Sexy.

OhmyGOD.

I. Got. A. New. Computer.

OhmyGOD.

‘Tis extremely sexy.

Would totally let it get to second base if it asked. You have no idea of the full horror of the technological disaster I have been living with for the past three and a half years or you’d understand my sudden moral looseness.

In love,

G

PS. What else from, say, 2008 onwards did I miss and y’all should clue me in on?

Break.

Hi, I’m Geohde.

I think last wrote something around these parts some time in the Jurassic era but then I swear a Brontosaurus ate my keyboard and a Tyrannosaurus decided I looked exactly like the right kind of sympathetic ear to unload a lengthy diatribe about all that Nasty Predator bad press and how difficult it is to find a good knitting circle when everybody thinks you’ll probably use their ribs for needles and so on.

Yes, I’m making things up and, no, I have no earthly idea when I last posted, either of content full stop let alone content of quality, I’m honestly too plain old tired to check the date. Perhaps we should stick with ‘a dinosaur ate my homework’ and THAT my friends is a shame because I work in a positive pent-up stew of human experience and the inability to share in a timely fashion clearly crimps the old style somewhat.

There was the amusing time I worked two weeks straight with the exception of my birthday at thirty six weeks pregnant, pissing off my boss with the request in the process and still sadly being denied an actual full weekend as such to whinge about my sausage legs while laying sprawled on the couch watching reruns of something or other on TV.

There was also the almost as funny time that LS decided the Internet connection didn’t seem quite ship-shape and in a fit of ‘fixing’ or ‘improving’ things managed to break it rather impressively. That took three days to fix, all done in bits and cranky pieces at the end of my cover shifts. At thirty seven weeks pregnant.

I can’t say I handed out overmuch sympathy to the whimpers of Internet withdrawal.

Lest I forget there have also been the slightly droll times LS has been interstate on Matters Professional, leaving my heavily gravid self to do it all solo. There’s been quite a bit of that, actually, and really he’s just bloody lucky I haven’t gone into labour when he’s four hours away by plane just to spite him.

I guess I could mention the time that at almost thirty eight weeks pregnant I found myself leaving work two hours late because extracting twins by c-section from somebody with a BMI in the 60s turns out to be rather hard work. The anaesthetist couldn’t hit a vein with a standard length cannula and an ultrasound machine and that was just the beginning of our collective troubles. The bit where we converted to a general anaesthetic mid-stream was kind of hairy, but I think the kicker was when she just kept on trickling blood post operatively and I had my hand to my elbow through abdominal wall and still had no earthly idea if her uterus was actually responding to enough oxytoxic agents to make cement look all soft because I couldn’t feel it.

That was today and I hope she’s okay.

Tomorrow is my last hurrah at work, I am hoping to finish in a knackered blaze of sharp with a scalpel in hand and THEN ladies of the Internet, I plan to get some bastard I work with to actually recheck my enormous fundal height and my blood pressure because I haven’t had an obstetric visit myself in nearly three weeks on accounts of the clinics being overrun with too many pissed off pregnant women as it is (without losing a staff member to the other side of Angry Wait) and my legs, they dint to about my knee and my vision has been a little starry of late and honestly saying  I feel a tad on the second hand side is missing the chance to abuse the delightful expression ‘like refried shit’.

Mostly I’m just writing to say Hello and I Haven’t Given Birth Yet. I’ve also gone and pushed back my own c-section to two weeks hence because I need a bloody break before I can face a newborn.

G

PS. Am contracting like a b!tch almost all the time these days and somehow I don’t think it agrees with me.

Random illustrated events.

It is a Saturday and I am not working, so what better thing is to do than listen to Saag and Naan merrily tear up the playroom, walls, light fittings and climb up out of the roof to freedom while I swear at my elderly slow computer creatively?

It Does Not Do Uploading these days, I think.

Regardless.

A:

I still appear to be pregnant. My arse does appear to be getting disturbingly big and I have already explained how I refuse to comment on my thighs and bottom but if you would like a series of localised fires, just put me in courdoroy trousers for a day.

Psst…not my house, too clean, Internet. But I covet this mirror.

B:

This explains why I would rather try and bathe a cat than prise those suckers apart four times a day to squirt in goo. Let alone risking the teeth to do the oral component of Die You Gram Positive Bastards.

C:

THIS is how to erase two hundred dollars from your life in ten easy minutes and about sixty hard ones.
 

D:

Credit where it is urinary due, I suppose.

Next uploads in 2020 sometime.

G

Blank.

You know I think that this time nightshift really truly HAS finally fried my tiny brain because, honestly, although I have been on the reluctant nocturnal receiving end of the usual damp gamut of human experience that is nocturnal obstetric practise, I can’t think of a single useful or remotely scandalous thing to say.

Well, other than that I seem to have just picked up a horrible hairy spider with my bare hands for no better reason than wanting to flush it down the loo to oblivion and beyond and it hadn’t occurred to me in the slightest that the bloody thing might be all, well, hairy and fast and unpleasantly eight legged and generally creepy as hell.

I’m not sure where it is now after I flung it away best windmill fashion, but I hope it has a headache.

Yes, I normally smash their tiny brains in with something I plan to never ever use again and then carefully scrape the corpse onto a piece of very long paper as far as possible from my body to dispose thereof (even when they are quite safely flatter than roadkill) like a good pathetic girly arachnophobe, so I can’t really think what came over me except that I ecxpect it didn’t really involve thinking as such.

Regardless.

I could also tell you about nocturnal nurse efficient on night fifty bazillion who thought that paging ME at 11pm, 1am, three am and five am  in water torture fashion over all sorts of minor DAYTIME issues was a clever idea, but really that story is also as boring as hell apart from the highlight where I finally snapped and got her to leave me alone by promising to come and write all the rubbish requested on the drug chart NOW, at aforementioned five bleeping am, if I could also watch her get them all and wake the bleeping patient up to give them at that sort of ungodly hour. I figured the patient could get away with slightly more salty language than I could and by five-bleeping-am I was all for giving them the chance to unload both verbal barrels.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, she uncharitably declined. Also, that wasn’t really all that interesting in the retelling, either.

I think it’s time to spray rather copious amounts of insecticide around my house again now if it’s all the same with you.

G

PS. You’ll have to excuse me on actual content worth a damn on accounts of Naan waking up two days ago with an eye the size of a golfball (just returned from nightshift brain diagnosis of periorbital cellulitis duly confirmed in local Emergency Department and IV antibiotics weaselled out of on grounds that child was zooming through department at one-eyed warp speed and clearly not in any way all septic and flaky but have you TRIED to give antibiotic mix to reluctant three year old mouth and drops to even more reluctant swollen shut eye? Bathing a cat has nothing on it, believe me), so count one ‘day’ of sleep clean gone along the way along with one first post nighshift run actual precious NIGHT of sleep clean gone in a Saag generated night terror for which the only cure was to sleep like a thrashing dervish in Mama’s bed, moaning about monsters at random until waking as fresh as a three year old weetie-devouring daisy at seven am.

I am a bit on the farking tired side actually.

PSS. It was an entire new tyre in the end after all. I shoudln’t have actually bothered going to work last week, I would have been slightly  more profitable sleeping in my bed, anyway.

Business.

I think it’s business as usual round these parts, or back to it, at least.

Sigh.

In other worse, in case I have failed to mention it, I have just spent the last entire whole week on a miraculous thing called annual leave and because I never have enough free time, this means I have been busier than a blue arsed proverbial trying to unkill my garden, untangle all the miscellaneous doll limbs from hair in the twin’s playroom, conquer my laundry pile (Last Load Today and I have even successfully committed laundry apartheid with the result that the whites are actually not a shade of reddy-brown for a change), purchase some visually acceptable maternity clothes that DON’T make me look like the arse-end of a barge and so on.

I still look like the arse-end of a barge, in case you wondered. I’m up 10kg/22 pounds at last check and, no, I don’t think I plan to check again. It’s bad enough that people keep lending me those belly coverer thingamyjigs and I have a shelf full of the blasted things I can’t use with any of my normal clothes because I can’t get them past my knees anymore.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that I have yet to organise myself for the minor matter of preparing for the interview to join the esteemed training program in the Royal College of Odds and Sods, because yes I did get an interview and it is this coming Friday thank you for asking, since not only it is hard to practise serious answers to grown up questions with two newly minted three year olds having a meltdown when they do not get a cake and tiara for breakfast but, honestly, I think walking into that interview conspicuously gravid pretty much visually overpowers even the best of pertinent, up-to-date and researched answers on why I think taking blood pressures while standing on your head and singing the rude version of ‘Rule Brittania’ is not a good idea.

Anyway, I go back to work tomorrow and I only have to drive about ninety minutes in peak hour to get there at 7.30 in the morning and I am feeling a little, tiny, wee bit sorry for myself. I’m going to have to get up halfway through the night before.

