Data Errata

Eek! What prognosticator, what stargazer, what scryer of crystal balls or reader of entrails could possibly have foreseen that operating a networked computer without firewalls or virus protection would result in obliterated data and total system failure?

Until everything is sorted out and I have my own working computer again, do try not to be too bereft at my absence from Bloggerland. You know - try to restrain all the wailing, tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth, because patchy-haired banshees with mouths full of worn-down nubs are not all that attractive to prospective mates or employers.

In the meantime, I'm going to drive without my seatbelt to the airport, catch an Air Nepal flight to Everest, climb it without oxygen, then base jump sans parachute. What could possibly go wrong?

Post-Holiday Laments

So all that stuff I said a while ago about eating properly and losing weight, you knew that meant after my holiday, right? Because if you were to look at me now, nearly a month later, and hope to see some change for the better, you’d be sorely disappointed.

I make no apologies – there was no way I was going to spend two weeks surrounded by delicious, cheap food one can’t get here, and plentiful five-star resort buffets, only to crunch glumly on celery sticks and rye crispbread. Besides, as I realised with relief (and also a tinge of vicarious shame when I imagined what the staff must think of the rich white tourists) I was hardly the sole, nor the fattest, fatty lounging by the pool.

But the self-declared diet amnesty is not the only thing I miss about my holiday. For six months beforehand my mediocre parenting and housekeeping had me merely coping at home with three small children, daily sinking deeper in despair as the house grew dirtier and the mental list of Things My Children Will Resent Me For grew longer. Then came those fourteen days spent in the glorious tropics instead of frigid and dismal winter, when my biggest worry was fighting off over-eager porky Americans who couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of waiting their turn for hot waffles at breakfast. Even with the difficulties attendant on holidaying with children, it was such a refreshing relief for me.

Now, however, I’ve been rudely thrust back into the cold and the grey of forty degrees too far south, in a one-star house without so much as a personal chef or a maid to wean me off the luxury to which I became so easily accustomed.

If, like some girls I went to school with, you opine that going on a nice holiday makes me guilty of being a ‘rich bitch’, you may be thinking something along the lines of: Aww, jaded by all the extravagance, are we? Spoiled for normal life by an expensive trip beyond the means of many of us? Try not to drown in my river of tears, Rich Bitch! And I could see your point. Even though the holiday was years in the planning and paid for by the bequest from my mother’s mother; even though my annual childcare costs when I return to work could not only pay for the same holiday but fly us first class; even though that was probably the last time I’ll see my other grandmother – my sole remaining grandparent – alive, I see your point.

Still, after a taste of champagne it’s hard to go back to swigging goon, and I can’t help but pine for the trappings of a lifestyle I can only borrow, not keep. O where is my daily housekeeping service? Whither my breakfast spread? Where is my view of the South China Sea? Who will turn down my bed?

Older and Wiser

The temperature didn’t magically rise by ten degrees, the housework wasn’t done by elves, the children still behaved as children do, and it was pretty much a day like any other. The shop-bought sponge my mum brought round as afternoon-tea-cum-unofficial-birthday-cake was dredged with that nasty, floury icing sugar mixture, and the artificial jam substitute inside was disappointingly insufficient to balance the flavour of the dubious fresh cream. The furthest I got from the house all day was the front yard, and I never even changed out of my pyjamas. That evening there was no party, no guests and no fancy dinner. The similarities with a non-event were striking.

But my mum visited with afternoon tea, and I rested at home instead of running errands or taxiing children to activities which tired me out more than them. I spent all day in my pyjamas which, as those familiar with my world of sloth will know, is one of my favourite things to do. There was no party to clean or cook for, no guests for whom to make an effort at sociability or stay up late, although I still received several touching birthday wishes. Mr. Lonie bought me the present I wanted, miraculously without baulking at the cost, and the card he gave me was chosen with more thought than I believed possible.

Even after far too many for a society obsessed with youth, birthdays are still good.

Thirty is the New Twenty

…Right? I know the number 30 is arbitrary, and I may as well be just as unenthused about turning 28 (those were the days!) or 31. I know that in many respects – openness to new music and technology, reminiscing about my long-gone heyday, giving up (with a sigh of relief) on trying to be cool, consulting doctors who are too young to know who Mr. T is – I grew old a long time ago. Still, I feel an impotent reluctance to succumb to this inevitability of life, an inevitability which is apparently so horrifying this video was produced:



But oddly enough, watching that vapid girl indignantly protesting her youth to a world of strangers has a cheering effect on me. After all, I’m over my salad days and no longer grope desperately for peer acceptance, a façade to hide my insecurities, a career, a life partner or a family. I mean, youth is great and all but ah! sweet old age brings retirement and an average thirty or forty years of nothing to do except wax nostalgic about the good old days before flying cars and the terrifying reign of the giant mutant polony monster.

