What was she doing in there?

Yesterday we took the family to the pool for a rare swim together (while Mummy got some quick laps in). As anyone unfortunate enough to spend any time in public change rooms will know, the showers are all on timers now. You press a button and get three to four minutes worth of drinking water to wash your hair in. Everyone forgives the odd restart - we're all human and no one wants to be left in the lurch with their hair full of lather. But yesterday I heard a woman restart TEN times.

What was she doing in there? Was she in labour? Was she having earth-shattering sex? Does she only shower once a week? Because those are the only reasons I'd accept for a shower of that magnitude.

Oh, and how do I know this? What was I doing in the change rooms for that long? I'm cursed with curly hair. It's a thing...

Some of the things I overhear...

The 12yo is home. Hooray! But of course he must have his Halo fix :(

When I listen to the exchanges between 12yo and his stepfather though, I have hope.

The best so far is, "Oh sweet Nellie! I just fell off a cliff!" (in a high pitched voice coming from a big bloke = hilarious)

and the carguments:

"No, you can't drive.... you'll just tip it over again... Ok, but if you tip it over.... hey!!! don't move yet... hey!!! Emma, he's making me chase the car!!!"

and the advice to stepfather from the Halo veteran: "If you see two guys, just play dead." "Oh yeah, you're supposed to be stealthy here." and "It's not night vision, it's a torch, you didn't know you had a torch?"

and the advice to 12yo from gaming veteran stepfather: "12yo, when you yell, OVER THERE! and run off. That's not teamwork." and similar...

and the random:

"Now THAT'S how you cross a stream."

Laughing, "Hey dude, you found the tree!"

"Quick, get in the car! no the other left!" etc etc.

Since they play with the sound right down, it's easy to forget if you're not looking that it's the first person shooter responsible for almost as many virgin males as WOW.

It's FUN.

I'm pretty sure (99.999999%) that it's not going to turn my son into a mass murderer either. Then again, this sort of gaming is recent and supervised. Can't help but wonder what the effect would have been of unsupervised gaming at, say 5 years old or something :-\ Luckily I'll never know...

Wow, I used to write train poetry!

I came across this in an old notebook... the Snippets from my notebooks Label is now reborn :-)

Tic, toc, this line is so slow!
The minion of my boredom shouting "Go! Go! Go!"
Yet, my pen is stationary on the stationery...
So what? Should I care if it rests unaware?
Drips from my fingers, my mind elsewhere?
Ah, me, I mustn't berate myself.
'Tis the trains terrific.... soporific... effect....

Bad Mummy morning and the screaming to-do-list.

I’m writing this for my husband. I’m writing this for a plethora of reasons (work avoidance, getting the writer’s juice flowing, venting) but mainly for my husband who oft complains that I make unreasonable knowledge demands of him as he can’t possibly know what goes on when he’s not here. Fair cop.

This article is written to cure ignorance. It is written for those who think that keeping house for five (if you include the dog), rearing children with widely disparate needs, while writing a thesis is easy. It is written to call out those parents who are making it look easy by pouring their remaining energy into a blissfully happy facade (STOP it will you? you're not helping!). And finally, it is written for those of you who will GET it, those who know that more thought goes into seemingly simple tasks than those who don’t have to do them can possibly imagine. Also, that there are MORE simple tasks than anyone can possibly imagine, and for those of us who wander around awake, these simple tasks can take over our heads, berate our brains with their need, and whip our conscientious bodies into actions that are not, necessarily, the ones that we would most like to be doing.

If this stream of consciousness account of my morning gets boring, that’s because HOUSEWORK is boring - plough through, that’s what I do, you may find there’s a reward at the end. Oh, and this is the truncated version.

6.45am My alarm goes off. I groan, rip out my earplugs (I wear these so I can sleep through the rumblings of the walrus), remember that I don’t have to get the 12yo to school today and roll over for ten more minutes of blissful snooze while the other half showers.

6.55am crawl into my clothes, most of which are too small - can’t afford bigger ones at the moment, solving the problem with the more economical strategy of eating less.

7.00am Toddler wakes up chirpy and cheerful (thank goodness) I spend the next 45 minutes negotiating clothing and breakfast. Resisting the urge to shout, “What is WITH you? Your brother didn’t care what colour socks he wore!! He didn’t even care if he wore socks! Just put on the blue ones for FUCK’S sake!!!” No, all of that goes on quietly in my head while I calmly wait for her to navigate the minefield of colours that is her underwear drawer.

