It's what she does

There are few things that don't eventually end up amusing the LGBB. She'll usually find the 'yumour in anything. But I really love watching the facial journey as performers/entertainers/TV shows/relatives all get put through their paces if she's in one of *those* temperaments.

Take, for instance, this photo essay that I shall call "Funny Mister Man" - what Lolly called him - the clown who was entertaining today in the open library at the festival we visited in our district.

You'll see here the expression I like to refer to as the Prove Your Worth - characterised by the triple chin-esque pursed-lipped grimace. The angle of the head is a give-away - this look says to me I hereby reserve my judgement of your entertainment value and I shan't give away anything of my ruling until I am assured of your hilarity.


The poor dancing fool in front of her will then get the lift of the chin, an almost imperceptible grimace of uncertainty. This look says... you'll have to try much harder than that to impress me, but you're getting there. Keep up the good work.







Then, surely, the LGBB will begin to lose herself in the entertainment. A very faint yet brief smirk crosses her face. You're almost in... but don't stop trying your best, Funnyman.







So the poor sod tries balloon animal joke after twirling umbrella-hat joke....






...which all fell flat. Apparently. Although in her eyes, I see the slightest encouragement, with the lifted brows.








And then. The Master does it. A farty-noise....






.... Oh, NOW you're talkin' toddler language. Or... bottom burping it, anyway.









One more "prrrrfppppbbbbt" complete with poking out tongue and googly eyes and she was putty in his hands.










It's such an awesome day, this community festival. We went last year for the first time.*

So we've vowed now to go each year and so far, the first two years haven't disappointed! Today we had a picnic on the grass, like last time. We've come home for a rest (OMG OMG OMG she is asleep!!!!) before heading out tonight for the fireworks display. Last year it was great. Here are some shots. Check out how little the LGBB was! Awwww. She wasn't even walking yet.



















* Er, despite living in this area for eleven years... it was one of those things we used to see each year, if ever we happened to drive through, you can't miss it for the traffic and the balloons and carnival rides - but was never something we would have enjoyed just the two of us. It's a family-oriented festival for the community, one which we felt so, so, so separate from, year after year the feeling got worse.

Just so we're all clear...

I tend not to write about the shittier side of things here. This post is not one of those posts.

I'm going through a patch. A crisis patch. It's so much less than what others are going through, I know, but this is my turf, this is my method (or lack) of coping, this is my brick wall. The one I keep butting my head against.

It's so ridiculous that I feel so incompetent simply because my house is a mess. I mean, for the past week, I've had two new leads, a new client place an order already (printing and a website), done three auditing assignments (my other 'line of business'), had three existing clients contact me and request updates, upgrades and alterations, I've begun a database to streamline the Peace Space work (which I am working on after hours to get it finished, something I am doing as a contra deal so it must be done). As well as this, I've used up whatever energy I have left in seeing the LGBB right for interesting and nutritional meals and snacks, a couple of outings, some projects at home..... she's a full time day job in itself. She's dropped her day sleep for over a week now and I am starting to really feel it. I'm grinding to a halt and yet still, still I feel like I am not a) doing enough and b) doing it "right".

I'm pissed off at myself that I can't even make jelly properly. I tipped the crystals into a bowl that I forgot had (clean) water in it that I hadn't needed for the curry I made tonight.

I'm pissed off with Pyrex for creating stupid glass pouring measuring jugs that spill whatever you're pouring onto the bench and not into the bowl. Why? WHY?

I'm pissed off that I can't be everything all at once, is what it boils down to. I feel really angry (at myself) that I can't 'keep house' the way I'd like - ha ha ha *she says with a dry laugh* not even close - and can't even seem to manage keeping the kitchen clean some days. I know it's probably only a few days out of the entire week when I don't get a chance to do dishes, put even the basic things away, but it feels like day after day after day of the same. Damn. Thing.

Namely, me feeling so overwhelmed that I am plunged yet again into a depressive state.

