Crappy New Year

And so that was Christmas.

So now, on the eve of the new year, let us take a moment to reflect on the 365 days past. The thrills and the sorrows. The joys and the triumphs. And all the crappy boring bits of domestic banality in between.

Mostly, I have spent the year of 2011, picking stuff up.

I don't mean interesting things that you could pick up like, say, 'a bargain in the sales', 'a bit of French while en vacances' a 'pleasantly muscled plumber' or even chlamydia. I'm talking about the bent-over laborious collection of voluminous amounts of kid-related crap sort of picking stuff up.

Back in the day when I were a wee lassie, when we carried a three legged donkey 30 miles to school and had naught but a rotten lump of coal to play with, our house wasn't overrun with crap.  We didn't have four billion-trillion toys like kids these days and were content with a rusty 3rd hand Malvern Star and a cheap cricket bat to keep us entertained for the summer.

We had a little gang of neighbourhood kids who roamed the streets like a pack of feral puppies searching for a stray biscuit or a mum who had baked a cake. We played out in the street, mostly didn't wear sunscreen and occasionally came inside for a drink of something highly artificial and E-number ridden or to marvel at the wonder of video.

No, us hardy gen X-ers didn't need much stuff.  We were enlightened by the joyful fresh-aired loveliness of our pre-pubescent innocence, frolicking around on roller-skates and climbing trees in our blissful suburban paradise. (Or maybe we were just high on E numbers?)

My mum didn't spend all day hunched over as if she hailed from Notre Dame, scouring the shag pile for fear of foot impalement by Slutty Schoolgirl Barbie's* seven-inch stiletto.  In fact, according to my foggy recollection, I do not remember her ever picking stuff up.  I do, however, recall that she drank shit loads of wine and regularly shouted something along the lines of 'clean up this pigsty or I'm chucking everything out'.**

So what's happened to our bratty little pampered gen Z-ers who require Everestian mountains of toys, books and craft materials in order to find fulfillment?  Why does my living room floor constantly resemble the aftermath of a hideous massacre, littered with Barbie corpses and gruesome matchbox car pile-ups?  How come the dining table, with it's carpet of glitter and sequins and texta stains, looks like the morning after some sort of gay fairy disco?

Personally, I blame Suri Cruise.***

I'm not one to make new year's resolutions but perhaps this year I will resolve to spend less time on crap collection and work very, very hard on doing my best to perfect my mum's old 'drinking and shouting' parenting technique.

Cheers, my lovelies and a very Non-Crappy New Year to you all!

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In light of my hero/guru Mareike Hardy's recent defamation charges against material containted in her blog, I have now added bonus disclaimers just in case any of you 27 lovely readers wish to sue me.

* There is no such thing as 'Slutty Schoolgirl Barbie'.  The particular doll I make reference to is in fact 'Princess Charm School Barbie'. She is wearing a provocatively-styled uniform of sorts however, it would be un-feminist of me to label her derogatorily despite the fact she looks 'well up for it'.

** My mum is quite posh.  She would never have said the word 'chucking'.

*** It's not Suri Cruise's fault my kids are disobedient, messy little buggers.  It's mine.  And Mr D's.  And my mum's cause she always buys them loads of crap. Oh and have a look at this hilarious blog.

 (Laimīgu jauno gadu to my Latvian reader.)

'Tis the season to be threatening...

I have threatened to call Santa on so many occasions during these past few weeks that it no longer holds the same malicious punch it once did.  Once upon a time, simply reaching for the phone would result in instant obedience. Now it seems the kids have given up on even trying to be on their best behaviour.  One friend's son told her "I think I just want presents from mum and dad this year 'cause it's too hard to be good for Santa".

Keeping up with Daisy's Santa wish list is also proving challenging. I have purchased the 'big girl' bike, make-up set and dinosaur egg as previously requested.  However, when we saw Santa at the shops this morning and he asked her what she wanted, the reply was 'an angel costume'.  It was the first I'd heard of that one. 'Darling, Santa may not have any angel costumes left in stock at this late stage.' I said with a panicked grimace towards the man in red. 'Oh, um, yes' replied Santa, 'sometimes you get what you ask for and sometimes I like to leave you a surprise.'  Nice save Santa.

Oh and by the way, I am currently residing with Mr Scrooge himself.  Following the mid-week delivery of our real live Christmas tree, a conversation between me and my beloved went something along the lines of as follows:

Mr D:  I thought we already had a Christmas tree (points to artfully arranged selection of decorated twigs). 
Me: No, that is not a Christmas tree, that's an artfully arranged selection of decorated twigs.
Mr D:  How much was it?
Me: (after calculation of the automatic husband-doesn't-need-to-know 30% deduction, exclusion of cost of tree stand, delivery charge and the trip to Bed Bath and Table for some new decorations) Oh, about 50 bucks.
Mr D: WHAT?!?

