Signed, Sealed, Undelivered

Mamma's Imaginary July Correspondence

Dear postman,

do you think it would be too much to ask that you place my parcels discretely by the front door rather than launching them across the lawn? Perhaps you are in training for the discus event at the next Olympic Games in which case I wish you all the very best, but would you mind so very much not practicing on my packages? Not only does it rattle the contents dangerously, it also makes the entire house shudder when they collide with the front door screen. Regrettably, this also tends to coincide with the moment I have just managed to get my daughter to go to sleep. 

Might I also request that you place my letters in their designated destination: that is, the letterbox. As I am sure you are aware, it's winter at the moment and that inevitably means rain. When my letters are scattered on the ground around the letterbox they get wet. Funny that. 

I look forward to seeing an immediate improvement in the above-mentioned areas.

Dear Nameless Noisy Toy,

I am writing to request that you ask your manufacturers to add an OFF switch to you. I can understand that you are a very nice toy from my daughter's point of view, but I am afraid that if I accidentally stand or sit on you one more time and have to hear you play Old McDonald had a Farm one more time, just one, that I might just have a nervous breakdown.

Dear Lillian Moller Gilbreth,

I have just finished reading Cheaper by the Dozen, the book two of your twelve children wrote about their experiences growing up in the Gilbreth family. It is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. I wish you were still alive so that you could write a blog and I could read about all this from your point of view. I can't believe you managed to be such a successful psychologist and industrial engineer whilst bringing up a dozen children. I only have two children and work less than 5 hours a week outside of the home. I think I need you to do a time-motion study on my life to help me work out how to write a blog and get my housework done. My organisation skills are obviously lacking because there never seems to be time for both and I think you can guess which one I prefer!

(you can read my review of Cheaper by the Dozen here). 


Dear ants who live in my pantry,

please feel free to vacate the premises. There really is no need for you to stay now as I have moved the honey to the fridge and have eaten all the chocolate. 

Dear possum who lives in my roof,

I regret to inform you that you have overstayed your welcome. Your presence is no longer novel, nor is it cute. I have enough reasons to be woken up in the middle of the night as it is without your help. If, in the future, I find myself in a situation where I do need to be woken up several times a night, I will know who to call.

Dear Other Half,  

I appreciate that you have to get up at Stupid O'clock to go to work in the morning and that that is not much fun for you. Do you think, however, that you could at least try to achieve this without banging every door in the house several times over and waking every other sleeping member of the household? Could you also at least try to remember everything you need to take to work before you slam the front door the first time so that you don't have to make multiple trips in and out of the house banging and re-banging it repeatedly?? How is it that you are always surprised that I am grumpy when you come home from work? You really are very good at being genuinely astonished when I tell you that you made so much noise you woke the whole house. Darling, I am being kind when I say that: you actually made so much noise you woke the whole street.

Dear me,

seven months of the year gone already! My my. Your baby is now almost 5 months old. That is such a lovely age, but unfortunately for you, it means she is no longer a newborn anymore. Actually, she hasn't been one for quite some time, meaning it is no longer acceptable for you to use the excuse that you've "just had a baby" as a means of justifying your lack of exercise. Walking to the letterbox to collect the mail will no longer suffice as sufficient daily exercise I'm afraid. It's time to actually get out of your ugg boots and go for a real walk. I know it's scary, but I genuinely believe you can do it if you really try. It will also be good for your mental health and, no offence, but you do need all the help you can get in that department!


That's all for now,


Goodbye July. 

All Fired Up

Isn't it funny how we so often assume that we are still good at the things we were good at when we were young? I foolishly assumed, for example, that I was still a star athlete because half my life ago I used to win medals for running.

The reality check came when I eagerly volunteered to run in the teacher race at the athletics carnival at the school I worked at last year: I was the last runner in my relay team and we were winning by a good twenty metres by the time I got the baton. I took off like a bull at a gate, just like old times, but very quickly I realised that my legs could not actually keep up with what my brain was telling them to do. Suddenly, my knees gave way underneath me and I started to wobbled towards the ground. Through some merciful act of God, I didn't fall completely on my face. No-one will have noticed I told myself, as I pumped my arms and continued hurtling down the track. But oh, oh no oh no no no no ... it was happening again! My brain told my knees to run and my knees answered back: you've gotta be joking! When was the last time you actually made me do any running of any kind? Six years ago? Seven? The knees started to wobble once more, but this time more violently. My arms flapped around like an injured bird, as I tried to hold myself vertical. I slowed down. All the other teachers running the last leg overtook me. I staggered over the finish line with my heart pumping like it was about to burst out of my chest.

