Let’s Talk About Sex Baby

OK so I have wanted to write this blog for a while. It’s a topic that I talk about with ALL my close girly friends and in doing so, have learned a LOT about post marital sex. Obviously, to protect the innocent (and the downright dirty) I will be changing names but I thought it was worth writing about because before I had these convos with my ladies, I honestly thought I was just broken from the waist down. I thought if I wrote about it, it might make other people feel better about their sex life (or lack of it) as well.

Before I was married, I was a pretty sexual person. I liked sex. I liked the intimacy of it. I probably did a lot of it for the wrong reasons but I also learned a lot of valuable (I know, I know… snooooore) lessons from it too. Thing is, I have never actually been able to *ahem* “finish off” without some kind of digital stimulation if you catch my drift. No biggie. I have read the statistics. I know I am not alone in this and never felt like I was missing out too much as it was never really the goal for me. So then, I got married. White dress. Chocolate cake. You know the drill. Married life was great (for the most part) and married sex-life was always fine too. Then kids came along. Yep, you can see what’s coming right? Total exhaustion, not showering for 5 days in a row (and I am UNDER exaggerating on that one) and being covered in breast milk and barf are not exactly aphrodisiacs to any one. So things in the gettin’ jiggy department started to lull.

I was lucky enough to get to be a stay at home Mum. For the most part, this job makes me want to shove a fork so far into my eye that I see stars for weeks BUT I do concede I am in a very blessed position. I know lots of Mums who would kill to get to stay home with their kids but they can’t and so I breathe… a lot… and occasionally I drink. Anyway! So the stay at home Mum thing happened and I sacrificed a lot of my identity for that. I was no longer winning the bread, I was buttering it. I was no longer bring home the bacon, I was frying it. You smell what I’m steppin’ in? Yep. Bye bye independence and hello 2 tiny, squalling DEpendants. Oh and PS hello post pregnancy pounds. Those suckers will kill your libido faster than Jeffrey Dahmer at a singles bar. And so, over time, the sexy me just kinda sat in a corner and whimpered with tiredness while the raging beast with a venus fly trap between her legs emerged. Isn’t THAT a mental image?!

Poor Captain Pants. I think he’s still a bit confused about what happened but you simply cannot explain these things to (most) men. They could never grasp what that complete and utter change in role feels like. It really does change you and as I changed, so did our sex life. More infrequent. More predictable. More pleading. It was a pretty sad state of affairs. So then, I started to talking to other Mums and lo and behold, I was not alone!!! I remember talking to a group of friends once and we were comparing how long it had been since we had slept with our partners. I was so embarrassed that I was going to have to admit that it had been almost 3 weeks since nookie town and then, miracle of miracles, one of my gorgeous friends said “Oh I haven’t let Mr X touch me since the baby was born”. “The baby” she was referring to was 9 months old at the time and I know for a fact that they had not bonked during the pregnancy so Mr and Mrs X had not gotten funky with each other for about 18 months. Phew! THEN another girl piped up and said, “Oh my gosh, you’re so lucky! My husband is at me every night, sometimes twice a night!!”. I just about fell off my chair! Seriously?! Who has that kind of stamina at our age?!? She deserves some kind of award in my books.

Cut to last week, I was having a conversation with friends and the topic of sex came up. My friend mentioned casually that she and her husband had done the deed the night before and she was cranky as she had not been able to “get off”. I looked at her with eyes like monster truck rims and said reverently, “you get off…. every time?”. She said, “yeah, pretty much, why? Don’t you?”. I didn’t know what to tell her. It seemed kind of awkward to say that the last time I had experienced fireworks in the pants department, I had been on my own and Ryan Reynolds MAY have been somewhere on the outskirts of my mind. I mean come on!! Every time?!? Someone give THAT woman a medal! If I was guaranteed that kind of happy ending every time I got down on it, I would be getting my jiggy on non-stop I think!

So back to the post-children sexual transformation I was talking about earlier. I don’t know if it is hormones or what but since having kids, I literally don’t feel like shagging. Ever. This is not a coup on my part or some attempt to get Captain Pants to mow the lawn, this is plain and simple. I. Just. Don’t. Wanna. I don’t feel turned on by anything anymore which seems strange but I honestly think I am just too tired and too busy and have too many other things to worry about. Every now and then, I will give the old girl a going over but it is more just to see if it still works or not. That’s bad right? Even as I type it I can feel you judging me. Look, I am sure I am not alone here. I know I’m not. I have had lots of discussions with other tired Mummies whose idea of sexy is watching their husbands vacuum or burp the baby. Priorities change. People change. Life changes constantly. I am sure things will normalise eventually but as sad as it sounds, it really does not bother me. For the most part, I barely miss feeling randy. My buzz lately comes from seeing my kids growing up. They bring me so much joy and happiness (when they’re not sticking their boogers to the toilet walls) that I don’t feel the loss too acutely.

I read somewhere once that to feel more sexual, you should have more sex. Simple right? Well I tried it and all I felt was more tired and slightly chafed. So I thought, maybe they mean that you have to achieve the big O when doing it for it to jump start the old libido. So I thought that me and Mr Good Vibrations should have some “quality time” on a nightly basis for a week. Wanna know how long I lasted? ZERO DAYS! I never did it. I was too freakin’ tired!!!

Look I do miss the intimacy. I think that the lack of intimacy (and I am not just talking naked/bedroom intimacy here) has a lot to do with things. As I have morphed and become a stay at home Mum, so the Capt’n has grown and matured in his role at work and that alone has created some distance. He’s been climbing the corporate ladder very successfully and that success comes with longer hours and more travel. It’s hard to feel horned up when it’s 8pm and all you want is a break from parenting, a cold chardonnay and a really good cry.

Relationships are hard. Really. Those of you who are blessed to have a relatively easy marriage should consider yourselves very lucky. Don’t get me wrong, this has nothing to do with how much I love my ball and chain. Sure his jokes are wearing a little thin and it drives me crazy that his iPad gets more attention than me sometimes but I do love the bastard. I wish, for his sake, I didn’t feel so anti-nookie. I know it’s his biggest peeve within our relationship (well, that and the fact that I have serious rage issues) and trust me, I try as hard as I can to step up but for the most part, everything pales in comparison to a good night’s sleep, in clean sheets, with no alarm set for the morning.

I fully intend to be like Stella and get my groove back eventually, when I have the time to work out why the pangs have disappeared on me and I’m not so gosh darn exhausted all the time. Until then, Ryan Reynolds and Mr Good Vibrations will have to do the job 🙂

Simply The Best

Since becoming a mother, I have become very good at lots of things. Don’t get me wrong, I screw up all the time and I mean ALL. The. Time; but I have also become a pro at many things that may not look great on a resume but make my family very happy.

In no particular order, here are just some of my newly acquired skills.

I can cut crusts off sandwiches like a pro. I hate waste. HATE it. I grew up in a very waste-aware household. You ate what was on your plate. You used something until it fell apart. If you wanted to do craft, you hunted down things that were already in the house and used those. So yeah, I am now ingrained with an innate ability to be super frugal where it counts. Like, cutting the crusts off sandwiches. I have got that down to a science. I can cut the crusts off a sandwich so literally, the shavings of crust that come off could be used as skin grafts. It’s a beautiful thing. Maximum sandwichy goodness with nary a sliver of brown crust to be seen.

