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

Incy Wincy

I wish my bladder would respect my bedtime.

Not long ago- and not for the first time- there I was, middle of winter in the middle of the night, facing a big and hairy scary thing when I should have been snug as a bug in bed.

I was under the false apprehension that creepy crawlies had gone into hibernation for the wintertime.  And since it had been a mighty cold winter, I, like other ophidiophobes (and arachnophobes) was feeling relatively confident that we wouldn't be crossing paths anytime soon.

My mistake.

On a regular trip to the wheelie bin with some household waste I encountered an eerie little 8 legged critter residing right under the lid I lifted. And despite the chill in the air, and the aforementioned myth that the larger species of snakes and spiders go to sleep in the winter, 

I can assure you, Incy Wincy it wasn't!

I don't know who was more startled- or indeed who moved faster- Mr Hairylegs or me. Might've been a dead heat, actually. Moving in opposite directions, of course.

So you can appreciate my reaction on a night-time trip to the toilet not long afterwards.

I don't know about you but when nature calls in the night, I try not to wake anyone else. I crawl out of bed, tiptoe around to the ensuite bathroom, and ever so quietly slide the door open and shut, lift the lid and go about my business. I even installed a phosphorescent toilet seat so I can be guided by the glow to where I need to go. Saves turning on the light. Saves a bit of my power bill.

There is a downside to this, as I have previously discovered.

My Beloved, on the other hand, has no such qualms. Throws the covers off, rolls out of bed, slams open the sliding door, slams it shut again, flings up the toilet seat, and goes about his business. Then slams everything shut again and bounces back into bed; almost bouncing me out the other side (note to self: we REALLY need a new mattress).

After recent events I won't be quite so diligent.

Usual story, I am rudely awakened from unconscious bliss by my bladder, but being chilly I chuck on my slippers before hitting the tiles. I head into the bathroom when I spy out of the corner of my still half-asleep eyes, a dark fuzzy shape on the floor by the bowl. So, slipper in hand, I most valiantly and enthusiastically kill....my hair elastic.

Yep I well and truly whacked the crap out of a hair band that had in fact fallen out of my hair en route to the loo in the dark. But I am proud to report not a single squeak came from my mouth during the entire episode (thankfully, none of my other body parts betrayed themselves either).

Not that it matters, as my Beloved has been known to sleep through thunderstorms, phone calls, fire alarms, one time he even slept soundly as a neighbour banged on the window right above his head!  And how many times did he wake refreshed in the morning after I'd been up all night with a crying baby. Must be part of the Y chromosome, as it's a skill set most fathers seem to possess (leaving most mothers saying: "Why?!")

It's just as well I am not one of those helpless females who need their white knight to ride to her rescue when it comes to creepy crawlies. Or anything that goes bump in the night, for that matter. Many a time I have ventured forth from the bedroom to investigate a mysterious sound without  a man to hide behind. In fact my man is behind in bed, no doubt being all brave and manly in dreamland!

Yes, yes, I know the number one rule of horror films: don't go out there alone. But sometimes you don't have the choice (and happy to say most times, there isn't any bogeyman waiting in the wings).

Spiders, though, that's another story.

I've often encountered the little critters on their night-time hunting, while I do the protector thing and check on my children.  I even keep a can of spray handy for times I need to defend life and limb as quietly as possible (after all, this is Australia, home to some of the world's most poisonous species).

But I've never had to kill a hair band before.

Chance are, I never will again.

Jx

©2012

Kodak Moments

A picture is worth a thousand words. Some pictures leave you speechless. Then there are those that make you laugh so hard you cannot breathe, let alone speak.

They used to be called Kodak Moments, after the major player in the photography field. (Might have to explain that to the younger readers.)

With the recent passing of my father we inherited a few bits and pieces; a computer desk and laptop among them.

I was both happy and sad to see some photos of dad that I'd never seen before, on the disk drive of his computer.

And both sad and happy to have to find room in the cluttered corner of our lounge room we call an 'office', to fit the desk in.

