I resisted for so long, I don't know why. I think it was Jason Bateman who stopped me initially. I couldn't quite get over the whole Teen Wolf II thing. Well, so it was a combination of the thought of him in TW and also Portia "who'smyface" de Rossi (love, stop with the enhancements, pleeease, you were so pretty about five fix-its ago and then you went a bit overboard) that was stopping me get into it.
And then, Steve borrowed the entire series from someone at work and brought it home.
I'm in a heaven of comedy. I haven't laughed so heartily in SUCH a long time. Not at least since that time Jazz met Simon (okay, granted, I may have laughed once or twice since then).
I. Heart. It.
And ummmm..... okay, I did a backflip on JB himself too. I find myself thinking lusty thoughts after him and sit here sometimes imagining my fingers running through his thick hair. What the hell is wrong with me??! And did I just admit that out loud?
They've been teasing with talks of a movie since December last year. It makes me nervous. Look what's currently happening with Sex and the City, after all (and don't you think wild horses could keep me from seeing THAT one, I'm going in a few weeks, I don't care what the critics are saying). When TV characters come back after a few years off our screens, they seem to come back older, somewhat wrinklier or with more sun damage. And oh dear, there is such pressure not to flop.
The actors who collectively make up the Bluth family are just such a big part of my world at the moment. I cannot believe this show was axed after only three seasons. I think it's got to be one of the most consistently funny, fast-witted sitcoms ever aired. If you haven't already, see if you can't check out an ep or two. If you don't laugh.... well. You and me probably wouldn't be compatible on one of those Love Match(dot)com sites. And don't that make your brown eyes blue.
Now... one more time (because it's my blog and I'll perve if I want to), please excuse me while I sigh dreamily and immerse myself in some steely eyes *siiiigh*
After the whoops and hoop-la surrounding this momentous occasion, there have been scarce little steps taken by that little minx, the LGBB.
I asked the physiotherapist what this means for her baby book.
Me: "How do I fill out the First Steps Taken bit? I mean, is she walking? Technically, she has walked. But can we say she is walking?" Physio: "Well, no. What we say is, she has taken her first steps..."
Hey, at least she took me seriously and answered my question. I'd only been half-joking, but I supposed it was a real nagging question I now had.
So now we're well into the LGBB's twenty-second month. She is still largely walking assisted. At least it's a case of "yes, yes, everybody can see that you have walked so they know you can walk and perhaps the medical profession at large will leave you alone to get on with it in your own time... now, we'll just look over here and pretend we didn't notice you walking around". We have to be most careful not to overdo any praise or encouragement, lest it cause her to retreat from her efforts (it's backfired a few times on us and now it's more a case of telling Lolly routinely that I am not going to help her, that she can get up and walk over and get 'whatever' herself). But little miss isn't giving in without the good fight. She will stand like a mule with its heels dug in and set her jaw in such a way that I know we're in this confrontation for the long haul. I get every procrastination and whiney, toe-digging-into-carpet angst-ridden protest under the sun, along with a scrunched-up, badly acted face that I suppose is aimed to make me soften and come and rescue her. I know she's only a wee sprite, a mere dot on the planet, but holy hell after two years of carrying her around and now feeling increasingly like I'm being played.... it's kinda starting to wear thin, especially when her peers (and younger) are at least self-sufficient in their upright mobility now. She's as stubborn as her mother, this kid *sigh*
Just this week, I vaguely recall my mother's voice saying (when I was about nine), "Just you wait, your children are going to whinge and complain to you and then you'll know what it's like." Poor mum. What a long time waiting for her retribution.
But dang, the old girl was bloody right. And shit.... the LGBB's nowhere near the age I was when my mother flipped out and said what she did, in what could only have been a moment of sheer frustration at whatever it was I was currently bellyaching about (I know I whined a lot as a kid, I'll freely admit). Good Lord, what am I in for in future years? *grimace* Thank heavens for my mother I was not a rebel or a trouble-maker, I think I would have been terrible to "control".
So given that we want the LGBB not to go backwards or get slack in progressing, we've had to continue to up the challenge, devise ways of enticing her to strengthen those little matchstick lower limbs without realising or thinking too much about it (for you can sometimes see her thinking, waaaaait a second I'm walking and they want me to walk and...noooo I don't wanna now!). The latest has been 'taking baby for a walk to the shops'. This is no easy task for a little girl, to take her baby to the shops. Isn't it funny that you never saw just how uneven and precarious the footpath is until you walk it like you're two?
