Warmer in winter

This morning, I took the kid to the zoo while The Boy worked on the PhD. We drove past a scattered army of yarn-bombers wrapping the trunks of the trees of Royal Parade with quality knitting. These were no Handmade Nation wannabees. They were sensible matrons in hi-vis vests. The winter morning light made them young and hip and beautiful. Yellow leaves drifted down on them, settling in their braids and beanies.

Turns out they have a Facebook page

The kid fell asleep in the car on the way home. I turned on the Hottest 100 of all time, and felt like I was 21 (and 17 and 26) again. Driving home warm and maudlin with Augie March and Bon Iver and Powderfinger. It's been a while since I understood a Countdown. The days of epic annual parties are long gone, but it's hard not to overhear that day-long summer broadcast in surround sound, in parks and on beaches. 


When we got back, The Boy came downstairs to sit in the car with the sleeping kid and write. I went in and cranked it loud. Danced to Hey Ya like no-one was watching and kind of wished someone was.

Chefs don't cook at home

Some time ago, I started knitting a blanket for a baby. That baby turns four very soon, and I finished the blanket last weekend. The baby's not getting it.

Not even like it was all that complicated. I think I just underestimated a) how big a blanket actually is in stitches and b) how uninteresting it is to knit something that big and that much the same. So it's a spare farm blanket now, for throwing over knees while reading stories and gently draping over sleeping toddlers in the night.

Here is a toadstool

And a small boy on a tractor

On Monday I made porridge and pancakes for breakfast, a loaf of bread, a giant pot of bolognese for dinner and a beetroot and chocolate cake for dessert. (Probably should have paid a little more attention to the instructions for that one. Not very picturesque.) And we managed to get to the library for story time, the park for a play and the supermarket for bubble bath. I did a load of washing and caught up on work while the kid slept for two hours. On reflection, I am SuperMum. But while it was happening, all I could think was 'Christ on a bicycle, someone knock me up so I don't have to have a period for a couple of years'. Over-achievement as mood-stabilising/pain-masking technique. Only moderately successful.

A little more successful - the 'let's not bother with toilet-training' toilet-training method. We had the potty out a bit over summer, during prime pants-off time, but the kid wasn't all that interested in doing anything much except using it as a little seat. The occasional lucky strike was exciting, but it was clear he wasn't really ready to set his mind to it. I read a couple of those three-day intensive strategies, but the thought of spending that long locked in two rooms together gave me hives, so we carried on not really doing anything. Then a couple of weeks ago, he woke up and said, 'No nappies, mum. Undies today.' And off he went. Accident central for that whole day, but by the end of the week he'd got the ratio of hits to misses way up, and we haven't had wet trousers for almost a week. Maybe two-thirds of the night nappies are coming off dry as well. I'm this far away from packing the whole set up completely. Just in time for my house not to be full of wet bog-catchers on drying racks all winter. Thanks be to bladder control. (It occurs to me that watching the older kids at childcare may have spurred on the undies-love. That and the assumption that wet cloth ain't all that comfortable. Whatever it was, I am peeing my pants at the excitement of him not peeing his.)

Further points of note this week:

• Two-year-old molars are in. Just like that.
• Kid can suddenly simultaneously sing and do the actions for all of the storytime songs. All of them. Just like that. (I am tempted to add video, but despite the rambling brag-fest this place has become, even I have limits.)
• Being toilet-trained also means being able to pee off the far edge of the verandah at the farm. (Special privilege of boys in drought time, never revoked.) 'You a boy, mum? No, you don't have beenits. You have gina. You can't wee off verandah.' I am devastated, obviously.
• The crazy in the kid's little head continues. He told me he was going to the pet shop to buy a little horse and a little cow to sit next to him in the car on the way home. And tonight when I was cleaning his teeth, he gravely said 'Scarecrows are going to get our cat. Then we'll have to get a new cat.' Seriously, is someone plugging his tiny brain into Worzel Gummidge while I'm not looking?
• My mum has offered to take him for a weekend, 'So you can have some time together as a couple'. Code for 'Go make another baby'? Probably. Gross. But ok!
• I am working on a book with racist authors! Fun!
• I may be an editor by trade, but that doesn't mean I'm all that interested in editing myself. Maybe one day soon I'll write something with structure and/or purpose. In the meantime, go forth into the world, incoherent collection of anecdotes. You are a reasonably accurate reflection of my half-baked take on life.

Things inside our heads

Things are better today. Definitely no baby. But that's ok. I was looking for all those signs to prove me wrong, but I knew. Forgive the dark mood. Probably shouldn't have watched back-to-back episodes of Broadchurch while The Boy was at aikido on Tuesday night. A comedy, it is not.