On the plus side, don’t tell LS because he would freak himself a new one, but Saag clambered her way out of her cot without acquiring any form of head injury every day this week and either toddled down to my bedroom to give me a cudddle or, bless her heart, toddled the other way to the holy television and turned it on and quietly watched endless bleeping Dora episodes until I surfaced.

I’m going to miss getting sleep. It was nice. I now offically don’t get a skerrick of time off until I go into labour or my c-section, whichever happens first. Also, I think it might be time to take the cot side off, on the balance.

G

Cash.

Dear Internet,

May I diverge from rambling on about my gonads and instead gibber in fear at the state of my finances?

Thank you.

I’d like to write something interesting and fertility related, but then again that would involve not spending my holidays at work purely for the love of the dirty, dirty money. Also, it would involve something happening other than my ovaries just sucking up exorbitant amounts of FSH and not even bothering to leave a tip.

So I’ll talk about work.

Trust me, it’s not because I enjoy sewing up the busted lips of unlucky teenagers who lose fights with gravity, most especially when their disinhibited (read pissed as a parrot) mother decides to hover over their poor baby clad only in pink frilly pyjamas. At 3pm.

I certainly don’t turn up to watch a twenty year old junkie pick his impressive boils in the corridor, either, and to be brutally honest I could do rather less with seeing the ones on his ass. I didn’t ask to see them but within thirty seconds of meeting the guy I was new best friends with both cheeks.

It’s absolutely for the money and up and until somebody buys a spare house I happen to have carelessly left lying around, my entire damn salary is going just to meet the interest repayments.

The interest.

Fuckityfuckityfuck.

G

How to increase your traffic by a bajillion percent.

Give or take.

Actually, this post is merely a small PSA for those positively gagging at the bit to own a piece of Apple’s latest wallet-drainer.

Yes, I may have posted an entry about three years ago in which I referenced one ‘IP.ad’. However, do bear with me. Don’t get all carried away, please.

Clearly the fact that half of the western world clicked on a site loudly proclaiming to be a blog about infertility, lady parts, work, twins, life in general (and not manually strangulating one’s spouse and stuff in the face of extreme daily provocation) means that I have been obtuse.

It should have been taken as a clue that I am not a particularly savvy technological type. Also, I am not all that funny, either.

Today I got the shock of my life when I noticed my stats now look like THIS:

Whoa, Nelly.

I had to go and read the news to work out what’s been going on on Planet Earth lately that got you all in such a swivet, because I’ve been stuck hamster-wheeling around an artificially lit concrete bunker pretending to be a healthcare professional.

But I think I’ve figured it all out. We have a minor misunderstanding going on, Internet. You’ll laugh.

Let me state the following, s-l-o-w-l-y and clearly, okay? I don’t know my motherboard from my USB slot, and I would have serious trouble differentiating both of them from a hole in the ground.

I do not have ESP and neither am I that ahead of the curve, so you can all stop molesting the post in question now. Also, I have not the foggiest where you can buy one, so do refrain from asking me.

But if you’re into random spotting, dildocams, IVF cycles, twins and angst in general, well, pull up a bouncy chair. Just wipe the snot off of it first, Naan’s a bit under the weather.

Love, Geohde.

I’ll bite #2.

No, I won’t eat poo, delightful as that sounds and as abundant at my dozen-child-generated-shits-a-day household as it IS.

However I’ve been doing the maths, so I can’t help but wonder.

If 150-ish people read me in the all-powerful google reader, and I get 300 plus or minus (depending on how dull I am, childbirth was a 900 hit high and half of my lesser eloquent musings about, um, was it cheese? were decidedly cricket-chirpingly NOT) a bit hits a day on the site itself, well…

Where are the rest of you all coming from?

I deeply appreciate the twenty-three brave, BRAVE people who commented AND also mostly fessed up to something daft they’d done at some point or other, but where’s everybody else?

Maths isn’t my strong point, but um?

Do I really get that many frustrated blokes in search of porn mistakenly finding my plastic-p.enis catheter inserting abode a day?

Okay, yes, so I AM low on content now that you mention it. How did you know?

Honestly, I’ve never nagged people to delurk before to the best of my knowledge, I’m just genuinely curious.

Humour me

Okay, I shall begin this boast post with the disclaimer that it involves not only pregnancy, but multiple pregnancy, in heavy amounts. I understand if that fact alone is enough for many of you to justifiably to click the ‘no thanks’ button. Repeatedly.

So, for those of you who do want to hear what I’ve been abusing my keyboard with lately, just read on, MacDuff.

Internet, do humor a slightly mad rapidly ageing lady with little enough time as it is to scratch her bottom (and a rapidly approaching deadline with NO LIFE ever again, I SWEAR it which I steadfastly refuse to acknowledge right now) who insists on finding new ways to make sure the laundry pile never does get sorted.

I’ve gone and written another piece and somebody very nice indeed has very kindly (again) taken pity on my spits and spurts and gone and published it on their own snazzy website. All proper-like.

Perhaps it was just a ruse to make me go away and shut up already with the inbox harassment , but nevertheless, here ’tis:

Am I Having Twins? A brief guide to ultrasound twin-spotting.

Apparently rather a LOT of women out there really want to find out if their ultrasound of almost always ONE baby could be two, even if all and sundry present at the scan said NO in capital letters. I was only too delighted to write some words on the matter.

I would quip that I like smashing dreams, but that sounds mean and is probably (unless your dream is of endless free no-questions emergency department supplied smack) not true.

I simply like exercising my inner science nerd. Over a dozen years at university will do that to a girl.

Anyway, along with all of these, care to read?

You can help expand my head (or put me in my silly place) in the comments section. Don’t get all drunk with power now, will you?

Love,

G

PS. Always happy to take solicitations for very slowly naptime-powered pieces on this and that. Don’t all rush at once.

Around the world in 80 blogs.

Alternatively entitled ‘In which I join in on somebody else’s good idea, and hope madly that nobody from my bottom-part of the Antipodean world has had a crack at it before I hit publish’.

Alternatively alternatively entitled ‘Photography clearly not my own for three reasons, namely 1: My camera sucks, 2: So does my Internet connection and it would be quicker to post you all the photos, if indeed I took any. Which I didn’t. 3: These ones are in focus (see point 1)’.

Internet, let me tell you about my home city.

We have giant heads with which to terrify the holy bejeebers out of any four year olds you may be carrying about your person.

Actually, this is allegedly an amusement park, more famously known as one ‘Luna Park’.

So, I live in a city where for the price of admission you too can walk through a giant mouth without fear of dying a suitably giant, carious, halitosis-filled death, although the state of the rides inside may make you wish you had.

Being as the edge of my city ends at this wet stuff called ‘the ocean’ at one part (the other parts being kind-of ringed with these high things we call ‘smog catchers’), we have beaches.

Most of them are fortunately syringe-free and you can fry yourself a delicate shade of lobster red with safety in the hot months. As an added bonus you may take home half the sand in your bum crack, all free of charge.

If you were looking for the wholes, by the way, they’re just down the road from the above beach. You’re welcome.

We have a great place to spend city lunch breaks on sunny days, otherwise known as the Botanic Gardens.

 You actually CAN peacefully enjoy beautiful parkland right on the CBD, if running in circles around the perimeter like all the superfit lumchtime lemmings fails to appeal to YOU as much as it does to me.

Also, on balmy summer evenings you may (for a small fee) enjoy a picnic and watch an outdoor movie, all the while studiously ignoring the young and enthusiastic types shagging of in the foliage.

Whatever takes your fancy.

You can forget where you left your car (after you spent five hours fighting to the death to get the damn space in the first place) in an orgy of shopping in locations too numerous to count.

Our retailers are happy to keep you comfortably poor and in no danger whatsoever of ever actually paying off your massive mortgage for that modest tin shack.

If you ever tire of shopping in a giant concrete can with transparent roof panels in strategic but clock-free locations, then you can instead shop, eat and go to a rather good pub, right on the water’s edge.

Hopefully without having your face ripped off or being blown into the water by ever-present driving wind.

In MY city, you can drive around in a filthy vehicle completely guilt free (and as an added bonus call yourself an environmentalist for being a sloth), since water restrictions mean you’re not meant to be doing it, anyway.

Also, however, take note that one may get stuck on the eternally crowded train network with some people who have taken this view rather too far and have exposed, well-aerated armpits (due to hanging on for grim life to nearest bar, rail, roof panel or other hapless commuter).

Go on, get the obligatory ‘aww’ out of the way before I tell you how a trip to the eastern foothills can land you at a place called Healesville Sanctuary where not only can you pat one of these suckers, but you can also get clawed, widdled on and learn about how they all have the clap, the cheeky things.

