Trench-ant
I can’t help feeling - as I sit here and try and cram 14 hours of files (i.e. two days work) into one day, that I am coming close to turning into one of the freaks that I have to type about. I was just typing about someone’s carpal tunnel syndrome and my wrist is sore and twitchy, then I move on to someone with bilateral shoulder pain, and my right shoulder starts to ache. Then I start typing about someone with…oh, whatever. You get the idea.
I am still here. Still feeling like that witch in that Judy Garland film my brain won’t tell me the name of. The rainbow one. Oh! The Wizard of Oz! I’m that witch (north, south?) who screams “I’m melting, I’m melting!!” That’s what it feels like. I have just gone through the most hell week, some of which I can’t type about for fear of incriminating myself and making my life more difficult - but staying at my mum’s with Z on my own with no power was a highlight, M in a filthy mood with a filthy cold staying at my mum’s with me and Z and no power the night before my birthday - that wasn’t bad either.
Having my birthday somewhat hijacked by the arrival of M’s sister, cousin and great-niece - which wasn’t their fault, as they didn’t know, but it did mean M had to cut short my birthday lunch (eaten in shifts as we baby wrangled the non-sleeping Z) and leave for the airport at 2pm, and not returning until 6pm. Waking up on my birthday and having to wait around for a (very nice) electrician to fix up stuff, and then give him $250 [sigh]. Blah blah blah, there are children dying with their legs blown off in far horribler situations than mine, but guess what - they’re not here whining about it on my blog. I am. And there’s more to come. Gah.
Flying
I can type this very quickly because it is not work time. Work time is when PartyPie sleeps – and as she only sleeps in grabs of forty to fifty minutes about three or four (if we’re lucky) times a day – I have not got any work done this week. Anyway, here in Trailerland I am sitting here amidst the most disgusting fly plague. There are a ba-MILLION flies and somehow they keep getting into the trailer.
Now, the trailer and I have an understanding. We are fond of each other. Living here is serving a purpose – it is not my heartfelt dream to reside in a trailer, but it serves its purpose while M is building the Very Large Catamaran. However, as the trailer is…a trailer – it is sometimes easy for it to regress into icksville. (As opposed to Hicksville…although that’s nearby.)
I am reluctant to spray because I don’t want PartyPie to have Aeroguard lungs, but there are only so many I can kill with a skanky teatowel. Am plotting to see if local supermarket has some antiquated flypaper (the odds are slightly higher on that than them actually stocking tofu or the check-out person knowing what rhubarb is). The flies are really unbearable – I can’t even nap with PartyPie in bed during the day because they keep landing on us – she has to nap under netting in her pram. Gah.
Which is the coolest bit of New York?
I suppose this all depends on what you’re into. But, just say you’re going to New York for a month, and you’re into bars, fashion, art, music - all the fun stuff. Which of the following addresses would it be best to have? (And no, sadly this is not me - it’s Small Brother.) When I write “High 300’s” I’m talking about the street numbers, btw.
a) Chelsea - in the high 700’s on 6th Avenue
b) Flatiron district - low on West 31st Street
c) Midtown West - low 300’s West 58th Street
d) Upper East Side - low 300’s East 63rd Street
e) Gramercy - high 200’s 3rd Avenue
f) None of the above, Small Brother sucks. He is spoilt for choice.
My vote is for Gramercy (because I liked that Ben Lee song from a million years ago) and I’ve always wanted to go to Gramercy Park and Small Brother is arsey enough to befriend someone with a key. My other pick is Flatiron district - because somewhere, packed away, I have an excellent print of the Flatiron Building which is pining to be framed.
From the trenches
I have been going to Mother’s Group. Yes. Twice. It is less freaky, and more bearable than I had thought possible. There is even a girl there who I think is very nice. Yet my mind still struggles with the fact that all members of my mother’s group seem to live in this area of their own free will. They are not living here in order to build a large catamaran. Anyway. The trenches. Yes. Yesterday I was in the Somme.