I can turn making dog food into an activity that feeds our family (and the dog of course) for a week. Our dog is highly strung (yes this is as annoying as it sounds). He has anxiety issues and has seen a doggy psychologist for it and everything (I wish I was kidding). Along with his anxiety comes a plethora of tummy troubles. Basically, if he eats anything labelled “dog food” he gets the squirts for a week. SO, I have to cook chicken and rice for the dog every week (like I need MORE jobs to do right?!). I have managed to turn cooking the dog’s chicken into making chicken stock for us as well. Can I tell you, this stuff is the ducks nuts. I mean it. It is rich and wholesome and healthful and I have come to enjoy the ritual of making the dog’s food as it means my family also get to benefit from it.

I can read a kids book better than Justine Clarke on a good day. I have always had a flair for the dramatic (just ask my mother) and let me tell you, this translates to me being one kick ass story reader. I do voices, I do faces, I do actions…. I am seriously, one tearful monologue away from a “best actress” oscar I shit you not. The kids look forward to going to bed because it means they get to hear me read. I think Captain Pants must not have been read to (at least not very well) as a kid because I will often find, as I am reading, he comes creeping in from wherever he has been in house to listen. He’s usually been on the computer and believe me, dragging him off that thing is no mean feat, that is how good my story reading skills are. He’ll come and curl up on the bed with us; the 5 year old boy in him shining in his eyes and he’ll hang on every word with a big goofy grin on his face. It’s kinda awesome. I own a badge that my best mate gave me a while ago and it says, “It is never too late to have a happy childhood”. Now, whilst I don’t think the Captain had an unhappy childhood, I do think (like a lot of us), there were gaps that never got filled so it makes me happy that both he and the kids enjoy story time so much. The book du jour right now is a book about a little boy who goes to use his crayons, only to find they have all written him letters complaining about how they are each being used. It’s a rad book for sure but there are like 12 different letters from 12 different crayons and I made the fatal error of reading it the first time, doing a different “voice” for each crayon and now, I am locked into reading it that way. I tried reading it once with no voices and the peanut gallery practically threw rotten tomatoes at me. I’m that good.

I have become an expert at getting out of nookie (sorry Captain, I know this one is gonna make you squirm). As I am sure any parent can appreciate, at the end of a long day, full of household jobs and child-rearing jobs, there are certain “jobs” *ahem* that one just does not feel like doing. At the end of most days, I find myself one of 2 ways. On a good day, I am beat and on a bad day, I am shattered. Cut to bed time; the Captain awaits with love (sometimes) and carnal inclination (always) on his hopeful face and my heart sinks. I love the man to pieces. Really, I do. He makes me laugh and he tolerates my crap like a trooper but most of the time, I don’t want to bite my pillow, I just want to lie on it, drooling ever so slightly and snoring my face off. This is not limited to my husband by the way. I am pretty sure Brad Pitt could turn up with a box of ferreros and a devilish glint and I would go, “Meh, can you ask me again tomorrow?”.

I can get stains out of just about anything. I mean it. ANYTHING. I have every internet-sourced stain removal known to man in my repertoire and I use them… often. I get really angry when I meet a stain I cannot remove. I feel like it’s challenging me. “Oh yeah? You gonna come at me with hairspray and hand sanitiser?! Pfffffft! Lady, I ain’t leaving your son’s school shirt for nothin’!”. Bastards.

I can fold a fitted sheet. A KING-SIZE fitted sheet at that! I know, you hate me right now but let me tell you, you have not experienced true satisfaction until you have turned a hippopotamic land mass of crumpled fabric, into a small, neat rectangle. I imagine it would be what taking heroin feels like. Elation. Triumph. Euphoria. Bliss. OK so maybe I exaggerate but it feels pretty damn good. PS. Did you like my Princess Bride reference? Yeah! Me too!

I have perfected something I like to call “fridge tetris”. I can fit more in my small, single door fridge, than most people can in their double doored monsters. I have reached “expert” level. At Christmas time, I make it my business to have a neat and orderly fridge (and freezer) as, let’s face it, Christmas time is the time when fridges revolt and start spewing their contents every time you open the door. Not in my house. In my house, the fridge is my bitch. Nuff said.

I can multi-task like a son-of-a-gun. If Ganesha and an octopus had a love child, I would still kick it’s ass in the multitasking Olympics. When I am on a roll, and I have a few things on the go and I am managing them all well, it is like I am dancing. The steps just come to me and I am as graceful as a swan on a calm lake. There is the odd day though, when the winds are not in my favour and any effort at multi-tasking fails in a spectacular fashion. On those days I am less swan and more new born giraffe. I recall a day last week where I was attempting make the dog’s chicken, make caramel popcorn, launder some whites, parent a croupy toddler and take care of some paperwork and household bills. I ended up with burnt toffee, light blue whites and I think I paid our lawn mowing guy too much. On days like these there is vodka and once again, all is right with the world.

This admission is one that comes with much guilt but it is the truth, I have become a very good white lier. Let me say at this juncture, I do not condone lying and have been trying very hard of late to be more authentic in all aspects of my life but when you have children, the need for the whitest of lies does seem to come up more often. Like the aforementioned crayon book. I don’t think I have it in me to read that book one more time. At this point, we have read it 7 night’s straight. I am exhausted just looking at the damn thing so, it will need to be hidden for a while so I can regain my sanity (and my voice). When I am asked the inevitable question, “Where is the crayon book?”, instead of being honest and saying, “listen kid, if I have to read that darn book one more time I am going to commit hari kari WITH the book itself”, I will probably say, “I loaned it to a friend”. When asked why we no longer go to swimming lessons, rather than say, Mummy thought the teacher was an immature upstart, I just said that pool was closed that day. I’m not proud of it but I do it… and I am good at it. Dammit.

So there you go! I could go on for hours about my other wicked Mummy/parent skills but I would love to hear yours! I know you’ve got ’em so let me hear ’em. Trust me, it feels kinda good to have a little brag. Ooooo bragging!! Something else I am getting awesome at but that is only because I hit the lotto in the kids department *grins* See what I did there?

OK, I am stopping now before you all barf on your keyboards. Hit me up with your skillz peeps!

Ain’t No Grave (Gonna Hold This Body Down)

An open letter to the internet trolls who harassed Charlotte Dawson…

I awoke this morning to the news that Charlotte Dawson had been found dead in her apartment and found myself unspeakably sad. I didn’t know Charlotte personally but like a lot of Australians, loved seeing (and hearing) her point of view on my TV screen. I watched Australia’s Next Top Model and giggled at her acerbic wit and the gorgeous love/hate chemistry between her and Alex Perry. Her personality was large and she was unashamedly outspoken about everything. I loved her immediately. She was who she was, botox and all. She made fun of herself in a way that was endearing and funny. She was witheringly sharp and searingly intelligent.

