How awesome is the movie The Incredibles? Totes awesome, that’s how, just like my grammar. There is a nugget of truth in the movie (depend on Disney for that) when Mrs Incredible tells Mr Incredible that they are finally moved in because she finally unpacked the last box.
Husband and I moved for the first time with a then 8 month old, from a tiny apartment in North Sydney to a seemingly warehouse-sized apartment in California. We had a laundry room that we used mostly for storage of some unopened boxes, until we crammed laundry machines in there as well. Then we moved to Oregon (and the weather was crap and Husband travelled like a fiend on an endless cycle of “h & g”s). We had some extra unopened boxes in the study, along with the unopened from the first move. Cue the itchy feet and we move again to the south side of our town, into the countryside, and after 2.5 years we have whittled the unopened down to one half-unpacked box and old paperwork strewn around on shelves. I haven’t made the call to Husband telling him we are officially moved in, because of that half-unpacked box, and it will probably remain so for another 18 months, until, in a fit of over-zealous tidying, I turf the lot into a smaller box and put it in a cupboard. The point? Life gets in the way. We don’t stop doing the school drop-offs and pick-ups, then making snacks, lunches and dinners, then inevitable and pointless clean-ups afterwards. And in between the meals, the playdates, library trips, and naps, those precious naps, perhaps some fun and interesting family activities on the weekend. And then the glasses of wine and grown-up television shows when the house is actually quiet. So there isn’t actually very much time to unpack and set out those dusty moving boxes. And don’t forget the vacations as well.
We have gone away every year, somewhere or other. Plus a few trips to the beach as well. That is a lot of packing (but I have my trusty list) and unpacking just for the vacations and haul-our-asses-away weekends, let alone moving countries, so when is there time for unpacking moving boxes?
Husband is adamant that vacation-unpacking is far more pressing, and I agree with him (gasp). When we get home I pull out the dirty washing, and frankly, what else is there so pressing? The chickens need tending to, and the grass is a foot high, so after all the school runs and snacks and naps, when there is (was) a little ray of sunshine outside – besides my totes adorbs nearly 3yo – I mowed the lawn in the garden. And the kitchen is my never-tiring nemesis and Husband’s eternal bone of contention (might I point out that ‘kitchen’ encompasses our main eating area, large actual kitchen plus a pantry, and a large play area for the boys as well) so I spend most of my cleaning and tidying time in here. When I am putting stuff away or doing goodness-knows-what, I will walk from the kitchen to and from the laundry then through the dining room and into my bedroom and then see the leftovers that need attention. So I will grab a few things and take them hither, thither and yon on my way back to the kitchen. But 2 weeks later there are still little boy suspenders and bow ties on the floor – the little boy shoes have moved to the floor of my dressing room so they don’t count, there are a few CDs and button-up shirts, then there is a basket of new washing plus different blankets for the bed and a toddler mattress plus odds and ends that I can’t recall but know darn well they are there, cluttering up the place. And after all that, I think we have a box or two in the truck garage, come to think of it, which blows my 18 month theory way out of the water. Doh! Husband won’t be getting that call anytime soon.

I heard about the Roller Derby tournament and thought it would be awesome to watch, but maybe the boys would like it as well. What’s not to love about adults smashing each other? I thought it would be like hockey, sans sticks. It wasn’t quite like that but the boys were excited to go and were excited to watch for the first 5 minutes. Then the inevitable trip to the toilets seemed to take half a fucking hour, because the facilities were down the corridor and the 2 were separate, so the big boys waited while I took nearly 3yo, then it was our turn to wait while the big boys went into the men’s room even further down the corridor. ‘Twas the perfect time for 6.5yo to let go what he had apparently been holding back all day, “but I didn’t need to go at school” and “it was in for a long time so it took a long time to come out” etc. And then we needed snacks. And then we ate the snacks and wanted more. No! Can’t we just sit and watch the action, for pity’s sake?! Pity me.
6.5yo did love watching the action, but the other 2 became restless and then 6.5yo had to join in on the stair and chair climbing. Various time-outs and threats later. Nearly 3yo can’t contain himself and runs to the other side of the arena along the chairs. Cue the steaming ears.
We managed to watch for a little while longer, but I don’t think I got my moneys worth. Barring cabin fever we will be staying home today, but I would love to go again, either sans kids or at a better time when I have a full arsenal of snacks/drinks/flags/noisemakers/I can’t imagine what else.