So happy birthday to me, and bring it on! It’s not like I’m turning 40.

Pre-Holiday Realisations

nataliedee.com

Ugh, I’m disgusting. There’s nothing so abruptly disillusioning as shopping for new clothes and finding the number on the label of your best fit is much smaller than you’d hoped.

You read that right. I said smaller. You got a problem with that? Well kiss my skinny arse…if you can find it beneath the mound of blubber which has invaded and proclaimed itself emperor of the land of Gluteus Maximus, because WE’RE TALKING ROMAN NUMERALS, PEOPLE! It’s a predicament that can be expressed, in order for the blessedly slim among you to more easily relate, thus: imagine you have $1000. You spend a few dollars on ice cream here, a few on pastries there, and when you next look in your purse to see how many thickshakes you can afford, you’re shocked and appalled to discover you only have $50 left. Worse, you lose $10 without even realising it and then you’re down to $40 in loose change. 1000 --> 50 --> 40. In other, more brutal, words: M --> L --> XL. Where, I forlornly wonder, is my band of magic-potion-swilling indomitable Gauls to resist this corpulent conqueror? Alas, Liposux demands too much for his services, Aerobix and I have been estranged for some time, and Willpowa’s strength is unfortunately less than superhuman.

The sad thing about my increasing likeness to Jabba the Hutt – besides, you know, my increasing likeness to Jabba the Hutt – is that in our Western society my figure is nothing out of the ordinary. While no one is likely to confuse me for a waif who lives on cigarettes and diuretics, my daily routine does not involve screaming, “I am not an animal!” at a riled-up mob of people offended by my unnatural aspect, either.

In fact, I could probably tell anyone who was rude enough to point out my similarity to a suet dumpling that I’m still working off the pregnancy weight from my last baby and have them believe me, but in truth I’m a lot fatter now, more than five months after giving birth, than I was recovering in the maternity ward. My family’s concern that I was unhealthily skinny at that time, even at several kilos over my maximum ideal weight (calculated using BMI and plain common sense), seems to illustrate how normalised overweight has become in Australia. We’ve even supposedly acceded to the dubious honour of fattest nation in the world, although I find it hard to believe that our population of super-morbidly obese people who can only leave the house if carried by burly firemen through a hole cut in the wall, outweighs that of the land of deep-fried Coca Cola.

What really makes my chins wobble like an indignant Harold Bishop’s is when the jiggly among us insist they’ve tried everything to lose weight to no avail, even as they stuff their faces with a chocolate bar and chase it down with a packet of chips. And my pudgy little hands curl into fists of rage at the number of people who plead a thyroid or hypothalamus problem as if those fatty boombahs who aren’t afflicted with an unfortunate physiological condition making weight management difficult or near impossible are the rarity, not the lard-arsed norm. At least I can admit I got this way by being greedy and lazy.

But as enjoyable as being greedy and lazy has been for me these last few months, it’s time to reform my intemperate and indolent ways unless I want to begin buying clothes in shops with names like ‘Big Gals’ and ‘Muumuus R Us’. I know what I need to do – eat a balanced diet, consume fewer calories, exercise more – but as with so many things, getting into a healthier and less behemoth-like shape is easier said than done. I’ve just got to stop chewing the fat long enough to bite the bullet.

Caught In The Act

Such assaults are never the girl’s fault, although some were likely to whisper maliciously that she shouldn’t have worn those shoes – pink wedges which would have looked at home on a stripper – or that tiny skirt, or the skimpy top that looked like it was sprayed on.

He’d taken a liking to her, that was obvious, and she went unprotestingly to him, but by the time she was in his clutches and his intentions became clear, it was too late for the poor, silly girl to escape.

Luckily for her, I walked in on them before he could irreparably defile her. I caught him slavering over her like a hungry wolf, one hand up her skirt and his open mouth hovering near her breast. She was rigid in his arms, resigned to her fate and unable even to cry out. Her golden hair, once her crowning glory, was now tellingly dishevelled, and her makeup which had always been so meticulously applied was a mocking mask for her shame.

