choose your own title

The most difficult thing about updating here isn't finding the time, it's finding the frikkin' keys on this damn keyboard. After a bajoollion years of typing - using the correct fingers, mind - you'd think I'd have a better strike rate than 50%. My problem is discipline, and my need for speed, which is self defeating because rather than spending some time typing slower and hitting the correct keys, I type fast and hit the wroing keys and spend more time that I would had I chosen option A fixing my typos. My perfectionist streak (don't laugh, fuckers) chafes my hide too, for rather than working for me to make me perfect in everything I do, tra la, if I can't do it right the first time, or thereabouts, I figure I'm a failure and don't want to do it again. Being a perfectionsist sucks butt, even if you're a perfect perfectionist, because it's a life fraught with failure. (Deep,huh?)

I think though, and I'm not just making excuses, that the damn keyboard doesn't help. I don't know if my fingers are feeble weak or if the keys really do stick, so today, when the technician delivers more RAM (and does anyone else feel dirrrty, mrrreow, when they say they're getting more RAM? I feel like I should be bent over the bonnet of my car when he gets here), he's also going to bring a selection of keyboards for me to try. Chances are I'll still be crappadoodle at typing, in which case, I may throw myself off a cliff. I swear though, with my PC's succession of different keyboards, not one of them had me feeling as intimidated by the idea of streaming my consciousness all over the place as this bitch here does.

That's not to say that finding the time to write the several small thoughts I have each day is a picnic though. It's not that there isn't a lot of vacant time in my day, it's that it's not in any substantial blocks because, apart from Daniel chipping away at the minutes in the day, I lied about that streaming my consciousness thing. I'm edit crazy, which is stupid because if I was like this in the days of pen and paper, I'd have torn up a forest worth of trees before I finished the e-mail equivilant of something like "great, see you at 5". and fyi: I edited that last sentence roughly seven times. In those olden days, I used to rip through letters and essays like no body's business. Once a word was written, there was no looking back. I'd rather a less than perfect sentence got read than rewrite the whole damn lot again back then, so while the computer age certainly rocks, its delete button can kiss my overworked editorial arse.

You know, I hadn't intended to reference that stupid perfectionsist streak again, but I think I just explained my infatuation with Mr Delete. (and I only edited that sentence once. Go me)

The irony at this very minute is that The D has been asleep long enough for me to sit here and blabber enough to entertain myself at least, but the computer tech guy is due any minute.

He doesn't usually nap at mid afternoon-o-clock, (Daniel, not the tech guy, though who knows what the techies do after lunch at their Apple store?) but today, after his noontime nap, he had a feed, did a gigantic poo (which had to be exhausting as dude lost almost half his body weight), spent enough time in the bath to get shrivelled and raisin like, and while there, practiced his personal rendition of a Roman statue by peeing on himself, twice, and also actually, really and truly held his bathtime ducks for the first time ever (*mexican wave*) and put them in his mouth for a chew (go deebs!), had some time on the floor looking alluring in a bath towel and little else, and then peed on himself while watching a paused DVD on the TV screen. He wasn't meant to be frying his little brain cells watching television, hence my use of the pause button, but the super expensive and interactive Lamaze educational toy obviously isn't as educational and attractive as a static view of Doc Martin's face.

Moving right along, Tim the techie, who was the epitome of geek, in a totally and coolly cute way, has just left and this mac is ripping along with 768MB of RAM, (hooYAH!) and my new keyboard is rocking da house. It's much like that of a laptop, and its geography is different, so I keep missing the spacebar. Damn. Meanwhile, my old keyboard, if one was to hold it upside down and shake it, could proabably feed several small nations if the foodstuffs inside weren't dating anywhere from today's to two years ago, eww, and The Daniel is still asleep which, what the fuck?

Just so we're clear, when I say Tim the techie is cute, I'm not talking lustfully, mostly because please be referring to the 'geekie' part of his description, which while geekie can be quite a lurve magnet quality, it ain't when it's applied to a twelve year old. Okay, so he wasn't twelve, but to my aging self, he may as well have been. Anyway, I have no idea what this thing called 'libido' is anymore anyway, so techboy could have been Lust In A Bucket, and I'd be all, eh. Good thing I'm not married, huh? Or involved in any way shape or form, as being single and spending Saturdays nights with a dwarf who poops his pants sure as shizzle means I won't be getting any for quite some time, so thank fuck I don't want it any.

