ANZAC DAY, LEST WE FORGET...JUST HOW COMPLEX THIS ISSUE OF WAR IS

This time a year ago, my family was busy celebrating the marriage of one of my brothers, a fantastic party including a game of two-up played with 'bride money' (pretend money made using a portrait of my new sister-in-law).
It was a wonderful event somewhat overshadowed by the memory of having to breastfeed 17 000 times throughout the day, getting my cans out of the only fancy dress I managed to find that didn't require a complete strip in order to feed my human.

But that's a blog for another day...taking your baby to a wedding is lame. Next time, I will be sure my baby takes the bottle. Even sitting on the couch milking myself like a cow to prepare for the event, would be preferable to negotiating a 5 month old at a wedding.

This year things are a little different. This year we're celebrating the fact that another brother is half way through a tour in Afghanistan and grateful he and his mates are safe and well.

I never really imagined myself to have much to do with the military. It's not really my style. Before my brother became involved, the closest I'd ever come to it all, was the festival scene when I did a production of The Sound of Music. You know the scene, the one where the Von Trapp family is singing Edelweiss surrounded by Hitler's Goons. I was a nun in that production, so we weren't in that scene, but I seem to recall we took it as a fantastic occasion to commit whatever antics were required on the side of stage to make all the male chorus men dressed in Hitler pants and holding wooden guns break on stage.
So mature.

I'm not much of a rally person either. Crowds drive me a bit mental. Although I did do the 'sorry march' across the bridge. I prefer to sign a petition. Or write a letter. Does anybody write letters these days?

Am I against war? Sure. Who isn't?
But I also very much like the quality of life afforded Australian citizens and it's something I think worth preserving.
Do we have to fight for it? I don't know to be honest.
New Zealand seems to be maintaing their high standards of living without engaging in battle.

But I tell you what is worth preserving. My brother. And all the brothers like him, wherever they are in the world.
Yes, they agreed to go. No, they weren't conscripted, the choice was entirely theirs. But what we don't necessarily know is their reasons for making those choices.
While we sit on our couches enjoying a public holiday, our impotent inertia is perhaps a tad insulting. Particularly to the innocents caught in this brutal crossfire.

I wish things were simple. Hitler was bad. So was Stalin. And Mussolini. Not many people would dispute that.
But this conflict is not simple. In either warfare or ideology.

It's so sad to me that we haven't really learned from the fallen men and women of yesteryear, at least not enough to stop repeating the same behaviour. Just like they didn't learn from the people who fought before them.

We're not that smart, are we? Well, we're all programmed to fight to survive, so at its basest, we're just following our natural instincts, I suppose.

But right up there with survival though, my other natural instinct is to love. I suspect that's why we want to survive in the first place. To be with the people we love.

I love my little brother very much, and I love my daughter with a fierceness known only by other parents.

I would fight for her. For her rights, her freedom, her very life.
And I know I would do it with a ferocity seen only in a lioness.
Every animal instinct would emerge to protect that human that I made with my very own flesh.

See, that's why it's so complex, we just don't know what's driving other people. What their love is.

Q and I will make ANZAC biscuits this afternoon, and box them up to send to my brother overseas.
It's a small and completely ineffectual gesture.
But those biscuits will be made with thought and love. Conscious of the lives being lost in conflicts all over the world and with a gratitude that at our basest, I pray our natural instinct is still, and always will be, to love.

Stay safe little brother, you're in my heart.

CLEARING THE CLUTTER IN MY MIND

If I had a job that required accuracy and precision, I would never have been able to return to it post baby.

Q stole by brain cells while I was growing her and she's never given them back. (She also stole the curl in my hair, which is really annoying because curly hair is a lot easier to manage. ie you don't have to do anything to it).

Most annoying is the fact that Q's hair isn't even curly, it appears my curl disappeared with the exhaustion of breastfeeding.
Yes, despite what the breastfeeding nazis might tell you, breastfeeding does drain the mother. Trust me, I did it exclusively for 14 months and my nails have only just started to grow again.

The original point being that ever since Q stole my brain cells (and particularly my memory) life has been a tad tricky.
Add opening a restaurant to that, and it becomes abundantly clear one needs to find a new way to survive.