Fearing no-one would believe him capable of such acts – for his mien was innocent and his reputation blameless – I snatched up my camera which was fortunately nearby, and took photographic proof of his deeds.

I don’t know if Barbie will ever be the same again.

The Story So Far...

I love the idea of being tagged for memes – it appeases the high-school child inside me who will forever be hypersensitive to rejection and neglect – but when it comes time to list the last eight meals I’ve eaten or the literary character I identify most closely with or ten life forms I was in previous lives, I always realise how uninteresting I am and my enthusiasm for meme-ing becomes only slightly greater than that aroused by the prospect of a colonoscopy administered by a drunken Eastern Bloc ‘doktor’.

It was therefore with some delight that I found myself asked to participate in a meme with a difference, a story virus. A story virus is like the game we used to play on school camps where everyone takes turns making up part of a story, except that where the school camp story would continue along one line until the teachers sighed with relief and told us that the story was over and it was time for bed, a story virus mutates after contact with each different person, until after just a few transmissions each strain bears little resemblance to the others. In other words, the originator (Splotchy) tagged several people to continue his story. They then tagged other people to continue their diverging story lines, and so on. For a complete explanation by Splotchy, click here.

Of the Splotchy-p0nk-Lonie Polony strain of the virus, here is the story so far:

I had been shuffling around the house for a few hours and already felt tired. The doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw a figure striding away from the house, quickly and purposefully. I looked down and saw a bulky envelope. I picked it up. The handwriting was smudged and cramped, and I could only make out a few words. [by Splotchy]

"Interesting," I thought to myself, "I don't know anybody named Ted Kaczynski. Unless it's going to clear this damn sinus infection in my head, I'll have to open it later.” I set it on the kitchen table, and prepared my tincture of herbal tea remedies. [by p0nk]

“You know,” said Jasper, as I eased gratefully into a chair, “it would probably help if you put your glasses on. You’re not as young as you used to be.”

I grimaced, both at the bitterness of the tea and the tactless reminder of my decrepitude.

“What ever would I do without you, Jasper?” I said, my voice thick with sarcasm as I donned my half-moon spectacles and pulled the envelope to me. “Dance naked and whoop for joy, probably.”

Jasper rolled his eyes but said nothing.

The blood drained from my face as I felt the last tenuous thread of what had hitherto been my reality, snap. I had woken that morning with the body of an 80 year-old man. My black Labrador Jasper was speaking in human tongue. And the envelope read:

Fred’s Emergency kit. To be opened in cases of strange, abnormal or infernal events. Guard the contents with your life!

This was something even last night’s absinthe party couldn’t explain.

Anyone who would like to contract the story virus is welcome, but I’m specifically tagging Mutley, Angela, Littlesnoring and Hungry Hungry Hypocrite.

Please humour me, people – think of my inner high-school child!

Futility

Once, our house had a beautiful garden. The previous owner had applied to great effect his skills as a landscape gardener, and both the front and back yards looked like something out of a toffy magazine. Of course, when we bought the house and it came time to pay our first water bill a few weeks later, we discovered he’d used a volume of water equivalent to that of the Amazon River to maintain this botanic delight, and, thanks to our substandard conveyancer, we had no choice but to pay the outrageously high bill and the higher charge per litre on all subsequent use, for having exceeded our entire year’s quota of water.

Now, we haven’t watered the garden for years, and what was once lavished with enough potable water to quench a small nation’s thirst, now parches under the harsh sun. I don’t mind, because in these times of indefinite drought, a brown lawn and a horticultural demonstration of Spencer’s survival of the fittest are somewhat of a badge of honour, the blood upon the lintel by which the Angel of Water Conservation knows to pass over your house and fall upon that of your lush-lawned neighbour with wrath and indignation.

Trying in other ways to save water, and thinking of farming families who have to share the same tub of gradually darkening water for their daily ablutions, I’ve repeatedly shivered through shampoo and exfoliating routines with the shower turned off, at the mercy of my bathroom fan which outstrips the pathetic efforts of the heat lamps to counter its chilling effect, heat lamps which, in defiance of all the physics I learnt at school, produce light but no discernible heat.

But sacrificing my warm, non-goose-pimpled flesh and my clean, frequently-flushed toilet bowl to do my bit for public dam levels has all been for naught, as we discovered not long ago when Mr. Lonie crawled under the house on some manly mission of home maintenance. He found a thin but steady fountain of water splashing up onto the floorboards of our bedroom, which had, over a length of time too horrifyingly long to bear thinking about, caused significant water damage thitherto undetected due to its unlucky positioning beneath the bed. Once the flurry over stopping the flow and moving furniture was over, we awaited the next water bill with trepidation.