I'm at home today. Sydney will not be a weekly affair, thank god. More like monthly, perhaps. It was productive and exhausting, but I do not fancy been driven away from my house in the dark on a regular basis while the kid wails in The Boy's arms, pointing furiously at the end of the street and shouting 'Go back to taxi rank! Go back to taxi rank!'. He cheered up, though. And I was fine. Mostly because no matter what other shit might be going on, lifting up above the clouds at sunrise is one of the most glorious experiences on the planet and I will never, ever tire of it.

Cliche alert

The drive home last night was a half-hour journey inside the crazy that is my kid's head. 'I've got a monster, mum. He just popped out of an egg. He's a kangaroo monster. He can jump! And hop and run. I'm going to chase him and catch him and give him a cuddle. We're going to the beach, mum. I'm going to splash you! Here's the monster's towel. Where's your towel, mum? We're having sandwiches. You want one, mum? I'm building a tent. You want to get in, mum? Monster is going to the supermarket. He's going to buy some food for dinner.' On and on, it went. Words pouring out of him as fast as he could think them. A brief hiatus while he shovelled in his dinner, then he decided that his bath was a chocolate shop and there was a man in it giving him ice cream. And just before I put him back in his cot after a last-minute bedtime poo attempt, he told me that I would turn the light out 'and then the monsters will start talking'. What the fuck, child? This is all just two, right? He's not actually seeing men and hearing monsters. They don't seem to bother him, imaginary or no, so I'm choosing to find it all funny rather than disturbing. But only just.

He likes to pretend I'm going to sleep. Driving the car, cooking dinner, doesn't matter to him what I'm doing. I love the way he tells me to close my eyes. 'Dose y'eyes, mum'. That's what I was thinking about when I went to bed last night, with aching belly. The kid and how wonderfully nuts he is. Then the kitten, with porcelain purr, curled into my empty curves. The Boy gently snored. I had sweet dreams.

Reading the signs

Despite my shouty ambivalence, I am back here in the land of acronyms that start with 't'. Trying to conceive. The two-week wait. Attempt #4 feels very much like it's about to go the way of the last three, but I can't tell for sure.

The internet is awash with this hand-wringing. Women watching the signs, the signs! like witch doctors over cauldrons. Dissecting the details of heft of breasts and tenderness of nipples and heads and hearts and moods. Analysing knickers with Pantone colour charts. IS that blood? (What day is it?) What does it mean?

It makes me think of birds. Seagulls screeching and pecking and snatching at scraps. Gossipy hens.

I want no part of it.

I'm here just the same.

My colour charts don't help me. My signs are inconclusive.

No premature peeing on sticks, this time. Tomorrow will bring proof of what the familiar twist in my guts just now foreshadows.

Up with the birds

This morning I woke to my 6.30 am alarm (ALARM! I knew I set that thing 15 months ago for a reason!), with no one in the bed except for me and The Boy. (And maybe the cat. Where did she appear from when the bells started?) I don't remember the last time that happened. Maybe once way back in September 2011?

Yesterday - the one day a week I stay at home - the kid woke at his usual pre-dawn hour of somewhere starting with 5, and as usual The Boy went and got him, but after some squirming and singing and reciting parts of 'Spot's Treasure Hunt' in the dark, kid went back to sleep, and so did I. Didn't hear The Boy get up. Didn't hear him leave. Didn't stir until the glorious, sun-filled hour of 8 am, when we both rolled over and looked at each other with ginormous grins on our well-rested faces. 'Hi Mum!'

Oh my god. Two nights in a row. This is what it feels like to sleep. Is it too much to ask for a hat-trick?

Because, you know, I've started working on a MASSIVE, EXPENSIVE, DISORGANISED project this week. Not a book. Not with anyone in the Melbourne office. Flying to Sydney on Friday (and every Friday now, apparently - there goes my day at home to cook and wash in between the editing) to meet with a platform developer, who is probably going to charge by the millisecond. Must have sensible questions and photographic memory and not look like I got dressed in the dark. Which I will have done, because my flight leaves at 7.30 am. This is big, people. Wish me luck. Wish my kid sweet, lengthy dreams.

Anchor

 

Anchor to baseline

I seem to write this a lot

Makes me feel adrift

Reasons I don't want to leave, and other miscellany

It is becoming more and more apparent that we cannot afford to buy a house where we live. Yesterday we went to the auction of what might have been The One, and the opening bid was $140,000 above the advertised price. Come on.

The Boy has broached the topic of perhaps looking further out than our current point of no return, and it makes me want to die. To make that equation worthwhile, we would have to be a lot further out. With the same ridiculous mortgage, and one more bedroom, in a suburb that we hate, dependent on cars to do anything at all. I'm not kidding. I would rather die. I don't need four bedrooms. I don't even really need three. I do need life outside my front door. I need people I know and places I love and roots that are older than I am.