And so I set about de-cluttering my life.

• I spent a good hour consolidating all my passwords into one because I had taken to recording them in a notebook and carrying it around with me so I could access things when out and about. (And no, it is not an easy password. It is unique and very Naomi-centric so you wouldn't have a hope in guessing it).
• I am cooking only things that immediately come to my mind. Any additional thought of new herbs, spices or (dare I say it) a recipe wastes precious brain power.
• Write everything down. Including where your daughter is going to be. Yes, typically she's right by your side, but sometimes you might forget that and that can be very awkward to explain.
• Systems. Have a 'to-do' box, a 'to-be-filed' box and a 'can't-deal-with-it-now, she'll be right, leave it till later' box.
• Stop making promises you know you can't keep. It will only cut into precious sleep time as you lay there stressing about how you've let someone down.
• Breakfast for dinner is perfectly acceptable. 
• Several times a week.
• Say 'no' if you have to. Less yes means less clutter. 
• Keep doing the one thing that gives you peace...for me that's running, but eating chocolate brownie is a close second.
• Reassess your priorities. Do the quilts really need dry cleaning? It's just another thing you have to remember to pick up.
• Don't take on other people's clutter. This is most easily avoided by steering clear of social media. Twitter and facebook updates are the ultimate clutter-ers. All of a sudden you're worried about somebody else's grandmother!

If you find any, all (or none) of these helpful, feel free to take them on board.
Just don't tell me, because then i'll feel obliged to check up on how you're going and that would be the ultimate de-cluttering disaster.

IF YOU'RE BREASTFEEDING, DON'T READ THIS.

There is no blog today because yesterday nearly did me in and today I underestimated the walk from the bus stop to my parents place, and sweated for twenty-five minutes pushing Q uphill in her chariot in the blazing midday sun.
And all I can think of is brownie.
My world famous chocolate brownie.
So I whipped it up and am about to eat it all piece by piece by piece.
And you too can whip it up because I'm going to share the recipe with you below.
But I warn you, don't try this if you're breastfeeding.
Because one taste of this delicious lifesaver at 3 o'clock in the afternoon when your eyeballs are hurting with the effort to even stay in their sockets, and you'll be hooked.
It's like a defibrillator. It will bring you back to life in 4 minutes or less. Guaranteed.

NAOMI'S WORLD FAMOUS CHOCOLATE BROWNIE
1 cup sugar
120g butter
2 eggs
1dash of vanilla
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa

Melt butter, beat eggs, wack in a bowl with everything else.
Mix.
Pour into a small-ish dish that you've lined with paper.
4 mins in the microwave
And there you have it.
Your life is saved.
But remember, don't blame me when you find yourself making it every single afternoon.
I did warn you.

These are not mine.
 Mine are way better but I don't have the
cord to connect to the computer.

NO SHOWER NO SEX NO DEBATE.

I am a night-time shower-er. My whole family is. We feel quite strongly about it.

Shower in the morning as well if you wish, but don’t even think about putting your sweaty, smelly day-old arse between my sheets without cleaning it first.

It is gross and nasty and as for the chance of a dirty doodle and a nasty ny-ny ever meeting in the dark…you will find yourself more celibate than a nun.

 It’s a tough stance, but some things are just not up for compromise.

It’s been known to nearly end a few relationships, until the offender sees the error of their ways and comes around to the Hart way of thinking.

Recently however, this evening showering business is wreaking havoc on my beauty regime.

My beauty regime goes like this;

·               Wash body in soap of the non-allergic variety. Use it on face too, even though that is widely recognised as a cardinal sin in the beauty world.

·               Shampoo and condition hair with whatever product was on sale when last I shopped.

·               Towel off and cover body in sorbolene. (The tight-arse/allergic kid’s attempt at preventing wrinkly skin).

·               Scrunch some de-frizzing product into hair

·               Put on pj’s and go to bed, drying your hair on your pillowcase. The benefit of curls being that sleeping on them doesn’t make them any better or worse. In the morning, you just add a bit of spritz (or just wet your hands and scrunch with water) and you’re done.

 Voila.

Not much to it, the real beauty (ha ha) lying in its ability to be appropriated to any environment anywhere in the world.

