Stuck on a desert island

For more than 24 hours I have had no access to the internet. I am half way across the world away from my home and family and suddenly I was cut off from blogging, from facebooking, from googling, from cyber-surfing. Ouch! Can I even begin to explain how uncomfortable the last day has been? It felt a lot like having your tonsils out. Without anaesthetic. While you've got a wedgey. In the front. And your socks are too tight. And there's a bug trying to attract the opposite species from the confines of his cozy new home which he's just set up in your ear. And your hands are tied.
No amount of coffee, sleep or crafting has been able to relieve my anxiety.
But I'm back, Baby! And I am breathing easy once more. Phew!
My separation from the Holy Grail that is an internet connection lead me to think of times gone by. How on earth did we ever, ever survive without internet, without mobile phones, without satellite TV, with Apple? How did mankind plod along for thousands of years worrying about building their pyramids to imitate the stars and connecting them to life out there somehow, when they could have been chatting up a storm on Skype?
The thought of paying a runner with a cleft stick to take a message home to my peeps did cross my mind briefly, but in the dash across my mind, the runner tripped up on some of the mental debris I have been sorting out lately and twisted his ankle. So much for that then. I also thought about writing a letter to post off, but my handwriting seems to have deteriorated, I'm ashamed to admit, but what with the advent of the PC, well, the keyboard kinda killed the caligraphy star, didn't it?

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Sometimes leaving the past behind should be just that - left behind. Sometimes it is NOT a good idea to casually finger through those memory files labelled "Done and Dusted". Sometimes picking up on a past story or explanation is more like picking open an old dried scab to release a bloody explosion of unrefined feelings and and undisclosed regrets.
At this point please do not refer to a blog on this site labelled "Living without Regrets", because I take it all back, I am a world-class hypocrite, I cannot for the life of me bring myself to regret nothing that ever happened to me, nothing ever said to me, and nothing I ever did as a result of trying to figure out how this quagmire of complexities called LIFE is actually supposed to work.
I have regrets. I have hurts. I am angry about things that happened to me. I am disappointed by events and situations that I had no say over. I need a stronger anti-depressant. And I'm not even pre-menstrual.
That, or maybe I'm a little Hhhmschk (she mumbles from behind her hand). Sorry? You didn't get that? I said I'm a little hmsishuh,uh (she sips some water). OK OK, already! You want to hear me say it? Homesick. There! Happy? Yes, I miss the kids. Yes, I miss my husband. Yes, I miss my house. Even the neighbourhood dog who always leaves a fragrant parcel on my front lawn - ok, so maybe I don't miss the dog. Do I regret being nearly 6000km from the center of my universe? No. Is my inner CEO getting a little wobbly? Sure. Would I prefer the sound of suburban traffic to five Calls-to-Prayer a day? Not really- it's a bit nostalgic, just like the sound of a mosquito near your ear reminds you of fun times camping outside on the garden lawn when you were a kid. Would I change anything about this very moment right here and right now? Of course yes! I would give a whole sand-castle cemented together with A-grade camel dung to have my most important people with me.

Is the voice in my head bothering you yet?

I have come to the realisation that I have lost two very important components to my integral being by becoming a parent. The first is time. The second, a decent portion of my sanity (including short term memory), and the third, my waist-line. I think that the second factor has delayed my realisation of the third factor for a long time, which, thanks to the first factor, I didn't have anyway.
While taking in an episode of Dr Phil (over a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich), I was brought to a point of enlightenment like never before. The good doctor was berating some tear-stained 17 year-old for having a condition known as BDD - Body Dysmorphic Disorder - it's where this fairly attractive pubescent girl looks in the mirror and sees "an ugly, overweight cow" (Dr Phil's words, I swear).
Later, upstairs, I stood in front of the mirror and tried to out-stare my reflection. My reflection blinked first. I took a couple of steps back and had a good look at what I saw. I turned left and checked my profile. I turned right. I faced away from the mirror and craned my neck like an owl, trying to see what I look like from behind. I turned back again and smoothed my creased shirt down over my twice-gravid belly.
The penny dropped. Time stood still. My reflection blinked. Again.
I suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder.
The truth was, and is, that my hormone bedevilled skin, my dried out split-ends, my extra weight evenly distributed between boobs, belly and bum, my vagrant eyebrows, my years of poor personal attention leading to chipped nails and hobbit hair on my feet, well all of that stuff, I kind of didn't see. As I stood in front of that mirror, all I saw was absolutely fabulous!
So there you have it, I know what the truth is, but, due to my lack of time and increasing insanity, I just haven't really being seeing it at all.
When I get up to go in the mornings, if my shoes match, it's a good day. I apply my make-up in a poorly lit bathroom and leave home thinking that I'm good-to-go. If I happen to catch a reflection of myself in a car window or mud puddle during the day, still I'm happy with the way things are. The real problem comes into play if I happen to find myself in a change-room at Woolies or, worse still, before the mirror in the baathroom at the pre-school at Delivering or Collecting time. For some reason the mirrors in these places seem to pierce through my apparant view of the way I see me, and reveal an apparition that blinks at me through the glass. Her hair is standing up, she has tomato sauce dried on her chin, next to a whopper zit, her eyeshadow has rubbed off, but a smear of mascara is staining her cheek, primary wrinkles are appearing around her neck, her bra is far from supportive (Parents Against Early Ageing would do a better job), clothing creased, but her shoes match. Hmm! That's me!
I turn away, take my sunglasses off the top of my head and breath over a lens. Wiping the mist off on my sleeve, I tilt the shades so that I can just catch a glimpse of my face reflected in the lens. My reflection winks at me. Looking good, Baby!
Now wouldn't I just completely blow all of Dr Phil's boats out of the water?

Starting with a Pang!

Meet Moni. Moni is possibly one of the strongest woman I have ever met. Moni is a massage therapist at Saad Clinic. Moni is no stranger to suffering. She is well-trained in inflicting great deals of pain. But Moni carries a little bit of Heaven in her hands.
She established the pressure that was comfortable, and then proceeded to apply 7 times that to parts of my body that have never been massaged before. Like, for instance, that spot just under and behind my armpits. I think what she did is considered deep lymphatic drainage, but if I could actually see the spot (I can't; I've tried) I would be telling you just how bruised I am. Now when I move my arm like this, it actually buzzes a little bit.
Included in Moni's Swedish massage therapy was a little Vietnamese torture ritual that goes something like this: offer your client a BIG glass of water before you start, be sure to make her comfortable lying on her stomach, let the faucet drip nearly imperceptibly in the background (just beneath the volume of Enya's sweet serenade), every now and then apply a little pressure in the vicinity of her bladder - increase gradually. If done correctly your client's bladder should be bursting by the time the massage is over, making it practically impossible for her to relax completely. Good job!
OK so it sounds bad, but it wasn't really. I feel like a new woman (just like a lump of Play-Do can feel like a dog or a cat after some molding and hammering). I admit that I have been kneaded into a mild state of holiday. I know I insisted that this venue was as far from a holiday spot as possible, that in the heat and the sand it's more like a touch of Hell (and really I did this to try and make it easier for the dear individuals I left behind), but I think today Moni sprinkled (read as rammed) a tiny bit of Heaven into Hell, and I am all the better for it.