The comments section can be used for those of you who wish to thank me for sharing.

I'm reminded though, that Mother Nature can kiss my big ol' barge arse. What is it about childbirth and being hit by the ugly stick? My God. Three months after I whelped that puppy, and I've gained four kilos and my hair is falling out. Those in the know are aware that my stupid hair has been having a cow for four years now, so it's not like I've got a lot to lose. That would be reassuring if I had a lot to gain, like if I'd gambled ten bucks on the chance I could win a hundred, but this is my hair and I'm sure as shit no Natalie Portman. And I'm old. Gack.

Speaking of old and ugly, (and aren't I the segue queen today?) Stef called. He'd sent me a text message on Saturday night which, as the message alert system on my phone causes me to shitteth my pants if it's switched on, didn't get read 'til the next day, when I declined to reply to him because I went over all control freak. He was all about he's ready to talk now, so I met his "I'm ready" and raised him a big old ignore, HA! So come Monday night, he called. I answered it because this is about Daniel's life, not my power trips or my pride...and I'm gonna have to leave it there folks, for the lad in question has just woken up.

from the sublime to the ridiculously cute.

the story of eww

Digestive issues shouldn't really be up for discussion on a public forum such as the internet. This is especially true if these issues are not your own as after all, having one's innards outed by a third party just ain't right. Be that as it may, this entry is about Daniel's poo. Sorry kid.

Every since he was a wee lad, the deebs has been a turbo charged, power poo-er, responding to his creative (ahem) urges constantly throughout the day. This kid pooed so much and so often that buying him a t-shirt bearing the slogan "No Nappy* Left Unsoiled" was in consideration. Fascinating stuff, and proof that magic is real and that you can in fact pull something substantial out of thin air. Dude only drinks milk, not four pound steaks followed by a bucket of coleslaw, and yet he's dropping flotsam like a trucker after a weeklong barbecue. Amazing. This is all moot though as a few days ago, his creativity dried up overnight and since then, nothing. Even his farts went missing.

Before making the dash to the ER, I checked with google and lo! it seems that this is a natural part of a baby's development. Other mothers concurred, so I chilled the fuck out and began to enjoy the poo-less nappies and the beginning of my days of wine and roses. It occured to me then though, that this was a lull period, the calm before what could become a periodical storm, for while Daniel had ceased producing copious amounts of poo every day, he was now producing the same amount but liberating it less frequently. According to google told, at this point in his life, he's likely to be laying his special brand of cable only once or twice a week.

I'd heard tales of steaming rivers of poop escaping nappies and burning holes into the earth's crust, so I waited.

And waited.

And I then worried a bit too, mostly about the emission force of the expected delivery. Dude had already been levitating with every *poot* before this backup began, so the anticipation of having him shot halfway to China if I wasn't waiting at his southern end wearing a catcher's mitt was excruciating. Also, the predicted volume of this mega poo scared me. I couldn't spend every hour crouched down there with a goldfish bowl over my head for protection and a ten gallon drum on hand to catch what the nappy wouldn't, so I tightened the fasteners at every nappy change and with grim determination, and waited some more. I also got my passport in order in case I needed to retrieve him in a hurry from some foreign land.

The day before yesterday, he smiled at me as he filled his pants, and I don't know what all the fuss was about. The deluge I expected was instead, a modest amount of containable shit. Granted, this was more liquid and certainly a higher volume than his previous norm, but it was fully contained by that god given sphagnum and Daniel's nappy's double elasticised pants legs. Angels sung, the birds returned, and this new style of crapping every other day or so seemed a fair exchange for the literal shitload of poopy pants the deebs previously got through every day.

As you know, Daniel and I lie around together like a couple of old tarts in the morning, so when he luxuriously farted yesterday while curled up beside me, my immediate thought was of a red alert nappy change. Then I remembered his new routine of Every Other Day Or So, and I relaxed. Because this routine isn't yet well practiced, before I nodded back off to sleep, I felt his little tush through his pyjamas, testing for the tell tale warmth of a newly hatched dump. Everything was in order back there, so I snuggled the lad closer and...zzzzzz.

