Hitler VS Superman
And that’s a glass table.
This is Louisette’s first Easter Egg hunt:
Hey, guess what? It turns out moving house is, like, all complicated and stuff. I keep thinking of thoughtful, fascinating things to write here, and then forgetting them utterly. This is the point where I say, “Here they are!” …or it would be, but I did say “utterly”. Here’s some other random gibberish.
First, some pics! Here’s Louisette three seconds after climbing on to one of our dining room tables for the first time (I grabbed the camera, turned around, and found this):
I quite often work a twelve-hour day without breaks – especially on Wednesdays. I get up at 6:30 to get dressed and have breakfast, and usually have a few small urgent jobs (putting dishes away, coordinating babysitting for some upcoming event, doing yet another change of address form). Louisette wakes at 7 (last night she woke twice during the night too, but that’s unusual), and I’m generally still getting ready for work so CJ gives her the milk and breakfast I’ve prepared. She and I leave at 7:25am for work. From 8am until 6pm I mind Louisette, an 18-month old, and a 4-year old. It’s ten hours, and there’s no-one but me. Lately, Louisette is the only one who naps (which today involved two and a half hours of screaming because she is teething/picking up on family moving stress/adjusting to different sleeping arrangements).
I get home at 6:30pm – eleven hours after leaving for work, and eleven hours since the last moment I had thirty seconds to myself (Louisette often screams during the drive – luckily we’re moving closer to my workplace AND it looks like they’re happy for me to work from home!) The good news about today (other than earning $200 – which is more than I’ve earned in a fortnight for most of the last decade) is that, although the kids were extra-mucusy and certainly not at their best behaviour-wise, I was looking forward to home time. . . . but NOT panicking and not getting angry. Miserable but not insane – on an eleven-hour day? I couldn’t do it every day, but I CAN do it every week. The last tortuous month has taught me how consistently strong I am.
(My normal 12-hour day is 7am-7pm with Louisette and an hour or two of other jobs to do with Louisette in tow. On a bad day I beg CJ to be home at 6:30, and I leave him to feed Louisette upstairs while I hide from the mess and screaming in our room.) Oh! And I forgot to mention that while I was at work today our lawyer called and said our settlement date for the house might get changed. The thought is so appalling I don’t think it’s even registered yet.
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In extremely exciting news, I’ve just found out about a combined school and childcare centre that is super close to our new house AND involves several acquaintances of mine (that I like) AND is Christian. So first of all, the future question of Lousiette’s school is now solved, no question. But I may also have just found a career! This development is only a few days old so it’s possible I’m crazy, but here’s the plan:
Pre-1 (which has been firmly on the table for about a year now): Get more qualifications. Yep that’s right, I’m going back to school. I’ll be doing online TAFE courses, and challenging myself to finish them in the fastest possible time (pending the epiphany that studying, working, and mum-ing is a lot to do at once).
1. Get job at childcare centre that fits in with my current job time-wise. This is the hard part, but I do have a shot. The boss is actually a former boss of mine, and we’re already talking about a job for me BUT I’m certainly not qualified yet.
2. Enrol Lousiette in childcare centre on the same two days I’m there.
3. Get pregnant sometime next year. Make the most of sickness and maternity leave (woo! a real job!!) – but if I’m as sick as last time, leave Louisette in a comfortable safe environment while I languish at home (and call in the grandparental troops for other days).
4. When Puggle (future kid) is old enough, enrol him/her into the childcare centre on the same days.
5. When the respective times come, Louisette and Puggle transition to big school.
6. When I’m no longer in the carer-of-an-under-five-year-old lifestyle category, I get a job teaching Indonesian (which I’ve done before for the same people – I quit because of mental illness, not that I knew it was mental illness at the time). By then I should know my capabilities very well, and I’ll choose my hours accordingly.
Sounds pretty good, non?
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In other news, as I was driving home I realised one of my knee-length skirts (which fortunately I can’t fit into and thus haven’t worn for years) is, in fact, a petticoat. I’ve owned that skirt for at least eight years (I know because I remember wearing it often when I worked at Questacon) and worn it hundreds of times. D’oh!
On the up side, when it comes to wearing underwear on the outside, me and Superman have heaps in common.
You may have heard and/or noticed that every argument in the Western World eventually, somehow, results in someone bringing up Hitler. (Everything from “Hitler was a vegetarian” to “. . . and that’s why Obama is just like Hitler.”) After mentally writing the above paragraph, I was watching TV and Superman was brought up. That’s when it struck me: Why can’t we shake up the world just a teensy bit so every argument ends with SUPERMAN instead?
It’s up to you, my peeps. Go find a series of comments somewhere online that have veered wildly off track (that should take you about five seconds) and bring the thread back to superman – no matter what it takes.
D’oh!
Still nothing to say.
In other news, I keep growing out of my fat pants, and have to buy more. Did that today, which is almost like a benefit of my ever-increasing weight.
