BLACK BELLIED BEETLES

I think pregnant women look like beetles – long limbs protruding from rotund, oddly shaped bellys. This is also due to the fact that once you hit about six months, the easiest thing to wear is leggings and some sort of covering, like you did when you dressed up as a spider in book parade day.

We’re also awkward like beetles, particularly when we’re on the floor, sitting on beanbags (which I’ve now decided will not be in my repertoire of equipment for the birthing) because beanbags – like the water bed we’re sleeping in – offer no resistance so if you need to change positions you’ve got to do it with the thing your sitting or lying on constantly giving way, and having no core muscles to assist your desperate move, we end up floundering about like beetles on their backs until someone comes to our aid and heaves us over to our side.

I made this observation at prenatal yoga, which I’ve been meaning to get to for…well seven months now, but somehow other things constantly get in the way. I’ve mentioned my discontent with yoga previously in this blog, but I always follow that by stating that I know it is indeed very good for me. Yoga for the most part, is all the stretches I know I should do every day but have managed thus far without doing in my life and so continue my poor trend. Breathing, (which I’ve also been doing for 31 years now and would therefore consider myself something of an expert) and getting in touch with the universe which I always find difficult when the person next to me mistook yoga class as a chance to skip a shower and not wear deodorant.

It’s excellent though, I was so tired yesterday so after we battled through an hour of inhalations and arms stretches and other such taxing exercises, we then got to the ‘relaxation period’ where I propped my feet up on the wall at a 45 degree angle (if you’re not up the duff you can manage 90 apparently) and had myself a little snooze. No snoring, thank heavens, that’s always a little embarrassing and hard to explain since you’re meant to be tuning into the universe not tuning it out entirely, but I felt quite refreshed afterwards and once I’d gotten up off the floor – it’s so undignified, feet spread wide, arse halfway to South Australia – I waddled my newly centred self right on out of there. Still don’t know how any of that is going to help me push a human out my nether regions, but perhaps that’s next week’s lesson…

THE PEANUT RETURNS TO KERRI-ANNE!!

After my last modelling success on Mornings With Kerri-Anne, the peanut and I are back by popular demand tomorrow morning sometime between 10 and 12.
So, if you're home, bored and need a bit of a laugh, tune on in. We promise to be more impressive than last time, when the peanut was so small, the commentator was forced to say; 'this model is very newly pregnant. This is what you could wear when you're just beginning to discover your changing shape.'
And then, if you haven't had enough of us by then, you can tag along to my show, this Friday and Saturday night. Details here. Happy Friday blogees!

PUBLIC OPINION IN THE THIRD TRIMESTER

The peanut and I have officially entered the third trimester and with it, it seems, comes a torrent of public opinion and helpful hints for labour, parenting, pram purchase and the supremely controversial issue of cloth versus disposable nappies.

Here are some of the best ones I’ve had rained on me thus far;

1.              The greater the age differences between the parents, the greater the chance it will be a boy. (Immediately discredited by my parents, my in-laws and the rest of the world in general).

2.              A mother from the dance academy I teach at (had I started there seven months ago, hers and others offspring would perhaps, have provided the perfect contraception) suggested I start stretching my nether regions now to lessen the pain during labour

3.              Or I could put all my eggs in one basket and follow this theory…eat an egg a day and the baby will slip right out of you

4.              Enroll for childcare now

5.              Wait for the symbolic dream and it will all become clear. (I still don’t know what ‘all’ actually is).

6.              Mothers groups can be very scary

7.              But a good chance to discover the average income of your area, since partners’ salaries appear to be a major topic of conversation

8.              Every man secretly wants a son

9.              Never tell a teacher your name ideas, you can guarantee they’ve taught someone rotten with your favourite name, and

10.          Your appropriate weight gain is a complicated algorithm based on a series of mystery factors, yet it still can’t be determined for me since I didn’t weigh myself pre-conception to begin with.

