MOVING
All moving plans have been postponed until next year.
This is a good thing (it’s too close to Christmas to think about it) and a bad
thing (it’d be nice to start 2016 in a new place. I’ve no idea why, it just
would).
THE PSYCHOPATH TEST by JON RONSON
I really enjoyed this book.
HAZEL
So Hazel’s toilet trained. I mentioned in October that I was planning to put it off until next year, but she was having none
of it (my suspicion that this will be a recurring theme in our lives is
growing). There was one afternoon where we needed to rush to preschool to pick
up Moses and she r.e.f.u.s.e.d to put a nappy on, and I realised that my
argument against her going out wearing undies boiled down to, “Please refrain
from becoming more independent because I can’t be bothered thinking about
packing a special bag or doing more laundry than usual,” which sounded bad when
I put it like that. Apart from an incident involving the Maritime Museum, a
fair amount of poo, and approximately one bazillion baby wipes, she’s been
accident-free for weeks, and is now at the point where I don’t even remember to
take her to the loo before we head out. We’ve packed away the change mat for
good, and while I’m not at all sad to see it go (it was an unattractive and
space-consuming addition to their bedroom), it has made me wonder what will be next: The
pram? The cot? I feel far more attached to both of these symbols of babyhood.
(I realise your care-factor regarding
Hazel’s toileting habits is (/should be) nil, but a couple of times now I’ve
found myself failing to remember when Moses reached a particular milestone, and
wished I’d written it down somewhere. This is going to help me be a nicer old
person; instead of assuming that my children did everything perfectly by the
time they were 10 months old, I’ll read back over my blog and realise they actually weren’t the wunderkinds I’d remembered them as. You’re welcome, distant-future parents.)
CAMERA
My camera is dying now. I’m
pretty sure it’s my camera that’s the problem; I used to be able to get sharp, crispy
shots, but now they often range from the-teensiest-bit-out-of-focus to
seriously-blurry, which is really annoying and a little heartbreaking; the camera’s beeps have always let me know it’s finished focussing, but now
those beeps feel like lies. LIES. Beeps of DECEPTION. I switched it over to
manual focus for a while and spent a merry evening with my camera trained on this protea (“We
chose this for you, Mum, because it’s your favourite colour: PINK!” Pink is not
my favourite colour, but I really did love having this flower around).
Manual focus doesn’t work so
well with energetic children as the subjects, though.
STUDY
On Monday night I finished my sixth subject for the year. I
was running very low on motivation and very high on whinginess; it was an
extraordinarily satisfying feeling to finally submit the report and begin my
month-long break (the longest I’ve had since starting my course) with a glass
of red wine and a game of cards with Alan. I now have four subjects left. Alan
deserves a massive shout out, for allowing me to hide away for four days in
order to research and write my assignment. It was clear that hanging out with
the kids for that long was chipping away at his sane-feelings, but he didn’t
mention it (at least explicitly) because he’s lovely (and passive-aggressive).
(It reminded me that I totally know what that insanity feels like; it’s what
drove me to study in the first place.)
FOOT
My foot is not broken. I ended up having an x-ray, just to
see. My doctor was happy with the unbrokenness of it, and the news did mean I wasn’t required to wear a
giant boot in this 35-degree heat, but I was still a tad disappointed. A small
fracture would have allowed me to yell “IN YOUR FACE!” to my under-reacting
body, and how often does one get a chance to do that? Not very often. My foot
still feels quite bruised (even shower water falling on it registers on my pain
scale), but I’m not protecting it quite as obsessively as I was before, and I
can rest it on the bed when lying on my tummy now, both of which are
improvements.
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