about a boy

Daniel is four. He's in preschool now, and is such a nice boy, it's unbelievable. I'm his mother so it's my job to think he's the best thing evah, but when OTHER mums tell me how great he is,I think maybe I'm not so biased after all. Maybe he IS an amazing kid! He's sitting next to me right now, having some quality time with the dvd player. V educational, Dr Seuss is. Ahem.

For whatever reason (I don't know, maybe it's becasue he's FOUR) he's now learning the finer details on Being A Boy. Unfortunately, these lessons are coming to him thanks to the insecurities of parents who think that allowing boys to to experience and enjoy whatthefuck they want even if it's pink or has ribbons and bows will make them gay, and Daniel has started sprouting propoganda like "Pink isn't for boys, it's for girls. I don't like pink" when pink has long long LONG been his favorite colour, and "The Fairies is for girls", which sucks because I took him to The Fairies show last year and he lost his mind with love for the show.

Daniel wanted a pink sparkle balloon that day too, and the girl selling them looked at me with concern and sidemouth whispered "Is that okay?". Yes. It is. Except now, and probably forever, he's all "ew, pink is for GIRLS, and so is bling. Ptooey, yech, etc".

On the more traditional macho side, he LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine, and so does my friend's little girl. So there. Daniel gets up at night yelling "THOMAS!" in his sleep, and reports Thomas dreams pretty much every morning. Can we say "obsessed?" Or maybe it's just "four". Or, "boy". Or "Jury's still out on that gay thing".

He starts school in first term next year, so in January 2011, and is enrolled in a small Catholic school up the road from where we live. I'm not Catholic (anymore) but I'd like Daniel to have a start point for any spiritual journey he may wish to take.

His father's presence in his life is still sporadic, which makes things easy for me on the one hand, and harder on the other because it's screwing with Daniel already, and that makes my heart hurt.

On Daniel's birthday, Strep showed up at the front door after seven (S.E.V.E.N) months of no contact at all. Daniel ran around like an excited puppy, and I've never before or since seen such a show of (awesome, am weepy writing about it a whole three months later) Look At Me! as a thin disguise for what it was: Please Love Me.

When he left (him: "can't stay, the dog is in the car". me: "The DOG is in the car? Daniel's happy to see you and you have to leave because the DOG is in the car?" and that's when I let him have it. Right in front of his daughter too, but not in front of daniel who'd scampered off to find something else to impress his father with. ) Daniel had his second asthma attack ever. He'd had NO symptoms after hsi first attack: no cough, no wheezing, no shortness of breath after exercise, spring pollens, cats, NOTHING affected him. The doctor said then it was quite possible the emotional upheaval had triggered it, and then Daniel had a cough that lasted for another month, and it THAT ended up being his unresolved second asthma attack, and he needed preventor medication to get rid of it. So, really, that awesome paternal drift in drift out again experience cost Daniel six weeks of optimal lung function, and now several weeks of extra (steroid, so not yay) meds.

In that seven months, I contacted his father because sometimes you have to be bigger than the pissiness that gets me thinking "fuck that" because it's not about him or me bla bla BLA. Anyway, the calls and texts were ignored, and, well, fuck that. Let the ass shoot himself in his own foot. Which essentially means let him mess with my son's head. Repeat this in your own head over and over until your own head is being messed with. Actually, think it over once and reap the benefits.

It's a difficult place to be because there's nothing I can do that isn't like choosing which door to certain doom I'd rather Daniel took. So I do whatever might suck maybe slightly less than the other, but maybe not, good luck with that, suckah. If I tell Strep "Nope, too bad, If you can't commit to your own son, then piss off", which is what I WANT to do, then it's likely that, when Daniel is older, he'll feel I deprived him of his father. If I don't do anything, then it's likely Daniel's going to feel rejected, and he'll likely assume because of deficits in HIM, not his father.

