Unreal TV

I don’t know about you, but I find a guilty pleasure in watching television shows like “Hoarders”. I mean, I get that there are serious psychological conditions that lends itself to collecting or hanging onto stuff. Lord knows I have trouble letting things go myself sometimes.  But it is in the watching of these almost hopeless homes that makes me feel somewhat better about my own housekeeping skills.

There is nothing like looking at a load of stuff stashed in someone else’s place that makes one feel that the piles parked around one’s own abode maybe aren’t so bad after all. Now I know my Beloved would have something to say about said piles, but since I don’t see him dashing about with a broom or duster, or dare I say it, even aware of where these items are kept, I don’t know that he’s in the best position to judge.

Anyhow, unlike certain other reality TV shows that make you feel pathetic by comparison (‘The Biggest Loser’ anyone?) Hoarders and the like have the ability to make one take a good hard look at your own surroundings, and see that they’re not too bad after all, as long as you have a clear path between you and the closest exit in the event of an emergency (and even then my Beloved would say we push the limit at times).

I always find myself inspired to get up and have a crack at that towering pile of something too, after I watch an episode or two. The kids hate it. Because the pile I am pursuing usually involves them.

Take the last lot of school holidays for instance, I declared that our New Year’s Resolution was to go through clothes, shoes, toys, books, whatever other clutter was clustered in the cupboards, and have a good old fashion Spring, I mean Summer, clean. Better late than never, right?

So I assigned both boychild and girlchild the task of starting in their bedroom closet, while I had a go elsewhere in the house. The instructions were quite specific- empty drawers, shelves, and hanging space, one at a time, and sort accordingly: keep or throw. Sounded simple enough in theory.  In practice you would’ve thought I asked them to climb Mount Everest! I swear, the preparation time was about equal, along with the potential failure.

So I sat, one bed at a time, and helped my precious progeny start sorting, with a new set of instructions to make it easier: Does it fit? Yes/No. If No, chuck it. If Yes, will you wear it? If No, chuck it.  Simple. (And here I really did start to swear, albeit under my breath so as not to set a bad example for the children.)

After about 6 years of sorting clothes (well it felt like it) we moved onto the shoes, then opened the toybox. Pandora’s Box more like it. Why is it that toys can lurk a long time under the lid, unplayed with, unthought of, unmissed. But as soon as it comes time to consider culling, it’s suddenly the Toy Of The Year and can’t possibly be gotten rid of?!

Anyway, it was during this time I realized that while my kids’ cupboards were looking good, we had somehow misplaced the bed. And you can forget the floor!  So at least on one occasion I had an extra body in my bed until theirs was uncovered again (luckily, or not, depends on how much sleep I needed) my Beloved often works at night a lot so there is a spot beside me.

On it went. At least the holidays were a full six weeks so we had time to make a dent in things. I have to confess though that even now there are little piles still awaiting donation or delivery elsewhere.  Yet while I was ultimately proud of my kids’ achievements in making their own rooms tidy, somehow, some of the stuff made its way into the Master Bedroom, so now MY room needs at least 6 solid weeks of sorting to make it habitable again.  But since we haven’t signed on to any episode of “Hoarders”, it can stay quietly hidden behind closed doors, as so much does in the lives of parents.

In the meantime I can settle in and see how someone else copes with the load, sitting smugly in my less-than-spotless place, and use it as a teachable moment for my children that this is where we’re headed without a few more hands on deck. Or until the next school holidays.

If all else fails, I’ll record a few episodes of “Wife Swap” or “World’s Strictest Parents”. 

That oughta do it.

 Jx

© 17 February 2014

Boys, Bubbles, and Butt-Cracks

If you can believe my Beloved, everything you ever needed to know about boys and friendship can be described in three simple terms: Snow globes, bubbles, and butt cracks. 

I guess I should explain.

Our boychild is on the cusp of, well something. Not entirely sure what yet, but he’s at the tail end of his primary school education and about to move into the high school years.  At the same time, as you’d imagine, he and all his mates are approaching puberty- that wonderful, wonderful time in a parent’s life.

Naturally, there are a lot of changes taking place. But it’s the out-of-body experiences that are causing the most concern.

As we all know, those who sat through sex education classes at school, or even more embarrassingly, “The Talk” our parents gave, boys and girls mature at different rates. In different ways.  At this stage of the game, boys seem to lag behind- physically and emotionally. Here’s the crux of the matter. Not even the boys in my boy’s group are moving at the same pace. Some just aren’t keeping up on the social side.

I won’t go into the gory details but this means a few, well, let’s just call them ‘moments’. And more than one conversation about how to deal with it all.

Since my Beloved has the same hardware as our manchild (if you know what I mean), I have been trying to encourage him to do the father-son thing, and talk to him not only about the physical stuff ahead, but also how to deal with mates. I suspect there is some Post Traumatic Stress about his own memories from a similar age (can’t say I blame him as my own experience wasn’t a walk in the park) so he’s been a little reluctant in approaching this task.  So imagine my utter amazement, not to mention amusement as I overheard their little chat the other night.