745am Getting ready to go, checking shopping lists (because it’s Tuesday and there is no other shopping day), checking that the banks have all done what they were supposed to do overnight, organising to pay the most urgent bill - “first notice… school excursion…. second notice…. final notice…. they won’t REALLY take me to court…. disconnection - Bingo!”

7.55am Ready to walk out the door only I forgot that the dog was getting clipped, impatiently wait for him to finish his breakfast before loading everyone into the car (this, just on its own, can take fifteen minutes).

8.45 Catch all the horrible traffic due to getting out of the door late so treated to half an hour’s worth of whining about childcare from toddler instead of the usual twenty. Fill in the forms for medicine at childcare (toddler has a runny nose) and attempt to disentangle myself from the lady limpet - thank goodness for childcare angels who manage to extract her without a tantrum today! They are under-applauded and under-paid.

9.15am Dropping the dog off. At least he likes the groomers, no separation issues there. Forget to rebook his clips so will have to do that at the other end of the day. Bleah.

9.30am Finally make it to the shopping centre an hour later than usual and debate the pros and cons of having a coffee now. Stomach solves the problem by announcing to all and sundry that it’s empty. Breakfast is a gourmet mocha made with real chocolate and served on a Bunsen burner. Worth every penny but the decorative melted chocolate down the sides of the mug drives me nuts (being a non-handle type of person).

I try to alleviate the pausing for coffee guilt by reminding myself that it’s a rare day when I can have a coffee in the morning without the toddler present. Also, I get out my to-do book and start to write down all the nagging clutter in my head. The list of things still left to do… it runs to three A5 pages. Not bad. This tirade wasn’t on it, by the way.

10.00am I finally get to Coles and find to my amusement that they have solved the problem of consumers having accurate information (the price per unit info under the actual price) by making the UNITS different. That is, one brand of tissues is priced per tissue, the other brand is per 100 tissues. Nice one Coles. Very clever. Respect. This is the highlight of my shopping trip. I still take the time to buy the cheapest thing on the shelf.

11.00am Home again. The plan was to dump all the stuff that needed to be refrigerated in the fridge and leave again for Uni so I can get a draft to my supervisor who is lucky enough not to have read a draft of mine yet, and so demonstrates some enthusiasm for them.

Instead I think, “It’s only a small shop today, and you’re only making soup to freeze, you can cook while you put away the shopping…” I’m powerless against that nattering, nagging, get it done now you won’t regret it voice… so I do it.

Chop onions, remembering to put peelings into our new compost pile as I go, retrieving the large saucepan from the *dishwasher that needs emptying* (“Oh, I’ll just get that out of the way too…”).

Set the onions to caramelise, find the herbs, waste time looking for a special chili mix that seems to have evaporated with the move. Disappointed I settle for chili powder. Get out cans for this amazingly easy vegan soup. Stir onions, unpack shopping, stir onions… add herbs… stir onions…

Open the cans of cannellini beans (organic, whatever that means) and tomatoes (whole tomatoes because the factory uses the better quality fruit for those that go whole into the tin - damaged stuff gets diced or pureed - see how we think about every little thing that goes into the cupboard and hence your bellies?) run a small experiment to see whether the visual effect in the blender is more pleasing to the eye with the cannellini beans on the top or the bottom (bored am I). Cannellini beans on the bottom definitely wins. I will forget this and run the same experiment next time I make this soup. Pour the resulting pink slop over the onions and muse that if I were ever to write this recipe down I would need to reassure the gentle reader (why are readers always gentle? I’m not!) that the resulting soup is a rich red. Set it to boil. Realise I forgot to buy tuna, go through the shopping list to see if there’s anything else I forgot, while I’m at it go through the receipts in my wallet to see if there’s anything claimable on them. Fix the permanent shopping lists in my permanent list book (that's why I forgot the tuna).

Time to clean up (“you might as well get that out of the way”). Rinse out all the tins with the same bit of water, run it through the blender then add it to the soup. There’s nothing meaty or dairy on the blender so that gets a quick rinse and goes straight onto the *dish rack that needs emptying* so you empty that in order to be able to put the new stuff on it and remember that you were going to empty the dishwasher… (“Might as well get it out of the way…”)

(“Might as well finish off”) the shopping job by putting the shopping bags back into the car… Also collect rubbish from car and check mail while you’re there (“might as well”). Reflect that if you were a better parent you’d make the kids clean up their own car mess so that they didn’t think fairies did it.

Reward: When I come back inside, the house smells amazing.

