Month: March 2012

Making my neck itch

I have much to tell you all but at the moment the world and pretty much all that is in it is giving me the absolute shits. For example:

  1. Someone commenting about someone wearing unflattering clothing thereby necessitating a whole week of dross on ‘is feminism dead’. For fuck’s sake people, GET A GRIP.
  2. A movie having a massive weekend and someone attributing it to ‘us’ being desperate for strong female leads in movies. Or maybe it’s just A REALLY GOOD MOVIE.
  3. All of my children forgetting I am their mother and thinking I am a pack horse. CARRY YOUR OWN DAMN DRINK BOTTLE SON WHO IS ALMOST THE SIZE OF A MAN.
  4. Lego’s new range of girl Lego. Let’s look at the cafe:
    Gender stereotyping at its best

    Let’s look at an ad for Lego circa 1973:

    Sanity prevails

    Apparently boys and girls could play with the SAME sets of lego in the early 70s, but almost 40 years later we need pretty pink and pastel sets for girls because there’s NO WAY they’d want to play with primary coloured Lego – and similarly there’s NO WAY boys would want to play with sets which make up a vet surgery or a shop. STOMP.STOMP.STOMP.

  5. Some weeks ago someone complained to our local council about the skate ramp next door. I’ve written about the ramp here and got PAID to write about the ramp here.

    I am guessing it was the challenging man who lives in one of the townhouses diagonally across the road from us, the same man who confronted Oscar’s driver on Friday because he beeps the horn when he arrives and was that really necessary. Also, the grumpy arsehole who lives in the nursing home/retirement village.

    Regardless, the council provided stipulations that had to be met for the ramp to stay. Stipulations I imagine involved paying sizeable sums of money to the council for ‘permits’ and inspections and the like. Considering the owners of the house are basically letting this original beachside should-be-heritage-listed house rot into the ground because they want to put a McMansion on it they were hardly going to fork over some cashola to allow a skateramp exist in the yard.

    So today the ramp had to come down. Vale ramp.

Onward. Stomping onward.

 

Inside the fishbowl

I was at a lunch on Friday put on by Oscar’s School of Awesome to celebrate women with a particular nod to those of us who are mother’s to kids with dodgy chromosomes or some other label that indicates their load will be a little heavier and wonkier than most.

It’s not something I dwell on that much any more but Friday made me realise that is simply because I’m now quite used to wearing the coat that is being mum to a kid with special needs. It was really nice being in a room packed with (295 no less) women and feeling celebrated and appreciated. It was not something I had expected.

Our Principal talked about a series of short films made by students two years ago and the sister project of a documentary following the students making the films. I know, SO post-modern. (I don’t even know what that means.) She described how, in the doco, families of the kids were also interviewed and that their honesty in what it was to have a child with special needs took her breath away. She explained that while she has worked in special education for more than 20 years it was this that truly showed her she (nor anyone else who does not have a child with a disability) will never ever understand what it is to be the parent of a disabled child. She then hijacked a staff meeting and made all the staff watch it. All the wondrous, committed, beautiful staff. She said the silence in the room was immense.

I can not tell you how validating that was to hear.

It explains so much. Why she is such a tireless advocate for our kids. Why every single member of staff at the school live and breath our kids and how to help them be the best they can be. Why that place is a place of daily miracles.

One of the things that came from the doco was the concept of being in a fishbowl, that you can swim around and see out and still be a part of everything but there is always this barrier between you and the rest of the world. Similarly people can see in and engage with you but still that barrier is there.

It is such a good way of describing my life since becoming Oscar’s mum.

I remember when we were first told of his diagnosis and internally railing against it. I did NOT want this for my life. I was NOT going to be one of those women, those mothers you see with a disabled child – you know the ones, they’re always so angry, and either grossly overweight or carnie thin, with bad hair, outdated make-up, cheap clothes and did I mention the angry?

I know, even I would have smacked myself back then.

But here I am, swimming around that god-damned fish bowl, regularly head-butting the glass, grossly overweight, no make-up, cheap clothes, dubious hair (it needs a cut) and on occasion very very angry.

I cried on Friday.

And then life went on.

Oscar went over to a friend’s place today to hang out. A first.

His voice started breaking this weekend.

He made me laugh. He made me cranky. He gave me kisses and cuddles. He asked me many questions many times over.

My life will never ever be as I imagined it. Nor his.

And that is OK.

 

Onward.

Inside the sneaker – an insight into extra-curricular gymnastics

I was remarkably flexible as a child

 

Once a week Jasper, Grover and I go and climb into the equivalent of a big smelly sneaker. They get to run and jump and climb and tumble while I get to sit with fellow idiots parents trying to solely mouth breath. This is known as ‘gymnastics’.

The gymnasium is a place with a smell not like any other, a complex blend of sweat, Impulse, foot odour and broken dreams. Some kid normally takes a dump in the toilets before heading in to swing on the bars so that malodorous treat adds to the whole experience.

The waiting area is the about two metres square and for some reason the collective IQ of parents believes we will all fit in this area in clunky green plastic chairs. What ensues is either being trapped, locked in on all sides by chairs with arms or legs over-lapping or constantly moving your legs so some parent and/or small child being punished made to watch can get by. It’s a slow-burn to homicidal rage at gymnastics.

