The Great Desk Tidy = Disaster for the rest of the house

Ok, I've cleared my desk and it is now home only to THINGS I USE.



Now can someone tell me where all the rest of this shit is supposed to go?




*sigh*

For those who don't know, I am a recovering hoarder who lives with a fellow hoarder in a house with one cupboard.

Bad Mummy is at the airport.

Today marks the blackest day of the holidays for me. It's the one where my son travels interstate as an unaccompanied minor to see his father. Not that I don't want my son to see his dad, far from it. He likes it, his dad likes it, they bond and stuff. The bit I don't like is the part where my son's welfare is suddenly out of my hands for a week.

Control freak?

Yes.

Sue me.

Being a control freak I am now a veteran when it comes to delivering unaccompanied minors unto airlines while coping with the company of fractious toddlers. These are the rules:

1. The airline will tell you to arrive two hours early. Ignore them. Arrive the usual one hour early or you'll face an hour with a bored and somewhat stressed child for company. In my case, I'd also have a bored and restless toddler who fails to see the point of sitting still in airport lounges. She has the vocal prowess of Joan Sutherland singing a high A, only with more stamina than Joan.

2. Write down all your ex partner's details before you leave or you will have to make embarrassing phone calls at check in while the airline staff eye you suspiciously. It also helps if the airline have got the name of your offspring correct, but that tends to be out of your hands.

3. On cold days you may be tempted to wear bulky jackets. Don't. You will invariably be bomb sniffed and toddlers don't like to wait around while you're checked for explosives.

4. Take a pram that can fold up umbrella style and go through the x-rays or no pram at all, otherwise you will be redirected to the wheelchair entry where you will wait for an eternity with the protesting toddler for your pram to be inadequately fondled by strangers. The only time this happened I felt slightly ill.

5. You will be tempted to take the nappy bag for the toddler. Don't. The less you have to take through airport security the better. Take ONE nappy and ONE bag of wipes wrapped in a change mat. This can fold up into the pram when it whizzes through the x-ray, and your hands will be left free to deal with the toddler who thought she was being let out of the pram to run around - when a two year old express her disappointment that her bids for freedom are being thwarted she expresses it to all and sundry, minimise the damage by traveling light and moving away fast.

6. Once you're in, buy the kids iced chocolates. This will get you at least half an hour of quiet while they eat ice cream with a straw. If other parents glare or glance disparagingly at you for giving a two year old such a rich treat I recommend a stony glare back along with wishing them a demon child for their next one. They don't know you're doing them a huge favour by keeping your little blitzkrieg distracted.

7. When it's time to say goodbye to the minor who is going, don't, whatever you do, let the guilty gibbering worrier inside you have a voice. Your child doesn't need to know that you're secretly afraid you're never going to see him again. Be cheery, tell him to spend his money on food instead of hoarding it like a miser, to have fun, and that you'll see him in a week.

Finally, the last rule:

8. After the minors have boarded and you're hanging around waiting for take off, thou shalt not look the other parents in the eye. In this case, pain shared is pain magnified, and pain magnified leads to public sobbing. Keep your haunted look to yourself. Trust me when I say the other parents have it too, you don't have to check.

Only after his little pink face has left with the gaggle of other minors (there's always a group of them) can I let myself succumb to the guilt-monger in my head. The one that scolds me for abandoning him. The one that berates me, "If you'd only been organised about your life he wouldn't have to do this!" The voice that lists a thousand things that could go wrong while I'm not there. The voice that tells me that he's your good one, your little joker, helper, entertainer, argumentative, imaginative bright spark and you've let him get on a plane alone. What were you thinking???

He must be only a few feet away really, sitting on the plane I can see through the window, but already there is a gaping hole in my side. This wound will remain raw and weeping all week. I try not to cry.

The Odd Sock Solution

Today my 11yo helped with the laundry. I told him to get all the dirty clothes out of his room and into the wash, when they were dry, he helped fold. Laundry is so much nicer with company, I find.

Now, I fold with an Odd Sock basket alongside; any sock that doesn't immediately pair up goes straight in and every now and then I go through it and find matches. Today, after a matching session we were left with no less than 35 odd socks, some of them dating back to when 11yo was four. Being the inventive type, he suggested some ways to solve our odd sock syndrome:

1) A Chameleon Sock
This sock could be paired with any other sock, and during its sojourn in the sock drawer it would gradually take on the colour and texture of the odd sock and voila! A pair of socks! The chameleon sock would revert to its distinctive state after washing.

Apparently though, that is too slow, so...

2) The Magic Sock
This sock simply automatically matches whatever other sock you happen to have on. When I asked why we couldn't just have all magic socks he said that magic socks were REALLY expensive, so nobody could afford to have more than one.

But the master solution is best...

3) The One Sock to Rule Them All
A master sock must be created. One sock to rule them all, one sock to bind them, one sock to wear them all, and in the crevices find them. So whoever had the master sock, could locate and pair all the lost and odd socks of the world. Maybe, the owner of the master sock could sell the paired socks back to their owners... or conquer earth with a Lost Sock Army. We were fuzzy on the details...

Afterwards, I followed him back to his room to help him tidy it and found no less than 13 socks just lying around, four of which belonged to his toddler sister.

It's quite possible that the Odd Sock Solution is to have the 11yo fitted for some glasses.

Where to park the pram in the disabled toilets

Occasionally, when I'm at a shopping centre by myself and desperate for the loo, I take my daughter - pram and all - into the disabled toilet.

