An Embarassment of Boredome

Over the last couple of weeks, DH and I have had to sit through a lot...and I mean A LOT.. of end of year presentations. Every activity the kids do (and 2 of them do 2, and 1 does one, and they all go to school...and wait, did I just create a verbal math equation?) has an end of year gig.

So I've sat through:

1 hour of Scouts
1 hour of Girl Guides
3.5 hours of dancing
3.5 hours of gymnastics
45 minutes of basketball
3 hours of school awards night

That, my friends, is a heck of a lot of time. Like an entire day's worth of ceremonies and awards and some awful orchestral pieces and spending my time watching all the parents around me texting and playing on their iPhones. (Although to be fair I was one of those parents. A girl's gotta do, right?) I am especially proud to brag that at most of those events, one if not more of my kids got honours given to them.

I'm excited and proud of them, but the real parent (TM) in me is really sitting there thinking, "I've got to put up with HOURS of this just for a piece of paper? Really?!" In the case of ballet, it was all those hours (and over 40 pieces of dance, OMG how many cartwheels can a person endure?) only to get a certificate with DD2's name spelled incorrectly. Honestly. And while I get that the idea is to showcase all the hard work the kids put in over the course of a year...I'd be much happier going to two shorter events twice a year than this one bloody long one which makes me want to slowly push a stick into my eye while I'm sitting there...just because focussing on the pain would be far more interesting.

I realise that my pain is exacerbated by having to do this x three kids and x so many activities..it's a 'side effect' of the triplet phenomenon I never planned for. I've now decided that DH and I are going to get our own certificates to honour our patience, commitment, and ability to withstand hours upon hours of physical and auditory pain.

Let's Talk About Sex

I have the world's most fabulous friend, who on this blog is known as 007.

Among other things, 007 keeps me in stitches with all her stories about dating in the modern day world (although we tend to call it "boy goss."). She's single, forty and fabulous...and rather inclined to pash the odd bloke at the pub or find a willing partner for the night. I'm not saying she does this a lot (oh you slut you!), but rather that when she wants or needs some, she can find some.

She recently met a new bloke. I won't say too much about him (although one doubts he reads this blog) but I will say that this new guy opened up a whole can of worms with 007 and I. My POV is that, as long as what you are looking for is a decent, loving relationship - you shouldn't be giving up the goods (so to speak) too early on. There should be a bit of wining and dining and other stuff before there is the other, other stuff. Now if all you're after is a quick shag and a decent pash, well, by all means go right ahead. But if what you want is a partner to go to weddings with, someone to fart in front of, and a willing chick-flick partner ... just hang onto the goods for a bit. Not months and months on end ... but maybe 3, 4 dates. And I mean DATES. As in going out in public, doing stuff together, maybe spending one night in with a movie, whatever. But clearly DATES as opposed to "hanging out with some mates."

I also see no point in sexting unless you got the real thing first - because then it's just teasing bullshit which keeps people from actually giving up the real deal. Much easier to hide behind a flurry of texts than it is to pony up with the goods...and the number of times I've had friends with 'relationships' which never get beyond a mobile phone is staggering.

I digress.

007 thinks I am, among other things, 1) a total dag, 2) a nerdy berger, and 3) supremely old fashioned. I'm not denying any of those tags (especially #3 but then you all knew that already.) In her view, there doesn't need to be dinner or drinks or really anything at all. If you want to, do it and that's that. She sees no need for any of the rest of it, even when it IS a relationship she's after and not just a wham-bam situation.

I think to me, the whole dinner/drinks/time together is more about the respect you're giving the other person, the interest you're taking in their lives, and the fun of the pursuit. She thinks you can have all of that without the actual dating bit, and that just hanging out together or with friends will give you all of that. Me, I'm not convinced - but then we did say that I'm old fashioned, didn't we?

To be fair, I have close to zero dating experience, and definitely none happening at the age she's currently at (because I have several years to go before I reach that age, and because I was a child bride). Maybe things are different now and I really am a stick in the mud. I just refuse to believe that most relationships (although maybe some do) start with the sex and without the dating.

...but then again, I'm also damn grateful I won't need to find that out anytime soon. Perhaps I'd better crawl back under my suburban married rock?