As with any modern family, the amount of actual photographic images is far out of proportion with the number of shots we snap at any given time. These days the visit to the camera shop to develop and print pictures is a forgotten journey, and the trip down memory lane is a lot faster thanks to Instagram and the like. Digital cameras can run off several shots per second, and you can immediately see whose head was cut off, whose finger was over the lens, or even who forgot to take the lens cap off, which happened a lot in the good old days.

To me it means that the photos of old, taken on honest-to-goodness film, are a lot more precious than ever before. It was expensive to print pictures back in the day, and the shots you got were worth every cent. In some cases- priceless (like the picture of my sister and her man all fitted out for a fancy dress ball, but the only thing mum managed to get in frame was their heads)!

I wouldn't even begin to explain 'slide nights' to the current generation. They were even a little before my time.

Now it's just point and shoot and a lot of shots don't make it out of the camera, let alone into an album.  If you're lucky (or just plain organised) you download them to a disk.

So it was when my family started shuffling things around in the lounge room to fit dad's desk in.  In amidst the mess my Beloved discovered a CD of photos that his mother had sent us- going back to pictures taken when he was but a babe in arms.

Our boychild, who had been given the job of checking any such disks for important info, started to laugh at the thought of seeing his father as a baby. My Beloved took this as an insult and came into the next room where our girlchild and I were sitting.

"He doesn't believe that there are photos of 'young daddy'!" says the man of the moment, in a huff

"There are?" exclaims our daughter

"Because cameras weren't invented when daddy was a bub" says I, tongue-in-cheek

"No, I didn't think so" replies our girl, in all seriousness.

I won't go into the full reply that was given to us by the man of the house, suffice to say he was even less impressed, and amongst his mutterings about photography having been around for close to 200 years now and he wasn't that old yet, my daughter turns to me and says:

"What does it mean when daddy sticks his two fingers up?"

"It means he's not happy with us" I say

More mirth from me, and more grumblings from my man later, and the children finally took a look at their father in his youth.  And got the giggles again.

Needless to say my Beloved won't be lining us up for any slide nights in the foreseeable future.

The look on his face was a Kodak Moment for sure.

I just wish I'd had my camera handy.

Jx

©2012

50 Shades of...

If there is one thing that can strike fear in the heart of any woman, anywhere in the world, it is grey hair.

You only have to take a wander through the colour section at any store to see what a booming business it is to cover up any sign of that shade.

Genetically speaking, it was destined to happen.  My earliest memories of our older generation was a collection of dignified white and grey-haired ladies and gents. Not too many of the blue-rinse set. And not a single purple dye job to be seen. Not in our family any way.

My mother, the proud owner of classic titian tresses, was just one of the clan with a colour so rich it could never be reproduced by a bottle.

Red heads have been identified since around 1510 in their various forms: auburn, copper, strawberry blonde, ginger...and comes with a collection of nicknames, of varying shades of compliments too: Carrot top, Ranga, Ginger Ninja, and in Australia colloquially called "Blue". As we do.

Aside from being the rarest form of natural hair colour in the world, red heads have a lot of other interesting features: studies have supposedly shown that they are more tolerant of pain and require more anaesthetic to knock 'em out in the surgical theatre; the pale skin that comes with it makes them more susceptible to sunburn and skin cancer, yet gives them fewer wrinkles in their old age as a result; red heads are also traditionally known to have a temper to match their fiery tops, but there's no evidence to support this- unless you count the passionate temperaments of the people most often linked to that particular hair colour- the Celts.

Which brings me back to our clan. The recessive redheaded gene crops up at least every generation, and those of us who aren't red all over have natural highlights that money just can't buy.  I learnt this a long time ago when my oldest sister was in her apprentice hairdresser days and was determined to make me blonde. My date with the peroxide bottle just brought out the ginger underneath and I ended up having to go black to cover the mess we made.

That, and buy a few hats.

Now considering the average adult human head is home to about 120,000 hairs ... when they start to turn against their owner, that's a whole lotta grief!

So when genetics came to play and the grey turned up one day on top of mum, she decided to grow old gracefully and let nature - rather than hair colour- take its course.

As we've discussed here before, times have changed in just a single generation. These days the only shades of grey that are totally acceptable is the series of bestsellers by EL James. If it's being read in bed, it's ok. If it's on your head it's nowhere near as thrilling.

