Destroying the joint - what not to do.

Baby B was somewhat better Saturday so I went ahead with a plan I'd made earlier in the week to take P out for a Mummy/Daughter day of fun.  I don't get much one on one time with the little mouse these days and I think she needs it.  My big idea was to leave M at home with Baby B, and to take her to swimming class and then straight off to see a movie.  I'd noticed they were doing classic Disney childrens movies on Saturday mornings at Robina so thought that sounded good.  This weekend it was Pocahontas, so I thought it would be perfect. G rated movies are a bit thin on the ground these days...

So after swimming we headed off.  When I had mentioned to a friend the day before that we were seeing Pocahontas, they remarked that they thought it was part of a sort of princess film special event, but I hadn't really given it much thought.

When we got there, a million tiny girls all wearing tizzy fairy princess costumes were milling round in the lobby.  I could see P, in her ordinary clothes, eyeing them off.  She said "Mummy why are they all wearing their princess dresses?". I made up some bland response but I don't think she was fooled.

Anyway I was a little bit blargh about that, but we bought our tickets and got given our Disney Princess Passports (ugh).  I was still more or less ok at that point, and the ticket person said afterwards there would be craft and face painting, so P and I thought that sounded pretty ok  and we bought our Malteasers and headed into the theatre.

When we found our seats, we were soon joined by throngs of little girls attending a couple of birthday parties, closely followed by two young women dressed up as fairies.  They went up the front and announced a few lucky door prizes. I was still all good with things at that stage generally speaking.

What happened next still makes me feel yucky.  The fairy ladies asked all the little girls to come up the front of the theatre.  I was a bit suss already about it and said to P "Oh we don't need to go up darling", but she looked so disappointed I changed my mind and went up with her.

Then the fairy ladies got the audience to vote on who was the best dressed by clapping their hands.  I am not joking.  They actually went down the line of little girls and held their arm over each of them, one by one, and the audience clapped and hooted if they liked her, or didn't clap and hoot if they didn't like her.

A mother standing next to us exchanged glances with me as they inched closer to our girls.

"I don't like this at all," she whispered.

"Me either. I didn't sign up for this," I answered.

I felt sick as they came closer to P. I looked at her waiting patiently in line, and I knew nobody would clap for her. The little girls with the parties had cheer squads and she wasn't wearing a princess dress.  When they reached her, I tried to cover up the lacklustre applause by clapping and woohooing loudly myself.

Thank goodness they moved quickly onto the next one, and P is just little enough that the whole thing was pretty much lost on her.  Any older and the shame of standing in front of strangers and being judged unworthy would have been unbearable.

The next event was a twirling competition (ugh!), but I managed to hustle her back to our seats before getting sucked into it.

I was so angry.  HOW DARE THEY force this veritable beauty pageant on these tiny girls.  The whole world has gone absolutely fucking apeshit crazy.  I wanted to yell "Fuck you Disney princess bullshit world and your dominant paradigm, fuck you and the horse you rode in on!!!!".

But I didn't of course.

I felt hot tears prickling my eyes.  I was so bloody strung out and exhausted, and felt so terrible about taking P to something where that would happen.  As the movie started, I remembered how tragic the whole Pocahontas story actually was, and as the first rat scuttled on board the ship bound for the New World the tears rolled down my face.

Oh God the TRAGEDY of it all was too much for me and it all got mixed up in my head as I wept silently in the dark - colonialism, smallpox, lost love, the degradation of Mother Earth, the oppression and princessification of all the tiny girls in the world by Disney, John Smith's bad English accent, the guy in front of us and his bad body odour.  The bloody shitting tragedy of everything.  I know. Just a bit over the top I guess.

I felt deadset sorry for the nice man and his two little girls sitting next to us as I clutched P close and sobbed quietly into her hair through the whole film, while she asked things like "But who is John Smith, Mummy?!" and "Who is Pocahontas?" and "Where is Pocahontas' daddy?" and so forth. I can only imagine how maniacal I looked in the reflected light of the big screen.