It takes a bit of forward-planning and sight to prepare for the LGBB to either make it part way or the whole way to the shops. Properly fitted shoes are a must. A drink for all those rest-stops and a whole heap of free time ahead of you so you can spare the hour or so it takes to make it the usually five minutes' walk up the street, factoring in all the "Oooh! Birds! OOH!! Blue car!" talking points (which also necessitate long pauses in the walking). But there's not been a day yet that she has made it the whole way there and back. So the most important take-along is the LGBB's pram for the ride home.
We took these photos a couple of weeks ago, Steve with his pram and Lolly with hers. It's handy her baby both fits and doesn't mind fitting (pram and all) in the lower part of her "mummy's" pram for the stroll home.
I've been knee deep in a bit o' nostalgia, from a time back when ads were entertaining. Kids were kitsch. And floor shows were all the rage.
No, please. Indulge me further and I'll explain.
When was the last time you saw an orchestrated (read: really pissy but highly entertaining) kids-dressed-up-as-adults advertisement that was as innocent and damn catchy as this? I dare you to watch this and not get it in your head. I DOUBLE dare you.
I admit to being a little impressed that somewhere in the recesses of my brain, I had managed to stow away most of the words to this little jingle, along with many of the visual cues. How imprinted was I? And how much telly? Oh, the wasted hours of youth.
There was once a time when the mere sound of a particular piece of joyous music would make the heads of me and my little bro spin around from our Playtrak faster than we could say "Hotwheeeeels!!"
That music... was this.
What was not to love for an eight year old? "Work on the wail woad ... Wobcat tractors." I wanted to zoom that flying fox. Mostly, I wanted to ride the mini trams and have a snack aboard Wobbies' snack train - it's always, always been about the snackage for mine and what you can eat when you're out (but goddamn, mum was so organised and would pack salad sandwiches for us bluuuuuurgh).
I wanted it ALL. And I wanted it now.
But let me just set the scene: Wobbies World was not as they claimed so cheerfully in this television advert, an international-style play park. No. Wobbies World, in reality, was about two acres of the most crappily thought-out and expensive (while ironically being very shoddily slapped together) "entertainment" you'd ever come across. It was Melbourne's best answer to an "amusement park" in the 80's. Hell, I was pretty damn unimpressed with Gumbuya Park on the one occasion we finally belly-ached our parents enough to take us. So if we ever actually made it inside Wobbies World, I would have been crying bitter bitter tears of defeat.
How did they make the ad's look so enticing? It was the music. The music drew us in from whichever room we were in and made us stand, arms dangling, eyes glazed over and watching the screen imploringly. Basically, I think we were just desperate for a bit o' entertainment and we saw Wobbies World as "it" (when I say "we", I'm talking my brother and me - I do realise there will be many far more enlightened Melbournians reading who will have been much less keen to visit Wobbies World, but I dare them to look inside themselves and honestly say.... they never wanted to work the helicopter by themselves).
My parents did load us up, as I recall, and drove us all the way there once. When they saw the admission prices (and then discovered it was a fee for each ride - Oh. My. GOD. Can anyone say extortion?), we turned right round and came home. I think it took me a good hour to stop shuddering from the tracks of my tears *sniff*
They followed up their 80's ad's with more edgy, modern music and new vision when this one came out. By this time, I was over it. I was a teenager by then. I'd pouted and put the whole no-go Wobbies World experience behind me. We would see the ad by this time and be all huffy and lofty about how the rides were crap.... all the while a bit jealous that "the kids of today" now got to go in mini spinning helicopters, play mini golf and be asphyxiated in a ball pit.
And not until I uncovered this one did I realise that the fireman staring down the camera and squirting his hose was a little, uh... suggestive? (or is it just me and my need to find fault because I'm embittered that I never actually got to go?)
Now, super-fun happy slide amusement parks aside, who remembers The Swagman? "Melbourne's own". They said it was best. Yes. I suppose they probably would have had to talk themselves up. The closest I got to seeing the floor show at The Swagman was having one of the dancers as my ballet teacher when I was a wee poppet of four years of age.