Wherever you go, your beauty regime follows. Even if you're camping.

It’s always been enough to get me by. There was never any danger of me being a supermodel, I’ve had wrinkles since I was 12 and I have reactions to most of the expensive smelly stuff anyway.

It’s been enough up until now.

Up until when I became a mother and breastfeeding almost literally sucked the life out of me, causing my nails to stop growing, my arse to diminish, my hair to lose its curl and fall out entirely and my skin to become as desiccated the Murray-Darling riverbed.

My face looked like a Cruskit. 

I rang the Breastfeeding Association for advice, but in their typical, propaganda fashion, they just told me there must be something wrong with my diet and to eat more nuts.

Really people? Exclusive breastfeeding for over a year and that’s what you tell me?

Add to the monumental weight of mother’s guilt why don’t you? Thanks very much.

So just when I was about to ween Q cold turkey, she decided the independence of drinking milk from a cup quite suited her independent nature and I was saved. My boobs are now only used morning and night.

During the days, they are mine, all mine.

I cut my nails for the first time in over a year, my lips stopped cracking allowing them to return to their former shape and size, and my hair began to grow, sprouting new shoots like a nervous young plant.

New shoots that now frame my face in little wispy tufts, too fine to curl, too short to blend into the rest of my hair.

Made all the worse by my nighttime shower.

Come morning, my hair having dried overnight, I look like a pubescent lion.

There are not enough bobby pins to save me.

Suddenly I’m finding more than a scrunch and go is required and frankly, I just can’t be bothered.

Of course if I skipped this nighttime shower, the problem may be solved.

But I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it. I’ll never do it.

Bad hair be dammed.

I look like this, only better.

At least I know my sheets are clean.

BAD PARENTING - WOULD YOU ADMIT TO IT?

Yesterday was Q’s first birthday and she celebrated by taking a dive off the bed and giving herself a lovely bruised cheekbone.

We’re not bad parents I promise.

Gregory is.

I wasn’t even here.

Although I should admit that this morning I had to stop her from swallowing a necklace piece I had left lying around that was a potential choking hazard.

Have you called DOCS on us yet?

The thing is, this parenting gig is fraught with potential disaster. There are near-death experiences awaiting your every move.

Only yesterday my friend pinched her son’s skin into the seatbelt harness when she was putting him in the car.

Not surprisingly he squealed in pain.

The day before that another friend was carrying her baby and walked her clean into a door. Even worse, all her friends were watching.

Then there was the time Q came out in a dreadful heat rash because I had done exactly what they tell you to do and put her in one more layer than I was wearing and just about cooked her.

Note to self – my babe runs hot like her father.           

Or when I was too scared to give her Baby Panadol for the first time, so she cut her first tooth pain-reliever free.

That would have really sucked.

My brother has squashed her hand against a wall when he was walking her in the pram. ‘I told you to keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times Q,’ he said rather unsympathetically.

Anyone that changes her has to perform a UFC move by trapping her arms with their head, her legs with one arm and dodging a pooey nappy with the other. ‘It’s like trying to put a cat in a heshen sack,’ says another brother.

Then there are the amateur mistakes like baths too hot or too cold. Ditto food. Getting stuck in the rain without any protection and being forced to walk home while breastfeeding, the water beating down on the back of your child’s head. Anyone remember the trouble Jackie O got into for walking while bottle-feeding? Lucky nobody knows me.

Forgetting to give Baby Panadol before your child’s first vaccines.

Leaving your child with 2 doting uncles and a bottle of expressed milk, which she refused and decided to scream for 2 hours instead.

Or packing all parts for the bottle except the one that joins the nipple to the vessel thereby rendering the entire thing useless and forcing your husband to try to drip milk off his finger into your starving child’s mouth.

Yep, we’ve pretty much covered all areas of bad parenting, and due to upcoming changes in our family income, it looks like I may have to venture out into the workforce, so it seems only sensible to do what I am naturally gifted to do…

Babysit.

20 bucks an hour, cash seems fair don’t you think?

30 if they’re not asleep and I actually have to do something.

No doubt I’ll fill up pretty fast, so be sure to book in immediately.

HOMESCHOOLING, BAD PARENTING & WHY AIRPLANES ARE THE PERFECT LOCATION FOR SQUEEZING ZITS!