Frankly the whole thing left me feeling like I'd been through the wringer.

I trailed out after the movie ended and dutifully lined up with her to wait for the face painting. She must have absorbed my gloom because when it came to her turn, she sat silently and morosely staring at the face painter until it was all over.  The saddest face paintee in all of Christendom.

One of the fairies and P sitting as still as a statue.  

I had to ask the fairy not to press on P's black eye.  We must have looked quite a sight, my tear streaked face and her sad rainbow annointed, black eye sporting one.

I made myself feel better today by writing a letter of complaint and emailing it to the cinema.  I bloody hope they listen. I can take expensive popcorn, overflowing bins in the toilets and rowdy children in the theatre, but a surprise beauty contest for toddlers I will not stand for.
The #destroythejoint peeps would be disgusted.

Linking up with Jess for...

On the occasion of his first birthday.

WARNING: Slightly emo parenting blog post alert!!

Baby B turned one on Sunday, and frankly I'm in a glass case of emotion about it.

We're only having two babies, and every time I look at him I realise he is the last baby who will snuggle into me, babble at me, chuckle at me.  And now he's one, he's getting that bit closer to stopping all the baby stuff.

I didn't remember to write much down about P when she was a baby. I did find a Word document saved somewhere on the computer yesterday that contained lots of her words and phrases from 15 months onwards thank goodness, but nothing from when she was one.  Silly me.

But I can write some stuff down about B.

B can say "Mama", "Dada", and "nana" (like "banana").  Nana is his favourite thing so that he seems to call everything he wants "nana".

He can play "peekaboo" with us, clap hands, and babble long sentences that I feel I can almost decipher sometimes.

He can pull up to stand, and crawl as fast as any baby I've seen.

If I ask him "Kiss for mummy?" he sometimes plants one on my lips, but sometimes he frowns and shakes his head vigorously instead.  Cheeky.

He bops along to music like a maniac on the dancefloor.  His favourite is La Roux "Going in for the Kill" or whatever it's called.  How hip am I?

He sleeps like a log all through the night, alone in his room, with the door shut, in the pitch dark.  I know!  God bless second babies.

He laughs all the time, but nobody can get quite the belly laugh out of him that P does.  He adores her.  P has a special teddy called "Beanie".  It's a pink one of those weird Beanie Baby things (Google it).  She asked if we could buy B a blue Beanie for his birthday, so I took her to the shops and she chose one.  She called him "Jack Beanie", like Jack and the Beanstalk.  Naturally she is monopolising both Beanies but B doesn't mind.  Yet.

He is a dear, sweet, cuddly, loving and lovable baby boy and we adore him.

Happy birthday to our darling boy, and may he always find life as easy and full of joy as he does right now.

Me and P on her first birthday.

Me and B on his first birthday.

When you are a little child.

P has a sweetly confused idea about the circle of life that she talks to me about often.  She tells me stories about the future, where she is the grown up mummy, and I am the little child.  She says things like "Mummy, when you are a little girl and I am the grown up, I will wear a dress and go to work and look after you".

I find the idea so appealing.

I wish it were true.  The truth is much sadder.

I don't know about you but I've really only just realised fully that I won't live forever.  Neither will P.  Or B.  Or M.  Maybe I will die tomorrow.  Maybe Baby B will.

I wonder why it is this way?  Why is life so full of loss and grief?  The longer you live the more you lose.  I find it unbearable to contemplate sometimes, the inevitable march towards death.

I've spent so much time thinking about things I'll do in the future, how life will be, holidays, travel, great jobs, all waiting for me out there somewhere.

But what if I die tomorrow?

Bille Brown, a famous theatre actor from round these parts, died in January.  Geoffrey Rush spoke about him at a memorial yesterday, and read out some of Bille's words.

"I THOUGHT I had more to do, more to give, but I know now it's time to leave."

