After an hour, I started to empathise with those dogs you sometimes see tied to trolley barriers while their owners do the supermarket shopping. Will he ever come back? Why are all these people patting my head? Where is my water bowl?
After ninety full minutes, he returned to the car thrilled to the back teeth because he’d been approved for a motorbike loan. By that stage, I was too busy snapping at my itchy bits like a flea-ridden dog to care.
It’s easy to pass these off as what they undeniably are: crap dates. They stink of disrespect and deceit. But are bad dates a waste of time? Not at all. I’d go on them all again (and, dear reader, there are MANY more stories where these come from). They’re funny. I love that the world is full of people not like me. And sometimes we have them in our living room and, yes, even in our bed.
My gran always used to say, “Every pot has its lid,” and it’s true. And as pots, we have to enjoy trying on as many lids as we can, even if sometimes they’re square and we’re round, or we’re teapots and they’re, well … crackpots. I have no doubt that both Kade and Jimmy have found the loves of their lives now. Though I suspect Jimmy may have to register his one true love with the council.
2nd September 2012
“Having it all”
I’ve been doing a few interviews lately because I’ve started a new job as the host of Can of Worms. It’s the usual roster of radio and press commitments and, frankly, the usual roster of questions. The first one I am asked, without exception, is: “How does it feel to have it all?” Of course, what the journos and broadcasters are referring to is the fact that I have two small children and I hold down a breakfast-radio job as well as the once-a-week hosting duties for the TV show.
I’m not sure why, but every time I’m asked that question I have the overwhelming desire to poke someone in the eye. Because what is the answer? Am I supposed to take a swig of Krug and bleat, “Graysh, thanks! It feels ahmahzing to have it all, thanks so much for noticing.” The fact is, though, that from the inside, from where I stand, “having it all” just feels kind of like having a job and having kids. Nothing more and nothing less.
I read a great quote this week: “The reason we struggle with insecurity is we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone’s highlight reel.”
Well, to answer the question, “How does it feel to have it all?” I offer the following insights into my own behind-the-scenes …
My alarm goes off at 4.45am. I sneak out of the marital bed and get dressed in the kitchen because everyone is still asleep. I lay my clothes out the night before and sometimes forget my shoes or undergarments, so at least once a week I turn up to the studio with no shoes/a floppy maternity bra/no undies.
I could probably get up a bit earlier and run a straightener over my hair, but I opt for the extra fifteen minutes of sleep. The drawback of this is that I spend the majority of my day looking like an escapee from an asylum.
I always forget to make sure there are enough bananas. We run out of them – often. And they’re the only fruit my one-year-old will eat.
Last week, I put my three-year-old to bed and quickly read him a story. I confess I skipped every second page and invented The End when I felt like it.
Weet-Bix and blueberries can double as dinner.
I just measured a hair on my leg and it came in at an impressive 1.2 centimetres. Clearly, I need a Post-it note in the bathroom that says “shave”.
Last week, my gas was nearly cut off because I forgot to pay the bill. I had to call them and beg for an extension, spurred on by visions of my children in layers of clothing huddled around the cat for warmth.
I made a terrible waldorf salad and chicken spare ribs for dinner and I couldn’t even talk about how foul it was. Later that night, I heard my partner stirring up a glass of Fybogel to make up for the distinct lack of edible anything in the meal department.
The “service me NOW” light has been on in my car for about four months – but, seriously, how can I survive without the car for two days? I will probably drive it until it explodes. And work it out then.
My three-year-old knows fifteen types of dinosaur and I have no idea who taught him. Where have I been?
So there you have it. That’s what “having it all” feels like. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It’s life. It is what living feels like. It’s busy and disappointing and being spread too thin. It’s also joyful and crazy and rewarding and funny. It’s the same as your life. Every time I read an article on women “having it all”, it is accompanied by a picture of a model in a crisp black suit, looking exasperated and juggling a smart phone and a teddy bear. What a load of rubbish.
Actually, maybe I just found that elusive thing that deserves that poke in the eye?
9th September 2012
Too much information
Yesterday I laughed so hard I sprayed coffee out of my nose. In truth, this sort of thing happens to me often because I rate having a guffaw very highly on my daily to-do list – along with breathing, nuzzling my sons in that area between their shoulder and neck and singing Adele songs loudly. All good things.
I also really love it when something embarrassing happens to me. It gives me a thrill. Even as the humiliating event is unfolding, with me at the centre of it, I am at the very same time delighting in the thought of the imminent retelling of the excruciating details of the story to an appreciative audience of friends/sisters/colleagues. When you have a group of like-minded people to enjoy your mortification, everything is funny.
Last week I stopped by a cut-price department store to pick up some baby onesies and some undies. I was mooching around with my three-year-old in the trolley when a tiny woman approached me in the baby department and breathed a whispery warning in my ear. “You have a hole in your pantssss,” she said. Then immediately she vanished. Not unlike Snape from Harry Potter. Or Slugworth, the creepy guy who approaches each golden ticket winner in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
I immediately reached my hand around to feel for the hole and all I felt was bottom. A hole indeed. I tried to pull down my jumper to cover my exposed rump. When that failed I thought, “Imagine you don’t know your bum is hanging out and finish your shopping with a cheeky nonchalance.”