 True story.

If you have a car and like windy roads with a gradient that makes mountain goats a tad uncomfortable, then you can visit Mt Dandenong ( a.k.a one of the high bits). For only the cost of the petrol involved, you can get stuck behind the endless parade of old cars with ribbons on the front ferrying the hapless to various bits of Mt Wedding Central.

Also, this is where we stick our TV transmission bits. Pretty.

The End.

Now when are you all coming to visit? It really is quite nice, my city.

The Antipodean Invasion.

Also known as ‘The blog entry in which I give the game away’.

In other words, should you happen to live in a certain country that likes to hang out on the northern side of the equator, well, expect your population to shortly temporarily increase by about four people, two of whom are admittedly a little on the short side.

The logistics of the planned shenanigans avec twins on several long-haul-tin-can-with-wings-on jaunts has had my overly list-dependant self in a busy world of planning check-box heaven, much to the detriment of this website.

Are strollers included in baggage allowance (Very Bad, since ours weighs about a metric ton, give or take), or extra (super awesome)? Do airlines let enterprising parents take litres of shelf stable milk on board with which to placate spawn and stop their ears exploding at takeoff and landing? What do you do with two one year olds on a plane for fourteen solid hours after the fiftieth repetition of ‘Mary had a little lamb’, anyway? Why do American street numbers start in the thousands for a perfectly normal sized street (answered, just because they do)? How terrifying might it actually be to be a passenger in a car that Geohde absent-mindedly keeps trying to drive on the wrong side of the road? Do alligators really eat people, or just snack on unguarded limbs?

The questions are legion.

DId I mention that Chez MII is going mobile, and we’ve just been on the almost-phone-with-extra-dropouts that is Skype to the wonderful HereWeAreAJen planning details?

As for Jen, she is as lovely as she types, although possibly with a bit more accent.

I expect that she thinks the same of me, and that additionally I am Very Red at the moment. Most Loudly Red. I shall, however, go ahead and assume that she is probably much less pixellated in real life.

In conclusion, Holiday! Jen!  Whee.

Thank you, Jen, you absolutely rule and now I must attempt to conquer Mt Washing before Saag and Naan (who waved dutifully at the computer screen when prompted and even blew kisses before a thankfully kept off camera defcon-10 naptime meltdown) re-emerge from their cots in search of lunch.

Ooh, I’m excited.

Things that annoy me…

I hereby dedicate this post to the following things that annoy me the very most in the world. Well, at least as of today, at 7 pm, plus something minutes and something-else-divisible-by-60 seconds. Just so that tomorrow when I am at work and something annoys me more, I can rank it appropriately with regards to my feelings on having run unexpectedly out of chocolate because LS has eaten what I though was the last bar in my cleverly concealed secret stash.

Also, it is raining and too bloody cold to go out for more.

Pity me. I am a (insert discrete whisper that menstrual events may be happening) woman without chocolate. Thank goodness for wine.

1. People who treat nauseous and nauseated as synonyms and thus in one fell swoop tell the world that they make other people feel sick. Actually, they make me feel incredibly unwell in a grammar nerdish way, so perhaps they are not so very far from the truth, after all.

2. People who do not know that their vehicle posesses these clever things called ‘indicators’ that help other drivers bereft of ESP divine that they intend to possibly turn into the path of their innocent car. You know, so that the rest of us can save on the unexpected tyre wear, rear view mirror middle finger action overuse injury,  foot-to-brake-pedal reflex testing and general brown trousers wearing.

3. See above, but insert ‘accelerator pedal’ and ‘working eyes’ when the ass in front of you is blithely driving at half the signed speed limit in a zone marked No Overtaking.

4. Point 2, but with reference to ‘keeping within one’s OWN lane’ (because wanting more than one is considered greedy by most motoring authorities) and refraining from ’Honest-to-be-jeebers shaving on the go’, because whilst I like to make friends, I do not like to make them at the freeway speed-limit. Neither does the paintwork on my car. Besides, isn’t carefully crafted stubble considered sexy these days, rather than merely unkempt? After all, it is the approach I take with regards to my very own legs.

5. All the numerous sad, twisted searches that goog.le now proclaims me Ass Lady of The Internet with regards to, about thirty times a day. I swear a good proportion of my traffic is now about rec.tums. People, it is simple, so do listen up. Your bottom is solely designed to release chocolate hostages, back out a log or two a day, park a brown buick in the odd porcelain garage and so on. Really. There is no earthly need to get so very creative with regards to the Hershy Highway. Traffic is strictly southbound. Trust me on this one. Now bugger off somewhere else, please.

Yes, I mean figuratively with regards to that last point.

MRWhy?

Because it isn’t always all about me, no matter how blithely I assume the universe revolves neatly around goings on JungleChez CrazyMII when I post various predictable whinges about:

1. The complete and utter inability of LS to suck it up and stop pretending he’s dying over a mere sniffle.

He can’t, and it seems he won’t until the very, very lastest cold virion has turned up it’s metaphorical tooties in disgust and has literally been bored to death by all the bleeping whining.

The man is currently completely, utterly annoying in that eye-rolling, fist-twitching way that only a whining pansy with a backbone composed of runny jelly can provoke. Especially when one of our communal assorted one year olds has vomited six times overnight and two times today, leaving pretty fermented yogurt patterns on my no-time-to-change-them sweatpants and little lumps of puke curdling between my toes.

I am THIS close to performing a violent anatomical rearrangement armed solely with blunt spoons that shall have him searching for his dentition with the aid of a colonoscope, needless to say.

2. Children, and how on earth they fit so very much snot and puke in such little bodies. See point #1 above for clarification.

No, this post is a blast to those who think it is a good idea to give somebody who happens to be a good friend of mine their abnormal MRI brain films, with no report, no discussion of what the great big white thing inside their brain might be (because nobody would cheat before the appointment by peeking, surely?) and pat them on the head and let them go on the metaphorical merry way.

I don’t know a person alive who isn’t going to rip open the packet and have a look-see while waiting for their follow-up appointment, duly freak the fuck right out, and call somebody who might know something helpful.

After all, it hardly takes a medical degree to work out that (to get all technical)  Big W.hite T2 Hyperintense, Vasoge.nic O.edema Surrounded Intra-axial masses, better known as ’what the FUCK is that Big White Thing in my brain?’ simply shouldn’t be there.

Also, the list of causes is predictably both Short and Nasty, and mostly involves cheering terms like, say, ’cancer’.

I object to having my heart sink to a geographical location more commonly associated with movement of tectonic plates when I see aforementioned films combined with anxious faces of my friends, hoping for something reassuring.

I intensely dislike having to tell my heavily pregnant very good friend that they need to get the formal report TODAY, and not wait for their appointment in a week because, well, I can’t reassure them, I can’t fudge it. I think the film looks bad. Yes, as in ‘cancer’ bad.

In other words, I’ve told a good friend her partner has a brain tumour, simply because nobody else thought it might be a good idea  to discuss it with them before giving them the bloody films. The formal report, antisocially late to the ‘Oh Fuck’ party almost to the point of irrelevance, belatedly says the same thing.

Cue fallout.

That’s what I’ve been doing with my last few days, and while it is not about me, it BLOWS.

Serendipity.

A rather self-absorbed post about my hair, or what there is left of it these days.

My hair and I.

When I was a child, it was long, blonde and prone to containing pieces of other children’s chewing gum upon occasion. It was also an utter knotted bastard to brush. But my parents did not cut it.

When I was an adolescent and predictably enough prone to spending hours at a time shut in my room, deeply preoccupied with examining my reflection in the mirror and wishing the pimply reality would go away, my hair was similarly long and wavy. I wanted what I did not have and would spend hours at a time frying it to within an inch of its poor life with my inexpert attempts at straightening.

In reality, I just added iron-induced-frizz to my spotty problems. House iron induced frizz.

When I was a young adult, I decided to give peroxide a bash. Half of it fell out at about shoulder height when I left the stuff on too long while talking on the phone.

After about six months of going around with a very thin ponytail, I succumbed to the inevitable fact that it would not miraculously recover and I cut it. Emboldened, I added a fringe and cursed myself to a year of penance at the temple of hairclips as I grew the blasted thing out.

In my early twenties, bored, I cut it all off and permed it. Then, not satisfied, I dyed it red, then brown and then jet black.

Just for kicks, I had it permanently straightened into a bob, but this only had the effect of making me look like an entirely different race from behind and like iron-deficient pallid death from the front.

The blonde, wavy regrowth also had the unfortunate tendancy of making me look like I had gone prematurely grey.

I stopped colouring my hair, and grew it out.

By my mid twenties I was again free of a bimonthly date with the good people of Clairol and long of locks, although I had enough sense by this time to limit styling efforts to the words ‘hairbrush’ and ‘ponytail’.

