Monday 14 January 2008

Product Launch!

We here at Lonie™ Polony are pleased and proud to announce the release of a fine, new product! We trust our loyal customers will find it meets the same impeccable standards as the other lunchmeats in our exclusive range.

Yes, I now have my very own Neptune Athelstane Polony!

*

Consequently, I shall herewith prominently display this button created by the lovely Littlesnoring:



and pretend that irregular, infrequent posts are all part of my grand plan to become the next multi-millionaire lunchmeat mogul.

Wish me luck with my growing polony empire.

*Image may not be of actual Baby Polony

Saturday 5 January 2008

You Betcha Baby!

Just who do I have to sleep with to get my baby to come out, anyway? Any virile man with a plentiful supply of semen will do, apparently.

Not that I’m seriously considering a do-it-yourself labour induction – bubby will make its appearance without my resorting to Old Wives’ remedies – but during an idle search of various labour-inducing methods that you, too, gentle reader, can try at home!, I came across a rather unsavoury discussion of that oft-recommended contraction jump-starter, sex:


"Sex as means of getting labour started is thought to work in three ways: firstly the movement may help to stimulate the uterus into action; secondly, sex can trigger the release of oxytocin, the 'contraction' hormone; thirdly, semen contains a high concentration of prostaglandins which help to ripen, or soften, the neck of the womb (cervix) ready for it to dilate when labour starts.

At this stage in your pregnancy sex is easier said than done. Try spoons, with your partner entering from behind or use the bed as a prop: your bulge isn't an obstacle if you lie on your back at the side or foot of the bed with your knees bent, and your bottom and feet perched at the edge of the mattress. Your partner can either kneel or stand in front of you. Alternatively, giving your partner oral sex may work better. It is thought that prostaglandins are absorbed more efficiently through the gut than through the vagina. (Note: you may prefer to keep this piece of information to yourself.)"


(http://www.babycentre.co.uk/pregnancy/labourandbirth/planningyourbabysbirth/naturalbringonlabour/#6)
Hmm. Seems to me more likely to induce vomiting than labour (although Mr. Lonie was still keen to give it a try when I mentioned it. Funny, that.)

And just why should I be ever so slightly impatient for the baby to venture out of its current home in my seemingly stretched-to-the-limit belly, when another two weeks of relaxing in its cosy amniotic sac past the due date now upon us is considered normal? Certainly not because I’m one of those women whose suitability for motherhood I question when they petulantly complain they’re ‘bored’ with pregnancy (after all, raising a child takes significantly longer and is much more trying than gestating one).

One reason is my obstetrician’s threat to medically induce labour if I have the audacity to withhold my baby from the world until next Wednesday. Been there, done that, was so unimpressed I didn’t even bother to buy the lousy t-shirt.

Another reason is that fridge-cleaning and other nasty chores which have been put off in the hopes of baby’s imminent arrival letting me off the hook, cannot be forsaken when that pesky little internal voice I try to ignore as much as possible is barking at me to get your lazy arse into gear and at least pretend to exhibit some nesting instinct, woman!

And then there’s the fact I have only minutes left to win the birthdate sweepstakes, if the little one would just cooperate.

On the upside, a delayed arrival means I still have time to get a more elaborate baby-related betting scheme up and running, one that puts “Guess how long I’ll be screaming in pain!” and “I lack opinion and imagination! Please suggest God-awful names for my child - mine and my baby’s dignity to the winner!” games to shame.

Here’s the kind of thing I was thinking of:

Scenario One: While I’m still bloodied from giving birth, my mother-in-law strides in and immediately pronounces the baby is the spitting image of Mr. Lonie. In fact, am I sure it's biologically impossible for a child to receive all its genes from the father?
Odds: Even money.

Scenario Two: My freezer, full of delicious meals I’ve spent hours and hours preparing to make life easier when the baby arrives, breaks down the day we return from hospital, leaving everything spoiled. We grow fat on takeaways every night for two months.
Odds: 20 to 1.

