LESBIANS WITH LARGE HANDS, FREUD & HOMEMADE SOUP

On Friday I had a casting for the role of an ambulance officer in an upcoming feature film. I had to resuscitate a pillow and say ‘who reported the accident.’

Then the casting director said, ‘listen I know this isn’t very fair and we haven’t given you any time to prepare, but do you think we could have you read for the part of the lesbian with large hands?’

To celebrate such an audition, my mum, Miss Q and I went to her dad’s work, (she very quickly made her way to the hip of one of the waitresses, helping her and trying to eat all the napkins) then we did a spot of shopping (I needed to boost my supply of maternity singlets so my tummy doesn’t freeze while feeding Q in this chilly weather) and then I dropped my mum and Miss Q off while I paid a visit to the Westmead Children’s Hospital because my friend’s son had just had brain surgery, and if Miss Q had just had a hole drilled into the side of her head, (she and Master W are the same age) I wouldn’t mind seeing a familiar face armed with a cup of coffee and some chocolate biscuits.

It took me a while to get there, I had a bit of a fight with the GPS - it was directing me one way and the road signs were directing me another, which happens quite often and generally means I follow a combination of both and take an as yet undiscovered route to my destination. 


Which meant that by the time I arrived, I had eaten into precious time between feeds for Miss Q (who I had left with her completely competent, I raised 4 of my own, grandmother) but was still stressing about anyway.

Apparently Freud will tell me this is because I don’t trust anyone to look after Q but myself. I’ll tell you it’s because I’m a worrier with a massive propensity to succumb to unwarranted guilt. It’s entirely my own problem and I intend to work on it one day.

I met W and his mum at that very scary manufactured event called mother’s group. 
I gravitated towards W’s mum immediately because she’s funny and calls a spade, well a shovel really.

For her part, W’s mum gravitated towards me she says, because when Miss Q and I walked into that first meeting a few minutes late (deliberately, so as to avoid that awkward who-am-I-going-to-sit-next-to competition, that a bunch of hormone charged, sleep deprived new mothers could host with indelicate aplomb) Q let out a big, long, your-father-would-be-proud-of-you, seat-tearing fart right in the middle of the silent room.

W’s mum decided that anyone who could parent a kid with such highly developed social skills at such a young age was worth knowing indeed.

Before they went into hospital, I enlisted a professional’s help and took her and her husband some chef-made, homemade soup and choc chip biscuits. I’m going to take some more around now that they’re home, not because I don’t think they can cook, but because it’s all I can think of to do, to show W’s mum that I think she’s brilliant and brave, fabulously witty and because I know that as a mum, there, but for the grace of God go I.

Guarantees? 
There aren’t any. 
There never were. 
I know that. All parents do. 
But bloody hell, do I count my lucky stars every day Miss Q is a healthy, growing girl.

Cheers, W’s mum. You rock.

THE SYDNEY HOUSING MARKET SUCKS

Explain to me how a relatively young couple with their first child (he a chef from America who earned a good wage, but used it to pay off his substantial student loans, she an Australian musical theatre performer living in NYC and always having enough money to fly home to be a bridesmaid, but never for much more) is meant to break into the Sydney housing market.

Not that we’re trying, but here’s why – because on Saturday an ugly brick two bedroom house in Lane Cove sold for $925 000.

That’s nearly a million dollars for a house that (if we do what Peter Costello wanted us to do and have a kid for the mother, a kid for the father and a kid for the nation) would probably have to be renovated anyway.

That is mental.

And that is why we’re about to move back into a one bedroom flat above the house of a family friend with a common front door and a narrow staircase further diminished by the moving chair that was installed for the previous tenant – his elderly sister.

But the rent is cheap, its around the corner from my husband’s work, the perfect location for my 10k run, and the small balcony with a death-trap set of stairs to the overgrown back garden, has a view of the harbour bridge.

