Worries

I spoke to my Mum today and she told me that she was just about to get out of bed. It was 11:30am, and it was the first thing she said to me.

“Hi darling, I’m just getting out of bed”. 

This is strange because it’s a strange way to start a conversation, and it’s also strange because my Mum would typically have done a whole bunch of stuff by 11:30am. But since she had the stroke, she’s been different and the tricky thing is figuring out what’s a difference to worry about and what’s just different because she is in fact, different. 

At first, after the stroke, she was very very tired and would stay in bed and sleep a lot more. This is very normal and reflects that fact that her brain has been damaged. After a few weeks her energy levels picked up and she would stay in bed, but read her book or “do things on the iPad”. I think that meant read the news and read emails and maybe look at photos of the kids. When she did get up, she may or may not get out of her PJs and that was somewhat alarming to everyone because my Mum loves to look groomed. She does not look groomed in her PJs. 

But heck, the woman was recovering from a stroke and so we all figured as she got better she would be more motivated to get her groom on. 

It’s been a month and a half now, so still not that far out from when it happened, but I think my dad and my brother are a bit concerned by her ongoing interest in staying in bed and not getting dressed. I’m not sure how worried I should be. Maybe she’s just finally wise to the fact that lying around in PJs all day is actually pretty great, and she’s finally, at 75, letting herself do it. I mean, that sounds about right, doesn’t it? 

I think my Dad and brother are put out by it because it’s a visual reminder of the fact that she’s changed, she’s not as invincible as she once was, she’s vulnerable and not the person who is effectively keeping our whole family safe and cared for. 

But we’re all adults. We can take care of ourselves now, more or less. Doesn’t she deserve to lie around? 

I think so. 

Got milk

Yesterday, J sent me a message to say that a friend of a friend of hers grew up next to the Hemswoths. 

 

Here they are introducing their fourth brother on SNL. LOL.

Anyway, naturally that got me thinking about the Hemsworths and frankly, I enjoyed that. I sent the following message to J.

 

Only I didn't. I accidentally sent it to my Mum instead, who had just texted me to say she bought milk. 

When I realised my mistake, J and I had a good chuckle. 

 

Later, when I saw my Mum, I told her what had happened...how it was a message meant for Jen in response to some information about the Hemsworths. She laughed and said she'd wondered what that was all about. 

Moments later, she said "That is quite hot".

Those Hemsworths sure do got it. 

Get out

I have got to get out more. Last night I got a pocket call from Dad's phone clearly made by my mum but the phone obviously was not in her pocket because she left a voicemail in which I could extremely clearly hear both sides of a conversation between her and K's mum that they must have been having on Mum's phone.

I only listened for a few seconds of course. Obviously it was a mistake and although the conversation was only about them trying to arrange a meeting it did feel a little weird and pervy listening. There was something a little David Lynch about the experience. Like how could Mum accidentally call me when she must have been just sitting around at home and the offending phone clearly wasn't in a pocket? How do you even do a pocket dial from an iPhone that requires a passcode? And why could I clearly hear both sides of the conversation when I know my  mum wouldn't use speaker phone, I believe her hearing makes it unfavourable. Then whole thing is so mysterious I started writing a blog post about it this morning until I realised that it was also so boring. It may seem Lynchian to me but in truth i know it was just an accident. No dwarf conspiring to creep me out here. But life is pretty small when you have a tiny baby and I can't keep on writing about the US election. And I really didn't want to bore you with complaints of a back so sore it even hurts to sneeze.

And so I make this pledge to you, readers, I'm going to get out! See the world! Have something interesting to say! And I'm going to do it by Thursday! And then regularly! As long as my back gets better!

In praise of Mums (AM)

Last week, J and I may or may not have been complaining about our Mums. How they can and do say things that are very very annoying to us. That somehow they annoy like no one else. That some of the things they do and say...well, it's just all very annoying. We said all of this knowing how lucky we are to have mothers, and to have such great, loving and (substantially) supportive mothers. We know were among the luckiest of the lucky. And yet. Sometimes they can be annoying. Periodically we complain about our mothers on MSC too. 