I had lunch with my stepsister E the other day, and we spoke about her dad.

While he was dying last year, I felt the happiness in my life more acutely.  It sharpened my senses and concentrated my thought on the present.

But E and I both agreed that now, 6 months after, the knowledge of death has sucked some of the joy out of life.

I wish I could be a little girl again, and that P could be the Mummy and look after me, just like she hopes will happen.

Break in the Weather. Sweating the Small Stuff.

Ma, the rains are here! [Insert obligatory comment about the weather, Crikey she's a harsh country of extremes, she is, and drought and flood and fire and pestilence and so forth].

Readers, I've got a bit of STUFF on my mind.  Yes, yes, of course we all know that I spend most of my time contemplating Art, Literature, Philosophy, the Downfall of Western Civilisation As We Know It, and my navel.   What time I have left over after I've finished that I mostly dedicate to Keeping it Real, Championing Feminist Issues and Making Benevolent Gestures to the Poor and Unfortunate, but look, sometimes even MY superior intellect and over-developed moral backbone strays into the mundane territory of worry and stress about the "small stuff".

Sometimes the small stuff is actually the big stuff, in a way.  So I've been sweating it. The small stuff, that is.

My comfort eating is back with a vengeance and my nails are torn and bitten.

I need to make a big decision.  But I can't manage it. So I just complain and poor-me about the same stuff endlessly and never change the thing that is really wrong.

Apart from that particular small stuff, there are other smaller, small stuffs that I've been wasting time worrying about.

So, in the words of Alan Partridge, let's just throw them all in the air and see where they land, shall we?

- We can't get the baby to sleep and he's screaming in the background as I type. Relaxing. Like fingernails on a blackboard. Who needs whale music when I can listen to that as I GET CREATIVE BLOG-STYLE.  My muse (or my A-Muse as I like to call her) is laughing at me while she lies on the couch and eats bon bons, I just know it.

EDITED FOR CLARIFICATION JUST LIKE THEY DO IN HANSARD: Don't worry loyal Slapdash Army, he's usually a great sleeper, just bad this evening which I thought added an amusing soundtrack to my Whining Blogging. Apt, even.  Carry on.

My A-Muse. She's laughing hysterically and saying "Don't worry about the bay-by Sarah! Here have a bon-bon!" [Source]

-  I don't want a smartphone any more, I think it's making me dumb.

- As mentioned, my comfort eating is back and my exercise habit is broken. How many months into the New Year was that, some kind of record? Gah.

- I'm worried that P is getting too much exposure to tizzy fairy princess ballerina tizziness mctizz shows/books/general stuff.  She is basically a very imaginative creative little thing and she loves to dress up and so forth, and it's not that I don't like princessy fairy ballerina ness in itself, I just feel that's kind of all she's into.  Anyone got some good suggestions for non tizzy stuff I can show her? Books/movies?  I bought her the movie "Brave" which is fantastic but it's a bit too scary really.

P performing an interpretive dance for a small admirer. With requisite tizzy mermaid style getup. Tizzy.  I like that word. 

So peeps, what are you worried about? Do you like bon bons? What are bon bons anyway? What issues do you champion? Do you like to dress as a mermaid? Or Cinderella? Anyone seen my moral backbone? I think I left it at Woolies.

EDITED AGAIN: To link up with Grace for Flog Your Blog Friday. One day I will work out how to put buttons on my blog. Anyone who nows how to do this feel free to explain in the comments. Grace did once but I still can't work it out. Blargh.

Just call me Dopey. Or Sleepy, or Sneezy, or Doc, whatever.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go.

Guys.

I'm going back to work tomorrow after 12 months maternity leave.

Things I am worried about include...

1) Baby B at daycare. Sob. He's being eased into it by short stints for the moment, but still. Sob.

2) The commute.

3) Not having lost all the weight I wanted to. Drat.

4) Having to dig my brain out from storage.

