Thursday, May 27, 2010

THE HALCYON DAYS


I wrote this quite a few weeks ago...
These are the halcyon days.  Sitting on the grass in the late summer sun, no nausea or fatigue, my husband working on the vegetable garden that will one day soon provide food for our baby.  Me with my legs outstretched, my loyal anti-nausea friend (a bottle of sparkling mineral water) by my side, the baby book of 75 000 names lying in my lap.
“Ohhh, Eden.  That’s lovely,” I say, “what do you think?”
“Sounds like a porn star,” he says, turning the soil in what will be the strawberry patch.  “My job as her father is to keep her off the pole.  Not help her up onto it.”
“Ok, how about Mannix?”
“As in Mannix depressive.”
“Zander.”
“From the planet?”
“Tuaco – it means the eleventh born child in Ghana.”
“We are not having eleven babies!” We both say in unison.
“Miles?”
“Like the singer?”
“Faze?”
“Are you ok today?”
“Rania?”
“Definitely not.”
“Ravin.”
“Sounds like a pro-wrestler’s name.”
“Rex.”
“Like the dinosaur.”
“Sheldon?”
“Nerd in glasses.”
“Silvester?”
“Stallone.”
“Soren.”
“We are not Vikings.”  He stops shoveling and turns to face me.  “There are seventy-five thousand names in that book and this is what you come up with?”
“Seventy-five thousand just means that seventy-four thousand of them are dreadful,” I say and shut the book with a sigh.
Perhaps this is why Mother Nature gives you nine months.  In the vein hope that by the time the baby arrives the parents will have at least decided what to call it, if nothing else.

Apparently when you are expecting a baby in Germany, you take your name suggestions into the name deciding office and they tell you if you’ve chosen wisely or not.  In Denmark there’s even less freedom.  There, you pick your baby’s name from a government-approved list. 
Maybe we should try this with celebrities, then we wouldn’t have these poor kids walking around answering to Tree Bark, Thank-heavens-it’s-Sunday-Petunia, Stargaze-ray and Tarragon. 
It is a very serious thing to pick your baby’s name.  I mean forget the fact that you also have to rear it and teach it to be a good human and spell and make its bed and what-not, but the name picking is crucial indeed.    Choose badly and you can really screw things up for them.  You must consider the name’s meaning, make sure you say it with their surname and think of every conceivable nickname so you can try to avoid your kid being picked on in the playground.
With a newfound respect for the sanctity of the task, I reopen the book and start at A…Aba meaning born on Thursday.
Seventy four thousand nine hundred and ninety nine to go.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

WHEN OH WHEN WILL I FEEL PREGNANT?

When do I start to feel pregnant?  I mean really pregnant.  Not nauseas or hormonal or starving or exhausted, but pregnant.  Glowing and maternal with a lovely bump in my front.  Currently all I have is a pooch when I stand and a big fat roll when I sit, which does nothing for my self-esteem and is making me start to believe all the baby books that tell us mamas-to-be that any weight we don’t lose naturally post pregnancy is because we overate during the 9 month gestation period.  Harsh isn’t it?  Particularly when I was convinced the peanut wanted plates of creamy pasta for dinner and packets of tim tams for dessert.  Initially I was doing alright because I wasn’t drinking but those lost calories seems to have been easily replaced with copious amounts of legal hard cheese, bread, vitawheats and banana bread (which we all know is cake masquerading as something healthy).  Ah well, it’s a journey, just like our three month food-and-drink-orgy road trip and I bounced back from that ok.  It would help if it wasn’t always raining of late, I would be far more compelled to get out there for a trot if I knew I wasn’t going to have to swim part of it instead.
This sounds distinctly like I’m having a whinge, so I shall stop right here and go and have breakfast.  Scrambies, mushrooms, homemade baked beans and fresh sourdough bread topped liberally with fresh salty butter.  Delish, though i suspect it's also part of the problem.  Any clues bloggies?