Scenario Three: While Mr. Lonie is overseas, my dogs wake me from my fitful baby-related-insomnia-troubled sleep at 4 am, mere hours before I have to sit an allowance-dependant exam for work. The dog bed and laundry are covered with what I can only describe as explosive diarrhoea, which takes me an hour to clean and disinfect while I desperately try to restrain light-sleeping Master Lonie from creating a coprophiliac’s idea of an artistic masterpiece. Oh hang on, I forgot. This already happened.
Odds: all bets are off.

Further suggestions are welcome. So: Any takers?

Thursday 3 January 2008

Guilty Pleasures

I’m shocked, shocked! at the widely-held perception of me as a cantankerous biddy. I simply can’t imagine whence this dreadful calumny sprang, but I present for its refutation these examples of things which give me enjoyment, albeit the kind of enjoyment that comes with its own measure of guilt.

Who doesn’t like singing along to songs with rude lyrics? Probably quite a lot of people actually, but I’m not one of them. Don’t let my prim, purse-lipped mumsiness fool you – on the rare occasions I’m at home or in the car without the little pitchers, and the mood strikes, I take a certain gleeful delight in providing tonally-challenged but lusty accompaniment to Sir Psycho Sexy, sharing a good-natured mofo with Jack Black, or cataloguing a range of sexual behaviours with the original cast of Hair.

Join me in my sinful confession and admit it, most of us love a long soak in a full, hot bath. Now I know we’re in a drought, so before you form a lynch mob and come at me with pitchforks and blazing torches, allow me to hastily explain that a bath for me is generally a birthday/Christmas/imminent delivery of baby sort of indulgence, certainly not a daily, weekly or even fortnightly thing. Moreover, to prevent the guilt from completely overwhelming the pleasure of the experience, I take certain…measures…to offset what in these days is an extravagant use of water. Short showers, letting yellow mellow, plunking the children to bathe in my lees, even the occasional homebound day with no shower. Are those gasps of disgust I hear? Hey, I said it was a guilty pleasure, not a pretty one.

What would my life be like without far too much chocolate? A lot less sugar-crazed and liable to make the creators of the healthy food pyramid faint with horror, I suspect. As it’s the New Year, and as I don’t seem to have been not-pregnant long enough since 2003 to regain a reasonable weight and figure, I have resolved to eat more healthily when the super energy-burning powers of this round of pregnancy and breastfeeding begin to wear off. What a shame there’s still about a kilo of chocolate stashed in the house. I wonder who’ll selflessly rid the Polony pantry and fridge of that delicious brown scourge?

In these days when celebrity gossip is peddled as essential world news, we all seem to absorb at least a vague awareness of the latest proof that money and fame don’t buy class or happiness. And usually I’m content to glean these smug reminders from slow news days and months-old magazines in waiting rooms, but when it comes time to waddle off to the maternity ward to birth my latest babe, my overnight bag is simply not complete without a stash of trashy magazines. I know they’re a waste of money I could better spend on a nice book, I know they encourage my nasty streak of Schadenfreude, and I know they keep paparazzi vultures in their despicable line of work. But isn’t that the point?

Guilty pleasures – they’re wrong, but they feel so right.

Tuesday 1 January 2008

Spewdrops on Roses and Biscuits with Grit In

Toxic heavy metals and hard seats to sit in,
Brown toilet ‘packages’ that leave stubborn rings,
These are a few of my least favourite things…

My, my, my, we are in a bad mood, aren’t we? And by ‘we’ I of course mean ‘me’. Lately it seems I’ve had more than enough cause for irritation and irascibility, but I find in my current condition I simply don’t have the patience for penning time-consuming discourses on subjects such as colleagues who see nothing inappropriate in their expectations of a heavily-pregnant woman in obvious physical discomfort (ie: me) acting as their personal dogsbody. Plus I currently have the attention span and verbal agility of the child I hope soon to meet ex utero. So, I’ve delved into the rantings that have been pent up in my resentful little mind for years in some cases, hoping to achieve some catharsis and translation to the state of Madonna-like* serenity that is other people’s tiresome expectation of mothers to newborns. I’ll see the hardier of you at the other end of the post…