5) The commute.

6) The commute.

7) Various big changes that have happened at work while I was away. [Shakes fist].

8) Not knowing who I'm job sharing with and other Unknown Unknowns.

Things I am looking forward to are...

1) Alone time in the toilet. A cliche, I know. Well I'm just assuming there won't be any awkward loo sharing moments with my colleagues but I guess you never know.

2) Wearing work clothes, such as they are.

3) Using my brain. A bit. Such as it is.

4) Seeing old colleagues. Such as they are. Hehe.

5) Air-con-freaking-ditioning. Hallelujah!

But basically I'm crapping my dacks.

Still, I've got my tiger striped hair and newly plucked eyebrows to get me through.  The tiger hair (trust me, oh unbelievers, the photo yesterday did not reveal the full hair situation) makes me think of that song "Eye of the Tiger" which in turn makes me think of Rocky which I will choose to see as a sign that I am TOTALLY CAPABLE "facing up to the challenge of my riiiivvaaallls".  Whoever they may be.

So, think of me tomorrow.  I'll be hangin' tough and stayin' hungry.

And probs sobbing like a big girly girl into my breakfast smoothie.

Hold me.

Or at least write something comforting in the comments.

The kindy bags are packed.  Sob sobbity sob sob sooooobbbbbb sniff snort dribble blub...

My week, a synopsis in photographs

I'm finding it difficult to get a moment to myself to write this blog.  So here's a speedy update on my week in photographic form, for those who are interested, although why you would be is anyone's guess!  I tried to start it twenty million times with P and B at my feet "writing" Christmas cards and so forth but not a moment's peace was to be had. I usually do as much as I can on my phone in any snippets of calm I have, but I still have to tweak it properly on the ole fashioned desktop computer.

I cannot work under these conditions people I AM AN ARTEEEESSST!

Also, I've been shamelessly flogging the blog around the traps and have successfully ensnared some new readers.  Hello to you all my new friends!

OK so here it goes for what it's worth.

• I invented a new word, sangry. You're sangry when you feel like this - 

Oh woe is me, I'm failing the kids, I'm an awful Mum, I'm never going to have a meaningful career, my daughter hates me, boo hoo hoo hoo 

        And then immediately feel like this - 

Grrrrr the house is so MESSY no matter what I do, I may as well be a frigging char lady, all I do is argue with the toddler and wipe arses, it makes me so MAD I WANT TO KICK A SMALL DOG BUT I CAN'T SO I'M JUST GOING TO SCREAM LIKE A BANSHEE AT MY HUSBAND!

 And then like this again -

Oh the world is so full of cruelty and horror, global warming, war, Tony Abbott, famine, misogyny, it's all too much, {sobs into pillow}.

Closely followed by - 

If I hear one more word about RADIO BROADCASTERS ACTING LIKE ARSES or if one more person bags out Julia Gillard JUST BECAUSE SHE IS A WOMAN WITH RED HAIR or if P does ANOTHER wee on the floor I am going to go OFF LIKE A FIRECRACKER OR AT THE VERY LEAST SCREAM LIKE A BANSHEE AT MY HUSBAND!!!

Sound familiar anyone?  We all get sangry from time to time.  Let it all out folks, breath out sangry, breathe in love.

• I remained more or less committeed to Fox in Flats #darecember. Get ready for some hardcore selfie action you guys.

Dress

Neck party

Red nail polish

Animal print

All black

Curls

•  This happened - 

Then this happened - 

Then this happened again - 

See "sangry" entry above for further details.

• Cute baby crap went down

Hee hee

Bless

•  This happened. For ages. WTF.

Sharpness of mind and clarity of thought, I has it.

•  I had a Tupperware party.  I know.

Wore this.

Baked this.

Scored free shit.

What have youse guys been up to?  Get about in mismatching clothes? Yell abuse at your husband?  Score some noice free plastic gear? I want to hear it all.