Monday, May 24, 2010

BANNED FOODS FOR PREGNANT WOMEN

You know, it’s not the alcohol I’m missing.  Which is odd when you consider the love affair I was having with gin and tonics.  Great, glorious, stiff gins, a dash of tonic and plenty of fresh lime.  Delish. 
I think your body helps you out by making the taste of it quite repulsive (at least to my taste buds) and the same thing has happened with my other vice…coffee.  Don’t even want to smell it these days, yet less than four months ago, I’d happily consume three, even four cups in a single day.  Mother nature is very clever indeed. 
What she didn’t do, however, is cure my love for soft cheeses, turkey melts, (I don’t know what my chef husband does to make it taste so good, but somehow sourdough bread, avocado, tomato, swiss cheese, mayonnaise – another baby no-no – and mustard are combined to produce the most scrumptious lunch or late night snack) medium rare steak and sushi.  I wonder if Japanese women give up sushi?  We know the Europeans don’t give up wine.  Or cigarettes for that matter, and their kids seem to be doing alright. 
It’s very hard to keep it all straight in your head.  I was taking a multi-vitamin thinking I was doing the right thing (since I was allergic to the iodine in the special baby vitamins) but I’ve since discovered vitamin A can damage your baby.  Then I had some salami and realised later it’s probably in the same category as sliced turkey.  I’ve also been tempted by my late night shopping habit (when all the specials go into place) to pick up a bargain with the roasted chickens.  I rationalise that the peanut knows a bargain when it sees one too, which prevents it from catching whatever it is you can catch from a roasted chicken sitting on the shelf from god knows when until I pick it up at 11pm that night.  Oysters I had only recently acquired a taste for so I’m coping without those, but trying to navigate the minefield of pregnancy-authorised fish is another thing entirely.  Nothing deep sea, which means no swordfish and most likely a dozen others I accidentally ate, and tuna only once a week.  Do you think that includes tinned tuna, because I lived on that for 7 years in New York and it is very dear to both my heart and my stomach.
So far the peanut seems to be coping with its mother’s tardy eating habits okay, but I guess we won’t know for sure until it pops out.  Or tries to learn to read.  Blimey, the parenting mistakes I can make are absolutely endless.  Whatever made me arrogant enough to think I could pull this off?

Saturday, May 22, 2010

I OWE IT ALL TO BABY PEANUT


A never before encountered incident has occurred in the life of baby-carrying Naomi.  My mammary glands are kicking in for some hard labour towards the end of the year and as a result have expanded to something a woman can almost be proud of.  Having been somewhat challenged in that department my entire life, this is a startling and most welcome change.  I’ve even had a couple of honks while I run and I like to think that this is the reason and not because I’m now running so slowly it looks concerning to a passerby.  I planned this deliberately folks.  Baby due right at summer time so I can make maximum use of my new chest and indulge in a secret long-time longing to wear plunging, v-neck, cleavage showing tops!  I love you Peanut, bring it on!!!!

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

RELAXIN JACKED ME UP



I have just returned from the physio.  It appears that all the relaxin steaming through my pelvis (nature’s way of helping me get a bigger cavity to extract the peanut) has had a conflict with my running.  I have jacked up my left hip.  That’s not the technical term the physio used, but I can never remember those latin muscle names, it was one of the many reasons I gave up on dreams of medicine.  Kindly, he has given me a free bottom lift and taped up my right butt-cheek, which I suspect is not going to make my running any easier.  But never fear, last time I went to yoga they taught me to breathe through my left nostril which apparently is anti-anxiety breathing, to which my big brother replied “I’ve got a deviated septum and haven’t been able to breath through my right nostril my entire life.  Stop oxygen depriving my niece or nephew.” 
This exercising while pregnant thing is more complicated than you would think.  Which is why im considering returning to the pool.  Though, it’s been so long since I swam the black line that my goggles have turned into a sticky mess that once resembled rubber and I only own a bikini top and swimming shorts for wear.  But I think a bikini is a perfect option given that my middle is going to do nothing but expand.  It may well overwhelm my fellow paddlers (I will probably look like an albino whale) but that’s ok.  Once the peanut is out, ill be back to running and never see them again anyway!