I don’t mind flying.  It’s like shopping – a necessary evil.  The best part of both being the overhead fluorescent lights found in airplane toilets and dressing room cubicles - perfect lighting for blackhead squeezing. 

I have passed many a shopping hour digging out those hard-to-see-under-ordinary-household-lighting-chin-heads.  I may not have a dress to wear to the wedding I was meant to be shopping for, but at least I know I’ll be going with clear skin. 

It’s a fabulous by-product of an otherwise expensive and rather boring activity, though you do cop a few stares from irritated passengers when you finally come out of the airplane toilet. 

Obviously, due to your time behind the locked door, they think you’ve been getting rid of some seriously hazardous material and they know they’ve got no choice but to head on in there and suffer the scent. 

But I don’t think anyone actually poos on an airplane on account of the bread rolls they serve.  It is like eating a block of mildly flavoured sandstone, guaranteed to wedge in your colon and halt the passing of any solid waste. 

I think it’s a deliberate ploy on the part of the airlines. 

I don’t care which celebrity chef does your airline’s food, every meal contains the sandstone roll to prevent in-flight toilet blockages, overly long queues and potential diarrhea. 

I have contemplated telling my fellow passengers what I’ve really been up to in there, but somehow I’m not sure they would consider my mini-facial worth the fifteen minutes I made them wait.

This time round however, I arrived in LA with the same clogged skin I had at take-off on account of my child only sleeping 3 out of 14 hours, and spending the other 11 hooning up and down the aisles, finding the long legs of only good-looking, single men to help her stand up when she wanted to.

She took a particular liking to a gent in 47A.

Seriously, it looked like a stitch-up. Like I’d deliberately sent her his way.

Luckily she didn’t stay put long enough for me to have to engage in embarrassing small talk. Although I must say, my girl has excellent taste.

What’s that phrase? An old bird like me can look at the menu, I just can’t order.

And so we landed in LA, my skin none the better for it, and the first leg of our journey to the Big Apple over.

It had been our thinking to give Q a chance to stretch her legs by breaking the trip in LA, but since she stretched them the whole way there, she was then ready for a little shut eye, and literally fell face forward into my lap on the cab ride to the hotel, where we were shortly meeting friends, thereby making it impossible for me to nap and leading to a 36 hour stretch of wakedness which seriously blew.

Wakedness is not a word as far as I can tell. Which should indicate to you just how tired I really was. Am.

There is a reason the Army uses sleep deprivation as a means of torture and punishment.

Two days later we boarded an American Airlines flight bound for my favourite town, NYC.

Typically, I am not a fan of AA, but I was a fan this time because I had used my points through Qantas to gain free flights and free makes me a fan of anything.

But it wasn’t just that. Someone in the marketing team, or perhaps is was customer relations, maybe HR, I don’t know, but someone had alerted the flight attendants to the notion that it is in fact their job to serve people, that a pleasant attitude is pretty much mandatory and that ironing your uniform has the dual purpose of making it look like you care a bit even if you don’t, and reassuring a nervous flyer that there is some sort of attention to detail within a company responsible for flying you through the air from one location to another.

Well done American Airlines. I will stop besmirching your name.

In an effort to tire Q out, we let her crawl madly about LAX (the most boring airport in the universe, which meant Q was interesting to all and forced me into more banal conversations about my daughter, parenting and whether or not we’ll try to manipulate the sex of our second child) until boarding time.

The flight wasn’t full, but bulkhead seats are the popular ones, so we had another family across the aisle with a daughter who looked to be about four, and a woman next to us who we immediately apologised to on Q’s behalf.

‘Oh don’t worry,’ she says, ‘I’ve flown with my sister’s two children, I understand. Do you breastfeed? My sister did. Does. Her children are four. She’s still breastfeeding. Oh no, I think it’s weird too, don’t worry. She’s into attachment parenting do you know what that is?’

Gregory was still looking horrified at the four comment, so I shook my head on our behalf.

‘It’s when you never say no to your children, you just give them other suggestions instead.’

‘Excuse me please Quinn, before you go crawling off that veranda there, might I suggest you read a book instead.’

Yeah right.