Anyway, Mr D may well be pleased to know that since the tree went up I have been battling a violent internal tug of war regarding my disdain of artificial Christmas trees, versus the irritation of having sticky little pine needles carpeting the house which are an absolute bugger to suck up the vacuum.

Next year we might just have an artfully arranged selection of decorated twigs instead.

Thank you for the music.

While driving to the country with the Saturday afternoon PBS groovy funk session blaring on the radio, the two year-old announced, clear as day, 'I don't like this kind of music.'  'Whaaaat!?!' I shrieked, shocked not only because the kid's just learning to talk, so I was kind of impressed by the clarity of speech and complexity of his sentence structure, but how is it possible for a mere pipsqueak of a lad whose favourite tunes include 'Twinkle Twinkle' and one line from The Sound of Music sung over an over again have an opinion on musical styles? And more importantly, how can one not feel their soul groove and spirit uplifted by the feel-good fandango that is funk music?

I make no claims of being a music aficionado.  My musical taste has been described as 'appalling' at worst, 'eclectic' at best and I certainly do not know my Lady Goo Goo from my Justin Beaver.  I abhor commercial radio stations (with the exception of the one that plays the classic hits of the 60's, 70's and 80's). Pop is so plastic, techno gives me heart palpitations, while anything much heavier than Kenny G makes my ears bleed.  Mr D favours a selection of late-seventies/early-eighties British music which is all sung by poorly-nourished angry-looking toothless creatures who shout a lot.  Nope, for me it's the groovy melodies of funk, soul and jazz that really make my heart sing. That and show tunes.

I have harboured a long time not-so-secret desire to be in a musical and have been privately rehearsing the role of 'Chris' Wife' in Miss Saigon for approximately 23 years. Hair. Les Mis. Annie. Starlight Express. JC Superstar.  I love them all.  My children are subjected to regular performances of show-tune medleys which, in my opinion, are Broadway-worthy brilliant.  However, the mini-critic's reviews left me feeling, well, rather les miserables when one of the boy's first proper sentences was 'stop singing Mum!'

In these heady days of small children, it is rare for me to be in control of anything (especially my bladder). My life is dictated by a pair of cuddly little Hitlers whose preferred musical choice is a quartet of grown men wearing coloured skivvies.  What's playing on the car radio is my final frontier of free-choice and I will tirelessly fight for and defend this right to my freedom, Braveheart-style, until death. Or at least until Mr D gets in the car and switches it straight to the cricket.

Bah Humbug

I've never been a big fan of Christmas. And I'd rather stick rusty needles in my eyeballs or permanently move in with my in-laws than visit a large shopping centre during the month of December.  However, since tradition dictates that we must indulge our small treasures during this annual festival of clutter-up-the-house-with-even more-kid-related-crap-in-the-name-of-baby-Jesus, I was forced to venture to the local mall this week. 

While searching for a car park I conducted a very important anthropological experiment which led to the conclusion that there are at least 2 different car parker personality types:

• The Cruiser:  The Cruiser ambles up and down each isle watching for the flicker of a tail light before he pounces, indicators ablaze, waiting patiently for the departing vehicle to make avail of his space.
• The Stalker:  The Stalker hunts the bag-laden shopper as she swerves erratically between rows of cars, anxiously anticipating where she will stop, watching for for the flash of key-less entry, shamelessly speeding to overtake the Cruiser in the quest for car park glory.

I am a Stalker.  I even shout out the window 'are you going now?'  If they're just dropping off bags and going back for more, I run them over.  It's kinder to put them out of their misery.

Here's some festive poetry from the archives. Circa 1990.

Christmas With my Rellies.

They come from every corner.
They come from near and far.
They come over just to kiss you
And to ask you how you are.

You put on your best party dress.
You comb your hair all neat.
Even thought you really want to scream,
You have to act so sweet.

The presents that they give you
are just junk in Christmas wrap.
So when the shops reopen,
you take them all straight back.

What happened to the spirit
and all the Christmas cheer?
Christmas with my rellies...
Thank Christ it's only once a year!

Pants on Fire

It has occurred to me just how much I lie to my children.

The other day Daisy showed me a lovely smooth, round, flat, pebble she found at the beach.  'Did you squash that pebble?' I asked. She looked at it, perplexed.  'How did it get so flat?' I said. 'You must have stood on it and squashed it.' Again she looked at the pebble, turning it around in her hands, mystified. 'I didn't do it!' she replied in defence. 'Maybe a dinosaur squashed it' I replied.