Travelling with(out) Kids

I am SO relieved to have done the last 30+ hours on my own and without the burden of children.

(This can now also be called the Bad Mom Blog).

As I made no less than three (all delayed) flights to my final destination, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the babies in arms, toddlers and little children tied to their mothers (and some to their mother's luggage). With a 9 hour stopover in Dubai where I happened at one point to find myself neatly wedged between two very gay Philipino lovers and a Kashmiri with VERY bad personal hygiene, I was so relieved that I didn't have the extra stress of little people.

Now don't get me wrong, I would give my favourite, er, camel (?) to have my brood neatly tucked under my wings in the land of sand, but the actual getting here part, well, we may have to wait for a sandstorm resistant laser beam to transport them here in a nano-second of Business-Class comfort (in-flight entertainment included).

The boredom of little children at the airports going round and round in rectangular squircles on the passenger conveyer belts to pass the time, was tragic to witness. Their parents with dark rings under their eyes trying to maintain some semblance of sanity on a maximum of 2 hours sleep in a cramped economy class seat.
I tried to help out one desperate mother who's unruly two year-old was having a world class tantrum 4km above the earth's surface. Admittedly he had been pulling my hair each time he flung his arms over the head-rest (mine) of the seat in front of him, so it was becoming a little difficult ignoring the pesky little greek. I drew faces on my fingers and played out a very amateurish finger puppet show behind my head to entertain the tyke. It worked for a bit, until I had to magically invent easter eggs for the Easter Bunny to find in my now matted hair, and my left wrist cramped and the show was called to a sudden halt. Alexander, the not-so-great, took to kicking the tray in front of him, and behind me. Even though I was developing a real pain in my neck with all the kicking, I was somewhat relieved that it wasn't a child of mine that was in need of 8 hours of entertainment.

So I find myself child-free in a giant sandpit. Torn between the guilt of leaving my darling little family and the joy of revisiting a time and place that was truly significant in the development of my family and creating new memories with dear friends.

Let's see how long this sand-castle princess can keep her pose...

Torn in two

It all started with a couple of late nights, just to really get the Grumpy going. The tired parent syndrome, naturally, rubbed off on the children. 

The kids started acting up, of course, looking for attention. At first I thought that perhaps it was all in lieu of me going away that they were vying for my affections, feeling nervous and insecure of my near departure.

I asked T-bird if she was worried about me leaving.

"No Mom," she picked her nose.

Was she angry with me for leaving her for 2 weeks?

"No, Mom," finger well wedged in her left nostril.

Was there anything about me going away that was bothering her?

"Are you going to bring us presents?" eyes wide and expressive (could have been because of the finger).

"Yes, of course, my sweetie-pie!"

"Oh," she looked out the window, carefully wiping her finger on the car seat. "No. Then everything is fine."

"Here's a tissue."

*Note to self: My children's affection for me has been brought down to the delivery of a gift. It feels so Santa Clausey. You love him for bringing the prezzies, then forget about him for the rest of the year. Hmmm.

I tried to figure out if the cloud I felt was hanging over my family was indeed there, or if it was just me getting nervous about leaving them. I pondered the matter over a mug of coffee. AirBear was sitting next to me sticking her tongue out at me.

"And now?" I tried to put my most disapproving face on.

She looked a little guilty and wiggled her tongue thoughtfully from side to side. "Ah eyusth tham a thooting sthum  eron my thonrg."

I tried the I-am-not-amused-face. "Talk to me properly, please," I commanded.

She swallowed the excess saliva that had started leaking out of the corner of her mouth and said, emphatically, " I was just putting some air on my tongue."

Yeah, right. And I'm the Easter Bunny. Er. Well I guess I am the Easter Bunny. Ok. Bad analogy.

My darling husband flicked my arm and said, "You will come back, right? I mean, you signed the ante-nuptial contract and all, remember. If you leave, you don't get to take much with you - just so you know."

"What you talking about? I own everything."

He sighed. "I know, but I had to give it a try." 

So, I am still torn in two over the situation I find myself to be in at the moment. On the one hand I can't bear to be away from my perfect  little family (see, the nose-picking, tongue-sticking, arm-flicking thing is already forgotten), but on the other hand I am super excited about the trip that lies before me. 

People watching

Today my family and I went to Wimpy at Canal Walk for breakfast. I did a little People-Watching, and this is what I saw:

I saw a man that looked like a woman.

I saw a woman that looked like a man.

I saw a baby that looked like a teenager.

I saw a teenager that looked like a baby.

I saw a boy kissing a girl.

I saw a girl kissing a baby.

I saw a baby kissing a dog.

I saw a dog following an Easter Bunny.

The Easter Bunny looked like a teenager, but I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl.

A man who did not look like a woman followed the Easter Bunny.

The man looked like Father Christmas.

Father Christmas did not like dogs.

The woman who looked like a man called the dog.

The dog's name was "Claude".

The baby's name was Tyrone. Tyrone got into trouble with his mother (who looked like a woman) for kissing the dog, Claude.

Father Christmas called the Easter Bunny "Sam". 

I still couldn't tell if Sam was a boy or a girl.

Father Christmas kissed a girl. 

The girl called Father Christmas "Daddy".

The girl asked Father Christmas if they could have a dog. 

Father Christmas said "No."

The girl kissed Father Christmas, turned and followed a woman who was eating an Easter Bunny.

An Easter Bunny without ears looks like a dog.

The measure of success

For a long time I agreed with what I had heard at a marketing seminar: that people believe they have become successful when they are just slightly better off than their own parents. It made a lot of sense for quite some time that your own private measure for how well you perceive yourself to be doing would be based on your own personal life experiences. 

Oprah (who I would vote for if ever she decided to a. be a South African and b. run for president - because she is one of the few people in the world who could actually decide either of these things without being challenged on it) said that you would know you were on the road to success if you would do your job and not be paid for it. Guess that would make me fairly successful, right? I mean not just me. Any mom, really. In fact, if it were a truly accurate statement, there is probably not very much that can be considered more successful than mothering, except, perhaps the inspired few who have actually arranged someone to pay them to look after their own kids.* (Smells a little of Moses in the bullrushes, doesn't it?)

*I've not officially ever heard of any modern day mom who managed to get paid (more than a monthly grocery budget) for rearing their OWN children, but I do know of a granny that charged her daughter 20 bucks a day to watch the grandkids while Mommy worked a double shift at the local Shoprite. It's true! Shocking, but true. I mean what granny doesn't get with the program the moment those sweet little offspring of their offspring make their first appearance? You would think that a Granny's one true desire in all the world is to dote on her descendents, the bearers of her legacy. You would think it, but apparently, it just ain't so.

But back to the success issue. You can't think you have become successful just because you're slightly better off than your parents AND you aren't being paid to be there, now can you? What is success really? Is it tangible? Does it have a solid way to measure it?

What stops day-to-day accomplishments from being a measure of personal success? For about a year and a half I was convinced that the fact I had gotten through (another) 24 hour period without running away/ killing myself/ killing somebody else was a pretty good sign that I was OK. Are you successful then, just because you actually do get to put your head down on your pillow at the end of the day? Surely if you hadn't actually made it to the end of the day, you would have been unsuccessful, unless, of course, it had been your plan NOT to make it to the end of the day, in which case you would have been very successful in deed.

