MY LIFE AS I KNEW IT IS OVER

‘You deserve a break,’ my husband says to me when he comes home from work to find me folding the laundry with one hand and playing with Miss Q with the other, ‘why don’t you go and do the grocery shopping.’

This is what I’m dealing with.

This is the kind of delicate, tactful bloke I shacked up with.

I’ve got no one to blame but myself.

Now, now, before you pepper me with emails about how it’s not too late to walk away, (arguably it is, since I don’t have a job and I do have a human) it had been a Miss Q-is-very-demanding kind of day and as odd as it sounds, (and believe me, it sounds odd to me too) doing the grocery shopping somehow seemed like just the mind numbing activity I needed.

I think I got a little excited that I had the use of both my arms though, because I came home with bag after bag of groceries.

Two hundred and fifty dollars worth.

Items I’d never bought in my life ever before.

Things that mean you’re putting down roots. Setting up house. Staying put.

Things like golden syrup in case I want to whip up a batch of my grandma’s ANZAC biscuits.

A doormat. Desiccated coconut. Muffin tin.

A muffin tin for heaven’s sake.

Never before have I owned a muffin tin.

Now all I need is a cookbook.

I may be married to a chef, but trying to use one of his recipes is like having to translate Mein Kampf when you’ve only done high school German.

And if you did the kind of high school German I did, that wouldn’t help you much at all.

I am thirty-two years old and I appear to have entered the age of domesticity.

Next thing I know I’ll be buying an iron.

Still won’t know how to use it though.

TWO ROOMS AND A VIEW

Here it is people.

Not exactly a great shot, but that is definitely a picture of the Harbour Bridge as seen from the deck of our salubrious one bedroom apartment.

The two little white triangles on the right hand side are none other than the Opera House. Not bad huh? Certainly beats the 6th floor apartment I lived in in the arse end of Harlem.

I have a picture of me on my wedding day, my brilliant white dress offset by the bullet hole in front door of the building. That's right folks. I'm a simple gal.

All I need to be happy is a couple of rooms, my two favourite people, easy access to the outdoors and one high quality toaster oven.

It might be such a tight fit in the bedroom that I bash my shins on our bed every time I get Miss Q out of her cot for her nighttime feed, but I am ever the optimist, and have no doubt that one day soon she's going to decide she doesn't need a midnight snack any longer and will slumber peacefully until oh, say 8.30 am.

Either that, or I'm going to start wearing shin pads to bed.

CHITA RIVERA TELLS ME WHERE I'M GOING

I’ve just got back from seeing Chita Rivera perform.

Dang that woman puts this thirty-two year old to shame.

There she is, 75 years old, two fake knees, three-inch heels and still owning the stage like she did 53 years ago when she originated the role of Anita in West Side Story on Broadway.

I left Miss Q sleeping at home…in the capable hands of her father, two brothers and a few other blokes, three of whom are members of the Australian Special Forces.

She was very well guarded. Nothing but Australia’s elite to protect my girl.

I went with my mum and it was so precious to sit there, holding her hand, whispering reminisces about my little New York in her ear and hoping I’ll be able to share similar things with my little girl.

I used to watch performers on stage with a wretched mix of envy and a sense of belonging.

Wanting to be up there, knowing what it feels like, yearning to be a part of their journey, while thanking them for letting me in just the same.

That feeling has changed now. 

Oh, I still get that secret smile as I recall the headiness of it all (the adrenalin, the costumes, the makeup, the applause at the end of your number, the post show parties…) but it’s not as desperate as it once was. It’s not as essential. It’s certainly not as painful.

Chita sang one song called where are you going now.

And it struck me that while I still don’t know quite where I’m going, at least now I know who I’m going there with.

I'M BA-ACK!

I'M BA-ACK.

Internet is up and running.

But I don’t mind saying, it's been bliss not having it.

I'm nowhere near as popular as I like to think evidently.

Usually it hits 7pm each night and I think ‘Buggar. I still haven't written back to so-and-so.'

Tonight I cleaned out the emails that had been collecting over the previous two weeks and discovered that most of them were either from those websites that sell you stuff for a discount (which I of course fall for) or the weekly email from the baby website that tells me what Miss Q should be doing. (Teeth, solids, rolling – she still hasn’t bothered to try that – and some nonsense to make you feel better when your child is a nightmare, that it’s actually a good thing as it means they feel secure enough to muck up around you, their doting parent).

There are a few disadvantages to having no Internet though.

I had no idea why Qantas had stopped flying, as I’d had no access to news and therefore didn’t know a volcano had exploded in Chile and I had no doubt missed several other comment-evoking gems such as this.

MAN FLU. NEED I SAY MORE.

This morning I had raspberry crumble with cream for breakfast on the grounds that crumbles are made with oats and fruit – both of which feature in a healthy breakfast and cream is just like milk only thicker.

