my nemesis, the mop

I am coming clean about this. I hate to mop. It is the last thing on my chores list so the thing that most often gets neglected. It is last on the list because I loathe doing it.

We have 'moppable' floors (boards or tiles) in the kids' rooms, the sitting room, the study, hallway, bathrooms, laundry, kitchen and dining area. Over half the house. Half of these rooms are what I grew up calling "track areas". As in: my mother saying to me "Could you vacuum the track areas for me please Carol?" - track areas are the bits that get used a lot, that need a regular facelift, not the whole housework hog but a run over, the areas that get shabby quickest and need attention a little more often than not. You would think that a childhood that contains the concept of a 'track area', coupled with a borderline obsession about neatness would mean these floors are mopped regularly.

Not so.

They were mopped when the kids were crawling because there is nothing like being outed as a slattern by the exposed grubby knees of your infant. So when the kids were tiny, I mopped. I also drove myself into the ground with ridiculous expectations of perfection and motherhood. Suffice to say I don't really do either that much anymore.

As I type this I am supposed to be mopping. It is 9 days since my last mop. Alas, abstinence is not to be admired in this field. If only it were, I could happily 12 step program mopping and give it up forever.

So I am procrastinating, not mopping. I am sitting with a cup of peppermint tea and a melting moment. I am reading blogs.  And because I am a most gifted procrastinator I have finished my regular reads and looking at a few newbies. I found this one - cloth paper string - and it is beautiful. But I draw your attention to the 4th of March post which starts with the magic words "It's been well over a year since I mopped the kitchen floor..." Soulmate, I have found you. Now to stop procrastinating and read some more of this lovely blog by a lady in Maryland, a place I fell in love with in 2001 on a trip to the US.

The mopping can wait. Do you have a blog that I can read? I would love to have a look...

endings, beginnings...

I have filled in the forms and she is now officially enrolled to start school next year. Bittersweet.

early to bed...

Our kids are early risers. Always have been. Sam more than Milly. We have never had to wake him up to get somewhere in time. Milly might sleep until 7am every couple of months. Sam is up between 6 and 6:30 every day. Except when he gets up at 5, which happens every couple of months.

It could be worse (it was worse when they were younger) - they are self sufficient, making their own breakfast and doing their own thing until we get up. But they always wake us to let us know they are up. Always. There is an upside, they are in bed by 6:45 (at the latest - lights out) every night. It is our knock off time. I don't know how parents can still be going at 8pm.  By 6:30 I have just enough energy left to read a chapter of a book, supervise teeth cleaning and sing a lullaby. There are nights I don't have enough energy for that much and dental hygiene standards slip below acceptable levels.

There are two ways to get screwed when your kid in an early riser: There is the horror 5am start to the day. Then there is the crying at the drop of a hat, impaired neurological function, crazy mood swing inducing exhaustion at the end of the day.

And yesterday we got screwed. Both ways.

Sam woke at 5 in the morning. He woke me to say good morning and, unusually, I did not get back to sleep. Happy as anything, he pootled around fitting in a days' worth of play before walking to school at 8:30. By 5 in the afternoon I was exhausted and he was weeping quietly into his teddies. The bath was no tonic, dinner was a write off, homework - not a chance. At one point he declared through his hiccup-y tears "Everything is SO hard". On nights like these sugar may as well be crystal meth as it will send him off on a bender like a rockstar. Calm voices are a must. Boundaries need to be firm. In the blink of an eye he can go from weeping in misery to raging crazies.

Last night he was in bed at 6:20, asleep by half past. We managed to get him there without the raging, just the misery and crying. Success. But there is always a moment when I am agog that a 7 year old's energy levels and mood have dictated to the household. I am sure my parents would have yelled at me and thrown me into bed. I have tried that - it doesn't work.