Still though, Daniel is one of the happiest kids I know. He's secure and confident and makes friends easily and just loves to laugh. Everything is fun for him, and BECAUSE he's so nice and easy and funny and chatty, his life is a series of positive reinforcement from pretty much everyone he ever meets. I'm always impressed at how, even at four, he's so INCLUSIVE. If there's a kid in the (MacDonald's. Don't judge) playground, he'll make sure they're not left alone. He's a real protector too, and sensitive, and so kind. I've never (NEVER) had to drag him outside to force an apology to a sobbing victim of his preschoolerness. (You all: " and does he shit gold too?" Me: "well, now that you mention it...")

Of the two of us, I often wonder who's more adult. In the ultimate role reversal of Grown Up v Preschooler, I'm less predictable (thankYOU, PMS), and when I've succumbed to the black hole of Crazy, he reassures me "It's okay, mummy. We don't fight that much" when I apologise to him AGAIN for being such a monumental ass.

Which isn't right, but neither is PMS, so I guess it all evens out somewhere in the universe.

comments, etc

How much does the new coment system suck? Effing haloscan curled up and died. Before it did, I got emails saying "log in here to save yourself" or whatever, then I tried to log in here several hundred million times and couldn't, probably because haloscan sucked and THEN died.

I'd adjusted to the whole OMGallmycommentsGONE thing, then halscan transferred me to this js-kit bullshit (which rhymes, FOR A REASON) without even asking (no doubt because after the free trial whathaveyyous, I need to PAY them for the privilege of using this complicated wtfness.

ANYWAY

Any idea how to get back to blogger commenting? I'm about to tackle my template again (AGAIN!) which is code for "stare blankly at screen, chew lip".

Later, dudes.

Edited to add: So I changed my comments back to blogger comments, and now there are no old comments here AT ALL. ANYWHERE. Which makes me sad because that's five years (!) of love thrown my way, gone. Obvs, all the "OMGNEWBABY! comments are gone too which I know I need to deal with but.....but....etc etc etc.

Lay some love on me, peeps. Let me know that duming the old to go to the new was a GOOD thing. Or! Tell me I'm a moron for ditching the past because things got too hard and log inny. Either way, I'm up for it because, comments, I has needs for.

is this thing on?

I decided today to post something about anything, because this whole Not Writing AT ALL thing kinda bothers me, especially as I still think in Blog Speak, as in, several times a day I write something rivetting and amazing in my head and then do shit all about it in terms of keystrokes.

so, the decision was made and I went and cleared out a drawer, rearranged the bathroom cabinet, and bla bla bla'd my way through the morning because these other engagements were pressing and urgent and needed doing, just like every other freakin' day I decide to write something. Which, as an aside, is every freakin' day.

My (non existent) literary life is made of Dodge and Weave.

But there IS always something more pressing and urgent to do because, as an example, right now, there's a voice yelling at me from the bathroom (which isnt a euphamism for "bathroom". it IS our bathroom. It also happens to contain the toilet) because he's "FINISHED!", and I need to "COME HERE, MUMMY!", and oh boy, we all know what THAT means.

*waves crash on beaches*

Thing is, there's SO much to tell so where do I start? And can you see what I'm doing here? Telling why I haven't told.

Awesome.

So.

I got a new job last year, and it's perfect. I get to take Daniel to work with me, the boss is AWESOME, my manager is great, there is SO MUCH potential to upskill it's unbelievable, and there's also SO MUCH more work potential available to me once Daniel is in school.

Daniel is enrolled to start school in January next year. It's a private school, and it's just up the road. Deciding factors were: smal class sizes and Italian on the curriculum.

Since enrolling Daniel, and based on the latter deal maker, I'm still wondering why in fuck my parents sent me to a school that taught French. I was fluent by the time I left school. In French. I'm ITALIAN, for christake. Okay, I'm AUSTRALIAN, but my background is Italian, with a shitload of close family members living in Italy. Where they speak ITALIAN. What the fuck were they thinking sending me somewhere that taught only French? Oh, right. My parents were idiots. I keep forgetting about that.