After we’d overcome our shock, we got ourselves comfortable and it occurred to me as I watched the woman with the daughter wipe down every surface with a sterile wipe, that Q was currently munching on snacks from hands I’d forgotten to wipe clean after crawling on the airport floor.

The fact that I forgot to wipe her hands makes me a bad parent.

The fact that she was eating organic kale puffs with dirty hands makes me a good parent.

They cancel each other out.

‘You have a little baby girl,’ says the woman’s daughter, immediately identifying herself as a genius for not thinking Q was a boy.

And so we begin to chat, I ask her about the toys she brought along, the bible colouring-in book she’s working on and her favourite thing to do at school.

‘Circle time,’ she says to me proudly.

‘What’s that?’ I ask, adding that I thought it was probably something like pass-the-parcel and that that sounded like fun to me.

‘Oh no,’ says the mother, ‘it’s word and picture recognition time. She loves it. She’s homeschooled.’

And then she gave me an ‘I feel sorry for you because it is clear you’re not going to offer your daughter the same opportunities smile’ and stopped talking to me.

Yeah?

Well I made Q a book of the alphabet and numbers. 

If that’s not word and picture recognition I don’t know what is.

Clearly this is a zig-zag & zucchini for the letter Z,
I know, I should be an artist.

BOOB FAIRIES, BREASTFEEDING AND BETTER OUT THAT IN!

Totally lame and pathetic, but today has been busier than planned.
She says, like that's different to any other day.
So in a complete cop-out, I'm reposting the blog I wrote this time last year.
Last year, when I was carrying my little peanut safe inside, enduring the 6 weeks of pre-labour and starting to wonder just why I thought I was up for this gig in the first place...
Enjoy and apologies,

Happy Monday!

IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE

It could have been worse.

Does anyone remember Pollyanna anymore?

You know, the girl from the books. She was an orphan I think and went to live with her aunt. Or someone.

Anyway, somewhere in the town, lived a cranky old woman who was perpetually sick and as cantankerous as the bedsores she was probably sitting on. Pollyanna, in her impertinent way, made friends with this lady and introduced her to ‘the glad game’.

‘The glad game ‘is a game where no matter what the circumstance is, you find a way to be positive about it.

It’s completely cheesy, but I have to admit, for many years now, I’ve been playing it too.

I’ve always been a ‘glass is almost full’ kind of kid; I’m too lazy to be upset, it requires too much energy.

Here’s how I play the game with my recent experience…

·               I could have gotten sick when my mum was teaching and then I wouldn’t have had anyone to look after Q.

·               My husband could have been unwilling to move to his in-laws for 6 days so I could recuperate

·               It could have been glorious warm spring weather. Rain and cold meant I could lie on the couch in tracky-dacks and not feel like I was missing out on anything while simultaneously managing to cover my dreadful, ugly full-body rash.

·               It was only acute bronchitis. Very close to pneumonia, but it wasn’t. That would have really sucked.

·                Could have happened right before we were heading OS in which case I would have had to delay my departure for sure.

See how it works folks? Suddenly having breathing difficulties, a head to toe magnificently itchy rash and serious exhaustion doesn’t seem so bad after all!

Try it peeps, see if it works for you.

Have a great weekend. 

DOCTORS, RASHES AND THE CASE OF THE MISSING BEDSIDE MANNER

I have been impaled on a stake of misery.

My torso strapped there with some serious oxygen deprivation issues, my hands and feet each held in place by fatigue, bronchitis, asthma and aches.

I seriously don’t think I have ever been knocked around this badly. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve been pushing things for a while now, feeling rubbish for longer and trying to hide it all from my ten-month old, husband and family.

I am not a pretty sight.

But it’s not just me who thinks so.

Below is an exact transcription of the conversation I had with the doctor on Monday.

What’s wrong?

I suspect I have a chest infection and asthma.

Yes, I can hear that. I’d say it’s quite serious. Let’s prescribe…(and then he rattled off a cocktail of drugs that I know from my asthma days are not exactly butter menthols).

Oh no thank you, I’d rather not take those. I’m breastfeeding.

You’re still breastfeeding? How old is she? Ten months? You look dreadful. There’s not much to you. You look really run down, exhausted. 

