Other minor updates since the last one/s

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.

The end of an era

Moses graduated from preschool last Wednesday evening. Just thinking about the upcoming ceremony made me teary, and after the teacher’s speech at the beginning of the evening I thought I’d soon be snotting everywhere embarrassingly, but I managed to distract myself by initiating the applause when no one else was clapping, and faffing about with camera settings, and then by taking a stream of mostly-blurry photos of Moses accepting his award, so that it wasn’t until he’d walked out of the room again that I realised he’d just been standing in front of me wearing his gown and cap, and I’d paid zero attention to this fact because I’d been focussing on focussing. It stopped me from crying, which was helpful, but I think next time I’ll leave the photos to someone else and appreciate my little boy’s proud face in the actual moment instead.

So Mo has two more days of preschool left. FOREVER. We’ve all been talking about it a lot since last week; I think it’s finally sinking in. Mo’s started counting down the days and telling me how much he’ll miss Henry when they’re no longer together “all the time.” “Do you think maybe you’ll feel a bit excited, too, when you finish preschool?” I asked him this morning. “No,” he replied, “Just sad.” This afternoon he said he wished he was Hazel so he could start preschool next year instead of school. He said, “I just wish things didn’t have to change.” I told him I completely understood, that change made me feel anxious too, and then we sat in silence for a bit while I fought off tears. (I told this story to Alan this evening, and he cried too. We’ll all be messes on Wednesday, but we’re having pies for dinner, so that’ll help.)

Friday Night Lights - Season Two

Season two of Friday Night Lights was terrible. It was full of groan-y storylines which even the actors seemed to have a hard time being convinced by, and things too often wrapped up nicely by the end of the episode when actually they should have taken longer to resolve. An example scene:

PERSON 1: I am absolutely going to do this thing and no one can stop me!

PERSON 2: Nooooooo!

PERSON 3: You can’t do it! You might die! Are you even thinking of anyone but yourself?

PERSON 1: You have no idea what it’s like to be me!

PERSON 2 and 3: [wring their hands]

*3 minutes pass*

PERSON 1: Y’know, y’all were totally right. I’m not going to do that thing that moments ago I said I’d definitely be doing. All of my passion’s magically dissolved because there’s not enough time left in this episode to fully explore it. Let’s just hug and go home.

PERSON 1, 2 and 3: [hug and go home]

[Credits roll]

*Eyes roll*

Season two made me roll my eyes at even Tami Taylor and Tim Riggins, two characters I’ve developed full-blown crushes on, so that’s saying something. And now it’s tainted my enjoyment of season three. I’m noticing little problems and reacting as if they’re BIG DEALS, kinda like when Alan leaves his socks on the loungeroom floor and then later says something ridiculous, and if it’d just been the ridiculous thing, I’d have let it go, but because it was the socks AND the ridiculous thing, I think, “Wait - SERIOUSLY?!?!” and huff and puff inside my head about how much better the world would be if everyone did things my way. 

I <3 TAMI

So I’m up to the fifth or sixth episode of season three and already someone’s suddenly in a job I didn’t think she was qualified for, and people have played squash wearing black-soled shoes, and someone left a room without her handbag, and I basically sit here wondering how it’s sunk to these kinds of depths (black-soled shoes, people. ON A SQUASH COURT) after such a cracking first season, and daydreaming about going back in time, travelling to the US, and somehow winning a spot on the Friday Night Lights production team, just so I could correct all of these mistakes.

It may just be that I’ve watched too much TV since starting holidays last week. It may be that I’m irritable and exhausted and underwhelmed by everything, which is my typical let-this-year be-over-soon December mood. It may be that the show really is struggling to reach the glorious heights of season one. I’m not sure.