Through the thick gravy of sleep, I can hear the chattering. “Blah blah blah” says one. “Blah blah blah laugh” says the other. In my mind I hear Sonny and Cher singing “I got you babe” and have to remind myself that while I am stuck in Groundhog day, I am better looking than Bill Murray. I reach over with frozen fingers and hit the snooze button. “Goodbye squawkers…hear you in nine more minutes”. In the haze and softness I assess the day ahead. The pain in my fingers and feet tell me that the next hour will only survived through gritted teeth. I swing my feet out of the covers, gingerly sidling towards the toilet. The doorknob is hard, and the bathroom floor is cold and hateful. I see myself in the mirror. Some days I’m surprised that I look better than I feel…this morning…not so much…the Blair Witch is staring back. After minutes of dozing on the loo, the Worlds Oldest Cat, and her friend, Second Worlds Oldest Cat, push the door open. They see me, and start whinging. To myself I think “Great, now I have a soundtrack to go with the pain”

  Walking on skeleton feet I hobble out to the children.  I attempt a sunny “Good Morning.”  Thankfully the children are not morning people (not at least for another hour anyway) and they virtually ignore me.  In silence I potter around.  School lunches and breakfast.  Fasten top buttons and scrounge through the washing for matching socks…grimaces hidden behind a mask of smiling, and high pitched reasurances.  The news comes on the tv.  I grab my keys and scan the children for food faces and scarecrow hair.  Like an army sargent I march them out to the car, all the while ignoring the pain that sizzles away. Through bickering voices my anger bubbles. ”Yes they are arguing but don’t over react” – just a simple warning will do.  I look at the garage roller door, imaging a way to open it that will not result in more pain.  It weighs more than a blue whale.  I stare at it.  I hate it. 

Second by second the day unfolds.  The ground is hard, hard, hard, but as we walk into school more seconds pass. I am surviving this step, then the next.  I squat to hug my boys, to wish them a great day, to tell them I love them.  And in our embrace, I think “I can’t enjoy this.”  All I want is for it to be over, to take the pressure of the joint, but I stay.  I wonder if they look into my eyes and see what I feel.  I wonder if they think it is about them? 

 As I do a skip shuffle out to the car,  I take a breath, a giant ballon breath. ” Thank you”, I say to myself.  “Thank you for keeping it in”.  “Thank you for not lashing out.”

For now, I retreat.  Six hours and I will do it all over again.  Pretend , pretend, pretend. 

This life, my life is lived moment to moment.

 A string of moments, each seperate from the next. 

 No future,

No past,

Only now.

  

Picture this. It’s 4pm on a Thursday afternoon. Crazy after school traffic fills the streets, and the kids and I are off to swimming lessons.

 My car, packed to the ceiling with swimming gear and schools bags, dodges in and out of traffic.  A feat in itself considering it’s a two and half ton 4wd and does zero to sixty in  three quarters of an hour.

 Silence has descended on the car after a heated discussion between myself and my three boys regarding the lyrics of Britney’s latest song “If you seek Amy” and why it’s inappropriate for them to be singing it.

 ”Just because!”  seems to  be sufficient enough answer…for now. 

I sigh, relieved and enjoy a moments silence as we wait for the lights to change.

  From the back seat I hear,  “Muuuuuum?” 

I reply “Yes matey?”

  “Is there such a thing as a quandong?” 

“Yes mate” I answer. 

 ”A quandong is a fruit native to Australia.  The Aborigines refer to it as Bush tucker and tastes a bit like a mango.” 

 I feel a bit like super mum with all the answers, and a bit proud of oldest boy for asking such an interesting and diverse question (of course he gets his natural curiosity from his mother) 

 Another moment of silence ensues, then Master Nine turns to his little brothers and says “Boys…..always wear a quandong.” 

Frikkin’ heck,  I think I just heard my sanity slam the car door and walk off!

 

 

 Wanted:  One Mother\wife – like person to adopt a menagerie of men children and various forms of pooping\puking domestic wildlife.  Successful applicants will be required to fulfill and undertake the following criteria-

 

• Be an arduous task master when it comes to scraping dried cereal from the floor and kitchen table

 

• Be adept at  scrambling under beds and finding missing school ties and 35 over -due library books

 

•  Expertly utilise an entire weeks worth of towels to sop up bathtub overflows.  Sometimes blaming  it on the kids, but occasionally confessing to  a  few too many wines and a little distraction known as Facebook

 

•  Maintain a grown up, respectable telephone conversation with an “out sourced” Indian telephone operator, whilst silently separating fighting offspring with an expert arm yank

 

• Be able to keep a straight face during the most excruciating conversations with 5 year old boys about testicles and why it’s not a good idea to try and “pop” them!