Remember without proper treatment, asthma can kill you. It nearly did my neighbour. It’s just lucky I’d come home for lunch so he dragged himself over and collapsed at my front door. Fine, we’ll change the drug to this, but if you get any worse you must go straight to the hospital.

And then he ordered a blood test on account of how dreadful I look.

It was that quick and that brutal.

He is not my usual doctor.

But it was a matter of some urgency that I get air back into my lungs and my doctor doesn’t work on Monday.

So, what do all independent, mature, capable adults do when they don’t feel well?

They move back to their parents’ place that’s what.

And here we all have been for the past 5 days, me lying on the couch sounding like a chain-smoking Darth Vader, while my parents and various uncles entertain my busy girl and Gregory goes to work.

I tell you, the kookaburras are onto something. Their concept that all in the family helps raise the young is a genius idea.

Many hands do indeed make light work.

Although, to be fair, I’m not providing many of my hands at the moment, as in addition to finding breathing a difficult task, I had a reaction to one of the medications I was given and am sporting a rash which requires my hands to soothe on a regular basis.

So now I have fatigue bruises under my eyes, thin hair and poor skin from breastfeeding, a red nose from blowing it, cracked lips from constantly breathing through my mouth, a horrible wheeze, a nasty cough and am covered head to toe in a spotty, dotty red rash that’s so itchy I want to rip off the top layer of my skin and completely destroys the idea of being seen in public if I actually had the energy to get out there anyway.

I suppose that Doc is right.

I do look dreadful.

Now, I’ll accept most of the blame, but he’s the turkey whose prescription gave me the rash.

The lesson?

Never go to the doctors on Monday.

They’re too busy writing fake sick notes for people wanting a long weekend, to remember their bedside manner.

JURASSIC LOUNGE, SKINNY JEANS AND HOW THEY CAN SAVE A MARRIAGE

Last night the joint CEO’s of QFL enterprises took a two-and-a-half hour break from the company and attended the Jurassic Lounge at the Australia Museum.

The evening began with Q falling asleep too early (because she only took one day nap) thereby ensuring a nervous female CEO as she anticipated a wakeup at any point during her absence.

That was followed by an extra long bus ride because we jumped on without looking at the sign, unfortunately allowing plenty of time for a discussion about G’s work which we hastily aborted before we got a divorce on the bus.

We made it to the museum just before 8 o’clock and I remarked to my beloved that our last outing had been Easter.

Oh we go out and see people all the time, (several times a day if you count my brothers dropping in) but just the two of us…not since the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection.

Marriages don’t survive on miracles, we surmised, so we’ve succumbed to using that very wankiest of terms – date night – and shall make it a regular thing.

It also occurred to me that it is important to get out more often, so I can accurately pinpoint the demise of society.

Since when did electric blue high-waisted pantaloons become fashionable? The woman in question looked like an uptight Hitler on his way to Studio 54.

Ditto the sensible lace-up school shoes our mother used to force us to wear to school even though everyone else was in sneakers or buckles.

I’m no stylist to be sure, but those things cut the line of your leg worse than a Sydney shark attack.

Tighty-tight-tight jeans are ever in vogue, but when swivelling your torso and dislocating your hips is the only way you can climb stairs, perhaps you should consider a larger size.

Perhaps.

The queue for the bar was so long this breastfeeding mum was fearing she’d never be able to down her one free drink, but it did give me ample opportunity to study these fine fashionistas.

It’s a bold move to open up a museum after hours, provide alcohol and entertainment and let people wander free…

Gregory and I were remarkably well behaved as you can see by this slightly blurry picture of me riding a bike that made a skeleton ride his.

He seemed to be doing a better job.

G was too much of a wuss to handle the stick insect in the learning centre (he’s got a bit of an issue with snakes and insects so it’s a shame he migrated to Australia I suppose) but I gave it a go.

No one got drunk and mounted a T-Rex which I thought was a sure bet, but we did see a couple getting hot and heavy behind the stuffed dingo.

A quick trip home – helps when you take the right bus – and we walked in the door to discover Miss Q in the arms of her aunt, talking away telling her all about the nap she’d just had.

We’d visited history but now we were back to making history, one Q day at a time.