Come on. Don't sit there and tell me you wouldn't have wanted to go. Not with an inviting, chintzy song like that one.
Four kg's lost since Sunday (they'll soon be found, alas, no doubt) and tummy only just beginning to right itself. I feel like I have the Gravitron going on under my shirt.
At some point overnight on Sunday while I was lying on the bathroom floor, freezing, wrapped in a spare doona, aching and teeth chattering, going crazy with a goddamn Hi-5 song on incessant replay in my head (doesn't matter which one, really, because any of them would drive even the hardest to tears after the fourth hour, but for the record it was that bloody "Bang that drum, go BANG BANG BANG, shake that rattle go SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE..." eurghhh *shudder*), I had the presence of mind to reach for the bathroom spray and squirt the insides of the bucket down.
Yes. I haz bucket. Because the toilet was occupied for "other matters". Or matter. Or... well. Hmmm, this is just turning into yet another of those posts where I should have been kinder to my pregnant readers. Sorry.
So at least after that little brainwave (the only brainwave at that time), I only smelled the spray. It didn't stop Nathan, Kelly, Tim, Kathleen and Charli, but it was minty fresh. And that's all that counts.
I spent, in all, about eight hours on the floor because it just wasn't worth the trip back to bed each time. Cripes, I don't remember being that frequently ill since my last child care centre placement back in 1993. There were hallucinations, there was drifting in and out of dazed sleeping. I managed to crawl back to bed at about 8 o'clock Monday morning and couldn't sit upright til the afternoon. The LGBB and Steve got it too, not with nearly so much gusto and none of the hurling, save for Lolly's first and only effort on Friday, and she's just been off colour since - nothing you can put your finger on... in. Sorrrrry! Thank God for her there's been no further vommies.
We're all pretty sore and sorry for ourselves today, though, and by jingoes I am going to lap every minute of this restful toddler up while I've got her in the cosy crook of my elbow on the couch. I don't care that all I want to do is lie down to make the spinning and stinging head stop. I miss her. It's only been a couple of days, but I miss watching her. Isn't that so naff of me.
I'd like to say it was an okay way to start the week. But it really has not been. We're out of the woods but I'm not putting the bucket away just for the time being and if it weren't for pesky clients (why is it that only on days where I am flailing about like a fish out of water that strange/unlikely/unheard of requests from clients come out of the blue???) then I wouldn't even be here.
The screen is moving left to right. Who's doing that? Is it you? I'm leaving.
This box of tissues was bought in the year 2000. I was six weeks pregnant. I was going to put this box of tissues in the nursery for that baby. About seven weeks later, I was shattered for the first of many times when I had to have a D&C for the missed miscarriage that had happened.
The box of tissues stayed in the top of our pantry. I didn't tell Steve about them. Just kept them there. He never needed tissues so was never going to open a box. They were safe there.
Each time, through each pregnancy, and the painful months in between when I was either recovering from miscarriage or waiting to find out if I was pregnant that month, I'd glance into the top of the pantry and in a split second, be placed back in that hospital theatre room just before they put the mask over my face. Knew that the box of tissues had always represented to me what I had lost that night.
In 2003, when I was 16 weeks' pregnant, we painted the bedroom that was to be Ella's first nursery. I took out this same box of tissues and put them on the shelf we'd put in there. This time, I thought. This time I'll have them to use in the baby's room.
After Ella died, I actually took this box out of the room that was to be hers, even though the rest of the furniture remained intact, assembled and in place, until Lolly used it as her first room two years later.
The box of tissues went back to the top of the pantry.
I almost beheaded Steve one night in 2005 (I shall unashamedly blame fertility drugs) when he - who the feck knew he used them - needed a tissue. He reached up to the pantry and brought down this box. He had no idea they'd already been there for over four years when he tried to use them.
That's when I had to tell him through embarrassed and broken tears that I had been saving the box for our baby. Any baby. He'd pierced the perforated top. He apologised profusely and rubbed my arm and then drew me in for a big hug. I sobbed. And then I laughed. And he laughed. It was so ridiculous, It's just a box of fucking tissues, I said.
And that it is. We've used them now. I ceremoniously cracked open the box, starting at the hole Steve had made with his thumb the year before, when the LGBB was no more than four weeks old. Every time I've seen the box in there, I have remembered its story. In, out, up, down out of that ruddy pantry and baby's room.