There is a certain amount of guilt associated with this practise. I'm not disabled, and neither is my daughter. However, I alleviate said guilt with this reasoning:

1: I would not want to go to the toilet in a parent's room where people also go to breast feed their babies. Yuk. (Yuk for the breast feeding mothers, that is.) Shopping centers that put toilets in rooms for breast feeding have missed the point entirely I reckon. One room for poo, one room for food is how it should be. The best set up I've seen (I forget where) had a living room type arrangement with coffee tables and magazines (with some screened off alcoves for the seriously shy), and the toilet and nappy changing facilities were in their own room off to the side. Also, the toilets were big enough to take a pram/gaggle of kids in with you if you needed to. Lovely, perfect, and unfortunately rare.

2: I do not want to leave the stroller with my baby, and my shopping in a public toilet where I cannot keep an eye on them while I relieve myself in a tiny cubicle, and I'm too shy to make leaving the cubicle door open an option. Unloading child and shopping and taking it all into the tiny cubicle with me is also not an option.

So, I wheel the lot into the disabled toilet and do my business in peace, giving my daughter a bonus lesson in toilet decorum.

The thing to remember though, when you're using one of those automated disabled toilets is, Never, Never, NEVER, park the pram near the button that automatically opens the toilet door. I did this today. Nuff said.

Don't child-proof the world, world-proof the child.

This is ace. Striking a balance is hard though.

A bit of TV for toddlers could go a long way...

I often feel guilty about sitting my toddler in front of the Wiggles when I want to get things done or need a bit of "me time". However, when I read articles about this kind of child abuse, I feel ok about it. I'm sure this kid would have wished his mother had dealt with the extreme frustration parenting can bring by sitting him in front of the TV for half an hour - better than a punch in the face.

My first toddler was an angel, a little whisper in his ear brought on the most sickeningly angelic behaviour by my friend's kids standards. So it was hard for me to understand my friend's frustration. Not that I was judgmental; I'd read all the relevant books and I knew how lucky I was. My second child is far more militant, and now I completely understand the screaming red rage that an innocent child can bring out in you just by being their "growing-up", "inquisitive", "discovering independence" selves. My toddler can hit raw nerves using her voice alone - she's a master - by the end of the day I can be an emotionally exhausted wreck. I now view my friend with a deep respect and awe for the way she managed to keep her cool in the face of "very active toddler" behavioural issues.

If I can lose it to the degree that I know my toddler and I need to be separated NOW or very bad things will ensue. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in that situation and have the crippling disadvantages of drug addiction (read, lack of control over actions) and a lack of parenting education.

If parenting education and drug rehab is too expensive, perhaps we could hand out wiggles DVDs and the means to play them? Wouldn't it be nice if that were a viable solution? :-(

Too much to ask of teachers?

My son's primary school has just redefined "Caring" and "Responsibility" and found a new way to piss off a mum with a logic major.

Dear Principal,

With regard to the converstion we had about the treatment of my son’s injured eye at school on Tuesday.

While I understand teachers’ reluctance to administer all but the most basic first aid on the premises, (in my opinion, even this extra responsibility is not covered by your salaries). I must confess to being more than a little irritated at the reason you gave me for your refusal. Just so we’re clear, I’m not irritated by the refusal itself (though it means my son will have to stay home while I work from home for the rest of the week), I just can’t let shoddy reasoning go by unremarked.

You claim that there are no staff that are medically trained on the premises, so nobody could put ointment on my son's lower eyelid. According to the doctors at the Eye and Ear Hospital, the only qualification required for this simple procedure was gardianship of a child. Of the thousands of medical practitioners in Australia, you would be hard pressed to find one who required that a parent obtained a medical degree before applying eye ointment. In the words of my own doctor, “A trained monkey could apply eye ointment.” So, that you have no medically trained staff is not a good reason for refusing, in fact, it’s rather bad. You could probably get your grade five kiddies to prove this with ven diagrams.

Here are three really good reasons for refusing that I thought were probably lurking in the background:

a) in the rather sad social environment where suing after an accident seems to be the knee jerk reaction of selfish people looking for someone to blame and vent their anger on, and as a result no one wants to take on any responsibility for anything, we’d rather not take responsibility for treating something as important as an eye, besides…

b) haven’t you been reading the news? We’re worked off our feet and underpaid as it is! we simply don’t have time to administer medication as well, sorry… and...

c) if he needs treatment every four hours, should he really be at school at all?

But of course, in this politically correct environment you couldn’t say those things without accusing me of being: a) the suing type, b) one of those thoughtless people who imagine teachers have all this free time on their hands to devote to their child, or c) a bad mother. However, personally, I would have preferred a bit of honesty over a reason that was logically ridiculous.

It amazed me that the doctor at the Eye and Ear Hospital thought it would be best that he go straight back to school, I wouldn’t be surprised if it amazed you too. Maybe she assumed the school would have a nurse, though it is more likely that she didn’t think about the logistics of four hourly ointment application at all.

For me, coming in to the school from university takes one hour out of a precious four and a half hour time slot, so in order to save a few precious minutes I have decided keep my son with me and work from home (while trying to avoid the temptation of the pool in the heat!). His absense will be sad for his buddy of course, but since I have a rather large dealine looming and extremely limited time slots in which to complete my task I see no other alternative. My son will resume school on Monday by which time he will not need the ointment or I willl have taught him to apply it himself. He said that he might be asked to speak about his experience at assembly and I wouldn’t want him to miss out on that.

Kind regards,

me

It will be interesting to see if they make it to the end of the letter and get the vital information :-) i.e. son will not be at school!