I, along with the rest of Australia, heard about the vicious internet campaign that some cyber bullies launched against her last year and felt her pain. I too have suffered with depression and know how isolating and lonely it is to be locked in your own head with no respite from the constant self loathing that comes from within. I cannot imagine going through that struggle with a bunch of people who want nothing more than to break you… for no other reason than because they can. She tried to kill herself after that first online onslaught. “They” told her to and so she tried. She failed that time (thank goodness) and after doing some healing, she rose, phoenix-like, from the ashes of that travesty and stood up and spoke about the hatred she had been at the receiving end of. If you saw the interview with her on 60 minutes, you can appreciate some of the poison and toxic nastiness that was spewed her way.

“Please put your face into a toaster”

“Please do the world a favour and go and hang yourself”

Can you imagine being at the absolute lowest point of your life and having a complete stranger taunt you like that? It must have been hell. Hell! So she spoke up. She said her piece. She called these keyboard cowards on their shit and what happened? She got accused of trying to garner publicity for her new book! She got dropped by her PR firm for not being “saleable” any more. As my beautiful sister so eloquently put it, “How dare we have an outspoken female without having to tear her down… Heaven forbid we have a vagina AND speak our minds too and I’m not saying its just men who cut these women down, it’s other women too. Can we not be better than this?!?”.

Well they won. Those trolls under their bridges won. Charlotte decided it was easier to not be here than to deal with the nightmare of abuse that must have plagued her for months, possibly years. To those trolls I say this… MURDERER!!!! Make no mistake about it, their words were bullets and they shot and killed a person. A really REAL person. A person who lots of us looked up to and admired. Actually you know what? It was not even as kind as a quick sharp bullet to the brain. They tortured her to death. The bamboo skewers of taunts about the way she looked. The waterboarding of constant, hateful criticism. The pistol whipping of name calling. The slow, draining, groaning death under the weight of people telling her to end her own life. Tears run unchecked down my face as I write this because the word “unfair” does not even begin to cover how horrific this slow, painful demise would have been. Suicide must have felt like a merciless relief for her. I cannot… even… imagine…

To the hateful, poisonous, toxic, insecure, senseless, witless, GUTLESS people who ever said anything to Charlotte online, I hope the guilt from this tragic loss follows you for the rest of your life. I mean that. I hope you wake up every day and feel rotten to your core that you DIRECTLY caused the death of a woman who was a great role model. In a world full of falsities and deception, she was a blissfully honest beacon and I for one, will miss her voice very much. This did not have to happen. Didn’t. Shouldn’t. Can’t have?!?!

Ms Charlotte D, I am so sorry that the words of lesser men caused you to question your existence. An existence that held meaning for many of us who don’t have the voice that you did. You spoke for us, you spoke with us and you represented us profoundly.

Go with God lady. May you finally have the peace that passes understanding.

Material Girl

Hello folks. Long time no blog. Life has been very busy of late. I know, I know; we all say it but I really mean it. This blog is trending back to my fave subject; poop! 

So a few weeks ago, B1 lost his 4th tooth. Nothing untoward there apart from a truly gross moment when boy dropped tooth and dog ate tooth. I know! Gross huh? After much assurance that the tooth fairy would still be visiting (but perhaps not retrieving the tooth per say), B1 went happily to bed and sure enough, the very kind (and beautiful if I do say so myself) tooth fairy left a nice shiny $2 coin for B1 in his tooth box. He carried the coin around for the day until in the evening, B2 decided she was going to carry the coin for a while. We have been wrestling with B2 for some time about putting things in her mouth. The little darling seems to be quite an oral little thing (hopefully NOT a sign of things to come) and puts everything in her mouth, except, irony upon irony, food! I am flat out getting a cracker into her these days but apparently, lego car tyres and My Little Pony crowns are the snack de jour for the hip and happening toddler. I have fished batteries, bobby pins, paper clips and erasers (to name a few) out of her mouth in the last few months. In her defence, the eraser was shaped like a hamburger so I can see how she may have been confused. Anyway, so this particular night, she is walking around with B1’s $2 coin in her hand as we are all standing around in the kitchen talking. She disappeared off up the corridor for a second and when she came back to the kitchen, she was very obviously choking on something. We all panicked but before we could do anything, she made a massive gulping noise and promptly stopped choking. We didn’t put 2 and 2 together at first but as we pieced the information together, it became apparent that what she had choked on and subsequently swallowed, was B1’s tooth fairy money. 

I rang the health nurse immediately, expecting to be told to get her up to a hospital stat! The nurse I spoke to was lovely and said that this happens a lot and that these things usually “pass” on their own and as long as she was not in any distress, we were to wait and see if the coin came out on it’s own. At this stage, B2 was still in nappies so it was a relatively easy notion to hunt for the buried treasure. Smelly, but easy. Super disgusting, but easy. When she pooped, we had to have a little prospect around in the carnage of her nappy and deem it coin-free before wrapping and tossing. If there was no coin in about 2 days, we were to call back and check in. 

2 days passed but the coin did not. After another call to the health nurse and another kind woman telling us to watch and wait for another 2 days, the idea that the $2 was still in my kid was starting to freak me out. She was like a human slot machine that just would not pay out! Captain Pants had taken to calling her “coiny” and she was proudly telling strangers in Coles that she had a coin in her belly while rubbing her tum like a small blonde, cherubic Santa Claus.

The “relatively easy” job of smooshing through her waste was wearing me down (and incidentally, caused me a raging case of pink-eye to boot) as of course, Captain Pants’ idea of looking for a coin in a nappy was to hold the nappy in one hand, give it a squeeze or two, then chuck it. Typical man! Sorry fellas but you have to admit, a large percentage of you are not so good with the bodily functions of anyone but yourselves! Off topic, what is THAT all about?! Captain Pants has a retch fest every time a nappy’s contents are even remotely less-than-solid but will proudly leave what he calls “love stains” in the bowl of the toilet and even call me in to see them on the odd occasion that he feels they are super impressive! Lucky me huh? Thankfully, my guts are pretty cast iron so I sigh, wrap my fingers in baby wipes and commence the poop dissection knowing if I don’t do it, “we” are likely to miss the offending currency if it comes out.

At this point, day 7 of coin-gate, I am second guessing myself. Did she even swallow the darn thing? Am I just being paranoid? Is all this “shit-strirring” (pun FULLY intended) worth it?! The health nurse had said it would take about 4-5 days for the coin to pass and apart from the one nappy that Captain Pants had “checked”, I had been very thorough *shudders* with the others. It was at this point that B2 started to have some abdominal pain. She was twisting and griping and in general, was just not herself. Off to the doctors we went and he immediately sent us for an X-ray. After the X-ray was taken, we all stood in the little booth as the image loaded up on the screen. It started from her pelvis and crept up slowly as it loaded. As inch by arduous inch of her intestines came into view, there was no sign of the coin. I started to exhale. It must have been in that nappy that Slacky Slackerson “checked”! Boy is he gonna get it when I get home! Then the X-ray revealed her stomach, and there, glowing like a beacon in the darkness of her abdomen, was a perfectly round, perfectly intact, perfectly STUCK, $2 coin. My self righteous rage at Captain Pants flew out the window and was replaced by dread. 8 days later and it was still in her stomach?! That cannot be good. Sure enough, after whispered conversations in the corridor by doctors and radiologists, we were sent up to the children’s hospital to see a gastroenterologist.