Tell me it's just a box? I actually want to reduce the clutter here, not add to it. But I'm finding it a tad hard to flippantly toss the thing. I can't actually even reduce the box down for putting in recyclying rubbish. Is that pathetic of me?
Erm, yes, and I am sentimental. Very... just in case it's not been obvious before now.
Tonight before her bath, the LGBB played a game of Go Fish with her dad and me. Except, it didn't end up being Go Fish. It ended up being Memory.
We used five pairs of flash cards - each pair with an animal on them - and Steve and I stared at each other over the top of her head in stunned disbelief as she blitzed the table, getting 100% hit rate without appearing to think twice. Even I struggled to remember where the lion was and who last turned over the "kulala" (koala).
I'll only be impressed, though, if she can follow that performance with cooking me a lovely three course meal complete with suggestions of appropriate wines to complement each aspect of her menu. I want to see evidence of sound knowledge of which side of the vineyard the grapes came from or it won't believable.
This morning, it happened. For the first time ever, I had to clean up someone else's vomit. That word I can't even see typed on a screen without my stomach contracting and twinging and threatening to sympathise.
Yes, that is correct. The chunder bus dropped off its passengers in the LGBB's bed. Well, technically, mostly in her hair, on her mattress, down her pj's, spattered on Scraps and dear Marley appears to have taken the brunt of the explosion.
She awoke to discover the carnage and let out some rather alarmed "Daddeeeee"s. Daddy was half way to work by now, as the LGBB had still been asleep when he left this morning. So, unbeknownst to me, I headed in to confront the stench. And when I stood looking down and she looked back up at me, half crouching, half suspended above her soggy chunky mattress, I had half a mind to call Daddeeeee and tell him to turn right round now and come help me, let me tell you, or else I'd have more than double the amount of spew to clean up.
Are my prego readers enjoying this, by the way? I do apologise, but if not.... I can't see why not *insert most evilly coy smiley here* Perhaps just avert your eyes until the next entry...
So once my mind connected the dots (ie. smell hits olfactory nerves, foggy morning brain cranks into action, recognises the strong acidic fumes, realises it gave birth to the thing causing the offending smell and that there is nobody else responsible enough in the house to clean it up for you, you'll just have to reach your big girl hands in and grab the child out of the mess), I undressed Lolly in her bed, lifted her out and held her at arms' length over to the change table. Ahh. Great. Both ends needed cleaning, it seemed. Highly unusual for her to have a dirty overnight nappy. I was thinking at this stage the poor poppet must have something brewing in that upset tummy of hers.
She thought it was funny when mummy jogged her up the hallway to the bathroom. What she didn't know was that mummy heard the horrifying plops of chunks of chunder falling from the LGBB's hair. Oh dear God. And she also didn't notice mummy calculating just exactly how much trouble it'd be to just shut the door on that end of the house forever and live in the front half. Surely nobody would miss half the house. It'd sure as hell save any confrontation of half-digested stomach contents.
Is anyone still reading? Muahahahaha.
So in the bath, I rubbed and scrubbed. Good and proper. The dear wee girl stood and watched as the bath filled, she had those sicky-shakes, you know the ones you get when you've put all your energy into heaving. And even though I washed and rinsed and washed her hair.... it still makes my eyes water this afternoon in a confined space.
What am I going to do if she never smells fresh again?! Shall I give her head a buzz cut? Is Lolly's hair like Jerry's car now? What's more, she's been in bed asleep for two hours now and *whispers* I can still smell sick. At the other end of the house. It's in my nose. Maybe it's in my nostril hair! Do I have nostril hair? (Of course I do, it's a dumb question... skip that)
And what's worse, I've washed my hands so many times today but just before, I leaned my head on my hand and..... I smelled it there too. Eeeeeeeew.
We had to give Marley, Scraps and Comee (the bunny) a good hearty bath too. In the kitchen sink. Suds aplenty. The LGBB was most satisfied with our work. And then, oh joy, they had to get dried. I don't think I've laughed harder than seeing the little tails of these two dogs "wagging" in the air of the ducted heating vent. I have no idea why I thought it was amusing, but it tickled me no end, seeing these two lay-abouts lapping up the warm toasty air like all their doggy dinners had come at once.
The smell is now also altering my sanity. Obviously.