It was bad. Very bad. Even worse was the mocking irony of the situation, for the source of the leak was the reticulated sprinkler system installed by – you guessed it! – the previous owner. As chagrined as I am by the cost, as mortified as I feel about the waste, I’m most upset that all my efforts at saving water have been rendered effectively useless.

F****** utility.

Doin' It For The Kids

One of the scariest things about having children is that they’re a blank slate and I, their mother, am a pen filled with indelible ink-

What’s that? Ink isn’t used on a slate, and slates are meant to be wiped clean and written on over and over again until cracked over the head of Gilbert Blythe for calling Anne ‘carrots’? Hang on, let me try again:

Children are sponges, equally capable of soaking up the milk of human kindness or the liquid faeces of the scum of humanity alike…no, wait! Children are the harshest mirrors, reflecting not our superficial appearance, but the juicy pimples on our character and conduct…

Ugh, I give up. You know what I mean; if I’m not careful, my children are going to end up the kind of slate that’s covered in swear words, pornographic doodles, and chemical formulas for illicit substances.

Bearing this in mind, I try to conceal from them the kinds of behaviour I don’t want them to emulate, and attempt not to burden their fragile developing personalities with my own psychological baggage. Obviously Mr. Lonie and I confine our Bacchanalian orgies with people we meet online at keyparties.com to times when the ten-year-old girl next door is available to baby-sit; and when the children are within earshot I spell out (instead of pronouncing) the obscenities I scream at random passers-by I don’t like the look of, but something I really struggle with is keeping my fears and phobias repressed deep inside where they can manifest at a more convenient time as something less traumatic for the children to witness, such as severe facial tics or trichotillomania.

Maybe if I were scared of unicorns or dodos or space aliens I might be more successful, seeing as we don’t get many of them around here (and even the anal probes aren’t so bad after the first two or three abductions), but unfortunately it’s spiders and cockroaches, with their creeping and scuttling and insinuating themselves into every nook and cranny in the house in order to leap out at me with fangs bared and antennae waving menacingly, that I loathe and fear. I know there are all sorts of techniques to combat such fears, but my preferred method of spraying DDT from crop dusters is frowned upon these days, just because a few scientists started bleating about cancer and birth defects and untold effects on the ecosystem (which sounds like namby-pamby bug-loving nonsense to me).

So I’m forced to suffer the iniquities of a society biased against people who simply want to eliminate all insect and arachnid life within fifty metres of their house. I must fight every natural inclination and actually approach said creatures of hell’s outhouse, and touch them with something less buffering than a ten-foot barge-pole, in order to eject them from my home. What’s more, in the interests of preserving my children’s freedom to cultivate their own bugbears without undue influence, I have to do all this with as much of a psychotically indifferent façade as I can muster, while inside I am screaming and quaking and cursing Mr. Lonie for his absence and his neglect of this basic husbandly duty.

Helping matters still less is the discomfiting realisation that, as I age, what started out as normal dislikes and aversions are amplifying into irrational, paralysing terrors. It seems that I’m doomed to end my days as a twitchy mental patient who can’t even look at the Dewey Decimal number of a book containing a reference to another book with a picture of a cockroach in it, without curling into a foetal ball and clutching to my chest the cans of bug spray I keep holstered on my hips. Death will come for me not with a scythe, but a fake tarantula dangling on a string, and as the massive heart attack sends me shuffling off this mortal coil his dry wheezy laughter will be the last thing I hear.

Nevertheless, I am, as I said, more scared of damaging forever the impressionable young minds of my children with my exaggerated dread (children are malleable clay and I am the potter…?). I’d hate to see them suffer the same unnecessary apprehensions I do, and be reduced to a whimpering mass of non-functionality every time an objectionable creepy-crawly crosses their path.

And besides, if I manipulate them just right, I’ll always have someone around to get rid of that cockroach for me.

For The Fallen

“Lest we forget who?” we asked some years ago, as we passed the sandstone gatepost on which the inscription was carved.

“Jesus,” our dad answered absently, distracted by the realisation that the narrow road we were driving along was actually a wide footpath.

Common traits of courage and self-sacrifice notwithstanding, today we remember the other great man with a donkey, and the ANZACs and their successors for whom he has become a symbol.



Lest We Forget.

Oh, The Nostalgia!