 

• Convincingly appreciate (and keep forever!) the entire recycled waste of a small country (think Sweden) creatively fashioned  into various forms of art presented to you on Mothers Day morning 

 

• Successfully pretend to be going off to an office job as you go through the McDonald’s drive through for a coffee when in reality you merely going home to blog and Facebook

 

• Successfully  feign interest when the MOTH (Man Of The House)  is extolling the virtues of a square pie over a round pie

 

• Expertly hide yourself and the children in a darkened house as Mormons knock incessantly on the  front door

 

• Be a Maven  of emotional blackmail, frequently making statements like “everything I do for you kids, and I never get a thank you…………………..”

 

• Be  able to forage through knee deep refuse on Xmas afternoon, looking for instructions for toys that were accidentally thrown out, despite the garbage bin smelling like a cat’s died in there!

 

• Happily provide expert medical care to pseudo sick family members whilst bleeding out ones’ own ears. 

 

Clearly an exciting career opportunity for a highly motivated go getter.  Wages are non existent, however the successful applicant will have unlimited access to mountains of cold leftovers.

 

Interested parties, should not bother contacting me, I’ve already left!

 

Have you ever heard something, on the television for example, that came as such a shock that you coughed, chocked and made red wine come out your nose?  Well I have, and I consider myself pretty unshockable.  It was nothing outrageous, more an indicator of cultural differences. 

Here’s the tale.

  I’m perched on a stool in my kitchen.  I call this “guarding my post.”  Technically I am sitting down, but to the children, I am in the kitchen, so I could be very busy, and so they don’t feel obliged to get me to do stuff for them.  So, I’m sipping my wine, appearing quite vigilant, whilst indulging in a little Bold and the Beautiful.  The kids think this is my show (so does my husband for that matter) which is ridiculous, but keeps them at bay for 30 minutes each day.

  Anyway, I’m sipping, when out of the blue, Ridge (chiseled faced philanderer who’s had it off with several wives and some step children!)  announces to another character (Valley or Crest or frikin’ Fjord!) that she’s not too old for a smack on the fanny! 

Cue the coughing and the nasal discharge Shiraz style. 

 Now alot of readers here right now, are from America, and this saying is used colloquially in the States.  Ya fanny is ya butt! 

 However…….(long pause)……(and this is where it gets interesting) in Australia, a smack on the fanny seems like just about the cruelest thing you could do.  And believe me, brings a tear to the eye of any woman who’s ever heard this saying!  

  Ya fanny is ya  va jay jay!  Yep, put into the context of giving it a smack seems like an extreme punishment, and kinda personal! 

“No thanks Dad!  Think I’ll skip the vagina smack for now if that’s ok with you!” 

Maybe our country is still in the midst of puberty (I mean we are still a very young country,  Hell we’re no Egypt!) because alot of the American slang makes us snicker.

  Another fine example is the term “We’re rooting for ya.”  Again I see this and I’m snorting to myself.  We know what it means.  “Go team Go!” 

In the land of Oz however a “root” is a sexual term, and most Australian women could attest to being “hit up” for  a “root” by their partners as teenagers. ”Wanna root?”   Hell my husband used the term not 2 weeks ago! 

So when the Yanks use the term “we’re rooting for ya!”, all I can imagine is a husband giving his wife a good solid shag, with every thrust “Go Redsox”! 

 It’s even worse if someone says they’re rooting for YOU!  Yikes.  Don’t do it for me!

On a less immature note, a flip flop is what a fish does.  In Australia, it’s called a thong.  And yet if we showed our American friends a thong and asked them to put it on, they’d be some funny walking and alot of chafing!

I don’t really mind though, coz in the privacy of my own home I can get all Beavis and Butthead about it!  I do though, resent being reminded in person when an American uses these terms in front of me. I’m obligated, as is my civic duty, to correct the poor soul, saving them further ridicule as they travel this incredibly mature and cultured country. 

Their response is not one of gratitude, it’s more like….”Are you retarded?” 

And I think to myself….”Yes.  Yes we are!”