As I carefully negotiated the evening with this child, who is intelligent and reasonable and curious and kind and funny EXCEPT when he is overtired I wondered what the balance is. Last night was most definitely not ok. But does it really matter when this only happens once every couple of months? Could he be re-programmed to sleep in longer? Would we want that if it meant he stayed up later? What if , would it, could we...

It is sometimes exhausting, this parenting caper.

workers

With so much sewing going on here this month it is ages since Milly and I spent an afternoon in the garden. We are pruning grapevines, cutting back enormous bushels of miscanthus gigantus (it lives up to its name and is 10 feet high this year), mucking out the chicken coop and raking leaves. The Japanese Maples are all about the leaves at the moment.

bedside reading

The author of choice in our house at the moment is Cesar Milan - Dog Whisperer and general guru with his approach to balanced dogs. Sadie is lovely and obedient when it comes to basic commands like stay and sit and out but I do suspect that should Cesar come whizzing past on his rollerblades he would know within a millisecond she is a little unbalanced. She persists with jumping and over excited spinning around the kids. Nothing really bad, but definitely annoying. Apparently it is about their energy. Which is unsurprising as they can make me unbalanced sometimes.

Meanwhile we will keep reading and hope to find an approach to counter the occasional whirling dervish we are living with. Feel free to leave me hints if you have becalmed an excitable dog and have a tried and true method.

please excuse my absence this week, I was...

...trying hard to get through the week without going crazy. I worked an extra day this week and while 3 days a week is not a lot, it was a shock to the system. I decided the thing that had to go was the computer, I haven't posted here or read others' blogs or even posted pics on instagram much. So instead of computer-ising I was:

~sewing the endless quilt
~having a tupperware party (if ever there is a sign that you may need to say 'no' to people a bit more it is finding yourself hosting a tupperware party)
~going out without the kids twice in a week, once in Melbourne - a shock to the system and a reminder of our life pre-2004
~keeping Sam home from school in a preemptive strike against the bronchial lurgy that is lurking here at #55, thus teaching him a new word - "wagging"
~planting lupin seedlings (just 3 of them) and wondering if this is the year I will get them to flower properly
~starting the autumn garden maintenance in earnest
~maintaining the pocket money system which has meant that in a crazy week the kids have pitched in and helped more than usual.
~catching up with lovely friends by having school mums over for lunch on one day and on another spending time sitting and chatting in my favourite room

In short - I have been doing everything but sitting at the computer.

far away in time

{ photo from NSW Parks and Wildlife }

Gods have aligned. With a public holiday Monday and a Friday off to write reports we had a sudden realisation that I have a ten day break from work next month. Add our desperate need to get away after a long couple of months and a desire to give the kids a taste of camping and we realised that a holiday could be the answer.

In the space of an hour I have found and booked us seven nights in paradise. Depot Beach, NSW. We've never been there, don't know anyone who has but I am going to spend the next fortnight believing it is paradise until we pull up with the van in tow and are faced with an alternate reality.

Sam wanted a state he had never been to before. I wanted a beach. Michael wanted no mobile phone reception. Milly wanted to be able to plug in her night light. We had no choice but cheap. Depot Beach it is.

I have been jumping around the house singing "Depot Beach" to the tune of Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins. Seriously - look up the lyrics - it is perfect. "The only thing that helps me pass the time away, is knowing I'll be back at Depot Beach someday". Bring on another crazy week: I will be singing this in my head. In 2 short weeks I will be watching the sun rise over the ocean.

discovery

We found a reserve today, the entrance to which we have driven past hundreds of times and always thought was a driveway.

We stood next to trees so enormous we couldn't put our arms around them or see the top.

We smelled the smoke from chimneys of nearby farmhouses and wondered if people who lived there were snuggled up in front of a fire or out working in the cold air.

