Would you, could you… with a goat?

Since becoming a parent I have also become au fait with many different pre-school-age television shows, books, characters etc. Whilst some of these make me remember characters and shows I loved when I was a child. Some are just weird. Or am I just getting really old?

I have Dr Seuss playing round and round and round in my head. And if that were the worst of it, it would not be so bad. But it’s all mixed up with In the Night Garden and Teletubbies. And whilst I dream about taking a bouncy ride in the Ninky-Nonk, it is not a happy dream. I didn’t buckle myself in and I fear I may have a Pontipine stuck up my left nostril.

Why… how… do people come up with these ideas? Is the precursor for making a successful children’s character to (a) imbibe an extraordinary amount of hallucinogenic substance, wait for it to take effect, and then (b) sit in park with dictaphone, digital camera and notebook and just write what you see and hear (it should be a lot).

As soon as you come back to reality (assuming you do), don’t try to make sense of it, just (c) pitch the details as-is to a producer or publisher. Not that I advocate such a method (although Kekulé, were he alive, may well encourage such action).

And whilst my son does not at yet know Kekulé, he does know Santa. He does not like Santa, and will not ‑under any circumstances‑sit on his lap. No amount of bribery, even the chocolate sort, will convince him to sit on lap of said big-fat-man with cotton-wool facial-hair and general ho-ho-ho-ness for photo.

Can’t really blame him. He doesn’t know Santa. Santa does not tuck him in bed or read him books, and son can’t read himself yet so when he opens up the million-and-one presents that Santa has left him, he’s going to think: cool, toys! How does this work? I DO like that cardboard box… I wonder what it tastes like.

I’m tired,

Can I have more cake, and  

All presents are mine.

He does not understand Christmas and fat men who wear red suits. So it is hardly surprising that lap-of-Santa is not a welcome prospect. If Santa was dressed as, say… Igglepiggle or Makka Pakka, then it would be a completely different story.

I think I have some synapse function left but I can’t quite be sure

I wrote a thesis.

It was a little one.

It hurt my brain.

I think I may have a hernia in my frontal lobe.

I can’t stop thinking in footnotes.

No this is not a fucking poem.

You see I’m limiting myself to short sentences because as soon as I begin to go over  one line I then find myself using terms such as ‘not only… but also’, and words like ‘juxtaposition’, ‘praxis’ and ‘discourse’. Yes, not only does this mean I have turned in to a wanker, but also I will soon have a piece of paper proving that I am one.

It’s dangerous this research thing. It pushes out some of the ability your brain has to do normal things like… oh, I don’t know… wash dishes… perhaps feed the cat (oh yeah – that’s why she's meaowing), or even feed the child. People with doctorates must have personal assistants and nappy-changers because I’m sure I’d forget to pee if I was doing a doctorate.

I would like to now leave you with a thought.

Something witty, something pithy, something intelligent, but I don’t think I have any smart left.

what about a picture?
yes.
one showing all the bits that have been irreversibly damaged through research.

Grey is the new mousy-brown

I’ve dyed my hair blond for years, so many years in fact that I have absolutely no idea what my natural hair colour is. If the regrowth is any judge, then the true colour is somewhere between a dark, dirty blond and a kind-of nondescript auburn. It’s what most people call ‘mousy’ [squeek]
I guess there are probably a few grey hairs lurking in there, but I would really prefer not to think about it thank you very much. At least I’m not bald. (Apologies to all my balding friends)
I dye my hair and I don’t have to think, or care, about whether I’m going grey or not.

But shock, horror, [cue dramatic music] when I was in the shower the other day I found a grey pubic hair.

I wasn’t looking for one, I swear! It just seemed to glow with an unearthly aura around it, so much so that I couldn’t miss it. I didn’t know what to do. Should I pull it out and hope that the other pubes don’t notice? What if the shock of having Grandma Pube ripped out from next to them makes all the rest of them go grey? I suppose I should just leave Grandma P there in the hopes that she will talk to all her little P’s in a ‘don’t live your life like I lived mine or this could happen to you,’ kinda way.
I could just shave the whole lot off. Or wax it. I just don’t know that I could live with the resultant stubble or in-grown hair.