I don’t often read the paper.  The news seems to stick in my mind and haunt me.  It follows me around, begging for a solution.  “The world has problems!  What are you going to do about it?”  It’s not that I don’t care.  I care too much and  get overwhelmed.  Then the melancholy sets in.  I try to let it wash over me, to not give too much attention to the negative.  I think negativity feeds negativity, so I try to empathise then move on.
Yesterday however, I read a story about a lady who intentionally drowned a possum in her garbage bin!  There was a lot of feedback from the community, some commenting on how sad it was, others making note that possums were pests and they should all be drowned.
Now I’m not a possum lover or hater.  But I have had my encounters.  Many times I have visited rural playgroups and had to discourage the children from eating the possum droppings off the path.  Once I sat with a dying possum on the grass. Despite the obvious outcome, I stayed until he passed away.   As an adolescent I would lie in bed at night and listen to our cat fight with the possums in our roof.  On our honeymoon the MOTH and I dined alfresco at a tropical rainforest restaurant where the possums wandered in and we fed them scraps of bread.  My Gran frequently has her phone calls disconnected by the possum that lives on top of her fridge.   It climbs down to sit on her head and accidently stands on the “hangy uppy bit.”  I guess my point is, there’s a pretty good picture of a possum in my head and now it’s drowning in a bin.  I wonder sadly at the cruelty of  this.  This woman isn’t a warrior out feeding her family.  She doesn’t hunt for sport, or work in an abattoir.   And yet her response to an annoying situation was the premeditated killing of an innocent creature.
I find the arrogance of humanness astounding.  Build your house in someone else’s backyard, take over then start killing the locals if they mess up your bins at night.  I guess that is the history of the world.

I feel sorry for this lady.  Not a condescending sorry either.  Often people are pushed to extremes.  And it’s the extremes that worry me.  Where must she be in her life that killing became the next obvious solution to her problems?  “Wits end” has a lot to answer for!

I’ve  never really gotten the appeal of  New Years Eve.  Most years have been spent lying in bed, in the dark, listening to other peoples celebrations, avoiding drunken midnight phone calls from deranged relatives and friends.  Sometimes I have made the effort to see in the New Year, even if that simply means sitting up till the clock strikes midnight.  Other times I’ve been asleep for three hours, and the ringing phone wakes me.  Often (and sadly) it’s my Mum on the other end partying like it’s 1999.  As she passes the phone from one merry reveller to the next I’m sure she experiences a sense of disappointment that her eldest offspring is a bit of a “Nanna.”  It’s not like I don’t know how to to have a good time, it’s just that I’m not sure what I’m meant to be celebrating?  Usually the passing of another year leaves me ambivalent.  I give no thought to the last or the new.  Today, however I think would be a good opportunity for a bit of self reflection.  I can’t change the events of  the last year, but maybe I can (as a typical Virgo) gain some insight.  Here we go.

                       1.  What am I most grateful for in 2008?

       New friendships in 2008 have bought me more joy than I ever thought a relationship outside of my family could ever give.  I’m most grateful to myself for allowing things to flow and take their natural course.  I like to think that I’m in control of this little universe, so this year letting go has been my biggest challenge. 

                        2.  Have I hurt others?

     No doubt.  I’m a “right” fighter.  I let my fears control how I react and respond.  This is not always the case, however if I’m feeling vulnerable or cornered I can be vicious.  My husband will tell you the worst thing I did to him this year was put his mobile phone through the wash.  I know how upsetting that was for him, and I definitely struggled to be apologetic. 

                      3.  Am I holding a grudge from 2008?

     Absolutely!  Despite my age (35) I still sometimes manage to get caught up in hysterical “womens” business.  I don’t always see it coming, and when it does I am far from forgiving.  During last year I “graciously” extended the hand of friendship to a woman whom I thought needed a friendly face in her life.  Over the course of several months our children played together and had sleep-overs.  Cutting to the chase, it was revealed that she was not the person we all thought she was , and now she can kiss my ass!  This too shall pass, however having to see her frequently makes forgiveness hard.  I can forgive her, but I don’t want her to know that!

                         4.  Did I have fun?           

     Fun is a strange concept for me, because life is a serious business.  Better get it right this time round cause you may end up coming back and doing it all over again.  But then, what if the meaning of life is to have fun and I’m getting it all wrong?  Spending time with my kids on holiday last year was fun, however the eight hour plane trip there and back defies definition.