In my late twenties I gave up on the layers and thus additionally saved myself the cost of bimonthly hairdresser visits. Once or twice a year was enough.

Obviously, I had twins in my early thirties. Prompted by the double whammy of losing half of my hair down the shower drain and the rest in my children’s fists, I cut it short. The kind of short that not infrequently results in mildly amusing misunderstandings about the role of p.enis in my sex life.

Because it was entirely uneeded, I forgot where I kept my hairbrush.

I began going to see the hairdresser more often, because short hair has this unfortunate habit of growing.

When Saag and Naan began sleeping thorough the night, I started to feel less like death warmed up. I cared about my appearance once again. I stopped wearing vomit soaked tracksuits and dressing gowns all day. I voluntarily left the house to socialise. I wore make-up.

I purchased hair-dye.

We all know how my experiments with a little light home colouring went initially, however I learned that if you choose a darker shade, short hair is startlingly easy to do yourself. Without even bothering to use a mirror to check the back of your own head.

Today I discovered that if your hairdresser does not answer her phone for two days running and you are desperate enough, you can indeed clipper your own hair perfectly well.

I may not be the long-haired blonde that LS married, but I am very cheap to maintain.

This and that.

Many apologies for yet another minor interruption in transmissions from the land of the Long Green Snot a.k.a Chez MII.

Actually, the current permutation of upper respiratory virus that Naan, then Saag, then myself, and finally (and most loudly and dramatically) Long Suffering have had the pleasure of making the intimate acquaintance with isn’t all that bad. We’re revoltingly mucoid, and I wouldn’t rush to give any of us a kiss, but we’re well enough for business to pretty much continue as usual.

Oh, but I’d avoid Naan’s kisses, even if she didn’t currently have two cheerful green streamers emanating from each nasal passage, simply on the grounds that the kid has yet to figure out that kissing shouldn’t be an exercise in establishing just how far one can unhinge their mandible and aim straight for the unlucky recipients tonsils with their tongue. That’s what thirteen year olds do.

It’s vaguely Jaws-esque to be the lucky winner of a Naan pash.

Regardless, life has been particularly busy lately with all the usual dull items that go into riding the domestic catastrophe curve in a household with twins.

On the plus side, I have finally caught up on the laundry after a couple of really useful windy days without the usual combination of a significant element of pissing rain. On the minus side, I have not blogged, and additionally because I am clearly careless with my pegging action I seem to be one bib, three pairs of black Bridget Jones style underwear and a sock short.

If you find some Big Knickers caught in a local tree over the other side of the Big Drink, please don’t snicker. I think they may have in fact been blown off my washing line, picked up by some intercontinental jetstream or other and have horrified the population of several Pacific Islands from on high on their way to you.

Just post them back, please.

Oh, and I also went to Ikea.

It really is Swedish for ‘time sucking maze containing items of obscure function’, isn’t it? The golden rules of Ikea survival, as I see them now are:

1. Work out what you want to get on the website. Do not be tempted to browse the physical store. Resist.
2. Note where your intended acquisitions live in the bit at the end just by the checkouts. Screw the showroom. Remember point 1.
3. Check if the effing item you want is in stock online or by phone before you leap.
4. Avoid weekends like the plague, unless you want the item to be gone before you get there, gobbled up by ten thousand ravenous allen key owners.
5. Go in the exit and do what LS says is a vaguely kinky ‘Swedish reverse ikea’. By this I mean grab a cheap-ass and disturbingly more-ish hooves-and-rectums hot-dog with mustard, walk breezily in through the exit aisle, grab your specific item off the shelf, pay and get the hell out. Do not forget item 1.

Smug grinning optional.

Next time I’ll take my own advice.

Really?

I have, in the day and a bit since my last post regarding my Interview (Schminterview), had several polite emails asking exactly how I fared in the Suck It Up and Grovel campaign for my old full-time job back.

Okay, so it was only one email,  but I am thankful nonetheless. The executive summary for those who don’t want to read is ‘Probably Okay Enough’.

Honestly, I’m not even sure why I really want the job back so badly, except perhaps to prove that old farts with children can be functional doctors with something to contribute to healthcare-at-large, even if it is only the best combination of ‘ahh’s’ to deal with Banged Knee.

Oh, and the best way to rip off a Band-aid (as fast as humany possible without breaking the sound barrier).

Don’t snicker, will you, about the seriousness of Banged Knee.

Saag will have you know that when your walking is a little on the imperfect side (i,e, she looks pissed when she tries it, and by pissed I am not being euphemistic for anger, but for about ten sherries too many), that Banged Knee is a Real and most Serious injury.

Really.

Or so about a dozen stumbles, followed by careful looks for a possible sympathetic parent and a very predictable LaLa on the nearest floor would have you believe.

Me, I don’t take her so seriously.

It’s an old permutation on the three second rule, the one that goes ‘if it’s on the ground for less than three seconds, you don’t need to clean it’. I love that rule, but getting back to my personal variation, to whit: If Saag takes three seconds or more to decide if she’s actually hurt, well she isn’t. 

Accordingly I shall clap up a motherfucking storm and generally play the fool until she decides she isn’t, either. 

But, where was I?

Ah, job interview. I was busily trying to distract you from the subject at hand, i.e. I was avoiding trying to talk about the blasted thing.

Suffice it to say that my Campaign Not To Mention the Babies was foiled by the predictable event of one of my interviewers being the very bitch who I distinctly recall screaming so loudly that I had to hold the phone about half a foot from my ear at my dead-baby-and-three-IVF-transfers-whee-TWINS news (pardon my French, but I’ve already contributed to my virtual Swear Jar with a carefree ‘motherfucking’ or two now, so I figure that the b-word shall not shock those that remain reading excessively).

I don’t precisely think she shared my enthusiasm for the possibility of a live birth at the time.

Since the very first distinctly unofficial words in our three question Structured Exchange were ‘How has Maternity Leave been?’, I don’t think she has forgotten me, either.

Also, I struggled mightily not to guffaw out loud at the liberal rewrting of history involved in changing ‘forced resignation’ to ‘maternity leave’. A smirk may have escaped. Possibly.

As for the actual interview questions?

A: Name a value of in our network slogan and describe how you apply it in daily life. (yawn, the acronym is XXXX, and here’s how I bore the pants off all of us with a random anecdote).

B: Describe a situation involving conflict and what you did to resolve it? (well, funny you should mention that…..)

C: Oh My God WHAT DO YOU DO if somebody is having a heart attack? (Easy, check it IS, call for help because we all know a problem shared is a problem halved and if they’re actively trying to die get the crash trolley).

I’ll find out how I went if a few weeks.

Meantime the litmus test is do any of you want to try a coronary on for size and see how I do?

I must be premenstrual.

Dear Internet,

Firstly, I do hope that you are enjoying your weekend. As the title may imply, I am not enoying mine in the least, and in fact am bringing large amounts of The Cranky (B!tch edition) wherever I go.

So perhaps those of you who have enjoyed my personal Fantasy Morning of a good a lie-in, followed by toast and eggs and a leisurely newspaper read in which (for once) mysteriously there are no headlines screaming ‘DEATH’, ‘CRASH’, ‘ECONOMIC CRISIS’, ‘DISASTER IN THE WAR ON….

(pick your item of choice, this poor overworked phrase is quite painfully abused nowadays. I’d like to declare a war on The War On, if I may? Or did I just commit the sin of grammatically irritating the heck out of myself?)

…’, or, if your fancy takes you in the more tabloid regard ‘AFFAIR!’, ‘CAUGHT WITH MISTRESS!’, ‘PREGNANT LOVER!’, and the like should just click away. Now.

I’d joke that I must be premenstrual, but I haven’t seen a period this season and despite wistful peeing on anything vaguely stick shaped at several bathroom opportunities, it’s not because I shall be ending the post with the grand denouement that I am in fact in my thirteenth trimester and wasn’t I silly to mistake those cramps for gastro?

Anyway, I’m just vaguely pissed. Saag has taken to shoving her fingers up her nose in the supermarket, as well as inexplicably down the back of her throat,  often after indulging in the first item. I think the kid is trying to win the contest for world’s tiniest bulimic, because she vomited everywhere in a particularly infuriating queue by amusing herself in this gag-reflex discovering fashion.

Additionally, and I say this only reluctantly and with difficulty because I love you all, Internet, a bunch of tweets is NOT a real post. 

No, it’s not. I am sorry to break it to you in this manner.

No, not even if you cheat and let it automatically update to your blog periodically. Not even a nicotine patch version of a post.

I’d need to take my socks off to count how many times I have happily clicked on a link in my feed reader lately, excited to read a post, only to be hit with a bunch of garbled sentences, all less than 140ish characters that often bear no connection to one another.