While we carry on like pigs in a pen, on the other side of the fence prances an abnormal quote of flexible children. I’ve seen a coach pushing a girl’s legs down to the ground at right.angles.to.her.hip.joints while the girl was lying on her back. Apart from a spontaneous urge to cry ‘paedo!’ coupled with a ‘thank GOD she hasn’t hit puberty yet’ and a quick foray into ‘so this is really why the Brazilian was invented’,  I found the whole thing morbidly fascinating. Other girls were not as freaky double-jointed easy flexible  but that didn’t stop the sadistic leader from trying to push their legs in directions they are simply not designed to go.

Down the other end there were girls I am guessing were aged around 15 who seemed to be hanging from a very high bar by their chins. Behind them a girl was up a very thick, very scratchy thick piece of rope wearing little more than her underwear. The rash I imagine those girls must get from shimming up and down that rope in velour hot pants occupies way to much of my mind.

From what I can tell the outfit has equal importance to talent in gymnastics. 6 year olds in teeny tiny bra tops and velour hot pants are de rigueur. If that midriff isn’t showing you’re not trying hard enough. A sign of modesty are the girls in the leotards as opposed to the two piece. It appears compulsory for these outfits to contain a minimum percentage of flesh-tone fabric of 30 per cent. Sequins must occupy at least 50 and the more lurid the colour the better.

Gymnastics, where every cheap, nasty, highly flammable, made-in-a-sweatshop, rejected-by-ballet-school fabrics go to die.

Riding the pummel, a handy life skill

We don’t see the boys squad training, they’re upstairs lifting each other over their heads and learning how to ride a pummel horse. Apparently it take years to master the horse, a skill I’m sure those boys will find handy in the boardroom. I have no idea about the rings. That just strikes me as complete and utter nonsense.

I did see a boy arrive this week wearing w.h.i.t.e. s.t.i.r.r.u.p pants WITH a seam up the front which I wish was the worst of it. Boy after boy arrived in, you guessed it, shorty shorts. Let’s all take a moment and pray for supportive and secure undergarments.

 

I know.

 

It’s like I’m trapped in a 70s German porn but without the body hair, the porn or the soundtrack.

 

 

Onward!

 

What have I DONE!?! When good mums think they’ve gone bad

My heart is aching for Beth over at BabyMac at the moment. Her wee little moppet is recovering from having her tonsils and adenoids out and while some would say pfft, routine, I would say FUCK YOU! Any operation with a child which involves post-operative pain management is officially HELLZONE.

You see, you take your cub into a big scary place where you make them wear a dress with no back in it. You’re already on the downward slide in your child’s mental list of favourite people. If you’re lucky the premed makes them all woogily and so you don’t have to endure the (often multiple) attempts at getting a cannula in or the psychologically never-able-to-unsee experience of having to pin your child to a theatre trolley with them looking at you with pure terror as you try to stay calm and reassuring and ‘oh this mask! how fun! just take some deep breaths!’ This comes in a very close third to the awfulness that is seeing your child ‘go under’ when the anaesthetic starts to work which is a very close second to actually witnessing your child stop breathing and watching a resus team work on them.

Yeah, hospital with sick kids. Such sweet sweet memories.

Anyway, Harper’s not opening her mouth for anyone or anything bar the medicine (small mercies) and some juice. It was this fact and a photo of the gorgeous cherub that bought all the memories flooding back.

It started out as one of Oscar’s routine dental procedures but some 2 1/2 hours later the dental surgeon came out saying cheerily, ‘it all went really well, we only had to extract five teeth.”

FIVE TEETH.

The extent of preparing Oscar for this had been something involving a hand puppet of a tiger and a toothbrush. Monumental fail.

The poor kid had gone in feeling absolutely tickety-boo to then wake up in recovery, in a dress with no back, a cannula in his arm and a mouth full of blood and stitches. To say I was the bottom of Oscar’s barrel of awful would be showing a generous heart.

I actually think he went into shock. He didn’t talk, eat, open his mouth for days.  To force in some water through a straw was akin to NATO negotiations to get humanitarian aid into Homs, borderline fruitless.

My recollection is the surgery was a Friday and he didn’t talk until the Wednesday, but that may well be traumatic memory embellishment.

I was beside myself. We’d broken him. There it was, in cold hard brutal truth before us. We had broken him. I cried and cried, buying him ridiculous treats and presents he’d barely even acknowledge. He’s just silently move about the house

There have been a couple of incidents in Oscar’s life which have rocked me, made me question why we did something or why we were doing something, made me feel the lowest of low because far out, here’s a child already carrying a heavier load of Unfair than anyone else and we just go and throw another biscuit of doom onto his cart.

But then the darnedest thing happens. They get better in their own cotton-pickin’ time. Whatever the procedure you’ve put them through damn well goes ahead and achieves what it was meant to (normally) and the self-flagellation abates ever so slowly.

I will never forget the morning after that hideous dental disaster when he came in, stood by my side of the bed and said, ‘Ogga eat?’ It’s something Oscar utters a minimum of 50 times a day but that morning, that day it was the sweetest of sounds I’d ever heard.

 

Thinking of you lovely lady, it will get better.

 

Onward.

 

New favourite

Try and listen only once. Just try. Then go and check out some of their other stuff, these guys make the tambourine sexy.