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

TOO LATE NOW


My husband and I went to the Birth Centre today to check out the location for our peanut’s arrival.  It doesn’t look too bad if you forget what it is you’re meant to be doing in there.  Double bed with side tables, huge bathtub and shower.  Couch, exercise mat, (that’s a bit ambitious I would have thought) outdoor private verandah, (with a wall too high for my husband to climb and escape) but no music player.  I will have to bring my own, as I suspect I’m going to need Eye Of The Tiger on repeat to get me through this experience. 
No mini-bar, no decorations and no carpet.  It looked like the cheap, Spartan motel you might stay in to break a long drive, and if I’m not too distracted when I go back, I’ll be sure to check the nightstand for a Gideon’s copy of the bible.

I was concerned at how quiet the centre was, until another mum-to-be (who was only a few seconds pregnant but had already done an embarrassing amount of research) told me that the walls are deliberately sound proofed.  Sure enough, when I listened closely, I could hear the dull, but unmistakable anguished cry of a woman in a considerable amount of pain.  I don’t know which is worse, muffling it so you don’t know the full extent of their misery, or just letting us mums-on-the-way hear it like it is, since it’s too late for us to back out now anyway.

The midwife who gave us the tour was a nice, no-nonsense German lass who hid her disapproval of assisted births behind her thick, formal accent.  She didn’t outright condemn them, she just said things like “of course, we can’t stop you having an epidural, you just won’t be given one here.  For that, you are moved into the labour ward,” she says.
I do love the idea of a so called natural birth, but I am also aware that this birthing gig really hurts and just like I intended to run a marathon this year, sometimes the best laid plans are better rechecked by someone who is a lot smarter than you.
“We offer hot showers to help with your pain,” the midwife says as if we’re just dealing with a bump on our head, “and some women find walking and breathing helps,” she adds, but trails off when she sees our faces.
Walking and breathing?  Is she serious? That’s what she wants me to use to get this thing out of me?
The good part is, there is always an out and I ain’t too proud to use it.  I can, at any point, raise the white flag and tell them I want the big drugs.  The midwives will leave the room in a huff of unrefined organic disdain and I’ll be left to pack up my high-energy ice cubes and heat packs all by myself, and do the walk of shame past the reception, across the lobby, through the swinging doors, (which could, I imagine, resemble the pearly gates of heaven) and into the hallowed, drug providing labour ward where I can get stuffed with as many and any things that might help me reach my end goal.

I take a glance at my husband, my birth partner, the man to bring me through this ordeal.  “Where’s the tv?” he asks, looking around the room, “didn’t she say this labour thing can last for hours?” 

Monday, May 17, 2010

TALES AND TUMMYS

Today our embryo turned ten weeks old and is now referred to as a foetus.  Weighing in at 4 paperclips, and with fully formed ears and upper lips, it has also started breathing (inhaling the amniotic fluid) and has decided (quite wisely I would say) to abandon its tale so it stops resembling a dinosaur and work on looking like its parents more desired result – a human. 
The book I am reading goes on to say that I may even be starting to show – which I am, a lovely little pooch that I am quite enamored with, but it follows by saying that has nothing to do with my baby, and is in fact, my distended bowel.

Now I’ve always eaten a lot (I remember as a little girl being embarrassed at sleep-overs as I always ate more than the other girls and still came home starving) and I will concede that growing your own penis or vagina (which also happens in week ten) sounds like terribly hard work, but does that really mean I need to consume the following all within a four hour period;
4 grilled asparagus
one hard poached egg (yes I did read the dangerous food sections and have abandoned my loves, the runny egg)
one grilled tomato
one slice of brioche
half an almond croissant
half a bowl of fruit salad (I had to share it with my friend’s two year-old son)
one orange
one tin of baked beans on a slice of sourdough toast and,
four large salt and vinegar rice crackers with spicy capsicum dip on them (which yes, I now realise is on the banned list and probably means my kid will come out with that tail after all). 