Unless it’s a particularly obscure form of poetry, I have to confess as a self proclaimed slow-adopter of New Things (and closet technological cretin) that I Do Not Approve.

How does one comment on a bunch of bird noises?

Told you I was cranky. Now write something, will you? In sentences, please, this time.

Much love,

Geohde.

Panhypo-proctrastination.

Dear Internet,

Please don’t dob me in to those I teach, but I’m meant to be preparing something suitably clever about the good old hypothalamic-pituitary-end organ of your choice axis and the various fun ways in which it goes pear from time to time.

Briefly, because I really should get back to it, depending on the glandy-pair involved, you get problems ranging from:

• Epilator, where for art thou?
• Why having no pubes is eerie on a forty year old, after all, and the brazilian industry should quit it already,
• How to tan in all sorts of clever places without the aid of sunlight,
• Blood pressure, only required if you want to get out of horizontal, but don’t worry about that because the myopathy means you probably can’t get out of bed,
• Stretch marks, not just for the knocked up,
• When Overly Square Jaws Go Wrong,
• Bitemporal hemianopia is Absolutely Bad For Driving, and, my personal favourite,
• Prolactinomas, now he can feed the baby, too.

Sigh.

So, if you shall excuse me, I think I have to improve upon my clearly fading grasp of all things involving a feedback loop.

I don’t think I’m going to get away with a simple ‘If certain hormones all with clever acronyms go up too much, that’s bad, and if they go down too much, that’s also officially Not Good’. Oh, and ‘Page Endo’.

Lastly, because I fully believe in giving credit where it is due, LS (sensing the Spousal Ice Age) ended up getting me Fried Crap for breakfast yesterday. Although mildly unfortunately since everybody else’s Male Half was busy doing the same thing it was nearly lunchtime by the time I got it in my greedy hands. As a bonus item I got a blissful twenty minute shower (uninterrupted by screeching, no less) while the dear man also took the spawn out for a walk to purchase some fresh milk.

I had been wondering about the odd stiffness to the froth on my coffee and the unusually sour taste. It turns out the stuff was practically on the march on accounts of being nearly a week post expiry.

Details, gotta love ‘em. They’re forever my weakness it would seem.

Now THIS is a knife.

Alternately entitled the post in which I relate just how disturbing waking at night to an empty bed, only to discover my spouse stalking around in the dark armed with the biggest assed knife our kitchen contains, actually is.

Many apologies for the unintentionally titillating start to my tale. It’s perfectly safe to exhale and continue drinking your coffee without fear that I shall, several paragraphs down, relate ‘and THAT’S how I ended up with one hundred stitches and a punctured lung’.

Don’t worry, I’m fine, he’s fine and you won’t be reading about a Nasty Domestic Incident in the newspaper anytime soon.

To begin again, two nights ago I was briefly awoken by what can only be described as a godawful cacophony of clashing, followed by clanging, and culminating in that classic ‘ringringringring’ noise that can only herald gravity gradually winning against a round object circling aimlessly on a hard floor until entropy halts it.

Then it all went quiet.

LS and I, roused to semi-wakefulness by the din doth utter to one another ‘what the merry hell was THAT?’, and there I thought the matter rested.

I went back to the land of nod, perversely reassured that no burglar or night time assassin would be daft enough to continue their mission after making more noise than a heard of elephants conga dancing through our front room.

Additionally I was fairly certain the noise could be explained by something falling off the shelving in the garage, in which case good luck to it and it could spend the night on the concrete and I’d take pity on it in the morning but not before. Or, more likely, one of those clever sticky-on (heavily overloaded it must be admitted, we like to ablute with variety Chez MII) shower caddy’s we possess, because our shiny new house actually has those annoying glass boxes without a single sensible place to put your bloody shampoo and all the other crap one requires to bathe in the modern world, had given up it’s suction cups in despair.

Gravity being what it is, this resulted in the predictable already-described veritable cacophony that only several bottles of shampoo, body wash, razors, soap and other Bathing Miscellanea hurtling to the ground (at, as I recall,  around nine point eight metres per second per second) can make.

LS obviously did not share my sleepy conviction, a fact I discovered when I next rolled over, reached across to pat him aimlessly in Dark Room Affection (most often in the nose or eyeball it must be admitted) and found a distinct absence of body where I expected to find Spousal Unit 1.0.

Then he appeared in the bedroom saying nothing and on tip-toe, giant bloody big carving knife in hand, feinted around the corner to the en-suite like the world’s best pyjama-clad paratrooper, sharp end first (of course) and doth stab forcefully and disturbingly silently around all the dark parts until he was quite sure that A: there was nobody there and B: if they were, well, they were probably quite thoroughly air-conditioned and unlikely to pose a threat.

I, naturally enough, began with a loud, startled rendition of ‘what the fuck is going on?’, only to be silenced with an impatient ‘shhhhhh!’. He then completed his sweep of the house before explaining that he was checking for intruders.

I did ask if next time he could warn me before charging about in the dark with the contents of the knife-y kitchen drawer and also that while I understood his them-or-me philosophy, I thought perhaps a smaller weapon would have sufficed.

The one he had would have gone right through and still had length on the blade. Unless the non-existent intruder was very fat indeed.

I think even a few of my short hairs are now grey.

I don’t.

Dear Internet,

I hope I do not cause undue offence to those of you who enjoy attending Big Weddings when I entreat you to join me in a small cry of protest at being subjected to Wedding Interminabley Longus yet again.

You see, I must confess I write this missive from my rather smug glass house of ten minute no-guest ceremony followed by beer garden hijinks, a barely recalled (and rather predictable) pissed-as-a-parrot take-away dinner, almost certainly followed by amnestic drunken shag at some point. Although memory fails me on that last item, it was probably good, right?

Regardless, may I object to my nearest and dearest insisting on all getting hitched with Big Poofy Dress, complete with around one hundred interchangeable bridesmaids, interminably long vows and standing time (enough to necessitate a mid-ceremony water gulp and energetic bobbing up and down on tired feet to avoid either dying of dehydration or making an utter ass of oneself by fainting from all that blood now residing in the calves), and the obligatory Big Ass reception in some venue where:

• All the tables will inevitably be round, decked out in flowers and not-so-delicately covered in a million bedsheets worth of mildly stained fabric and with bows on the seats despite the average chair not really requiring haberdashery to perform what I regard as it’s critical function.
• There will be photos of the main protagonists at each and every place setting in case one is crass enough to briefly forget who the Big Day is in honour of. With heart shaped frames, provided for the attendee to take home as permanent reminders of Undying Love and presumably also how to make twenty thousand dollars vanish in one sitting.
• I will not know anybody I am seated within a timezone of, most especially not my dinner companions and will therefore actually look forward to the inevitable indulgent slideshow rehashing of the ceremony I’ve just spent all afternoon at (presumably for those who nodded off the first time and were fortunate enough to actually miss the bit where the bride gushed about the sweetness of her groom and the beautiful pools that light makes in his eyes in the morning and generally how the sun doth shine gentle beams out of his ass and so on. He, in return, did honestly call her hair the finest golden strands of something stupid and utterly love-struck) because it means I don’t have to make painful conversation with people I shall never see again and also know nothing about other than the obvious detail that they know either the bride or groom in passing.
• LS and I will wish our Morse Code Skills were rather better so that we could blink S.O.S to each other from across the vast hall as the drunken best man makes the usual drunken indiscreet speech. Actually, I fib. I quite liked that part.
• The food will be a scintillating choice of lamb or chicken, neither properly cooked, coated in gravy to within an inch of their lives and delivered half cold. Unfortunately there will be a plethora of cheap booze and as a direct result of this abundance rather bored drunken guests won’t stop pawing at Saag and Naan when they’re sleeping in their pram.
• About twenty people will ask how old Saag is and then immediately ask how old Naan is after I have already mentioned that they’re twins because they’re clearly not actually listening to a damn thing I say on account of being more plastered than a house wall.
• Oh, the band will be entrenched firmly in the early nineties and when they finish their mediocre set ‘Return of the Mack’ will set the theme that the DJ wishes to explore. Acoustic-nerve-destroyingly loudly.
• People will dance to that sh!t. I will have to watch. They will also do the dance to that song from ‘Grease’.
• LS and I will go home tired, feeling  older than ever and relieved it’s all over.

Dear Internet, I don’t. Please don’t take it personally.

Beige.

I think I may be in serious danger of becoming completely, stuporously, coma-inducing boring.

No, don’t bother politely laughing at your monitor in a charade of disbelief. I mean it. Dishwater dull, to my orange-tinted roots, I am.

I posted an ode to Mom Jeans, ferchrissakes. Not precisely my most thrilling material, even I must admit, and you all duly punished me most deservingly by not bothering to click through and comment.

