Beating Bad Hair: The Hattification
The one genius thing about Winter is the excuse to cover a bad hair day in seconds AND NO-ONE SUSPECTS A THING. It is even better when your house is infested with hair-pulling midgets who (a) can’t reach hair when it’s under a beanie, and (b) can pull/chew on the plaits instead (because babies are pretty much like cats, let’s face it).
We’ve already begun teaching beanie-wearing skills to the next generation:
PS I received some Rather Good News today that may change everything – or nothing. I’ll blog about it fully within the month.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
So July is interesting so far. Our landlady is selling our flat; I’ve given up losing weight (for now); I’m about to go back on anti-depressants (just to see how functional I can get – possibly very functional indeed); my sister is in town and about to have a second child; and I’m looking for full-time work for the first time in my life. Should be interesting.
Here’s Louisette, pleased with her sudden increase in solo-sitting ability.
Zebras pulling carriages
Let’s face it: The Victorians were just cooler than us.
Lots more pics of different zebras pulling different carriages.
Ebooks
Ebooks are a huge deal, it’s true, but in my opinion the appeal of the “Hah! Take THAT, traditional publishing!” story leads to misinformation and exaggeration. Here’s a collection of articles on ebooks.
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2011/01/importance-of-context-part-1.html – ebook reality vs hype AND http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/12/will-you-ever-buy-mostly-e-books.html AND http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/11/top-10-myths-about-e-books.html AND (which I think is an example of some of the extremely rare people who are doing ok – while still not as good as print publishing) http://ripping-ozzie-reads.com/2011/01/08/e-books-and-indyself-publishing/
As you may have noticed (but I clearly did not), yesterday was Friday. I’d post your weekly book review, but I plan to write up “Red Dirt Diary 2: Blue About Love”, and that’s not going to happen for a few days yet. I’m basically better now, but still sleeping a lot and moving very little.
Sick Day
When you’re a parent and you and the kid/s get sick at the same time, you’re pretty much screwed. Luckily I have a mum and sister in town who have swooped in to save the day, taking Louisette to their place so I can loll about as pathetically as I like.
This is Louisette and I “playing” at 8:30 this morning, before the troops arrived:
PS We received some more bad news yesterday (admittedly, bad news that we were pretty sure was coming) and we definitely won’t be buying a house this year.
Borrow a Robot
Last week our ceiling was removed and replaced, so CJ and I avoided home as much as possible. We had an extremely delicious lamb roast at the home of an ex of mine, who happened to have a house-cleaning robot buzzing around in the hall. Based on his blasé offer to lend it to us* and the fact that plaster dust takes days to settle, we borrowed it for several days and had enormous fun watching it disappear under the couch, terrify our cats, and fumble about dizzily when its low battery prompted it to plug itself back in (at one stage we had a dinner party and the poor robot had half a dozen people shouting directions at it and trying to herd it back to its dock).
Oh! And my ex also lend us a clever little device about the size of a computer mouse which shoots out a line of laser light that the robot refuses to cross (we placed it at the top of the stairs for fairly obvious reasons).
I promised you lasers, as I recall.
*I now suspect that this was all some kind of cunning revenge plan, since the robot always gravitated towards my ankles, plaintively bumping into me and whirring frantically as its under-whiskers tickled my bare skin. SUSPICIOUS.
Who am I? The rebooted identity
A vast number of new parents – especially mums, who go through so much more before the child is even born – struggle with a major and permanent change in their entire lifestyle and identity. In a peculiar way, I am very lucky: I’d already had my self-identity and life utterly destroyed by seven years of mental illness, so having a baby actually made me much better off (because I have a meaningful purpose once again, and it so happens that minding a baby is something I handle about as well as the average. Being average feels like superman to me, so I win).
One of my minor obsessions is disabusing new writers of the notion that they’re about to become rich and famous, and the latest expression of that obsession was somewhat tactless and made several people on a writing forum quite angry. It always freaks me out to have anyone mad at me, and it made me think about what kind of person I am, and what kind of person I want to be. After much thought, I reckon that (s)mothering/teaching has always been a huge part of who I am, and for better or worse my often-patronising urge to help others is never going to go away. Luckily I finally have an appropriate target for my maternal instincts.
The last couple of Wednesday blogs have probably given some indication of my stress levels – Louisette is sleeping about seven hours at night, which is great for her age but not actually enough for me to be physically or mentally okay.
CJ and I are deciding whether or not to buy a house this year – which is absolutely awesome, but the uncertainty and the financial burden-to-be are hugely stressful, particularly since we have financial surprises falling like bombs around us (in other news, having our ceiling replaced last week wasn’t fun; our landlady is selling our flat).
I recently had a frankly miraculous weight gain: three kilos in under a week. I can account for one kilo (time of the month) and perhaps another (chocolate – but I really wasn’t that bad, and I did plenty of exercise). Three at once was a huge shock. That’s it for me until Spring: I’ve had too many weight loss failures this year, and it’s clear my body just isn’t up to it (I get headaches every time I cut down my chocolate intake). I’m devastated that I still look four months pregnant, but the only logical choice is to treat this time as yet another non-returnable gift from Mother Nature and just live with it rather than wasting myself in a fight I can’t win. Things may change in Spring, when losing weight doesn’t make me wake up shivering at 3am. But as far as my physical self goes, I probably don’t have much choice about the end result. I will always look pretty sh– pregnant. That is not a helpful thing to deal with, and certainly alters my self-image as a whole.
Right now my body is giving me a bunch of weird aches and pains (I find myself walking with a limp, etc) which I figure is a stress thing. Louisette remains a very easy baby and in some ways the least stressful part of my life – but this is probably the most stressful time CJ and I have been through, and it’s all coming to a head. I really don’t handle uncertainty well at all – I guess that’s another part of me that isn’t changing anytime soon. Will we move to a new house, with a yard for Louisette to faceplant in happily? Or will we be thrown out of our current flat and end up somewhere that’s smaller and costlier? We have a rental contract until January, but we may have a different landlord by then. Until now, our landlady has given us nothing but peace and security. It was hugely beneficial for my mental health, and I was improving (just ask CJ) – but home is not a safe place any more.
I know I’m a lot happier and saner since having Louisette, but right now my mental state is like a frozen lake with cracks in it: it might hold, and it might not. Louisette’s existence does mean the stakes are higher than ever before – but if the ice shatters I know exactly what to do: 1. Put the baby in the cot and walk away. 2. Tell CJ.
Our biggest stress may actually be resolved this week – or it may get worse. Nobody knows.
I look forward to finding how much sanity I end up with when I have a settled home and eight hours’ sleep a night. I may actually be able to get a real job one day (probably when kid #2 starts school – and kid #2 doesn’t exist yet). Either way, I have choices about who I am and who I want to be. It’s like a reboot of the teenage years, except this time I feel in control (with the exception of my body, which hates me as much as I hate it – but it functions all right, so I guess that’s the main thing).
Making a stand
Okay, so I have several awesomenesses waiting to be written (one has lasers*), but I’m tired now – so here’s an awesome thing from exactly today:
*not true. There’s only one laser.
Kissing Frogs
They say you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. Louisette is getting started early.
Steampunk attire for real-world gentlemen
Hurrah! Prada has gone steampunk! Truly ruly. Modern fashion just became interesting for the first time – and don’t they know it! Yes, these faces are indeed familiar. . .
Want more? Here’s more.
Felicity Banks 