Beeping

from here

Our garage is on an angle that makes it well-nigh impossible to manoeuvre our car into, and considering I run into poles even when I have plenty of space, “well-nigh impossible” is not a parking situation I want to be dealing with every day. Unfortunately, though, finding a spot on our street on a weekday is often difficult, thanks to the fact that it’s untimed and a block away from the train station. Every morning the spaces fill up as commuters leave their cars and head to work, and then from 5pm onwards the spots start opening up again. It is very exciting – VERY EXCITING – if I find a parking space on our street after returning from dropping Moses off or picking him up from preschool. It is even more exciting – EVEN MORE EXCITING – if I find a spot on our street immediately outside our apartment block. Moses has a special celebratory chair-dance for these rare occasions.

Last Tuesday I finally pulled into our street after a tiring afternoon of child-wrangling, and was very excited – VERY EXCITED – to see a free car space at the top of the hill. I headed up, pulled into a driveway to do a u— my goodness, I’ve never had to write the abbreviated form of u-turn before! How do you spell it? U-ey? Anyway, I pulled into the driveway to turn around so that I could then park in the free spot, and as I reversed from the driveway, SOMEONE PULLED INTO THE SPOT FROM THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE ROAD, AND PARKED FACING THE WRONG DIRECTION. Do you know what I mean? Here’s the situation in pictures, to help:

The driver jumped out of the car, glanced at me, then turned to his letterbox, grabbed his mail and headed quickly for the front door. I sat there waiting for him to turn around to acknowledge the look of utter shock and disappointment I’d been perfecting over the previous few seconds, hoping that upon seeing my face he’d be filled with remorse and compassion, and would then wave a sorry to me, hop back in his car, and move it elsewhere. He didn’t look back. He unlocked the front door and walked in, and I realised it was time to reposition my face and find another parking spot. Swistle reckons “in some cases, three separate responses might be needed: ‘the one I think is the right one,’ ‘the one I would find immensely satisfying,’ and ‘the one I think I’d actually do.’” In this case, I’d break up “the one I would find immensely satisfying” into two sections (“legal” and “illegal”), so there’d be four responses instead:

The one I think is the right one:

I think I should have beeped him. Unfortunately I’m very uncoordinated, so my brain was too busy getting my face into the perfect ‘shocked and disappointed’ position to even consider asking my hands to do anything too. Beeping would have both a) encouraged the guy to look at me (then he would have seen my face, been filled with remorse and compassion, etc., etc.) and b) vented some of my frustration, which instead ended up being taken out on Moses, whose tantrum about how far we had to walk when we eventually found somewhere to park around the corner was quickly interrupted by my tantrum about not being able to control which parking spots were available and when, or else OF COURSE we’d park out the front of our house, I wasn’t parking a block away JUST TO SPITE HIM. I really wish I’d beeped the guy, that would have felt right.

The one I would find immensely satisfying (illegal):

It would have been IMMENSELY satisfying (when it was clear the guy wasn’t going to look at me again or repent of his inconsiderate ways) to suddenly jam my foot down on the accelerator and ram into the front corner of his smug little car (JAM AND RAM), then to see HIS shocked and disappointed face appearing at his door and to flip him the bird before speeding down the street so fast that no one could see and write down my license plate details (JAM, RAM, AND SCRAM). Alas: a) I did not want to have the police show up on my doorstep because someone had seen and written down my license plate details; b) I did not want to have to explain to Alan what I’d done to our car; c) I freaked out that I’d be recognised by the guy, who lives in our street, who would then spot me later and try to kill me; and d) I was aware of the fact that I was being watched from the backseat by two impressionable youngsters, one of whom I’ve repeatedly told to be kind even to people who aren’t kind to him.

The one I would find immensely satisfying (legal):

As I stewed over the situation later that evening while chopping up vegetables in a violent and cathartic way, I decided that it would also be immensely satisfying to walk up the hill late at night, and to write “I steal car spaces” and “I am inconsiderate” and “I am not a very nice person” in liquid chalk all over his car, and then to tape pieces of paper saying the same things all over the top of that (I considered using gaffer tape to get the paper to stay on so that it’d leave sticky bits all over the car, but decided I’d use clear tape just to prove that I was a fairly kindhearted person), so that when the guy came downstairs the next morning he’d find his car covered in notes, and then remove the paper to find even more notes, at which point he would break down and sob, “Whyyyyyyyyyyyy?! Why did I do it?! I’m going to find that poor woman and apologise, so help me God.” Alas, I didn’t do this one either, because I was a) scared of getting caught and murdered, and b) not bothered enough to i) go buy a colourful liquid chalk (ours is white, and his car is white), ii) find somewhere to print out my notes (we don’t own a printer), or iii) stay up late at night.