I am clearly beige and very apologetic about it.

I’ve been sitting here wondering how to improve upon my situation which in itself is odd because, well, writer’s block has never really been an issue for me. Just look at my back archives for evidence that if it has run through my stream of consciousness, it probably has been written down at some point. No matter how embarrassing.

So. Humour me while I twiddle my cleverly opposable thumbs together, will you?

Lessee….

I could assault your retinas with fresh descriptions of how I came to learn that too much fibre can be a bad thing and the discovery that raisins appear to pass through the average eight month old digestive tract largely unaltered.

I could continue on to heavily scorch your mental imagery with retelling of how the hardiness of the average raisin prompted Long Suffering to ask if he could rinse some off a bit and offer them to his very poo-phobic best mate for a snack. You know, because it would be funny to see if he noticed.

But I won’t for two reasons:

1. Even I thought that offering Recycled Raisins to an immature boy-man, still living with his mother (the poor sainted soul) at the grand old age of never-washed-his-own-socks nearly forty who has yet to learn that his income is NOT for entirely spending on late nights out, flash cars, the latest gadgets and expensive holidays overseas was a bridge too far. Just. Even if the paunching playboy-wannabe does owe us six hundred dollars because he ran out of money after said recent fancy vacation (taken just for kicks, in the name of spontaneity, don’tcherknow) and decided to not let a little detail like legality get in the way of mobility and  just drove his car completely unregistered. Unregistered, I note, until LS nearly lost a testicle to Act Of War Wife by paying the bill off for him without prior warning to The Fiscally Jaded (and decidedly unsympathetic to the plight of fools) Better  Half.
2. Rabbits eat their own poo, with every sign of satisfaction I am told, because apparently it takes several goes to extract all the nutrition out of the kind of stuff they eat to fuel all that shagging and senseless reproduction. Not forgetting all that mindless hopping about, either. 

I think Best Mate Who Will No Longer Visit when I am home out of entirely justified fear that I shall in actuality drive a rather hot poker up his bottom if he does, bears too much resemblance to the second point for the joke to be funny. Remind me to stock up on pokers, incidentally, for all those asses who still seem a little vague on the concept of twins and biological realities and constraints involved.

But I did think on it heavily, that red hot poker action. I am but human.

Probably the only thing stopping me is the fact that I have enough exposure to rummaging around in cabooses at work and I don’t really want to indulge off the clock, so to speak. You have to pay me to do that. I hope that represents a relief, even if I must disclose that the pay is not handsome.

Regardless, I won’t go into more detail because I’ve also done poo jokes to a painful, messy death.

I’d discuss my recent period for light relief, because hey it’s always funny to leak blood from your nether regions unexpectedly when you’re hoping to be pregnant even if that IS rather vanishingly unlikely because you’re not sure the last time you actually had s.e.x, let alone all that messy infertility stuff, but I’m pretty sure I’ve done that to death before too. With paint swatches, if memory serves.

Like this:

and this:

For the more recent readers, ‘sizzle’ is not precisely how I would describe the act of discovering one’s lack of planning in the tampon department in public, and ‘sweet talk’ is more like ‘roll on menopause’.

Alternatively, there is always the merry joke about a baby (take your pick out of a field of two, both have done this to me recently) that is so full of snot that it streams freely from both nostrils into a perpetually open gob. A predictable top lip licking veritable auto-feast of snot lollies in the tasty form of dead cold virus, nasal epithelium and pus (yes, that’s what snot is) ensures until Vomitus Inevitabilus.

Turns out a belly (not unreasonably) protests heavily at being filled with the stuff.

But that’s plain revolting. Plus, I might save it for my next post, if I’m desperate.

For non bodily excretion related humour, I guess I could mention that the poor man that maxed out our credit card installed our blinds recently allowing me to remove seriously vintage bedsheets from my windows (many stained in that Motel Bed Indeterminate Way that has you just itching to break out a packet of bleach and soak the suckers for a decade) had one of the worst toupees I’ve had the pleasure of giggling at when he wasn’t looking my way.

Except he caught me staring in startled wonder at his nylon creation on arrival and I’m also pretty sure he may have spotted the tell tale coughing as the poor disguise of a peal of laughter that it was.

Also, I couldn’t stop talking to the damn thing.

I half thought it was going to grow legs, go ‘woof’ ,and run around for a bit of light exercise while he did his work. I’m pretty sure he noticed that my eyes rarely left the top of his head, and I hated to be so rude, but apologising for staring at somebody’s bad hair piece hardly makes the sin of laughing at it any better, does it?

To come full circle, move along please folks, nothing to see here. I’m boring myself to tears.

But do tell me, because I am indeed both terminally nosey AND desperate, why do you read? Wave hello, will you? Also, what the merry hell should I talk about?

PS. Just to really make my day, spellchecker has gone tits-up in protest at reading my waffle and merrily highlighted every instance of ‘ing’ in this post as a mistake and additionally glued half the words together, just for kicks.

It’s not the first time, either.

Therefore I hereby decree that any genuine spelling errors that remain are because I was so overwhelmed by a forest of ‘ing’ that I did not see them. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

You don’t say?

Dear Nice Lady At Telco,

It was lovely to speak to you several weeks ago whilst trawling my local supermarket vainly in the hope of pre-made salads that didn’t require I first call my bank for an increase in my credit card limit, really it was.

It is none of your business and not in any way your fault that Long Suffering doth insist on a salad that requires no arranging in a bowl every day and thusly I spend the best part of forty dollars a week on lettuce (of all bloody things, made mostly of water as it is) so I decided not to bring it up and affirm that yes, now actually was a good time to discuss making arrangements to pay your bill.

I must admit with a small amount of guilt that I was waiting to see just when the proverbial penny would drop at Big Telco Co that, in fact, my phone line was now connected and as a result I should have received both a (rather exorbitant, by the way) bill for the connection AND ongoing use.

Because I hadn’t seen one as yet, and I was more than content to leave sleeping phones lie until they rang of their own accord, if you get my drift?

If you don’t quite understand the reference, just ask the seller of the astronomically expensive window blinds I now possess exactly how much I paid on credit for the privilege of not using well washed 80 thread count for privacy.

Translation? I’m already broke, so if the phone works, I wasn’t going to rush to call you up and ask to pay money.

I might have had you seen to disconnect me, but you didn’t.

So, nice lady, getting back to my point. It really was so lovely to speak to you, even if I did have to rather amateurishly feign surprise at your polite gambit as to whether I had noticed no bill had been forthcoming when one clearly should have been.

I heavily blamed the twins for my lack of running after you with my purse open, I must shamefully confess, because people seem to expect a new parent to multiples to be a bit stupid and I often get away with murder that way.

 But.

I WAS truly most entertained when you gently asked when the connection actually happened, because nobody had recorded it your end. You seemed to have in your possession solely a list of mostly (non-attended by the way because I never saw hide nor hair of any of the minions I was supposed to) appointments to, I can only presume, look contemplatively at the grey pipe sticking forlornly out of my garden bed like a much neglected plant a bit and wonder if I might like it more if it actually joined the matching one issuing from the side of my house. Eventually. In the fullness of time. So I could call people, you know?

I hope you didn’t spot my deadly subterfuge when I inquired as to the LAST appointment date and confidently proclaimed ‘It was XXXXX date I was connected!’ in reply. I think I could have been more subtle, really. Upon reflection and all that.

Regardless of all that, nice lady, the thing I find the most amusing is I still don’t have your bill.

Heh.

Yours,

Geohde (in possession of several months and counting of free phone line).

Orange you glad to see me?

Dear Internet, oh-most-wise Computer residents,

Why did I not ask you before attempting to colour my hair?

Why did I not seek guidance that any attempts conducted on impulse by an inexperienced operator (to put it politely rather than calling myself an utter idiot), armed solely with the deadly combination of Dutch Courage and three glasses of wine and limited to the entirely ignorance-based inappropriate use of a de-colourant, for streaky bit insertion thereof, was going to go horridly pear.

Internet, dear, sweet, Internet, I actually had no issue with my hair the way it was.

I liked my hair, really I did.

I just thought some streaky bits sounded all, you know, fun and a bit daring and trendy. Like the young folk do, Internet.

But I couldn’t be bothered with all that cap applying and strand pulling and I just massaged the lot in. Yes, all at once. I do not do many things by half measures. I then proceded to spend a merry twenty minutes chasing Saag and Naan around my bathroom before stopping to carefully uncover a strand (as the packet said to, Internet, I note with some indignation) only to find to my horror that the texture had gone to that scary place where the next step is unequivocally ‘dissove’. Even I could spot that one coming, Internet.

Oh, and I was orange.