Too many people measure success by the reward they receive for the work they've done: the prize, the promotion, the salary. But what about the stay-at-home mom, who isn't receiving a prize, a promotion or a salary?

There are small pleasures that signpost the road to success for the stay-at-home mom: the first time your child wipes her own poo-bum WITHOUT getting crap on her fingers or the toilet seat (trust me this is major league success!), the triumphant co-ordination of a dentist appointment, a ballet recital, a trip into town to drop of your husband's forgotten sarmies, the weekly grocery purchase and getting both kids innoculated while remembering all the words to the Heffalump song all in the precious space of an afternoon - I'd say that's pretty successful, simply getting the parking spot closest to entrance 5 at Tygervalley - yip! Successful! Having supper ready before 7 o' clock - almost succesful, if it's supper with four different veggies - getting closer, if the kids actually eat it ALL - you've hit the nail on it's successful little head!

At the end of the day, one thing is true about success - you can't buy success and receive it Whump! in your lap. No. Success is acquired little by little. You pay for it in installments every day. Bit by bit. Gathering it in a box of memories, an album of accomplishments, an after dinner table of happy, satiated tummies.

An apology - of sorts

Hi.

Are you mad at me?

Do you want some time to sort out your feelings about all of this?

...

...

Is that enough?

No?

...

...

...

It's ok, you know, because it's not you. It's me. This has never been about you. It's always just been about me.

I know, I know. I have issues. You've told me that before.

...

It's alright if you're mad at me.

And maybe you're disappointed?

I knew you might be, that's why I didn't tell you sooner.

I'm not perfect. I tried to be, really I did. I just couldn't keep it up ALL the time.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is...

Crap!

This is as good as I'm going to get.

I can only hope it's enough for you.

So that's all, I guess.

Maybe you'll stay, maybe you'll go.

I kind of hope you'll stay - we have had some good times together; you and me.

So.

I guess that's all I wanted to say.

See you?

Comparing STUFF

So the STUFF in the STUDY is still there, although slightly diminished. (I have been doing my best to curb its alarming procreative abilities.)  I do, however, still pull the door closed when people come to visit, because the room does rather look like an impressionistic rendition of post H-bomb Hiroshima.

A friend commented over the weekend that her study resembled a whore's handbag. I was intrigued. Not only because of my own study woes, but also because I have never had the opportunity of rummaging around in a prostitute's portmanteau. I had to have a peek, of course, to educate myself.

Not knowing much about what hookers keep in their carryalls, I may be wrong about this, but I would dare to venture that, strictly speaking, my study is far more floozy than my friend's. And this is why...

First thing that grabbed my attention was the floor. I could actually see it. And not only that, I could walk a fair distance into the room without standing on anything that wasn't floor. My study floor is carpeted with everything from cycling shoes to Reader's Digests. You wouldn't be far wrong if you suggested that the filing cabinet had stripped itself right there in the middle of the room.

Her bookshelves were neatly stacked with an array of albums, textbooks and manuals. Made me think that bookshelves would be a useful commodity in my own study, if only to provide more space for STUFF-creep, or, and this is a far more reasonable use, to provide any visitor thrust  into that room with something to hold onto and steady themselves against.

The chair at her desk was drawn slightly away from the desk, and a sleeping cat looked quite comfortable, curled up in the middle of it. My office chair, on the other hand, has a box of condoms (blown up are a great visual tool when explaining breast feeding - no, really!), a pack of linen savers and a breast pump (kinky for a concubine, perfectly plausible for a midwife). 

My friend's desk also begged me to acknowledge it. It actually had desk stuff on it, computers, keyboards, a couple of pens, a notepad. My desk is draped with the fine art of my offspring. There are hammers and hooks and a handfuls of keys that belong in long-forgotten locks. There is a childbirth video and a t-shirt that needs mending. Not to mention the scrapbooking paraphenalia, the wad of sheet music and the four cycling helmets carefully balanced in a pink plastic crate that was, ironically, purchased for keeping things tidy. The crowning glory of my desk, (and this, if nothing else, will be what tips the slutty-study scale in my direction) are the anatomically correct childbirth education teaching aids. One is a yellowed plastic pelvis, a little wobbly in the joints (just to be perfectly representational), the other (*blush*) is Doris, my great velvet vagina.

So I guess that settles it then - my study is the harlot of my house. I am now more convinced than ever to rid my home of this scourge before the day is done.

Painting poles

At a nearby intersection, just a couple of blocks up from my house, the Cape Town Municipality (Durbanville division) is in the process of converting a four-way stop into a traffic-light controlled street crossing. This morning, as I finished off the school run and headed back to the safety of my piles, I mean housework, I rode through this intersection and happened to notice a forlorn figure applying regulation yellow paint to the already erected traffic light posts. He had no face. Just a lot of hair poking out of the hood of his standard-issue street-worker's uniform. Also, he was quite short, and the jacket he was wearing wasn't, so the roller he was using to apply the paint to the pole, half disappeared up his sleeve, where, I presume, it was being firmly clutched in a small and hirsute hand.

It looked like tedious work. The paint roller wasn't very big, and the painter did not have a ladder or anything else to stand on. When I realised this, I took a quick scan around the intersection and noticed that 2 of the relevant 4 traffic lights had already received attention from the hairball with the yellow roller. Only, the top third of each pole was a miserable grey in comparison to the bright yellow coat of freshly applied paint that covered the lower two thirds of each traffic light pole. 

What made them allocate the painting of the poles to the shortest employee is beyond me. In fact, what made them decide to paint the posts only AFTER they set them up is a greater mystery. At the risk of sounding decidedly feminist, I'm almost certain that if a woman had been in charge of this spot of town planning, the traffic lights would have been neatly painted the day before assembly, when all parts of each pole could be easily reached.

What is it with men and erections anyhow?

The scene at the intersection brought Dr Suess's delightful rhyme about being lucky into mind. He spoke about "poor Ali Sard who has to mow grass in his uncle's back yard. And it's quick-growing grass and it grows as he mows it. The faster he mows it, the faster he grows it. And all that his stingy old uncle will pay for his shoving that mower around in that hay is the piffulous pay of two Dooklas a day. And Ali can't live on such piffulous pay! SO... he has to paint flagpoles on Sundays in Grooz. How lucky you are you don't live in his shoes!"

I trust the bewhiskered, brush-weilding breadwinner begets better wealth than poor Ali Sard.

H is for HOUSE

H is for HOUSE. Unfortunately Preparation H is not. And I am left helpless to address my house's very, very, very bad affliction. My house has PILES. (This is so embarrassing!)

The piles of STUFF in the study have been discussed and explored in great depth (ouch). The treatment for study piles, you'll be pleased to know, is underway.

The terribly disturbing thing, however, is that since I have been carefully addressing the study's very sensitive issues, this evil disease has spread, silently through the rest of my house. It would seem that if I take my attention off any open surface for a short space of time (say an afternoon, for instance), the next thing I know, that surface has contracted a nasty case of piles.

There are piles in the KITCHEN. Piles in the LOUNGE. Piles in the GARDEN. Piles in each BEDROOM. And in the PLAYROOM, the piles have piles.