When my friend fell pregnant, her nutritionist told her all she needed in terms of extra caloric intake was the equivalent of half a cheese sandwich.  Half a cheese sandwich!  Pre-prego days I could eat that on my way to the table for dinner.  That’s not even a snack, doesn’t even count as an appetiser, it’s just something you grabbed on your way past the fridge.

The book continues by saying that if a woman only puts on the weight necessary for carrying the baby and breastfeeding, she will have no trouble regaining her pre-baby weight.  The additional one to two kilos most mothers tend to find difficult to lose, is not, the book claims, the fault of the baby, but the fault of the mother instead. 
Quite simply, it says, we have over-eaten whilst carrying our young.
That seems a bit unsympathetic to me and I beg to differ. 
I rarely eat pasta, haven’t even bought it in the last seven years, I don’t really like it, it tastes like glue.  But now I do.  Copious amounts of it, wrapped around homemade Bolognese or creamy carbinara. 
This is not me, this is the baby inside.
And brownies too, dangerously dropped off by a thoughtful friend.  Now those I would have indulged in pre-baby as an afternoon or evening treat with a steaming cup of caffeine included tea.   I would not have had it for lunch.  In main meal size portions.  Eating until there weren’t anymore brownies left to eat.

And then, after eating to satisfy the alien inside, I am lured to my bed, or couch or head first down on the desk if it’s all I can manage.  Anywhere I can shut my eyes and wake up ninety minutes later with numb arms, drool down my cheek and paper lines embedded on my face.
I’ve never been a napper, in fact I sort of considered people a bit of a daytime failure if they took one, but now I am possessed.  There is nothing I can do to prevent these afternoon siestas.  The worst part being that I awake and feel none of the refreshment such an afternoon luxury should provide.

Eating and sleeping, sounds like every person’s ultimate dream.  But it’s hard to pull off when you’re trying to keep the reason for your hunger and lethargy a secret.  The only thing I have thought of to say is tapeworm and a serious, but undiagnosed case of narcolepsy.  People seem to be buying it so far, which doesn’t say much for me.  Two more weeks and then I might post a list of activities my body has been up to and see if people want to judge my behaviour then.  I dare you to grow a new person’s limbs on half a cheese sandwich.  I reckon you’d get as far as the big toe and that wouldn’t do at all.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

IMAGINE IF...


Imagine if, when a couple decides to have a baby, they also have to decide which one of them will carry it.  I know this already happens for same-sex couples, but pretend it is a standard conversation with all couples all over the world.  My husband’s and mine would have gone something like this:
“You want to see if we can make a baby?”  I might say, over a cup of morning coffee.
“Sure, may as well give it a try,” my husband would respond and then probably slurp on his coffee in a way that he knows really irritates me.
“Who’s going to carry it then?” I would ask, “you or me?”
“We could flip for it?”
“You can’t flip for it!  It’s a baby.  This is a little more involved than who drives the first leg of the car trip.”
“Ok then, what are the criteria?”
“For carrying it?”
“Yeah.  What do you need to be a good incubator?”
“Diet for one.  You have to cut out coffee and alcohol.”
“Oh, well why don’t you do it then.”
“What!” I would rage.  “That is a total copout.  And it wouldn’t hurt you to cut out alcohol anyway.” 
“Focus,” my husband would caution.  “Don’t digress.  Stick to the subject at hand.”
“I like coffee and alcohol too you know.”
“All right, all right.  We’ll leave that one alone.  What else do you need?”
“Well they say the first trimester can be very difficult.  They recommend lots of sleep and good amounts of healthy food.”
“Eating and sleeping?  Sounds like a job for me.”
“That’s the good part.  The bad part is fatigue.  Apparently it can get so bad you can barely stand up.  Your breasts will get sore and your nipples will increase to the size of five-cent pieces.  Your gums bleed because of the increased blood flow, water tastes like metal, your scalp itches, your sense of smell increases until you can barely walk past a petrol station, you have to urinate frequently – multiple times every night, and sometimes the only thing you want to eat is laundry detergent even though you know that’s really, really bad.  Your emotional response to situations will often be completely disproportional to what the occasion warrants, you may swell up like a beached whale retaining fluid in parts of your body you didn’t know had room, some people get skin rashes, thrush, urinary tract infections, headaches, nosebleeds, weight gain but no baby bump so you just feel fat, and then of course there’s the nausea.”
“Nausea as in vomiting?”
“Nausea as in vomiting.  I’ve heard stories of people having injections every four hours because they can’t stop.  They can’t eat anything but plain crackers and sparkling mineral water and it isn’t just in the morning like the name suggests.  Sometimes it lasts all day and for longer than the first trimester.” 
I would pause to let some of this information digest.  “Still game?”
“It can’t be that bad or humans wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
“Maybe so.  But remember you’ve still got to get it out of you nine months later.”
“Oh that, well, you know, I can be tough,” he might say, “that part should be all right.”
“You reckon?  Have you read about childbirth?”
“Too much information.  I prefer to go in blind.”
“Take a look at this,” I would say and hand him a booklet with some gruesome pictures and a couple of choice phrases like ‘thirty-hour labour,’ ‘stitches needed after tearing’ and ‘faecal matter from force.’
His coffee would splurt out onto the bench and he would head to the bathroom to do the only bit of vomiting he was ever planning on enduring.
And so it came to be that our creator (whatever or whomever you imagine that to be) saved us all the time and wasted conversations and made it so that females were the sole bearers of children.  Foolishly lining up to reproduce not once or twice, but often multiple times. 
Foolish maybe, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  In fact, I reckon it’s the men that miss out.  Vomiting, nose bleeds, sore boobs and all.