Image courtesy of picturesof.net. Luckily there is no actual photographic evidence of the event (that I know of!)

It wasn't that bad, said the very naïve voice in my head. If anyone did notice, they'll think you got your foot stuck in a hole in the ground. Twice. Then up came the deputy principal and slapped me on the back.

"You right there, Liz?" he asked with a sneaky little smile on his face. "We thought we were going to lose you there a couple of times!"

Luckily my cheeks were already so inflamed that he couldn't see my crimson blush.

Now if anyone ever makes derogatory remarks about the current state of the younger generation, I fondly remind myself of this: although this incident was apparently blatantly obvious to all spectators present, not one single student ever mentioned it to me (what they said behind my back is their own business!). My male colleagues, on the other hand, were a different matter. Apparently this spectacle was hilariously funny and looked, as one of them informed me, "like someone falling down a flight of stairs".

There are several other things that I used to be quite good at that I am gradually discovering I really am quite embarrassingly unskilled at. Let's take fire lighting for instance. I was once quite handy at lighting fires. Not in the pyromanial sense, but in the campfire and pot-belly stove sense - a skill I mastered in my Girl Guide days, many moons ago.

We have a cozy wood-fire stove in our family room which we have lit every chilly winter's day this year. When I say "we", I don't actually mean we at all: what I mean is that Giuseppe throws the wood in and lights a match in the morning before he goes off to work and I keep it alive throughout the day while he's away.

Recently, we got into the habit of going to bed late and throwing a log on just before we do so, so that when we get up the next morning there are still enough coals to ignite a spark and keep the home-fires burning without interruption.

Unfortunately, last night was somewhat different: we were so tired by the time Annalisa was finally asleep that we collapsed into bed, neither of us remembering to stick on a log. When Giuseppe's alarm blasted intrusively into our sleep several hours later, he reached out and whacked it into silence. When he woke up again sometime later and realised the time, he bolted out of bed and fled off to work.

When I eventually dragged myself from the bedroom about half an hour later, I discovered that the fire was completely dead. This of course was a nuisance, but I didn't feel particularly worried. I was, remember, a very gifted fire-lighter in my Girl Guide days.

So after Ben was safely off to school, I set about constructing the wood the way I remember I'd been taught: the kindling at the very bottom, then the smaller pieces of wood and the big ones last of all. I couldn't find any firelighters but that didn't bother me - I'd seen Giuseppe douse a ball of newspaper with cooking oil many times to achieve the same outcome. Then I went looking for the matches and the newspaper. Usually, we have oodles of both, but this morning all I could find was half a box of matches and today's newspaper.

That didn't really bother me either because the only real thing of value in that particular daily paper is the crossword, if you want my opinion, which I rarely have time to do anyway. I'd actually like to have a cross word myself to the editor about the current state of that rag. Still, it seemed a shame to use it to start the fire when I know Giuseppe enjoys looking at it when he comes home from work.

With little other choice, I reconciled that if I started at the back and just used the sports pages (he has yet to be converted to Australian football) he couldn't possibly be upset. Besides, at least he would be coming home to a warm house.

So off I set on my mission. I screwed up some newspaper into a ball, doused it with oil, struck a match and shoved it in. It burned fiercely for about a minute then fizzled out. So I tried again. And again. Annalisa, at this point, decided it was very unfair that mummy should be giving so much attention to the fireplace and not to her. She started to bellow.

When I die and go to heaven (assuming that's where I do end up) after thanking the good Lord for my children, the first thing I am going to ask him is why, despite all his marvelous creations, he neglected to provide mothers with a third arm. It would have made the greater part of the last 8.8 years of my life considerably easier, particularly today. In between comforting baby bellows, I did my best to continue to strike matches, pour oil on newspaper and poke the wood around, experimenting with every imaginable angle.

Then I remembered being taught that oxygen fuels a fire. So I began to blow. I huffed and I puffed and I puffed and I huffed until my eyes filled with smoke, my face was burning hot and I was beginning to feel light in the head. Mercifully, by this time Annalisa had exhausted herself and fallen asleep.

A grand total of seventy-five minutes, three quarters of a newspaper and 23 matches later, I heard the first spark crack in the hearth and my little fire was finally in business.