We're talking a really BIG pain in the butt here.

These vulgar irregularities in my home's profile are insiduous. They creep up on me, subtley establishing themselves on any shelf, counter or table-top. It is getting so bad, in fact, that I may have to warn visitors not to sit still for long periods of time for fear of acquiring lap-piles.

Just this morning I discovered, much to my dismay, a new pile on top of the gas heater. The placing of this particular pile does not come as a complete surprise as the appliance has not been in use for the whole summer, and this makes it sort of inconspicuous, fading into the background. And this makes those piles that much sneakier. To lodge themselves on a neatly forgotten spot is really underhanded.

From piles of toys, to piles of documents; piles of washing, to piles of ironing (usually, I've noticed, the one form mutates into the other, and then back again - I have realised that this is possibly the hardest form of piles to get rid of); piles of dishes, to piles of shoes; piles of couch cushions (child generated), to piles of magazine clippings (also child generated); piles of My Little Ponies (ditto), to piles of Disney DVDs (which I won't, for personal reasons, complain about too loudly); piles of garden refuse to piles of plastic bags (I never seem to remember my big green earth shopping bags when I head off to the store); piles of recycled gift wrap to (and, this is the most recent version of piles in my domicile) piles of easter eggs.

What is a housewife to do? (Sticking my hands in my hair didn't seem to help. Neither did growling at any pile or pile-placer.)

Right now I would give a left pinkie, and possibly flash a butt-cheek for a nifty little laser beam to shrink these overwhelming piles into a neat little heap that can be tossed in a box and shoved under a bed. It would be awesome to be able to eradicate my serious pile problem with one quick session with a laser-beam. If I had a way of shrinky-dinking household piles, I could become one super-wealthy super-hero in one quick little blast of my hairdryer. I would embroider a tiny red H on all my underwear and carry my pocket size laser-beam in my (not crammed to overflowing) handbag.  My distress signal would be a bountiful, yet gorgeously curvaceous, buttock-profile shone on grey storm clouds. And anyone rescued by my magnificent little shrink-ray would wake up the next morning to find a little red H tattooed on their flank.

It would be fantastic!

But for now, I hold my breath, take a pain killer, smear myself with local anaesthetic and ease myself (gently) into the tedious, and definitely painful task of tidying up after another day.

Leaving on a jet plane

I am preparing for a two-week international break. On my own. Alone.

I dare not show too much enthusiasm for fear of offending my nearest and dearest. If I act slightly pleased at the prospect, they may interpret this as me being relieved to be rid of them for a fortnight. They may think that I don't love them, or worse still, that I won't be coming back.

This morning I went to wake my eldest. I gave her the daily body-rub-to-get-going (a ritual that involves vigorous rubbing of arms, back and legs - great for wakening the senses and getting the circulation flowing). She didn't open her eyes. Instead, she held up all the fingers of her right hand and the thumb of her left hand.

"Six?" I asked. "What's six?"

"Six more days till you leave," she rolled over and pulled her duvet up over her head.

How am I supposed to take that? My five year old's first words to me in the morning are along the lines of I'm-counting-down-to-your-departure. What does it mean? 

For the past week my usually easy-going three year old has been grunchy and obstreperous. I was considering the possibility of premature PMT when I put my domestic puzzle together and realised that she might just be acting up in lieu of me leaving. Am I bad mother?

As for my adonis, well, I'm pretty sure he's not too thrilled about the prospect of my absence either. Don't get me wrong, he's been very supportive throughout (above and beyond the call of duty), but I sense he may be a little down about my trip. Am I bad wife?

Having just (as in the last month) dedicated myself completely to the health and welfare of my little family, putting my career aside to focus my attention on the needs and desires of the three people who mean the world to me, should I really be abandoning them to pursue my own wishes? Isn't that a little hypocritical? I am an awful person. Surely there is some kind of horrible punishment in the after-life for stay-at-home moms who abandon their posts. Perhaps I will be reincarnated as crash-test dummy, forever cursed with whiplash. Or maybe, if the re-incarnation thing doesn't materialise, I'll end up in heaven solely due to my Mother-status, and get assigned to the cherub's diaper department and do doo-doo duty for all eternity.

The STUFF saga continues

BLOGDATE 30stuDydusTecHocabLes and counting:

Small party sent into the STUDY today. Of the 5 men sent in, only one returned (gratefully, and I mean this with all the sympathy to the families who have suffered terrible losses in this expedition,  it was my husband). Have informed the families of our fallen comerades of their losses. We are now alone in our mission to combat the STUFF.

The STUFF in the STUDY (debris from a recent office clean-out) has been left undisturbed for some time, and the original research party decided it was time to take a closer look at what was going on in there.

From a distance (like, say, from the lounge, or better still, from outside next to the swimming pool, with an ice-cold drink in your hand and someone rubbing suntan cream on your back) the STUFF seems fairly docile and even inconspicuous. On closer inspection, however, the STUFF  is a heaving, breathing, pile-upon-pile of matter with a very definite and diabolical mind of it's own. It has expanded somewhat since it's original relocation to the confines of the STUDY, and has pretty much made any navigation into that area impossible. This is particularly problematic as other crucial equipment located in that room (like the telephone, modem and accounts file) is now completely inaccessible.

The main aim of the scouting troop was to identify if the STUFF has a weakness, what that weakness may be, and while they're there, could they please look for my iPod?

The mission lasted half the morning. Base station 1 (located in the safety of the kitchen, near the kettle and toaster) almost commissioned sniffer dogs to locate the party when one pitiful figure appeared at the door, holding an iPod connector cable, a Barbie doll (sans clothing, hair matted), and looking, for want of a better word, pained.

"Water!" he gasped. I threw my cup of tea over him. It revived him a little.

T-Bird and Air Bear appeared from under the coffee table to argue over the Barbie. She crumbled into a pile of dust on the kitchen counter. A breeze through the open window swept the dust away in a little swirl of caramel coloured glitter.

"It's bewitched," he stammered, "there's something very strange about the STUFF.

"For one, it ate the PC."

The PC has lain, somewhat forlorn and forgotten in the STUDY since long before the STUFF arrived, but not much after the Mac did. Seems like the STUFF cursed the PC, and now the PC has given up its ghost and moved on to the happy motherboard in the sky.

"Also, I found this," he reached into his pocket and withdrew one golden stick about the size and shape of a McDonald's chip.

"What is it?" I asked, holding my breath.

"It's a McDonald's chip," he looked unamused.

"How long has it been there?" No-one has had any form of fast-food in the STUDY since well before the Mac arrived, which would place the arrival of the McD potato sliver at about October 2007.

We glared at the chip. It didn't move. It didn't melt. It didn't turn to dust. Instead it glistened a little in the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window and emitted a pleasantly intoxicating deep-fried odour. 