Bad driving. Gasp! You say I’m not the first ever person in the world to complain about bad driving? Well tough mammaries, I’m gonna do it anyway. Have you ever noticed how different cities seem to specialise in particular strains of bad driving? Well down my way, the prevailing transgression is the use of indicators not like a polite cough to inform you of someone’s intention to move your way when they’re quite sure it would not be an imposition, but more like an unexpected rough shoulder-charge before you crash winded to the ground. Apparently in the years since I passed my driving test I missed the amendment of ‘give way’ to ‘barge as barge can!’ in the road rules.

Warm seats. Don’t tell me I’m crazy – my neurotic posterior and I already know it. There’s just something about sitting in a seat still warm from the buttocks of a stranger that makes me cringe. Call it an overly-sensitive delineation of personal space.

Poorly-constructed underpants. Without wishing to encourage any stray fetishist pervs that may have come across this post (and who are shortly to be bitterly disappointed), I must confess I tend to buy underpants of the inexpensive, plain cotton kind. It’s one of those purchases I can’t bring myself to spend more money on, even though in this extortionate, profit-driven world such a seemingly simple item is still subject to the maxim “Pay peanuts, get underpants sewn by monkeys.” I find the worst thing about cheap undies is gussets that don’t fit where they should, which is not life-alteringly terrible in itself, but what really annoys me is that several years ago that ghastly crone Jeanne Little opined on television that only fat cows with big bums experienced that problem.

Not being allowed to use the word ‘opined’ in Department of Meat Products reports. Apparently it’s considered by our customers to be too toffy. So to avoid rubbing our education (which was required for the job in the first place) in anyone’s easily baffled and offended face, we’re restricted to bland alternatives like ‘stated’ or ‘said’. This may explain my propensity to pomposity here in this blog…

Spurious and idiotic explanations of the origins of words like sh*t and f***. What kind of (unjustifiably) self-satisfied loser fabricates such tripe? The kind whose creativity is limited to obscene and repugnant fan-fiction, I suspect. Worse still those who believe and propagate ‘Store High In Transit’ or ‘Fornicating Under Consent of the King’ when a half-decent dictionary will set even the most brainless of knuckle-draggers straight on etymology.

Those stupid signs you see in workplace kitchenettes. You know, the printed ones blu-tacked above the sink or next to the microwave that exhort everyone to clean up after themselves because ‘Your mother doesn’t live here!’ or, ‘The housework fairy is on strike!’ I don’t know about you, but I go to the kitchen for a break, not for edicts from someone you just know is one of those bossy, annoyingly perky people who take such things upon themselves, and whom you fantasise about punching in their irritating toothy faces.

People who don’t change empty rolls of toilet and hand paper at work. Yes, we have regular cleaners through our office building, but it’s not their job to station themselves in the toilets constantly topping up supplies and drying everyone’s hands with fluffy white towels like some downtrodden American washroom boy. I frequently wonder what the culprits find so difficult about taking a new roll of t.p. from the neatly-stacked pile and replacing the one they’ve stripped bare save for a few fluttering scraps. And why can’t they take the ten necessary seconds to load the hand-towel dispenser instead of leaving the roll of paper to become sodden and useless by the sink? Don’t they realise their mothers don’t live there?

Infantile psychoanalysis. This is a long-nursed grievance which thankfully hasn’t troubled me afresh since school, when doing something as innocuous as wearing purple or idly peeling the label off a drink bottle set certain ninnies to air-headed giggling before informing one smugly that “You must be sexually frustrated!” At twelve years old? You braying buffoons! Freud, whom I’ve long suspected to have been little more than a dirty old man, has a lot to answer for.

When the work sucks,
When the fools goad,
When I’m feeling mad,
I simply blog about my least favourite things,
And then I don’t feel so ba-a-ad!

*Do I really need to state I don’t mean the singer?