When my parents got married they had a bed and two hundred and fifty bucks. My husband’s parents started out in a two room hut and renovated in an American winter.

We’re just sticking with tradition.

I often hope that somewhere in my past, I’ve helped an old lady across the road who’s family made their money during the gold rush, and after experiencing such a kindly deed from a stranger, she wrote me into her will and one day a solicitor will present at my door (the communal door we share with our downstairs family friend) and give me a cheque for a large sum of money with a note saying; ‘thank you for helping me cross the road, may this small token of my appreciation help you.’

Maybe she lost my address.

Still, it’s been a great motivator for helping the geriatrics.

Or wouldn’t it be fabulous if you knew someone fabulously wealthy, (you know those people who earn millions of dollars just in interest on their bank accounts) and instead of tithing to the Outer Mongolian Pottery Society for Disadvantaged Llamas, they give it to you instead.

Just like when I pretend the diamond earrings I bought from the two-dollar shop are real, I am excellent at pretending I know how the other half lives.

Trust me, benevolent benefactor, I won’t embarrass you.

Ah buggar it. The bigger the house, the longer it takes to clean. I’ll think of you, rich people in your multi-storeyed, multi-roomed, multi-winged, madness while I’m whipping around our apartment, cleaning it from top to toe in under an hour. You’ll barely be through dusting the front parlour.

What’s that you say? 

You don’t have to clean your multi-storeyed, multi-roomed, multi-winged mansion? 

A cleaning service comes in twice a week and does it all for you?

Oh, gee.

Really?

Huh.

For once, I have nothing to say.

GO THE F*%#K TO SLEEP

This book could have been written for Little Miss Q.
Follow the link and push next to read it.
If you're not too sleep deprived that you can't read to see where the 'next' button is.

EVEN JESUS WOULDN'T EAT BOILED HADDOCK

Miss Q had pureed bok choy for dinner last night. It looked like what I imagine a frog would after it’s taken on the wheel of a car and lost.

Didn’t seem to bother her though. Which is good because my chef-for-a-husband has already loudly proclaimed that he’s not having a fussy eater for a child, but hasn’t yet told me how he plans to stop that from happening.

I grew up in the country where most people had some sort of vegetable garden and some evil mother discovered that if you went away on a holiday, and left your zucchinis on the vine, when you came back they were the size of nuclear missiles. Mothers around the town began sneaking zucchinis into everything – our mother even tried it in spaghetti Bolognese once. But only once. We sure told her.

About the only thing I truly hated as a child was orange haddock. Boiled orange haddock. I don’t reckon they even serve it in gaol. Our mum used to dish it up on a Friday night, Friday night being ice cream night, but you only got ice cream if you choked down the boiled orange haddock. She learnt it from my grandma, who by all other accounts was an excellent, excellent cook, but ask her to deviate from the bounty of the land and she was as lost as a sheep that had strayed from its flock.   

Grandma grew up between the two world wars on a sheep farm in rural Australia, where vegetarianism was as common as a Hindu. The concept of a meal without meat was like good shoes without pantyhose. You just didn’t do it. Except on Good Friday. In memory of Jesus’ death, you were not to eat red meat. Fish, however, was allowed. 

In my grandmother's defence, part of the problem, I suspect, was that the selection of fish in the middle of the country was somewhat limited. But grandma’s Good Friday meal stands in my memory as the worst dish I have ever had to endure. Orange haddock boiled until it resembled a roof tile - crusty on top and mouldy underneath, the disintegrated flesh covered by the stretched and sticky skin, and vegetables steamed until their colour had leeched into the water cooking them. The only redeeming feature was the bread and butter, but of that you were only allowed one piece until you’d cleared the rest of your plate. If we were doing it out of sacrifice, I would gladly have chosen to skip the meal entirely, but that was not an option, and neither was arguing with my grandmother. Hundreds and thousands of vegetarians enjoy delicious meat-free meals every day of their lives and yet there we were, suffering through a meal even Jesus would have complained about. 