I'm going to blame, just this once, my mother. And hell, my father too. The people I learned from. I am working very, very, VERY hard to reverse the damage caused by growing up in my childhood house. In the meantime, I am flogging myself for not being the kind of mother I envisaged I would be. The one who stops and takes time - every day, not just three or four out of the 7 - and is basically available for her young charge. Whatever she fancies.

But try as I might, once I put myself in that position, I dunno... I only last a couple of days feeling all zen before SNAP!!!! I just flip out at the LGBB. She demands and demands and demands. I call it The Demand-athon because it really is like a running, never ending list of things I am being called on to provide. And I, like anyone, have my limits.

Add to this the fact that we, Steve and I, have very firm ideas/ideals about the kind of person we hope the LGBB will turn out to be. She is considerate of others, empathic already, but inside the home, she seems to be exercising her strong will more and more and more. It is wearing me out (or down).

I don't want laughs here. Please..... don't laugh 'with' me if you feel compelled to comment. I am purging right now. It goes against every grain in my body to admit my faults - and there are many of them - as a parent. Especially one with the added guilt and pressure (placed on me squarely by myself first and foremost) of mothering after loss and such a struggle to even get ONE child here. But yeah.. walk a mile in my shoes and all that.

I resent my mother. I resent her for not being competent enough to support me EVER in my adult, let alone adolescent, life. She's here, alive and well, but unreachable. Even if she was in my life, she would be of no use. Believe it's not true if you will, but you would have to know her to really understand that. I get angry that I have to make do with just us, basically. Me and Steve. I get angry that I was never shown the proper skills to look after myself - to balance - properly. I'm paying for it now. And yeah. Some days, like this one, I'm resentful. Writing this out, I'm calming down. Surely it's obvious by now, that writing is my life/wheel alignment. At least I have expression.

He gets home of a night when I'm like this and just receives the full force of my atomic blow. It's not fair on him. I don't want to be this unattractive to him. Add to it all the fact that I am in the process of changing my old punishment/reward habits (of snacks and too much alcohol) by getting fit and healthy and stopping with the excuses and.... I feel like I have no safety net right now.

It'll pass. It always passes and I have faith that it will. It's hard, I know it's hard. It gets harder, I know it gets harder. I oscillate between wanting out and realising this is just me having a major adult tanty. Please allow me the floorspace to do it here, somewhat more safely than taking it out on anyone right in front of me. Far healthier, methinks.

For today, though, see me in my ugly form: The Stressed Out Mother/Wife/Business Owner/Friend

*deep breath in aaaaaaand* Ahhhhhhhhh. Thank you. Now I can go finish dinner for them.

A-Tagging we will go

Oh, I am usually so bad at these. But this one should be easy! Mind you, I am saying this before finding what I need to write about..... so here goes.

I’ve been tagged by Dani

Here are the rules:
1. Go to the section of your computer where you store all of your photos.
2. Select the 6th folder.
3. Select the 6th photo from that folder.
4. Post and explain about that picture.
5. Tag 6 other people

How did I ever know that this, taken by Steve at my request, would be one of only two times I got a closeup of our sweet girl's fingers safely inside mine? This was the day I felt so punch-drunk happy. Could have taken on the world today, my heart was bursting out of my chest. I had a lid on my concerns and dread, for she was so tiny, but this day my baby Ellanor was just making me soar.

I shall leave it there, I think.

Now, come on you lot... I tag Peta, Mel, Danni, Amoir, Kay and Meaghan! Off yer laurels, you readers!

The plans are in!

They're in! They're here. I feel like I can swing a cat already.

Or something.

Primitive Dog

A while ago (at least a month), the LGBB drew a chalk drawing of Jazz on our driveway. Aside from the fact that I just took this photo today and it is still pretty much as crisp as the day she drew it, such is our drought down here, I think it is a really good little drawing! She drew the head, tail and legs as I prompted her and this is what she came up with. We forgot the ears...

Very special! I love this little drawing, it's right near our front door and I let out an audible "Squeeeee" sound whenever I see it. It's my love-heart-song. And it sounds rather like the air being let out of the tightly pulled mouth of a balloon.