Yes, I’m not beating about the bush with such niceties as ‘strawberry blonde’ or ‘redhead’ because I currently look like Ronald McDonald’s slightly unfortunate long-lost cousin. I could easily double as an extra for the Straw Man in the Wizard of Oz. Or the lion, for that matter.

I’m really, very, hat-wearing-ly, next-stop-is-a-shaved-head orange.

LS, bless his heart, got home from work, took one look at me (in the darkened-in-disgrace house, so I wouldn’t have to witness the effects of my ill-thought through experimentation with pigment stripper), exclaimed ‘You’re blonde!’, then quizzically repeated ‘You’re blonde?’.

Then he flipped on the light and just about widdled himself laughing at my predicament, Internet.

Between gasps for air he snorted ‘You’re ORANGE! Ha!’. Then he doth skip a merry jig of amusement around the room, Internet, despite the increasing risk to life and limb posed by such unfettered merriment at the woes of another.

When I pointed out that this was hardly a sympathetic way to console me, he took me lovingly by the shoulders and uttered thusly:

‘Don’t worry, plenty of people with a disability live full and active lives in the community these days. We WILL get through this, I promise.’

Then he laughed some more, the prick.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Clariol and I have a hot date to try and repair the damage. I do not hold out overmuch hope.

I LIKED my hair the way it was.

Help! Any suggestions?

An open letter to all telemarketers.

Dear Headset-Wearing Fraternity,

Stop calling me.

Please.

I do know your job sucks and you’re probably as sick of calling me as I am of being on the receiving end when I’ve got twins in the bath or g-d forbid have actually grabbed the golden opportunity to have a shower myself, but consider this fair warning.

Quit it forthwith, or the next person to call shall get their headset inserted up their bum, minus KY. In the widest possible diameter. Slowly.

Yes, ouch.

I’m rather cross with you all.

Additionally, I know the previous owner of this unhappily recycled phone number liked to get a bit promiscuous, so to speak, with your lot, so you all have it and I’m screwed. I resign myself to a fate chock full of hanging up rudely in your ears because I’ve given up trying to be polite or explain that I would like you to not call.

It’s not my fault Mrs Bloody Schlepy liked to dial without protection.

Why don’t I explain any more? Because I’m sick of coded conversations that go as follows:

TM: ‘Can I speak with Mrs Schlepy?’

G: ‘I’m sorry (check out my politeness here), you have the wrong number.’

TM: ‘Oh, isn’t this xxxx-xxxx?’

G: Thinking this is getting creepy and reluctant to say the number at any cost ‘I’m sorry, I can’t confirm that, you dialled and you have the wrong number. Goo-….’

TM: They’re always such determined buggers and cut in mid sentence ’ThencanIspeaktothehouseholder?’

G: Crap ‘Well, that’s me.’ (mutter, bloody mutter….Happy days, aren’t I lucky, what’s my prize THIS time……?)

TM: ‘Is your energy account with xxxx?’

G: Seeing the iceberg but unable to stop the ship ‘No, it’s not.’

TM: Going for gold ‘Did you know you can get a ten percent discount for paying your bills on time?’

G: ‘Click’.

In a small aside, so THAT’S how they get around calling a late-payment 10% surcharge a fee. By including it in the account and removing it if you pay when they windowed-envelope says you should.

Do they really think I’m daft?

For a given value of ‘free’…

More plaintive missives from the annals of ‘Moving house is still biting me in the ass’.

Alternately entitled ‘Godsdamnit, when is an error ever going to occur in MY sodding favour for once?’

Or, possibly, ‘Gimme back my bleeping money already, You Careless Turds at Big Faceless Pay TV Company’.

Grr.

This post comes on the back of a incredibly embarrassing ten minutes spent this morning at the supermarket fumbling in my purse at the checkout, red-faced because my debit card had mysteriously declined to go through on the purchase of a mere loaf of bread and milk, whilst people behind me in the queue watched me dig through old tissues, scrunched up shopping lists, dummies and lint for precious loose change in thinly-disguised amusement. I think watching someone get financially caught short in public on such minor purchases must be nearly as entertaining as the aftermath of a particularly juicy car crash.

Additionally, I was left scraping for change whilst facing a cashier who was just exuding Judgement and looked for all the world like she was considering calling Security to go through my pram baskets to make sure I wasn’t half-inching the contents of the supermarket true five-fingered discount style because clearly I was Dead Dodgy and perhaps she should call child services to join the disapproval party as neither Saag nor Naan had socks nor shoes on and one had vomit down their front.

Anyway, I got home and decided to investigate why over three hundred dollars had mysteriously vanished from my account overnight, precipitating the whole sorry mess requiring me to leave the shops without the milk component of my purchase because I didn’t have enough spare change for both items.

I opened my Internet banking not half an hour ago and nearly fell over.

Apparently that ‘free’ pay TV installation and ‘free’ upgrade that we signed up for on the cheery advice of one of the door-to-door fraternity was free, only if you consider free to be less than three hundred and fifty dollars in total cost.

Cue much cursing of the verbally fluent little sod who lured a susceptible Long Suffering into subscribing on an enterprising foray into our new estate.

Furious at the new cost of ‘free’, I called the company.

They informed me that they’d already applied a 100 dollar credit in my favour.

I responded that I was very glad I was already sitting down because, well, damn. You mean to say it was originally over four hundred dollars for ‘free’ pay TV connection? Only 25% of the Geohde Household ever watch it! I continued on to insist that this number would be going considerably further southward, finally reaching zero before I was going to get off the phone, and if there was a problem with that, they could take the difference out of the wage of the cheeky sod who was signing the unsuspecting up left, right and centre.

Fortunately I still had the paperwork and a name.

The operator replied that they better check with their supervisor.

‘Good idea’, said I.

The upshot? I was given the option of my money being applied as a ‘future credit’ on the ongoing account until we were even at some point in the future or, if I really insisted, getting my own damn cash put back in my bank account already.

I picked option B with alacrity.

I’m told I should be newly re-solvent in the next 24-48 hours.

We’ll see.

It’s called manners.

Dear Asshole Rude Person,

I’m so sorry that I was not, in fact, the Mrs C. Schlepy you were hoping to call on the electric telephone yesterday morning.

Really, I am. I’m getting sick of all the misdirected phone calls courtesy of our what appears to be recycled number. It’s no longer funny.

In fact, I’ve been quite tempted to answer any further queries related to the former Schlepy Household with a shocked whisper ‘Didn’t you know they’re all dead? Horrible mixup with concrete, it was, in the end. I told them you shouldn’t swim in the stuff on a full stomach, but they didn’t listen (sob).’ I wonder how far I’d get into my telling of the sticky demise of the Schlepy Clan before they hung up?

Anyway, Rude Person, this doesn’t apply to you because my point that I am trying to make is that I didn’t in fact jerk your chain just for kicks. I was quite polite.

 

It’s called manners, you daft co.ck.

So, no, whilst I am regrettably NOT the presumably quite healthy and uncemented Mrs Schlepy of XField drive, repeating her name and address  even louder like I am retarded when I say ‘Sorry, she doesn’t live here’ will surprisingly enough to a person such as yourself not make me become her no matter how hard you try it. Oh, and repeating YOUR name and business at full volume, spelling it out letter by letter when I ask who might be calling is not in the least bit helpful in connecting you to all things Schlepy.

I, as I have hopefully conclusively established by now, am not her.

Not even if you treat me like I have a learning disability.

Finally, and here’s the kicker, if I helpfully explain that I am not a Schlep with polite explanation and use of ‘sorry’, ‘thank you’ and the like, the least you could do is refrain from hanging up in my ear in disgust.

In conclusion, Asshat,

Screw you.

 

Yours,

Geohde.

Whats got….

…..four arms, four red-rimmed eyes, four legs (fits of flailing pique for the use of), two yell-holes at full volume (shriekathon mode engaged), is red all over, sweaty and won’t go to sleep?

Twins with vaccination fevers.

Sigh. Fun times aplenty.

Incidentally, can anybody please tell me why the feck they dye children’s paracetamol red? It looks like Jack The Ripper has done a number on one chair, several bunny rugs, assorted bibs, baby shirts, my clothes and one piece of carpet Chez MII.

Apologies for the silence in the last day or so, but I’ve been busy. As I don’t particularly cherish the idea of my children ever experimenting with tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, meningitis and the like, I have this nasty habit (from their beleaguered point of view) of hauling them down to the local community centre to be perforated with sharp things every few months.

Don’t worry, they make it quite clear they don’t entirely approve. As they grow, and learn to anticipate, the disapproval creeps in even before the sharp things get started.

 This time around, poor Saag knew something was up, all my jiggling, humorously off-key singing, smiling and poop-eating grins aside, and commenced Anxious Whirling Dervish mode upon merely entering the place with all those crying babies, whacking me several times in my unguarded gob. Fair’s fair, I suppose.