But we both know it's not cool, so today I'm going to just highlight how excellent my mum is. Yesterday, KB was sick with the kind of projectile vomiting that I wouldn't believe was real had I not been covered in it. What with Appleheart away for work and the super gross smell of vomit in my face, I panicked. I called mum and basically said "I need help!" In a panicked voice. About half an hour later she was pulling into my driveway which is weird, because she lives a 45 minute drive from my house. She then spent the entire day backing me up with everything I suggested, despite me continually snapping at her. She drove us to the doctor and waited the 2.5hours it took to get KB seen to. She bought me coffee. She cleaned up the trail of vomit destruction in the house. She poured me a beer while I was bathing KB. She did it all without complaint and then stayed over last night so I could go to work today and she could look after KB. The woman's kindness knows no bounds. Which is why I have to stop complaining about the annoyance I feel. And why I shouldn't have snapped at her when she commented, while watching an episode of Homeland after KB finally fell asleep, that Islam has more demonstrative prayer rituals than Catholicism. I should have just let her think her thoughts about that and not said a thing. 

And I shouldn't have snapped at her this morning when I whispered something so as not to wake baby KB and she misheard and thought I said it was going to be 17 degrees. I'm sorry about all of it Mum and I am so grateful for all of it and please don't ever die and I love you.

And look what just came through! 

 

Kids say the darndest things (AM)

So who knew Bill Cosby was such a rotten apple? Crikey. 

A little side note: I had a dream the other night that my boss called me in to his office to tell me that the big boss, the man in charge, had requested that I brief him on the Bill Cosby situation as a matter of urgency. I said "Of course!" but then thought shit, I need to get up to speed on Cosby because all I know is something vague about rape and qualudes. True story. 

Anyway, th allegations don't change the fact that the dude was right about one thing: kids really do say the darndest things. 

Last night, I was at Mum and Dad's house celebrating Mum's 70th birthday. Happy birthday Mum! Niecey and Little Nut were there, and in fine form because they are small children and therefore love birthdays. They also have strong views about birthday cake. Love it fully sick. They were talking about it all night including the whole time we were eating our roast chicken and vegetables, only they weren't eating their dinners, they were just talking about cake. Midbro made the point that if they didn't start putting proper food in their cake holes, then their cakes holes would not deserve to be called cake holes. Little nut got a bit teary over this but Niecey reassured him by saying "don't worry Little Nut, it's dinner time now so your cake hole is actually your Broccolini hole, but it will become your cake hole again after dinner ."

Ha. 

 

I need to wee (PM)

Oh man. This is just another of the ways that I admire you Matey. You are patient and capable and have a steel clad pelvic floor. I do not have a pelvic floor made of steel. I have a pelvic floor made of something like jersey. All it takes for me to urgently need to go to the toilet is for me to hear someone mention needing to go to the toilet, walk past a fire hydrant that's a bit leaky or get to my front door. Within seconds of any of these things, I'm busting and there is no way  the demands of daily life could stop that urge.

I actually have this really strong memory from when I was little that relates to the toilet and the demands of being a mother. I remember being about 5 or 6 or something and having a conversation with my Mum. I don't remember the details of the conversation but I suspect it was something to do with my Care Bear. So it was pretty interesting. Anyway, I was following Mum around the house as she was doing this and that, talking about my business. All of sudden I found myself standing outside a closed bathroom door, with Mum on the other side. I obviously felt that I still had some points to make so I just opened the door and walked in on Mum on the toilet. No doubt this had happened millions of times before, but this time, for the first time, Mum plead with me to leave her alone and wait until she was finished on the toilet. Frankly, I was shocked. I thought I was pretty much her favourite person and whatever I had to say, she wanted to hear it, no matter what else she was doing. Turns out most of that time she was probably just desperate for privacy and really needed to wee.
And given that I am the youngest of her children, this situation probably persisted for about a decade.

I'm so sorry, Mum

The nail tutorial (PM)

But shit mate, they look so cute! Obviously I wasn't the one that had to sit around, immobile and with a baby to care for, waiting for the paint to dry but heck, the cuteness of the final product has me thinking that maybe it's worth it.

As for me, my nails are kind of stumpy and nail polish doesn't look that great on them, so I steer clear of it mostly and therefore will never have to face this dilemma. The only thing that makes me want to wear nail polish is so my hands will look more like my Mum's hands. 

Hear me out. 