This afternoon, when Giuseppe got home, my beautiful blaze was burning merrily. I was all set to divulge the saga of my manic morning when the phone rang. It was his mamma, calling from Italy.

Now I'm not usually into eavesdropping, but as anyone who knows a born and bred Sicilian could attest, quietness is not their forte. It's summer over there at the moment of course and I heard him ask about the weather. He listened for a moment then responded: "How nice; it's freezing over here" (a rather gross overstatement in the scheme of things). "But we're not suffering", he continued. "I light the fire every morning for Lizzy and all she has to do is throw a log on every now and then. It's so easy for her".

I'm sorry. Did I just hear the word EASY?!

I considered storming into the next room, interupting the conversation and informing them both that this particular FREEZING morning somebody FORGOT to light the fire and that the process required to amend that little problem was at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from easy, thank you very much!

I took a deep, deep breath and resigned to stay calm. Telling him that he forgot to do something is akin to a cardinal sin anyway.

Then a sneaky little smile crept onto my face. There's no need to try to even the score, I told myself ...

because any moment now, he's going to find out I've burnt his newspaper.

Don't Count Your Chickens

Ever since I was little, I have entertained the idea of owning chickens.  I dreamed of the rustic romance of being able to look out my kitchen window and see hens peacefully grazing on my back lawn and longed to collect their fresh, warm eggs in the mornings to make into fresh, warm omelettes for my breakfast.

Years passed and for various reasons I remained henless, although my partner, Giuseppe, and I often talked about acquiring three or so chickens. Our luck changed a fortnight ago, however, when our neighbour came knocking at our door one afternoon when I was out. She explained to Giuseppe that she was desperately seeking some adoptive parents for her mum’s three hens since her elderly mother had suddenly decided to return to her birthplace in Europe to live out her days. Neither my neighbour nor any of her siblings had either the space or the inclination to maintain these birds. Thrilled with this offer, which so serendipitously aligned with our little dream, my partner promptly accepted and immediately went to collect the chickens.

When I came home, Giuseppe was not inside the house but this did not surprise me as he often retreats to the backyard to tend to his vegetable patch and to hide from me. What I didn’t know was that what he was actually doing in the backyard was rounding up three newly acquired chickens into their new home in our garden shed. I glanced up from the kitchen window and observed the most extraordinary sight: there was Giuseppe hurdling over the vegetable patch at breakneck speed, brandishing a broom in one hand. I had not glanced up in time to see that there was a chicken about a metre in front of the broom. I went outside to assess his sanity just as he was successfully putting the last hen into the shed.

‘What a fantastic surprise!’ I squealed. ‘Not only are you not insane, but we’ve finally got our chickens!’ 

‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ he replied. ‘Now you’ll be able to have your warm eggs for breakfast like you’ve always dreamed of!’

Ah, the sweet words of optimism of the inexperienced …

During the week following our great Avian Acquisition, the pandemonium of parenthood took over our lives and we more or less forgot what the main purpose for our procuring the chickens had actually been.  That was until one afternoon when my son came in from playing outside and announced: 

‘Mummy, I think those chickens are just pretending to be chickens’.

‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

‘Because they don’t lay any eggs’, he said, a look of bewilderment and disappointment clouding his face.

 I considered this for a moment and realised it was true. They did not lay any eggs. But how could this be?

‘They must be hiding somewhere’, I concluded, ‘Let’s go and have a really good look’.

So off we went looking high and low, under the eggplants, the gooseberry bush and the weeds near the back fence, a bit like an Easter egg hunt without the chocolate. And , as it turned out, without the eggs. 

That night, I whinged about the situation to Giuseppe:

‘We’ve been tricked’, I moaned. ‘These chickens are too old to lay eggs; they’re menopausal’.

‘They’re not menopausal’, he laughed. ‘It’s just that it’s too cold at the moment. When it warms up again they’ll start laying’.

‘How has that got anything to do with anything?’ I griped. ‘I still manage to ovulate in winter!’

‘Yes, but you don’t sleep in the garden shed’, he replied.

I pursued the argument no further for fear that it might finish with him stating that he wished that I did.