Waking later to find the smell of that ripe fart had cranked up the volume, my gentle calm of an hour earlier fucked right out of town. Daniel was flat on his back and snoring beside me, so wide eyed with expectant horror, I tipped him over - and found his toxic waste had escaped his nappy, crept up his back, pooled inside his onesie, and was threatening to take over the world. There was an ocean of that stuff leaking all over the place, totally eclipsing yesterday's personal best. While I'm the idiot who didn't expect this copious aftershock, I'm not a total idiot, so I muttered my thanks to the God of Mattress Protectors, put Daniel back where I found him, tip toed out and left him to sleep it off.

Hey, if dude wasn't fussed about sleeping in his awesome puddle of poo, then neither was I.

The end.



*diaper, freaks.

a Marcel Marceau type entry

click to make bigger

dear son

Nah, not really. I'd write one of those moving entries if I could, but I can't. Oh, I compose real heart string pullers in my head quite frequently, every day in fact, but do you see that amount of thinking reflected on these pages? Nooo. Pity too, because I'm quite the prolific story teller in the ol' grey matter. I'm a dolt or something though because without fail, the minute I sit in front of my mac, my head gets the blue screen of death.

Anyhoo, Daniel was three months old yesterday. Practically speaking, the first few weeks of his life were about as exciting as carrying around an egg. They're fragile, so you wouldn't want to drop one, but they don't really do anything. Realistically speaking of course, those few weeks were so fucking amazing, even if, or because even, his personal bests involved excreting something from one end or the other. Add another few weeks though, and the egg hatched and dude is HERE! He's on planet Earth and is taking it all in. This morning he was taking it in so enthusiastically that he whopped me across the chin so hard with his head that I saw stars. When I'm not cradling my jaw with the hand that's not holding his scrummy little self on my shoulder, I call him The Tennis Fan because his head flips from side to side with a regularity that could be set by metronome-and it's a complete 180 degree turn that he does too, none of this taking in the scenery on the way. It seems the action takes place only at polar opposites.

He smiles a lot now too, usually at inanimate objects or strangers, unless it's morning and I'm waking up. Daniel wakes before I do, and passes the time doing his exercises next to me. I'll be half asleep as his little legs pump and his little arms slice through the air. He has quite a jolly old time of it too, chattering away to himself - which is also something he reserves for inanimate objects, like the mobile I bought to hang over has change table. It cost me ten bucks at Woolworths (as compared to the Lamaze and Fischer Price junk yard I have here on the floor that cost considerably more and actually do stuff) and Daniel loves it. He'd lie underneath it all day if I let him, because my goodness, it's fascinating company and so, the conversations he has with it are spectacular. And cute. Fuck they're cute. I called mum today so she could hear what sounded like his detailed opinion on the upcoming state election, and the minute she answered the phone, the boy shut up. He does that, shuts up when he knows he's being listened too. I have no idea how he knows though. He also doesn't like anyone interfering with the special relationship he shares with the mobile either. Or specifically, the mobile's Red Dog on the Yellow Moon which hangs in the middle. One word from me and it's all over, red rover with the chatting. He'll be having his own party on that table and I'll say something like 'hello' in an attempt to try and interact with this child who has just spent ten minutes alone (and before anyone calls child services, the change table has sides so unless I give him back his abseiling gear, he's not going over the edge), and Daniel will stop what he's doing and turn into a lump, and I'll slink away feeling guilty for ruining his fun. When I wake up though, it's all for me. He smiles and coos, and scrunches his legs up and gathers his hands up under his chin. That's a serious smile folks, one that requires his whole body to execute it. We could lay there all day and he'd keep on smiling and scrunching and cooing, and I'd keep staring in amazement at this little person who came into my life and made it worth something.

*****

Apropos to nothing to do with being three months old, apart from maybe that now Daniel is bigger, I got us a new carrier, and *paddaboom* there you have it. The neat segue I was looking for, ahem. Carrying on. I had him in his new hug-a-bub the other day and at first, being a hotsling kind of guy, he wasn't too happy. The sling has been good to us and we've used it since he was born, but now he's older, he's halfway man, being not quite old enough to sit on my hip and too old to fit inside it anymore, so he kind of hangs about in it like a set of balls do in a pair of Budgie smugglers. It didn't take long 'til he'd settled into it though...

pick one

a) the deebs is losing the fine head o' hair he was born with, or b) his head is bigger so the same amount of hair appears proportionately smaller.

my lovely lady lumps

My mother has always believed herself to be a strong proponant* for not worrying about what other people think. Which is kind of funny because if there was anyone in this world who taught me to give a rat's arse about what someone else - everyone else - thinks of me, it's her.