It made me hungry. And then it made me worry. If, and I seriously doubt this, the STUFF has managed to use the telephone and order fast food delivery straight to the STUDY, and then proceeded to devour the ordered meal, leaving one crispy chip as the only clue to its insidious behaviour, then we have a real problem on our hands. But, and this is the more likely explanation, if that chip was a dropped crumb from a grabbed-on-the-go-meal that someone had in (at least) October last year, we have an even bigger problem. The problem is that a 5 month old (at the very least) chip, looks, feels and smells like it just came out from under the golden arches. Has Ronald MacDonald not heard of mould? I mean come on! Shouldn't food that old be slightly discoloured (I'm thinking green-grey), a little mushy maybe, preferrably smelling a bit rancid? I'm not kidding when I say that that one little sliver of vegetable could have easily been on any one of your plates this afternoon (assuming, of course, that you had take-outs for lunch).

Am quite off fast-food for a bit.

And still the STUFF remains, bar a couple of papers that slid out under the door this afternoon which I threw in the trash - can't be tolerating any of that inconspicuous creeping into the main house now, can we?

That superhero thing - again

I like saving people. It makes me feel like I'm invaluable. It gives me definition. It helps bring meaning to an otherwise staid, normal existence. I want to be a superhero. What I find so thoroughly attractive about the whole superhero concept, is that these exceptional champions do amazing things and once they're finished saving the world, they assume their mild-mannered alter-egos and disappear into the background. Not looking for reward or accolade. Just knowing that what they've done has changed someone else's world in a BIG way.

I'd like to do that. I want to rescue people from their frets and woes, save them from awful circumstances, and then fade quietly into the background. I get embarrassed when people make a fuss of me. I don't like it. It makes me feel awkward. Let me save you, then please leave me alone and stop reminding me about it. I did it because, I hope, you would have done the same thing for me. If you want to say thank you, that's fine and you're welcome, but that's all you need to do. Don't tell everyone else, or keep harping on about it. It makes me feel like you think I did it for the attention, which, trust me, I can't handle as it is. 

I guess it's one of the characteristics that distinguishes the super hero from the villain. The villain seeks perpetual reward and recognition and pay - lots of it. He wants people to be forever in his debt, or if not, then at least to dominate them forever. With magnetic storms. And laser beams.

But enough with the villains and back to the superheroes. While I seek my super powers daily, I am convinced that real live superheroes already dwell amongst us. Take nursery school teachers, for instance. 

Today I "helped out at" (read as: saved people at) Air Bear's school for the whole morning. (Please, save your applause, I do not do this on a regular basis).

There we were: 2 adults up against 20-something ankle-biters. 

You go into something like that knowing, from the start that you are outnumbered. Your only weaponry is your age and the experience that you have (hopefully) collected along the years. "Can they be defeated?" I asked myself as I stepped through that kiddy-locked security gate. "Will I make it out alive?"

For a moment my life flashed before my eyes: images of pre-kid irresponsibilty; spontaneous trips to the cinema; sitting at home sipping on a cup of hot coffee; a manicure, neat and French; cruising on a yacht along the Cote D 'Azure (Wait a minute! That's not my life! Must have been a crossed wire - I looked up to see the other adult, eyes closed, also gathering herself together before the day officially started). 

"You been to France?" I ask. 

She blushes and shrugs, "One day... You ready for this?" 

I strap my helmet in place, army boots and bullet-proof jacket secured and ready. "I was born ready!"

"Er, right," she thinks I'm weird. "Whatever you do, don't let your guard down!"

For the next three and a half hours we are assaulted from every side. Ear-splitting shrieks and wails fill the air. A blast of sand explodes from the sandpit. There are casualties, "He threw sand in my eye!" wails a mercenary disguised in slip-slops and pig tails. 

I tend to the gunky eye. It was a ploy to distract my attention. I get an unexpected cricket bat across my left shin. The little guerilla holding the weapon looks at me with wide horrified eyes. "It slipped," he whispers, drops the offending instrument and scurries up the jungle gym.

A movement just outside of my line of vision catches my attention, curls and diapers are clambering up the neighbour's wall. I manage to apprehend the clamberer just before they get out of hands' reach. The diaper carries weapons of mass destruction. Lucky for me, I am well-trained in disarming these bombs.

Inside now to tend to what turns out to be more than I bargained for. Changing your own kid's bum is one thing, but somebody else's rug rat's stinky nappy is another matter altogether! At last it was done. Or so I thought: the guerillas turn out to be toilet-synchronised.

I lost count of how many bums I wiped today. More than 30, I'm sure (some of them had to go more than once). And the peeling skin on my hands is my war-wound for all the hand washing I was subjected to throughout the morning.

Come lunch time, I stand proudly by my Air Bear as she opens her colourful, packed-to-the-brim lunch box, and help myself to a handful of rations (since I forgot to pack anything for myself). 

A yoghurt grenade zooms through the sky and erupts in strawberry flavoured goo across the wall and my denims. Quick clean-up. 

Three little militants have started to leak toxic waste from their noses. I grab a handful of tissues and start to wipe. One terrorist assumes it would be very clever to blow her nose on the tissue I offer her. Only, she does it before I'm in position. Premature nasal discharge leaves me scrubbing hazardous material off my hands.

The day ends with a story told by yours truly. For the first time the whole morning the little group settles down. Some thumb-sucking spreads through the assembly. Suitable bear growls are suggested to contribute to Goldilocks's experience in the woods.

And the day is over. The little tykes are returned to their primary care-givers. And I am finished! Quietly relieved that I don't do this every day.

Only someone who is waterproof, elastic, inflammable, has extra eyes, extra hands and moves at the speed of light can really be a successful nursery school teacher.

So glad I know one of those.

Fixing the Food Fiasco

After yesterday's dismal discovery of how completely banal my children's lunch boxes are, I headed straight for my nearby Pick 'n Pay and loaded my trolley with an arsenal of lunch box fillers.

When I arrived at the check out point with a trolley overflowing with snacks, and two little girls thinking it was Christmas, the cashier raised her eyebrows and asked, "Party?"

"Eh, no," I mumbled and then did my best not to make eye contact with her throughout the rest of the transaction.

I could have sworn she was tutting under her breath.

This morning I packed the girls lunches for them while they were eating their (extremely humdrum) breakfast of cornflakes. Air-Bear managed to eat her bowl one boring flake at a time.

Their eyes lit up when they saw what I was putting into their boxes... guava roll, rice cakes with Bovril, dried mango strips, peanuts and raisins and a finger biscuit each (can't be that unhealthy if we give them to babies to teeth on, right?). I slipped in a puffy flower sticker each while they weren't watching. 

Ok, ok, so maybe I went overboard a little, but my guilty conscience feels much better with its Band Aid of overcompensation plastered neatly over my prosaic lunch box potential. 

As I was packing up, the next obstacle crossed the path. The clasp on T-bird's lunch box is malfunctioning. The lid just wouldn't stay down!

"I think Air should have this box," she suggested as I wrestled with the plastic repository.

"It's a perfectly fine lunch box," I grunted, giving up and heading off to find some Scotch tape to tape the receptacle shut.

And so the kids have been safely deposited at their respective schools, both with lunch boxes brimming with enticing goodies, one taped up like a birthday present.

I am left to pack away the collected stash of treats (and possibly sample the fruit dainites - DAMMIT!! - this is why I don't want to have these yummy things in the house!!!) and to draw up next week's shopping list: Item 1: Lunch Box.

Lousy Lunch Lady

I am a mean mom. I deprive my kids. Daily. And they are more than happy to elaborate the awful, torturous details to anybody who may feign the slightest interest in their torture and neglect.