And so I did. Albeit with apologetic eyes to anyone who had the misfortune of waiting behind me at the cash registers.
When I told my friend this story, she screamed and threw herself back in her chair. We laughed breathlessly for ten minutes straight. Delightful.
And it seems I’m not alone in my compulsion to share embarrassing stories.
The next day on my radio show, we opened the phone lines on mortifying moments and Kay called in with a cracker that left us speechless.
She had been to the dentist and had a tooth removed. One of the back ones, the ones that leave you open to the glamorous affliction called “dry socket”. Hot.
Anyway, Kay had the procedure and was feeling pretty fine, actually. Not one to waste a day off from work, she decided on a spot of retail therapy at her local shopping centre. You know, sashay through some shops, grab a muffin … ordinary stuff made exhilarating by getting to do it during work hours on an unexpected day off. It’s heaven, actually.
So Kay parked her car and checked her appearance: looking good, given something the size of a stock cube had been extracted from the bones of her face just an hour earlier. Feeling brave, she removed the wad of gauze, locked the car and off she went.
About an hour later, and after browsing several thousand racks of discounted pastel jeans, she blew her nose and saw a spot of blood on the tissue. Problem.
She made her way to the conveniences and within seconds realised something had gone seriously wrong with the whole stock-cube extraction situation. The lower part of her face was covered in blood. She’d been walking the shopping centre aisles, asking “Do you have this in
a size 12?” and “What’s the muffin of the day?” with a face that resembled something from a documentary about lions, impalas and feeding frenzies.
When she told us this story she could barely get it out. And my on-air partner Jane and I had moments of not even being able to hear what she was saying because we were howling like malamutes.
Some people call this “oversharing” but to me there’s no such thing. If Kay and I are telling stories that make some people put up the palms and squeal “Too much information!” then so be it. Even Rodney, who followed Kay on air, was not guilty of oversharing by my standards … even though his embarrassing moment involved the car park at a place called Tropical Fruit World, a funny tummy and mincing back to the car with his wife yelling after him, “Rodney! I can see something! What have you DONE?”
And in the interests of those who are vehemently anti-overshare, I’ll leave it there.
Enjoy your coffee.
16th September 2012
Grand illusions
We have decided to pull up stumps and move closer to the city. We live in a suburb that was settled in the ’60s … all big blocks and fir trees and optimistic architecture.
And we’ve loved it. The peace, the quiet, the parking! But I suddenly got the notion that I wanted to be somewhere that smelled like garlic from restaurant kitchens on Friday nights, so we’re off.
The house has, of course, never looked better. After four years of turning my key in a chipped mission-brown front door, it is now a glossy fire-engine red. The door I always wanted. We removed approximately five tonnes of weeds and nameless shrubs from the front yard and planted neat hedges and feature plants. It’s beautiful. The garage is like something from a TV series. In fact, the whole house is dreamy. Why exactly are we moving?
Let me tell you, it is no mean feat taking a house from Octomom to Martha Stewart. Especially when I am a naturally messy person and I have two little fellas under age three to contend with. The solution? Hire a storage unit. One day, when my three-year-old, Leo, was at kindergarten, two removalists came and took away a truckload of our life clutter. Leo’s room looks like no child has ever even breathed in there. Every so often he’ll get a faraway look in his eye and I know it’s coming … I know he’s remembering his old room and the questions are about to roll.
He’ll say, “Where’s my cubby house?” or “Where’s my train table?” To which I mumble something about aspirational buyers and selling the dream. He’ll get his stuff back eventually, but right now it’s important that his room resembles a still from a kids’ manchester catalogue. I may or may not have manufactured a twee “reading station” with colour-coded books and a Pippi Longstocking-themed rug. The devil, or the profit, as my real estate agent tells me, is in the details.
On “open for inspection” days, I fly around the house like interiors queen Tonia Todman on speed. A bowl of lemons appears on the coffee table. I usually have to artfully turn a few around to hide the bite marks, because my toddler finds them irresistible. I scream nonsensical things like, “Those apples are not for eating, they’re for SHOW!” and “Why is there still a sticker on that Packham pear?”
The en suite, usually the domain of a left-out hairdryer, charging toothbrushes and my fella’s beard clippers, is now host to a solitary Oriental lily in full bloom, a green Venetian candle and a pump of Aesop handwash.
Hopefully, the prospective buyers never need to wash their hands, because what they’ll find lurking in the fancy bottle is actually a cut-price refill.
I even have stunt towels. Bright white and never used, they are artfully placed on the rails ten minutes before the buyers arrive because, hey, doesn’t every family have pure white towels?
Then there are the pillows. Nothing sells a house like 4000 pillows. I have them on the main bed, the living-room sofa, every easychair and even in the cot.
