rainsinger, posts by tag: blather - LiveJournal

Hair Woes

It is nice to know that even in these times of economic uncertainty and social upheaval some things remain the same, and my Hairdresser Curse is as powerful as it has ever been. I am not sure why whenever I say "Shoulderlength hair plase" it is heard as "Chop! Chop more! Go wild! Bonus points if you can make Nina's head look like a mushroom!"

And today's haircut was no exception. I've never yet had the guts to transform my sinking inner feeling into a torrent of public complaint about the blatant disregarding of my hair wishes and instructions, so simply end up handing over my credit card and vowing to never set foot in that place again. This also explains why I get a haircut roughly once every two years.

I am trying to be philosophical about this newest mauling of my locks, because it is hair and it will grow but grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Transport Woes

A few days ago I managed to present myself at an interview in the deep South East of London, on time, with all the relevant paperwork and wearing a lovely dress free from food stains and cat hair. However, these actions obviously maxed out my Responsible Behaviour allowance because I managed to lose both my Oyster card and fall down and smash my knee.

I have a new Oyster card and my old knee and no self-respect.

The children have spent the last two weeks being poorly, crying and clinging to me like consumptive barnacles but considering that Matei's efforts this morning included attempting to give haircuts to the cat and the Christmas tree*, his return to health appears imminent.

The Christmas tree has been much beleagured this year, as seen from its "Passangers scrambling up the sinking Titanic" style of ornamentation.



Helena keeps patrolling and plucking off anything within her reach.

Fish is cooking, guinea fowl is waiting in the fridge, so Season's Greetings friends and may the festivities commence.

xxx


*The cat is quite well defended, although Christmas tree not so much.

1:00 am In the process of attempted conflict-resolution I have a stupid and ridiculous hissed fight with Z about what I said that he said that I said, whose main points are my irritation at his selective listening and the fact that I feel extra-cranky from the virus. I stalk off to the living room with my Kindle.

1:10 am Contemplate going back to kiss him and make conciliation noises but I'm tired and it's been a long time since I enjoyed a good sulk, so I sink sleep on the sofa, treaded on by cats.

7:00 am Z walks around the living room looking for keys and things. Words and gestures of conciliation are exchanged and accepted. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

7:10 am Matei wakes up and goes around the house calling out "Hello? Is anybody there?" until I take pity and call out. He high jumps onto the sofa, prods me in the kidneys with his icy feet and begins to relate some long and convoluted narrative about penguins which I do my best to tune out.

7:40 No longer satisfied with my lack of response Matei begins to set text comprehension questions and expresses his profound dissapointment with my respective replies of Gggnhhhgghh and Mmmmgh. "You must try harder, Mummy," he tells with a frown.
He announced his intent to visit the bathroom and I visit blissful silent dreamytime.

8:05 am I jolt awake with horrified realistion about school and uniforms and other responsibilities. Text my manager to affirm that I am still too sick to work, then chivvy my physical resources enough to sort out uniforms, issue a series of threats to Matei about stopping sailing boats and brushes in the sink and putting on clothes now.

8:10 am Helena wakes up and starts banging on the door to announce that she would like a piece of the action. The baby has apparently been amusing herself by trying to unbutton her sleeper and is now naked to the waist Miami-vice style. I lift her down from the crib and she totters off in search of things that she can decorate herself with (currently she is wearing several of my glittery headbands a necklaces). I resolve to sew her a tiny handbag for christmas because she enjoys carrying things around so much.

8:25am Locate Matei who is still not dressed and stand over him while he puts on his uniform. Get waylaid by my mother who regurgitates complex and angsty family histories. Postpone listening in the name of sorting out breakfasts. Matei weeps about the unfairness of it all. Helena arrives and tries to comfort him by fondly hitting him on the head.

8:35 I guide him into the final bits of his uniform and give her a bunch of bracelets. She amuses herself for a solid half hour putting them on herself and taking them off and clanking them together.

8:50 My mum takes him to school. Sofa and tea and blankets beckon. Cats purr. Helena totters around in an adorable outfit, with glittery headband necklace and this toy swinging briefcase-style from her hand. She roams around the house chattering in her language, looking like a tiny businesswoman with a full schedule of important meetings.

9:30 am My mum brings me tea and toast, and Helena goes into the care of others. My throat feels awful, I try to watch a Cary Grant film on iplayer (also awful) and fall asleep.

11 am - Wake feeling like my whole body has been sandpapered and then repeatedly run over. Read. Cough. Drink tea. Feel sorry for myself. The cat commiserates by sleeping on my head.

12:00 Finish Shit My Dad Says. It's not bad. Start reading The Constant Gardener. Doze off.

12:30 Wake up with a dull pain behind my eyes, complemented by sharp pain between my shoudlerblades. Baby coughs in a horrifying, raspy manner and tries to use a cat as a body pillow/hot water bottle.