It’s now 12.30pm and I’m starving. Time to make lunch and start moving things to the study…

(NOTE: With a toddler in tow, this morning would have taken until 3pm to complete. After which I would have started the after-school run. Today was a rare and magical day with my son away and my daughter in an extra day of childcare. To complete my Tuesday tasks in record time is a treat.)


Retrieve draft notes from the bedroom (because you fell asleep berating yourself for your crap prose and disorganised exegesis last night) unsuccessfully ignoring all of the post move clutter in the hallway that screams, “You’re at HOME!! Might as well do ME too!!!!” I give in and put away one umbrella on my way through. In the bedroom I also retrieve an empty champagne bottle from my side of the bed. Husband has cottoned on to the fact that it will be disposed of if he leaves it on my side and he’s not wrong. Bottle magically fills recycling bin which gets put by the door for my next trip outside which will be during my study break when I will also check the mail and make two dozen roast chicken sandwiches to freeze.

Make lunch, high protein, low carb as is the norm for the new dietary regime. I compromise with avocado dip and crackers, squeezing the lemon juice through my fingers to catch the pips Lebanese style and because handling the food is how you get the love in. Run my lunch and notes to the study while ignoring the outdoor jobs that scream at me -
the conglomerate of pot plants the broken easel begging to be measured up for some new dowel pins, the weeds in the path, none of which seem to bother my husband.

I check my mail and read the news, resisting the urge to berate a commenter and tweet about her inflammatory ignorance instead. Nice break.

It’s 1pm. Time to change hats from Mummy to Scholar. And can I? No. That’s why I wrote this, seething with resentment because I can’t shut all of this stuff out while the rest of my family can. I’m surrounded by animated tasks and objects and the chatter is deafening. My environment is a visual to-do-list, and in the current climate it is overflowing. I am, you might say, constantly perceptually overwhelmed at home. This is the reason one of the traditional Dad’s jobs was to “get mother out of the house” on occasion.

So, dear husband, that’s why I’m snarky and jittery when you come home after I’ve had a day at home. I’ve spent the day trying to shut out the chorus of a to-do-list that is impossibly long. That’s why I snarled when you used to refer to my days at home as “days off”. And THAT’S why I’m so protective of my one little sterile room. My one room with no jobs in it but scholarly jobs, my little grotto. THAT’S why I snap when you ask if I really “need” it, or when you ask why I can’t have the household paperwork here too…

But now I feel fantastic, sometimes having a good old whine does the trick beautifully. I’m going to go into the house to get another cup of tea, and when I do I’m going to tell the chorusing to-do-list to go and get stuffed.

Pondering the occasional well-timed smacking.

We are mostly nonsmackers in our house, reserving the smack for the life threatening actions (running on to the road) and occasions where the parents are too tired to negotiate. It's rare, but if I say, "Mummy is getting too cross and if you don't listen I'm going to give you a smack." It gives the kids a clue that they're pushing the limits. We rarely have to follow through. We never do the explosive out of the blue smack, that's scary and unproductive. We give warnings, and we do what we say we are going to do. The kids know this and respect it 99% of the time which is pretty good I reckon.

Today my 2yo and I are at loggerheads. Again. This time over getting dressed after her swimming lesson. I reason with her (you'll be cold, the car will be wet, Mummy has to get home and clean, you have to get home and have lunch, how can we do those things if you don't get dressed?) over and over. All I get is stalwart refusal over and over, rising in pitch and volume every time. I'm not going to forcibly undress her, she'll fight and get hurt. So, it's time for threats (or in politically correct speak, consequences). I don't ever make a threat I don't intend to carry out as I believe it makes for ineffectual parents. Kids cotton on to you reaaaal quick - Dad's not really going to throw me into the tumble dryer/leave me at the zoo on my own/make me sleep in the shower....

There's a limited amount you can do in a public change room so I raise my voice slightly over the single-minded 2yo naysaying and tell her this: "If you don't get dressed, I will pick you up as you are, take you to the car and plonk you in it. It will be cold, you will be uncomfortable, Mummy will be cross and there will be no nice things when you get home."

2yo weighs this up in her head and decides to give it a go.

Because I'm wearing black and I don't want chlorine all over my clothes, and I'm carrying two bags, when I pick her up it's pretty uncomfortable so she starts to scream. I carry her screaming to the car, manage to get the door open and dump her unceremoniously into the car seat, strap her in tell her that of course she's uncomfortable and it's HER fault for not getting dressed.

She screams all the way home in the car.

She screams when I get her out of the car, plonk her on our already abused couch and slam the living room door.

She's still screaming after I've opened the mail and got the kettle on. I kid you not. The girl has stamina.