VERY long story short, they made us wait for hours to tell us the same thing as the kindly women at the Health Nurse Line did; as long as she is not vomiting or in pain, there is nothing to be done but wait for the coin to pass. In 6 weeks we should have another X-ray done and if it is still there then, we can discuss options. 6 weeks!? 6 WEEKS?!?!?!?! 6 weeks of poo-sifting, pink-eye battling, stomach-churning, anxiety-laden fun! To top it all off, B2 decided she was going to potty train herself in that 6 weeks so the poop-prospecting became even harder. I was very lucky that a girlfriend had some disposable rubber gloves which made it ever so slightly less vile but still, it is not an enterprise I care to repeat. About 3 weeks into poop-watch, I decided that I’d had enough. What was I saving myself?! A $30 X-ray fee?! Sooooo not worth it!! So, I gave up. We are now one week off her 6 week X-ray and I am dying to see whether the wretched thing is out of her. I suspect it will not be. Quite the opposite; I think she will be like those great white sharks they cut open; they will X-ray her and find Californian number plates, bike tyres and yes, one very shiny, perfectly intact $2 coin!

Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, When I’m 64

I recently celebrated a birthday; my 38th Birthday to be exact. Unlike a lot of people, I hold no fears about ageing. I had a minor freak out at 25 for some unknown reason but now, I plod the happy trail towards death with nary a whimper. Captain Pants is the opposite. He fears ageing like I fear a giant spider jumping out at me while I am driving. Anyway so this Birthday I have had somewhat of a shaken foundation about how I look as a middle aged person. 

I am a big girl. I am not Marilyn Monroe or Adele “big”, I am like Beth Ditto “BIG”. What can I say, I love food and I have issues. Nuff said. So even though I am a plus sized woman, I like to look as nice as I can and for a hefty lady, let me tell you, that is a hard job. I am a size 20/22* and there is not a lot of cute clothing out there for larger gals. If I wanted to spend a fortune on clothes I might be able to jazz up my wardrobe a bit but I am Frugal Fannie. I mean it. If I can save 2 cents on a can of beans, I will so you can imagine what I am like with clothing. I know I know, you are all sitting there saying, “but you’re worth the money, treat yourself to nice clothes” but then we’d have to talk about the “issues” I mentioned previously and before you know it, I will be knee deep in a bucket of KFC and approaching a size 22/24 so believe me when I say, I am cheap. Anyway, even on a budget, I think I still manage to look OK but it is hard as what’s out there for lardy lasses like myself is primarily designed to hide and not flatter the figure. It is a bit of a slap in the face really when you think about it; like plus size designers have gone “Oh I give up” and just done variations on the muu muu from thereon out. I am sure there are some bigger ladies out there who like the tenty stuff you can find in most stores but even though I am big, I still have a shape and I am not afraid to show that shape. Finding clothes to fit that shape though, is like trying to find a Kardashian in a book store. Virtually impossible!

After kids, my shape went a little pear-shaped. I have this weird “high belly” that drives me nuts. I cannot wear a peplum to save my life without looking like the ship E.T. went home in. Anything with an empire waist juts straight off my “shelf” and makes me look like a fridge. If I wear a halter neck, the sheer weight of my boobs is enough to make my neck ache for days. My belly is quite rotund so I have to buy pants that fit it which usually results in the leg being too baggy. If I buy pants that fit in the leg, I get a muffin top that Dunkin’ Donuts would be proud to sell for $2.95 with a large decaf latte. So wear dresses you say? Yes well, that brings us to the painful subject of thigh chafe. If I wear a dress I end up with what looks like road rash on the inside of my thighs. A painful reminder of just how much your thighs love each other.  You see my predicament right? I have one word that is every big girl’s saviour when it comes to shopping for clothes… stretch. Yep, stretch. I check labels for any hint of stretchiness that might be in the fabric. I have perfected my check-out-the-pants-while-subtly-pulling-on-them-to-see-how-much-they-give moves. I hate changing rooms you see. Dens of death and destruction (of the ego that is). Nobody needs to see their own ass from that many angles and in that light, I am sure even Miranda Kerr would find some orange-peely realness on her heiny! So I pull and tug on the clothes to see if they will fit me and then buy them, take them home and try them on in a nice dark room after 2 shandies like a normal person! 

Anyway, my well meaning Captain bought me some clothing for my birthday. Now, I don’t know about your man but mine has 2 modes when shopping for me; “dead on the money” and “dear lord are you serious!??”. He has bought me some gorgeous stuff over the years. Handbags I love. Jewellery I adore and occasionally an item of clothing or 2 that was pretty cute. His latest foray into fleshing out my wardrobe though? Not so successful. I suspect him shopping (online mind you) for plus sized clothing is the equivalent of a blind person shopping for paint colours. The result was a dress that resembles a large surfboard cover, a workout top (workout?!?! me?!?!) which balloons out from under my boobs making me look not unlike a rather large sea urchin and a plain black T-shirt. Now, in fairness, the plain black T-shirt is the shopping equivalent of pizza or chocolate; even when it’s bad, it’s still OK. Oh and he also bought me a blue, stretchy polo shirt. I like polo shirts as much as the next guy… ON THAT SAME GUY! For me, polo shirts are for dudes. I can appreciate they look good on some chicks, but I have never been the polo shirt wearing type. Captain Pants however, lurves a lady in a good polo and has been trying to get me into one for years and now, thanks to his birthday “gift”. he has succeeded (I concede it actually looks OK on me but that is not the point. I am not some giant Barbie to be dressed up by her Ken-doll to take her our for sody-pops).

I surveyed the new clothes my well meaning Cap’n had bought me and a light bulb went off. Are these the clothes I should be wearing?! Am I dressing completely inappropriately for a 38 year old woman? If I had a banging’ bod (like my 35 year old sister who does cross fit and has mad abs after 2 kids does) I would wear more risky clothing** but I would never be that mutton/lamb/sow’s ear/silk purse chick that you see just about everywhere these days. So I mulled this over in my head for a few days, the idea of dressing for my age when lo and behold a parcel arrived in the mail for me. A belated birthday present from my sister (yes the one with the spectacular abs). She bought me some cute undies and jammies. I am looking through the items and I notice a set of undies with lace around the legs and waist and seeing as I am partial to a bit of lace, I pull them out of the pile for a closer look. As I pull them out, I free the tag and right there, on the little slip of cardboard it says “full brief” and I freeze. Images flood into my head of watching my mother get dressed in her “full briefs”. You know the kind; the ones that go so high up your body that your navel is hidden under a layer of thick, industrial cotton? So I text my sister and say, “you know you bought me full briefs right?”, thinking that maybe she thought they were boy-legs (man I love a good boy-leg panty) and she goes, “yep, they’re kinda cool at the mo'” and suddenly it hits me, I am not afraid of wearing the full briefs, I am afraid of wearing the full briefs and LIKING IT! Wearing full briefs and liking it makes you a Nanna right?! I mean, in theory, full briefs are a big girls best friend right? No low waist band to roll under your fapron (fat apron) 372 times a day. No high cut sides to dig into your fleshy hips and ride up into your butt crack like Butch Cassidy and his Sundance Kid (ain’t no sun up in there Butchy). Needless to say I still haven’t tried them on. Maybe I am not as OK with ageing as I thought… Oh crap.