Many, many moons ago I used to date this woman who shaved off all her pubes. I actually think this is why we broke up. There was something quite disturbing about sleeping with someone who is completely bald in their nether-regions. (ok, ok, vagina) Whatever. It was completely bald. Every time I went down there I had this horrible sensation that maybe she wasn’t my age at all, maybe she was pre-pubescent.
I’m all for waxing and trimming and general maintenance but this was ridiculous. It made me feel like a dirty old perv. It freaked me out. I had to stop seeing her. So I did.
I never used to worry about getting old – I guess that’s the thing about being young – you feel that you are going to be that way forever. I think having kids has pushed me in to an early mid-life crisis. No longer should I be asking what am I going to do when I grow up. I need to be grown up.
And yes, this thinking is turning me grey… everywhere.

So, whatever happened to Grandma P? She left of her own accord, no coaxing (gentle or otherwise) involved. Good riddance.

I cannot believe that he is one year old already

that he says mum and mama and no and nan-nan-nan-nan and that I am yet to get a good night’s sleep.

He should have been born in May but there we were, 2 weeks after the due-date, still no baby. We tried everything (legal and non-surgical) to get him out.

Liquorice by the bucket-load (apparently meant to induce contractions. I actually think it only induces runny poo, but that’s just the one opinion)

Acupuncture (not so bad)

Accelerating before speed-humps rather than braking (because someone told us that bumpy car rides can break the waters and so we stupidly believed them like the gullible, doe-eyed parents-to-be that we were) I think we wrecked the suspension on the car.

Disgusting herbal ‘bring on those contractions’ preparations (aka raspberry leaf, aka tastes like licking the lawnmower clean after mowing an entire golf course in the rain) – ok, so I just added the in the rain bit but let me tell you, these tablets just made my partner want to hurl (chuck/spew/vomit/ride the porcelain bus)

Super-hot curries (= indigestion and FYI curries are only tasty the first time round)

Talking to the tummy (ok, time to GET OUT little one – you know you wanna).

If it wasn’t for the actual induction (prostaglandin gel… syntocin drip) then baby may well have stayed in-utero forever… gotten married, gone to college, and had his own children right from the dark, damp and (apparently) quite noisy safety of my partner’s womb.

Now, one year on, he is in a constant state of teething, crawling, crying, laughing and generally giving his 2 mums an excess of joy, stress and poopie nappies.

At present he enjoys eating the non-toxic crayons we bought rather than actually drawing with them. Soon he will poo in waxy technicolour.

I cannot tell you what this last year has been like, it’s all a blur. Thank goodness for cameras, note-taking and multi-vitamins. If I could do it over again there are many things I would change, but even more that I wouldn’t.

Celebration, with much noise and rejoicing, of the large, unattractive concrete pillar structure

I think I was a Buddhist in a previous life. A bad, naughty Buddhist that did bad, naughty things to all the nice people. I was a beer-drinking selfish Buddhist who didn’t feed the hungry people or smile at every opportunity or chant for the dead people. And rather than coming back as say an ant or some type of vermin as penance, Buddha himself sat in his enlightened cloud-seat and decided that to atone for my wicked wicked ways, he would instead build a temple on the corner of my street as reminder of said previous life.

And Buddha said:

‘my people will park their people-movers and four-wheel-drives across your driveway; and every time a piece of my temple is completed, my people will rejoice VERY LOUDLY with tone-deaf-nasal-chanting through a loudspeaker at all times of the day and night and sometimes with firecrackers’

The temple is still not finished and I have lived in my home for 5 years now. Every few months a new piece of concrete is shipped in, put in place and celebrated. The concrete pillars are just the latest installment.

I am going nuts. The peaceful, happy smiling people are driving me insane.