1pm -Helena is dispatched to her bed for a nap. She screams and throws soft toys in her rage. When I leave the room there is a volley of shrieks which turn into an hour long monologue and then she finally falls asleep.

2:30pm My mum comes down with food poisoning. Begins to look and sounds worse than any other family member, which is impressive. I marshall sufficient resources to cook Chilli con Carne for dinner and rice for my mother.

4pm. Matei returns from school. Helena wakes up. She totters around the house in the manner of a ball in a pinball machine, in pursuit of cats and balloons. I rapidly lift the morning's threatened cartoon embargo and Matei settles into being happily hypnotised by the lovely moving pictures.

4:30 Helena sings songs to herself and claps to the rhythm. She wonders around the house looking for people to hug, CDs and books to pull off shelves and drawers to open. I start typing this. She petitions to be lifted onto my lap and sit with her feet on the computer desk, playing dodgems with the mouse and the keyboard. Good times.

On Wednesday Z and I took time off from work and painted our living room mustard yellow.* It was like the paralympics of painting since we both woke up with horrendous sinus headaches and generic dreadfulness. The only thing that convinced us to try lifting our heads from pillows and our arms above our heads was the fact that we had been planning this for ages to coincide with my mother's visit and her generous offer to look after the children and keep Helena from diving head first into tins of paint.

And once we began, we were further motivated in our work by the OhShit realisation that we had a guest for dinner, making us feel like we were starring in one of those home renovation shows in which you have to finish the house before the owners return. A feeling that was only amplified by our guest's announcement that he would be early.

Still, we got it done and it's been pretty much the only thing we've managed to achieve all week. Helena is getting incresingly sick. She has a terrible cough which doesn't let her sleep. Last night she was inconsolable unless dreaped over Z like a hot, miserable, snotty shawl. It's four days since I've had proper sleep and my throat feels like it's made of ground glass and despair. My tonsils are nihilists and my sinuses are in sedition.

Tonight I will be self-medicating with wine and Modern Family. Tomorrow, joining the baby in lying on the floor and crying.

Eating cake in bed with Z is bad for the waistline but good for the soul.

Alas, the best thing I can say about Never Let Me Go is that Keira Knightley dies in it.

I appear to have accomplished very little today. I blame this on Helena's newfound passion for hurtling drunkenly around the house pulling things off shelves and out of drawers, leaving them behind like a trail of breadcrumbs to help her find her way back to the wood. A trail that I, like the birds in the story, keep picking up in her wake. This is as much fun as it sounds, especially since my co-picker upper (Z) has spent the day in his own hobby making frames that we don't need out of pieces of wood that we also don't need.

I did cook a divine duck dish though, and if you wish so can you if you follow the steps below:

With pestle and mortar I pound together allspice berries, mixed spice, grated nutmeg and some salt and pepper. Lay duck breasts on a chopping board and with a sharp knife score the skin, the rub on both sides with the spice mix. Lay the duck breasts (skin side down) into a cold wok and slowly bring it up to medium heat. The duck breasts will sizzle satisfyingly in their own fat. Leave them to it for 12 minutes, then turn onto the other side and cook for 7-8 minutes.

I don't have any pictures of the finished product because we fell upon them like hungry beasts and devoured every morsel.

There are 5 half-written and semi-literate posts in my drafts, where they have been sitting for two months thus proving definitively that children being seen and not heard was what allowed Victorians to be a productive people.

Even though Helena has begun settling herself to sleep for naptimes by herself(she truly is the pinnacle of every dream I ever had), I do not appear to have substantially more free time. I have no idea where precious naptime goes, I suspect I have been frittering it away to procure little heart-shaped sunglasses and darling teeny red-tshirts with the money which I also don't have.

The unseasonably warm srping is infecting my brain with enthusiasm and impulse consumerist decisions. Tomorrow the baby and I jet off for a week to the Old Country attend the wedding of a dear friend and testify in medical malpractice lawsuit (well Helena won't be a part of the latter of course, even though she has been practising her public speaking recently whenever she found herself at a loose end). The trip promises to be relaxing, but in the meantime my stomach is churning with its familiar pre-travel anxiety and my bed is covered in a variety of dresses and hosiery and sunhats for both the adult and the pre-walking set and my mind has given up and wondered off somewhere for cocktails.

Finally, a cautionary tale of theft and cunning:







Covet not thy brother's cup, Helena! Tsk tsk.

I'm not really a fan of One Born Every Minute. I watched a couple of episodes of the first season but couldn't really stomach it afterwards because most of the men came across as unsupportive assholes and the series seemed to be portraying only a particular kind of birth. (Hospitalised, and medicalised. Lots of important looking machines, not much active labour). So I ceased watching because it made me angry and because Z felt that while being there for your wife's labour was a contractual requirement, watching some in his spare time was a step too far.

