Have a great break everyone, be it Christmas or just an excuse to eat and have nanna naps. I love ya guts.
ONWARD!
Month: December 2011
What’s ridunculous is that this is not that unusual
- I decide to hang a load of washing out as I won’t have time in the morning* and get another load on.
- I clean out the chicken coop, check food levels and refill their water because again, I won’t have time tomorrow*. Jasper helps me, bless him.
- Felix and I drag the dead bbq out the front to the nature strip for council clean up because again, I won’t have time tomorrow*.
- I then take all manner of other crap, broken toys, disused, filthy and annoying toys out.
- I come in after dark and get in the shower – I scrub the floor while I’m in there.
- I get everyone else ready for bed.
- I discover someone did wet their bed despite them telling me this morning they didn’t. Hell hath no fury is a phrase that comes to mind.
- Change their sheets willing myself NOT to beat them to a pulp.
- Come down the back room to ‘deal with it’, which is really the only way I can approach our open living hellzone. I realise I’ve left the eggs out the back. Felix goes to get them for me.
- Felix runs in – there’s a possum in the coop. Again. This happened about two weeks ago when Felix discovered the invaders – AFTER we’d barricaded the miniature mulberry and the passionfruit vines because we thought the chooks were destroying them.
- We discover it’s reworked its original entry point. THEN we realise there is a smaller one ALSO in the coop. It’s come in through another tiny hole we hadn’t seen. Then we see the bandicoot. I swear to God it’s Animal Farm.
- At 10pm Felix and I are out in the coop, with the torch on my iPhone, with wire, patching holes. It’s basically when we see the massive huntsman we both decide it’ll have to do.
- Now contemplating another shower.
- Decide to call it quits and go to bed, realise ENTIRE king size bed is covered in washing from the last three days. Three days, six people. Think of your local laundromat and triple it.
- Sort washing. Put washing away.
This is all after:
- Being up all night with Jasper, who was spewing out both ends.
- Over-sleeping.
- Rushing Felix to school via the shops to get crap for him to eat at the school end-of-year picnic and a packet of party sausage rolls for me to take Grover’s kindy party.
- Fanging it to Grover’s kindy concert with Oscar AND Jasper in tow (as mum had rehab so couldn’t watch Jasper) after hastily wrapping gifts for his three teachers and writing ‘Reindeer Noses’ on the little packets of maltesers and jaffas I’d made for classmate presents, delightfully in a red sharpie. So festive.
- Surviving kindy concert with only wet eyes occurring once.
- (Almost) Last round of Christmas shopping – not bad after only starting yesterday.
- Going to school to witness the whole school farewell to Year 6 – a tunnel of honour, three cheers, lots of tears and goodbyes even thought most of them are going to the same high school together next year.
- Coming home, getting dinner sorted.
- Go to Point 1 at the top of the page.
I mean, FFS people.
* Tomorrow features Felix’s cricket, Oscar’s cricket, Oscar’s cricket Christmas party, Grover’s friend’s birthday party, Felix’s cricket Christmas party and then farewell drinks for some very dear friends moving to New Zealand, at which we can all be fairly certain I would have written myself off at were it not for the fact I’ll be driving and one drink will probably render me comatose.
Onward my arse.
end of year shenanigans
I have felt that I had nothing to say here for the last few weeks but in just having a quick email with Blackbird I realised there is so much to tell.
I have three boys home today. Oscar finished his school year on Tuesday, Jasper is home after being up all night vomitting – on the last day of the school year no less, and Grover is home early as today was the kindy concert and an early home-time.
I need to tell you all about Oscar’s School of Awesome Presentation Day.
Well I cried at the first entertainment item – a photo montage to a song about (the school) being a place where God is. Then every student came up on stage and collected their certificate of achievement for the year. Even the boy crying because of the noise and crowd in the room. I think nearly every adult in the room was crying as he came down off the stage (with much help and praise and support and love from teachers to get him through everything before that and after) with his fingers in his ears, crying ‘I’m too scared, Julie can you help me’. OH MY LORD was there crying all around. One, for the love of this child, two for the fact he had done it! He’d done it!, three for the fact he could VERBALISE how he was feeling and that he needed help. I tell you, SCHOOL.OF.AWESOME.