I dare say though, Miss Q will do just fine. She’ll eat brussel sprouts, but when her father fries them in oil with chili, fish sauce, garlic and mint I dare say she’ll like it. Cauliflower too, when it’s pureed and mixed with butter, salt and cheese. Even zucchini tastes ok when it’s steamed with heirloom carrots and served in a balsamic reduction. Yes, Miss Q’s diet will be delicious indeed.

But I do vow, here and now, never to serve her boiled haddock.

I just couldn’t hack it.

SLEEP DEPRIVATION, THE PERFECT WIFE AND THE NOT-SO-PERFECT HUSBAND

Every morning if I am planning on going out, I put on same face powder, look in the mirror and note despondently that it doesn’t appear to have done anything whatsoever to improve my appearance. This morning I realised that this may have been because the container is completely empty and I have in fact been putting nothing on my face at all.

I wish I had worked this out before my brother’s wedding. Now I am forever immortalised with bags under my eyes so dark it looks like they’ve been gouged by a rhinoceros horn.

It also doesn’t help that my husband (who has to start work early) is shocking at getting out of bed and starts his wake up alarms TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES before he intends on getting up, by which time his child (she tends to be his in instances where she is highly difficult) is well and truly awake, thanks to said alarm, and ready to start her day.

Since I’ve started, I may as well throw my husband well and truly under the bus and mention that in my own humble opinion, I think I’m coping with this continual sleep deprivation with great aplomb, a fact which I believe is going largely unnoticed by my darling husband. I am telling you all with great truth and certainty that if Miss Q were relying on Gregory for food and comfort on a never-ending basis, she would be in dire straits indeed.

‘Imagine,’ I say, trying to get him to understand my saint-like efforts, ‘being chained to someone non-stop for 6 months straight, and having them scream at you for periods at a time and you can’t even be mean back.’

‘I don’t have to imagine,’ he said, ‘I have a wife,’ and then he ducked well out of arms reach.

He says these things just to get a rise out me, but it didn’t work that time because I had already risen on account of his TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES of unnecessary alarms.

I am also aware that writing this blog probably won’t change anything, as Gregory doesn’t read it.

If you do and you see him, would you let him know I’m doing a fabulous job.

If I do say so myself. 

Thank you very much.

CHILD BEAUTY PAGEANTS AND HOW I COOKED MISS Q

I have been cooking my child.

Steaming her like a little Asian dumpling.

(Except she doesn’t look remotely Asian, as the people who gave her birth are both pasty white, freckly anglo Saxons with big noses (me) and lots of hair, (Gregory) neither of which you see on Asians).

It all started a couple of weeks ago. She came out in a rash, right when she began solids, and I thought, bloody hell. I’ve got the one kid in the world who’s allergic to that stupid rice cereal.

So off I went to the chemist who informed me that rashes are one of three things: viral, allergies or heat. She very quickly ruled out the first two once I told her how many bedclothes Miss Q has been wearing to bed each night.

In my defence Miss Q can’t talk very well yet (she is saying mama and dada, but with absolutely no connection to what those words mean) so because she didn’t say ‘excuse me mama, but I’m hotter than a homo in a sausage factory,’ I was following the advice I’d been given and putting her in one more layer than what I require.

Which might be fine for normal people, but on a hot summer’s day, I can be standing in the shade and needing a sweater, so it seems that using me as the thermal yardstick is not a particularly accurate measure.

It’s not the first time I’ve gotten things wrong, (I know, I know, it seems hard to believe) it happened again today when I was convinced Miss Q wanted to take a nap – the incessant whinging and rubbing of the eyes gave it away I thought – but in fact she did not want to take a nap and told me so by screaming her lungs off for twenty-five minutes, despite the fact that her eyes were involuntarily closing and she was forcing them open with a will power I’m sure I’ll come to admire when she’s an adult taking on a huge multi-national to better the plight of the common man, and not her poor, lowly mother. The second I relented and picked her up the tears ceased and the smiles came.