Can anyone drive me to KFC?

 

*For those of you who don’t know how this works, let me enlighten you. When someone says they are a size 20/22 or a 12/14 you always take the larger of the 2 sizes and apply that one. What being a size 20/22 means is that in a very few rare cases, I can fit into size 20 clothing so I say I am a size 20/22 to make myself feel better and not so whale-like. Trust me on this one. So yeah, I am a size 22. Deal with it. 

** To clarify, risky clothing for me would mean tighter pants and maybe a dash of midriff. I am not, and I mean NOT, talking about those stupid shorts you see nowadays where they’re cut SO short you can tell if a gal needs a wax or not. You feel me?

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Have you ever been tempted to drink in the middle of the day? I am not talking about a celebratory champagne with friends or a cheeky bellini at a baby shower, I am talking about cold, hard, open-the-vodka-pour-half-a-glass-and-then-top-it-up-with-soda kinda drinking? Well today was that day for me. Yesterday I had made B1’s teacher’s gifts for Christmas. I made them these awesome cookie mix in a jar gifts. The ingredients are layered in a glass jar and then you do a pretty label and some dinky instructions on the side. They look amazing and apart from being a little time consuming, they are pretty easy to make. Buoyed with confidence, today I decided to make some Christmas crackles for B1’s classmates that he could hand out with his Christmas cards. I could not find an exact recipe online but I found several that were close and I am a confident enough cook, that I was sure I could knock something together that would be awesome. I was going to make them out of white chocolate and rice bubbles and I had a last minute brainwave that if I dyed the melted chocolate green and I worked quickly enough, I could shape them into little Christmas trees. Hurrah! I had bought some assorted candies which I arduously cut into little “ornaments” which I thought the kids could help me decorate the little “trees” with. Here was my first mistake. I TOLD the kids about my master plan BEFORE I had thought the details through so as I am melting chocolate over simmering water like a pro, I had both the kids at the counter, poking sticky fingers into my tediously tiny pieces of candy tree decorations and asking me if I was done yet. Stress levels:2.

As I mixed in my rice bubbles, I thought to myself, “Now Kirsten, you don’t want to end up with a mixture that is too dry or they won’t stick together nicely”, and I poured in about 3/4 of the bag. I stirred them in and it was looking good but the choc-to-bubble ratio seemed off (in favour of chocolate) so I go, “I can use the whole bag”, and before I think it through, I dump it all in. Here is my second mistake. Rice bubbles are like teeny tiny sponges and before I knew it, I had this MASS of slightly green, rice bubble rubble on my hands. BUGGER! Stress levels:5.

At this point, the kids are eating my “ornaments” hand over fist so as I am running around trying to fix the problem before the chocolate seizes, I am barking at them over the counter like a drill sergeant; to no avail of course. Kids, clever little buggers, seem to know when your hands are tied and happily chomped away as I madly melted more chocolate and butter together to try and salvage my crackles that at this point, resemble The Incredible Hulk’s dandruff! Stress levels: 8.5.

Then, Captain Pants decides to saunter over and see if he can be of assistance. This is the man who infrequently cooks but when he does, frequently burns shit so I am hesitant to take him up on his well meaning advances. He begins, with gay abandon, to tell me I should have melted marshmallows into the mixture as it would have held together better and wouldn’t you know it, the f*cker is absolutely right so I do what any woman would do in my situation; shoot him a withering glare and tell him to grab a bloody spoon. Stress levels:17.

I manage to do a trial “tree” and it holds it’s shape OK. HURRAH! I put the lone crackle in front of my sugar encrusted kids and take a deep breath and regroup. “Right kids”, I say in my best Martha Stewart voice, “Mummy is going to show you how to decorate the trees. Watch carefully cos you are going to do the next ones”. (There I go again, committing to things before I know what is going to happen. I SWEAR it’s an illness!!!!). I grab a little yellow jelly bean and say, “Right, these yellow ones are going to be the ‘star’ at the top of the tree” and I press it lightly into the top of my little green crackle and the whole thing promptly disintegrates into little green pellets in the patty paper. Stress levels: 82.

“RIGHT!”, I scream gaily, “I am just going to mix ALL the “ornaments” into the mix and we are going to make the trees with the little candy bits already in them!!”. This was mistake number 3. Heat+candy=melting sticky mess. As the “ornaments” began to meld into the mixture that is now looking more puce than green, I feel the vein in my head begin to throb. I look at Captain Pants who is still banging on about marshmallows and how their addition seems logical to him and I want to run. Run away from this whole endeavour. Run away from my children who are vibrating from the sugar they have consumed. Run away from Captain Pants who despite just wanting to help is looking more and more like a good target for my wooden spoon handle. Run away from this STUPID idea that I was soooo sure was going to be amazing. Who the f*ck thinks that making 27 little trees out of rice bubbles and chocolate is going to be a lovely “family” activity that we can all do together. ME!!!!! That’s who!!! Stress levels:579.

“OK”, I shrill with my last shred of Christmas cheer, “let’s just shovel the bubbles into the patty papers and mash them down hard and they can just be plain Christmas crackles!! The kids won’t care, they will just be happy they get to eat candy on a weekday!!”. We grab some spoons and commence scooping and filling. At this point the kids have lost interest and have wandered off, presumably to find somewhere to lie down and fall into a sugar coma so it is just me and the Captain, spooning like our lives depend on it. Both of us are eager to be done with the sticky mass on the stove and I am pretty sure he knew where I wanted to put my wooden spoon handle so I think he was just as eager to get away from the crazy lady with chocolate in her eyebrows and steam coming from her ears. Stress levels: 6432!

Finally we were done and my long suffering partner skulks off to pick the rice bubbles out of his fingernails (and the wooden spoon from his ass) and I am left in the kitchen with 27 little lime green Christmas crackles. In a moment of sheer brilliance, I remember I have some icing in a tube in the pantry and I think, “I can still salvage these!! If I put the ‘star’ on the top and glue it on with the icing, it could almost look like a tree“. This was my 4th and final mistake ladies and gents. I began frantically gluing the little yellow beans on the tops of the green mounds as at this point, I would rather be ANYWHERE else than in my kitchen. I finish the job and stand back to survey my handiwork and wouldn’t you know it, now they look like little green boobs with yellow nipples. Yep, you guessed it folks, I made Grinch tits for my kid to take to school! I snarled to myself that next year I was just going to buy a box of oreos and hand those out to my kid’s classmates! I grabbed my icing and with the speed and accuracy of an East African hurdler, I glued more little bits of candy on the outside of the mounds to make them look a little less booby. Stress levels: A BILLION!

They are in the fridge now and thankfully, they have solidified. I however, have fallen apart like so many bubbles of rice. Now, where’s that vodka bottle?