Definition of Popularity

School Reports are Bullshit

Today my kids got their term reports...reports which I always read with a healthy dose of scepticism and an even healthier dose of cynicism. School reports are totally bullshit, and there is nobody here to blame but the parents they are addressed to. Without fail, all of my kids' reports are filled with "DD1 is making pleasing progress," "DD2 is a pleasure to have in class," and "DS is very inquisitive and is achieving above the level expected," and so on and so forth.

It's all a load of crap. I say this because I find it difficult to believe 3 paragraphs waxing lyrical about how great my kid is, only to be faced with two enormous D's on the top of the page. Seriously? If my kid sucks this hard at this subject, why are you trying to sugar coat it? And really, if this is the END OF THE YEAR, why didn't you do something (or ask me to do something) about the fact that they suck at something like math? I'm kinda thinking math is essential for life skills...or maybe it's like those days when kids got shoved along until someone realised they were in 12th grade and still could not read.

I would love to say that this is all the teacher's fault - but being related to a teacher (my sister), and good friends with another one (The Neighbour's Wife), I know that school reports are designed to tell parents exactly what they want to hear, which is not necessarily the truth of the matter. My sister has often told me that 'nothing in a school report should be a surprise' - because if it is (either positive or negative), it implies your teacher isn't doing their job. I think parents of this day and age don't want to be bothered with the truth - it's far easier to hear that little Johnny is fine than it is to confront the fact that you're raising the devil's spawn. Diplomacy rather than truth seems to be the name of the school report game.

Of particular irritation to me is when teachers use cut-and-paste for their comments...which for us is obvious since we read three of these in a row, but probably works okay for most parents. *sigh* I would have thought they would figure this out by now, but clearly not. I realise that there are only so many ways to say, "Your child is totally fine and basically unremarkable to me," but it still irritates me. Ha - *I* should probably be the one to figure out that after all these years, it's not worth my irritation (clearly I too am slow on the uptake.)

What say you about parent reports? Useful tools, or just bullshit indicators?

Roller Coaster

I had the most fantastic day at work today. My fondant mojo was totally happening (as was that of my assistant, which is a gold star day all around, let me tell you...). All our work was getting done in a timely fashion, the kitchen was not too humid or hot, and DH was in the office getting some of my admin done. All around, I found myself thinking, "emzee is in her happy place!" more than once today...and yes, I used third person when talking to myself. I'm good like that.

...and then I had a minor tiff/not really a tiff/kinda weird moment with a friend,

...and then DH tells me his job is now not starting until MARCH (but it IS starting),

...and then my kids tell me that their day (spent at their new school) varied on a one to ten scale from "ten and 8 quarters" to "eleven" to "four hundred and eighty six,"

...and then I watched a movie with the kids which made me feel just horrible. Who knew that a Miley Cyrus movie (for those who want to know, it was "Last Song") can make you bawl and bawl and bawl? It was about her and a total hottie but also about her Dad dying. Nice.

...and then I get an email from someone asking for a bunch of money which I know I need to spend, but trying to find that money is just overwhelming and discussions of money make me want to bury my head under a doona for ten thousand years,

...and then, and then, and then. What a bloody crazy rollercoaster day of extreme highs and extreme lows and everything in between.

Clearly, the only solution is ice cream.

Best Noodles Ever!

We all know how I live and die by the meal planner...that this crazy family plans their meals in advance THREE week blocks of time, that we try new recipes all the time, try to eat fish more than once a week, ensure we all have a very healthy and varied diet and in general act all holier-than-thou when it comes to family meal times. Frankly, we totally rock when it comes to meal times and both DH and I put a lot of time and effort into our end-of-day family time because it's important to us.

However, because I don't want all of you in blog land to think I'm perfect, and humility is probably a good thing...let me just say that for dinner tonight, the kids and I all had two-minute noodles. From a packet....which came with a whole bunch of unidentifiable sachets filled with god-knows-what, all of which are probably cancerous and most certainly contain banned substances in some countries in the world.

You know what? We are all still alive, the damn things were pretty tasty, and I think I might be forced to put these on the officially official menu once in a while.