Because if you buy the hype, the hue of your hair has a lot to do with being 'hot'. Or not.

But while men get away with the Silver Fox tag, very much so, and you'll still see newsreaders and the like with grey hairs glinting in the studio lights. Not so the female offsider. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the age ratio is getting greater between the fellas at the desk compared with the ladies alongside. Seems as soon as they need a touch up on top, they're replaced by a younger model.

In fact the only shades of grey allowed on prime time TV belong to blokes.

Which is one of the reasons radio appeals to me so much. Doesn't matter about your hair colour, hell you can even show up in your pyjamas if needs be, as long as you show up! Dead Air is not a good sound, in any frequency.

And do not get me started on the schoolyard parade!

No wonder I'm so partial to hats.

Especially when I made the comment to another mother that I was considering giving up the ghost and going the way of my mum, letting my colour come through however it likes. Her response: "Oh no- Never give up!"  Mind you, this was the same mum who commented on how grey my Beloved has become around the temples in the years since kids joined us: "What have you done to him??" (Hey, he's grey for the same reason I am...the aforementioned kids!)  Funny how there was no suggestion he reach for the dye bottle. 

Looks like he's on his way to Silver Foxism himself. Better hope he isn't in the market for a younger model.

So it seems I, along with women the world over, will be keeping the hair colour companies in business for a while yet.

Then for the times I can't afford a dye job, I'll be supporting hat makers too.

And just quietly, I think EL James et al have given grey a shady reputation, in more ways than one.

Jx

©2012

Guerillas in the Mist

I've been letting off some steam.

Literally.

After more than 2 years of having gym membership I have finally figured out where 1) the sauna and steam room are, and 2) how to use them.

I'm not slow.

Truth be told, I was unable to use the gym for a good 18 months after my surgical mishap, and for the same reason I was stiff and sore after attempting a full day's work. So I decided to soldier on, and enlist the aid of the kids' boot camp to entertain my offspring while I stretch out and sweat.

I deposited my daughter with the personal trainer, parked my son in his wheelchair (his current form of transportation) and took myself off to the ladies' change room.

Finding a locker that actually locked was my first challenge, followed by trying to make the swap from warm comfy clothes to my swimwear of choice (a tankini, as the 'wet room' is unisex and we don't wanna scare anyone now do we) in the world's smallest cubicles. Seriously, would it kill 'em to remove one loo and make the others a little roomier?!

Deal done, I ventured into the steam room and pushed the button; "I can cope with 20 minutes" I tell myself and stepped inside.

Sliding onto the white tiles (again, literally) I wait for the onslaught of hot damp air, which when it kicks in, is every bit as hot and damp as promised. Within minutes I can't make out my own feet, and am finding it a little hard to breathe. But I'm loving it.

Seconds after that I have the distinctly unpleasant sensation of something dripping on my head.  I realise that the condensation on the ceiling is to blame and quietly freak out at the thought of what else may have accumulated up there before gravity brings it back to land...on me. I pop my little towel on my head to prevent any further absorption of god knows what, which also makes it hotter on top. All the better to detox with, no?

In the midst of all this perspiring and pondering I hear the sound of male voices. Can't see where they're coming from but I am hoping that they opt for the sauna instead. Even my modest tankini isn't modest enough, and despite the fact that I still can't see beyond my face in this mist I am not keen to share my space. No one looks their best in the steam room. I am now grateful that even the LEDs can't shed any light on the subject.

Another 10 minutes of this and I am desperate to a) breathe, b) see, and c) drink water that hasn't vaporised in the heat. So I carefully make my way to the door, stealthily slipping and sliding like a madwoman while blindly groping for the exit (again I'm thankful those guys wisely went with Door #2 or who knows what else I may have grasped in my haste to escape).

Outside, after a few delicious deep breaths of cool air, I make my next questionable decision, to try the Monsoon Shower: 10 powerful jets spraying water so cold it'd make an Eskimo think twice. I do my own personal version of the 'Hokey Pokey', and put my left hand in, pull my left hand out, with everything shaking all about. It's not until the spray slows to a trickle I am physically able to take the temperature. Then accidentally touch the button that starts the show all over again.