                          5.  Did I smile or frown more in 2008?

     Can I call it a draw?  No real winner here.  I have smiled a lot, and I think those smiling times were a gift from God, because he knew he was sending me a few frowning times as well.  I frowned at naughty children.  But laughed side splittingly when one of my boys described a friends leaving to live in another town as them “passing away!”  I have smiled when my five year old asked if he could borrow my wallet so he could buy himself a motorbike..and would I mind giving him a lift to the shop?  I have frowned at many doctors.  Frowned at a few teachers too.

                        6.  Biggest lesson for 2008?

     My biggest lesson is that my fears have kept me stuck doing the same things, hoping for a different result.  You can’t pray for change and then sit back and wait for it.   I have learnt that most of the chances we take pay off.  And if they don’t , well we learn, and there’s nothing wrong with learning, especially from ourselves.  I guess that’s my greatest lesson.  I am my own greatest teacher!

Don’t ask me about 2009.  I don’t know what I want or hope for.  I guess I’ll know it when I see it!

Today I feel blessed.  Blessed and grateful.  Not because I saw a unicorn or found that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Blessed because today was ordinary.  Ordinary sunshine, ordinary friends, normal, ordinary conversations.   The children remained sane despite party foods, and the grown-ups were left to be grown-ups for a while.   No bickering, no uncomfortable silences, no awkwardness amongst new found friends.        

I have never asked for the extraordinary in my life.  Just peace.  At times the universe has struggled to grant me this wish, throwing one exceptional hurdle after another my way.  Sometimes the way has been blurry, and my ability to be grateful has strayed.  And sometimes I just didn’t even know what to be grateful for, or what that even meant!  Unless it’s wrapped in a bow and placed in a beautiful box, we don’t see the gift that sits before us.

“When someone said count your blessings now
‘fore they’re long gone
I guess I just didn’t know how”

And so today amongst the ordinary and the mundane (and I hope nobody is insulted by that description), I found a little treasure.

In the ordinary, sometimes we find the truly extraordinary.  As for my blessings?  Consider them well and truly present and accounted for!        

                                             

“

This morning a friend called to ask me what I was doing today.  “Domestic Goddess!”  I said.  “Me too!”  she replied.  Then I got to thinking about her house and my house, and I realised that we each had very different ideas of what a “domestic goddess” did.

You see I never grew up with a very domesticated mother.  She was a career woman in the sense that she had no choice but to go out to work.  Usually there was never anytime or she was too tired.  So, weeks went by, and if you started to think your bed sheets were looking (and feeling) less than linen fresh, then you changed them yourself.  If you needed a shirt ironed same rule applied.  School lunches were another task that fell to your own volition lest you wanted to starve.  Now, don’t get me wrong..we weren’t neglected (ok maybe just a little) it’s just that priorities were different then.  For my family anyway.

This lack of domestic pride has followed me into my own adulthood, and as hard as I have tried, this is one genetic trait I can not kick.  In fact I see a lot of merit in spending time with my kids or with my nose buried deep in a wonderful book.

For example, I don’t do bathrooms.  Toilets yes!  Bathrooms no!  “Fine”, you might say.  “So who does the bathrooms?”  I don’t know.  “Not me.”  I do manage to iron, but only once a week, and the pile that the ironing comes from teeters in my lounge until the pile falters.  This I see as a sign from God that I should now fold and put the clothing away.  I wash the clothing daily however my enthusiasm ends there, and frequently I am forced to wash the same load several times before it is hung out.  And lets not speak of the horrors that await us in the kitty litter!

Occupationally were are required to move frequently.  This is always an excellent opportunity for your family (and strange removalists) to get a clear view of how domestically inclined you’ve been over the last few years.  Children are always excited to find their long missing toys under the lounge that hasn’t moved from the day the last removalist plonked it down!  One greasy, smelly chap once told me that he had helped move the people who lived in our house previously, and that she had kept it ALOT cleaner than I had!  Ha!  Cheeky sod!

People take a lot of pride in their space, and place a lot of status on the cleanliness of their abode.  One friend once boasted to me that HER cleaner complained that she wanted the house too clean!  I felt for that cleaner!

 

So, how can I claim the title of “Domestic Goddess?”  Because I am a goddess at all I do.  Some people might say diva, but I think that conjers up images of Mariah Carey, and I don’t wear my clothes that tight.

I am “Goddess” because I am woman!  We are all “Goddess”.  Your title is just waiting for you to claim it!