Now, a month later, the LGBB was standing at her chalk board on the weekend and I asked her if she would draw me a picture of Jazz (I don't often ask her to draw me something specific, but both times I have, I'm so uninspiring that I've asked her to do the same object - inventive, arn'I?). And again, a pretty similar shape came out.


And some traily thing that goes around to the right and over Jazz's head... yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say that she was drawing the trajectory of Jazzy's ball and it flew out of her jaw to be caught by someone. ... Too much? Too much. Ok.

So I think ... I think this is the LGBB's first drawing/s! Of her dog! Awwwwwwww. Sniff.

The day Beyoncé confused us all

Something I've hitherto not admitted is...... oh no, here we go.....

The LGBB is in love with this song. Why? Why that one?? But okay, it's happened, we've had our cringe and we've decided to move on (and allow her to douse us all in replaying of the damn thing over and over - I did it when I was a kid, but my song of choice to singe my parents' ears was Mamma Mia).

Yesterday, on about the four hundred and twenty-eighth replaying of it, I snapped. I stopped what I was doing, turned to Steve and said, "What is she going on about? Hair on what?" And Steve stared back at me blankly, the LGBB dance-jumping between us.

"Don't be scared if you see it's got hair on it?" I recited.

It's totally beyond me, what Beyoncé says in that section of the chorus. I don't really care to know. And we've made a bit of a sport of it when it comes around in the song.

Don't be scared if you see it's got hair on it?
Lather up if you see it's got hair on it...?
Don't be fair if you cheat and have cheese with it.

Oh we have no idea. And frankly, it's more fun not to know.


I feel so old. And yet, so juvenile at the same time *snigger*

Random thoughts plucked from my brain

It's been days now since I had a moment to myself. Literally, a moment. I've been working from sun up to sun down and let me just say... Well, perhaps I'll just let this video do the talking:



Spousal insanity has been declared in this house, yes. Though I haven't done any writing on the walls.... yet.

So as the days have passed and I've been running around like a blue-arse fly (are they real? Is there really a species of fly called The Common Blue-Arse?), I have had these sorts of things floating past my attention span:

• When the dogs come inside at night for their nightly "Special Time With The Peeps" hour, I swear we say "Mat!" "On the mat!" "JAZZ!!!! MAT!!!!!" so often that we are now calling her Hazmat. Because Hazardous Material just about sums her up.

• Yesterday, in my "free time", I plonked the LGBB on the trampoline where she practiced her "running round and round reeeeeally fast" while I picked up dog biscuits. No, not Boneo's. Not Good-O's or any of those other cute-named shop bought biscuits. I mean like... rear end bickies. One of our girls (and I'm tippin' it's that old one *squints narrowly*) doesn't have enough fibre in her diet, let's just say, so I was reduced to picking up around this big backyard of ours what I can confidently describe were rabbit-poo-sized dog turds. Fun? You betcha! Nearly drove me bananas (please refer to vid at top of screen if you've forgotten already). And what made it all the more sort of stir-crazy hilarious was that, here I am, Pooper Scoopin' my way through a shopping bag full - they've been hella busy this week, apparently - and I look to my immediate left and there, right near my feet if you don't mind, is Hazmat. Lying upside down, all four paws luxuriantly in the air. Grinning madly and doing that favourite doggy move they do: the back scratch when they wiggle their bums from left to right to scratch nice and goooood. As if to say, "I'm having a glooooorious time here, all my work (shitting and eating) is done. Ahhh!"

I stood there, thinking "Nice. Thanks for rubbing it in, Turd-Burglar."

• Whichever comedian it was (I think Jerry Seinfeld?) who mused that when aliens spy on Earth, they will assume dogs are the leaders because we are going around picking up their crap, was so on the money.