We wished we had packed a picnic and decided we would most definitely come back.

this week

{ Picture from chasingthecrayon's etsy shop }

Michael has been entertaining executives from the USA all week - think Global Chief Engineer.  Think lots of men in suits holding meetings and losing track of time and having little or no regard for the lives of the minions they are speaking at. Think Global Chief Engineer cramming two weeks worth of meetings into one week. So that's Michael's week, mine has been: 

 ~ Reading and watching TV with my head above my feet. Apparently that's what you need to do when you have low blood pressure.

 ~ Doing dinner Betty Draper style (i.e alone with children, no husband in sight) I think Betty did it with alcohol, I didn't, but I should have.

 ~ Making the hour long round trip to a previously loved bookshop to talk with the proprietor and getting advice on the next reading adventure with the kids. She was dismissive and useless and did not listen to what I was asking. At all. Henceforth I will feel no guilt using book depository and taking money away from that particular small and independent retailer. Bad retail service - on my list of top ten hates.

 ~ Finally having a day to myself with big plans to escape to the cinema but nothing was on worth watching. Seriously disappointing.

 ~ Opening bank accounts with the kids, and watched them lining up with their pocket money to deposit. Very cute. However I am scared that by October they will have more savings than me. Very scared.

 ~ Buying three cardigans at Target because they were cheap. Unsurprisingly they look cheap. They also feel cheap. I will be taking them back. A complete lapse of sartorial judgement.

 ~ At after school pick up asking the question in reference to the weirdest little kid at Sam's school - "Is (insert name here) riding a unicycle?" the answer was "Yes". His status as the weirdest little kid at the school is cemented. A unicycle? At seven years old. Definitely weird.

Now I have written this post I can hit publish and when Michael asks me how my week has been I can direct him to the nearest computer device-y thing and tell him to leave me alone. I am exhausted.  I can pretty well guarantee you that the one thing he will want more details on is the unicycle.

progress

I am on track with my "every day in may" project. I have ten blocks to go and feel like the quilt top will be finished by the end of the month. Yesterday I spent more time unpicking than sewing. The lesson being that while it doesn't take a lot, there is some level of concentration required.

autumn ailments

I am having my third day off this term. It is only week 5, I work two days a week which means I have had a third of this term off. Me sick, Sam sick. Now me again. Last night I had a migraine. I have one rarely, perhaps a couple of times a year. Today I feel like I am recovering from a car accident, battered and bruised. I am not sure how regular migraine sufferers do it.

On the upside - how beautiful is autumn?

mothers' day

So after my bitching and moaning I did have a lovely Mothers' Day, languishing bed, reading and being tended to. In the absence of a brass bell I was given a party blower and the knowledge that should I need anything my minions would come running to do my bidding. Breakfast in bed, afternoon tea, dinner, supermarket shopping - all done without me.

Of course I feel like an ungrateful cow but that feeling will pass and the memory of a relaxing Mothers' Day will linger. My gift, the lovely wallet (posted about a couple of weeks ago) is as glorious as I remember.

nerds

We spent a few hours geocaching today. A friend (an ex-scout and general outdoorsy nerd type) told me about this years ago and I could see the appeal but today was the first time we tried it. Geochaches are small treasures left around the world to be found by other geocachers using coordinates. Sometimes they contain treasures, sometimes only a log. If you take something from a cache you must leave something for the next cacher. The location is logged on a website and rated according to how difficult they are to locate. Some caches have a backstory or clues to help you find them. Anyone can register, copy the coordinates and go adventuring. We decided to do a lap of town today and chose 4 geocaches to unearth.

Our first find was an old horse trough which is part of a legacy left for the RSPCA by a wealthy family in the 1920's. The bequest allowed for troughs to be built throughout Australia in order that horses should be able to stop and rest. Beautiful. We found the trough but not the cache.

The second revealed our first proper cache - a film canister with a log of sucessful cachers - it was well hidden within an old pipe. We found it after about ten minutes of scrambling around in the ivy and dirt. It has been there a long time, the first entry on the log was early 2011.