Prenatal classes start this week for us, but I dare say with these bits of advice there’s really nothing else we need to know. And the peanut and I are trucking…or waddling along just fine. It’s learned this really cool move where it launches off my bladder and body rolls the front of my stomach and I’ve been performing a bit of late, and can’t work out if all the movement during my singing is because it likes the sound or is trying to tell me to shut the hell up. Perhaps it’s just the first in a long line of grievances my child will hold against me until it has its own child and just like the song says, the story goes on…

DISCLAIMER NUMBER TWO...

The below post is why I've been a little tardy in blogging of late. I apologise. Again. Come September, you won't know me. I'll be blogging like a little fiend. Daily. Multiple times. You won't get any work done!
Just you wait...
I appreciate your patience, and if you're in Sydney, I hope you can make it...

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH - TALES OF NEW YORK THROUGH STORIES AND SONG

misc.Productions present...

- THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH -

TALES of NEW YORK through Stories and Song... 

Featuring NAOMI HART accompanied by PAUL GEDDES

Come and discover the Big Apple no tourist will ever see. Chuckle, cry, commiserate, cringe and land back in Oz exhausted, exhilarated and damn sure you’d do it all again in a New York minute because.....

Acting is like a virgin on prom night...you just have to put out.

Dead dogs can indeed be transported on the New York subway. 

There is a porn store on the corner of 48th and 8th that gives out free coffee.

Ketchup packets and hot water make an excellent budget tomato soup.

Bullets should be removed before clothes are placed in a washing machine; and

Clingwrap prevents the transmission of genital herpes....

THE BERKELOUW WINE BAR [70 Norton Street, Leichhardt] Friday 27th and Saturday 28th of August @ 8pm [Free Entry]

Table reservations are available [Contact: 0438 644 622] 

www.berkelouwwinebar.com www.naomihart.com www.thisismisc.com

DREAMS VERSUS GOALS

I taught the other night and honestly, 15 teenagers in one room where I desperately try to corral them into singing the same song at the same time in any sort of fashion that won’t crack the windows is hands down, the most effective form of contraception one could possibly imagine. A little late for me unfortunately, so I’ve started a program of talking to the peanut and informing it of manners, etiquette, respect and general niceties. I vow to you all here and now that we will have a polite peanut if it’s the only thing I manage.

But the week got better, the show I’m in 40 in Song, opened last night and it feels great to be back on the stage. Somewhat more encumbered than I was last time I trod the boards, but great nonetheless. And it’s great to be back in a dressing room with a bunch of kooks all loving the same thing I do. One woman won’t wear deodorant for fear of aluminium poisoning, but took some G from a guy in a nightclub the other night and had to be resuscitated and taken to the hospital. (G, for those not in the know – and I’ll happily admit I was one of them – is the new drug on the party scene, don’t know what it’s meant to do, but sounds like you should be wary of your supplier). Another lacks confidence in her beautiful voice and frets herself into a frenzy before places and not even the glass of champagne the non-deodorant girl bought her can calm her down. There’s the requisite good-looking tenor keeping to himself in the other dressing room, the drum playing violinist who fiddled her way across Europe, the silent bassist, the soprano with a side career in corporate law and little ol’ me sitting in my dressing room wondering when it became normal for me to feel my child kick me from the inside.

This what I want to do. Be a mum absolutely, postivitely, but also to write a bit and sing a little bit more.

A friend told me the other day about two things - dreams and goals. If all you do is talk about something it’s a dream. If you make a plan and then enact it, your dream will become a goal. And that’s what I’m shooting for people, pardon the pun.

DISCLAIMER

I do apologise for my tardiness dear blogees, we have just returned from a frantic trip to the States, one show opens this week and another at the end of the month. I do hope that if you live in Sydney, I get to see you there. I will endeavour to improve my blog-writing rate by the end of this week at the latest! Thank you for your patience, and for continued interest, it is very much appreciated, Naomi
ps...am trying to upload a copy of the flyer for my upcoming show, but no such luck. Info available at www.naomihart.com