THIS KID BETTER COME OUT RECITING THE ALPHABET BACKWARDS!


Since no time is ever a good time to have a baby in the life of my husband and I, (that is, we will never have enough money, time or experience) we just decided to give it a go.
I mean it’s not like I have to swallow dirt and chew on an adder’s tongue to get there, the activity for getting pregnant is really quite enjoyable.  The only down side is the drop in alcohol and caffeine intake, but truthfully, I needed to watch that anyway. 
I like to think it’s a bit of a diet too – surely I’ll lose a couple of kilos by not enjoying my nightly glass or two…or three of delicious red wine.

But priorities please, this is not about you, this is about your baby.  So I set off for the health food store to buy some pre-natal vitamins.  I locate the correct aisle and find them immediately, right at eye level.  “Pregnancy platinum.  One month’s supply.  Reflux free.  Daily nutritional support for mother and baby.”  How could I go wrong, they’d even thought to avoid reflux?  I pick the box up off the shelf and turned it over to check the price. 

Thirty-four bucks for a packet of pills!  It’s like shopping for a wedding.  Mention the words ‘baby’ or ‘bride’ and immediately the packaging is pink and the price triples.
What on earth is in them?  Iodine for brain development apparently, (I suppose it’s too late for me to reap any rewards from this isn’t it?) folic acid to help prevent spina bifida (fair enough) and a collection of other vitamins and minerals I didn’t know I was barely coping without. 
This kid had better come out reciting the alphabet backwards. 
I am ashamed to admit that old habits die hard, and I put the pink packed pregnancy pills back on the shelf and went in search of the generic brand.  The baby won’t know the difference, I reasoned, finding a pack for twenty-two dollars instead.  And then, I got the guilts. 

Take a look at yourself!  Your baby’s not even made and already you’re a lousy mother! Here you are, scrimping on your baby’s spinal cord, its calcium deposits, its iron levels.  Are you going to starve it once a week too, just to save some money?  You should be embarrassed.  Hang your head in shame.

I did still buy the cheaper ones, as I’m not convinced there can be twelve dollars difference between one brand of Cyanocobalamin and another, but I do acknowledge that the activity of making and rearing a child, is not one where you can expect to make a profit.  Further to that, you can’t even expect to save.  Second hand clothes and cereal dinners are fine for me, but I do realise this is not acceptable for my offspring.  At least not until they’re adults and I’ve kicked them out of the house and they don’t have any money for anything else.  But I’ll address that obstacle in twenty-something years. 