When she starts throwing herself against the living room door saying she has to go to the toilet I open it up (still too angry to say words) set up the toilet for her and go back to my cup of tea.

She screams because it's hard getting her wet bathers off. I leave her to it.

She screams because she's cold and wet. I leave her to it.

Finally, she stops screaming and whimpers that she'd like to get dressed now.

So now I give the lecture. The one where I say, "See? Wouldn't everything have been much nicer if you'd just listened to Mummy at the pool?" She does the usual nodding miserably until she feels like she's been forgiven (and she's dressed and warm) then instantly cheers up. We call her little miss MPD for a reason.

After all this I'm completely shattered. I'm on to my second cup of tea and I'm blogging instead of working. Something for which I'll pay dearly later on. And I can't help wondering whether a short sharp smack on the leg at the pool would have saved both of us half an hour of screaming and misery. Either way she had to learn a lesson, and after events like today's I can't help wondering whether the non-smacking way isn't the painful and psychologically scarring way.

With a well-timed smack she might have learned that she'd taken it too far and that she'd better hop out of her bathers quick smart next time or she'll get another one and they're not nice. With the non-smacking method she learns that on occasion she can scream her heart out and Mummy won't care (I was pretending but she doesn't know that), she learns about the powerlessness of being locked in a room at someone else's whim, and being left wet and cold to freeze in order to learn a lesson about the consequences of not getting dressed. When I put it this way, the latter sounds more like torture than the well-timed smack.

My Therapist is on FaceBook - my plight. Those after Ethics can scroll to the end.

Hi all, I had to remove this page.

However, since it was extremely popular and apparently useful to patients and practising therapists alike I have decided to make an emailed copy available. Just send me an email at emervents@gmail.com with "Therapist" in the subject header and I will email you a copy, usually within 24 hours.

I will not keep your email address.

Cheers

Emervents

Pink Schmink - I don't get why some feminist mothers don't like pink. The real front line is somewhere else.

So it turns out that you can want to dress head to toe in pink, dress all your teddies in pink, and still find trucks interesting. Who knew?



I don't know why she's obsessed with pink, all I know is that it must be a gender thing as the people who market toys to children colour their products for a reason. My guess is that the pink girl toys outsold the blue girl toys resulting in the pink isle you see in the toy shop today. I think it's funny that the fact that the isle is almost entirely blindingly bright pink negates any advantage there may have been in making your product pink in the first place. These days a pink toy is lost in the searing haze of pinkness...

One of the more common arguments against dressing girls in pink is that there are assumptions inherent in pink. Assumptions about gender, purpose and societal roles. Apparently by dressing girls in a certain colour we're dooming them to an unfulfilling life in the kitchen (and that a life in the kitchen is deemed to be unfulfilling is a whole other bugbear of mine that I won't go into here).

The social constructs that are dooming girls to roles they find unfulfilling are far bigger than pink clothing. They are companies that discriminate against women on the basis of gender or family commitments, unaffordable childcare, and crusty old blokes like an ancient chemistry lecturer of mine who made it quite clear to me that in his opinion anyone with a vagina didn't belong in a laboratory and ought to be doing social work. He has retired now thank goodness. More and more of those crusties are retiring (a good thing) but unless we're careful they'll be replaced with blokes who are quite happy to continue a company tradition of rewarding people who are willing to work themselves to the bone at the expense of time with their families. In this kind of culture the children need a parent at home if they are to get any one-on-one parenting at all. And of course, in this kind of culture the at home parent is bound to be the birth mother as she needs all that time off to have the baby anyway... Changing the colour of your precious girl's clothing is not going to make one whit of difference to this kind of work culture.

So, as we don't want to return to those dark ages, I'll tell you where I think the real front line is. The people on the front line are the mothers returning to work who are organising job-sharing, or working out how their job can be performed part-time, or working out how they can do some of their work from home. Also on the front line are the fathers who are doing the same, braving up to bosses, swimming against a current of a century's worth of dogma and stating that they need parenting leave or part-time/flexible hours too, as they'd like to do some, duh, parenting. The real changes aren't caused by banning a clothing colour, they're caused by brave parents who are willing to break molds to create a work culture that is equitable in that it allows both men and women into the workforce without leaving our children in the lurch. So dress your girlies in whatever colour you like, you're not going to make a difference to your daughter's prospects until it is taken for granted that both sexes will participate in the workforce and do their share around the house. And for that to happen.... well... let's say it's going to be a little harder for parents than choosing a colour for clothing.