All I can do is keep breathing...

Sleep

from here

You know those times in life when something’s so big for you that you obsess over it and you google it and you read about it and you talk about it and it’s all you want to obsess over/google/read and talk about but you’re aware that others aren’t quite so keen on the topic as you are and so you just avoid people so that a) you don’t accidentally spew information at them and make them wish they hadn’t hung out with you, and b) they don’t bore you with their non-[your obsession] talk? Right now, that thing for me is sleep. SLEEP. I want to update Facebook every day with posts about how many hours of sleep I’m (not) getting so that people can comment sympathetically, but I won’t. I WON’T, DAMMIT.

I will update here, though. Just briefly.

I am EXHAUSTED, man. I haven’t slept for longer than 3 hours in a while. It’s not completely Hazel’s fault; sometimes she’s sleeping and I could be going to sleep but she’s snoring and I find it impossible to drift off when there’s a noise that I know to expect after a predictable interval, like snores – I start counting the beats between snores and then singing songs that tie in with the rhythm, and it’s VERY. DISTRACTING.

So Hazel snores and I think, “Ugh, this is annoying. I should be falling asleep right now, not singing silly snoring songs.” And I toss up whether or not to poke her and eventually I decide I won’t and then all of the sudden she stops! Then I think, “Okay, sleep time!”, but I wait and, after some minutes pass, I start to think, “Argh, she’s not making any noise; what if she just died?” and I lie there wondering if I should get closer to see if she’s still breathing and then deciding that I’m being ridiculous and then imagining what I’d do if she did die and then I have to tell myself sternly to STOP and just GO TO SLEEP. And then Hazel makes a noise and I relax and then I sleep. That’s a full 30 minutes (more, sometimes) I’m missing out on just because of my stupid, stupid brain.

Speaking of my brain, yesterday I said “brown paper” instead of “brain power” and accidentally smooshed the names of my children together (“Hazes”) instead of referring to just one. *YAWN*

If I ruled the world...

from here

If I ruled the world, I’d standardise greetings. At the moment it’s a veritable quagmire: Does one kiss or hug? Or kiss and hug? Where should the kisses go, and how many? Or, should the kisses be ditched altogether in favour of a hug? And then how long should the hug last – exactly how many seconds (microseconds?) pass before a hug moves from “Ah, this is nice!” to “Okay, this is weird.” You don’t want to be the first to pull away from a hug (this could be read as, “I don't like hugs as much as you like hugs,“ but it will probably be read instead as, “I dont like you as much as you like me“), and you don’t want to start to pull away only to realise it’s too early and recommit just at the point when the other person (who picked up on your desire to end the hug) decides to pull away.

There is too much potential for embarrassment tied up in this ritual. For example, after a bit of confusion trying to work out which cheek my grandmother was offering, my ex-boyfriend accidentally kissed her on the lips. And more than once I’ve thought the whole scenario was over only to notice the other person leaning back in for a kiss on my other cheek. We need a system. As in Europe one can now expect to pay in euros no matter the country one finds oneself in, under my reign, everyone in the entire world would be able to expect the same kiss/hug routine no matter where one, or one’s family or friends, resided. I’d get the whole thing ironed out once and for all. 

And then I’d work on world peace.

Politics

from here

I was quite keen on politics earlier this year. I was so keen, in fact, that I donned an XL-sized blue t-shirt and waddled the streets of Cranebrook to doorknock with David Bradbury, our local MP at the time. (My efforts earned me the title of Volunteer of the Week, which is only because I made doing the same thing as everyone else look more impressive by being heavily pregnant.) I remained keen even after Rudd elbowed Gillard out of the Prime Minister position, and I felt hopeful for the Labor party for the first time in a little while. And then, on July 19th, I gave up on politics for a bit. A few years max, I hope.

I remember the date because it was the day Rudd announced his harsh PNG “solution” for asylum seekers, which came as such a shock to me.* It was also the day my church emailed to tell us all that they didn’t want women having any say in the church (in different words, of course). That night I cried during dinner over the fact that men were ruining the world, and then, sometime between that moment and the next morning, I gave up caring. I stepped back. I realised I couldn’t be bothered fighting anymore; all of the hope for change I’d held onto seemed to have dissipated as I slept.