Later, I told another porkie pie.  'Murray Wiggle is coming for dinner on Sunday' I said. The kids were beside themselves with excitement. 'Can I do colouring in with Murray?  Can I do ballet for Murray? Can Murray read me a story?' 'Absolutely!' I replied. ('Murray' is actually my friend Gary who has that Wiggle-ish, slightly manic exuberance of a puppy who's just gulped down a large bowl of red cordial. He even looks a bit like Murray.  In fact if Murray were to break a leg, Gary could slip into the red skivvy and nobody would even notice.)

Life is peppered with little white lies to our offspring. I'm not talking about serious boy-who-cried-wolf lies with consequences but we do tell them a lot of stuff which is, frankly, bullshiz.  There's the traditional Santa, Easter Bunny and tooth fairy fables.  The old 'too much TV will give you square eyes' and 'eating your crusts will make your hair go curly' tales. My many regular porkies include; 'sorry, the toy shop's closed today', 'eat up your magic fairy trees' and my current seasonal favourite, 'right, I'm going to have to call Santa!'

I adore my little monkeys. But let's face it, sometimes this parenting malarkey gets a little dull and repetitive with all that bum wiping and tripping over Matchbox cars. I call this making stuff up 'situational creative embellishment'.  I like to have a little chuckle on the inside.  And kids are really gullible.

But where do we draw the line between fantasy fiction and fodder for therapy?  Could all this making stuff up be screwing them up?   Is it beyond hypocrisy to preach to your kid 'every time you tell a lie, a fairy dies'? Are the kids scarred for life because 'Murray Wiggle' turned up with frightening Movember mutton chops that were more Chopper Reed than Hot Potato?

There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics. According to Wiki Answers:

• 12% of adults admit to telling lies "sometimes" or "often". (Presumably the other 88% were lying when they answered that question.)
• The profession with the highest number of liars is teaching. (Gullible kids, why wouldn't you?)
• The most dishonest time of day is between 9 and 9:30 in the evening, with the early hours of the morning most likely to reveal the truth. (In vino veritas perhaps?)
• Australians are the most honest people in the world, followed closely by Norwegians, Swedes and Belgians.
  
• The most profligate liar in history was US president Richard Nixon, who researchers found to have lied on record 837 times on a single day. (Politicians lying? Who would have thought?)

Fascinating stuff.  And that's no lie.

Worrying Stuff...

My daughter, Daisy, is a worrier.  She is descendant from a long line of worriers, hypochondriacs, catastrophisers and grey-haired predictors of doom.  I worry about how much she worries.

In the car this afternoon she announces 'I am not going to have any babies ever mummy!' 'Why not?' I ask. 'Because I don't ever want a needle ever again' she replies.  (The injection phobia is warranted given she was simultaneously jabbed in both arms in the name of community disease prevention yesterday.) 'But,' I say, 'by the time you're old enough to have babies, you won't be scared of needles any more.'  Which got me thinking about all the things I used to worry about and assumed I would just grow out of. 

When I was a child I was a champion worrier.  I vividly recall losing sleep over a broad range of issues and concerns including World War Three, depression (of the fiscal variety), my parents divorcing, my parents dying, bushfires, acne, being struck by lightening, catching AIDS and losing my beloved soft toy panda.

I also spent a large part of my tweenage years worrying about the dog dying.  However, I calculated that if the dog (a mad Golden Retriever named Jacko) lived to an average age, say, 14-15 years, by the time he carked it I would be at least 24 and by then I would be old enough to cope with the loss. He died when I was 21 and backpacking in Laos.  I was mortified but at least I was old enough to douse my sorrows with Mekong whiskey. 

Sadly, maturity has not brought an end to anxiety and I'm still a world-class worrier. In fact I'm worse since having kids, which gives birth to a whole new set of worries (cot-death, kidnapping, head lice) and the invention of Google (who needs to seek advice from a qualified medical professional when Dr Google is there to tell you that you've probably got cancer or worse?)

According to some bloke called Thomas Kepler, on average 40% of the things we worry about is stuff that will never happen,  30% of worries are about things that have already happened 12% are about others' opinions while 10% are needless health worries. Which makes only 8% of our worries worth worrying about.  Now that's a worrying statistic.

The Dalai Lama says:  “If there is a solution to a problem, there is no need to worry. And if there is no solution, there is no need to worry.”  Wise words from the Buddhist Big Cheese.

My mantra of the week comes courtesy of Bobby McFerrin.

'Don't worry, be happy.'

Do do do do do di do di do di do di do...