And I went straight to my phone and textied my husband about how appallingly his child was behaving and that I hoped he was having a lovely childfree day.

So then Miss Q had red eyes to add to her red rash and I was beginning to doubt her chances of winning that children’s beauty pageant everyone’s been talking about.

And then Miss Q sang her little nonsensical songs to me and grabbed my face and pulled me close so she could nibble on my nose (which in all honesty, could do with some trimming) and the horror of before was all but forgot.

And that, my friends, is parenting. You get it wrong, they make you pay for it and you both end up making amends.

Long live the tale of Little Miss Q.

MOTHER'S DAY, RED CROSS AND NON-LACTATING BOOBS

Several years ago I was volunteering for my favourite not for profit (Australian Red Cross) when one of the women I was working with mentioned that she’d had a falling out with her son.

‘Oh that’s very sad,’ I replied, ‘I’m terribly sorry to hear that.’

‘Yes, both he and his wife are refusing to speak to me.’

Isn’t it awful when people offer leading comments like that, hoping your response will be ‘why whatever happened?’

Sometimes (particularly in volunteer situations where my experience is that the do-gooders are often as troubled as the people you’re trying to help) I find the less you know about your fellow altruist is very often all the better.

‘Oh dear,’ I respond, still hoping to avoid hearing the story, ‘perhaps it won’t last.’

‘Oh no, I think it will. You see I was babysitting their son the other day and he needed a drink.’ 

I couldn’t possibly guess where this was going. 

‘So I offered him my breast.’

I told you I couldn’t have guessed where this was going.

‘You what?’

‘I offered him my breast.’

‘Yeah, right.’ What was I meant to say?

‘And when I told my son and his wife what I had done they were furious with me and have banned me from ever visiting their son again.’

‘Right, well, I can see how that might have upset them. I mean you didn’t actually have any milk to give your grandson did you?’

‘No, of course not, but I knew it would comfort him and in some instances a non-mother has begun to lactate when a baby attaches to her nipple.’

See what I mean about do-gooders being crazier than a big bag of dust.

I had forgotten this story (or quite possibly I’d blocked it from my mind) but it resurfaced again today when I was thinking about a mother’s sacrifice and just how far we would go for our children. Though for the record, my mother has not been offering Miss Q her non-lactating boob.

So in celebration of my first official mother’s day, here is a list of some of the sacrifices I’ve made for little Miss Q:

·               Nappy scraping. Our virtuous decision to use cloth nappies has really begun to bite now that Miss Q is eating pureed carrot. In case you’re wondering, it comes out exactly the same way it goes in. It’s truly remarkable.

·               I had to stop running for four months, which (if you know me at all) you’d realise was a great sacrifice indeed – for further reading on my love for running, click this.

·                An unrelenting, continual, ceaseless pattern of interrupted sleep, resulting in constant dry skin on my eyelids and permanent bruises underneath them, thereby ruining my career as an eye model.

·               Getting my boobs out in public. Although I know someone who would argue I could ask my mother to do this particular parenting duty for me instead.

·               No more than one champagne. Even at your brother’s wedding, which really, really blew.

·               Missing the middle part of the movie for the 10pm feed. Which is what just happened. Even though it’s A Few Good Men and I’ve seen it so many times I can say ‘you can’t handle the truth’ better than Jack did.

I love belonging to clubs - water polo, choir, I even joined the library club for a brief moment in time because I’d started a new school and my only friend was already a member. But that only lasted a day because you’re not allowed to talk in libraries and I wasn’t very good at that. 

But now I’m a bona fide member of a club of elite, special forces. I guess the aforementioned sacrifices were all part of my hazing. Trouble is, the hazing continues…for the rest of my parenting life. Happy mother's day people. I am very excited to belong.