Small Z did not have a lengthy relationship with sleep yesterday, as each time she seemed about to have any, I had to drag her in and out of the car. For a baby that only really chucks a mayhem at arsenic hour, having a sad little bugger shackled in the back of the car when you have to drive an hour from home and then an hour back is probably quite close to my idea of hell. First we went to the mother’s group, and then had to drive into town for me to drop off my work files and collect more. By that stage she was very miserable, and SO tired.
L at work held her for a bit just as I was sorting out my stuff to leave and she fell asleep. I took her, still asleep, and put her in the CAPSULE OF EVIL (i.e. the carseat) whereupon she awoke and was yelling. I drove grimly toward my mother’s house, about a four minute drive from my work. Of course, just as I rounded the corner of the side street to my mum’s, she fell asleep. Naturally, I could not then stop the car, because that would have awoken the Kraken of the deep. So I called my mum and said we wouldn’t be stopping by. She was very indignant, as she had stayed home all afternoon waiting and did not know of my dire and horrible day…I screamed unintelligibly into the phone and threw it across the car, and then drove around for ages, too scared to get stuck in peak hour traffic on the way home, but too scared to turn off the engine.
I called L. Small C is seven months now, so she has been in the trenches recently, and still enters them regularly. SHe was sensible. “Come here, I will make us a cup of tea, and if you don’t want to turn off the car, then leave it running in the driveway.”
So I did. Of course, after ten minutes the Kraken awoke, but then we walked down and got some takeaway Indian to have back at the trailer, and L gave me tea and Small C lent Small Z her change table. It was all convivial, and saved my sanity.
The drive home was almost another epic. Poor little Z was so sick of being in the carseat, and was so tired she was beside herself (an interesting phrase). I drove into the Bunnings carpark near Cheltenham and drove backwards and forwards over a speedhump, which was an effective soporific. I had to pull over once more on our journey. By the time we hit Cranbourne she was asleep, but threatened to mutiny at every traffic light; so as I drove through Cranbourne, each time I got near a set of red lights, I would veer off into the car parks and petrol stations on the left, just to keep driving - because this time I was unable to cope with any more backseat traumas 
Finally we made it back to the Trailer. Small Z asleep. M got her out of the capsule, and for some reason did not put her straight in bed. She then mayhem-ed for the next three hours. All up, it was the hardest day I have had, and she has had, since her arrival. And it is for that reason we will be finding an alternative way to do things. Shoving her in the car for two hours when she is still such a tiny thing just so I can go and pick up files is TOO MUCH HARD WORK. M said that every time he telephoned me during the day it was as if I was a war correspondent in Iraq. There has to be a better way…
Not drowning, waving! Kind of…
They were a soppy band, weren’t they? Anyway, I am half drowning while managing to wave at the world - albeit not very often. I started back at work last week - went in and collected files accompanied by Small Z. I had been told, prior to her arrival, “Don’t worry - we’ll arrange it however you want when you come back. You are coming back, aren’t you?”
I took this to mean I would be going back to my usual three days a week, but from home for the first month while I introduce Small Z to the bottle (*sob* it is something I am loath to do, but stupid life demands it) so she can hang out with M or her nanna for the day. “Sorry,” they said, “Can’t give you three days from home. You can do two.” So I arranged to do two days a week from home for a month and then add in one day at the office in May.
The idea of doing work on top of fulltime baby wrangling was one that I’d been avoiding thinking too much about. Oh. My. God. Small Z sleeps like a champ at night - feeds in her sleep and is good from about nine at night to about seven or eight in the morning - but in the day? She might sleep three or maybe four times, but rarely more than 40 minutes. And this is where I squish my work time into. Because even though she doesn’t wake up to feed - I do! Which means I am catatonic by 9pm…
So all in all, this week was an interesting experiment in what I could achieve. It was very hard, and I had to ask M to wrangle Small Z on his own for the first half of Saturday and the first half of Sunday - but I got my files done [jumps up and down with tired enthusiasm]. Am hoping it might get easier. But it meant that I had no time for anything - barely any emailing, no surfing the net, no crafty sewing of things… Gah. Time and sleep are my new drugs - and I have little of either.