Lately, I've caught the odd glimpse of my hands and thought wow, they look just like I remember Mum's hands looking when I was little. And I don't know about you people but I LOVED my Mum's hands when I was little. Still do, in fact. They were always holding nice things like snacks or tissues, and they were the things she used when she did all that soothing head patting when I was sick and hand holding when I was crossing the street. And they always had nail polish on them. The pearly kind, that was favoured by women in the 1980s. Still do, in fact. 

Nowadays, when I see my own hands looking like hers all those memories come to me and it instantly makes me feel good. Instantly! And sometimes I think that if I put pearly nail polish on them then the resemblance would be even greater and I would feel great all the time. But then I think I would have pearly nail polish on my hands and that doesn't seem so appealing. 

Anyway Mate, maybe you should think about the magical memories that may be forming in Baby's mind when you have cute nails. Maybe having cute nails makes you a better parent?

I can see the future (PM)

I look exactly like my Mum too, so people say. Except she has had a Mum haircut and I have a regular haircut.

And now that you are shining a light on it, I guess I can't really deny the resemblance to my Dad. Stature-wise, more than anything. While Mum is little and spritely, Big K is what you might refer to as hulking and awkward and I'm certainly closer to that camp than I am the little and spritely camp. 

So I guess I have the face of my mother on the female version of the body of my father.  A true cross-breed. I hope my particular cross-breed will take off like the Labradoodle, who managed to make quite a go of it instead of one of those weird cross-breeds like a Pugalier, who just seem unhappy with what's been done to them. 

Why are people so unkind?

But when it comes to uniforms,  I am happy to say that I march to the beat of my own drum. Big K spends all his time in bowling whites and Mum wears sensible slacks and a freshly pressed colourful shirt every day. As if I could keep an all white outfit clean. And as if I would ever iron a shirt!

I can see the future (AM)

They say that if a man wants to know what a woman will look like in her old age they should look at her mother. They do not say you should look at a man's father to find out what he will look like, I don't know if that is because it is not true or because they think women don't care about such things. If they do say that it would definitely not be true of LB, dude looks exactly like his mother. And by exactly I mean EXACTLY. In 30 years he will probably look exactly how she looks now except only for the haircut and dresses. So perhaps the original sentence is true for everyone. If you want to know what any person will look like in the future look at their mother. I vividly remember the day I ran into The Notebook, I guess I hadn't seen him in a while and he said to me, "You look so much like your mother." I was in my early 20s so it was a little upsetting, no offence to my mother, I mean what 20-year-old wants to look 50?

And while there may be an increasing resemblance to my mother there is another increasing resemblance I am trying to deny but is overwhelmingly apparent to me.

If a person has ever come to my parental home, recently, in my childhood, ever, it is likely they have seen my dad in running shorts. That is because my dad basically always wears running shorts. And now I know why. Do you know how effing comfortable they are? They are basically the most comfortable thing in the world. Recently I went climbing with Russeth, it was one of those super hot days and I had left the house early in the day to do some things and I was not appropriately dressed for climbing. Believe me. So I bought some new running shorts. The 4-inch kind, which means they are far more modest than the regular kind. They were also the silky (polyester) moisture-wicking kind which my first pair weren't. On my way home after climbing I was sitting on the tram in the 35-degree heat and I was so comfortable, you could have turned the heat up a few notches. I was more comfortable than I had ever been in my life and I found myself wondering, "Is there anyway I could wear these on a day-to-day basis?" The answer came back to me, regretfully but overwhelmingly, "No!" And yet, I have found myself wondering this still. At home I find myself dressing for a run hours before I know I will go on one. On the hot days, especially those I don't intend to go far from home, I struggle against myself, wanting to wear what is essentially the uniform of my father. Running shorts, running shoes, a t-shirt. For now the better-dressed me is winning the fight, but who knows what will happen as I grow older and the inevitable parental resemblance strengthens. Poor LB wouldn't have considered that when he first met my parents.

My new fake boyfriend is not as nice as my old fake boyfriend (PM)

Um, Mate, it is a little awkward for me to have to say this out loud and on the Internet, in front of everyone, but I don't think that guy is your new boyfriend. I'm sorry.

As you seem to be having trouble seeing clearly, I am going to hold a mirror up to your post and show you the problem. Remember this thing you said 4 hours ago "we used to always run in to this one guy who came to be known as my boyfriend...he would smile at me but totally ignore J, which is why we dubbed him my boyfriend and not J's"?