Let me explain.

I pack my kids each a lunch to take to school everyday. Which is already a whole lot more than what my mother did for me. 

When I was at school, I had to make my own sandwich if I wanted anything to eat at school. It was such a pain in the bum getting up a few minutes earlier everyday to smear the peanut butter and jam across whatever wheat-based product happened to be in the bread bin at the time. If I was feeling energetic over a weekend, I would butter up a loaf of sarmies - mostly Marmite flavoured, wrap them in wax wrap (which I just never got the hang of, so my sandwiches tended to unwrap themselves between the time they were "wrapped" to the time I opened my lunchbox at break-time),  and chuck them into the back of the freezer (which generally meant that my badly wrapped sarmies lost their covers and got freezer burn by the time they were needed). Leaving for school in the morning, I would grab a ready-made (rock hard) sarmie, throw it into my bag only to retrieve it a couple of hours later, neatly thawed between my Maths homework and a Geography textbook. This sort of worked for a while, until someone (and I do suspect my siblings to be the guilty party in this regard), started helping themselves to my ready-made meals. So it was back to the early morning frenzied sandwich assembly. By the time I was in secondary school, I stopped eating at school in a desperate attempt to be skinny. While this did save me the morning sandwich making stress, it did nothing for my weight. (As a side note: I never had enough will power to be anorexic - I could not resist food for long enough. This has been my greatest obstacle in sticking to any kind of diet, actually. If it tastes nice, I'm going to eat it. And not just enough to get a taste, I'd rather finish it, thanks.)

Back to present-day child abuse: I pack a fruit (apple - skinned and sliced, banana or grapes - destalked) and a low GI whole-wheat Bovril (can't stand Marmite anymore - also can't imagine why not..)) sandwich (cut in soldiers, triangles, or, sometimes, hearts and stars - thank you Tupperware cookie cutters!) for my kids' lunches. Everyday. Sometimes I'll add some raisins or a couple of nuts. Not often. Just sometimes.

Today my curiosity got the better of me and I snuck a peak at what other kids are getting in their lunchboxes. 

Should have done it when Air-Bear was inside. She stood beside me with big, woeful eyes as I gazed upon the feast of biscuits, pretzels, fruit rolls, marshmallows, flings, ham and baby tomato skewers, squeezy cheezies, yoghurts, fruit dainties,  corn chips, cocktail viennas and pineapple and guava fruit salads.

"Mom," she whispered so as not to disturb the holy aura of this wonderful smorgasbord. "I don't like my sandwich."

I swear there were tears in her eyes.

I felt awful. My poor deprived little darlings! The torture of munching on a seedy, dry sarmie when all your table-fellows are gorging on MSG and sugar laden treats. (OK, so maybe they weren't all unhealthy meals - but I am trying to make myself feel a little better for trying to be healthy, albeit boring.)

Here I was thinking that I was being so much better than my mother had been to me, when there were all these children who's mothers (? I think there may be a handful of au pairs and grannies in the bunch) were going to all the effort of making fancy little meals for their darling offspring.

Not wanting to go the fast food route, and aiming to keep my kids' lunch-boxes healthy, I hereby dedicate myself to the inclusion of at least one non-boring "treat" in their lunch-boxes each day.

Suggestions welcome. And needed. Please.

Oh, STUFF it!

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the amalgamation of these two entities in holy matrimony. 

Today marks the auspicious occasion of the uniting of  LOADS of STUFF with TONS of STUFF in the sacred space of the STUDY. Their union is verified by their exuberant and instantaneous procreation, and so we celebrate the arrival of a HELLUVA LOTTA STUFF into the STUFF family and declare the inner-sanctum of the STUDY holy ground.

The congregation is requested not to disturb the STUFF in the STUDY, as its behaviour is unpredictable and can be fatal at any given second. Also we cannot take any responsibility for geological disturbances, the collapsing of carefully balanced STUFF or  the loss of persons or property within the defined borders of the STUDY. Please do not venture beyond the "safe-zone" as clearly demarcated by the Police-Tape. Also, it seems that STUFF not only has reproductive properties, but it also solemnly abides by the universal laws of entropy. 

Only seasoned veterans experienced in STUFF management may proceed for short distances at a time. We recommend that any person undertaking such an adventure be fully insured as well as to take the necessary precautions (ie rope, hard hat, ear plugs, bug spray, low GI snacks, rehydration solution, collapsible porta-potty, thermal underwear, candles, suitable walking shoes - preferably with a steel toe-cap, abseiling equipment, dart gun, flares, a water resistant  - up to 25mm - one-man tent, satellite tele-communication device, map book, a radiation exposure badge, the names and numbers of 1. a family member not residing at the same address as the explorer 2. the family physician 3. the closest movie rental outlet).

In the unlikely event of the immediate extermination of the STUFF, immediate family members are granted an island holiday. If, and this is a more realistic prediction of the near-future, the STUFF sets up semi-to permanent residence, immediate family members are requested to make the most of it until mom just can't bear it any more, or dad has no more easily located shoes to wear, in which case it is suggested that the house be set on fire and the family move.

Good luck.

The endangered night owl

I am not a night-person.

I have not been able to figure out why, I just cannot seem to push myself far beyond 21h3o on any given day.

When I worked night duty, I had to prepare myself two days prior to my allocated shift by sleeping for at least 6 hours during the day so that I had some "sleep" stored up for those long night stretches. And it generally took me two days after the nocturnal sojourn to recover. Like a weird form of jet-lag.  And it didn't matter how many babies were making their debut appearances, I really battled to keep the yawning at bay (which, I learnt, is not very encouraging for a labouring mom who generally needs a creative, physically strong and all-round energetic labour-support person by her side). It seemed that no amount of delivery-assisted adrenaline seemed to shake me out of my sleepy persona.

Having my own babies was also a real challenge for me, what with all those night time feeds! Being a dedicated breastfeeder, I did not share the 3 hourly feeding routine with my hubby, who would have been more than happy to help out if we had gone the formula milk route. I remember waking one night, after nodding off during a midnight feed, to find myself slipping off my rocking chair, breasts exposed, with my newborn balanced over my knee about to slide - head first -  to the ground. After that incident, I would drag myself to my infant's bedside when she woke for a feed, hoist her over my shoulder and trudge back to bed in a zombie - like state. There my baby would feed and I would pass out. This turned out to be the best way the most number of people in our household got the most amount of sleep. It also had its drawbacks, of course. I did get rather aggressively kicked in the ear when I happened to readjust my head's position on my daughter's tummy. She did not approve of being a stand-in pillow, obviously.

I don't understand why I am this way. I don't think it's inherited, and I don't think it's from a lack of sleep, because even if I do "catch-up" sleep during the day, I am just as tired as ever.

My parents, my husband, my in-laws and most of our friends tend to be night-owls, so my lack of energy in the evening hours is somewhat of a disappointment as far as socialising goes. Give me a late brunch, an afternoon picnic, or a day at the beach, but please don't invite me out for a dinner any time after 8pm - I will be a great disappointment!

And please don't suggest we watch a movie after dinner - I might as well fill out a prescription for Dormicum. If we do happen to rent a movie for an evening's entertainment, I will watch the first five minutes. After that, things will tend to get a little hazy. There will be one or two points during the film that I will watch out of obligation (only because my husband has jabbed me in the ribs because my snoring has sort of distracted the other viewers from a high-speed motor chase or a suicide bomber exploding.) Once the rib-jab wears off, however, I tend to drift off again, only to make a valiant attempt to comment on whoever's names flash up during the credit roll. It's tragic, I know.

And don't even get me started on other evening activities... my poor husband! Sex is a bit of a swear-word. For me, because I have to muster up some superhuman energy to actually take part (as in "What the sex are you asking me to do?"), and for him because he probably isn't going to get any (as in "Oh sex?" *shrug* "Sex happens."). I'm embarrassed to say that I have lost count as to how many times I might (only because I really can't remember the details) have falling asleep during fore-play. Which is why, in His infinite wisdom, God granted us a weekend every 5 to 7 days, and Disney, being equally wise,  granted us child-friendly audio-visual entertainment. Thank you, Mary Poppins! You have saved my marriage!)

I know it's not the ideal set-up, but it works for now.

Nocturnal gallavanting, in my book, is for the birds. Before you make the obvious recommendations, I really have tried to awaken the night-owl in me with double expressos, Red Bulls, even Pilates, but I'm afraid that that bird has long since flown the coop! Seems like an opportunistic  secretary-bird has taken up residence in that dusty nest. Turns out she is only productive during office-hours. And by appointment only. Not even for late night chick-flicks. And she prefers her eggs unfertilised in the morning. 

Sqwark!

Friday Feelings

I am whelmed.

It's that state of not-too-much-happening-right-now. Not too much. Not too little. 

Just ordinary. No extra. 

Like white linen before you bleach it. It's white, but it could be whiter. 

It's the feeling of been gasted without the flabber. 

Vagant without the extra. 

I'm standing in, not out. 

I'm ceptional.

I have nothing to complain about, I'm perfectly gruntled, thank you.

And I believe it all has something to do with it being the end of the week, and no, the To Do List remains unchanged, but thanks for asking, nonetheless.

What's in a name?

A labour ward is a good place to keep track of name trends. When I was doing delivery duty, I was exposed to a clump of Calebs, a mass of Micaelas, a hefty helping of Heindrichs, some Simons and a very few Felicities.

It was always interesting for me to hear what people were choosing to name their children and why. Some people went for the family name option, giving their brand new offspring a super-concoction of names belonging to various family members from the last 5 generations. I always felt that this was very unfair on the infant. Why such a tiny little person has to carry some ridiculously extensive title is beyond me. 

Can you imagine: "I'm so glad you came to visit. I'd love to introduce you to my son. I hope you don't have anywhere you need to be in the next couple of hours, because it's going to take that long for me to recite his full name. I will have to stop at some point just to check his birth certificate, because I always muddle up the part where Wilhelm Majorus Siegfried follows on to the Peter Gandolfini, or is it the Jean-Claude Renaldi bit? See, I get it wrong every time! Just trying to keep the peace in this politically correct EU family of ours. Ahem. Cuppa tea?"

Then there were the parents who insisted on the New Agey names: "Ja, this is uhm? What do you call that beautiful flower with the thorns? Oh yes, a rose... Rose, what did we decide to call this little bebby? That's right, man, we called him Sunbeam. I thought it was wicked, bru. Yeah it's a bit on the frillsy side, but we actually didn't check if it was a boy or a girl for the first three days, you know... those labour drugs were wild, man! What? What do you mean only she was supposed to have?""

I also have my reservations about New Age names. It might be really cute, Gwenyth Paltrow, to have your little Apple Blossom digging in the sandpit, making snow angels or even starting ballet, but one day, when sweet little Apple Blossom has finished her MBA, please tell me who is actually going to take her seriously when she applies for that fancy position at IBM? (Apple working for IBM? Splendid, I know!)

Or parents who complicate the spelling of their infant's name to make their little dumpling completely unique. "This is Michael,' is what you hear, but what they're saying is, "This is EmYkilL." And the day that poor little EmYkilL has to learn to write his own name, the kid's going to have to go see an educational psychologist just to deal with the fact that his parents couldn't spell!

So when the time came to choose names for my own children, I was quite nervous. Not only about making the right decision, but also about all the criticism that goes along with naming your child (as neatly illustrated in the last four paragraphs).

We consulted name books, in the end, deciding that we favoured giving names with inherently special meanings. We should have only looked at one book, though. The trouble with looking up the meaning of the same name in different books, is that each author donates their own special interpretation to each name, so you'll find that the name you really like could mean "radiant angel" in one book and "lump of clay" in another.

We ended up going with one name meaning "Happy" and one meaning "Bringer of peace". (Side note - we await, perhaps not as patiently as we ought, for happiness and peace to be brought).

Yesterday, on the way home from ballet, "Happiness" was thoughtfully tugging on a stray hair that had escaped the crooked bun pinned off-center at the top of her head.

"Mom," she said, "when I have my daughter one day, I will call her Juliet."

"That's a very beautiful and romantic name," I said.

"What's romantic?" she asked.

"It's, uh, it means lovely and beautiful and special," I grasped at straws.

"Oh." Moments silence. "If I have another girl, I will call her Chloe."

"That's nice too, " I said. "But what if you have a boy?"

No hesitation here: "I'll call him Spiderman."

Hmmm. Seems we may be into a new name trend here...

Me vs my greatest enemy

I am in the middle of a very heated argument.
One that I know will not end satisfactorily. And it's because one of the feuding parties will be convinced of how undeniably stubborn they are, and the other will be frustrated by unchanging circumstance.
This is a no-win situation.
Let me introduce you to the opposing teams: In the left corner we have Jessican't, mild-mannered mum, more the lover than the fighter, the intellectual. Dressed in pyjamas. Comfy ones. With sheep on. Munching a digestive biscuit. Because it tastes nice. In the right corner, exploding with energy, optimism and a long list of To-Do's, and desperately aware of her rapidly approaching thirtieth birthday and all the changes in metabolism which she has been severely warned arrive on the morning you turn thirty, and very aware of the spare tyre inflating around her middle ("You have had two children, dammit!" interrupts Jessican't from her Lazy Boy chair) is the overactive, tracksuit- and sneaker-clad Jessican, nature-lover, sun-worshipper and all-round health-nut. Chewing on a celery stick. Because it's good for you.
Yes, it's true. I'm fighting with myself. Jessica, the blogger, is being pulled back and forth by two uncontrollable personalities fighting to have things their own way.
This is the argument I have to put up with all day long: I must get back to gym, but I hate it. I must eat better, but healthy food is so blechy. I must blow dry my hair, but my hair has a mind of it's own, and without threatening it with a blow-torch, never mind the hairdryer, it pretty much does it's own thing. I must garden more, but I hate getting all dirty like that, and do you even know what size spider is lurking in the agapanthas? I must swim more, but the pool net is SUCH a mission to take off and put back on again. I must be a better lover, but I'm so tired that the moment I enter my bedroom, my body shuts down - which explains why sometimes, when I go to bed at night, the bed hasn't even been made yet, because I have refused to go into that room the whole day for fear of falling asleep at an inappropriate time (like, for instance, lunchtime). I must tidy the house, but I want to blog (oops - third party sneaks in an opinion).
So you see, I really am a mess. And it's an argument I just can't win.
Perhaps it is because there is just SO much that I know I need to get to, need to change, need to do, that I actually don't know where to begin. And trying to do a little bit at a time doesn't really help, because just when you've done that pile of washing, or washed that sink full of dishes, there's another pair of socks, or another dirty teaspoon to start the load all over again. It just never ends! Where is the satisfaction of completing a task, when actually, (and really, this was all clearly laid out in the brochure!) the task has no end!
Jessican and Jessican't battle it out. Daily. One, ever the optimist, insists that the job be done and be done now. The other digs her heals in, knowing that if the job gets done now or later, there will still be more of the same job to do tomorrow. And I am stuck between these two, their stubborn arguments clanging around in my head. Like empty pots crashing together in the sink. Like a tough stain refusing to relinquish itself to a potent detergent.
Jessica, the mediator, retreats to the sanctuary of her ISP. I am absolved of this madness, for a short time, bowed before the cyber-throne of my Mac, offering my daily blog as a penance. Armed with a sense of purpose and salvation, I set off to face the challenges that await me and my split personality. And hopefully, by the end of the day, I will have come to some amicable compromise allowing me to live to fight (myself) another day.

Take a pill and call me in the morning

It's been nearly 4 weeks since I started happy-pills. I know this only because my blister pack is nearly empty signaling it's time to refill.

Since starting this treatment, I have had mixed responses from all over. Some people have poo-pooed the notion that anti-depressants are actually effective at all, insisting that they only work due to their placebo-effect . Some people have tried to convince me that I can cope just fine without them. Some have tried not to talk about it at all - like it makes them feel uncomfortable. While still others have asked me to to pass them a couple of pills under the table (which could explain my empty pack...)

What do I think?

Well. Over the weekend there was so much on, and I was really caught up in the adrenalin of the bike race and the business of socialising and catching up, that I forgot my pills over two consecutive days. And you know, I actually felt it by late Sunday and spilling over into yesterday. 

It came as a heaviness. An empty tiredness. A longing to be somebody else, somewhere else, somehow. Just unhappy. A misery that crept like a stalking panther and settled itself somewhere behind my eyebrows, hiding in the hustle and bustle of my day, readying itself to pounce and devour. This melancholy caught my attention, reminding me about the little white pills resting undisturbed in the medicine chest. I took yesterday's dose early, and like mist, the prowler in my head disappeared leaving only a feint footprint in my mind of it's recent presence.

So, to answer the question: I think these drugs work for me. I feel better. A little more like the person I know I am. A little bit more like ME.

Super Hero In Training!

(Disclaimer: I am aware of but do not take any responsibility for the title of today's blog's abbreviated form.)

For the first time ever, I was grateful today that my house was a complete pigsty. It gave me something to do to avoid missing work, missing hubby, missing kids, missing life outside of solitary confinement. 

There was that, and I drank loads of coffee as I argued with myself about where I should start my assault on my To Do List: the study/ the spare room/ the LOADS of STUFF/ the kid's toy box/ correction: plural - toy boxes/ the TONS of STUFF/ the linen cupboard/ the entropy behind the bar/ the garden shed. 

At this point it would be fair to say that I am eagerly awaiting my super-hero powers from my recent (radio-active) spider bite to kick in so that I can let you all know that that To Do List I just went through, is what I accomplished before 10am. 

Sadly, I am still super-powerless. But I have not given up faith that at some point in the near future I will be bestowed with X-RAY VISION, SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH, and ULTRASONIC SPEED*. 

*I reckon that if I have several options to look forward to, and I only get one gift, at least I have more chance of expecting the gift I receive. For instance, if I was eagerly and only anticipating "INVISIBILITY" and instead got "GLOWS-IN-THE-DARK", how completely disappointing would that be?

The possibility of super-powers extends in so many directions... If I had a super-power, even FaceBook would be affected. Can you just imagine my status? Jessica can heal herself. Real quick. People would think I was on strong drugs - probably a very effective anti-biotic. Or how about this: Jessica is Mr Incredible. Kachow! I do like the possibility of declaring: Jessica glows in the dark - but that might be just too much for my FaceBook Friends to take in. If I said Jessica is invisible or Jessica can stop a speeding bullet,  I might raise unsubstantiated concerns for my emotional well-being and someone might send me a flower for my garden or a sea urchin for my aquarium out of sympathy.

Which is why, when I do receive my "special talent", I will assume a non-presumptuous alter ego. I will be an unnoticed wall flower, perhaps a shrinking violet. I will wear spectacles. And brown tweed skirts. I will hide my nose in a book. I will talk quietly and stutter in front of large audiences. 

So, I guess that's that then. The day I become a librarian my secret will be out.

But until then, I will continue my battle with the debris of existence which fills my home. And hopefully, I will be able to tick off at least one thing on the To Do List by the end of the week.

Tricycle Tours and Gallumphing Mamas

You know how awful it is when you hear a recording of your own voice? Especially if you're not into TV or Radio and don't have to listen to yourself for a living. 

Well, I saw a video clip last night that captured me running alongside my cycling 3 year old at the Argus Tricycle Tour 2008 yesterday. Running. Me. The non-gym fanatic. The holder of the I'm-not-built-to-run excuse. How painful is that? Let me tell you.

If you think hearing your own voice is bad, try, if you can, to translate that audio response into a visual reaction linked to rapid motion, and then times that by 700. Ouch! If I knew that's what I looked like when I ran, I would ban me ever taking more than a leisurely stride. In fact, I would be sure that I never hurry anywhere. On foot. (I had to add that, because I can drive pretty well, and I'm fairly competent on roller-blades even if I haven't used them as an official form of transportation in the last 10 years or so).

But watching myself run was a personally painful experience. Not only do I think I have a "Heavy" Run (a bit like a charging refrigerator), but having to see the way my body responds to increased motion is really not aesthetically pleasing. Apart from the obvious bits that get a bit wobbly during a run (note to self: should have worn better support), I was not impressed by the strained expression on my face. I seriously looked like I was been tortured. There was this pained look in my eyes which would belong better in a dentist's chair during root-canal surgery than on a race track. No matter how hard I tried, I just could not look at all good being a bit overweight, sweating profusely and trying desperately to keep up with a very accomplished little cyclist. I guess that the real pain comes from the fact that I had secretly hoped, somehow, that I would look really fabulous beside my speedy little tyke on her bike. That the other moms accompanying their kids to the race would look at us and think "Wow - what a cool mom! Wish I could keep up with my 3 year old AND look so completely fantastic!" It was a nasty wake-up call seeing the truth captured on film. A pitiful replay, to say the least.

The real cherry-on-top of this excruciating ordeal for me was the cheerful voice I was using to mask my discomfort. "Keep it up!", "Faster! Faster! OK, not so fast!", "Don't ride into the other children, Love!" and "Wait for me, Sweetie!" when all I really wanted to do was lie down under a pine tree and throw up (well, maybe not in that order). And, having been reminded of what my voice sounds like, the thought of that all mixed up with my tragic sprint is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

But beside all that, the girls raced beautifully!