The one I actually did:

So all I actually did was sit there looking shocked and disappointed for a long time, and then I cried and yelled and cried and attacked some vegetables and cried some more while daydreaming about payback. And then I mulled over it for days afterwards and thought about how very nice it would be to believe in a deity who would send a pox on the apartment and hail on the car of anyone who steals my parking spot, but instead my God has to be “compassionate and gracious...slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness“ (Exodus 34:6) and someone who inspires irritating things like “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). Grr. Is beeping an insult? Is it gracious to let someone know they’re an inconsiderate poo-face? I’m not sure...*

///

* Actually, I’m reasonably sure, but I’m pretending I’m not so that I can keep imagining the guy’s horrified face as I go zooming off after crunching up his car corner, laughing my mean little head off.

Growing pains

from here

The year I turned 18 I paid $50 to have my tax return completed by a professional. I thought you had to take it to someone; throughout my years of schooling I had accrued deep knowledge about many important things (the best colour hair dye to use, the route to take from French to Ancient History to make sure I passed Scott Shahidi in the corridors, etc.), however, sadly, tax was not one of them. The following year I’d somehow learned that I could just pick up a form at the post office and fill it in without the help of an accountant, plus it was my first year at uni and money was therefore far more precious, so I did my own tax return. Submitting it all by myself in 2002 was the first time I remember having the overwhelming sense of being A Real and Actual Grown Up Person with Important Responsibilities.

I’ve had many more of these moments over the 12 years since then. Like just now, when I figured out that it’s been 12 years since I started uni. And when I realised I was now the type of person who read the washing instructions on clothes before buying them (“Sorry, pretty blouse; I love you and it’s been very nice daydreaming about us together, but you are too high maintenance for me and so I will have to return you to the rack. Farewell”). And when I noticed that I’d started relating to the parent instead of the child in stories I read or watched. And when I turned 31. And when it struck me that the most daring thing I do these days is hang out my washing on a day with a forecasted 50% chance of rain (it didn’t! HA!).

I’ve been having lots and lots of those realise-y moments this year, as I watch myself filling in forms (I have to remember 3 birth dates now instead of just mine) and making appointments, and ringing up and changing said appointments after realising they clash with other appointments I’ve made, and remembering to take referrals to one place or another when I’m supposed to, and organising swimming lessons, and checking out potential schools for Moses. I caught myself the other day thinking I’d have to start some kind of system to keep track of the important bits of paper we’d need to take with us to various things in the months ahead. A system. 

And then there are the preschool things, like photo day (I had to fill in an envelope and put money inside! For my kid! I remember taking an envelope to school for me!) and headlice warnings (I found myself simultaneously glad that Mo has no hair for lice to set up camp in, and disappointed that I’d miss out on this round of dragging nits along long strands of hair before crushing them between my finger and thumbnail…Not that I daydream about things like that. Never. Gross). So school photos! And headlice! All proof that I am now The Grown Up rather than The Child. 

I think all these moments stand out for me because I still don’t see myself as being The Grown Up. I feel like a fraud as I talk about “my son” this and “my daughter” that over the phone to receptionists. I’m waiting for someone to pull me aside and ask quietly, “Are you just faking this whole Responsible and Mature thing?” I still smirk when I hear the word “balls,” for crying out loud!

Anyway, now Moses has an appointment with an orthodontist. An orthodontist! It’s official. 

I… I don’t even… I don’t…

Oh dear.

Knots

from here

I’m feeling rather anxious at the moment. I never used to be an anxious person (I think I came down with it while pregnant with Hazel and still haven’t recovered), and I don’t like it; I like to think of myself as being quite calm and collected, so feeling uncalm and uncollected makes me cranky, and then I just feel cranky and anxious. Cranxious. What follows is a whinge about list of the things that are currently tying my innards in knots, because writing will help, I think, so feel free to skip this post, or to comment with something like, “I have a great suggestion! [Followed by a great suggestion]” or “Good golly, this blog is getting boring these days,” or “STOP DRINKING BEROCCA YOU CRAZY PERSON.”