And then remember this other thing you said 4 hours ago "instead of smiling at me and looking all eager and  excited like the first fake boyfriend, this one always looks kind of irritated"?!

Ipso facto, that guy you keep seeing around is just some guy you keep seeing around. I think it may be important to learn the difference.

It's like Aussie Male. He wasn't anyone's boyfriend. You see, readers, before K's boyfriend came along we used to see this other guy around. All the time. For a long time he didn't have a name and then, weirdly, K and I were seeing a play and this guy, who we'd been seeing everywhere for months was sitting RIGHT NEXT TO US! At intermission he left his coat on his chair and out of curiosity we looked at the label. The brand was Aussie Male. And after that, so was he. Anyway, the point is, he wasn't a boyfriend he was just that ubiquitous guy, Aussie Male. 

In LB's family there is a story about one of his brothers who once asked their mum "How do you know when you are going out with someone?" People like to laugh at the adorable naivete of this, but you know he has a girlfriend now and I think there is no confusion about the girlfriend/boyfriend thing.  Sure, the blurry line may be different in fake relationships, but, if you like, I can give you LB's mum's number.

Haiku Thursday (AM)

DIAMOND JUBILEE EDITION

QEII

Sixty queen years

Word to you and your mother

May she rest in peace.

Queen Mother

Is it strange, you Maj,

For your mum's title to change

And be about you?

How does she do it?

QEII somehow

Makes beige look warm, appealing

Good beige costs money

I think I have something in my eye (PM)

Mate, your mother truly is the most adorable lady in the world. Not to disrespect my own mother who, along with my dad,  truly did me a solid this weekend by driving all the way to Bacchus Marsh and even staying in the freezing cold, blue carpeted Bacchus Marsh Budget Motel just so they could look after Baby allowing me to fully enjoy Blizzie’s beautiful wedding unfettered and not having to look for Baby in the bush all day.

Still, the only thing I’ve got in my eye today is sleep. I’m so tired. Do you know what it is like to have to party on with a bunch of wonderful people, eat delicious food and dance to some great tunes for 12 hours? Well it is great. And so tiring. And that was Saturday. Yesterday all I did was eat and watch TV and still I feel tired. Perhaps it is because I had to do all that in the messy house I left on Friday.

Plus I had this awesome idea to eat a hot, hot burrito for lunch with the idea that the chilli hit would be a wonderful pick-me-up. But check out the size of this thing:

Turns out that eating a giant burrito has just made me even tirederzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I think I have something in my eye (AM)

Mondays. They just keep rolling around, don't they? 

And faster every time, if you ask me. 

Apparently it is the coldest morning of the year so far. One of them's got to be, I suppose. 

This post comes to you from my kitchen table, where I have the heater on and a hot cup of coffee by my side. Well, kind of. Nescafe Blend 43. I ran out of home brew and developed something of a taste for Nescafe whilst at the Bacchus Marsh Motel for the Blizzie wedding on the weekend. No, Blizzie didn't get married at the Bacchus Marsh Motel. We just stayed there is all. Blizzie got married in a beautiful ceremony in a beautiful place where everyone looked beautiful and said such beautiful things that I had something in my eye pretty much all day. Anyway,  normally, I would be on my way to work by now. Or maybe watering the plants on the balcony. Today, I am intentionally dawdling by writing this and drinking Nescafe Blend 43 at my kitchen table. Why am I doing this? I'm glad you asked readers. 

See that picture at the top of this post? It's the first thing I saw when I returned home from the Marsh yesterday. When I headed off on Friday, I left my house in a diabolical state. Dishes in the sink. Stuff strewn everywhere. Bits of cotton and fabric all over the shop. It was totally gross. But as you know, it was a mega busy week, and I didn't have time to clean. You people who manage to keep your houses clean all the time: who are you people? You people are wizards. Anyway, I am not one of these people, as my Mother well knows because she is, and it bewilders her that someone so clean could produce someone so scruffy. 

So when I arrived home yesterday morning - tired, hungover and dreading the terrible state of my house  - and found this on my table, well. You can imagine my mother flipping delight.

The note reads:

Hi K* 

I thought it might brighten you up if you came back to a tidy living room. 

Hope you don't mind.