She Works Hard For the Money… wait… what money?!

Hey partners who work full-time in a paying gig, I wanna tell you about this job I know of. Tell me if you think you’re up for it.

First off, let me tell you about your bosses. Depending on the job, they vary but for the sake of argument let’s say there are 2. They are diminutive; they don’t look that scary but they are the most demanding bosses you will EVER have. They demand 100% of your attention 100% of the time. They require constant feedback and they have a million questions, all of which require answers immediately if not sooner. They are needy and loud and at any given moment they can revolt against you, gang up if you will, and cause you unimaginable stress. The good part is, that sometimes, they will fall asleep at their desks for an hour or two in the middle of the day. Think that’s your break time then? Time to put your feet up and recoup after a morning of constant meetings and demands? Nope, now the manual labour part of the job kicks in. The company washing needs to be done, the company meals need to be cooked and served and then cleaned up after. The premises need to be kept clean and tidy and that, i’m afraid, is your job too. Of course, before you finish all of this, your bosses are awake again and refreshed from their siesta so back come the requests and dramatics again. Quite often the bosses actually fight with each other and need mediation. This also falls on your shoulders. Good luck with that! It is pretty fast paced environment; you will need to think on your feet and depending on your bosses, there could be lots more jobs that you will need to squeeze in to your day for example, neither of your bosses have a license so you need to drive them wherever they need to go and wait until they are done so you can drive them back to the office. I should mention, you’ll probably gain weight, most employees do. It is a side effect of the gig I’m afraid as is constant tiredness and mind-numbing monotony.

Sounds like a sweet gig huh? Look there are some perks to the role. It comes with a huge amount of loyalty from your bosses. They genuinely like you and are not afraid to show it which is nice. The job can often have moments of great joy that happen. You won’t see them coming but when they happen, they do make a lot of the other stuff fade away for brief moments in time. You will hold onto those joy-filled moments because they truly saturate your heart with something much deeper than love and suffuse your soul with a feeling that is indescribable. Really. There is no adequate description for what will go through you when your bosses show you their appreciation for all your hard work. It is a huge pay off. Oh speaking of pay; there is none. Yep, this is a volunteer position but once you volunteer, you cannot quit. Your commitment to the role is essential; mandatory; iron-clad.

You will need to be able to find humour in situations where there are none. You will need patience beyond what you think you are capable of.  These bosses are kinda forgetful and ask the same questions A LOT! You will need determination. You will need spirit, in droves! Yes, you will need support, but due to cutbacks and costings, that support is not always going to be there to be utilised and in those moments you need to be tough. Those times are the hardest and the times you will want to quit the most but as I mentioned earlier, ringing out is not an option. What do you think this is?! The Navy Seals?! You must be inventive, creative and imaginative. These bosses respond well to new ideas but be careful, if you stray TOO far from the normal routines, you are liable to upset the proverbial apple cart so be sure to tread carefully and be calculating in how you try new things. You must keep your tone even; extreme swings of emotion (although blissfully therapeutic for you) are liable to result in a full day of chaos and make your job that much harder. Not to worry you say; you get to clock off and go home right? I’m afraid not. this is a live-in position. That’s right; you will eat, sleep, wake up and poop at the office. This is a 24/7 gig you guys. If your bosses wake up in the night and want to work, then you too must wake up and be ready for action. There are no real breaks or holidays in this job I’m afraid.

Oh did I mention you have an assistant? Yes you have an assistant who works at another job before starting their shift with you. They can get into work at any point during the day but most of the time, they will get to work and be so exhausted from their other job that they are not really that much good to you. You feel for them, you really do but you will be pissed as hell at them most of the time as what they fail to realise is that you too have been in your office all day, working hard for the tiny tyrants and whilst they got to leave their other job (where they get lunch breaks and health care and catered client dinners), you are still stuck in your freaking office and will be til the day you die! OK that might be an exaggeration but in all honestly, there will be days you feel like that. On those days, I recommend vodka. Oh yeah, another perk, you can drink on the job but beware; this could turn into a rabbit hole you don’t wanna fall down Alice!

So do you think you want to sign up for this job? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

So the next time you get home from your paying job, dear “assistant”, and come to “work” remember, you are stepping into my “office” where I have been all day! I may have been defecated on… I may have had food thrown at me… I may have been screamed at countless times by the diminutive dictators… I may be balls deep in a bottle of Belvedere… Whatever happened to me in my day, all I want, my darling “assistant” is to feel as though you are in it with me. After all, there are 2 of them and 2 of us (and at this point may I tip my barf-soaked hat to those of you with more than 2 “bosses”) and if you clock on instead of lie on the couch scratching your junk, we may just stand a chance!

Sweet Child ‘o’ Mine

Hi readers! This week, my blog is going to be a little bit controversial. I realise we are only in a new relationship here and we are still getting to know each other but I think it’s time we challenge each other a lil bit. Before I start writing though, I want to address something that is going to come up for all of you as you read this. You are going to sit there and go, “Holy cow, does she mean me?!?!” and the answer is YES! That being said, the reason it means you is because it means ALL of us… me included. I am not writing about any one specific person (I promise) but more about a prevalence I see creeping into our parenting that leaves me a little concerned. As I said, I know I have been guilty of it and I am not finger pointing in anyone’s direction, I am merely highlighting something I see happen a lot, now that I am in the inner circle of parenthood, and I think it’s something we need to talk about.

So, how do I say this without sounding like a complete bitch? It’s like this… you see… shit, this is harder than I thought it was going to be. OK, here it is, I think we are over inflating our children. There, I said it! Now, before you take offence and tell me what an angel your child is, stop and hear me out because THAT is exactly what I am talking about. In this world of internet memes that have us all believing we can fly and touch the sky and reach our dreams and all that other wonderful fluff, I think we have lost sight of reality a little bit. We all want the best for our kids and we all want to see the best in them and that is grrrrreat BUT, and it’s a big but, we also need to be open to the fact that as kids, they are behaving in ways that are not always “the best”. For example, and a few of my friends have heard me site this situation more than once, there was a little boy at the park once whose mother was in such deep denial about her son’s behaviour that she literally couldn’t see straight. Her son, all of about 2 years old, was running around the park choking kids. You heard me. He was grabbing them around the neck and SQUEEEEEZING the jiminy crickets out of them. Now, this mother, who I am sure was doing her best, ran around after him bleating to all of us other mothers who were rescusitating  our kids, that he was just trying to “hug” them. Now we could all see that this was not the case. Hell, they could see from the Russian spacecraft that this was not the case but this mother had herself convinced that her son was merely trying to be affectionate to the other children. NOW, here is the rub, how is that little kid going to learn any different unless someone tells him so. He MAY be trying to hug the other kids but if so, how about showing him how to correctly hug a person without cutting off their airways?! Now you and I both know that kid was not “hugging” anyone. If he was, why wasn’t he doing it to the parents too? Now, before you call me judgemental and jump to the defence of that poor Mum (who I do feel sympathy for by the way), put yourself in the shoes of the parents who had to deal with their poor choked children. In telling us that her child was just trying to “hug” our kids, she was setting us up as the bad guys because if we showed that we had a problem with what was happening, well we were the mean parents who could not accept her child was just trying to be “affectionate”. You see what I am saying? Two sides to every coin.