But the best part about all this? My kids never ate anything like it until about a year ago, when they had lunch at one weekend The Neighbour's Wife's house. They came home and told me they had the BEST lunch ever, and that I had to call TNW *right away* in order to get the recipe. TNW is not known for her cooking (it's not bad, she just doesn't enjoy doing it very much) so it was a bit of a surprise that she would pull out some serious recipe action for a kids' weekend casual lunch. Being an obedient sort, I did as told and when I called her, she laughed so long and hard I nearly dropped the phone. Her magic recipe for "the best noodles ever" ... was cheap $1 per packet Asian brand 2 minute noodles. The method is simple too - buy at supermarket and follow instructions on packet. My kind of recipe!

Sometimes even us cooking types use short cuts...and the added bonus is my kids think I'm awesome for even letting these scary packets in my front door. Mum points AND friend points!

New Sport Required

This past Sunday we went to watch DD1's gymnastics display. And by "watch" I of course mean "endure."

In theory, it's a nice idea - getting to see your little darling bounce around while wearing a skin tight shiny leotard. (FYI, I hate those girls on sight. There was not a single moment of my life - even on the day I was born - when I looked decent in a leotard.)

In reality, it's 3 hours of my life which I will never get back.

The idea is to see your kid doing all the various bits of equipment which they've been practising all year. So there are different groups - and each group also has a dance set to music. So at each part, one group does a dance, and then 20 minutes or so go by in which you need to watch ALL THE OTHER groups on various bits of gym equipment. I should also mention that each kid does a routine on each piece of equipment, and most groups have 8-12 kids in them. Then there's a gap of time for piss-farting around, and then another dance by a different group, and then everyone moves around to other bits of equipment, and then it starts all over again ad infinitum.

There's also a big finale dance which all the groups do together, and then a very llloooonnnnggg award presentation. It's basically hell on earth, made even worse by the place it's held - an enormous open floor gymnastics mecca. The only seating is in the gods, on hard wooden bleachers (very wide steps actually). It's hotter than hell up there, your ass is killing you, and the only food on offer is whatever is in the vending machine. The families who have been there before come along to the event looking like they are either going camping or going to watch the Test cricket. They're shlepping eskies filled with food and drinks, blankets and pillows and squishy seat thingies, and games and books for the younger kids. I only WISH I was kidding about this. The newbies who have not experienced this yet come with...nothing. The rest of us watch them in silence as they spend the first half hour in rapture, the second half hour in hunger, the third half hour in ass pain, the fourth half hour sweating uncontrollably, and then fifth and ongoing half hours running back and forth to the vending machine, hoping against hope it will have suddenly filled with hot chips and Big Macs.

Trust me, by next year they will either have decided that gymnastics is a sport for masochists, or they'll BYO eskie and squishy seat thingie.

My problem, as we all know, is that (as previously mentioned here), the first law of motherhood is "Thou Shalt Suffer" and so this is now the fourth year I've endured this special kind of parental torture. My MIL, god bless her, bowed out early this year with a mystery sudden-onset illness...but sadly, I couldn't in all honesty make ALL FOUR OF US come down with the same thing so we had to suffer it all from beginning to end. DD1 has announced to all of us that she's going to do it next year, too...because she desperately wants the little gold trophy they get after 5 years attendance. The next one after that is a 10 year trophy, and frankly, if I have to go through ANOTHER 5 years of this crap, I'm going to make DD1 buy ME a trophy for surviving it all.

Motherhood. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass.

The Luxury of Time

Not sure if I have blogged about this before, but in addition to my own business I also work part-time in another female-owned small food-based business (say that ten times fast!). This originally started because she and I had kitchens in the same building, and about 18 months ago she was desperate for a helping hand and asked if I'd pitch in. I helped that day, and then every once in a while when she needed an extra pair of hands - it was a very casual affair. Eventually winter came (the quiet time for me) and she asked if I'd do a regular once-a-week gig for her. Then DH lot his job, and it became a regular two day a week gig.

She's a lovely person, and the product is great...and there is no way I'd get the money or the conditions she offers anywhere else. And yet, I hate every single second of that job. I'm grateful for it - VERY grateful as it happens - but I can't stand it, and I swear small pieces of my soul chip away with every passing moment. The night before I go there, I'm irritable and annoyed about it. While I'm there, it can often take a while before my attitude catches up with my stern internal reminder that we need the money so I had better shut up and get on with it. At 5pm on the day I'm finished there, I practically skip out the door.