Belatedly I scan the room for security cameras, in case footage of my foolishness appears on someone's YouTube channel.

Relieved there will be no recordings I make my waterlogged way back to the Women's Room where I towel off best I can and put my street clothes back on. I make quick use of the complimentary hairdryers to blow my 'fro back into some semblance of sense (humidity and my hair do not play nicely together) and check I am not looking as frazzled as I feel before I go get the kids. Here I realise I am wearing but one earring. Must have come off when I removed my towelling head gear.  Am I talented, or what.

After a 45 minute workout my children are appropriately excited and exhausted and allow me to come home to the comfort of the couch and computer and a cuppa tea.

And quietly contemplate a better plan of attack for the next time I decide to let off steam.

Jx

©2012

Footy Fever

Our family had a rare and unusual moment last night. All four of us in the same room at the same time watching the same thing.

Almost-unheard of in our crew.

The usual practice is all of us spread out across any number of rooms and electronic devices (or heaven forbid- a book).

But last night was State of Origin.

While the big fellas of football were battling it out, state against state, mate against mate, our little team was plate against plate as we squashed onto the sofa, transfixed by pizza and the television. And a beer for my Beloved.

Working the ridiculous number of hours that he does, my Beloved has to stick with a 0.0 alcohol limit. And I seemed to have missed out on the Irish Drinking Gene so only imbibe on rare occasions, much to the disgust of some of my relatives. The kids of course are too young to indulge in the beverage of choice for sports punters the world over, but have now reached an age where they can appreciate the finer points of football (that's NRL). Or so we thought.

The Melbourne Cup may well be The Race That Stops A Nation (not sure if there's supposed to be a ® or ™ there) in Springtime, but the annual State Of Origin series captures the imagination of about 11.8 million Aussies- roughly half the total population- for three nights mid-winter. Even those who don't seriously follow the footy (like me) can get caught up in all the excitement.

It's NSW in Blue and Queensland in Maroon as they battle it out for the honour of a trophy and title of Origin champions. Sadly, the boys in Blue haven't been on the winning side for about 7 years now (leading some feisty footy fans north of the border to suggest we should sell the Trophy Cabinet. Rude.)

Sports lovers know the go: the pre-match sledging, the settling in period (read: a bit of biff between blokes), and the post-match recriminations: "We was robbed" an infamous (and grammatically incorrect) war cry. All set amidst a soundtrack of screaming supporters in their relevant colours alongside the field.

The usual position for home viewers is pizza and beverage on hand, tv remote under the control of the alpha male, and various missiles within reach when disagreeing with the ref's decision (lesson learned- only have soft options available).

For us, it was one child sitting on one parent apiece, snuggled up in our flannelette pjs (well it is winter) with my Beloved proudly wearing his NSW footy jumper

First try came barely 5 minutes in, with NSW crossing the line much to our jubilation (and relief). Not even having to stop and explain the penalty and scoring system to our offspring every few seconds dampened the mood.

Until Queensland came back with a vengeance. "Shepherd! Shepherd!" cried both my Beloved and I as the player in question dodged behind his team mate and crossed the line to ground the ball. The NSW mob just stood there like sheep and let him do it, obviously thinking it was, well, obvious. However the video referee didn't agree with us, upheld the try, and the converted goal put the opposition in front at half time.

Sadly, our little team of two also fell at the halfway mark, and despite waiting patiently for all the commentators to commentate, and advertisers to advertise, for the entire 20 minute break, barely 10 minutes into the second half we had to send the players off - to bed.

Since it's been such a long time that my Beloved has been able to sit, drink, and enjoy a game, I was on kid-duty again, and could only participate from afar, listening to the exclamations coming from the direction of the living room as the game continued.

So you can imagine the disappointment the next morning when the kids awoke to the bad news that NSW lost the game, and this year's series, by just one point.

Imagine my Beloved's belly after all that beer and pizza, and not enough sleep.

And imagine the reaction when, after all that quality time together, our son declared that he really enjoyed watching the Soccer with us.

Better luck next year.

Jx

©2012