The glass is half full…. of shit.

Posted on December 30, 2008 by borysSNORC

Long time pessimist that I am, I have a tendency to jump to the worst conclusion in any given situation… IMMEDIATELY. Yesterday we couldn’t get hold of Mr K’s Gran who is in her mid 80s and currently residing alone and my first instinct is that maybe she’s had a fall (the steps are rather bad at her place) or maybe she’s had some other injury and will be found three days later by an Energex worker checking the meter readings half eaten by Alsatians or perhaps someone has broken in and assaulted her for the ten bucks little old ladies tend to have in their purses or maybe she’s run off gotten a tattoo and joined a biker gang. Well okay, maybe not that last one but you see where I’m going here.

I tried to call my Mum to see if she wanted to join us for dinner tonight and we left several messages on her machine and tried her mobile but got that annoying ‘the person you are trying to contact has their mobile phone switched off or is not in a mobile service area’ tripe. Seeing that she’s been away for the weekend up the coast I immediately think she’s had a car accident or maybe she’s stuck on the side of the highway somewhere with a flat tyre and I find myself fervently hoping no opportunistic sociopaths happen to come to her rescue so we don’t get a call in the morning telling us she’s dead in a ditch somewhere. Of course the reason she is unable to be contacted is thankfully far more mundane – vacuuming and couldn’t hear the phone and her mobile battery was flat.

Unfortunately this happens to me ALL the time. If Mr K tells me he’s going to be home around 1745 and if he hasn’t walked through the door by 1800… I’m already envisaging his mangled corpse and twisted bike frame wedged up under the rear wheels of a semi-trailer on Wynnum road and cursing that we never arranged that additional life insurance policy…. or other equally gruesome unfortunate scenarios in a similar vein. If a doctor tells a friend they have ‘need tests to investigate that strange whatever’… I’m immediately preparing for hideous life altering news. On the two occasions where our dog needed to be rushed to the vet (one for a paralysis tick the other for an accidental ingestion of rat poison)… my initial reaction is to mentally prepare for the likelihood that we might have to euthanize the poor pup.

It goes on and on and on and it’s exhausting. Barely a day goes by when I don’t get a horrible sinking feeling that something crap is about to happen. And the worst of it is not so much that I’m just such a cynical pessimist chick who’s always waiting for the hammer to fall (and always has). No the worst of it is just how fucking crazily creative and detailed my little brain gets when I start thinking like this. It’s not just ‘dead in a ditch’ it’s a full blown episode of CSI or Bones that’s going on in my head

Just when I think I’m almost in the clear…

Posted on December 22, 2008 by borysSNORC

In my first year of married life, I received about 50 or so Christmas cards from friends and family who wanted to send a card I presume to wish us and our new little family a happy holiday season. I threw my hands up and went ‘EEK!!!’ and figured I had better get some Christmas cards to send back to people seeing that they’d been thoughtful enough to send one to me.

After Christmas… every single one of those cards went straight in the bin – admittedly a recycling bin, but staight in bin nonetheless. And as I threw them away I thought “What a waste!” and I still think they are a waste. Time, money, envelopes, postage, paper, printing… all of it ultimately wasted. In my second year of married life, I received again about 50 odd Christmas cards – and I sent out NONE, choosing instead to email friends that had sent us well wishes to thank them for their card.

In my third year of married life there was noticably fewer cards…. fourth year – even fewer again… fifth year – even fewer again. I realized the fewer I sent out the fewer I received (thankfully)…. and it continued to dwindle until last year when I received barely three Christmas cards! What an achievement! I felt that my small part in not propagating the unnecessary ritual of exchanging expensive and resource hungry cards every year to be considerable indeed.

In an age when I keep in touch with friends and family around the country and also around the world via email, MSN and via their blogs – do Christmas cards really serve any real purpose anymore??? My Mum used to send them out every year. She had a list that she’d pull out every December of people ‘she HAD to send a card to’ and she always included inside a personalized handwritten letter telling everyone how the Cross Famliy had been that year. This quaint method of keeping touch once a year seems to have become redundant in the age of technology when we know quite a lot of what our friends have been up to – with alarming frequency judging by some people’s Facebook habits!!! 🙂

So year after year my attempt to minimize the Christmas cards has been ever so slowly gaining momentum. Over the weekend I was thinking that I might have pulled it off as the only Christmas card I had received this year was from Caloundra Suzuki wishing me and my family ‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year of safe motoring in our new Suzuki!!!’ (I decided that promotional material of this nature doesn’t really count as a Christmas card so I was so far in the clear)…. and I thought “YES!! I’ve finally done it !!!”