Love,

The Cleaning Lady and her two 4 legged helpers

XXX

PS: Hate this pen!!

I didn't do your bedroom and bathroom as I thought you might think it a "bit intrusive". 

The house was spotless of course. Mum had used the spare set of keys I gave her (in case I ever lock myself out) to come over with the dogs and clean my house. Just because she knew that when I am tired and hungover I have a propensity to gaze out the window and mournfully hum Rainy Days and Mondays, and because everyone knows a clean house makes you feel better, she thought she would do me a solid and clean it up for me. Just because. 

Hands down, the nicest lady in the world, and she's my mother! Unbelievable. 

Boy do I have something in my eye right now. 

Good for you, Monday (PM)

The Bangles are totally hating on Monday in that song! Way to remind Monday how everyone hates it, Mate.

Poor Monday. For most people it means the end of the weekend and the start of 5 work days in a row. It would be so hard to overcome that kind of stigma. But you know, last night I dreamt I worked for an insurance company (what?) so alls I can say is, thank Christ Monday does not see me going off to work in insurance.

Also given that I only work Mondays and Fridays, Monday is actually the beginning of my long weekend. But I know that doesn't apply to most of you, so I'm saying it quietly.

I want to think of some other good things about Monday, but frankly, I got nothin'. I hope Monday's mum always told it that it was special, cause otherwise it's got no hope.

A daughter "to be proud of" (AM)

My Mum and Dad sent me a Christmas card yesterday.

This is what it looked like on the front:



Yikes.


This is what it said inside:



Note addition of quotation marks.

I don't know whether it's because of the Christmas fever we were talking about on Monday, or the fact that I am over tired from work, or some other reason, but this card makes me so happy I want to cry.
Mum and Dad, you may be "proud" of me, but I effing love the mother effing shi+ out of you guys.

(Sorry I said the eff word)
(You know I'm seeing you guys on Christmas Day, right?)
(Right?)

Baking failures hurt so bad (PM)

Gosh, I’m sorry your cake was such a disaster! It had so much promise. Didn’t’ we all though, ay?

You know from that picture you really can’t tell that just a little earlier that cake had been a lumpy, sloppy, marscapone mess. It looks fine. Just a little nude. Not that the giant candle is doing it any favours. I’m sure that it's not just me that thinks that large, lone, out-of-context poles/pole-like things seem phallic in a way that in-context poles/pole-like things don’t.

Funnily enough the birthday cake I made for my mother’s birthday last month was also mildly disastrous.  I tried to make this chocolate roll cake. I don’t know if you can be bothered reading a whole other blog post when you’ve got my awesome post right here to read, so I’ll just tell you that basically what the writer, Deb, says is that she has found a great way to ensure that you can roll this cake without breakages. The truth was I didn’t fully trust her and would have made a layer cake if I had more than one round cake tin. But I had no choice. I had to roll.

So I rolled the fresh from the oven cake with cocoa in a tea towel and when I unravelled it cracks galore! But what could I do?! I had to re-roll it with the whipped cream and raspberry as per my original vision because otherwise I just would have a collection of broken bits of cake. Here is out it turned out:

Thanks for nothing, Deb! (Except for a delicious light beautiful chocolate cake recipe that I will totally make again in layers. And frankly I can't freaking wait!)

Baking failures hurt so bad (AM)

It was my Mum's birthday on the weekend. Props to my Mum for totally nailing 67 years of life!
I hope she lives for another 67. Actually, I hope she never ever dies, but 67 more years seems like a good interim target. As a gift, I cooked her a nice lunch comprised of her favourite things: Gnocchi with napoli sauce, followed by lemon cake. I also bought her a pair of socks and a tote bag, but they are not important to the story, because this is a story about disappointment and she really liked the gifts.

In truth, the gnocchi was also very successful, so I won't bother talking about that either.

Delicious little guys

But the cake, guys. The cake was an effing disaster from start to finish.
Because it was Mum's birthday, I wanted it to be super special, and settled on a lemon layer cake, with raspberry jam and marscapone filling, and lemon marscapone icing. It was going to be beautiful and delicious and she was going to love the shit out of it!

My first mistake was made at the pan greasing stage. Even though I thought I was being thorough, I guess I wasn't at all, because the entire bottom  of one of the cakes stuck to the pan. I tried to salvage it and it ended up looking like this:

Yikes.