Several more days went by and although I coaxed them lovingly and cajoled them with organic vegetable treats and the crème de la crème of chicken grain and despite Giuseppe spoiling them Italian-style by cooking them vast quantities of pasta to warm their bellies, they stubbornly stuck fast to their resolution to not provide one single warm egg. I thought back to this time last year when, unbeknown to me, I was several weeks pregnant and frantically trying to finish over one hundred school reports, refining the fine art of communicating to a rather large percentage of my students’ parents, in sugar-coated code, that their offspring were lazy or insolent or both. For example, ‘restless’ was code for ‘she can’t sit still for more than 30 whole seconds together’; ‘his overall results do not reflect his ability’ was code for ‘he hardly picked up a pen all semester’, while ‘somewhat disorganised’ was teacher-speak for ‘he never even brought a pen to class’.

So in the spirit of this time of year, I mentally composed appropriate report comments for the three newest members of our family:

I left the above-posted photographs (comments attached) open on the computer yesterday afternoon and my son came home from school and saw it. He studied it in silence for about a minute then, drawing on his extensive experience of eavesdropping on my conversations, said:

‘Mummy, are you going expel the chickens?’

‘Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary’, I smiled. ‘I’m just going to whisper to them that I know a really, really good recipe for roast chook’.

                                                                                           

                                            **********************

P.S for anyone else who has chickens who have difficulty following instructions, here is the recipe:

Lime Stuffed Chicken

Ingredients:

50g butter

2 shallots, chopped

1 cup cooked rice

¼ cup chopped coriander

¼ cup of roasted cashews, chopped

Grated zest of two limes

Juice of one lime, plus two limes, halved

1 tsp Chinese five spice powder

1 tsp grated ginger

1 egg

1 whole chicken

1 tbsp olive oil

Method:

     1.  Melt butter in a frying pan over medium heat

     2.   Cook shallots for 2 minutes until soft. Transfer to bowl

     3.   Add rice, parsley, coriander, cashew, lime zest and juice, spice powder, ginger and egg. Mix   
         well. Season to taste

     4.   Preheat oven to 200°C or 180°C fan forced

     5.   Wash and pat dry chicken inside and out

     6.   Spoon stuffing into cavity and tie bird’s legs together to secure. Place in a roasting pan and drizzle with 
         olive oil. Season well

     7.   Roast chicken for thirty minutes. Reduce oven to 180°C or 160°C fan and roast for another hour

     8.   Scatter around lime halves and roast for another ten minutes or until juices run clear when a skewer 
         is inserted into the thickest part

     9.   Cover loosely with foil and let chicken rest for 5 minutes before serving

How to Look a Million Dollars

We all know it’s hard to look your best (or anything close to it) in those weeks and months postpartum. For a start, you’re lucky if you can get five consecutive minutes to undergo a basic ablution strategy before you head out the door, let alone another five to fix up your face and comb out that naughty little dreadlock that’s been secretly knotting itself since you misplaced your hairbrush god knows how long ago. And then there’s the simple fact that absolutely none of your clothes fit properly anymore; your pregnancy ones make you look like you’re five years old dressing up in mummy’s clothes all over again and if you do manage to jiggle and squeeze into your pre-pregnancy pants,  you risk never being able to get back out of them again. All of a sudden, you have to learn how to dress yourself with one hand and if you succeed in actually going out into the Big Wide World with only one remnant of vom, poo or gloop down your front, you’re doing very well indeed.

Since the birth of my daughter, I have had several fashion misadventures. You’d think I would have picked up a few tips the first time I had a baby, especially after the unforgettable afternoon when my son was just a couple of weeks old and my in-laws took his dad and me out to lunch in a fancy restaurant. One would think that fancy restaurant would equal fancy dress. At least that’s what I thought at the time – or maybe I was just so happy that fancy dress actually fitted me that I forgot to think.  

Halfway through our meal, my breastfed baby awoke, ravenously hungry. I suddenly realised I had a bit of a dilemma on my hands. I know that breastfeeding is completely natural and every woman has a legal right to breastfeed her baby wheresoever she may choose, but I’m not so sure that the right extends to doing it in a fancy restaurant with your dress pulled right over your head! I spent the next half hour sitting on the loo in the restaurant’s bathroom doing just that. Why didn’t anyone tell me I wouldn’t be able to wear a dress for at least six months after becoming a mother? Or is that one of those facts that comes under the heading of ‘common sense’ and which, therefore, I was never going to be privy to?