I also had it was because I was feeling sorry for myself as I’d caught a cold from my husband.

Except mine was a real cold with flu-like symptoms - terrible headache, runny nose and puffy eyes and his was a twelve minute man-cold which forced him to sit in front of the heater in nothing more than shorts and a t-shirt, chew on a packet of cold and flu tablets and indulge in a good old fashioned whinge.

All I wanted to do (after I’d eaten my dessert for breakfast) was sit on the couch, tucked into my bathrobe and ugg-boots and re-read Harry Potter in preparation for the final movie.

Six and a half months ago, this would have been possible.

Now…

Miss Q can’t read yet, so she didn’t get the memo that mama was feeling a little under the weather and was really hoping she could take care of herself today instead of relying on me for her every need and impulse.

I tell ya, this mothering gig ain’t for the faint of heart.

I know, I know, you can hear the violins playing a sad and sombre tune.

Good. Because I can’t.
My ears are still blocked from my real flu-like cold.

THE 2012 AUSTRALIAN PRODUCTION OF ANNIE

Yesterday I did an audition with Penny Cook.

Don’t pretend you don’t know her.

Even if you’re not Australian and have never heard of A Country Practice, the show she starred in for my entire childhood and the only tv show my brothers and I were allowed to watch growing up.

It was on twice a week – Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we were only allowed to watch one night. Which meant you either knew what was going on but not how it ended, or how it ended but not what was going on in the first place.

It was very frustrating.

But such were our parents’ rules and I intend to inflict similar annoyances on Miss Q.

But I digress.

I was telling you about auditioning with Penny Cook.

By with I really mean she must have been friends with someone on the panel and had a boring day lined up, so agreed to abandon her plans and come along and be the reader at the auditions for the upcoming Australian Production of Annie.

I thought our scene went really well. 

I played one character while Penny read the other 6. 

But when you’ve been the vet in A Country Practice you can do anything.

It’s funny, I used to audition in NYC and it really was life imitating art.

I was just like those people in A Chorus Line singing ‘I hope I get it.’

Who am I anyway?

Am I my resume?

That is a picture of a person I don't know.

What does he want from me?

What should I try to be?

So many faces all around, and here we go.

I need this job, oh God, I need this show.

But here I was in downtown Sydney and my sentiments couldn’t have been more different.

Now these people behind the long, imposing desk couldn’t have been less intimidating.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still got so nervous my usual tic appeared (an erratic shake to my left leg that can’t be disguised as keeping in time with the music) but this time I knew exactly who I was and who I was trying to be.

The stench of desperation had been washed from my body.

We’d already sung for them once the day before, this was the dance call. So we danced, then a few of us were asked to dance some more and this mama in her leotard and tights was one of those four. 

The choreographer set us a bit of a leggy number and then kindly asked us to stop kicking our face and keep our kicks to knee height instead.

She had already commented that she’d forgotten to bring her glasses, and I suspect this must have been where the confusion lay.

My leg was nowhere near my face.

Mama is way too old for that.

The show doesn’t go up until early 2012, by which time Miss Q will be over a year old and may have fired me as her primary source of food.

Call time for shows is an hour before curtain, which means I wouldn’t have to be there until 7pm each night. Which (now that Miss Q has gotten the hang of this sleeping gig) means she wouldn’t even know I was gone.

It’s the perfect gig.

I may not need this show (not like I needed it when I lived in NYC – to meet the dual purpose of refilling my bank account and my self-esteem) but I’d like it.

Oh boy would I like it.

6 MONTHS OLD AND ALREADY BEHIND BARS

It might be in a small one-bedroom apartment, but Miss Q is about to get her very own cot. I just don’t know if she’s going to like being behind bars. She’s a bit of a free spirit, I think it may stifle her.

She’s used to sleeping on a mattress by my side of the bed, propped up on one side by a beach towel so she doesn’t roll onto the floor (sounds ghetto, but at least it’s not a drawer) and moves into our bed for the 3am feed.

And there she stays, hogging the centre of the bed while Gregory and I cling to the edges, because somehow it seems better to have my arse hanging out getting chilly in the frosty winter air, than to stay awake while she tugs on my nipple (it’s amazing what I can now sleep through) and put her back on her mattress on the floor when she’s done.

I’ve decided to continue with the prison theme, and put her on a prisoner’s diet after I bought her a banana today for $2.12. She was having it mixed with porridge lovingly made for her by her grandad, but buggar that. Now she can have it plain.

If gruel was good enough for Oliver, it’s good enough for Q.

Tomorrow is move-in day (although I’ve not started packing so I’m not sure how that’s going to go). 

Tomorrow night she will be behind bars. 

We will see if the inmates rule...