I voted for neither Rudd nor Abbott, and then I ignored the count and I ignored the result and I’m still – a few months down the track – only vaguely aware that the Liberal Party is back in power. I’m fairly certain that Tony Abbott is now Prime Minister, but I’m making no effort to confirm it; it sounds lazy, but I have no energy to face that kind of disappointment right now. I’ve been wondering if, after Hazel starts consistently sleeping through the night, I can find some other way of ensuring I only get 2.5 hours of rest at a time so that I can spend the next few years in this foggy land of ignorance and then we can vote a better version of Labor back in and the world can be right (righter. Lefter) once again.

///

* I know this is a complex issue, and I don’t know what the solution is. It wasn’t just the harshness of the policy, though; I was upset by Rudd’s adoption of the callous language I’d always associated with the Liberal Party, and frustrated that it looked more and more like voting would be more of a lesser-of-two-evils thing than a “Woooo, go Labor!” thing. If you know what I mean.***

** I was very tired and hormonal, and I only speak in generalisations in these circumstances.

*** If you have no idea what I mean, or if this post makes you cranky, just pretend it doesn’t exist. I probably shouldn't be allowed to publish posts while this sleepy.

Conversations with the kids #2

Alan: Do you like telling everybody you’ve got a Hazel?

Mo: Yeah.

Alan: Is that because you love Hazel?

Mo: Yeah.

Alan: I love Hazel too.

Mo: Then tell everybody!

 ///

Mo: [Pointing to a picture of a sandal-clad woman] Why is she wearing funny shoes like God’s?

Me: Like God’s?

Mo: Yeah.

Me: Where did you see God’s shoes?

Mo: On his feet.

Sharing is Caring #2

They say that a change is as good as a holiday, and if you find holidays stressful and change stressful, this does seem to make sense. Alan resigned from his job last month, so we’re currently floating around in a weird, in-betweeny, waiting-for-one-particular-job-up-north-and-dreaming-of-living-near-the-beach-while-not-getting-too-excited-in-case-that-job-doesn’t-work-out-but-then-maybe-there’ll-be-others-near-the-beach-ooh-wouldn’t-that-be-lovely-but-oh-dear-where-will-Moses-go-to-preschool-now kinda state. This all means that it’s likely we’ll be moving in the next (little?) while (2 months? 6 months? WHO KNOWS?!), and so we’ve started looking around at all of the stuff in our house and wondering what we love enough to bother taking with us if the move is over an hour away and truck space will be limited and valuable.

One of the things I’ve decided to let go of is my CD piles, which for many years and moves have been used to decorate the area surrounding my stereo (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

It’s just the cases I’m getting rid of, not the CDs – I’ve bought some CD wallets online and have just spent Hazel’s sleep time organising the piles into alphabetical order of artists and compilations so that they’re ready to be slipped in once the wallets arrive. (Putting anything in alphabetical order makes me so happy that while I’m doing it I always wonder if I should just stop fighting the urge and become a librarian and spend my days feeling intensely satisfied. [I refuse to put my books in alphabetical order, though, because aesthetics trump system when it comes to my bookshelves. Perhaps a library job is not for me after all…])

Anyway, it’s because of this CD sorting that I can now share the following riveting facts about my CD collection with you:

1. My smallest stacks (with only one CD in them) are the letters Q (Queen – Best Of), T (Taxiride’s Imaginate), V (Van Morrison- Best Of) and X (Xavier Rudd – Food in the Belly).

2. My biggest stacks are D and C, but if I take out Alan’s Dave Matthews and C. W. Stoneking, the biggest become M (because of artists like Michael Franti, Moby and Miles Davis) and E (thanks to multiple albums by Enya and Eels).

3. I own no CDs by artists beginning with U, Y or Z.

4. I have exceptional taste in music.

I can’t believe it was almost a year ago that I put up my first (and only, until now) Sharing is Caring post, especially seeing as I was introduced to two now-loved songs because of it thanks to your comments. That means it’s been almost a year of me thinking up ideas for other Sharing is Caring posts and then not actually posting them. However, they also say better late than never and so here, my friends, is a playlist of 10 of the songs I voted for in Triple J’s Hottest 100 of All Time (the songs also happen to feature on my own All Time Favourites list), and I'm sharing them in the hope that you, in turn, will let me know some of the songs that you haven’t stopped loving despite the fact that it’s now 2013 (rather than the late 90s - waaaah):

El Scorcho - Weezer

System of a Down - Chop Suey!

The Cure - Friday I'm in Love

Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench

Bran Van 3000 - Drinking in LA

Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You

George - Bastard Son

Radiohead - Karma Police

 Sinead O’Connor - No Man’s Woman

Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Zephyr Song