I’ve been carefully watching the mail box, dreading the annual invasion of Christmas cards… and here we made it all the way to December 22nd with none to report…. But there’s this saying about counting your chickens and I have this afternoon found two chickens in my mailbox.

Bugger. Sigh… maybe next year will be the cardless Christmas I’m aiming for…

Other People’s Kids.

Posted on December 9, 2008 by borysSNORC

I’ve been looking after a friends two boys for the last couple of days seeing that it’s school holidays and all and their Mum has a couple more weeks of work. For the most part… the Small Child, Ring-in #1 and Ring-in #2 get along okay and I’m reluctant to get involved in petty childish squabbles as I believe they need to learn to work out things for themselves – it’s all part of learning about conflict resolution which is a vital commincation skill. But oh dear God…. other people’s children… where to start?

We’ve had drama over sharing the Game Cube – Ring-in # 1 doesn’t want to take turns and hogs the controller. Strangely I always expected this sort of behaviour would be the evident in the Small Child being an only child and all… but no he shares well with the other kids. We’ve had problems at snack time – Ring-in #2 doesn’t eat fruit and insists on cookies and chips which their mother knowingly provided :|. We’ve had problems riding bikes out in the yard – Ring-in #1 jumped out in front of the Small Child as he was careering down the driveway causing him to swerve and crash straight into a brick wall. We had an incident with the poor Caesar (our 11yr old Australian Terrier) when Ring-in #1 decided it would be fun to man handle the poor dog onto the top bunk in the Small Child’s room from which he subsequently fell. There have been numerous admonishments regarding treatment of the poor aged dog which have been administered with alarming regularity but seem to merely run like water off a ducks back.

But the best fun was to be had over lunch today…

Mom: I’m making ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch boys.
Would you like them toasted or untoasted?
Ring-in #1: I don’t eat ham and cheese sandwiches.
Mom: Oh… what do you eat on your sandwiches?
Ring-in #1: Ummm. Ham. Vegemite. Cheese. Stuff like that.
Mom: Right. So ham and cheese it is.
Ring-in #1: No not together. I’ll have just Vegemite.
Ring-in #2: Can I have just cheese?
Small Child: I want Vegemite too please Mum.
Mom: Okay. So that’s three ham and cheese sandwiches.
Ring-in #1: Ok but I won’t eat it. (No shit he said that)
Ring-in #2: Also, I don’t eat crusts.

Let’s see… I had hardly any sleep last night as I woke up in lots of pain and feeling totally drug fucked around 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep for hours. My new drugs are upsetting my stomach somewhat. My patience for this rubbish is thin at the best of times and today is damn near non-existent. Why is this so bloody difficult?!?! They’re just fucking sandwiches.

Mom: Sigh… Fine one plain Vegemite, one plain cheese and one ham and cheese.
Small Child: I want vegemite too.
Mom: That would be ham and cheese… Yes?
Small Child: Okay Mum.

Three sandwiches laid out with milk and one water later…

Ring-in #2: Mine has crusts on it.
Mom: Crusts are fine just try them (Read: Suck it up princess).
Ring-in #1: How come I’ve got water.
Mom: Because you said you don’t drink milk.
Ring-in #1: But I like chocolate milk.
Mom: Sorry we’re all out of chocolate.

And this BS went on for most of the two days in varying degrees over a diverse range of issues.

I guess my point is this – If you’ve ever watched my Small Child for me…. if he’s ever fussed over his food, or refused to play well with others or caused injury, either physical or emotional, to you or any of your kith or kin… then please accept my heart felt apology. I totally understand that to you he’s an ‘Other People’s Kid’.
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No! No! No! You can’t make me! I demand legal representation!

Posted on November 27, 2008 by borysSNORC

There comes a time as a parent where you need to make certain decisions to protect your own sanity. In truth we don’t want to let the offspring down and we don’t want them to feel like subjects of indifferent parenting… but there are some things soooo unappealing and tedious in our eyes that we simply must act in order to preserve what little remains of our own dwindling mental capacities.