Sickening (PG mild swearing)
It’s now abundantly clear that every time I cut down on chocolate – even for as little as a day – I get sicker. Not “darn these pesky sniffles” sicker but, “Oh man, bronchitis again? With more permanent internal organ damage due to the violence of the coughing? Great.”
Luckily, I’m aware than moving house is one of the largest personal stresses (outdone only by death and divorce – some of which unfortunately also involve moving house) so hopefully in a few months when life calms down considerably, I’ll be able to lose weight without falling apart.
Of course it’ll be Winter then. And once the weather warms up (properly; I find September and October cold) I’ll start thinking about getting pregnant again. So that’s 2014 and 15 taken care of – about a year of permanent crippling nausea followed by about a year of never getting eight hours’ sleep in a row.
Mother Nature is a real bitch. If I saw her in the street I’d punch her in the guts.
My little. . . .
Today Louisette took her walker into the kitchen, threw it repeatedly on the ground, and screamed in inconsolable frustration for ten minutes. Then I finally figured out what she wanted, and unscrewed one of the large plastic screws holding it together. She spent the next half hour delightedly examining the pieces. Perhaps she’ll be a mechanic someday.
Nowadays her vocabulary (some of which fades from use for weeks before reappearing) includes Mum, Dad, more, no, yeah, oh yeah, oh dear, tickle, duck, dog, woof, cat, broom-broom, ball, book, hello. Farmer? Telephone sales rep? Sportswoman?
She has a toy knife which she LOVES. All day she walks around with it clutched in one fist. Just. . . . ready. Boy, she sure loves that knife.
Time to stop guessing Louisette’s future. Stupid idea, anyway.
Take that, Maxwell Smart
This week, Louisette (who has been wandering around the place holding a toy mobile phone to her ear and saying, “Hello! Hello!”) invented the shoe-phone.
I took photos, but I’m still having technical problems so I’ll have to show you later.
Walking
Last Friday, when Louisette and I were picking up another child from her school, we were very early and I decided to see if she could walk the whole way to the classroom from the carpark. She did – and then wandered around the play area on foot for another twenty minutes. That day marked the end of an era. She’s certainly slow and easily distracted, and she falls on her bum plenty – but there’s no looking back now.
On Sunday we went to the Commonwealth Park castle playground with some friends, and she walked to the playground from where we were sitting – with a little help from her friend.
Are we there yet?
Nope.
Still haven’t exchanged contracts. Still nothing wrong, though, so that’s good. Just endless paperwork and waiting for other people to pass all their bits of paper around the circle three times and/or until the music stops. Something like that.
It should be official sometime this week. For reals this time. . .
Experimentation
I’ve noticed while minding Louisette and other toddlers that most of their time is spent exploring the world (requiring little more than observation on my part, which is awesome since conversations are a teensy bit repetitive): tasting, pulling, turning, shoving, trying on, putting something into a box, taking it out, etc etc. Can I lift the lid while sitting on it? What noise do ping pong balls make when I knock them together? What do cat eyeballs feel like?
They use a true scientific method, trying the same thing over and over until they have enough data points and can move on (pending further research). Speaking of movement – it’s a good thing we’ll be moving house soon (assuming nothing goes horribly wrong 🙂 ) because Louisette has just realised she can climb bookshelves. Including the ones that are holding the safety gate in place. The safety gate at the top of the stairs.
Hopefully the cat eyeball thing will continue to interest her a little longer.
Sadly, pics don’t seem to be working at present. I may or may not make it up to you someday.
Tick. . . . tick. . . . tick. . . .
So we haven’t signed contracts on our house yet. Not for lack of trying, believe me.
It generally takes 1-2 weeks for real estate agents, lawyers, buyers, sellers, and banks to all formalise the “yes” that they said at the beginning. Or before the beginning.
CJ and I aren’t that badly off. We’ll sign the contract on Tuesday, and then it’ll do a quick circuit of the aether before everyone else can sign and we’re safe (from gazumping at least).
Rationally, it’s unlikely we’ll get gazumped at this stage. It would have happened by now. But if thirteen years of novel writing has taught me anything, it’s that when you work really, really hard towards a goal for several years, and then put everything you have into making it happen, the result will be a wait that turns out to be much longer than it should be – followed by disappointment. Then more work, more waiting, and more disappointment.
This is the same oft-repeated scenario that threw me into a wild pathological panic the instant CJ and I began trying to make Louisette (which, for the record, happened much faster than the average, which is 6-12 months). After thirteen years of (mostly) meaningless toil and rejection, I have a problem with waiting. I may or may not get over it sometime. In the meantime, I attempt to at least BEHAVE rationally – which in this case means not changing my mind at the last minute and spending four years of savings on a super nice boat instead of a house (a boat made of imported chocolate and gold, presumably).
So that’s where we are at the moment. Everything will most likely be fine and dandy in a few days, but right now I’m so panicky I can barely dress myself.
I’d put a picture of our new house here, but with google image search you could then find out our address. . . . so that won’t be happening until I can take photos myself.