First of all, the church news sheet is NOT GOING WELL. I thought that by ridding the world of some clip art I’d be rewarded both on earth and in heaven, but NO. I spent approximately 400 hours last week reformatting the sheet  to reduce the size from folded A4 open-out booklet thing to an A5 front-and-back (as requested). This is good for the environment (less paper and ink used each week) and also for me, because I finally created the file in Publisher and now won’t want to punch Microsoft Word and its maddeningly sensitive and bizarre layout…iness… quite so often (I just added a space, Microsoft Word! No need to add an extra page/move my text into an entirely different column/etc.!). So I worked on the news sheet when I really wanted to be doing other things (like working for my old company OR getting reading done for my course for which I’ll have an exam in a month OR watching the second season of The Mindy Project), and then I emailed it out to a few key church people and felt relieved that it was DONE. 

But then the person who used to do it – let’s just call her Betty – emailed everyone with an “I’m not against change but what the flip is this?!” rant against everything I’d done, and then I spent ANOTHER 400 hours updating it and stopping myself from writing ranty emails back to her (“Dearest Betty, THE CHURCH ADDRESS DOES NOT NEED TO BE ON THE NEWS SHEET BECAUSE IF A PERSON IS READING THE NEWS SHEET IT MEANS THEY’RE SITTING IN THE CHURCH. Lots of love, Annelise”). It was handed out for the first time on Sunday, and an announcement was made that feedback would be welcomed. I’m still waiting to hear what others think. *grinds teeth*

Secondly, my brother’s getting married next month on the Gold Coast, and I need to work out what to do with the kids while Alan and I are receptioning there. Moses is at an age where he’d be happy and able to stay with someone we don’t see very often while Alan and I go up there, but Hazel is not. It’ll have to be someone we don’t see often because our main babysitter (my mum) will also be at the wedding, and our back-up babysitters (the older couple of my half-siblings) will be looking after the younger of my half-siblings while Mum’s away at the wedding. 

So. Do we drive Moses to Alan’s parents’ place to stay with them for the weekend (4ish hours there, 4ish hours back), and then drive back to Sydney and fly up to the wedding and then drive back to Alan’s parents’ place (4ish hours there, 4ish hours back) to pick Moses up? And could I just postpone Hazel’s daily breastfeed for a couple of days and leave her too? (No. No I couldn’t. I just checked with myself, and the answer is no.) (Also, this is provided Alan’s parents are both available and cool with the idea, which they may not be.) Or do we start asking friends if someone can come stay with Moses here, and then Alan, Hazel and I fly up and back without him, thus saving both massive drives and the cost of Mo’s plane ticket up and back?

Or do we fly a friend up with all of us and stay somewhere on the Gold Coast? Or do we find somewhere to stay in Brisbane and ask Brisbane friends if they’re free to babysit, and then drive an hour to the wedding? Or do we find accommodation somewhere cheapish for the Friday night and then stay at the actual venue of the wedding on the Saturday night and then hire a babysitter through some kind of find-a-babysitter service, knowing that we’ll be 5 minutes away from being able to check in on how everything’s going and that the babysitter won’t then need us to arrange accommodation for them? Or do we fly all of us up to Ballina and stay for free at my aunty’s place, which would mean her friend could babysit, and then drive 1.5 hours to the wedding? This option wouldn’t be too bad except DAYLIGHT SAVINGS! Here is a maths problem for you: If Alan and A Crazy Lady leave Ballina at 2pm and drive for 1.5 hours to get to a wedding in QLD, which is an hour behind NSW, what are the chances of them arriving just as it’s ending?

I want to book flights so that at least that’s done and I can move on to the next thing, but I still don’t know whether I need tickets for 2 adults and 1 child, 2 adults and 2 children, or 3 adults and 2 children, and whether we’re flying to Ballina, the Gold Coast, or Brisbane, and whether we’ll all be leaving on the Friday or whether I’ll go up on Friday and Alan can come up on Saturday instead and PLEASE EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO SCREAM INTO MY PILLOW.

Thirdly, I’ve been drinking Berocca because a (non-doctor) friend repeatedly implied that I was not recovering quickly enough from being sick for the simple reason that I was not drinking a Berocca every day, and I was so sick of being sick and she wasn’t the first person who’d sung the praises of Berocca at me, so I thought, FINE, I‘LL TRY IT. So I did, and I’m obsessed with the stuff, it’s like not-as-fizzy Fanta, and maybe I’m even addicted to it now, I don’t know, but it makes my heart feel funny, and not like, “Oh my goodness, I think I might be in love,” but more like, “Oh my goodness, I think I might be having a heart attack.” It also makes me act like the guy with the gun in this scene from The Fifth Element:

 

Sans weaponry, of course.