That brief yet intensely bitter interlude brought to you by my face, because I just spent ANOTHER thousand bucks on it, and if they hadn't been idiots their entire life, my face would never have gone through the intense amount of bullshit that seems to be a) never ending, and b) a bottomless put of financial distress. On the upside, that last thousand spondoolies was to put and end to the major youchies in my front tooth that's been there since the first surgery. Seems my dentist is an idiot (my new dentist: "you need to get out of that circle (of orthodontists, surgeons, and dentists) because mistakes have been made, and no one will admit to them, so nothing will ever be done to fix them") and that tooth IS in danger of dying or whatever, because after the surgery and the orthodontics, the ONLY point of contact in my mouth was that one front tooth. It's still loose, but after the major reconstruction work done on Friday, I'm finally free of the intense pain. No shit, some days I wanted to either punch myslf in the face, or throw myself off a cliff. After three years though, I was so used to it that when the new dental receptionist asked me if the appointment was for an emergency, I told her it wasn't, so I got an appointment for, like, a month away. Then I hung up the phone, and went back to holding my tooth cuz it's the only way to stop it hurting SO badly. Then I thought to myself "whah?", and called her straight back and got an appointment the following day.

New dentist rebuilt a lot of my teeth with, fuck, I don't know. Das? and then I resisted the urge to pash him because FINALLY, you knopw? And then my insurance said "no, actually, we're NOT going to pay", and then I cried, and then I handed over my credit card and here we are, me ranting on bitterly about inconsequential stuff when there's so much more interesting stuff to get excited about.

Things like the ChiBall Method.

I just did a seven day intensive course and loved it so much I did a workshop stright away on top of that, and daniel got to spend time with his aunt, and his old daycare centre, and I got to change my frikkin' life because THAT SHIT CHANGES YOU. Semthing to do with shifting energy, which I believe in but others, maybe you, get all "wtf are you talking about fool?" over.
But traditional chinese medicine has been around for a LOT longer than regualr western medicine so there's go to be something in it, and in that seven days I got all crankypants, then I got all sad, then I couldn't stop crying, which was hihgly annoyig and, according to the course presenters, a really frequent thing for students to go through, then I had this dream where I was so desperately sad and full of grief and I was saying to a friend of mine who, in my dream, was all up in my grill saying shit like "you're different, get grip and GET OVER IT.", and I could barely breathe from The Sad and lay on the ground and was all, "I LOST MY BABIES. Don't you GET IT?", when really, I'M the one who's refused to Get it.

I get it now, after all this time. As a related aside, it took me a full year to be able to talk to anyone about it in Real Life. A smattering of bleahs here, and that was it. I see a grief cousellor now, still, and that helps. We talk mostly about Not Babies, so it's not like I feel like I have to sort through Grief and Loss and shit. I guess though, that Grief and Loss and shit colours so much of your (ahem, MY) life, that just talking about anything helps. Which it does, if only because I get to talk about Me for an hour every so often, and I'm fascinating. Ahem.

Anyway, I woke up the next day, kept bursting into tears, and then when I got to my course that morning, cried some more than laughed about it when the presenter asked me how I was.

And then I was okay.

I feel lighter now, and calmer, and my friends tell me I look younger and happier. It's not like now I can talk about dead babies or anything, so let's talk! I don't need to tell anyone how it's affected me, and I think that's because the only peson who needs to know how I feel/felt/whatever, was/is me.

How I teach other classes now has changed dramatically as well, and while that might seem like a weird thing to marry with grief and loss, it kind of isn't.

Uusally, I begin freaking out at least four days before my class is scheduled, write some choreography, change it, change it again, practise it over and over and painstakingly choose the music I'm going to use.

Now I grab my iPod, stick on some music, and wing it when the beats start.

It's such a relief to not feel I'm made of jagged edges anymore, you know?

ChiBall Method has a simpleclass format aimed at movement, not epiphanies and life changing creams, but it WILL have a positive affect on your life. If there's a class in your area, do it. Just once. This is not a paid review bla bla BLA.

And now we DO have a pressingly urgent engagement and we're off to the beach. I apologise for the deep and meanignful shit I didn't mean to include here today, but there it is. My life, as it is now.

I do hope to write here more often, and to tell whoever's still visiting all about how magically awesome life with Daniel is.

Because it is.

Love to you all,

xx