Month: November 2008

OH the excitement

So Felix had basketball this afternoon. There’s been a marked improvement in his playing ability in the last few weeks, which I put solely down to the presence of grandparents.

Regardless, the boys are a motley crew of friends of friends in years 2 and 3 which would be fine if the comp wasn’t for years 3 and 4.

Seriously, there are some boys on our team not much taller than a cricket but let me tell you, what they lack in height they make up for in sheer tenacity.

There have been quite a few games where they have come from seriously behind to steal the game. Always very exciting stuff.

So today was the semi-finals and we were playing the team coached by the mutton-dressed-as-lamb mother with the hot body, who certainly didn’t let us down – a fluorescent pink ensemble featuring hot-pants short shorts and a fitted hoodie with plenty of midriff and basoombas on display. I’m all for women to be fit and healthy, but I really don’t need to be able to see the outline of your g-string and clearly be able to determine you have no pubic hair whatsoever.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, the game.

Well, their team was predominantly year 4 kids so we really should not have even been in contention. But oh boy were we in contention.

It came down to a golden point.

They got it.

Seriously, it was thrilling.

International travel

so from school camp for grown-ups to international travel …

Last night’s dream involved a trip to the US! With my mum!
I’m not sure where we were but we certainly weren’t in any city or state convenient to catch up to blogging friends.
So we were in the middle of some tourist attraction somewhere and I burst into tears, telling Mum that all I wanted to do was go to New York to see New York and Jen and Brian (our very dear friends who were in Aus for 8 years and had to return to the States about 6 months ago) and internally thinking maybe I could sneak in a visit to Blackbird.
And she was all – of course!
So off we went.
Then I had a melt-down in some massive Gap store because I had Grover in a stroller (none of the kids had been there before that. Typical. Just crushing my shopping style) and mum was all ‘you can’t leave him there’ and some other Americans were tsk-ing me and rolling their eyes and my stupidity of attempting a stroller in New York in the pre-Christmas lead-up.
Then I met BB who was as slight as a bird with the most delicate of hands she was in the process of rubbing hand cream into.
Which was when I was woken by children.

and I didn’t even eat lots of cheese last night

OH DUDES I am knackered.

Apart from Grover being up at 10.30 (I was still awake), 12.30 (I was so asleep) and 3.30 (who ever invented the 3.3o in the morning was an idiot) it was the cuuurrazzy dreams that wore me out.

You were all there – Blackbird, Badger, Eleanor, Duyvken, BabelBabe to name a few – plus all these other women including my best friends from school and loads of other bitchy girls who scared me witless back then. You know, the ones without pimples who were thin, had boyfriends (even though we were at an all girls school) and gorgeous shiny hair.

We all had young babies. I can almost hear Badger falling off her chair at the thought.

It was some sort of Mothercraft weekend respite but it had elements of Desperate Housewives – that red-headed one was there and she was mean and crazy – and a lot of ANTM (we had to do wardrobe changes and make-up challenges).

There was a lot of running around and giggling. Kinda like Year 9 camp but with a level of adrenalin and competition and all-round more sophisticated bitchiness.

There was also a Mormon element. With those who were Mormon talking about how their third-born had that – and I quote – ‘typical mormon third child married to their older sibling connection‘. Creepy.

We all drew straws as to who got to sleep in which dorm each night – and the night Blackbird got the Mormons with their eleventy gagillion snot nosed children (who were curiously all dressed like they were Amish) I was lying next to her on her bed gossiping (see Year 9 camp reference) and said under my breath (in typical ANTM style where everyone can still hear you) ‘Oh you’re so not getting any sleep tonight’.

Anyway, when it came time to go to my dorm I picked up our backpack and Kill yelled at me to ‘RUN. No. STOP. Don’t move, THROW THE BAG’. There was all that thrashing panic and as I turned to look there was a massive tarantula in the bag, but then, when we turned around, they were everywhere. Swarming in the grass, up the walls of the dorms. Billions of them. Then at the next dorm it was snakes. Snakes writhing so thick you couldn ‘t see the grass.

We wrangled some sort of get-away with a shopping trolley and this red haute couture dress I saw on an episode of Gossip Girl the other week (the one Little J stole from one of the girls’ mother’s wardrobe) which we used as both a rope and a whip to clear a path.

Someone came in with fire-sticks in true Indiana Jones style but then the spiders decided they could fly as well as jump and crawl.

Then I woke myself up.

Industrious

You know, most days I just lie on the lounge eating salt and vinegar chips drinking Fanta while the kids amuse themselves and scavenge for food behind the cushions. Because of this days like today warrant a post.

Today I …

  • did three loads of washing
  • weeded the front nature strip
  • took the little fellas over to the beach and carried one of them half way to hell on soft sand after the energetic three-year-old thought a walk ‘over there’ was a good idea
  • managed to get a completely root-bound palm of some sort out of one of those half barrel pots and replanted into a new pot and two different spots in the garden – and I know that doesn’t sound like much but oh.MY.GOD it took me over three hours to do it and it was such an EFFORT to try and un-root-bound the fucker and get it into its designated new homes.
  • vacuum
  • peel three kilos of pickling onions to go into the brine solution for the first stage of the pickling process

and now I’ve typed that it doesn’t actually seem like that much at all. Sigh.

History turns the page

In February 1998 we had Oscar, which was a bit of a surprise because he wasn’t due until April. Six weeks later we got to go home and one of the first things I did, apart from standing at his cot watching him sleep for a ludicrous periods of time, was go to my first mother’s group meeting. Everyone gasped at how little he was, which also caught me by surprise because not only were we used to it, he had cracked 2kgs and we thought he was SO BIG!

Anyway, Saturday night saw five women from that original group get together for dinner and well, it was just so lovely, restorative, informative, bolstering.

All of us had horror stories to share. Everyone had the ability to laugh at themselves and particular parenting moments when they’d either lost their shit or misplaced it momentarily.

It was one of those female evenings when you can just vent, offload, advise, reaffirm, discuss, laugh and just listen.

And you know what, we’re all on the cusp of the next stage.

Our ten year olds are throwing us curve balls on an almost daily basis. One is having absolute grief at school with bullying (my goodness girls can be BITCHES), one wanted to know how to spell condom, some are crying in that ‘I don’t know why I’m crying’ genre, someone’s child had skipped out of scripture and when the school rang to inform her mum, her first response was, ‘wow, I didn’t know she had it in her,’ which the school didn’t seem to think was the correct answer and one has recently written a note to her mother saying she is too meddling and ruining her life. Already!

It’s like becoming a parent all over again.

And I’m just so pleased I have these women around me for the coming years.