Purple ears and an urge to kill
I got my hair cut and coloured (even though only exactly four people have bothered noting this fact) about two and a half weeks ago. M came along to wrangle Z, because I doubted I could do it with a head covered in foil. As it turned out, I traded in my trailer-blonde hue to go kind of reddish b!@#n as there is no way I’ll be able to maintain the trailer-blonde in my new role of parent. Amanda, my hair-heroine and owner of a toddler exactly one year older than Small Z, gave me some extra colour and peroxide stuff to use in a few weeks, as apparently colour fades very quickly when you put it straight over trailer-blonde.
This morning, with Small Z being very amenable, I mixed up the dye and asked M to paint it on the roots of my hair. I was a foolish, foolish person at this point, because I assumed that when I told him to imagine he was painting the waterline on a boat, and when I said “You didn’t get it on my skin, did you?” as I felt the brush poke my neck and then behind the ear, that he knew what the job entailed. My wrongness was large. He held up his hands once he had finished - they were purple.
“This will come off, right?”
I stared at him uncomprehendingly. He began washing his hands in the sink. They remained purple.
“You didn’t tell me that I should have worn gloves,” he whined, scrubbing furiously.
“I didn’t assume you would decide to coat your hands in it.” I felt I sounded reasonable - which I was, until I stood up and examined the job. I had an inch of dye from the back of my neck around to my ear. And some more around the other ear. I looked like I’d gone a round in the boxing ring, facing backwards. I began to scrub and shriek, while M tactfully withdrew and made himself a consolatory coffee. I began scrubbing using face cleanser and warm water. Some of it came off. A lot didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” M began bleating from the safety of the change table. “I didn’t realise. I’m really sorry. It’ll come off. I’m sure it will.”
I cranked the hot tap on harder, and then did a double take, as the water, instead of gushing forth, trickled to nothing.
“AGH! AGH! Jim’s turned the water off! Help! Help!! I have to wash this all out in fifteen minutes, or the world will explode!! Go and find him.Quickly.”
M went, taking Small Z with him. I began typing this lament, and watched him walk up the back paddock to where Jim was working on a horse drinking trough. There were two small boys with him. I beat myself over the head several times as I questioned why I had become a disaster magnet - the first time in about three years I decided to go back to doing my hair at home - and I enlist a crappy apprentice and the landlord turns the water off. Of course.
Small Z apparently had a great time watching Jim work furiously to try and get the horse thing fixed while my hair basted. A fly bit her on the hand and she yelped, but did not cry. She was entranced by the two small boys and the very large horse. Finally, she and M returned and the water began pouring from the tap I’d left on.
I jumped in the shower and began rinsing. Was mildly appalled by the fact that rather large amounts of hair remained in my hands as I put shampoo and conditioner through. How was this fair? I had done a home job, as instructed by my hairdresser, to prevent Small Z from being dragged along to a two hour appointment, and now was shedding faster than a persian cat in spring. This was not the end of my torment. After repeated looks in the mirror, my hair has now dried. Is it a deep mahogany b!@#n colour? Is it?!? No. No it’s not. Because that would have been too much to expect.
I swear that I ran to the kitchen and double checked what it said on the colour tubes, because my hair is now BLACK. Just like M has always wanted it to be. Oh. My. God. Of the many colours I have been, black is my least favourite, as it renders me corpselike without make-up on, thus making me look about three hundred and seven - which is about how many times I have shouted the work FUCK!!! in the last twenty minutes. I have goth hair. And I have less hair than I had before. And I have purple ears and a purple neck and a dressing gown with purple stains around the neck (thanks again, M…) I have no idea what I did wrong, but in my vast history of hair dyeing, it has never gone this pear-shaped. Gah. Kill kill.