Fourthly, I have work for my old company, which is very exciting. I’ve done bits and pieces of work for them over the years since leaving, but this is the first time in a long time I’ve worked on lexicons, which is what I used to do when I was there. The supervisor emailed me and asked if I could help out, and I said YES, and then he sent me the transcription guidelines, and I wrote back and asked why things were being done That Way instead of This Other Way, and then he wrote back saying [what I heard as]  “You are awesome” and “How have we managed for all of this time without your amazing intellect” and “I’m soooo glad you’re working on this project,” etc., etc. It was pretty much 4 years of affirmation in one email chain. And I get PAID for it! And I know what I’m doing! And if I make a mistake I won’t be scarring anyone for life! It’s the exact opposite of mothering. So I want to be working on that, but instead I have to use my kid-free time resolving news sheet dramas and wedding dramas and Berocca dramas, and I have an EXAM next month, and all of that gets me into a cranxious spiral of thought which starts with me thinking about how everyone else gets to work during the day and then relax in the evening but here I am working, and working on other stuff when I want to be working on work stuff, and it’s too late and I’m too tired, and so on and so forth. And then it ends with me watching Mindy and gnawing at my fingernails and not looking at the time before I go to bed because I know I’ll regret knowing.

KNOTS, I tell you.

Lego

Let me start by saying that I know it should be ‘LEGO,’ but it feels too weird yelling the word all through my post, so I’m just going to call it Lego, okay? Okay. 

There aren’t many females in Lego Land. I noticed this when Mo was given a Lego ’Spot the Crook’ book; the ratio of males to females in all of the pictures is approximately 19:1. Presumably this is because each page show things happening in and around the city, and most of the Lego women are at home looking after all of their boy babies and preparing for their multiple husbands to return home.

I then noticed it again while shopping for Mo’s birthday present earlier this year – I was looking for a box from the ‘City’ range that had a female character in it, but the options were a) male and female holidaying in a campervan (Mo doesn’t know/care about campervans), b) male and female bank robbers being chased by male police (Mo already cares more about “baddies” than I’d like him to), and c) female business woman (*fills with hope*) with a broken-down car being rescued by male tow-truck driver (*deflates*).

And then, a month or so later, I went shopping for some Lego for a couple of Mo’s friends, a boy and a girl. In the perfect-size-and-price-for-a-friends’-birthday-present boxes of Lego, I had lots of different vehicle options; for James I chose a cherry picker with a bucket that went up and down, because it looked like it would be fun and challenging to build:

Unfortunately, none of the vehicles were driven by females, and I didn’t know Avril well enough to guess how she’d cope with unwrapping a Lego monster truck at her party, so I went to the (much smaller) girls’ Lego section, where I found that in the same, perfect-size-and-price-for-a-friends’-birthday-present boxes, I could choose either Mia’s lemonade stand or Olivia with her newborn foal (both with appropriate Girl Colours, because blues and blacks can make girl brains implode):

Neither of these looked like they’d be particularly fun or challenging to build. Plus the people look weird (I’m sorry, Mia and Olivia, but it’s true. I think it’s your bulbous extremities). I bought Avril a puzzle instead.

I know Lego’s created a set of female scientists in response to a letter written by an observant 7-year-old named Charlotte, and kudos to them for trying, but surely the easiest resolution is simply to let females do the ordinary around-the-city things they do in real life but that Lego currently has only males doing. Females can drive and be paramedics and fire fighters and police officers and swim with sharks too! Keep the scenarios the same and just let half of the characters be female, Lego! And make sure you’re not perpetuating gender stereotypes when you choose which half. (Incidentally, if you made the dinosaur fossil much bigger, Moses would love the paleontologist set.)

In the meantime, I’m making up for Lego’s male-heaviness myself: I’ve borrowed some long hair from the Lego collection of my younger siblings (for the purpose of this exercise we’re just going with “long hair = female”), and we now can have female business-person in suit, female surfer, female construction worker, female supervillain, and female truck driver with beard, among others.

Hopefully by the time Hazel’s 4 there’ll be enough female characters in Lego boxes to render my hair-replacing unnecessary.