On the other hand, this episode of the new series is not at all bad.* The staff are lovely. There is a pretty chilled-out waterbirth. The men are occasionally confused/helpless-seeming, but still manage to be supportive of their partners throughout. (The guy who was fanning his partner industriously made me laugh - I wasn't sure how much she was finding it helpful and how much he was doing it because he had been given A Task - the modern equivalent of boiling water). I even forgive the guy who was texting, because he's 22 and maybe he was live-tweeting the whole thing or something.

I had a fabulous labour with Helena, and watching all those babies being born made me feel quite teary-eyed. A new baby's cry! So amazing! Although also the sound whose novelty wears off really quickly.

Finally, all this segues quite nicely into the story about Z, who, once it was confirmed that I was in actual labour with Helena after weeks of yes-maybe-I-guess-notness, sat down on the sofa to read a book (Cloud Atlas) while I pranced around the room in between contractions.
"You're reading?" said I.
"Well," said Z, "it seemed like a good opportunity. Things will probably get intense and tiring later and I won't have the time." **

*Unlike, say, the NHS plans to cut surgeries they offer. Which is very very bad.

**To be fair to him, I was managing very well by myself at that point because the glee of finally having this baby was completely trumping any uterine discomfort.

I was recently struck down with a virus of such sudden onset and visciousness, that the only rational explanation I could come up with was a voodoo curse. Perhaps a voodoo curse wielded by Gillian McKeith to curb any pre-holiday gluttony and joie de vivre.

For two days I was wrecked with fever and shakes and revolting gastric symptoms. For two days I subsisted on just one daily banana and cup of miso soup (one sip every five minutes; any more than that and I would just throw it all up) and a few cups of tea. I was reduced to crawling around the house since I felt too dizzy to walk.

On the other hand, I am feeling much better now (eating a whole apple to celebrate! Maybe even graduating to a few spoonfulls of chicken soup at dinnertime!) and for the first time in years my body weight in kilos does not begin with the number 8. Happily my husband was on hand to capture the romance and the glory of the moment.

Z: You finally weigh less than a washing machine! If you keep it up I might even be able to carry you over the threshold one of these days!

The cats were also happy to help.

CATS: Human Female, you are ill! Don't worry! I shall lie down on you and breathe in your face, while my colleague treads on your charming baby. There! You see? I told you we'd have you on your feet in no time at all. Bravo HUman Female, bravo! Your verticality is an inspiration for us all!

And er... now you are on your feet... would you perhaps consider going to THAT cupboard in the kitchen and producing a little something something as a thank you for your most faithful companions?

I NOM you, delicious baby! NOM NOM NOM.

I am working on some meaningful entries - such as Birth Story Part II - but today has consisted of 5 hours of shouty children in Legoland and then 200 miles worth of roadtrip from Manchester to London improbably wedged between two car seats in order to provide comfort and sustenance to infants, and now we are back and both the children are sleeping and Nina's Outraged Dented Hip is insisting on communion with the bath. A lengthy communion.

On the other hand, today's meaningless drivel is brought to you by day 14 of the National Blog Posting Month and my misplaced sense of competitiveness.

How has your weekend been?
x</p>

One of the ways in which the blogging world continues to inspire me is to make me want to create things of beauty. To name but a few, Ryan Marshall takes wonderful photographs*; Holly Burns does lovely art and craft things in her house and has been the force behind inspiring me to actually make my bed every day, because it looks nicer and makes me feel a million times better. chiller and mockduck make me want to pick up pencils and pens and draw and design something already. Antonia reawakens my own sense of playfulness and causes me to draw bad cartoons**.

I look at the beautiful things that people I know and people I don't create and I feel moved. Inspired into being a little bit greater than the routines of my daily life and think all kinds of pastel Ophraesque thoughts about beauty and meaningfulness. That I want to expend the energy and make time and create things which please me - whether they be drawings or photographs or neat bedrooms, so that when I have a break in my day I can look at them and feel good.

It is hard though.

Because though I am good at creating splendid and profoundly beautiful children


sorting out the messes they generate on a daily, even hourly basis, takes a lot more energy than I think I have. So I end up feeling downhearted. And then I look at the mountains of dishes and the tyranny of unfolded laundry and the hostile invasion of the post and I feel paralysed beneath the relentless dullness of it all.

But then one of you lot does something marvellous. And it makes me go Oooh and shine a little bit.



It makes me wish to look around and clear surfaces and create beautiful things. To invest effort into it, even though it is boring and repetitive and risks leading Z to believe that there are fairies which swoop down and put away the socks he so kindly leaves for them on the floor. It makes me want to do my best even though (barely) controlled chaos is the most I can aspire to.




* Steve McCurry also takes wonderful photographs. But I'm not going to be able to replicate his Travelling-With-Enormous-Lenses lifestyle anytime soon, so I have no aspirations. Although Romany might.

**Not that Antonia herself draws cartoons badly.