Trailer Gloom
Dear Small Brother,
You left today to go back to bloody London, where you will be for another few months before relocating to bloody New York - an equally distant location [sigh]. It was fun having you here, though arguably, we probably had more fun last time on our sailing adventure and city holiday. However, baby wrangling is the current priority - and you were surprisingly good at it. You didn’t earn the title of Spare Parent by just buying M a slab of Coopers (although you probably could’ve…)
There were a surfeit of hot, disgusting days during your visit, which was somewhat unfair. Particularly for me, as I was unable to drown them in gin and tonics. I remember this time last year that the weather was far more accommodating. Oh. Glad you liked tooling around in my car!
Just after you left, with the trailer under a pall of gloom, I was putting away a pair of shorts that I’d put in storage for about ten months. In the pocket was a receipt for a pair of jeans I bought that day that you, M and I cycled from the boat to the Collingwood Children’s Farm - the previous night, M had retrieved his bike from the bottom of the harbour using the anchor. By the time we were halfway there, we noted that M’s bum had become a soggy, wet browned thing. The bike seat had not dried out from it’s deep sea dive.
We refused to go to a children’s farm with someone with a butt like a very suspect pond dweller and took M into the big op-shop on the river in Abbotsford. We made him buy more shorts. I also bought a pair of jeans. It was exactly a year ago that I found the receipt for them in my pocket. I tried to look up what else we had got up to and am horrified to realise that it never made it to [miaow] - yet another task for the person who is someone else’s food source and has eyebags you could use to buy in bulk.
We here at the Trailer hope your flight was good, and we also hope that you make it back before the end of the year, at which time PartyPie will be able to run toward you shrieking “Oh! Greetings and salutations Spare Parent. I have been missing you in my own small way. Did you bring me more presents then?”
I will coach her assiduously in your absence.
May your nose not freeze and your lager be plentiful. Come back soon!
Love,
The Elder Sibling
Welcome to the World
Yesterday we hosted a Welcome to the World party for Small Z. I have to admit - it was entirely organised by M, as I couldn’t bear to wrap my sapped and exhausted brain around the mere idea of putting on a ‘do’. M sent out the invites, cleared out the backyard (goodbye to Buns’ bunny compound) and bought some party supplies. My mum was amazing and provided two huge excellent salads (she is not known as the ’salad nazi’ for nothing), watermelon, and made an equally large pink iced chocolate cake (pictures to follow).
This was the picture he used on the invite. I kind of like it :o)
E contributed her famous chickpea salad, and everyone (including my Nan, who is here from Marblehead, Small Brother, who is here from London, and Relle - our lovely doula) gathered in our somewhat dry and dusty backyard, which looks on to the paddocks.
T and Small Brother made sure everyone was equipped with champagne, and the weather was startlingly cooperative. M had worked hard on what he wanted to say and I had decided that I would also speak a few short words. M primed a few people to contribute a poem to welcoming Zoe, and E, PGR and my mum (as tribal nanna) all spoke. It was actually quite an exceptional occasion. I welcomed Small Z to the world and remarked on the fact that I have found her personality laden, intriguing and alarmingly adorable since the time of her arrival - I also introduced Small Brother (whom not everyone knows, due to his London lifestyle) and made it known that should M and I be hit by a stray asteroid, it will be he who takes over Small Z wrangling - his title? Spare Parent. Ha!
I wetted Small Z’s head with a little bit of champagne, and DJ finished off proceedings with a poem he had thoughtfulliy and humorously penned in the back of his street directory. We all barbequed, drank and nattered into the night. It was great to see my Nan meeting all our mates, and Small Z’s other baby friends (Small E and Chloe Rose) were also in attendance.
It was a day that I couldn’t have put together, but I’m so grateful that M did. Almost everyone remembered to write in the Special Book that I’m going to keep as a record of Zoe’s first year. It was a lovely day; because of the people who came along (M referred to them as “Zoe’s Tribe”) and also because of why they came. M finished his welcome speech with this:
William Blake put childhood this way:
To see the World in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
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*Salad Nazi: someone who repeatedly forces their salad upon you e.g. “Have you had some of the green salad? Have more of the green salad. Hey, I don’t think you eat enough salad. Do you want to finish off that salad?”