I know that in some way I am broken - unadventurous and scared of new places and unwilling to build a community from scratch. But I belong here. I am from here. My grandparents were born here. There are flaws here, of course, but I don't care. They are outweighed by the things that happened this week, like the things that happen every week...

L texting to see if we are home on Wednesday evening. Walking the five houses down our street with the kid to hang out in her living room because baby J is asleep and she needs to run out and pick up little L from childcare. (Having little L nearly burst out of her skin when they come home. '[kid]'s here! [kid]'s here! [kid]'s here!')

Spending $9 on a belly full of noodles for me and the kid when The Boy is out and we're running late and there's no food in the house, because Thursday night is locals night at Colonel Tan's. Live in the postcode, get your dinner half-price.

(Also I love climbing those stairs with a small person on my hip at five in the evening, instead of stumbling down them with a boy I just met at five in the morning. Revolver. It's the only place on Chaps that's open all night, and if you end up there, you probably should have gone home. Good times.)

The Boy's barista giving him a $50 voucher to use at the cafe for dinner one night, just because.

Strolling to the end of the street to eat tapas there on Friday, sitting outside watching the world go by, and no-one worrying that we left our wallets at home, because everyone knows The Boy and the kid will be back there in the morning for coffee and will sling them the extra tenner we spent.

The girl at the pet shop letting me walk out this afternoon with $50 worth of cat food that I can't pay for because all my useful cards are in the fancy purse that I took out last night. She knows who we are and she knows we'll be back.

And so on. 

***

The fancy purse accompanied me to meet the old housemates and K in the city, sans her man and my Boy and it was wonderful. First stop, a little Japanese bar in a laneway with a street-level buzzer, then up some hidden steps to a cosy room of windows over the garden edge of the CBD. Proper Japanese. Shoes off. Shochu. Arigato gozaimasu.

Then met E&A at the restaurant around the corner that E's brother works at, for gussied-up Mexican. We ate a lot and drank a lot but I'm sorry Mexico, tequila is still my kryptonite. Not even the top-shelf stuff can override the heavily imprinted neural pathway of tequila = puke. The very thought... Ugh. Somehow we were there until nearly midnight, the stragglers in the empty room. E&A had to go home to baby & sitter, but the beauty of The Boy staying behind was that I could keep going. Off to the Supper Club rooftop with the boys and K, just a couple more drinks. Oh, Siglo. You are a wonderful, wonderful place.

I'd like to thank global warming for the balmy almost-winter night. No coat required. I would not like to thank this piece of work, for making me (and K, and the fellas) wary of us getting home alone when none of us have never felt that way before.

***

It's Mother's Day, and after creeping in at 2am, and somehow not feeling all that drunk (or rather, being out of the habit of hangover prevention), I failed to carry out the essential steps of water, Berocca and panadol before bed, so when the kid woke at five this morning, I felt like a pig shat in my head. I have never needed a sleep-in so much. The Boy is the best.

It's Mother's Day and my womb is still not on board with the idea of being mother again.

It's Mother's Day, and last night while I was on the train, M posted a fuzzy ultrasound Instagram and I beamed out loud and called Dubai to shout hooray at them from the other side of the world. I have no idea what time it was there. I'm sorry, pregnant lady.

It's Mother's Day and The Boy and the kid are at the farm for the night, having man-time together because I have to go to a course for work tomorrow, so why not. They called a few minutes ago to say goodnight. 'Happy Mother's Day, mum! [kid] loves mum!'

It's Mother's Day and I am not very far away from getting in a 12-hour sleep, in a big bed all by myself, with no small-boy shaped alarm clock to crash the party. I think perhaps it's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. 

My life is a chaotic shambles.

Inspired (flabbergasted?) by Bunny's post, I give you a week in the life of Team Twoblueshoes.

Monday
5 am: 'Daaaaad. Come here, Dad'. The Boy gets the kid before the gentle call becomes 'COME! GET! ME!' He lets the cat out and puts the kid in our bed. We pretend like we're getting another hour's sleep while the kid pokes and wriggles and sings and labels body parts.

6 am (6.30 on a good day): 'Are you getting up, Dad?' 'Suit off, Mum.' '[Kid] would I like some toast with Vegemite, Mum.' We stall as much as possible before getting up. I have Mondays off, so while The Boy is getting ready for work, the kid and I make toast and porridge and often bread dough as well and I usually put on a load of nappies. I might try and work out what we're having for dinner that night.

7-something: The Boy goes to work.

Times mean nothing now: We eat. We knead the dough. At some stage, we'll have a shower together. We wriggle on the bed under the sheets and the kid says, 'Mum's got biiig, biig, nipples!' and that's my cue to get dressed. We might go outside for a bit and hang out the nappies. The kid will chase the cat.