I think we as parents are seeing our kids as extensions of ourselves and in admitting our children are not perfect, we have to admit we as parents are not perfect and who wants to do that!?!?! That mother at the park would have to admit to a bunch of strangers that her child was going through a choking phase and she was at her wits end because she didn’t know what to do with him. That leaves her open to judgement. Judgement of her parenting and judgement of her child and let’s be honest folks, we are all sensitive when it comes to criticism of our kids. It is HARD to hear when your kids have stuffed up and we as parents immediately jump in with reasons and excuses and justifications for those bad behaviours. What I am suggesting is, we just be OK with it. It is OK that your kid hit another kid on the head with a water bottle (that was my little B5 about 6 months ago), well it is not OK at all but you know what I mean. I heard that news that my son had done this and my first question was, “well what had the kid done to B5 for him to do that” and you know what the answer is to that question? IT DOESN’T MATTER!!! Nothing that kid did to my son, justified him getting hit on the head with a water bottle. It’s that simple! All the justification in the world won’t make it any more acceptable and that was a huge lesson for me.

I am not saying I won’t do it again, hell, I’ll probably do it today BUT the fact that I am now aware that I do it AND I want to do it differently is a big step. Our kids are amazing, all of them, BUT they are all going to do stupid/rude/naughty things and how we handle that as parents, means everything. If we gloss over it or try and pass it off as something it isn’t or worse, make excuses for it, guess what that teaches our kids? You guessed it! It is AOK to keep doing what I am doing cos Mum and Dad will get me off the hook. Holding our kids accountable is not equal to failure as a parent. I propose it is the exact opposite. Holding your kids to a standard of behaviour is what MAKES you a good parent. Honour your kids. Respect their abilities and disabilities. Celebrate their strengths and please, please PLEASE don’t make excuses for their bad behaviour.  I think you’ll find if you are honest about what is going on, most parents will be receptive to that. I go back to poor harassed park Mum. She was so afraid of judgement and yet I think we all ended up judging her a little because of the way she handled her child’s bad behaviour. Had she just been honest about it and dealt with the situation in an honest way, we would have all been able to respect that.

This idea that perfection is something that is able to be attained is craziness! Our beauty and uniqueness comes from our glorious imperfections. Our children ARE extensions of our imperfect selves. Admitting they have faults in no way makes them any less amazing. Look, I’ll go first. My son, uses the water-on-the-stone technique with just about everything he wants. He will ask and ask and ask and ask and ask and ask… you get the picture. It is horrible. I am his mother and it drives ME bonkers so I imagine to someone who is not related by blood it would be infuriating.  BUT he is able to read way beyond his skill levels at school. My daughter, has a set of lungs on her like a German opera singer. She can scream like no child I have ever heard before and she does, frequently and at the drop of hat. It is the WORST! I am embarrassed by it and utterly sick of it but I have no idea how to stop it. I continue to discipline her around the screaming issue but it has not stopped. I am sure people who know her are ready to kill her; heck, I am ready to kill her BUT she is so funny and clever that I just cannot bring myself to pull the trigger.  My perfectly imperfect kids are my pride and joy but I will try not to put them on any kind of pedestal. We are raising a generation of kids that feel like they can do anything they want and that is not always a good thing. You want to be a dentist? GREAT! You want to strangle other kids at the park? Yeah, not so great.

OK you can all go and “unfollow” me now 🙂

Jenny from the Blog

So here I sit, thinking about my week (or two) and wondering what to blog about and darn it, wouldn’t you know, the funniest thing that happened to me this week involved poop. I promise I am not doing it on purpose, nor do I spend more time than most engaged in or seeking out pooping activity. I think as mothers (and fathers) it is just one of those things that becomes of special interest to us. And so I blog about it but I have to say, I am a little alarmed as the few people who are following my blog, that I don’t know personally, all seem to be fetishists of one kind or another. I am not kidding. I read with great excitement that I had “followers” (and a big hello to you all) and WordPress suggested I check out their work as well which I dutifully did (P.S. I do everything the internet tells me to do). Lo and behold the pieces of theirs that I read were great. Interesting, well written and engaging…. and all about sex and fetishes. I am not sure how people who write about shagging in chains have come to like my Mummy blog BUT I can only assume it is the poop connection. Not a worry, this is an equal opportunity blog, we accept all manner of followers. I do draw the line at country music lovers though. You cow-tippin’ hicks can go and chew your blades of grass elsewhere. I kid, I kid.

Speaking of kids, this week’s blog exists thanks to my 2 year old daughter, B2. B2 is a bird. She eats like a bird, she flits around the house like a bird and she shrieks like an adorable little bird who you just wanna pop with a BB gun. Anyway, as a result of the eating like a bird, she also poops like a bird. No, not from a great height and on your shirt but minutely and infrequently. Actually it is not that small but when it only happens 4-5 times a week you would expect it would have some volume to it. Anyway, B2 loves and I mean LOVES cheese. She would eat cheese for all 3 meals if you let her. Now I am not sure if you know this but too much dairy can bung up your plumbing. I didn’t know this but thanks to B2, I do now. So a little girl eating cheese and drinking milk and not much else, can often end in some pretty catastrophic constipation. Thanks to the good folks at Accident and Emergency, I have found out about these wonderful little things called glycerin suppositories. They are solidified glycerin “bullets” and I am not sure of the ins and outs (no pun intended) of how they work but they are fantastic for relieving lil Miss of her cheese-induced pain. The problem is, as with all suppositories, that they need to be inserted… well… there’s really no nice way to say it… rectally. For you and me that is fine. Not fun but do-able. You know it’s for the greater good and you suck it up and like Nike say, just do it. Right, well how do you explain to a 2 year that she needs to relax and unclench?! You can’t. Anyway, I have had to do it enough times now, that I am a bit of a pro at it and the trick is simple; be confident and quick, oh, and a little paw paw ointment helps grease the wheels so to speak. 

So this week we arrived at constipation station again. B2 was whining to me that she needed “cream” which is her way of telling me she has a poop stuck in the chamber. She was miserable with it poor little minx and so I scooped her up and took her down to her room to administer the glycerin and give her some relief. So for as confident as I have become, I guess she has also become accustomed to the procedure and knows that the end justifies the means. How do I know this? She lay perfectly still and relaxed as I primed her nether regions with paw paw ointment and then, as I was quickly and confidently inserting the little glycerin nugget into my 2 year old, she reverentially whispered, “aahhhh the bullllllet”… 

I think I am raising the next generation of poo-curious humans and you know what? I am OK with that! 

 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

So let’s just get this out of the way; I started my day by shitting in a bag. Let that sink in for a minute… is it sunk? Yeah. Gross huh? My husband thinks my family is obsessed with poop. He’s kinda right. Where other families would greet each other after long absences with questions of health and happiness, our family usually want to know if you’ve made number 2 yet and how was it? We then spend the first few days in a new environment talking about how our bowels are handling it (this usually happens over a nice meal). My husband is appalled by how detailed the conversation can get and this from a man who has perfected something called “the sumo fart” (more on this at a later date). I am likely to blog about poop. A LOT. Get used to it. OK now let me explain the shit-in-the-bag comment. It’s a bit of a long story….

I recently embarked on a trip to Bali with a close friend. 5 fun-filled, sun-drenched and most importantly, kid-free days. We had both been looking forward to the trip for a long time; she, a mum of three, actually 4 if you count the red-headed step child (not even kidding) and me a Mum of two, three if you count Captain Pants (the balls to my chain). So you can imagine, as hard working Mums, we were looking forward to the break from children as much as the actual holiday itself. Neither of us had been to Bali before and did not know what to expect. We had heard the good, bad and ugly stories from friends and family and were keen to formulate our own opinions of the place. I could spend the whole blog telling you about the entire holiday but for now, let’s settle for the highlight reel.

MEETING ELEPHANTS. So like a lot of you, I have a little bucket list. It is not hard and fast and it changes often, for example, where it used to read “kiss Corey Haim” it now reads, “meet Nigella Lawson”… you get the idea. Anyway, one of the constants has always been to meet an elephant. I don’t mean to ride one, I mean to actually meet one. Up close. Personal. Have a chat. Look one in the eye. See how it feels to be that close to something that big. Can I just say… it… was… AWESOME. I could have stayed there the whole day. Looking into those big, limpid eyes is like therapy. I must have looked like a loon as I stood there gibbering on to this giant beastie but I could not have cared less, the happiness in my heart was flowing over. I got to pat a baby elephant too and I swear I need a filling now cos that little thing was so sweet!! Bucket list item checked off and overall just a super cool experience.

NUDE BATHING WITH MY “WIFE”. Whilst in Bali, we decided to indulge in a spa day. We don’t get to do that very often and had heard some of the spas in Bali are amazing. We booked into one of them for a package deal that included a massage, a scrub, a yoghurt moisturiser and something called a “flower bath”. It all sounded lovely and after a big spate of walking the day before, we were so ready for a relaxing massage. We arrived at the spa and were taken into our treatment room. It was gorgeous. Half in the open air, frangipani trees trailing over rock walls, trickling fountains and one BIG ass bath. As we walked in, my friend and I looked at each other and I swear we had the same thought, “they’re not going to make us bathe together right?!”. We were instructed to strip down to nothing and put on this little pair of mesh undies. I looked at the mesh undies and the leg holes were not big enough to choke a chicken with. Now I am a woman of, how shall I put this, some girth, so I just left my own undies on rather than risk cutting off circulation to my lady bits. My friend is a lot smaller than me so she put on the fetching meshies with ease. We got up on our massage beds and waited for bliss. Well, the massage began with these 2 balinese women climbing up on our beds and straddling us. As I mentioned, I am a larger gal so this teeny Balinese woman didn’t “straddle” me so much as threw her leg over and held on for dear life. The massage itself was nice. It was very firm (I have the bruises to prove it) but I like it a little rough in the massage department so that was fine. Then came time to turn over and we obliged, thinking the massage would be limited to arms, legs and head. We were wrong. Very, VERY wrong. My breasts were treated to a very detailed massage and scrub, as was the rest of my front (excluding lady-garden of course), and as always, the thought of this mutual bath was looming in our minds. At one point, my friend even asked the ladies if we were expected to get in together and they just laughed and didn’t answer. I think we had our answer then. After our intimate massage and scrub we were told to hop up off our beds (still wearing nothing but our smalls) and we were promptly smothered in fresh yoghurt (more breast touching!) and then told to rinse off under the outdoor shower and hop in the flower bath. Yep, the moment of truth and our suspicions finally confirmed. This gorgeous, romantic bath, full of rose petals and frangipani blooms was for both of us. The women looked at us and said “It’s OK, we had a couple from Australia get in together last week”. I looked at my friend and with skills a ventriloquist would have been proud of I hissed through gritted teeth, “I think they think we are a couple!!!!” We had 2 choices, explain we were not actually a same sex couple or get in the damn bath! I think at that point we had seen enough of each other’s bits that there were no boundaries left and so, with much giggling, we hopped in the bath together and spent the next 15 minutes snort laughing into the blossoms and comparing whose massage had come the closest to being inappropriate. A very funny but pretty confronting experience.

OK so enough elephants and flower baths and onto all things poo. On the last night there, despite my best efforts to be sanitary, I got struck down with the dreaded “Bali Belly” and spent the night running to the bathroom and popping Imodium like tic tacs. Thankfully they worked and I was sufficiently plugged up for the flight home. The problem was of course that the infection was cooped up in my body then and I spent the night in cold sweats of fever-wracked agony as the wretched thing tried it’s best to exit my body through any orifice available with no success. Cut to 5 days later and I was still suffering with the horrible bug so I dragged myself to the doctor for help. Sure enough there is medication available but before you can take it, you need to provide a stool sample. JOY!! I have never been lucky enough to have to do this before and so I asked the doctor, the best method for obtaining the *ahem* specimen. She advised to find an old container I was not attached to, put it in the toilet and do my business in it. The collection cup has an ingenious little scoop on the lid so once the sample is in the container, it’s a simple matter of scooping the poop and screwing on the lid. I talked to my sister when I got home and told her what I had to do and she advised a method passed on to her from a wise friend. Line the toilet with a plastic bag, as you would line a bin, and then put the seat down. Do your worst in the bag and then voila, collect your sample and bag your droppings and turf them. Simple right? I decided the bag method was the go.

I awoke this morning feeling dread at what lay ahead of me. I had multiple bags in the sink ready to go and my collection cup at the ready. I knew the mornings were a safe bet for me as usually that is when my runniness is at its worst. I realised I would have to pee first as I did not want a bag full of pee to contend with as I am very clumsy and would likely tip the entire thing over myself trying to get my sample. So I sat down to pee feeling the familiar cramping that warns me I need to brace myself and bunker down. I realise, mid pee, I am going to have to stand up after I am done whizzing, line the toilet with the bag and then sit back down to finish. My stomach sinks as this is going to have to be some precision work if I am going to make it without turning my toilet into a work worthy of Pro Hart in his carpet ruining days. I take a deep breath as the last drops drip out of me and with the deftness of a small cat and grace of a puma I simultaneously stand and grab my bag, clenching my butt cheeks in a feat of strength that Arnold himself would be proud of, and whisked that liner into the loo as quickly as I could. I slammed the seat down just in time and released the breath along with the contents of my aching guts. The relief was short lived at the realisation I was going to have to confront what was IN the bag in a mere moment. I won’t go into detail as I think you are probably all gagging at this point anyway, suffice to say, it is not an exercise I care to repeat in this or any other lifetime. The bag method works, I would recommend it but I would also recommend a full gas mask and hospital grade gloves if you have them handy along with some Glen 20 as you are gonna need that, and a 20 minute hot shower just to feel clean again.

So Bali, thanks for the memories, the mammaries and the calamities but I think next time, I will go somewhere where there is no risk of me ending up having to shit in a bag. Thanks all the same…