do as I say... not as I do

Or should it perhaps be do as I do, not as I say?
(I don't think I ever got the hang of that maxim…)


and whilst I tried to ration my son's chocolate supply over Easter,
I did not ration myself and ate far too many creme eggs
and that's because I am a

hypocrite

I have not yet said this to my almost two-year-old son, but if I were to, I am sure he would repeat it.

repeat it.

Yes, he has got the case of the copies. Copies. And everything that my partner or I say, say, is repeated, repeated, until it becomes a case of echo... echo... echo...

Although I do have to admit that there are some words I rather enjoy hearing him say, like: dungarees

Duggarees

Rungadees

Dungarees

third time lucky I suppose.

We have this A-B-C cat book at home that has all kinds of ridiculously long and unusual descriptive terms in it (describing the cats) and I am dying to read it to him. It has fragments like 'daringly eats dragees, devilled drumsticks and donuts' and 'his name is Wilberforce, he lives in West Wittering' and I want my son to attempt saying West Wittering because, well, I admit it, I find it AMUSING. 

Does this make me a bad parent?




hell no... 
...
hey - what can I say... he called me Caroline the other day. CAROLINE not MAMA!
the nerve!
the cheek!


I almost wet my pants laughing.
kids - they're great - you get a belly laugh a day.

It's a LUCKY DAY

If I get extra change from a small business owner, then I give it back, always.

If, however, I get extra change... or let's say one of the items is not scanned... or... well... if SOMETHING happens to my advantage and the perpetrator of said 'advantage' is an employee of a large, faceless corporation that most likely has many subsidiaries that wreak awful damage to the environment in one breath and yet financially supports high-profile 'reducing carbon emissions' strategies on the other hand...

Er... what I mean to say is that if I go to a supermarket that shall remain un-named and they undercharge me, then it's a LUCKY DAY.

No - I do NOT give it back. In fact, I goddamn well think I deserve a treat of free tampons, or 'buy ten items get eleventh free'. No I do not think that this will karmically (is karmically a word?) seek to bite me in the butt (hang on... maybe it will... see last post to find out exactly how this karma could be returned)

Maybe it's their karma as a large, faceless organisation to have this happen to them.

If, however, I went to the newsagent and they gave me change from a fifty and I only gave them a twenty - I would let them know. Why? 

Because I like them. Because it's their livelihood

Supermarket chains, however, are not people; so I say suffer in your mass-market-undies you corporate-[INSERT EXPLETIVE HERE].

what would YOU,

yes... YOU do if you had a lucky day at the expense of a large corporation?

I once bought an outdoor setting from a large hardware-chain-store that shall, again, remain un-named.

They charged me for one chair, not two. Every time I sit in that chair I feel lucky.

Call me dishonest, if you will. (Actually, please don't, I like to pride myself on my being honest and forthright for the most part, in fact if my friends saw me as dishonest I think it may well hurt my feelings.)

speaking of lucky... Happy St Pat's Day to all. May your day be filled with everything green and clover-ish, and may it be lucky lucky lucky!

Just don't do what some Chicago residents did to their river:

that can't be lucky for their fish.

just call me bubble-butt

or, bubble-gum-butt to be precise.

When I got dressed this morning, I though to myself, hell, why not, wear your good 'going-for-an-interview' garb. Not that I was going for an interview, there are just some days when it pays to look smart. Maybe it's a self-esteem thing, I dunno. But TODAY was ONE OF THOSE DAYS. So here I am, avec white shirt, waistcoat, good pants. oh yeah... I look gooooood...

And then I sat in chewing gum... could be bubble gum, not sure, I didn't want to check the flavour of it. Especially because it's located in that particular spot that is right between the cheeks, oh yes, it is in seam-land.
I look like I crapped my pants. (Lime-green crap to be sure.)

And there aint nothin' I can do about it until I get home.

GODDAMN IT. TODAY, OF ALL DAYS WHEN I HAVE A TRILLION F#*%KING MEETINGS I LOOK LIKE I CRAPPED MY PANTS.

Had to spend an inordinate amount of time this morning picking my butt in a disgustingly concentrated sphincter-fondling sort of way. And every time I get off a chair I have a velcro-moment. All I need now is someone to write 'kick me' on my white shirt and quite possibly shave off one of my eyebrows.

mama is a potty-mouth

F**K, sh*t, f**k, sh*t, f**k, f**k, f**k, c**t.

believe it or not, I am trying NOT to swear, in fact, I am attempting to eradicate all manner of foul language from my vocabulary, because I don't want my son thinking that saying c**t is the socially appropriate thing to do - at least in pre-school anyway. Thing is, I never realised exactly how much I swore until I tried to prevent these words from escaping. In fact, I may well be developing a sh*t-f**k-f**k-crap form of tourettes because whenever I feel an opportunity for 'swearing-in-this-context-and-in-this-company-is-ok' I seize it with all the power my potty-mouth can muster.

Is it alright for parents to swear?

No it's not bloody alright, in fact it's completely f**ked. We are also not allowed to drink, smoke or, er... have sex. We are perfect, not puerile.

But I love the puerile. I miss the puerile.

in fact...

Mmmm... NUM! NUM!

These are the words I hear from my almost-two-years-of-age son who is in the back yard, with me, pottering about. I call it pottering about because, well… that’s what we do.

He, of course, got a million and one things that bleep and whizz for Christmas (click here for details of last year's Christmas toy shenanigans) and my mantra for a while was ‘it’s tractor time! We’re off to the fields! Beep beep’ I have now succeeded in convincing toddler-son to accompany me and indeed help whilst I do jobs around the house. He rather likes to:

help me weed the garden: 'more weed?'

try to find the cat: 'cat?... gone!'

yes darling, she’s hiding… from you

or water the garden: 'more can?'

The only problem now is that if I stop to do something else, he doesn’t like it much. Yesterday I found myself putty-ing up the wood on an old stool that I had already puttied to within an inch of its life because he kept on chanting ‘more putty!’

Son is very bossy.

But sometimes… yes, sometimes he manages to amuse himself without my intervention and there follows a period of silence while he fiddles with whatever he is most likely not meant to be doing, like trying to pull out a tree.

He does finally get sick of this and finishes by saying ‘heavy!’

So when we were pottering in the garden and I heard nothing from the little tacker for a few minutes I thought I should investigate. I found him quite calmly and happily, sitting on the deck next to the cat’s bowl, eating her crunchies and saying ‘mmmmm! Num num!’

No darling, yukky! We don’t eat cat food.

I take away the bowl and he decides to throw a tantrum. (but will, fingers crossed, thank me for this later in life)

Thing is: he won’t eat fruit but he will eat cat food.

I want him to grab a strawberry and say num num, not the fishy vita-bites.

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.