This kicks Emo Kid's skinny black arse.



Spicks and Specks is over, back to the washing-up.

Sort Of Dunno Nothin' by Pete Denahy

This is my laundry pile.

Actually, it’s one of my piles of clean clothes, waiting to be sorted and folded and put away. Funnily enough, there’s also a similarly sized pile of dirty laundry waiting to be washed, hung out, brought in, sorted, folded and put away. Then there’s the vacuuming, the dishes, the general cleaning and the resisting of the powerful urge to curl up under my doona and rock back and forth while muttering The horror! The horror!

Acknowledged: I suck at housekeeping.

Corollary: I suck at regular blogging.

Result: I am just going outside and may be some time.

What’sa Matter You, Hey? Gotta No Respect?

As a three-time gestatrix, I’ve put up with my fair share of insensitive, annoying and downright stupid remarks related to each of my pregnancies. Like the time when, having recently started work at the Department of Meat Products, I experienced sudden, excruciating belly pains and feared for the life of my 28-week-old foetus. Admitted to hospital overnight (and thankfully having everything turn out fine), I returned to work after a couple of days, only to have my supervisor at the time, who was fully aware of the reason for my absence, jest, “Now you mustn’t expect time off after every report you write!”

My stony silence obviously didn’t clue him in to the insensitivity and inappropriateness of his ‘joke’, as he then retold it on two or three other occasions. It wasn’t meant maliciously; none of the things people have said to me were, and I’ve therefore been led to wonder what is it about a pregnant woman that seems to cloud people’s judgement? Does her extruded belly-button transmit synapse-jamming radio waves? Do peripheral bystanders contract a temporary form of ‘pregnant brain’, like passive smoking?

Whatever the reason, many mothers-to-be are already struggling with physical discomfort, turbulent hormones and fluctuating emotions; if they are anything like me, they’re also hypersensitive, anxious about the baby’s development and wellbeing, and feeling guilty about everything from their diet to the exhaust fumes they couldn’t help inhaling on their way to work: thoughtless comments and irritating questions are among the last things they need, especially from family, friends and colleagues from whom they could justifiably expect more support and understanding.

As a public service, I’ve therefore compiled a countdown of utterances the clueless may consider terribly witty, amusing or interesting, but which should never be said to an unpredictable and volatile woman in reproductive mode.

7) Gee, you’re getting fat!
It’s called being PREGNANT, moron! And it’s only temporary, unlike your permanently flabby brain. (Okay, so no-one’s actually said this to me; I just really detest it when people, especially pregnant women themselves, equate baby, placenta and amniotic fluid with fat.)

6) Should you be eating that?
Let’s see: I’m an educated woman who’s read authoritative baby books and consulted closely with the obstetrician, and above all cares about the wellbeing of my baby. I’ve been eating healthy foods I never normally touch purely for the sake of my child, so if, on rare occasions, I want to indulge in a measly chocolate bar, then yes, I will bloody well eat it and thank you to keep your interfering nose out of my damn business.

5) Smile!
Everyone who’s read this will know how I feel about this brand of thoughtless interference. Yes, if I’m interacting with you in any way, I will smile and generally try to be amiable, but when I’m minding my own business, waddling to the toilet and back for the tenth time that day and feeling horribly uncomfortable and weary, your yelling this over the desk partition as I pass is more like to elicit a murderous scowl than a smile you’ve no right to request.

4) It’s a boy! No, a girl…no wait, a boy…
Predicting the gender of my baby with a dangled wedding ring or from the shape of my belly is a bit of harmless fun, but gets extremely tiresome when the prediction is revised on an almost daily basis along with perceived changes in my shape, as if I’m actually meant to credit such ridiculous lore. One colleague explained to me her own Old Wives’ Tale about predicting the baby’s sex, saying, “I think Karen is having a girl, because she looks so serene and pretty. On the other hand, I think you’re having a boy because…” She stopped short as she came too late to the realisation that calling me a haggard old crone was perhaps not the most polite thing to do. It’s not like anyone wins a prize for guessing correctly – and everyone can call heads or tails and be right some of the time – so just leave it the hell out.

3) Unspeakable tragedies.
I don’t care if it happened to someone you know, or is something you saw on the news or a TV show. How could you possibly think I need to hear what happened to this or that poor baby? Save your horror stories for a cold-hearted freak.

2) Congratulations on getting pregnant! Was it planned?
To me, the only possible subtext of this question is: “Tell me, are you irresponsible, or just stupid?” I’ll have no-one say my precious children are ‘mistakes’ or ‘accidents’. Enjoy your speculation and gossip if you must, just do it out of my earshot.