Then there was another musical item – this time with two students singing Enrique Iglesias’s I Like It and the Eddie’s Entertainers (aka student dance group) performing a routine to it. The male student did all the rapping, WORD PERFECT, the female student the singing. AWESOME.
Also – can you imagine just how much better Presentation Days would be at all school presentation days with these sorts of things – minimal talking, quick presentations, lots of entertainment.
The next musical interlude was a montage of the 60th birthday celebrations and blessing of the sacred place made in the grounds during the year – a beautiful, serene space for students which was instigated and completed by the grounds keeper off his own volition.
Then, THEN, there was the solo. A Year 9 (or maybe 10) student singing Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. I tell you what, that kid knew how to work the microphone. It all started with a rallying ‘are you ready to rock and roll!?!’, included a ‘this is where I BREAK OUT’ which led into what can only be termed an impressive air guitar solo and ended with a ‘you’ve been an awesome audience today’.
I swear to GOD this school could not be MORE AWESOME.
*****
Felix is currently enjoying the annual school picnic on his last day of primary school. Monday was the Year 6 Farewell dinner which is hosted by the Year 5s and involves dancing, a sit-down dinner, a very loving and funny roast by the teachers, presenting each of the students with a funny award.
It is such a privilege being a part of this child’s life, being witness to his life and the man he will become. This year there have been moments when it has taken my breath away. Such an awesome kid.
*****
Yesterday I did nearly *all* the Christmas shopping. Four gifts to go. Not bad for a 3.5 hour effort hey. No wonder I was shattered last night.
So you see, there has been news, there has been stuff happening after all!
ONWARD!
39
Last week I was 39.
Not much else to say really.
I’m trying really hard to focus on the good – beautiful boys, loving husband, awesome friends – and not the bad – no savings, ongoing financial strains, not owning our own home.
At 39 I have perspective, I am kinder to myself most of the time, I can run 5kms in under 40 minutes, I have produced and am raising four awesome human beings.
I have discovered new loves – quilting and crocheting while (nearly) perfecting others – making bread, pastry and baking in general.
I have lost contact with some and sadly just lost some friends along the way while gaining many others, making me wonder how I had existed without them in my life earlier.
I have faced many many challenges and while sometimes do not respond with grace under pressure do ultimately weather these storms to rise stronger and braver.
There are several aspects to my life I wish were different at this point but really, my world is rich with love, laughter and food on the table. It is good. Life, is good.
Onward.
the flip side
So Chef has been depressed for about a month. Six weeks maybe? It started with him quietly telling me one morning that he was feeling ‘a bit sad’.
And now I am well and truly on the flip side of mental health ‘issues’. The supporter not the sufferer.
And quite frankly, it is fucking hard. If I was a quarter of how Chef is currently feeling (and I know I was actually a lot lot worse) it is a Modern Miracle we are still married. That we are is basically a reflection of Chef’s character. His tenacious, resilient, loving character. That the memory of the ‘normal’ me held him in there for the long haul is remarkable.
Chef is the one who can turn the most banal statement into a lewd one. The one who can turn a perfectly normal conversation into one about how he has a great big bed shark for me. Who has the quick wit and the most hilarious quip in any situation.
But at the moment he is grey. Flat. No sex nagging. No sex quips. No bed shark circling. He is glum. Quick to anger. Sullen. All the things on the depression spectrum.
And I have to work SO HARD to remember what to do for him. What to say, what not to say (Dear self: you know how you HATE people asking how you are when they know you’re depressed, as if you’ll just snap out of it overnight or from the morning to the afternoon? Yeah. Then STOP ASKING HIM if he’s OK when clearly he is not.). Here’s the rest of my checklist:
– just because he is withdrawn do not withdraw from him
– do not get angry at his lethargy and lack of helping
– do not overload him with requests to do things
– make some favourite meals for him
– gently encourage him to talk by just ‘being’ by his side
– do NOT nag
– always let him know how much he is loved, what an integral part of the family he is and that he is special
– reassure him that he WILL feel better, that this WILL pass.
Onward.