I heard about the Roller Derby tournament and thought it would be awesome to watch, but maybe the boys would like it as well. What’s not to love about adults smashing each other? I thought it would be like hockey, sans sticks. It wasn’t quite like that but the boys were excited to go and were excited to watch for the first 5 minutes. Then the inevitable trip to the toilets seemed to take half a fucking hour, because the facilities were down the corridor and the 2 were separate, so the big boys waited while I took nearly 3yo, then it was our turn to wait while the big boys went into the men’s room even further down the corridor. ‘Twas the perfect time for 6.5yo to let go what he had apparently been holding back all day, “but I didn’t need to go at school” and “it was in for a long time so it took a long time to come out” etc. And then we needed snacks. And then we ate the snacks and wanted more. No! Can’t we just sit and watch the action, for pity’s sake?! Pity me.
6.5yo did love watching the action, but the other 2 became restless and then 6.5yo had to join in on the stair and chair climbing. Various time-outs and threats later. Nearly 3yo can’t contain himself and runs to the other side of the arena along the chairs. Cue the steaming ears.
We managed to watch for a little while longer, but I don’t think I got my moneys worth. Barring cabin fever we will be staying home today, but I would love to go again, either sans kids or at a better time when I have a full arsenal of snacks/drinks/flags/noisemakers/I can’t imagine what else.

I have read some fantastic books, but this takes the cake. I just stayed up ALL NIGHT reading The Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness. I knowingly stayed up, depriving myself of much needed sleep, knowing that my 3 energetic boys would get out of bed at just before 7am. I watched the hours tick by, from 11-something, through midnight, after 1, and eventually after 3.30, 4.40, after 5, then – sheesh – it’s 6am! Husband’s alarm went off just before 6 (why?!), and I kept on reading, changing positions, snacking on banana bread and occasionally slurping water; I took some unpronounceable pain reliever for my headache, and kept on reading. I was also watching Husband toss and turn, and snort himself silly, just like nearly 3yo. Husband is very dark and nearly 3yo is very blonde, but their facial expressions while sleeping are identical.

I am feeling surprising well for going on 26 hours awake. The boys are surprisingly well-behaved even though I have not slept a wink. Usually they sense my weakness and yell until my ears threaten to bleed, but not this morning. I wouldn’t trust myself to drive, much less with monkeys in the car, but I feel pretty good. Husband has buggered off to rugby training or some such thing, and I think there is a contractor coming over to fix something soon, so I will also need to get showered and dressed pretty nigh on now, actually. After that, I’m assuming Husband will take the boys out almost all day and let me (finish my book – I’m so close to the end now) sleep as long as I like, considering that he was away most of the week. The weather is foggy so I am not sure where he will take them, but that is not my concern. At all.

I assume the par-tay people do this all the time, stay up late and sleep in the day if at all, probably while wearing gorgeously ridiculous high heels and sculling martinis and such. And perhaps disco biscuits will be in there somewhere, too. I will need to make my own biscuits, but they will be sans disco, mostly oats, and perhaps cacao. I did have a nice nap yesterday afternoon, but that is not normally enough to see me through the whole night without sleep.

The only other time I stayed up all night was in the early 90s, at a sleepover, of course. But the next day I was exhausted and didn’t feel “in the moment” with my friends for much of the next day. So far I am very “in the moment” – I have had tea and breakfast, boys are mostly dressed and all are breakfasted, so I think that is all of my pressing business, until I can hit the hay in about 45 minutes.

During our holiday, wine with dinner and more wine after dinner led to my BIL educating me on why my boys can’t pee in the loo without making a mess. My SIL was mortified, and I sort of was as well. The whole discussion was equal parts enlightening, unnecessary and gross, and now, 10 says later, I can’t get his hand movements out of my mind. Eeek! Thankfully, our days have been full enough so we haven’t spent much time at home and consequently in the bathrooms, but the weekend is approaching and I just know that Husband will balk at leaving the house for anything less than hospitalisation. Exceptions to that will include bmx on Saturday and hopefully a trip to the Lego store for 5yo to blow his birthday cash and generally run amok, but I had better have my vinegar spray bottle at the ready for the remainder.
I LOVE using vinegar as a cleaner – it is a single ingredient and cuts through pretty much everything on my breakfast table that the boys can spill, smear or otherwise leave behind. And it works a treat in those nasty bathrooms.