But nearly nine years later, it seems I’m still not very good at dressing myself. Several weeks ago, I decided it was high time I went for a walk. I went digging around in my wardrobe for my sneakers, but surfaced empty handed. I rummaged under the bed, but all I found was one dirty sock, one of last year’s newspapers, a teaspoon and a toothbrush. Don’t ask; I don’t know. Exasperated, I decided to locate my tracksuit pants instead, hoping the shoes would present themselves in the meantime. I looked again in my wardrobe, then in my son’s wardrobe, in the very bottom of the washing basket and even in the garage. No tracksuit pants. I was rapidly losing motivation for this walk. With my last glimmer of hope, I searched for something to cover my top half that would be both comfortable enough and warm enough. I hunted under the sofa and under the bed in the spare room, I dismantled the linen cupboard and upended the ancient clothes stored away in my suitcase. That’s right, you know it- no warm, comfy top to be found.

At this point, you may be excused for wondering, as was I, how long exactly had it been since I last went for a walk??

With diehard determination, I resolved that desperate times called for desperate measures: I grabbed my partner’s baggy tracksuit pants, threw on his oversized hoodie and donned his pair of black sneakers (two sizes too long and about three too wide). I buckled my baby into the pram and ventured into the Big Wide World …

In the midst of all this havoc, I had completely forgotten that most people usually brush their hair before leaving the house. The idea that my head might resemble a bird’s nest never even occurred to me until I passed two yummy mummies walking towards me at a rate of about four times the pace of my leisurely stroll. They were clad in tight, bright lycra and their ponytails swang back and forth as they bounced along the path, rays of Autumn sunlight radiating from their glossy tresses.

‘Morning!’ I greeted them with solidarity.

They sized me up from me bird’s nest to my oversized booties and back again, then mumbled something incoherent before bouncing away in the other direction.

When I arrived home, my son, who had not been home when I left, gave me the exact same look.

‘No offence’, he said slowly (don’t you love that schoolyard disclaimer, that indication that whatever comes next is going to be highly offensive indeed?).

‘No offence mummy’, he repeated, ‘but you look like a man!’  

                                               **********

Fervently resolved to not appear man-like for his sake, I put on a skirt and a pretty pink top to go and pick him up from school a few days later. Usually he would catch the bus, but that particular afternoon I needed to pick him up myself. When I do go up for the school run, it’s usually an uneventful procedure and no-one really talks or even looks at me at all. This day was rather different, however, as it was the first time I’d taken his baby sister with me. Nothing draws attention like a 4 kilo baby in a teeny weeny dress.

The unexpected social interaction was quite uplifting and when we got home, I was smiling away to myself. But that smile was quick to dissolve when my son suddenly looked at me aghast and said:

‘Mum! Why are you wearing your top inside out?’! 

Oh, what a blighted co-incidence that I should happen to pay such little attention to detail on the one day that some other mothers were actually talking to me! 

                                             **********    

I had all but given up hope of ever looking respectable in public again, when something miraculous happened: I made another of my rare school pick up trips. It was quite run-of-the- mill really, but when we got back to the car, my son announced seriously ‘Mum, you look really important today’.

‘Do I?’ I replied, amazed (I am wearing a pair of jeans that are almost as old as my son himself, a weathered pair of black shoes I bought from Big W for $15 and a plain black jumper I got at the same bargain boutique for even less). I am, however:

1. Not sporting a bird’s nest upon my head

2    2. Not dressed as a man

3    3. Wearing all my garments in the direction they were intended to be worn

‘Yeah’, he nods sincerely, ‘You look like you could be the Prime Minister or something!’

So ladies, take note, forget the salon, the day spa and the shopping spree. All you need to do is stay in the house for a month or so in your raggiest pyjamas with greasy, fuzzy hair, then one day, surprise the family by having a proper shower and scrub, wash and brush out the bird’s nest, dress in whatever you like (so long as it’s female daytime wear applied correctly) and you’ll feel like a million dollars. Or perhaps even a Prime Minister …

The Shopping Shambles

Ask any expert what the secret to a successful relationship is and they’ll tell you it’s communication. This is nothing new; everyone from the pop psychologist to the parish priest has been proclaiming it for as long as I can remember. It appears, however, that my partner and I like to learn things the hard way …

Now I’ve never heard any mother of a new bub actually say they enjoy going to the supermarket, but I’m lucky enough to have a very enthusiastic partner who willingly goes solo. All I have to do is write a list and off he trots. Unfortunately, enthusiasm aside, the list gets used only as a ‘rough guide’ to the things we might want around the house, rather than an indication of the items I require to compile the recipes I want to make over the coming week or of the articles necessary for maintaining our existence.