Why do I hate it so much? Simple - every moment I'm spending on HER business, I'm not spending on MY business. Here's where it gets messy. My business does not pay me enough to support my family, so I have to go out and find other means of financial support. HOWEVER if I invested that same amount of time in my business, I'd finally be able to grow it enough to actually then take the salary I need in order to succeed. Instead of investing that time in my business, I'm investing it in someone else's business and this is killing me. Slowly killing me.

The real criminal here is TIME. If I had the luxury of time - and if I could just tell the mortgage company, "Hey, listen, give me about a year and then I'll be all good!" - then just imagine what a force I'd be. Since I don't HAVE that luxury of time, well... I'm spending 2 days a week in a kitchen which is not my own and wishing I didn't have to be there. It sucks, and yet it's paying my bills.

Sometimes being a grown up is just no fun AT ALL.

I Got Nothin'

...to blog about. I even asked DH for some topics and all he had to say was, "I don't know! Pets? Trains? Books?" and then he sort of looked around helplessly as if to say, "What do I know from this blogging madness?"

Yeah, that's really helpful. I know I have some unfinished business of topics you all suggested which I have yet to get to (including a rather difficult marriage of mother in laws and men in bed together) but I just don't feel like tackling those topics tonight.

So - forgive me this non-post and let me get back to you all tomorrow, when hopefully inspiration will have struck. If not, well, I might be forced to take more photos and post them (and not delete them.) Now there's a scary thought!

Maybe It Is The Hair

So last night I spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom attempting to take a photo of myself, for the purpose of a profile pic for here and on facebook. I look different enough to my current photo that I thought it was a good time to take one. I was even having a good hair day (even though it's grey and overgrown..) and thought it was worth a shot.

Well, about 50 shots later I realised why none of these pictures were appealing to me. I look different, yes...but I don't look like ME. What a strange sensation to be looking at photos of yourself and be thinking, "Who IS that? I don't have that angular of a face or that pointy of a chin...weird! Must be the angle, I'll try again." Then I tried again and again and I still did not like any of those pictures. It's like the me in my head needs to catch up with the me in the viewfinder.

And this, you know, could be the focus of an entire therapy session. Instead of delving into the emotional minefield of it all, I'm just going to blame it on the hair. Seems to work as a strategy for everyone else, right? ;)

Sidelines

It was a kabillion degrees today. Seriously. This is Australia in the summertime and this means (for Melbourne in particular) that yesterday was a massive rain storm and today is the freakin' Sahara. (Great day for cake delivery, btw. Not.) Anyway, the kids and DH went to the local pool while I went to deliver a wedding cake, and the plan was to join them upon my return.

I didn't really want to go to the pool today.

I wanted to come home from my delivery, lay on my cool bed in my air-conditioned room and just have quiet time reading a good book and eating junk food. So I did exactly that, and I even had a plan for what I might say if the kids questioned my absence. About 5 minutes after I lay down, DH called to see where I was, and to say he'd paid for a family pool ticket so I could just walk in and not worry about queuing to get in.

Damn. He totally foiled my plan.

I did grant myself 15 minutes of quiet time and snacking (which I then regretted = massive stomache ache = spew up that which did not agree with me) and then headed for the pool. I decided en route that even though my bathers were waiting for me at the pool, I wasn't going to get in. I had a stomach ache, it was hot, I hate wet clothes, the pool is noisy - hell, any excuse you can think of, I had used as a reason not to get into the pool.

So I stood around in the glorious sunshine and watched my family play in the water, and my kids jump off the diving boards, and my husband laughing as the kids dunked him yet again, and I thought to myself: FUCK THIS. I am BURNING THE DAMN BOAT of the fat, lazy mother who does not want to go swimming and I am going to live in the moment with my kids. The excuses of not wanting to get wet, not feeling too great, and being too lazy to change were all still there...but the mind-set had changed. Why would I want to miss all the fun of this sunny summer day? Why would I want to spend it BORED and HOT on the sidelines, when I could be having fun and cooling down in the pool with my family?