1) Has the baby come yet?
Yes. Yes it has. I just didn’t tell you because I’m a sociopathic freak. NO, THE BABY HASN’T BLOODY WELL COME! This one screamed up the charts to number one after the due date came and went. It was very popular among family, friends and colleagues alike, some of whom rang every day to play this number one hit. I had started to take the phone off the hook and avoid calling anyone lest my teeth be worn down with all the furious grinding.

I understand that many people never have and never will understand what it’s like to be pregnant, and therefore will never be able truly to empathise. If you must, set up a ranty blog like mine and rail about the irresponsible, moody, humourless cow you know, the one who’s the size of a house and probably going to lactate vinegar. But when the urge strikes to open your gob in my direction, ah SHADDUP YOU FACE!

Unforgiven

It’s a little known fact* that several years ago Clint Eastwood, director and star of the eponymous movie, grew jaded and bitter from playing bitter and jaded gunslingers of one variety or another, and opted for a drastic change of career, a sea change if you will.

He experienced a brief period of happiness operating a commercial kiln patronised by a thriving community of artists – working closely with fire brought him a primitive pleasure his mere portrayals of a man’s man never could, and his desire to be involved in the creative arts was satisfied – but his contentment quickly changed to chagrin when increasing numbers of potters and sculptors approached him in bespattered smocks and beatnik berets, smirkingly asking him to “Go ahead, bake my clay.”

Enraged with the same bad joke and overuse of the term ‘sea change’, he shoved the next imprudent bohemian in the oven† and returned to show business where no-one dared mock him, not even with deliberate provocation in the form of Space Cowboys.

As instructive and amusing as the preceding vignette was, this post has nothing to do with an award-winning tale of revenge in the Wild West, and everything to do with the vendetta my body now wages against me in return for the sins of my youth and the ravages of age and lifestyle.

Accusation:
Once I had a magnificent bosom, the kind that, were it a character in one of Clint Eastwood’s westerns, would burst through the saloon doors to an instant hush from the pianola and murderously argumentative poker players. After a few seconds of awe-inspired silence, the piano man would strike up a lively honky tonk number, the whores would flounce out of their rooms to peer over the balustrade, and guns aimed under tables at cheatin’ varmints would be holstered unfired, former adversaries embracing like brothers.

Now imagine I joined the harlots in several spirited performances of the Can Can without an adequate sports bra, before spending four years suckling ravenous infants.

Reprisal:
Alright, maybe my bosom wasn’t that great, but it was pretty nice. These days, my boobs would be better cast as the subject of the song Do your ears hang low?, if you substitute ‘ears’ with ‘no-longer-so-much-funbags’.

Accusation:
For years I bent at the waist to lift heavy objects, with the nonchalant air of someone who snapped up an extra back the day Dolly Parton opted for two servings of front instead. “Calcium? No thanks!” might as well have been the cheerful up-yours I gave Dairy Australia each time I filled my glass with more Milo than milk for an eatable treat.

Reprisal:
Let’s just say I’ve selected my children’s careers for them: physiotherapist, chiropractor and masseuse.

Accusation:
In a time of vinyl records and rotary dial telephones, commodore 64s and roller rinks, Sid, like Norm, was just a likeable cartoon character with a catchy jingle in a health-awareness campaign market cornered by the bowling Grim Reaper and his bed of syringes. Much of my childhood was spent un-slopped and –slapped; I don’t recall even owning a hat until I was about 11 or 12, while zinc cream in attractive fluoro shades was just for decoration (because the ’80s were cool like that). Ra accepted my burnt offerings, and was pleased.

Reprisal:
The spectre of a leathery brown lizard woman haunts my dreams as dire warning against further carelessness.

Accusation:
I never expected I’d think wistfully back to the days when pimples made me feel like the ugliest bush-pig of all the self-conscious teenage girls at school. But O! for the time when those sweet, pus-filled tokens of youth were the only blemishes I had to contend with, when I could express my adolescent superiority and disdain with a thousand different grimaces, or sleep on my face as much as I wanted, as if my natural collagen would last forever. “Vanity!” I cried at the wrinkle cream advertisements, sure in the knowledge I would never be so foolish as to spend hundreds of dollars on potions and unguents which would, at best, only disguise the inevitable. Besides, I would wear my eventual creases with pride, for are they not signs of wisdom and gracious aging?