9.30-ish: We leave the house, probably for the supermarket and the library, maybe for a tram-ride to the park a couple of suburbs away where some of the mother's group mamas have moved to. It will take us approximately one hour to walk maybe a kilometre.

10.30: I try and fit too much shopping into the basket under the pram. The kid demands grapes. And toast. And to be intricately involved in the entire supermarket experience. The lure of the library is the only thing that will speed the process up/bring the volume down.

11.00: Storytime with Amy, who the kid is deeply, deeply in love with. She sings and read stories and hands out some sort of craft thing and we usually see a few other mother's group people and then, my god, get me home, I'm knackered. Hopefully we've had time to do the book-borrowing part before seeing Amy. Usually we have to go and change the kid's nappy and wash glue off his hands before we leave.

A bit after 12: We race home and eat something and see what the bread is up to and faff about and do more washing, maybe... I don't really know what happens. We sweep the floor?

1.30-4.30: I try and get the kid to have a sleep. He ignores me. It is awful. Sometimes we bake.

5 pm: 'Dad!' I retreat to the kitchen and get dinner ready.

5.30-6: Dinner! Which in an ideal world is varied and nutritious and ends up inside bellies rather than on the floor.

6-something: The Boy gives the kid a bath. I get night nappy and jarmies sorted, retrieve all the sleep comforters and set them up in the cot, pack the kid's bag for the next day, put another load of washing on, put the bread in or out of the oven as required...

6-something else: Get the kid dry and dressed. The Boy cleans his teeth, then the kid and I read three stories in his room. Then I put him into his sleeping suit. Then we talk about our day and what's on for tomorrow. Then we count the animals on the frieze above his cot. The we check that the toy monkey is holding onto his water bottle. Then he wants to stick his fingers up my nose. Then it's 7 pm and I am out of there.

7 pm: If I'm lucky, The Boy has washed the dishes and tidied up the kitchen while I've been doing bedtime. If I'm unlucky, he's been replying to students who have nothing better to do than email their teacher after hours. Nerds.

7.35: I go to yoga. It is amazing.

9.20: Home. Teeth. Bed.

Tuesday

Repeat the morning part, except that my alarm goes off at 6.30, because one day, god help me, I will need to be woken up. This time I'm the one getting ready while The Boy shares his muesli with the kid and deals with the toast and the clothes.

7.15: We're trying to get out the door.

7.25: We're out the door.

7.45: I drop the kid at my parents'. My mum wants to tell me some long-winded story about my step-grandfather's lung condition and ohmygod I have to go. The kid will have a swimming lesson with my dad, and drink babycinos and go to the park and to the library and will sleep on cue.

8-something: I get to work. I eat breakfast at my desk. I spend all day there. I do not leave for lunch. I do not achieve anything, because Tuesdays are full of production meetings and bullshit.

4 pm: I try to leave work.

4.15: I leave work.

4.30: Pick up the kid from my parents'. Again with the long-winded stories.

5.10: We get home. The Boy is there. He plays with the kid. I cook dinner. Repeat Monday's routine, except that The Boy leaves for aikido at 6.30 so mama's flying solo for bath and jarmies and teeth and bed.

7.00: I tidy up the kitchen. Bring in washing. Feed the cat. (One meal a week seems fine.) Waste time on the internet. By the time The Boy gets back at almost 9, I'm ready for one episode of something short and funny, and then bed.

Wednesday

Mostly the same, except that The Boy takes the kid to childcare, and I catch the 7.34 train to work, and READ A BOOK.

Lunchtime: Usually I have to shop, because on Monday I have only thought about dinner for two nights. This is supremely annoying, because I then have to lug shopping home on the train.

4.30: We're all home. Dinner can be something fancier than DALS quinoa, because there is more than 20 minutes to cook it in. I'll wash another load of nappies. Unless I have to go back to childcare for some kind of grants meeting. This seems to happen quite a lot.

7 pm: Hopefully no extra-curricular activities, but by this stage there are four or so loads of clean washing piled on the living room floor, so The Boy will do the PhD, and I'll do things domestic and we might watch an episode of something.

10 pm: We'll realise no one has done the dishes in three days. The Boy will do them. I will sweep and wipe and pack leftovers and wish I was asleep.

Thursday

Same as Tuesday, only I take the kid almost to my work, where The Boy's mum meets us and he gets into her car. She takes him to her library for a music lesson, where they also learn sign language. (No shit, the kid is freaking fluent.) Probably I have to shop again, because Jesus, we just can't get the hang of this business.

4.00: I try to leave work.

4.20: I leave work. We somehow don't manage to the car-swap thing anywhere near as quickly as in the morning.

4.40: We leave for home.