We turned and headed into town to look for one called "Don't look up". It was placed high up on the post of a traffic light at a busy intersection in the centre of town. Look to the left of Milly's hand and you will spy the canister. This was our favourite as we replaced it and then laughed at the dozens of people walking below it, oblivious to the secret treasure so close.

Heading down to the bay we had our trickiest hunt. We found a large cache, this time camouflaged in a tree. Lots of treasures inside - bubbles, stickers, tickets and the log. This is a relatively new cache, placed there in January this year. It was put there by an American tourist with a "travel bug" (a small token) that the cacher would like to travel around the world then return to the US. The travel bug has long gone but we are imagining it having a world adventure as it heads back to be tucked inside a Californian cache where the owner might find it again.

We are thinking of setting up a cache of our own, down our laneway, tucked in against the fence. The thought of leaving treasure for strangers has us very excited. Until then, if you find a cache and see that Perennial Family have logged it, that's us. We will definitely be looking for some more.

an open letter

Tomorrow is Mothers' Day. I am sure that tomorrow I will have a good day and in the evening I will post happy photos of my family doing happy Mothers' Day things. But in reality I have a few 'issues' with Mothers' Day. It is a bit of a con, the set up is that it is all about you. The reality is that if what you want most of all is to be left alone in the house (watching season 3 of Nurse Jackie while you eat cake) it is never going to happen. It is the false expectations that kill me.

A lot of mothers are horrified by this sentiment. A lot of mothers agree with me. Not everyone will express it. It is seen as too selfish. Which brings me back to why Mothers' Day is the ultimate betrayal - it's meant to be all about me but if I say what what I want I am being selfish. Kelley at Magnetoboldtoo wrote a great letter to her offspring and husband expressing her true desires. Inspired, I decided to write my own:

Dear Michael, Sam and Milly,


On the day before Mothers' Day I will be cleaning the house from top to bottom. Feel free to move around the house, you are under no obligation to help, but if you spoil the orderly perfection in any way I will take you down. 

On the day of Mothers’ Day, don't wake me up. Put on socks and tiptoe around the house checking for any and all signs that anyone else lives here. Remove them. Walk out the door silently. Take the $50 I will leave on the kitchen table. Make it last all day. Leave the present I bought myself on the hall table.

I will spend the day pretending it is 2001, ie: I am single, living alone and slim.

I will be going to a 5 pm movie session. You may return anytime after this but allow enough time for all children to be in bed and any mess from dinner to be cleaned up. I expect to return to the same orderly perfection I left.

If I see a child on Mothers’ Day it will not be deemed Mothers’ Day. We will try again next Sunday. And the Sunday after that. Until we get it right.

Your loving wife and mother,
Carol

I am not sure what will actually happen. I am sure it will be somewhere halfway between perfection and hell. Which I can happily live with, just don't try to sell it to me as domestic utopia. Because it isn't, I've seen utopia it and it was 2001.


A post script:
I had been feeling a little bad about this snarky open letter expressing a less than enthusiastic love of Mothers' Day. Three hours after hitting 'publish' I made toasted sandwiches for lunch. Sam ate the entire serving, brought his plate to the dishwasher, turned to me and said:

"That was the worst toasted sandwich I have ever eaten." 

Obviously I have decided against deleting my anti-Mothers' Day post.

specs

So this is me. Sewing. You can tell I am sewing because I am wearing spectacles. This is a new phenomenon. They are not real glasses. Not from the optometrist. They are old lady, buy them at the chemist, 1.5x magnifying glasses. Except I got them from a gift shop. Because buying glasses from the chemist is tragic, it is what old ladies do.

I was tempted to just use a magnifying glass like Sherlock but that wouldn't free up my hands to sew. Same problem with a jewellers' loupe. I remember seeing some kind of wrap around combination light and magnifier contraption being worn by a scientific type but I think a white coat would be needed. Either that or a leather apron, watchmaker style.