Reprisal:
Is anyone out there a young virgin? I need to bathe in your blood.

*Fact may contain lies
†Lonie Polony is clinically insane and therefore unfit to be prosecuted for libel

Sic Jokes

Some years ago when I was planning our wedding, one reception venue’s attempt to woo our custom involved the promise of crudities on the menu. Whilst hearing the waiters tell Mr. Lonie’s horrible Aunt Mildred to “Eff off, dragon lady!” instead of offering her an hors d’oeuvre would have filled me with boundless glee, I reluctantly concluded that such a scene would not be setting an appropriate tone for the occasion.

Alas, impish Circumstance had no such thoughts of sparing my blushes the day I frantically searched the university library for any book remotely relevant to an unstarted essay due the next day. The tome I clutched desperately to my chest as I approached the loans desk was so old and obscure it had evaded the library’s computer system, and I was therefore commanded by She Who Must Be Obeyed to fill out a form with the book’s details so it could be duly catalogued. With trepidation I handed her the card, expecting an outraged reaction including immediate ejection from the library and cancellation of borrowing privileges. The name of the author was Dikshit.

Speaking of things in that general homophonic area, I’m of the puerile disposition that is endlessly amused by someone’s confusing ‘prostrate’ and ‘prostate’, but can never understand how Mr. Lonie’s parents manage to do it every single time they’re blithely discussing some friend or other’s medical history in front of me. I amuse myself by imagining Mr. Lonie’s dad during his police days pecking out a report on the typewriter: “…the victim’s prostate form was discovered in the vicinity of the rectory…”

One needn’t look far for the source of my juvenile sense of humour: my family can’t play Trivial Pursuit without recalling the legendary Game of the Misread Question, during which the immortal words, “Does Uranus have aurora?” were met with resounding hilarity. We still snigger about it after all these years.

I maintain the humble hope that you, Dear Reader, will similarly find this post worthy of the anals of history.

This Too Will Pass

The good thing about Mr. Lonie going interstate for three days on business is…nothing really. It sucks, not only because something always goes wrong when he absents himself from the status quo, but because some things don’t change – there are still three small children, often boisterous, sometimes misbehaving and occasionally very naughty; there’s still a house that looks like a hoarder’s den the council finally has to clear out with a mini bulldozer following complaints from neighbours and a report on Today Tonight; and there are still two dogs who lay enough mines to make our backyard worthy of a visit from the late Princess Diana, but there’s only one responsible adult left to deal with everything.

I know I should be grateful that I’m not a single parent, and I have great admiration for those who manage to get through each day with their sanity and their kids’ happiness intact. I’ve really been trying to be more patient, tolerant, kind and understanding as a mother, for example when an overtired Master Lonie is screaming his throat raw instead of peacefully going to sleep, for no good reason except that he’s a toddler and doesn’t need a good reason, dammit!

I don’t think I’m succeeding though, because at such times I can’t help but wonder: Am I the only one who feels like hollering at my child to “SHUT UP!”, and sighs wistfully at the remote possibility of it actually working? Am I alone in daydreaming of a soundproofed, padded room for children in the throes of an inconsolable sobbing-screaming-thrashing tantrum? Is it wrong to fleetingly wish I were one of those obscenely rich, neglectful parents who employ a nanny for each child?

For the love of God, humour me. Please say no!

New Porn Babe!

Roll up, randy gents and raunchy birds! Lenny O. Loopi’s the name, producin’ quality erotica’s the game. I’m fillin’ in for Lonie Polony on this bloggin’ lark while she’s busy wiv a baby clamped to ’er jubblies. I dunno wot she’s on about wiv this cathartic rantings malarky, so instead I’m gonna let you in on the juicy details o’ me latest classy production called Naughty Nurses 3: Push It Good! It’s one o’ me best films yet, ’cos it’s got a little something for everyone, even them wot like a bit o’ the kinky stuff, know wot I mean?

It’s set in a hospital, see, and opens wiv a shot of me brand new star – it’s ’er first movie an’ all – ’oo’s playin’ a patient. She’s stark naked and one o’ the naughty nurses is takin’ ’er to the shower.

“Let me ’elp you get soaped up,” she says, pumpin’ the dispenser and workin’ up a lather. “And then you can give me a shower…a golden shower!”