One week, for example, I unpacked the shopping to discover that, among other things, he had not bought the parmesan cheese. His justification was that it wasn’t on special that week.

“Well you don’t seem to have any qualms about devouring enormous chunks of it when it is on special”, I huffed.

Despite being thrifty at times to the point of infuriation, he also has a tendency to offset his frugality with impulse purchases. These have been known to include: DVDs we will never watch; toys that break the first time they are used and half a dozen blocks of Cadbury chocolate, because they were on “super special”.

“They were on super special”, I informed him wryly, “because their expiry date is tomorrow”.

“That’s okay”, he replied cheerfully, “we’ll just have to eat them all tonight!”

But most annoyingly of all is when I discover items are missing because he was “in a hurry”. I can understand this under some circumstances, but not when the products in question are somewhat essential. Like milk and washing powder. And toilet paper.  Now I can be reasonably patient and resourceful when I try and can work around not having milk and washing powder for a few days, but toilet paper?!? It was when an overnight visit from my parents coincided with a complete absence of toilet paper in our household that I resolved that it was definitely time for a revolution.

The revolution came in the form of online grocery shopping. When I considered its various advantages, I couldn’t believe I had never done it before. Nobody could call me a fan of technology, but the online version would not only allow me to completely avoid traffic, trollies, prams, parking and untimely encounters with my former students or worse, their parents, it would also ensure that I ended up with all the items on my shopping list and eliminate all impulse purchases. It would also save my partner a couple of hours every week and would significantly reduce the ensuing arguments we have on a regular basis regarding the vast abyss between the items on my list and what actually goes through the checkout.  Moreover, it would save my daughter from getting really cranky with me if I tried to take her with me and, with the help of the website’s ‘search’ button, I could almost instantly locate a slightly obscure ingredient, rather than wandering up and down the aisles for three quarters of an hour searching for it. Physical shopping suddenly seemed so passé.

In preparation for my first virtual trip down the online aisles, I wrote a list and just after midnight, I sat down at the computer in my uggboots, pyjamas and a face mask (I couldn’t get away with that in front of my students’ parents now could I?). It would be a tremendous surprise for my partner when he came home from work the following afternoon; there would be no need to go out again after a hard day’s work. He could put his feet up and relax as the truck delivered the groceries to our front door and all I had to do was unpack them. He would extol me for being so ingenious and perhaps we could even use those hours that he now didn’t have to spend at the supermarket doing something nice together, like talking to and looking at each other.  As I switched off the computer an hour later, feeling more satisfied than I had in a long time, I could never have anticipated what would actually transpire …

Just after lunch that same day, the delivery van pulled up. The driver carried the bags right into the kitchen for me and didn’t seem to care at all that I was still in mu uggboot and pyjama outfit (minus the facemask). I had just started to unpack the contents when my partner pulled up in the driveway. I had expected him a couple of hours beforehand, but he works a sporadic schedule, so I wasn’t too surprised. He bounced out of the car, beaming.

‘I’ve got a surprise for you!” I announced, beaming back.

‘I’ve got one for you too!’ he exclaimed, and before I could tell him mine, he continued:

‘I picked up the shopping list you left next to the computer this morning and I’ve been to the supermarket already and this time”, he declared triumphantly, ‘I got everything on the list!’

The Problem with Prams

                                (photo courtesy of gettyimages.com.au)

Every expectant mother is inevitably inundated with advice from all angles, but I have just one pearl of wisdom to pass on: learn how to use your pram before you actually have to use it. I really shouldn’t be complaining. My sister who, having already had five babies, assured me she will never need it again, generously passed onto me the pram she used for her last child – a state-of-the-art baby mobile that retailed at more than I paid for my first car.

Throughout the last few months of my pregnancy, it sat in the lounge room looking fancy. It really was something to be marvelled at; its cutting edge design even seemed to defy gravity. I would stroke it admiringly as I passed by, imagining the ease with which I would transport my little one through the supermarket and on long walks, when she arrived. And of course I was convinced it would be child’s play to operate it because I had seen my brother-in-law do it effortlessly when he dropped it off at our house. I was wrong. Spectacularly wrong.