I am sure I don't need glasses. Everything is clear. But these spectacles make it all clear and BIG. When I need to re-thread, the eye of the needle is huge. When I read, the words are bigger. It's not that I actually need them to be bigger. If I don't wear the glasses I can still read the words. But the glasses just make it easier. And life should be easy.

I was going to write about the event a few weeks ago, when for the first time in my life I came across text so small I couldn't read it: The company that manufactures the batteries for my hearing aid changed their packaging and I was reading the details on the package at the very bottom telling me where they were made. It was tiny. And I just could not read it. No matter how much I tried. I did that thing. That thing where old people hold what they are reading at arm's length and then squint and pretend they can see it.

Then I realised this event centres on the fact that my diminishing eye sight is interconnected with my already decrepit hearing. Which made me stop and try to think of another example where my eye sight failed me. An event that was funny but not connected in any way with being deaf, and therefore not nearly so tragic. And I couldn't. Because it has happened only once. So my ego had a little revival which makes me think I will just hit publish and put it out there:

Today I am 41 and two thirds. I have worn a hearing aid for 4 years. I have just started to wear glasses to read and sew.

Written like this it is more affirmation than sob story. Right?

the spectrum

I have had periods in my life where everything in my house was colour coded. Wardrobe, linen cupboard, kids' toys, books, crockery - everything but CDs (alphabetical). I was single, happy, had  more disposable income than I should have (why, oh why did I not save a cent?). It wasn't a matter of needing energy or effort to maintain because I lived alone and it was as easy to put the cerulean teatowel between the cyan and cobalt as it was to put it with the lime, mint and verde.

What I learned when I had kids was that if I wanted a colour coded, everything organised in a manner that I considered perfect life I would have to ship 'em off to childcare. Fulltime. I tried to do it without childcare but that caused a major neurological schism (aka depression) and I realised that sane really was a better way to live than colour coded.

Now I have one colour coded bookshelf and it makes me happy. I also know that if I am reaching into a perfectly organised wardrobe to re-fold and sort clothes that are already folded I am on the brink of another schism. It's my warning signal. Basically, if I start self soothing with a rainbow take me out for coffee and casually interview me using the questionnaire from the Black Dog website, then call my GP.

But I do still love me some order and the best kind of order is the colour spectrum. Now I just look at them, and this one of the Queen's frocks of 2011 cracks me up.

walls

No sooner had I posted that I would be joining in the One a day in May fun and declared my intention to sew a block of my quilt each day, I hit the wall. The everyone's had a turn at being sick for the past week wall. The my house was infested by mice and it cost $400 to get rid of them wall. The my children are 7 and 5 and no matter how lovely they are, parenting is exhausting wall. The I have over committed myself to help other people wall. And the why the hell did I agree to host a tupperware party wall.


So no photos of seven blocks of the quilt all freshly pressed and stacked up. Instead I am going to stop trying to ram these walls and just sit and rest against them for a while. Just as soon as I have finished the morning ritual of checking the corners of my house for mouse cadavers.

And if you need some very expensive plastic - come over on the 22nd. It will be a blast.

at the moment I am...

watching...

Our Idiot Brother. Taken from the shelves of the dvd shop with no expectations. A surprisingly good movie to watch if you are in the mood to laugh and not in the mood for a fart joke. Not that there is anything wrong with a fart joke.

reading...

Pippi Longstocking to the kids. Our version is illustrated by Lauren Child in the same collage style as her Charlie and Lola books. It is beautiful and the kids are enjoying it.

despairing...

that everyday Sam comes home with a new bang, graze, scrape, scratch or scab. I am expecting that any day the school will start charging us a BandAid levy.

loving...

this fantastic tray I found in my favourite oppie yesterday. I hadn't been in there for ages and this caught my eye immediately. Gorgeous.

cold, rainy with a dash of rodent

A quick dash home after taking kids to school and kinder to mop floors before the exterminators come and sprinkle poison all over my skirting boards. Sadie is heading to doggy daycare today with Amber. I am out all day.