*Needle scratches on record with a jarring screech*

Sorry about that, people – Lonie Polony here. What my open-shirted, gold-medallioned friend was actually describing, albeit through his porn-tinted glasses, was my latest hospital stay. And jubbly-clamped as I am, I feel it incumbent on me to point out that, despite what a small group of perverted weirdos may think (I’m glaring at you, maiesiophiles), there is absolutely nothing sexually arousing about childbirth.

It’s true I was stark naked and being helped to the shower by a nurse. And she did ask me to wee in the shower, but there was definitely no Bow Chicka Wow Wow about it. For one thing, I’d just squeezed out a nearly 10-pound baby and was consequently too cavernous to provide a satisfying hidey-hole for even the largest salami. For another, I resembled not so much a post-match jelly-wrestler, but someone who’d taken a dip in a vat of meconium and uterine ‘goo’ (as Mr. Lonie scientifically termed it). And I’m sorry to disappoint any urophiles who were hoping for something more exciting, but the wee – which was not forthcoming anyway, my plumbing having suffered secondary traumatisation from witnessing the horrifying assault on my birth canal – was about the happiness of my bladder, not your excitable bits.

My boobs did look the part at one stage, being gigantic enough to rival those on the set of Lenny’s Knockout Knockers 6: Ten Gallon Jugs! But even if bosom-fanciers pretend they were engorged with silicone and not milk, there’s no ignoring the fact that I now look like the ‘before’ shot on the breast-lift segment of Extreme Makeover.

I suppose if you were inclined towards menophilia, you might find my bleeding a turn-on. You know, the kind of bleeding my male readers would probably prefer I’d warned them about before mentioning, so they could go and watch a testosterone-filled action movie (not Crimson Tide) instead. And I’ll admit it did make me fantasise about getting into someone’s pants and having something long and thick down there. But before you go rubbing your hands with glee (or whichever lube you prefer), you have to understand that the pants I dreamed of getting into were incontinence pants, and the something long and thick I wanted was what’s known in the vernacular as a surfboard. That’s right, a whopping great maternity pad for women who care more about cushioning their swollen, tender bits than frolicking on the beach or horse riding in what television tells me is the usual manner of biblically unclean women.

Maybe after glimpsing my ‘surf’s up!’ reflection in the mirror I could still have deceived myself that someone apart from certain fans of The Crying Game would find me sexy, were it not that Mr. Lonie’s affectionate patting of my backside became a quizzical, concerned groping of the prominent foreign object in his wife’s nether region.

The alluring scent of regurgitated milk wafting constantly from my clothes and skin completes his sensory dismay, and so I think I can safely tell Lenny that his chances of a Mandy Does Maternity porn smash hit are rather less good than my fronting the most successful anti-fornication campaign in the history of the Church.

Oh, and Lenny? The title of the post was supposed to be ‘Newborn Babe’. Slimy git.

Surprise and Relief

Not a man of steel, but a man of flesh and blood, and that's what makes him a hero.

P.S. Shut up, Nelson.

Full As A Goog

Oh dear. I realised too late that one might reasonably infer from my previous post that I believe I’m extraordinarily talented, and the only thing holding me back from fulfilling my potential as the most brilliant blogger ever are the requirements of mothering three small children.

Because I still haven’t completely overcome the self-conscious teenage certainty that all are beadily eyeing my every move and passing harsh judgement, I had commenced an exculpatory post in which I tried to explain that, had I communicative skills more articulate than those of a drunken illiterate mute, the implication I made should have been something more like, Gee, I have all these ideas for blog posts which seem hilarious as they swim around in my head. With a few hours and some peace and quiet, I may be able to finesse them into something adequately humorous, once the dents sustained during the laborious progress through my brain’s clumsy incoherent textifying centre are largely beaten out.

While deciding how to explain that what I meant was not that I’m a shooting star chafing at my cruel earthbound tethers, but that I just don’t have any time…I realised I just don’t have any time.

So in a nutshell, look kindly upon me, Dear Reader, and remember: I’m not full of myself, just full of crap.

Temporary Amnesia

I peruse the TV guide and I often think, Hmm, that program sounds interesting and thought-provoking, I must remember to stay up and watch it.

Or I see 2008 theatre subscriptions advertised and wonder why I haven’t taken up such a good offer before now.

Or I say to myself I simply must pay a visit to that little chocolaterie and indulge myself while I relax on their comfy leather sofa, Dahling.

Or I promise that tonight I’m going to sit down and write the blog post that will have everyone urinating with uncontrollable laughter, garner me instant worldwide fame and twelve book deals, and win the first ever Pulitzer Prize for blogging.

And then I remember that I have children.