Dear Buddha,
I apologise. I am sorry. I know I have a long way to go until I am enlightened. In fact, it will probably never happen. I am destined to stand outside the gates of Nirvana forever. I will set myself up with a little picnic mat, maybe some tinnies and a packet of fags. But I will walk there, I will be very quiet, my burps will be inaudible and I vow never to park across your driveway.
Promise.

EXHAUSTION – it’s a little like being drunk, just without the drunk bit

(you know… the swaying, the inability to make sense, the vagueness, the eyes like road maps...)

If poos, wees and vomits make you squeamish then stop reading. Alternatively, you could set yourself up with potty, bucket and laptop.

I have survived the week from hell. (also known as the week from smell)

Have a look at this pretty picture:

Harmless, innocuous little green dots they are not.

These little bastards have had a monumental party in my gut, my partner’s gut and my son’s. They invited their friends and procreated at an alarming rate.

Viral gastroenteritis.

(Do not lick the screen)

We knew something was seriously wrong when my son metamorphosed into a geyser. A tomato-pasta-breastmilk-geyser to be exact that rushed forth vomit all over the kitchen floor and son’s pyjamas. Whatever we put into the little guy spent approx 30 minutes in his tiny tummy, then it would re-appear – complete with stomach acids – charging jet-like out of his mouth and on to whatever was in its path.

Needless to say we wiped both him and the floor clean, and rushed regurgitating child to the hospital.

At this point I digress: my son seems to become instantly better as soon as we enter a hospital emergency department. He is happy, distracted and completely forgets that he is ill.

The triage nurse tells him he’s putting it on and sticks a thermometer in his ear. He doesn’t have a temperature. He giggles and gives her a cute smile. His mouth is aimed right at her face and I would give anything for a warm, frothy vomit waterfall right now, but no such luck.

Instead we are ushered into the waiting room and it takes my son all of 2 minutes for the excitement to wear off. Now he is cranky but we are stuck. So we sit slowly calcifying over the next four and a half hours.

We give him something to drink in the hopes he will keep it down and see the triage nurse again. Not long after this we are directed to a cubicle and this time he knows to vomit when medical staff are present.

Geyser-boy then has naso-gastric tube inserted and hands bandaged (boxer-style) to prevent him ripping out tube. He protests and it breaks my heart. There is nothing like the blood-curdling scream of an infant in distress.

At least he doesn’t vomit.

Six hours later, tube is removed and we go home.

The exhaustion? Yeah well… we were all pretty tired after that.

I won't discuss the next bit in detail, I will just say this:

once it stops coming out one end, it comes out the other...

Post-graduate student seeks BabelFish text translator

(refer to http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3930815 for details)

Anyone? Anyone?

And really, if you don’t understand what I am writing, then you’re not the only one.

I have started (finally) to wade through the theory-ooze of literary and cultural works of Mikhail Bakhtin. I say ooze, not in the sense of… say… a weeping sore. No, more like that slippery, squelchy mud that you get after a torrential downpour. But seeing as we’re in drought, I am really only relying on the memory of such rain-events.

Maybe I should call it sludge (the mud not the brain. Although come to think of it, maybe the brain too). Yes. And so you see how it is affecting my thought.

Whatever I call it (theory-sludge? THludge? THooze?), it’s the down-in-the-WWI-trenches kind of sludge. The pre-battle charge where you crap in your pants prior to being slaughtered by the assessors.

Yes. I have to write a goddamn thesis.

I have no one to blame for this unfortunate turn of events but myself. I even chose the theorist.

I must be nuts. MAD. Bloody bonkers.

The ironic thing is this: my theorist is Russian. My current creative writing deals with the cruelty of the Russians during WWII. So by reading a dead Russian’s words I may well be continuing the torture and slavery of the Polish soul. Even in death the Bolsheviks exercise their iron fist. My only consolation: at least the theorist I am using was exiled from Russia. Seems he was also an enemy of the state. We might agree with each other after all…

Hang on… this isn’t ironic … it’s just melodramatic. Oh god.

And so you see what this theory-imbibing has done to my brain. (Will I ever think normally again?)

Back to the confusion.