See that front door? I want to walk in, close it behind me and stay all day - maybe lie on the couch and read a book or watch a film. But people are expecting me and if I hang around here I will be as dead as I am hoping the mice that have infested our house will be in a few hours.

See how I am trying to be all light and casual, mentioning an exterminator in one paragraph and a mouse in the next? The reality is that in the space of 24 hours there have been 5 mouse sightings here at #55. I am hoping it is one mouse that we have seen 5 times; that we are housing one busy mouse. That she is scurrying from the study to the lounge room to Milly's room and back to the study. That she is able to be seen in one room and just moments later be heard in the wall cavity of another. Because I am only just holding it together at the thought of an infestation.

I proposed the idea that maybe we only had one, highly active, mouse to Shaun the exterminator. He cheerily told me "Love, for every one you see there's a dozen you don't. Worse than bloody 'roaches. You tell yourself that if it makes you feel better but I'll be there tomorrah and I'll be killing more than one bloody mouse for ya".

So I am telling myself we have a mouse. It is making me feel better.

r.i.p salt and pepper

Old age? Sudden cold temperatures? Perhaps some kind of parasite? We aren't sure what has befallen the chooks but they died during the night. We will miss their lovely eggs and gentle clucking. We have had chickens for 9 years and will replace them in the spring. The kids are sad and reflective. Another lesson in the ways of nature and lifecycles.

They were good to us, we think we might have loved them.

every day in may

Kate at Foxslane has inspired me. Every day in May I will sew a block of my vintage sheet king sized quilt. It has been sitting, abandoned, since February when I started it and I am keen to revive it. One block a day. Half an hour. Just me and straight line sewing. Bliss.

May can only mean one thing...

Mothers' Day is coming. I have (mostly) healed scars from the Mothers' Day fiasco of 2007 when, despite giving birth to his daughter three months earlier, moving house two and a half months earlier (do the maths - she was two weeks old), and spending every day with his two and a half year old son Michael did not give me a gift on Mothers' Day. It was particularly shocking because he had never failed at any gift giving in the past.

He woke me with breakfast in bed and a sheepish expression, telling me he hadn't got me a present *yet*. It took me until midday (when I was cooking lunch for his mother) to finally ask: "If this is not a joke, and you really haven't bought me a present, if you are not hiding something to give me later, you need to tell me now because I'm starting to really feel like shit". Apparently on the Mothers' Day of 2007 I was destined to feel like shit. Did I mention I was cooking lunch for his mother? His mother, who arrived with a gift for me because I had just given birth to her granddaughter and because she knew THAT was a big deal.

I wont relive the hurt except to say that for every Mothers' Day since he has excelled himself. It is important to let you know that I don't think Mothers' Day is that big a deal. Until I got nothing in 2007 obviously. I do remember that by 2008 when I was suffering from as yet undiagnosed depression I sent a text to a friend with the message : If this really was Mothers' Day they would all f**k off and leave me alone for the day. I was diagnosed in June, drugs kicked in and by my September birthday I was loving them all again.

This year I have done something different - I bought myself a wallet last week and and told him it is my Mothers' Day pressie. It is beautiful. I made the error of giving it to him and he has hidden it. Which he knows drives me insane because I really wanted it right then and there. My current wallet has plummeted from being adequate but 'not quite what I need' to being completely useless. I am contemplating just using the pockets of my jeans like a boy until May the 13th when I get the wallet I obviously need.

I have searched the internet and found photos of the glorious leather beast. I was going to post them here for you to look at. But I think a post with no photos probably tells the sad story of this tale a little better. I have something beautiful yet I can't have it, I think it is hidden in his sock drawer under the crappy socks I gave him for Fathers' Day. I know shouldn't look...