We went out to a cafe the other day, and as she was saying something about her being the one who taught us that what others think shouldn't affect our actions. As she spoke, I ripped open my shirt and flopped my tits onto the table discreetly put Daniel to my breast and began feeding him. Mum asked me if I shouldn't perhaps put a shawl over my shoulder to cover my giant bazookas him. I jokingly (read: passive/aggressively) referred her to her purpoted* teachings from my childhood.

"But this is different" she said, "There are people who would be offended by what you're doing".

Uh, okay.

For what it's worth, I don't cover up when Daniel is nursing because, while I'm not too keen on supplying a specific band of fetishists with a laundry list of wank fantasies, breastfeeding isn't a sexual thing and as such, it doesn't need censorship. I don't like eating while wearing a bag over my head, so I'm not going to make my kid eat while wearing a bag over his. Also, a ready supply of oxygen never goes astray when one plans on keeping one's infant alive. In any case, his big, giant head covers my nipples which are, according to the FCC and their outrage over wardrobe malfunctions, the business end of pornography - and why is that? I mean, when it comes to mammaries, men and women share the nipple factor, but we don't share the lumpiness. Why then isn't the lumpiness censored?

Eh, I know what I mean, I'm just having a hard time transforming my thought processes into journal entries.

Actually, I have a hard time transforming everything these days, which is why my pages here are so yawnsome. I think things and then *poof* they're lost in translation, becoming something as riveting as "this happened, that happened, the end". Just so we're clear, my life isn't as boring as my lack of updating suggests. Oh, we do sweet fuck all most days, but in between the fuck alls, there is Daniel, and his light fills my heart and makes it sing. Loving him is like watching someone blow up a balloon. There's this anticipation that builds as the balloon grows, and it grows so big that it's just got to explode, but it doesn't. It keeps growing and you keep watching and the anticipation of it exploding right...about...now - but it doesn't...actually, it's probably more like an orgasm than it is a balloon. The feeling is so intense that it has to explode, but it doesn't, and just when you think it couldn't get any more intense, it does. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

If you have kids, I probably don't need to explain that analogy to you at all.

But I digress.

While I always planned on breastfeeding, I was a little squicked by the idea. I was also squicked by the idea of climbing out of bed in the middle of the night to sterilise bottles, mix formula and plug my baby's gaping maw with a bottle. My laziness was enough to convince me that breast is best, even though breast is best (oops, did I say that out loud?), and lo! After nursing the little sucker (hee!) a few time, the squick factor faded and now it's just Something We Do To Keep Him Alive.

Speaking of which, I expressed for the first time ever yesterday, the Grande Planne being mum would bottle feed him while I was away for more than the three hours there are between feeds to run some clases. HA! Dude is short but man, he's opinionated. He also ended up wearing more of his dinner than what went down, and my mother may never recover.

I write boring entries, but with ta-tas like these, I don't need to be interesting.
Also, Yoda had a bath at my house the other day.

*are these real words?

news in

Daniel's a birth has finally been registered, and there's a big, fat blank where the father's details should be.

I should be, but I'm not relieved. Sure, Stef doesn't want to acknowledge this child right now, and in my arena, angels should be singing, but what about the day he wants to play Daddy? God but I dread that day. I'd want to fight it all the way because not sharing my son with that (oh my, I almost said the "c" word) man would make me very, very happy, but if it'd make Daniel happy to be with him, I'd have to smile and be happy for him, even as it's killing me. Thinking of waving that little boy off each Wednesday and every other Friday...I know it does no good to worry about what may never happen, but this is me and that's not about to happen, so thinking about not having Daniel for those days, and knowing who he'd be with...I can hardly breathe.