It is funny how you start seeing the same thing everywhere when you didn’t see it before, whether it is the car that you just bought (I bought a Datsun Stanza in the late 90s, and having never seen one before then, they were everywhere there after) or when you decide to get pregnant for the first time. For a while it was seeing babies and pregnant women after we lost our son. They were so prevalent, it seemed like a reproductive army was following me around. I would tear up in restaurants or the library, or just walking down the street. They haven’t really faded into the background as much as the Stanzas eventually did, and I still see a lot of maroon Traverses driving around town, but I suppose I stopped letting them upset me as much. Every once in a while I would be caught off guard, but that happens less and less often. But then something will remind me, quite bluntly – and that is probably due only to my mood at the time – that I could have had another baby grow in my arms until he started walking, I could have had those cuddles and sleepless nights, I could have had more time to wonder at small hands and feet and a thousand other tiny details. Yesterday I was caught off guard by a lovely lady swanning around with a petite bump, and it hurt my heart. Excuse me while I bury my face in booties and bonnets and heirloom wool.

When I was in 1st grade a boy invited me to his birthday party. I screwed up the invitation and put it in my bag (one of those old school cardboard suitcase types that my boys would be mortified to use) and forgot about it. Mum eventually found it and called to rsvp. I don’t know if she was more upset over my bad manners or that we were late to rsvp. At least the parent of the boy hadn’t seen me disregard the invite.
I am annoyed when people don’t rsvp, even if it’s a no. I am no party planner, but I do plan fun parties and I plan for numbers, people! So fucking call me next time.

Husband and I got all domestic in the beginning (way waaaaay back in the day) and loved watching real estate shows (you know you’re old when…). There was one about giving away your lot in the big smoke and moving to the country, buying or building or what have you, and living in a small town/village or out further in the country, and the host would come back a year later and see how you had settled. The host was welsh and he had a particular way of saying “… In the cunn-rey”. Husband and I still use the line today, because we have moved progressively further away from our life in Sydney, where we would get (out of pajamas) dressed in our trendy corporate clothes and head into the city everyday. Oh! The pretty shoes and uber fashionable hairstyles. And now I have to remind myself to check for breakfast on my (own) children’s faces before getting out of the car for school.
We don’t have one of the beautiful stone and oversized timber beam houses, we don’t have fields of lavender blooming on our property, but we do have deer, ground squirrels, raccoons and various predators. We also have mice, and nothing says you live in the country quite like finding a nest full of mice in your barbecue. Cue the vom voms. There were 3 of them scurrying around with their beady little nightmarish black eyes, and eventually they scurried away while Husband burned the nest and disposed of it, but we can’t use the grill now until after some heavy duty cleaning. Blergh. I’m guessing some peroxide might do the job, but we won’t be able to enclose the bbq, so, yeah. If the eagles and hawks circling around would come a little lower, they might find a king’s ransom of scurrying appetisers, then they wouldn’t need to wait and see if and when my chickens stray from underneath the hawk netting, dag nam it!

Sweet Jesus, I think Scarlett is brooding an egg or two. We’ve not had a lot of eggs because of the heat, but Buffy has started crowing again and I saw him busy with a hen or two recently, so I guess the heat had him off his game as well. Anyhoo, Husband was woebegone because there were no uovo to have with his beloved Tillamook formaggio. Then, last night I went to lock the door of Toad Hall and have a sneaky peek for an egg or two, and Scarlett had assumed the position! What took me by surprise more so than Scarlett eyeballing me, was seeing her housemates crammed into the other nesting boxes, rather than roosting like regular birds. That shit is startling! And gross. I need to put larger walls between each of the boxes to discourage congregation. Husband is all for building a new house, but he is full of crackpot ideas that aren’t always realistic or necessary (whereas my crackpot ideas usually involve work for Husband, but they are AWESOME ideas). Also, both wings of Toad Hall are in fine condition. We will be ordering an automatic door opener and I do need to do some gap-filling, and probably cutting out a poop-chute for easier cleaning, but those are just maintenance issues, rather than whole new housing issues.
The blackberry vines are growing like wildfire and providing nice coverage of the chicken fence, so it should be quite picturesque by spring next year. It has also provides some extra shade for my ladies. There weren’t many blackberries on it, though, unless my ladies ate them all. Anyhoo, if there is another bebe or two brooding away, there will be plenty of shade for them by next summer. I will have to watch even closer, though, I’m not prepared for all and sundry to be having their own little family, and I wonder if even adopted Grandma Mabel will tire of too many littles running and jumping all over her.