cringed and wanted to change stuff. Except I didn't. I held firm. I set aside the time for rewrites, that time came and went and the rewrite was done and any further changes will be made on the actual rehearsal day. I am interested to hear this play in front of an audience for a few reasons but one of the main ones is the subject matter. It's about two infertile couples, one of whom is about to go through IVF, and the effects of this on their relationships, as a couple and as a group of friends. It's also the play I was working on in a week long workshop (that sounds stupid but you know what I mean) where I started crying when I was reading out a monologue because I realised what a complete bitch I had been about my best friend (and flatmate) Michelle when she got naturally pregnant and I didn't. Which all probably sounds a bit dire except there is quite a lot of black humour involved in infertility as bloggers know so hopefully all that will come across too. I am unsure about how the sperm ballet scene will go, so will keep you posted.

But the words that mean the most to me at the moment come from Tricky and now they're flying thick and fast.

Last week, the words my and mine finally made their long awaited appearance as in my milk, my Bobo, my playdough but also as a substitute for I.

One evening he wanted to sit in the hammock on the verandah and when I put him in I said Darling I think you better lie down in the hammock, it's much safer.
No pankyou Mummy, he replied, mine just sitting.

No pankyou is Tricky's general response to everything he doesn't want to eat or do which is polite as well as cute and not entirely unsuccessful as a result...

Will you eat your dinner please?
No pankyou, mine eat bake beans.
Eat these nice carrots, look, yum yum...
No pankyou Daddy...
yum yum, carrots...
NO PANKYOU DADDY! NO PANKYOU! BAKE BEANS!! BAKE BEANS!!

When the fatherperson foolishly persists in spruiking the joys of the carrot, Tricky's bowl suddenly and mysteriously leaps from the table and rolls about the kitchen floor scattering hated orange root vegetables gaily about the floor boards. Now there is no dinner and because the motherperson is terrified that Tricky will starve to death a can of baked beans is hastily produced.

Would you like some baked beans?
No pankyou, mine eat yoghurt.

And so it goes on.
And each day more words, from him and from me, and more and more and more...

arrrgggghhhagleyargle....gluggggggg........

so that wierd gagging noise you can hear? That would be me struggling under the weight of several deadlines and writing tasks that have fallen like a tonne of bricks and prevented me from doing stuff like blogging and um...having fun.

Last week it was nose to the grindstone to finish a rewrite of my new play which is having a public reading in two weeks time. And I had to finish it last week because this week the producers of the tv show are "turning me round" (my, the dirty laughs C had over that one) so I can get cracking on the next draft. This is not so much 'nose to the grindstone' as face mushed to a bloody pulp. Eeeka. In a scant few seconds I am going to mainline my coffee so that I can do some loglining (I have all the jargon) and then head off to Day 2 of the turning around process.

Of course, life must continue on, for instance if you are a toddler you don't give a toss if the motherperson's brain seems ready to explode, you must have Charlie and Lola, also Eensy Weensy Spider and for good measure, dinosaurs, on tap. And why not, I say. So on the days Tricky is not in childcare and while C is away I must stop with the plotting and the crime scenes and the big story arcs and I must change smelly mumpies and heat up weetbix and paint pictures and play in the park.

Thank God.