INTRODUCING THE PEANUT

Introducing the Peanut. 
100% owned and made by Llewellyn Hart Productions, currently thirteen weeks uterus time and due sometime around the end of November.
Obviously I am not running this year’s marathon as I told you all I would.  I didn’t even run the half marathon this weekend, as general medical opinion seems to be that that sort of mileage is not good for a developing foetus, as it may in fact cook it.  So I have happily dropped back on my distance and replaced it with a yoga mat so that I can find my pelvic floor, which I didn’t know was missing but is apparently quite useful when it comes to getting this little peanut out of me. 
I have made it through the danger stage, survived the nausea, (though I have a sister-in-law who vomited daily for the first six months of each of her three pregnancies, so I don’t really feel like I have a bucket to chuck in) battled the insomnia, (which is so debilitating it makes the life I led in New York seem like a walk in the park) and am thoroughly enjoying all the weird, unimaginable things my body is getting up to.  Gum bleeds, outrageous sex dreams, insatiable appetite, nighttime trips to the bathroom, pinched nerves, tummy pooches, caffeine intolerance and rockin’ hormones. 
We are completely thrilled and mildly terrified by the prospect of being parents but figure we've got a good year or two before the baby works out we don't really know what we're doing.
While I’m still managing to run ten k’s a few times a week, there will come a very sad day when that will no longer be possible, and I really think, that even before it’s begun, this could be the biggest motherly sacrifice I’ll ever have to make.  Swimming doesn’t cut it, you know how I feel about yoga and walking is the poor man’s very distant second.  But there is one baby purchase we’ll be making for sure - one of those all-terrain baby buggies so that the peanut and I can venture into the great outdoors.  It can feel nature’s elements on its face and I can get right back to doing what I love.  So I hope you’ll join me as I talk less about marathons and more about the marathon I’ll be running for the rest of my life…the marathon of motherhood.  Trouble is, I though the marathon sounded hard.
I’ve been keeping a bit of a secret diary for the first three months and I’ll post some of my musings about pregnancy and the peanut now.
We happily bought our tickets and are pretty excited about the peanut ride…

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

NO EXPECTATIONS


I have been rather tardy on my blogging, I apologise to my few loyal fans (my mother in law, my aunt, my aunt’s friend, family friend and anon) sometimes I manage a run but not a blog and that is not really quite good enough.  I often find that I’m not really quite good enough.  Don’t you?  In smaller tasks like getting all the laundry washed, folded and put away at once, returning friendly fire emails in a timely fashion and never running out of milk for tea and coffee.  But I like to be equalitarian in these things, and also manage to be not quite good enough in other more complex areas too.  Coming close to, but not landing the gig is one.  As is being told you’re writing is witty and clever but still not being picked up by a publisher.  I could also mention my inability to earn money as another.  Not because I don’t work hard, I do, very much so, but I haven’t exactly chosen well-paid careers to begin with
This sounds perilously close to me having a whinge but it’s not.  Honest.  If I can’t cope with the way things are I can easily go and change them.
The one thing that doesn’t matter if I’m not quite good enough is running.  Yesterday I ran the same run I always do seven minutes slower than usual but the only person that knows that is me and there isn’t a single person out there including me that cares one way or the other.  And that, my friends, is the ticket.  Find something that you love and never grow tired of, where the outcome doesn’t have any significance at all.  Baking, gardening (though I suppose you want a result from those) sewing or lawn bowls, for example.  Something that is just yours and just for enjoyment.  No expected return or result, just a pleasant way to pass some time hanging out with yourself.
That is why I run.