The mind is a funny thing. Frankly, the mind is a big JERK sometimes.

So I went and changed into my bathers, and had 2 hours of splashing and laughing and in general acting many years below my chronological age and I loved every single second of it. I didn't even mind the wet clothes, or the damp hat, or the rough concrete on my feet, or wearing the bathers with not enough boob support. I just lived in those moments, and adored all of it.

We've come home, and the hungry three are showered and clean and smelling delicious enough to eat. Dinner is almost ready, and we'll eat together in tired happiness until their eyelids droop and they head for bed and I head for a hot shower. My only regrets about today are the 15 minutes I wasted in bed, and the half hour I wasted on the sidelines when I could have spent those minutes living a happier, healthier, far more authentically wonderful life.

You know, I could get used to this whole boat burning business.

It's Not The Hair

In the last couple of weeks, I've had to cancel two hair cut appointments due to either family scheduling muck-ups or major cake muck-ups. This now makes me something like 10 or so weeks since my last hair cut, which means I am rocking the salt-and-pepper look (hey thanks Mom for those genes..). Not only is my hair showing some serious grey hair action, it's also all out of shape and much longer than usual. Plus my ridiculously cool blue streaks faded weeks ago so now I am somewhat lion-ish in appearance with random blond bits.

It looks really bad.

And yet, in the last 2-3 weeks, I've had no less than SIX people tell me they love my new hairstyle, they want to know where I got it done, they want to tell me that it really suits me, and in general it's all been OMG you have the most awesome hair we have ever seen!

People, people, people! What you are noticing is NOT my hairstyle, it's that my ass has shrunk significantly, but you either a) are blind and can't work out what is different about me, so you think it must be the hair, or b) you're not sure how to be polite and say, "your fat ass is smaller than it used to be," so you're focussing on the hair in your version of trying to be complimentary without making possibly offensive reference to my formerly massive ass.

Either way, let me just assure you that it ISN'T about the hair (and if it IS, how shit did I look before, if you're all complimenting the 10-week-old look?!)

Burn The Boats

I had a lengthy chat today with a business coach - I've mentioned him on this blog before, and I think as interesting tid-bits come to light I might continue to share them - all about burning the boats. Now apparently this expression is attributed to various cultures from the Spanish to the Ancient Greeks and beyond, but here's the basic premise: Make a decision, and then make it impossible for you to go back from where you have come.

In the case of our mythical explorers, the legend is they sail to the shores of their enemies, and on arrival the leader cries, "Burn the boats!" thus signalling that either they were going to win the battle or die trying. Really, it's all about signalling their intent, both to the enemy and to themselves. One of the issues we spoke about today was that I am not spending enough time burning the boats. I'm making decisions and then thinking and re-thinking and then going back a little ways and then giving up (just for a while) and then starting again (for a while.) At no stage am I burning the boats and just moving forward with things, and this reluctance to just commit to a course of action is doing me (and thus the biz) more harm than good. Without the willingness to move forward in a significant way, there is just NO way to move forward in the first place. This doesn't mean you act with haste, without thought or without research. It just means that once you have arrived at the decision (and recognising that you have arrived is in itself hard to do), you then MOVE FORWARD without looking back.

Thinking back over the course of my life, there were many times when I did not burn the boats. For whatever reason, burning them was too big a step, too scary a step, too much like hard work and far too much like getting rid of my safety net (which is exactly the point of it.) It's not hard to come up with examples...like all the times I lost weight but kept my fat clothes in the closet. Or left the phone numbers of people I hate in my mobile phone. Or stayed in a job for too many years because it was easier to stay than to go and question the status quo. Or said something like, "I'm not fussed, YOU decide," when really I was fussed. I'm sure all of this is sounding pretty familiar, isn't it? We are a world of wafflers.

So you can call it what you like - burn the boats, cut the cord, rip off the band-aid, cut loose, 'never look back' -but either way it all boils down to the same thing. Stop the bloody flapping around and GET GOING.

Which boats will you burn this week?

Chappy Channukah

My most favourite of Jewish holidays, which involves eating chocolate and fried food and giving presents...is celebrated in song by this totally adorable group. Enjoy: