The universe  is smiling on me while my nearly 3yo scratches my eyes out. It has kept them asleep an extra 40 minutes each day over this weekend. In the language of beauty sleep, that is massive news! So instead of waking up even earlier like last year, i got to sleep in! And today, on a school day, we all feel great AND have an extra hour to get ready for school. But i do have a few errands to run before taking nearly 3o to a playdate, so i am expecting him to display his newly acquired assholian talents, which will surely cancel out any warm and fuzzies i have after aforementioned sleeping.

The moral of this story is not to languish in bed during that extra hour of morning glory.

It is common knowledge that 2yos are terrible. It is less commonly known – until you have one – that 3yos are worse. Nearly 3yo is not 3 for another 5 weeks, but geez, what an asshole he is already. Sometimes it is cute to see him throw a doozy, but that was before he started planking in the car to avoid seat belts,  and scratching and pinching and grabbing and twisting people’s faces! ‘Sup with that?!
I have heard that teenagers can literally grow overnight which might partly explain why they may or may not be assholes. I have to assume that nearly 3yo’s brain is making connections like never before and throwing itself into overdrive or something, because I have come to expect steam to shoot out of his ears or fire to explode out of his mouth. Kid has been a train wreck a number of times these past few days.
I find it hard to remember minutia of what the other boys have gone through at different stages, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t pull this shit.
Nope,  I can’t find articles about 3yo brain development and tantrums. I’m sure they’re there, but my 34yo brain is a little preoccupied with wine, now that the boys are in bed.

House renovations can sound the death knell of even the strongest of marriages, because the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And the bodies of spouses that didn’t fucking listen. Lucky or not, our house is not in need of renovating, but it has had some hardware updates and even those were pains in the marital backside. We think *fingers, toes, arms, legs and eyes crossed* that we won’t need to change anything on our house for a little while. But of course the walls of our house had been painted by great swathes of dogshit shortly before we moved in, so we have been of one mind – lucky him – to paint the whole house at some point. There have been various points over the past year, and there is little left to do. The boys’ bedroom upstairs will be last; I am currently working on the “Peacock Bathroom” and the “Hawaiian Bathroom” downstairs. I like naming stuff, if anyone is wondering.
The Peacock Bathroom will be the same colour as the dining room chairs and the Peacock sofa, which is just around the corner, so it should tie together nicely. The Hawaiian Bathroom has photos from our trips there, and I have been trying to match the wall to the idea of humidity in a room full of Bird of Paradise flowers, and the leis that you receive everytime you turn around whilst visiting there.

The first attempt, Fuscia Kiss, was too barbie for Husband; that was when he told me he didn’t like the idea of a pink bathroom. In a house full of dudes, I have done very well to decorate the house with (what I think is) good taste sans girly frills, so we can all suffer a pink bathroom, I think, i.e. bad luck. The 2nd attempt, Exotic Bloom, was quite a bold shade, but again, too pink. Today I tried to veer to the purple side with the 3rd shade, Orchid Kiss, but it seems a muted pink again, there on the left. So the winner is there on the right hand side, Exotic Bloom. In comparison to the kisses, it is the right shade of boldness combined with the right amount of pizazz, and that is exactly what our house needs, as we feel it lacks character.
Perhaps some people would think my decorator tips are over the top, but to them I say “I care not for Miami gold or burnished bronze light switches”. Yet others would say that I should sell off what I rip out, because “someone probably paid through the nose for that kind of ugly”. That is sage advice, and yet it would not bridge the gap between my champagne taste and lemonade income. Husband would scoff and splutter at lemonade, but I do have fabulous taste.

Today, I attempted to change a shower head. This is my story.
I’ve already declogged a drain, so I’m totally ready for this.
Remove new showerhead from packaging, check.
One google search said I don’t need to turn off the water, and I don’t recall Husband doing that when he changed other showerheads, so I’m forging ahead.
Hit a snag almost immediately, but persistence pays off, I think.
Hmmm, I seem to have hit an impasse. Something looks like it will spray water uncontrollably if I keep fiddling. Fuck it.

Awkward success, no bathroom calamities. Am going to try and take the locked bulb thing off, which may lead to full scale renovations, which would eventually to lead to breakdown of the marrital unit.
When in doubt, bang it with a wrench.

I’m going to need a bigger wrench.

Im going to try a hammer.
Just found one of Husband’s toenails GNARLY.
Am trying the spray on liquid wrench route, this time. Perhaps I should have thought of that before I dented the fittings, hmmm. Pipe down Husband voice.
Liquid wrench, you’re my hero! Actually, today I’m my own hero.

I was wasting time last night watching bad hair and bad love scenes and an ad came on for a by the minute psychic service.
“Call now for $1 per min…She saw me owning my own yoga studio… She had names, she had so much detail… call today, your best psychic reading or its free”
I wonder if someone is waiting by the psychic telephonist to type in the number you are calling from and cross-referencing your location with facebook and yellow pages etc, so they really can give you the best psychic reading. Or perhaps they don’t need to, because they can tell all sorts of things by the sound of your voice reverberating through the phone lines.
I called a psychic hotline once. I had misplaced a personal notebook – an actual notebook, not an electronic version – and was desperate (obviously) to find it. I can’t remember if I had notes in there for my book or if I was merely paralyzed at the idea that it could fall into the wrong hands. Anyhoo, I called before I left work and read out my credit card number, and proceeded to tell her about my notebook. The call didn’t last long because after ahe said something along the lines of “I feel like it is somewhere near where there is water”, I declined her offers to hear certain bullshit about my job prospects or love life. Wasting money and making myself available for a potential fiscal downfall did nothing to improve my prospects for finding the notebook. Eventually I did find it in my large and mostly unused make up case which was under my bed; I’m not sure how long it was between the 2 events.
Did the woman on the phone have a bunch of flash cards that she shuffled around to find the right-sounding solution for each person? Or did the water content in those unused tubes of youthful glow count?
Years later and perhaps 3 years ago I did get my palm read. It seemed a bit more legit because we were at a renaissance faire. She told me one or two things that I can’t remember, but also that an older man would figure in my life as a friend. I think that might apply to my neighbour, but otherwise who the hell knows.
In the past I have always had an interest in that sort of stuff, but really I’m a little skeptical. Is it really an accurate prediction or a self fulfilling cycle? And that question only applies if it’s not complete bullshit in the first place. I don’t really think it’s bullshit, but I have hard time making up my mind between the other two.

Today there is no school (in other news WAAAAHHH!) for 6.5yo because there are parent teacher conferences w the students today and tomorrow. I am quite sure that the teachers are rejoicing about no sugar meltdowns in school tomorrow.
The “little boys” are in school today so Husband and I could take 6.5yo to his conference and not be (mortified) distracted by their behaviour. Nearly 3yo almost had conniptions about me leaving, but I knew that in no time at all, they would both be enjoying their halloween parties. I am sorry to have missed helping in their classes; I have helped for the last 2 or 3 years and it is so much fun.
Anyhoo, I woke up with big hair because I went to bed with damp hair, sure, I get it. But after 2 glasses of red in a jacuzzi tub, I was too tired to use a blow dryer. I think I slept pretty well; I can only assume that my
hair was drying in the shape of a cumulonimbus cloud and was so fluffy that it made my pillow softer and therefore more comfortable; I felt fine until I looked in the mirror. But I didn’t worry much about it because I sorted laundry upstairs and the boys put away their respective piles. My ulterior motive, though (there has to be ulterior motives if one is sorting laundry), was to find the black ninja shirt that I made for nearly 3yo so he could be Cole, the black-robed ninja and spinjitsu master. I easily spent 20 minutes looking for it: in the car, the lounge room, their bedroom, 3 different baskets of laundry, and various other places. To no avail! Where the hell is it? He was adamant that he wanted to be Cole, even though he more closely resembles Zane who also has blonde hair. Luckily, we have a fair assortment of costumes that have not been lost, so he could go to school dressed in the garb of a pit mechanic for Lightning Mcqueen. Damn it.
I thought that after the school run I would have time to do hairy damage control but I decided to go shopping. We didn’t get much but we did get some much needed toothbrushes for the boys, because boys are gross. Then we were going to go home and get Husband after unpacking, but it was already 30 minutes before the conference appointment, wah! There was no time!
Driving toward the school, I was mentally going through every pocket in my bag looking for bobby pins or something. In the carpark I did it for real and found only a plastic purple flower clip from when my Dad went to some tropical island 25 years ago. Even 6.5yo laughed at that. Some hand combing later and

it didn’t get much better. More frantic searching, then feelings of acceptance, depression and finally normality returning, the hair was somewhat tamed after yet more hand combing. I managed to reduce the volume of hair somewhat, at least so I no longer looked like I stuck my hand in a power socket.
Hair aside, I would like to have worn more respectable clothes than a canadian hockey zip up sweater.
This will stick in teacher’s mind as “that” mother, and further add to the list of excuses that I accrued from the start of the year: after being a week and a half late to the school year, we rang through another day late, we had no internet and he couldnt do homework and Husband was away so I didn’t want to drag all and sundry somewhere for wifi, ho hum.
Tonight should make up for all, a bunch of treats to balance these nasty tricks, and also, it will be ok for my hair to be unruly.

Well, that is the random comedian said on the excerpt of funny on the low brow radio station this morning. 5yo likes the dance music and I can’t bear hearing Eddie Vedder sound as old as he does when he sings the new song, so we listen to the dance station pretty often. I try not to have it on too much in the morning, because I know there is a bit of trash talk during the money hour, but even the tongue twisting in Love Cats will set the boys to talking. Anyhoo, I hadn’t had the channel changed before long when the funny guy comes on and says something along the lines of “halloween is for kids and sluts…”. I can see where he is going and im sure the punchline would have been pretty stupid but funny as hell. Of course 6.5yo pipes right up with “what is a slut?” I waste no time with my tried and true response of “I don’t know, it doesn’t sound like a real word to me”. But it didn’t stop there.
“I think it is another word for slug.”
“For what?”
“For SLUG.”
“Well, maybe it is, but I haven’t heard that before and if you used it in a sentence i think no one would know what you meant.” Crisis averted. For now.

We were heading to a pumpkin patch this morning and somehow got to discussing the minutia of zombies. Husband is away drinking in MA so he could not poo-poo the scary questions. Since I just happened to sit through a zombie film last night, plus bits and pieces of two others, I was certainly up to the task.
Boys:What do zombies eat?
Me, the Voice of Reason:They eat brains.
B:Why?
MTVOR:I don’t know.
B:Why do they eat brains?
MTVOR:I don’t know but that’s what they eat. But remember, zombies aren’t real, they are just pretend, they are just scary halloween stories.
B: Are they dead?
MTVOR: Yes they are.
B: How do they move?
MTVOR: They come back alive. I don’t know how but they become reanimated somehow.
End conversation. By that point we had been in the car long enough for them to stop listening to me. How do they even know that word? 6.5yo is afraid of pretty much everything he sees on television, so why does he take such a perverse interest in obviously scary stuff when kids are talking at school? Because they aren’t me, obviously, and he isn’t thinking of falling asleep in the dark when he is sponging up that information. I couldn’t help thinking, though, about the cute neighbor on the movie who had eaten his fathers guts, rather than his brain. And also? All the zombies died when the sun came up. What’s up with that? Sounds like someone has their macabre villains mixed up. Not me, though, I know that mine were all in the back seat.

When I moved to sydney nearly a decade ago, I wrote two plans for myself: I think the first one was for the – at that time – next 10 years and was for the single me; the second one was for a married me, and I’m sure it was done as an afterthought. When we were engaged and flying to the US together for the first time (we have taken that trip 6 times altogether, I think), not-yet-husband and I were (drinking complimentary booze) drawing up a new plan for – I think – our next 10 years. I found it again a month or so ago, and have put it inside one of the kitchen cupboards. I also started another one, but mostly it is to map out wish-fulfillment of the holidays we would like to take, but of course, writing them down effectively makes them set in stone. I have no idea where the first two plans are or if I even have them somewhere, but it would certainly be interesting to compare them. That goes without saying, really. We have accomplished most of what we set out to do, I think (I’m snuggled under a blanket on the couch, so I’m not going to go and check right now) – except for one thing in particular that Husband let slide right by, more fool him – and we are pretty happy with that. Obviously I am still working on the publishing aspect, but all is well that ends well.
From what I can remember, the single me had 5 years to finish the book (have 1 eye on Zombie Night on tele, so distracting! In other news, why do I watch this shit when Husband is away??), and the ball and chain me had 10 years. Well, 10 years is up *now* and I have started writing again. But what of the other things that would have been on the list? Travel would have been on there at some point, and I have managed a little of that. What should I or would I have had on the list? If I were to write one again, then, times aside, it may look like this:
+ travel to europe
+ live overseas
+ learn a foreign language
+ finish the bloody book and make haste on the others
+ do those itunes free courses (I’m realistic about how much time I have)

Those things do look pretty realistic for us, but perhaps Husband has a few things of his own to add, but this is my blog so he can just tag along with my list for the time being.