Small Child: Mum we’re doing Carols by Candelight – are you going to come?
Mum: I don’t know Sweetie. Why don’t you go ask your Dad if he likes Christmas.
Small Child: Da-a-ad! Do you like Christmas?
Dad: Do I? I love Christmas!!!
Small Child: Yay! We’re having Carols by Candlelight at school are you going to come?
Dad: Sure thing kiddo 😐

I’m such a horrible parent.

It started right from day dot when I was lying my arse off to the doctors so they’d let me take him home. And then there was the time I forgot the Toothfairy and then made up some bullshit for the Small Child in the morning telling him we were supposed to email the Toothfairy so they’d know to come visit. There was the time he was complaining of RSI in his thumbs after inadvertently being allowed to play too much Nintendo on the holidays. Then there was the day where I totally lost him and subsequently lost the plot as well. Then of course there is the special torture that is enrolling him in Catholic school when we’re not overly even remotely religious. Then there was the time we weren’t vigilant enough about exposing him to YouTube which had him sprouting about Menergy and Kenyans for two weeks solid. And of course there have been innumerable occasions where I’ve exposed him to our friends who don’t have a PG rating.

And after tonight we’ll be able to add to the list of my (real or imagined) parental infringements, my flat refusal to participate in something that involves 1) red and green clothing ‘preferably something Christmassy’ and 2) the singing of Christmas carols by small talentless children. Why? Well because Christmas Carolling doesn’t even remotely resemble something of whimsical Dickensian tradition – to me it’s more like being forced to sit through Chinese opera performed by mating possums.

Please I don’t want to go… you can’t make me!!! It’s bad enough that we have to do things like enter elevators and shopping centres around Christmas time where we involuntarily have Christmas carols inflicted upon us. I see no reason why we should exacerbate the situation by voluntarily participating in carolling ourselves (shudder) . You know forced exposure to Christmas Carols should constitutes a human rights violation… or at the very least… be considered cruel and unusual punishment of some sort.

Sigh… but thank you Mr K… you’re a Prince among men for taking the Small Child to the Carols by Candlelight tonight. Why, Im sure taking your children to something like this is tantamount to being there for dance recitals! So I bet there’ll be no goats on the internets in the Small Child’s immediate future and that’s all thanks to you Daddy!
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I’m easy… just not cheap.

Posted on November 26, 2008 by borysSNORC

Had a quiet day today trying to erase yesterday’s traumatic shopping experience from my memory. I did have an unexpected visit from Brother in Law #2. My brothers in law (I have four) have the habit of occasionally popping in for a cuppa and a chat when they’re out and about. Today BIL#2 dropped around to shoot the breeze and hang for a bit. We started talking about the dreaded and imminent Christmas season and I’m not sure how but the tone of our chat turned into a conversation about desire.

Why is it that we (people in genral) continually find things (objects, people or experiences) to desire. Are we hardwired to never be happy with what we have? Eventually you’d think that we’d run out of desires… that maybe there’s some point of saturation where you no longer feel the need to acquire. But from what I see we don’t ever seem to get to that point, for as soon as we say or think we’ve got everything we want our entire society is geared towards telling us we want (need?) more stuff. Or maybe desire is so integral to being alive that if we were to stop wanting and desiring various things, people and experiences we may as well be dead???

Because the silly season is approaching with indecent haste, we’re all getting asked that most dreaded of holiday questions "What do you want for Christmas?" and I got nothing. I can’t think of a single thing that I want right now. Well I should qualify that – there’s nothing I want that would fit into the average Christmas present budget range. I’d like to build an extension onto our house approx cost about $25,000-30,000. I’d like a new pavillion that is a more sensible size for singleton camper approx cost about about $2,500. Errr, a hydrotherapy spa – about $14,000. A Moran leather Chesterfield lounge suite – about $8,000-9,000. New carpets through the house – conservatively about $10,000-12,000 and given a few more minutes I’m sure there’s a handful of other ridiculously expensive things that I might like.

But other than wanting big ticket items for our home… I can’t think of anything I want let alone somethng I might actually need. Maybe this is why I hate the consumer driven holiday season so much. We’ve all totally bought into thinking up stuff we don’t need for our friends and family to buy for us and we in turn buy stuff for themt that they totally don’t need and the whole thing is a stupid cycle that we repeat every bloody year.

Don’t misunderstand me though, I’m not some sort of hardline greenie or socialist trying to save us from our own mass consumerism. In fact I may well be one of the most accomplished consumers I know. But I just hate this mad accumulation of ‘stuff’ for no reason.
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