I'm angry and I'm sad too- and hell no, I'm not sad because Stef isn't around. That'd be a HUGE negative on that one Batman. I'm sad because I have abandonment issues n' shit, and Daniel being rejected like this, well, it makes me sad in case it makes him sad one day, and I'm angry because I'd like to smack the bejeezuz out of any fucker who makes my child sad.

*****

About the fatigue (oh, the fatigue) I mentioned earlier. My god. It has nothing to do with this new mother crap, though it is complicated by it. It's not a Need To Nap kind of tired, more of an Who Put Cement In My Shoes? kind of feeling. Lifting my leg to put one foot down, repeat as desired, is killing me. No shit, I'm so tired I can hardly walk. It's been like this for years now, in varying degrees - since I gained weight actually, how naff is that? I had energy to burn when I was a stick figure, and yet for the four years I've weighed more than ninety pounds, ugh. This was of course, initially complicated by the thyroid issues I acquired a nano second after the weight gain, and then the bout of mono I contracted after that, then the two surgeries after that for the annoying lumps etc appearing in places they shouldn't be, then the relapse of mono following that (oy), so every year or so I get on the medical bandwagon, donate a shitload of blood and hope that some goon can find something innocuous - and entirely fixable - that's causing this bone numbing fatigue. Or give me script for methamphetamine. Yeah. You think I kid? When I was doing fifty billion classes a week and working so hard, I was tired not because of the workload, I worked despite being exhausted, and if I wasn't such a scaredy cat, a hit of whizz wouldn't have been out of the question on many a day, yessiree Bob.

So anyway, it's time again to address this tiredness shit so I'm seeing yet another doctor and have had the gallons of blood leeched. Apart from my thyroid levels being in my fucking shoes, another result came back looking dodgy. Now while there's no real definitive diagnosis, this result may be one that says "Yes! you may have Chronic Fatigue, the Syndrome, not just the Fatigued, Chronically version. Let's investigate!!".

Yay?

wah, etc

The other day, I don't know whether my sadness rubbed off on Daniel, or whether Daniel's day long whimpering was what took me from a teeter on the edge of to a plunge into a sea of despair. Thankfully, the mood passed for both of us, but for one day, oy.

I've been dealing with hairloss for four years and now, hello! post partum shed, and I'm also dealing (rather well I might add, considering that while my life looks normal, kinda, I've not dropped the freakazoid attitude toward food and weight) with the size of my butt threatening to take over the Southern Hemisphere. As an aside, what the fuck is up with that? Eight days after Daniel made his entrance, I got my old body back. It was a little softer around the edges and I had a little pooch where my washboard abs used to be, but by and large, my jeans fit, angels sung and if you listened closely, you could hear the sound of a harpsichord playing in the background. Now though, ugh. I'm breastfeeding fercrisake. The rule book says breastfeeding mothers lose the goddamned baby weight. I didn't really gain any baby weight, so should be able to eat a horse and the stable cats, but nooo. Despite the fact that I'm eating barely enough to keep a bug alive, I'm gaining saddlebags (hello equine theme) and this...this...big fat thing behind me. Worry not though, for despite this stringent regimen, not only am I growing beyond the state line, Daniel is thriving. That's mothercode for 'time to buy bigger diapers'.

The calorific math doesn't add up though. In goes, like, a thousand of those suckers - and Daniel and I are both gaining a tonnage a week. Lesson time: it takes three thousand five hundred extra calories to gain an extra pound, so what the fucking fuck?!?. Daniel's succulent outer coating flatters his fine self, while mine means I have nothing to wear and I look like an extra on the set of Free Wille.

That digression means that the theme of my planned entry has exploded because Sir Suckalot, who was alseep, isn't, so he's exploded. Not literally, thank goodness, vocally, and probably also in-his-pants-erly, so I'll quickly summarise: we were both sad, him maybe because he realised I'm not really a good mother, I'm just a bad mother blessed with an easy kid, or maybe because of that fucking eighty dollar parking ticket, and me because even though I stoically deal with hairloss, regrets over my wasted life, bills, bills, bills and no income, a million other things that whirl through my overthinking mind because I truly am a poor thing, and the fatigue, oh the fatigue, which is not related to food intake or new motherhood and is grounds for another entry entirely, and this newly formed, still growing, big, giant arse on a daily basis like it's all no thing, on that one day this week, I felt like crying so Daniel did it for me. The end.