In my baby’s bedroom, the poo bin is stashed away. No one wants to see evidence of an actual human baby. Lord knows they’re not going to find any of that at our place. I am ashamed to admit that there is a chair in the baby’s room, complete with cushion and small side table with three thoughtfully fanned out Beatrix Potter books. I have never sat in the chair, I have never opened those books. Hell, I’ve never even read Jemima Puddle-Duck to my one-year-old! But let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good story, shall we?
And you know what? It’s working. People love the house. They’re eating it up. But I suspect what they’re really falling for is not the bricks and mortar. It’s the irrational belief that if they buy this house, they’ll be the sort of person who has fresh tulips in the dunny.
They’re buying being the family who always makes the beds and has a kitchen that is 90 per cent shiny benchtops and bowls of perfectly formed navel oranges. They see themselves entertaining their friends in the “alfresco barbecue terrace” and their excitement ignores that fact that it is just a patch of Lilydale Topping with a ten-year-old Super A-Mart table on it and a $10 blooming cyclamen in a terracotta pot.
Part of me wants to stop them on the way in and say, “It’s all a dream! We don’t live like this! NO ONE LIVES LIKE THIS!” But that would be beside the point.
I have been tempted, however, to include in the contract a small disclaimer along the lines of: “Purchasing this house does not include children who live like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Your husband will still leave chest hair on the soap, wet towels on the floor and abominable odours in the WC. And the indoor grill is a bastard to clean. You will use it once and stick to the frying pan.”
Let’s see what happens come auction day …
23rd September 2012
Learning to lie
My child has learnt to lie and it is both worrying and delightful to me. I guess you have to be careful what you wish for, because when he was about six months and I was getting impatient to converse with him, I remember saying to my partner, “I can’t wait until he can talk! And, you know, start fibbing.”
I’ve always loved watching tiny people concoct whopping great lies. Mainly because they have no idea how obvious it is that they’re lying. When you know, you can enjoy the performance.
Last week we noticed our above-ground pool (better than a beach in your own backyard!) had started to develop a slowly dwindling water level. If the slightest thing goes wrong with it I call the professionals immediately. Frankly, it’s like a big blue moody mistress is living in my garden: great times to be had, but you don’t want to hear about its problems. Within a few days, someone in a wetsuit had found a hole and patched it and we were all fine.
It was on this pool guy that my three-year-old decided to unleash his very first lie. Leo loves a visitor, even a tradie. He follows them around, chatting and inspecting their work. First stop with any pool problems is the filter-and-engine thingy. In our case, the machinery is housed under the decking in a dirty, spider-infested crawlspace. I’ve never been in there because it gives me the creeps, but pool guys and three-year-olds are clearly impervious to its perils and in they both went. It was a beautiful day so I was standing outside holding my one-year-old and listening to the barrage of questions that Leo was firing at the pool guy: “Is that a spanner?” “Is that your tool bag?” “Did you know my dad sometimes locks me in here?”
Ummm … what?
That’s right. My son was telling a total stranger that sometimes, you know, just for kicks, his dad LOCKS HIM UNDER THE DECK WITH THE POOL MACHINERY.
Before anyone calls the authorities, I can assure you that I have spent many hours with both the accused and the alleged victim, and Leo’s dad has a hard time keeping a straight face even while telling him off for breaking his favourite Star Wars figurine.
I mentioned the Pool Guy Incident to my friend and she said, “Yep. He’s nearly four. That’s when they start lying like rugs. It’s hilarious. But also scary. Caitlyn told everyone at kindy
I had a hairy penis.”
Another friend confessed she’d been called to the school because her daughter told her teacher that Mummy had chopped up her bed and stopped giving her breakfast.
I must confess, I remember the first whopper I ever told. It was 1979 and I was playing at the Penrys’ house at the end of the street. For some unknown reason, when Mrs Penry asked how I was, I feigned sadness and told her my dad had died … in the war.
Maybe I’d been watching too much Apocalypse Now, who knows? The strangest thing is that now, as an adult, I have no idea why those adults believed me. Sure, there was a war going on between Vietnam and China, and the Cold War was yet to wind down, but 1979 wasn’t a big year for Australian involvement in wars of any kind. And besides, they’d probably slowed down the Falcon and had a quick chat to Dad while he was mowing the lawn that very weekend. Why didn’t they know I was lying?
Nevertheless, Mrs Penry turned up on our doorstep with a CorningWare pot full of curried sausages and a message of condolence. I came to the door behind Mum just at the moment Mrs Penry was mouthing something mournful to her. The penny dropped as I realised what the curried snags meant. My immediate reaction was to bundle my things into a handkerchief, attach them to a stick and hit the road forever, hobo-style.
But I had to face the music. Thank goodness my mother was sensible and realised I was four years old and just, well, lying my bottom off. I’m not sure Dad was even told about it. It might have hurt his feelings, actually …
Perhaps it’s tales like these that prompted the story I heard recently about a local primary school slipping notes in the schoolbags of its pupils, cutting a deal with parents: “If you don’t believe most of what your child says about school, we won’t believe most of what they say about what goes on at home.”
Is It Just Me? Page 7