Her worst fears confirmed in each thigh, she then warbled inconsolably the entire trip home and I had a particularly entertaining half an hour getting a justifiably suspicious sobbing, hiccuping infant to neck down some bloody paracetamol. After numerous false starts which left us all rather decoratively covered in sticky red goo, vomit and snot, I succeeded and she fell asleep in my arms.

That will teach me to sing ‘Old MacDonald had a farm’ in public.

Naan merely squealed in surprised fury at her skinny legs being assaulted in such a way and then got over it just as quickly. Until they BOTH spiked the aforementioned fevers several hours later, of course. That kid can yell when she’s febrile.

Fortunately we don’t have to go back for another six months.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Finally, in an entirely unrelated matter, Jul (of thumbscre.ws fame) made reference to my natural disinclination at conducting rectal exams before dinner time. It’s nice to make new friends, even if I am now in danger of becoming the online Bum Lady.

Anyway, I said it there, but I’ll say it here, too, because the last thing I’d want anybody to think is that I would shirk my bottom-rummaging duties and, you know, not do my bit for the Public Good.

So.

Rectal exams aren’t so bad. Unless you happen to be doing them in an open ward with just the flimsy curtain-of-silence drawn, pretending HARD that the other patients can’t hear you laboriously explain (for reasons consent and legal, I really do have to explain in painful detail. It’s worse when I have to use an interpreter and keep pausing for effect. No, I don’t do helpful gestures. I carefully clasp my hands to avoid that exact inadvertent phenomenon).

‘Mr/Mrs Suchandsuch, I am going to need to examine your back passage. I will insert one finger only. I will be wearing gloves and I shall use lubricant. It may be a little uncomfortable but it shouldn’t hurt. Is this okay? Alright….here I go, I’m just going to gently insert my finger now….’

THEN I get to whip the curtains back and leave the room while the poor patient in question pretends to read the newspaper really thoroughly to avoid all the stares.

I guess it’s worse for them.

The end.

My last will and testament.

Well, kind of. Inspiration for this particular missive comes courtesy of a far-flung relative who (I think) intended well, even if they were surprisingly forthright and passionate about their cause.

Imagine my surprise when I opened what I though was a lovely letter thanking us for our attempts at hospitality in a recent visit and instead found enclosed a long missive about how I really Should Think About The Future with a rather more long term view than most thirty-somethings are accustomed to having. Complete with a blank will form, premarked with my name, address and ‘sign here’s’ in lead pencil. Nice thing, the personal touch.

Ooh-err.

I didn’t know I looked that bad.

Thanks to Uncle GrimReaper, I now have one more piece of paperwork just begging me not to stack my many many early morning coffee cups on it’s pristine surface and bloody well fill it in already.

Except I’m stumped.

What on earth does one write on a will other than a vicious ’I told you I was sick, you pricks!’, closely followed by, ‘To dear Sister Molly I bequeath my 300k mortgage because she needs the motivation to Get A Sodding Job Already’? Oh, and ‘Aunt Bertha can have the leftover pizza in the fridge (the mould scrapes off a treat, you should have checked on me sooner, you know, or it’d still be fresh). Cousin Adam can have my half-full rubbish bin. It’s the big green thing with the flappy lid, in case he’s forgotten what they look like. He must have lost his a very long time ago because he lives in a bloody dump’.

It has always seemed to me that the very best time to be as passive aggressive as possible is after you’re dead because it’s the only time you’ll ever be able to get all your jibes in and leave your opponent with zero capability of arguing back.

So, now what do I do?

After all, whilst I’m not quite as young as I used to be and I’m sure there are some decidedly grey-ish hairs in amongst Clairol’s best do-it-your-one-handed-with-a-mirror self haircolouring efforts these days, I’ve yet to really ever sit down and have a good think about my worldly possessions. Or, importantly, whether I care enough about what happens to them should I ever come a messy second in a contest with the front grill of a local bus to write a will.

To be honest, the way I see it, my family can fight it out all they like for my old tennis shoes, broken stethoscope and staggering collection of really really bad techno music from the days when I thought being cool meant going out all night and dancing to music like you’re having a seizure. It’s not like I’ll be around to care about it anymore.

Or perhaps I’ll leave all my left shoes to my sister, and the right ones to the dog.

Honestly. Now I have to go and write a bloody will, for cryingoutloud. Suggestions gratefully accepted.

PS. I did some real write-y stuff. For a real website. Am feeling very chuffed with myself and dead pleased that the site owner was kind enough to let me disgrace their URL with my scrawlings about IVF. So, importantly, do tell me: did I suck, or can I continue having difficulty getting through doors due to massively swelled cranium?

Miscellany.

Otherwise better known as a half-arsed tired post from the dregs of the weekend. The weekend that I spent at work (sob) duelling with the machines that go ‘beep’ and spending half an hour looking for the linen skip. Plus, why is it that if a line can possibly run itself up an armhole, behind a neck, get carefully twisted around a c-spine collar and as a bonus item mysteriously stuck on it’s own IV pole, it will?

Sod’s Law, or perhaps sleep deprivation on my part. I AM rather clumsy these days.

Oh, and I typo-ed IVF pole in the paragraph above, and nearly kept it to prove what a mashed thing my CNS truly is. Mashed, I tell you.

The patients are easy by comparison. Especially the physically and chemically restrained ones. Those lucky sods get to sleep all day.

Anyway.

Some brief bullet points (I am sorry, I am so painfully exhausted I can’t possibly venture another paragraph. Really):

• Naan now feeds her own damn self. She’s quite insitant about it and squaks in Indignant Baby about what a Big Girl she is and how I should just shove off if I try to grab the bottle (and that yes, she MEANT to put it up her left nostril for five whole minutes this morning SO THERE). Sadly, instead of sensibly cheering as another menial task on my part became redundant I actually had a bit of a cry. Fortunately Saag shows no interest whatsoever in feeding herself. She’d much rather I did it, as per the current arrangement thank-you-very-much. I think I’ll have to cut her off at thirty, though.
• Naan, who has developed rather an unholy liking for custard (preferring to either gag herself lunging at the spoon, or even better drink it straight from the jar), has also discovered pumpkin. All I can say is that if I wasn’t already a confirmed atheist, what ends up in her nappy would quickly convince me there is no g-d. None. The smell, not to mention the texture. Enough said.

Yep, out of ammunition at two things.

I am kind of tired, methinks. Did I mention that part?

Of Bandaids and Vodka

A conversation between Geohde and friend via the electric telephone this very morning:

 

Geohde:  Fuck. Settlement on house done. Owe bank firstborn child and future happiness now. Now can somebody please tell me why I have visions of the fecking builders who, by the way have yet to FINISH unless you consider grout in tiles and mirrors in bathrooms elective items (I’m much too vain for that), diving and merrily swimming and generally sodding gambolling happily in a giant pool full of my hard-earned moulah? Bet they’re using it to light cigars, too. Pricks.

Friend: Why, fuck. That’s clearly shite. I hate to be aggressively reasonable or Captain Obvious for this one, but may I enquire why did you pay them?

Geohde: Because of Clause 50 million in subclause five hundred and forty kazillion in the print only readable with a microsocpe at a gibbous moon in the back of the contract in invisible ink that says ‘Certificate of occupancy (issued by aforementioned fuckers who are as we speak making daisy chains with my cash) = must pay or Thou Shall Be In Default. Sucker.’ Even if ‘occupancy’ status is debatable.

They pointed that one out last week with great satisfaction, furthermore I swear one of them made a money sign and sniggered in the background.

Geohde: ‘Oh, and as bonus item, empty house full of shiny steal-able goodies over silly season ripe for picking for those who would like free upgrade status on their dishwasher.’

Friend: ‘Ah. Yes. I can make a firm diagnosis of  ‘you’re fucked’. Does that help?’

Geohde:  ‘Knowing my luck….no’

Freind: ‘Hmm..’

Geohde:  ‘…..so have booked truck for Saturday.’

Friend: ‘Whaaaaa…THIS Sat? After xmas Sat? Not, say, mid January Sat? They have at least four in January for you to choose from, you know.’

Geohde: ‘I figured perhaps it was like ripping a bandaid off fast versus slow.’

Friend: ‘I see…and the twins..?’

Geohde:  (nothing like going for broke in fits of optimism) ‘Yes, thanks for that! You ARE their favourite Honorary Babysitting Auntie.’

Friend: ’Um. I have legitimate employment Saturday. I can come after 3pm to watch your spawn vomit, is that any good?’

Geohde: ‘Yes! If only for vodka drinking company if all goes pear.’

Friend: ‘My advice would be to pack it last on the top of a box then.’

Geohde: ‘Pack it? It’ll be in a hip flask, mate…’

 

I may go quiet for a while, Internet! Merry Christmas.