• I then announced out loud, to the LGBB and possibly any neighbours who were outside in their yards, that I was going to get myself a new business card. "You poo it out, I'll clean it up for ya" I just feel like the world is one big pile of poop waiting for me to clean it up some days. If it's not the dogs, it's the LGBB. Yes. Toilet training is going THAT well *withered look to camera*

• I have it on good authority that this is still Tim. "Funny Tim", he's been christened by the LGBB. Even when he clearly states his name is Stevie (wtf? why not just Steve? why do you have to cutesy it up, you're already on a cutesy show with a cutesy haircut, man! Dooooh I'm cross). I hope I never have to have that sit-down "Oh dahl... c'mere, I need to tell you something" talk with her or she'll be crushed. And I don't wanna see that bottom lip pout when she realises that her Hi5 Tim had to stop singing and dancing because of his splintered vertebrae, the poor bugger.

• I loved Tim and Nathan. There. I said it. In a time of day (that time of day, you know the one) when I try to chop like a butterfly and cook like a bee - similar to Ali, uh huh - and need some sweet mercy, I usually allow an ep of Hi5 to sneak its way on the telly. And ok, so on the surface Nathan always appeared to be a tool. Or a fool. Or both. But seriously, so good at the old-fashioned piss-take of himself! Funny, funny stuff. Not afraid to be a dill, that's what he was.

• I can't bring myself to watch new episodes of Hi5. It's all gone to shit. Kelly and Nathan were just hanging on in those episodes they're showing now. She looks so incredibly sad and he looks, well, rather uncomfortable. And the newbies - Funny Tim, Funny Kathleen and Funny Charlie (who at the moment is still the real Charlie but with new-and-improved hair?) - are just wrong, wrong, wrong when you're used to seeing the originals in their younger, happier days. God, it's like Days Of Our Bloody Lives.

• I bumped into a local woman who used to own a café round these parts. It was this café where I first really started to head into the deeper writing of my book. I'd sit for a few hours and just let stuff pour out. Really good stuff, some of my best was written there. So I have a very soft spot for that place and certainly this lady, I'll call her M, and her husband, R, who is a chef extraordinnaire and created the most divine menu of curries and light eats. Healthy, nurturing, lovingly thought-out. Well. They've sold it to people who are in it for the money. The place has lost its appeal fast. So sad. I now use it as a quick coffee pick-up (they do great coffee still) and am trying to break the habit of going there for breaky now and then with the fam because in a few short weeks, hand-over will be complete and R will not be in the kitchen.

Anyway, M and I always got along but never really talked about any truly "deep" stuff. Picture us yesterday, for almost two hours, standing outside the local crystal and oogidy-boogidy shop (that's what I call it in front of the MIL - I think the stones and books on animal wisdom scare her so why not take advantage? muahaha) and discovering that our paths are heading along a very similar track. She has had the most amazing and unexpected confirmation about her natural ability to listen, to heal and uplift people, since selling her shop. Part of what made the place so fantastic was her. She is slowly beginning to accept this but is still mighty uncomfortable with it, even though it's plain as day to everyone else that what she brings to a place, you couldn't market or bottle or sell or teach. It's her.

Now this is very much the pot calling the kettle black here, I know, for I have a similar denial going on. I'd barely sat down, literally, and begun that grief workshop when I had several people tell me how amazing I am (eeek) and the good I am doing (bluuuuurgh). I'm too humble. That's my annoying problem.

So anyways.... I started thinking as I was listening to M and it started coming out that she had been told she was going to be helping women who had been in hardship and needed nurturing, a back rub, some counselling perhaps, or at least a place to talk and feel safe. Perhaps we'll be doing something together somehow, she and I. Because I too have been told, ever since the year I lost Ella, that I would be helping mothers and babies (a concept that, at the time, made me recoil in fear and doubt because I couldn't look at pregnant bellies then, let alone acknowledge the women they belonged to). And I, like her, have been resisting this suggestion because I haven't got any formal degrees hanging framed on my wall. She hit me when I said that, a "Get OUT!! That's what I think!" moment of complete understanding.

So yeah. I think it wasn't such a chance "bump into" meeting at all yesterday. And I will be watching with interest (we swapped numbers) where and when her new business venture pops up, because I think I just may become one of the practitioners there.

Gosh, there's sooo much more I want to tell you! But I seriously don't have time. BZZZZT! That's it. It's up.