Friday, May 7, 2010

A RUN A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY


Yesterday I had the sneezes.  Terrible sneezes.  All day long.  But, because I’m working on a new project (a play that’s been brewing in my brains for a few years now and is finally ready to come out I think) I was desperate to keep writing and not retire to the couch and feel sorry for myself which I would have done under normal circumstances.
By 4pm I was beat so I stopped writing and decided to run the cold out of me.  A risky undertaking to be sure as this can only result in one of two outcomes.
Either you do indeed run the infection out of you, or you send the germs flying around your body much faster than a normal tv-watching, couch sitting sick kid would, and bring on the infection full force.
At least that’s what my grandma always told me when I was little and I now use it as medical dispensation when I’m tired and can’t be bothered running.
Maybe I’ll just walk, I thought, slipping on my running gear just in case.
Nah, I feel better than that, I’ll run. But I’ll do the shorter distance instead.  7 k’s not the full 10.
So I set off on my plod, the snot up my nose managing to stay there for the moment, and realised I wasn’t plodding, I was running.  And I felt great!
Buggar it, I thought, I’ll do the whole ten k’s.  And I did.  And this morning I awoke with not a sneeze in sight.  Not a fat head, not a fever, not a cough or an infection.
Which just goes to show you that it’s not an apple but a run a day that keeps the doctor away.

Monday, May 3, 2010

IRRITATIONS


You know what really annoys me?  People who decide public transport is the perfect location to go through their selection of ring tones on their mobile phone regardless of how irritating it is to their fellow passengers.
This is what happened to me on the bus this morning and I almost, almost said something. 
But what if the offender doesn’t quite hear me and I have to repeat myself which makes me miss my stop, or I use my hands to gesture at his phone, the bus lurches and I land in an embarrassed heap at his feet, or he attacks me for protesting in the first place which sets the whole bus off in a discourse about the boundaries of the public’s interference in each other’s lives. 
And all of that just seemed like too much to deal with at 11am on a Monday morning, so I got off the bus and let the warm autumn sun burn the irritation out of me.
There are quite a few things that annoy me (as surprising as that may seem) and I think I’ll share them with you right here and now.
Another public transport misdemeanor (I am a huge advocate of PT when it works and is on time, which is generally never in the state of New South Wales) is people who clip their fingernails and let their discarded droppings tumble to the floor like seagull poo from the sky.  To be fair, this was a regular occurrence on the New York subway and I’m thankfully yet to see it in my homeland.
Automated voices when you call customer service are also up there, but who doesn’t get annoyed by that? 
My husband’s work hours irritate.  As do pantyhose, though I’ve managed to construct a life where (unless I’m performing) they are an unnecessary fashion accessory.  Dentists are annoying, mostly because they yell at you for not flossing enough and you can’t retort because they’ve shoved a hard, cold metal tool into the back of your throat. 
I find photocopiers intensely annoying, (they see me coming and deliberately malfunction, doing extra copies or not enough, skipping pages and printing upside down) which is perhaps one reason I have never pursued a job in an office. 
An order of stale banana bread at a café when you decided not to go with the raisin toast, L platers on freeways (I appreciate RTA trying to give our young drivers a taste of life in the fast lane, but it is annoying none the less) and bikini waxes in Australia that provide forty minutes of pain in my life instead of the swift seven it takes in New York.
People who walk on the wrong side of the footpath and fail to move even though they see you from at least a hundred yards and you’re clearly running dead for them also elevate my blood pressure.  It’s not that I mind moving for them, but when I do, I then come face to face with a serious, much faster runner (usually a bloke twice my size) or worse, a kamikaze bike rider trying to break the national record for the city to inner west commute.  And so, because some nitwit chatting on her iPhone refuses to take one step to her right, I have to break suddenly to avoid hitting her, she doesn’t apologise and I am annoyed.
This happened yet again on my run today and I really wish I could see a way to stop it happening.  But I fear that for every person I scold, there will be one to tell me to quit my whinging, one to tell me it’s a free country, and another to tell me to run around an oval instead and then I wouldn’t face the problem in the first place. 
And for all my bravado and big talk in this blog, I really would rather avoid confrontation if you don’t mind.
Maybe tomorrow I should go to yoga.  No one would dare invade my space there.  That is against the yoga protocol, which means (providing I don’t get annoyed by the exercise itself) I could then pass the day in relative harmony. 
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...