The other cake came out fine, so at this point I should have just abandoned the layer cake idea but I pressed on. I figured that I could overcome the above mess through creative sandwiching. My fellow cake eaters would be none the wiser. Plus, there was icing and  icing hides a lot of sins, right?

Right, unless icing IS THE SIN.
You guys, when you think that it's fine to replace cream cheese with marscapone in a cream cheese frosting, and you also think that you probs don't need to follow a recipe because you successfully made cream cheese frosting one other time, you are WRONG. Instead of making marscapone lemon icing, I made what looked like curdled lemon slurry. It just did not come together at all. There were lumps galore. Though very concerned about the appearance of this 'icing', I piled it on the cake anyway and hoped it would be OK. It was far from OK. It continued to look like curdled lemon slurry, and refused to adhere to the cake itself. It just slid right off like some sort of curdled lumpy slime. It looked disgusting. It did nothing to patch together my broken cake. 

I really effed it up, people. I stood there for ages wondering what to do and feeling super humiliated because I had effed it up so bad. And all the while the icing kept sliding off the cake and pooling at the bottom of the plate like a moat. Like a moat of shattered dreams. It hurt so bad!

I considered turfing the whole thing but it seemed dramatic, and plus, the cake itself tasted pretty good. And, my Mum is the kind of person who considers making an effort and executing your vision to be completely equal. She's a pretty nice lady.
I ended up wiping every shred of icing off the cake and leaving it nude. It looked terrible, but as predicted, she loved it.

The ugliness continued when we couldn't find any birthday candles and so stuck this giant candle in it and sang happy birthday. Mum said she preferred the big candle, because that way she could be sure she would blow it out. She's such a good sport.

Ew.

I think my brother is cool (AM)

The other day Russeth and I were sitting in my Mum's living room and when Russeth got up to leave he put some things in his backpack and Mum and I both said, "oooh, that's a nice backpack." He told us he bought it for about $20 online and then we all went to the computer to see if we could find it. It turned out he actually bought it for about $50 and when we found the bag we couldn't find the nice navy one that he had and felt sad. Well, Mum and I felt a bit sad, Russeth probably didn't give  a shit. Come to think of it Mum probably didn't care much either.There was a black version and a khaki version, and quite a nice mustard one, but Russeth's navy one was really the winner.

A few days later I got an email about a sale from the very same e-store from which that bag had come and decided I should have a proper look for the navy bag. So I did. And I found it. Half price! About $20! Just like Russeth had fantacised and lied!

So I bought it. Bought one for Mum too. A few days later when Russeth was visiting I told him I had found the bag in navy and bought it for myself. And for Mum. I told him what a great price I got it for too. He was jealous.

Then about three days later I got a text from him that said exactly this:

Hang on. So are you telling me that you bought the exact same bag as I have?

Umm, the guy told me exactly where to get it. Saw my disappointment at not finding it. Heard my delight at finding it. Had a discussion about me buying it. Thought about it for three days and then that question occurred to him. I guess I think he is cool, cause you know I copied his bag, but maybe he is not as smart as I thought he was.

Your mother

Mate, yo mama is so fat when I looked for Facebook on Google I couldn't find it cause yo mama was in the way!

Just jokes. Yo mama is adorable.

Mums say the darndest things

Ok guys, I promise that this is the last thing we will say about Barbra Streisand for a while.
I just thought it would be appropriate to give my mum the final word, given that she is the woman responsible for this whole love of Barbra fiasco.

So back when I wrote the original Babs post, I emailed Mum to tell her that she got a special mention on Miss Soft Crab, and sent her the link. Much later (Mum hates the interweb),  I received the following in response:

Hi Darling, I'm quite embarrassed, but pleased to hear that you actually appreciate
Barbra.   I still have "The Way We Were" recorded and watch it from time to time,
and believe it or not I still cry every time.

I couldn't send a comment to your blog as I didn't know what PROFILE meant!!

Bye darling, Love Mum XOX

Hahahahahaa. Oh, Mum.
(Just quickly, sometimes I think she has forgotten my name because she calls me darling so much. )

Also, this is kind of unrelated, but I was just listening to the radio and they said that right now, facebook is as big as the entire internet was in 2004. The whole thing, guys! I wish I knew how big that was, but the truth is I have no idea.