After a day at school with a number of ‘moments’, our son was feeling a bit low. I was in the process of settling the girlchild into bed when I wandered past my boy’s bedroom door to overhear the lad and his dad saying something about bubbles, and butt cracks.  “What the?” I muttered, only to be told to move along, it didn’t concern me.

On my return journey the topic seemed to have shifted to snow globes. Again the mystery was not to be revealed as I was again shooed away.

It wasn’t until my son came in the next morning for a chat of our own that he filled in the blanks.

Here’s how it goes.

At the start of every school year all the students are put into different classes, some end up with their friends, and some don’t. Our school’s Principal in particular likes to shake things up. As my Beloved explained, the kids are floating around like the flakes in a snow globe. Some settle pretty quickly, others take a bit more time, but there’s usually one that takes a lot longer to come down. Like our boy’s buddy, he’s taking a while to find his place this year. 

Not a bad analogy I thought. 

Now for the bubbles.  Our son has been with one group of guys since Kindergarten, they are great mates, get along really well for the most part and have stuck together. Like a little bubble. Over the years a few new friends have joined up with our lad, due to extra kids coming to the school, classroom placement, similar interests, whatever. There’s your second bubble.  OK so the two groups occasionally come together, but like two bubbles, never really join up - there’s a line down the middle. According to my Beloved, that’s our lad. A common denominator if you like. (There are actually a couple of the kids who would also make up that line, but for simplicity, and since he was only talking to our son at the time, he was in the middle.)  In imagining how the two bubbles look stuck together but not completely joined, and being typical males, they came up with the image of a butt, and the centre line was- you got it (do I really have to spell it out?)...

After the laughter, our son seemed to get it.

You see, in my Beloved’s opinion, as long as the kids realize that they can all still be friends, even if not totally stuck together all the time, things should settle down eventually, once that last flake finishes floating.

So there you have it. Everything you ever wanted to know about boys, bubbles, and butt cracks. And how to solve friendship problems in adolescent lads.

You can thank me later.

Once you get any unsavoury images out of your head.

Jx

© 2014

Sobbing in the Shower

I had a moment this morning. Well if I am being completely honest, and is there really a better place to do so than anonymously on the internet (unless you count Confession and that only applies if you are of that religious persuasion and feel the need to save your soul)…I had more than a moment.  I had a full-blown Good Cry. That term, I feel, should be trademarked if it hasn’t been already (and if it isn’t, and someone does, and makes a lot of money, I call dibs on commission for the idea), as there are few other terms that instantly bring to mind the precise scenario you try to define.

Don’t say you’ve never been there: lip quivering, nose tingling, eyes brimming, with the bonus chest and stomach pain reserved for those really special occasions. Whether you’ve been holding it in for a while, or it’s brought on by a sucker-punch of a situation, there is nothing so overwhelming yet cathartic at the same time. A Good Cry is best kept until you’ve reached the privacy of your car, your bedroom, or in my case the bathroom. 

Coincidentally (or not, perhaps) it was while I was standing under the shower, spraying cleanser onto the screen, that I felt the urge to weep.  Faced with the task of scrubbing soap scum that no one else in my family seems to see, I felt a somewhat inexplicable and unfamiliar tremble in my lower lip, burning in my eyes, and off I went.  (On the upside, it's a great place to let the tears flow, along with the runny nose that always seems to accompany A Good Cry, and while it's not a great look at the best of times, at least there's no one there to witness it, unless you've invited others to your Pity Party. I mean, with the mirror fogged, even you can't see how bad you look...)

Anyway, as I attacked the scaly screen I started thinking about all the other household jobs awaiting my attention, started plotting the best order to do them in, dreading the energy expenditure required, and being overcome with an enormous sense of failure on multiple levels.

Long story short, yet relevant to this tale: a Special Needs son (another term that sums it up but one that I’m not so fond of), an unexpected permanent disability of my own, a husband who works split-shifts/dog-watch/14-if-not-24/7 with no massive financial return to show for it, a young daughter who I desperately try to not get lost in all of the above- means our home is not a castle by any stretch of the imagination. Not a Hoarders’ Hovel either, but gives a good impression of one at times- I simply cannot keep up with the housework. Which means that I actually actively discourage visitors, and sleepovers are out of the question altogether. There lies the rub.

Kids are supposed to hang out, have playdates, and stay up all night after too much junk food and rubbish TV. Heck, I did all that and then some when I was young. Not my kids. Our 3 bedroom house does not lend itself to extra bodies, not when in the wisdom of the architect the bedrooms barely hold a bed, let alone extra bedding. With the aforementioned revolting shifts, my Beloved comes and goes, and makes coffee, at all hours of the night, so a kids’ camp in the living room is not doable either (allowing that they will eventually drop off to sleep at some stage).

Add to that my screaming lack of pride in our place, and the never ending load of laundry looking at me on the lounge, and I don’t feel able to offer invitations to other people, or their children.