I am yet to find anybody who really truly understands theory. People say they understand, but no-one can explain to me what the hell it’s really about. The world is awash with a myriad of books, essays, theses and so on, all claiming to analyse and understand and make sense of it all. (Note: theses rhymes with faeces for a reason).

Yet the language is so dense (see sludge) that it is impossible to try to extract any kind of sense or meaning from the words.

And no, not even psychotherapy or ECT would help me now.

What I really need is a BabelFish. Will pay top dollar for one. Will check e-bay now.

Eat your greens (but steer clear of the reds)

My son has spots, and it’s my fault.

We’re experimenting with foods – some oatmeal, pureed fruit, tiny bits of pasta, mashed broccoli with no seasoning at all, all pulverised to smithereens – you know the drill. We wait until it is lukewarm and then we open our mouths in the hope that he’ll emulate us and spoon the mushy goop into his waiting mouth. We chant ‘yummy!’ like some deranged housecoat-wearing cheerleader (housecoat in case food is spat out in a spray of ppppppppprrrrrrrrrrah. He hasn’t yet learnt the word for ‘no’ but ‘no’ will most likely be his first word).

Lately, we’ve been a little lax in the ‘wait a few days before new food introduction’ routine. Yesterday, I let him hold a piece of red capsicum. I didn’t let him chow down on it. But what touches the hand touches the mouth and so on and so forth and now he’s covered in an allergic rash and red capsicum is the only thing I can attribute it to.

I feel really guilty, but I must remember that no- I did not give him a toilet brush to lick or rubbed his face with cold sores. Still, the guilt is there and I feel like a bad mama. (FYI: I am mama and tummy-mummy is mum or mummy. They’re different enough, yet are also both ‘mother-ish’ names so as not to spark confusion or questions from nosey people who have no business in my family life but who will – because they are just ‘like that’ – invariably end up asking us all kinds of impertinent questions. Note to such people: fuck off, none of your bloody business.)

Back to the spots.

Child seems happy enough and trip to the hospital with mum (ie not me) ended up with the diagnosis of ‘allergic reaction… probably. Nothing to worry about… probably. Unless it gets worse… which it probably won’t’.

Luckily, it doesn’t get worse, but this doesn’t lessen the worry., not only because it could have been more serious, but because had it been more serious, had I rushed him to hospital, there would have been nothing I could have done. I am not even allowed to authorise the use of children’s paracetamol.

Spotty child is content to sit in high chair, eat pre-allergy tested porridge with apple, and bash table with green plastic spoon.

boing-weee-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-bleep-bleep-whizzzzzzz (I need to buy shares in Fisher Price)

There’s a toy in the car that won’t switch off. It’s possessed by the boing-ha-ha-ha demon, and it’s not happy that it has to share it’s space with the whiz-bleep-bleep lion thingy or the da-di-da-da plushie giraffe.

I am living in a baby rave party. Babies all over the world, come on down to my pad ‘cos it’s a hapnin’ scene, there’s lights, music, songs (all with prerequisite American accent) and even the shape-sorter plays a tune.

The green frog is on ecstasy and its eyeballs look botoxed. Kind-of reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange.

Happy hands it’s fun to play!
Count to three! Clap away…
One! … (clap-clap-clap)
Two! … (clap-clap-clap)
Three! … (clap-clap-clap)
Happy hands… Hooray!

The green frog is freaking out my son. It’s bigger than him.

Everything needs batteries, myself included. But nothing comes with the precision screwdrivers that are required in order to pull the darn toys apart so that the batteries can be put in and why oh why are we even thinking about putting in the batteries anyway?

I can’t stop thinking in bleep-bleep mode.

Happy pills are fun to take!
Prozac keeps me sane all day…
One! … (in the morning)
Two! … (just for luck)
Three! … (what the hell)
Happy pills… Hooray!

My son’s fave toy: a small green plastic spoon that was part of a green-frog plastic bowl-and-bib set. Spoon fits nicely in his had and is good for both bashing things and chewing; it doesn’t get soggy and sometimes comes with pureed apple.