The first time I took my baby girl to the shops on my own, my partner collapsed the pram for me and put it in the boot (I could have easily done it on my own, I told myself, but he insisted). Setting this contraption up again took much more effort than I had imagined and I had broken out in a sweat by the time I had finished. Luckily, baby was sleeping angelically throughout this ordeal. I wasn’t quite so lucky when it was time to come home …

After a two hour parade around town, she had well and truly had enough and was letting me know about it. I placed her in her carseat with promises of “mummy will just be two seconds”, while she screamed her little lungs out at a decibel that I previously had no idea she was capable of reaching. In the meantime, I dashed back to collapse the pram the way I’d been shown. I pulled on the lever that was supposed to go up and pushed on the one that was supposed to go down, while pressing my foot against the bit that was meant to release the wheels. Nothing happened. I tried again. And again. Perhaps I had got it wrong. Perhaps I was pushing up where I was supposed to be pushing down or pressing when I was actually supposed to be pulling. I tried every combination and permutation of pushing, pressing and pulling imaginable. The cries from the carseat were breaking my heart (and my eardrums). I considered leaving the pram in the carpark and driving home. At that moment that honestly seemed like the best solution.

Just then, a youngish looking man walked up to the car next to mine and was about to drive away. I doubted he had any children. He’d probably never touched a pram before in his life. “Excuse me”, I stammered, red with embarrassment and close to tears, “I really need some help with this pram”. He approached cautiously; clearly the background noise was not exactly inviting. I recounted for him what I had been instructed was the correct way to collapse the pram. He did exactly what I said and it worked immediately. I couldn’t believe it. Who knows what he must have told his mates later about the madwoman he met that morning in the carpark!

My daughter fell asleep before I had even driven out of the carpark, but I was still fuming when I walked through the front door of my house. “I am NEVER going out again on my own with that pram!” I raged to my partner. “I’d rather stay at home and be a hermit than got through that again!” 

I felt an intense longing for the bottom-of-the-range pram I owned 8 years ago with my first baby: 

I’d shake it and it opened.

 I’d kick it and it collapsed.

So therein lies the only other piece of advice I'd ever give to an expectant mother: in simplicity, there is greatness. 

The Washing Whine

                                          (image courtesy of istockphoto.com)

Several years ago, I remember one of my sisters lamenting the tedious conversation that transpired between the mothers at her children’s school during drop off and pick up times. “All they talk about is how many loads of washing they’ve done,” she said with a screwed up nose. We laughed, safe in the knowledge that both of us had far more interesting things to talk about. I didn’t really think about that conversation again (naturally I was much too busy doing interesting things!) until recently when a former teaching colleague of mine dropped in to see my new baby. There is an eight and a half year age gap between my two children and perhaps time distorts a mother’s memory, but I definitely had not anticipated the sheer quantity of washing that would come with my new little bundle – not helped at all by the fact that she is extremely refluxy and vomits with alarming frequency not only on her own outfits but on everyone else’s too, as well as on every towel, sheet or blanket in her proximity. My mother always warned me that when you became a mother, the rules of mathematics went out the window: “One plus one does not equal two when it comes to having babies”, she would say. “It’s a lot more work than anyone ever expects”.

So while my former colleague regaled me with tales from work – the classes she was teaching, the texts they were studying, the students who’d already been suspended this year – I entertained her with stories from my laundry. “Honestly”, I told her, “you won’t just be able to do all the washing at once on a Saturday morning once you’ve got kids”. She nodded sympathetically. “Just when you’ve brought in one lot, you’ve got to hang out another. The spare room is constantly piled sky high with stuff I’ve got to sort out and iron and when it rains, you might as well give up completely!"

When she left, I realised, to my absolute horror, that I had become one of those women. This thought haunted me throughout the next day as I loaded and unloaded, pegged and unpegged. By the last load of the day, I was exhausted and, during a lapse of concentration, put my partner’s new blue t-shirt in with my baby’s little white and pink outfits. When I pulled them out of the machine, I discovered her lovely dresses and jumpsuits, many of which had been gifts and had only been worn once, had turned a ghastly shade of battleship grey. At that moment, the phone rang. I thought it would be my partner and felt relieved that I could at least get some much needed moral support, but alas, it was a telemarketer. I burst into tears, apologised and hung up. What I really wanted to do was yell down the phone “HOW DARE YOU CALL ME DURING A WASHING CRISIS!”

I made a cup of tea and persuaded myself to be philosophical about the situation. It could be worse, I reasoned. I could be the mother of refluxy twins with diarrhoea whose washing machine has actually broken down … and at least I have the next instalment of The Washing Saga to tell my former colleague next time she comes to visit!