Why precisely this all caved in on me in the shower this morning, I’m not sure. But the trigger was a photo of 7 smiling faces on facebook- showing all the other girls in my daughter’s class at a birthday party this weekend. Every other female except mine. I know they all play sport together, do various other events, and “face time” for hours on end.  They are a nice group of girls really, they all seem to get along in class, all happily accept the annual invitation to our Halloween Party, and begged my child to get some sort of ‘iProduct ‘ so they could include her (which she did, which they haven’t); and yet the photos keep coming of the rest of the class (of the female variety anyway) hanging out, without my girl.

And I know it’s because our lifestyle- or rather the circumstances of our life- means she cannot join the sporting teams, go on shopping trips, or concerts, or just hang out. There's always another appointment to attend, or not enough time, energy, or money at the end of the day.

So while I have to trust that we are doing the best we can raising our children to hopefully head into adulthood as community-minded, well-educated, decent mannered and socially aware human beings, it’s this in-between period that’s stressing me out.  If they are missing out.

Which brings me back to my scrubbing and sobbing simultaneously in the shower.

And now sees me sitting here scribbling with a sick feeling in my stomach, knowing I’m going to have to come up with some sort of explanation, or a big box of tissues, when my little girl comes home from school tomorrow knowing she was excluded again, and quite possibly needing A Good Cry of her own.

At least the shower's clean should she need it.

Jx

© 16 February 2014

Lonely Hearts

As the weather warms up I am reminded that Spring has sprung and love is in the air. The wedding season is hitting full swing, and romance is everywhere.

Makes me ponder how long it'll be before my Beloved and I are meeting our offspring's prospective partners. Or chasing them off.  (I swear, as soon as he saw we were having a girl, my Beloved considered getting a gun!)

Both kids are still young enough that their thoughts haven't turned to romance just yet. Some of their friends have ventured down that track. But my little girl is still happy playing with dolls and my little boy is still happy with his first love: his mum.

It's adorable really, as the saying goes: a mother is her son's first friend, first kiss, and first love.  And we've all heard that old chestnut about girls marrying their father in a Freudian kind of way (Guilty, as charged).

And while people seem to be getting younger and younger when they start all this dating and more, we are sure (or maybe just hopeful) that ours aren't old enough just yet.

Like a lot of other stuff that's been around for centuries, the youth of today think they've discovered friendship and love, and created the language to go with it, what with all the BFFs, LOLs, LMAOs, and ROFLs (although I must admit to wishing I was still young enough myself to actually physically Roll on the Floor to Laugh, without the worry of whether I could get back up again). But OMG, for example, first appeared in 1917. British admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher first penned the acronym in a letter to the then-UK PM Winston Churchill.  I guess long hand was a bit of a bother with quills and things.

And since Newspaper classifieds charge by the word, people were being inventive back when they first started spruiking themselves in the Singles section of the paper. For those who've never had the need, or the novelty of reading them here's a bit of shorthand for what people want:

SW/M (or F) = Single White Male (or Female)

GSOH = Good Sense of Humour

DDF = Drug & Disease Free

BBW = Big Breasted Woman (well we know who'd be writing that one, don't we, since there's no alternative saying BPM?!)

IPT = Is Partial To

WLTM = Would Like To Meet

AL = Animal Lover

NK = No kids

NSA = No Strings Attached

Even the head of the Holy Catholic Church has had first (ok second) hand experience with the Singles section of the paper... I read recently that Pope Benedict XVI and his brother, 82 year old Father Georg Ratzinger, were surprised to learn that their parents met through an ad their father had placed in local Catholic weekly, Liebfraubote, if you can believe the London Times.

According to the report, Joseph Ratzinger Senior's July 1920 ad read: “Middle-ranking civil servant, single, Catholic, 43, immaculate past, from the country, is looking for a good Catholic, pure girl who can cook well, tackle all household chores, with a talent for sewing and homemaking with a view to marriage as soon as possible. Fortune desirable but not a precondition.”

36 year old Maria Peintner, an illegitimate baker’s daughter and a trained cook, replied. Word is she did not have a fortune, but they married four months later anyway. No mention was made of whether she was a BBW or not.

On a side note: I do wonder what it says that both their offspring chose the celibate life of the clergy...

And dating sites have been around almost since Adam was a baby. I am sure I saw an ancient cave drawing that seemed to suggest 'SW/M WTLM AL, to go Clubbing with'. (Insert groans here.)

So I shouldn't have been surprised when my son said: "You're my ideal woman. If you and I both went on eharmony.com you would be the first match they recommend for me."

My Beloved was flabbergasted that our boy knew what eHarmony was - he obviously hasn't spent as much 'quality time' in front of the television as I have with the kids. (Seriously, between ads for dating services and funeral plans, it's a wonder there's time for any actual programming on TV!)

After the laughter (from me) and the accusations of hurt feelings (from my son) died down I explained that it would be highly unlikely that both of us would be on any dating site at the same time, seeing how I'm already married....to his father!  Besides that, the age difference could prove a problem (for the record, my son says he wouldn't mind that, as long as she was like me. I see trouble with Cougars in our future).

For now all I can do is wait and see if my son does find someone like me to marry. And I can pray that he doesn't. Because I'm not sure she and me would get along.

And if my daughter marries a man like her father, well I'll be wishing her luck and keep the box of bandaids handy.

I'll keep 'em next to the shotgun.

Jx

©2012