5.20: Home. Evening routine as per Thursdays - aikido again. I might write a blog post while The Boy is out. Last week I made The Boy skip his class and I went out to the opening of the lovely K's latest exhibition. Where there were streamers hanging from the ceiling.

 (And shhhh, don't tell anyone, but I spent $1000 on a painting. BUT! Justifications!

1. It's my birthday. 
2. If we ever manage to buy a house, this sort of thing will be out of the question. Best do it while I can. 
3. With each exhibition, K's work gets more expensive. This is absolutely the last price point I can reach. Get it while I can afford it. 
4. Really, it's for K. So she can still see the amazing pieces that she sends out into the world. Now they're at my place, instead of at some stranger's house! (The Boy tells me he and the kid had their own exhibition while I was out. So probably that means I have enough of her stuff now.)
5. It's BEAUTIFUL, and I will never, ever tire of it.)

Friday
Much the same as Wednesday, only I walk the kid up to childcare and work from home. So, more laundry. Perhaps something slower for dinner. Probably some dough to thaw and turn to bread.

4.00: I pick up the kid. We take approximately one hour to walk home, by which time The Boy is home too. Cue evening routine.

7 pm: Date night! During which we watch an entire film (or maybe half of one) and go to bed without doing the dishes.

Saturday
5 am: 'Daaaaad. Come here, Dad'.

6.30: The Boy gets up with the kid and they walk to the end of the street for a coffee, which takes approximately one hour. I sleep in.

8.00: Probably there are nappies to wash.

8.50: I walk to the gym for wafty yoga, which is not amazing. Depending on what week it is, The Boy will take the kid to the Toy Library for something new to play with. The other weeks, they might go to the supermarket.

10.10: Tag-team parenting. I walk in, The Boy drives away for aikido. The kid and I shower and play and pack our stuff for the farm until The Boy gets back. We might try and clean up a bit so we don't come home to a bomb site. The kid likes to vacuum.

12.30: The Boy is back. We are all starving. On a good day, we can feed ourselves from the fridge. Otherwise, we'll go out and get something in between house inspections.

2 or so: We drive to the farm. The kid sleeps in the car. Sometimes we go straight through. Very often we have to stop in Yarra Glen and buy food for dinner.

3.30 or so: We're here! Everything is right with the world. We do farm things like feeding the cattle and wandering up to the top paddock to see the pig next door and catching lizards and watching kookaburras. Sometimes we have friends come up.

5.00: Evening routine is the same, with less mess and less pressure.

7.00: We read, I knit, we drink some wine, we wait until a reasonable hour for grown-ups to go to bed. (There is no mains power, so we do not watch TV.)

9.00: Bedtime! Unless we have friends there, in which case we hang on for another hour or two.

Sunday

5 am: 'Daaaaad. Come here, Dad'.

6.30: I get up with the kid and The Boy sleeps in. He misses out on porridge with the kangaroos.

7.30: The Boy gets up. Makes coffee. Eats muesli. Speaks.

8.00: Time to do some 'work'. Which means the kid wants boots and gloves and hats on, and the keys to the motorbike. Please. Some actual work usually ensues. The kid is quite good at picking up sticks.

11-ish: Time to go. The kid sleeps in the car.

12-ish: Lunch at The Boy's mum's. While we're there, The Boy washes the car.

2-ish: Home time.

3-ish: We come home to a bomb site. I might try and go for a run. We will probably not go shopping, even though we should. We definitely won't clean the bathroom. We will do more washing. We will try and tidy up. We might have take-away for dinner. Probably we'll eat leftovers. Cue evening routine.

7.00: Think about getting ready for the week ahead. Watch Episodes, Homeland and Girls instead.

9ish: Get into bed and talk about how great the kid is for one hour. And that's a wrap.

So. I guess it's not quite as chaotically shambolic as it sometimes feels. The dinner thing is what really gets me. The Boy does cook sometimes, and he'll shop after work if I can't get away from my desk, but most of the brainpower required for the planning and the organisation seems to have to come from me, and it is RELENTLESS. I am totally happy to do the cooking part. Mostly I actively enjoy it. But the thinking is the bane of my existence.

The other part is the cleaning. I am untidy. It is a problem. I haven't yet managed to find a lasting way to change my attitude towards it. I am gunning for this PhD to be finished. The Boy is going to pick up the cleaning slack to balance out the cooking and washing, mark my words. 2014, Year of the Regularly Mopped Floor!

Oh, New Zealand. You are the best.

I don't normally post stuff that's not about MEEEE, but I woke up with this song still in my head.


I love that the general population can spontaneously harmonise.

Have you read the lyrics? *Sob!*

They are agitated the waters of Waiapu, 

But when you cross over girl they will be calm. 

Oh girl return to me, 

I could die of love for you. 

I have written my letter 

I have sent my ring, 

so that your people can see 

that I am troubled. 

My pen is shattered, 

I have no more paper 

But my love 

is still steadfast. 

My love will never 

be dried by the sun, 

It will be forever moistened 

by my tears. 

And this speech is pretty great too.


Although there were a few reasons why we got married the way we did - at the registry office with just our immediate families, before the 'wedding' at the vineyard in the country the next day - a very big part of that decision was so that our many and best gay friends didn't have to hear the 'marriage is between a man and a woman' part of the legal Australian ceremony.

Surely, surely it's only a matter of time here.

New Zealand were the first country to give women the vote. They had a female Prime Minister long before we did (and I'm pretty sure they weren't half as misogynistic towards her). They have great respect for their indigenous people. Those two little islands just to the east of us, right at the bottom of the world, are more enlightened than the the great majority of the nations that think they are bigger and better and more important. They may have more land and more people and more money, but New Zealand has more heart than all of them put together. Ka pai, neighbours.

To whom it may concern

My name is [two blue shoes]. I am [my brother's] sister. I am aware of the current charges against him regarding [dumb thing], [other dumb thing] and [how fucking stupid can you be].

Eighteen months ago, I tried not to think about my brother too much. I sent messages every couple of weeks to all the phone numbers I had for him, but rarely heard anything back. I received threatening phone calls from strangers demanding that I help them retrieve their property from him, and while I feared for his safety and for the safety of my family and my parents, I was almost glad that I could honestly say I had no idea where he was. I had nightmares about him turning up dead somewhere. I mourned the fact that his son and his nephew were missing out on the father and uncle that I knew he could be. I offered him life rafts that he wasn’t ready to take. I gave him money. I supervised him when he had access to his son. I visited him in prison. All the while, I wrestled with the love I have for him in my bones, and the despair I felt at what he was doing with his life. Many times, I resolved that it was easier not to care for someone whose every move was further into a mess that there was no clear way out of.

I don’t know what the turning point was for my brother. I do know that he has changed. He is rational. He is calm. He is clear-headed. He is working. Eighteen months ago, I would not have left him alone with my son. Yesterday, I watched him gently teach my two-year-old as they painted the fence he is building at my parents’ house. And for the first time in many, many years, last night, my brother came out to dinner with my extended family and friends, to celebrate my birthday. He was a little late, because he was secretly buying 33 candles from the IGA across the road, to put into our dessert. These gestures, these quiet kindnesses, are the things I missed most about my brother while he was lost. The fact that they are back is proof, to me, that at last now, he is found.

I don’t know how many chances my brother has had. Certainly more than two. But I think if he gets another now, it will be the last one he needs.


Yours truly, yadda yadda, this is the last fucking character reference I am writing for him.

Get your shit together, little bro. You ask things of us that do not come for free.

Red light district

So that's a negatory on the baby-making. I think I knew there was nothing happening this time, despite the lateness. Even though I kept drawing blanks last month, and even though we only got a week or so into it, I felt pregnant, with the boobs and the nausea and the hound-dog sense of smell. I wasn't that late this month, and I didn't have any of those symptoms, so it wasn't much of a surprise when the lazy womb finally got around to delivering the message. Oh well. We try again. Who knows what's going on with the timing, though. That shit is weirding me out.

On the plus side, no baby now means The Boy has a little more PhD time up his sleeve. That fucker is due at the end of the year and I think we all know how well things would go if there was a newborn, a toddler and a crazy, hormonal postnatal lady competing for attention with the thesis. Also, another month means we're moving out of 2013 + Year of the Snake = how's that for an inauspicious birthday. (Shut up, I realise that an entire cohort of children can't possibly be unlucky or evil or whatever other superstitious bullshit I'm pinning on them here. I'm grasping at pros, ok?) In the cons corner, we have the missed opportunity of The Boy being home all summer to help with a newborn. That's a big one. I guess, technically, it's possible to still scrape through on the tail end of those holidays, but then we also run the risk of a Christmas baby, and that's no fun for anyone. The Boy disagrees. He wants All Of The Babies NOW and doesn't think it matters when they are born. I am a big sook and already want to have a month off from the trying circus of the trying even though we have only tried twice.

In life outside the womb, we stayed at the farm on Sunday night with a couple of teachers and their not-quite-two-year-old. The kid spent the whole time showing off his kingdom, saying, 'Now, come on, Mae. Dis way, Mae. Up here, Mae.' Baby-crush. He's all of a sudden starting saying things that connect with the way he's feeling too, rather than just describing things. 'That was a funny song, [kid's name] liked that song!' when we were making up crazy tunes trying to keep him awake in the car and 'That made [kid] feel scared' when someone dropped a saucepan in the kitchen at a friend's house and 'Nan loves [kid]' when she was over yesterday and asked him for a cuddle. He's thinking about the questions people ask him and saying 'Sometimes' and 'Maybe' instead of just yes or no. He is also still a giant parrot. On Saturday, The Boy said, 'Woah, you look like an 80s prostitute!' as we drove past a woman waiting to cross the road. To be fair, it was an accurate description, but the kid spent the remainder of the journey up Punt Rd chanting, 'eight-ties pros-ti-tute, eight-ties pros-ti-tute' to us from the back seat. Which, of course, prompted family karaoke time - a YouTube version of Roxanne cranked out on the iPhone. There is nothing I don't love about the future.

 

Hungry, hungry hippos.

What the hell, reproductive system? For twenty years you have been as regular as clockwork, despite your dangerous cells and extreme levels of pain and various other inconveniences. Even when we were trying to make the kid, it was always a very clear red light/green light situation, right on time. But twice in a row now you're pulling this late-but-not-pregnant shit? Rude. I refuse to pay any attention to you for at least another 48 hours, by which time I hope you have had a serious think about your actions and decided what you're doing one way or another. (And if we're going down the same path as last month, I could do without the labour-level pain, mkay?)

This morning as I dropped the kid off at my parents' house, my dad forgot the kid's second name. He's right into saying all three of his names to anyone who'll listen at the moment, and although he's not clear as a bell, if you know his name, it's totally discernible. Not so clear if you can't remember. Dad also seemed surprised that there were six rather than four different pictures to choose from when the kid started doing a block puzzle made out of cubes. As I was leaving, mum told me that yesterday he couldn't remember how to change a tyre. My ever-oscillating brother happened to be there and in a compassionate frame of mind, so he sorted it out, but signs don't point to that situation getting better any time soon.

I am under the pump at work, and my clothes smell like pizza. The Boy picked up our take-away (we're eating take-away!) in the car last night, leaving it with a lingering eau de arrabiata. We've run out of cat food and our sheets are turning grey and I needed a haircut two months ago.

But, the kid cures all ills, even when he is a Wild Thing (although the cat would probably disagree on that).

This was pretty much our Good Friday. Running and shouting, in various states of undress.

All calm at the farm, looking for puddles.

At the Gallery, on Monday. Serious and arty.

I love his guts. My guts, not so much. The waiting game sucks.

 

Sugar high

We've been working, we've been farming, we've been sweating again. We've been playing with friends. We're on the brink of school holidays and Easter is real soon, and I'm not sure I'm ready for the chocolate. I just ate two tiny little eggs that the Social Club left on my desk and holy blood sugar, Batman, I am rushing like a teenager on speed. Damn you, Lenten sacrifice, you have ruined my sweet tooth.

The kid suffers from no such affliction. He eats no sugar apart from what he gets from fruit (and grandparents) and he'd never had chocolate until our NZ trip, but when we got back we bought a block of 70% to keep in the cupboard for the occasional treat. Last night before dinner, he clambered up the front of me, hooked his pudgy legs around my hips and wrapped his arms around my neck and said, 'Just one little piece of chocolate and then that's enough, yeah'. At least he knows his limits.

We're going to the boys' house for their annual Easter Breakfast on Saturday, and it is going to be a diabetes wonderland of hot cross buns and brioche and tarts and whatever other magical treats they care to dream up. God bless them and their childless ways. Lucky the kid can chase their tiny dogs around and burn off some of the high. (Should I drink the champagne?)

I have squirreled away one small-ish dark chocolate egg for the kid, which The Boy deemed unnecessary and it probably is. But I saw something on Facebook the other day about what 'Easter gifts' people had bought for their kids. Easter gifts? Since when was that a thing? These people weren't just talking a few eggs and a story book, they were going all out, giving their children more than I ever intend to give the kid for birthdays and Christmas (you know, those holidays where gift-giving is an actual part of the celebration). I am not a miser, and I like to think I'm pretty live-and-let-live about parenting styles, but I gotta tell you, I think it's a dangerous precedent to set, giving tiny children a bazillion presents on any occasion, let alone one that has precisely nothing to do with gifts. (Ok, so rabbits delivering chocolate eggs aren't all that relevant to the whole resurrection of Jesus thing either, but we're skipping the rabbit part, and the Jesus part, so that's fine, right?) Having said all that, when I picked the kid up from The Boy's mum's this week, this is how he greeted me...

Running so hard that the giant blue rabbit ears she gave him are not in the shot at all. So there's a gift, and a rabbit. All aboard the hypocrite express!

The kid chatters away AT ALL HOURS these days and is totally all over the fact that I keep telling him I'll do something and then getting distracted. 'Are you coming, mum?' 'Are you ready, mum?' 'Are you there, mum?' Kills me.

We love a house. We can't afford it. We love it so much. We might buy it? It gives me palpitations. Or maybe it's the sugar.

Workplace hazards

I work from home on Fridays. I would go completely crackers if I had to do it every day, but once a week, it's perfect. I walk the kid up to childcare (a 20-minute amble on the way there - saying hello to snails, watching hot air balloons, waving to trains - a 5-minute stroll on the way back) and come home to a quiet house and an unruly manuscript and get to work. I can put the washing on. I can rustle up lunch for one with the full array of kitchen utensils at my disposal. I can edit without constant interruptions from the bozos in my office. (I can blog.) I can also be here waiting for a plumber.

Our shower has dripped since forever. It's fine, we put a bucket in the bathtub and the water keeps the garden growing and the cat hydrated (because she is completely autistic about only drinking from there - I think she would actually rather die of thirst than lap from her designated water bowl). But last night, The Boy came home from aikido, had a shower, turned off the tap, and then turned it back on again. Or so I thought from the living room. Twelve seconds later he's naked in the doorway, saying, 'We've got a situation here'. The drip has gone from filling a bucket every couple of days to running, with force. The tap just spins. So now our hot water is turned off at the wall and we're all stinking it up. Wouldn't you know it, the heatwave just broke too. No longer quite sweltering enough to endure cold showers. On the flipside, we're no longer slicked with sweat just being alive either, so that's something.

Working from home today also means I get to listen to a lot of very loud cars driving very fast around a race track in the middle of the park (whose bright idea was that?) a few hundred metres from our door. Holy crap, every year I forget how freaking LOUD the Grand Prix is. All week they're at it, whizzing around like gargantuan angry hornets. The worst part is the fighter jets. Is that what they are? The scary military-style planes that zip around the apartment blocks on St Kilda Rd and shoot over the racetrack before they turn vertical and fly straight up. The Boy loves them. He crashes out of the house onto the balcony upstairs and cranes up at them, making himself crazy about the power of flight. I try to appreciate them like a calm and rational human being but can only take so much of the terrifying, sense-destroying power of it all before OHMYGODIT'SSOLOUDANDSOFASTANDMYANIMALINSTINCTSSAYFUCKINGRUN! Gets me every time.*

At least we have the farm to escape to on race day. It has hot running water and is a very long way from the park track.

*Ha. They just flew past again. M from upstairs has a new boyfriend. He's out there now shouting, 'Quick! Come and check this out! Oh man, It's fucking awesome!' She appears to be having a similar reaction to me.

Cool it.

There is something desperately wrong when you wake up at 6.30 and open the house up to the 'cool' 24-degree morning air. When a forecast of 29 degrees sounds like a refreshing change. Our house is hot. After one million days in a row over 30, the impenetrable cool-locker has been breached at last. I should not have baked bread on Monday night. It was 37 degrees outside at 8 pm and a little warmer in our kitchen, I think. I apologise, climate change, for all those air miles I racked up in my 20s. Can you please send autumn now?

There are some good things about hot nights. We drove back from the boys' new house over the bridge last weekend, after swimming at their rocky dog beach and washing off the e.coli with cold showers in the hot upstairs bathroom. It was late and dark and the kid was still awake, and so was everyone else. An ordinary suburb turned holiday town, populated by locals strolling past the shutting shops in singlets and bare feet. The ice cream place doing a roaring trade. The yacht masts quiet in the still air. We made our own breeze with the windows down. The kid sang every song in his repertoire.

I snapped up tickets a few weeks ago for the free ballet concert at the Music Bowl in the gardens. We used to go to the Symphony ones every year, sometimes twice, but we haven't made it since the kid arrived. I miss those balmy evenings on the hill, everyone traipsing up with picnics in green bags, coming straight from work to graze and laugh and then the gradual ripple of movement as the music starts and eyes close and propping palms become elbows that give way to lying flat on the grass.

Everyone sat up to watch the stage on Friday. It was a greatest hits show - a little Swan Lake, some Don Quixote... Bella Figura is and always will be my favourite ballet, but it's nice to see bits of the classics. I packed dips and hearty salads and met F there, with her parcel of figs and strawberries and macarons, and we drank a bottle of wine out of plastic cups and caught up on all the things we hadn't found the time to tell each other lately. The sun went down and the cygnets came out and it was warm and glorious. And because I am dangerously close to being a hipster, I took an Instagram photo and immediately discovered three different hipster friends who had done the same thing. Snap.

And then I sweated through the tram ride home, even though it was 11 o'clock. It's been nice not to always have to carry a cardi around. The kid has thoroughly enjoyed being a little nudist. But I am sick of the still air and the blinding sun and I just want to sleep with some pyjamas on. Or at least a sheet. I'm tired of waking up in a puddle. Do you hear me, freak-show weather pattern? I'm done!