Scroll down to the bolded text if you feel like de-waffling me today. A waffle-ectomy may be in order!

…alternatively entitled the post in which I succeed in amusing only myself with  depressingly unoriginal and rather too obscure attempt at wit. Geddit?

Huh?

Eh?

Oh.

Do excuse me, I’ll right with you when I finish making only myself chuckle at the little joke in the title there.

Actually, since it’s only me laughing despite my best efforts to involve all of YOU too, I think I’ll stop right now and pretend I never said it. Can I also skip the inevitable tidal wave of blush that is conquering my torso as I type this missive and any second now shall burn the paint clean off of houses in the next postcode?

Nevermind, it’s too late, and I guess you can’t see the phenomenon anyway.

Just take it on faith that should you ever be in my company and short of something to fry your eggs on, simply pointing out that my skirt has been tucked into the back of my tights for the last hour IN PUBLIC will do the trick. Even if it’s not actually true. I take a while to work things like that out.

Unfortunately I am actually also quite talented at getting my upholstery all confused in that sort of manner and at least some of the burning glow I emit is from bitter memory. Also, recently I emerged from an end-of-long-haul-flight slighty lively plane loo with a big piece of soaked-in-something bog roll stuck to one foot and a dirty baby wipe on the other.

I have no idea why I told you that, but you will be very pleased to note that I did the only thing possible in the circumstances and pretended I had no such accessories attached to my shoes and hid them in the seat pocket in front of me at the earliest opportunity.

Anyway.

I’m guessing that nobody has the faintest idea what I’m blithering on about, so I shall get to the point.

Once a year I gird my disorganised self into some semblence of organisation and I do my best to introduce new bloggers in the community to all of us by hosting the Great Blog Cross Pollination.

Except THIS year I inconveniently went and scheduled International! Travel! With! Three Children LS! and Twins! right when I should have been nagging you all to merrily swap entries for a day left, right and centre. 

Because I know full well my organisational limitations (you will note that I remain slightly disorientated to time and place despite having been home for, what?, several days now, although person has reassuringly remained rock-steady though all of my recent travels), I didn’t even try this year.

Yet.

So, here’s the deal.

Please, pretty please with a cherry on top participate in the Great Blog Cross Pollination this year.

It’s open to EVERYBODY in the ALI community, and divided into two groups of blogs, those that reference children (hereon known as ‘avec’) and those that do not (the ladies and gents of ’sans’). The idea is to swap posts for one day with a matched blogger so that you BOTH meet new bloggers and everybody finds new readers. Old blogs, new blogs, infertility, loss, pregnancy and parenting blogs (and anybody else I haven’t covered) are more than welcome.

Actually, having crossed into the dreaded muh-’ummy’ (or ‘ommy’) blog territory myself I especially welcome meeting new bloggers still in the trenches.

Here are the details, it really is easy. I do most of the work. Really.

1. Leave a comment here (ensuring that your blog url and email address are written the appropriate fields, you don’t have to write them in the comment itself and this stops spam filters eating your words, too).  In your comment, all I need to know is if you fit the AVEC or SANS group. You can write as many other nice things about me as you like (or not, I shan’t be offended), but the AVEC or SANS is handy to know.

2. This one bites me in the posterior every year- please make sure the email address you have entered is one you check, because I shall be in further contact with you about your match via that email address. Also, if you change your mind about participating, let me know. I’d never be offended because sometimes circumstances change, but it is hard for your match-ee on the day if you bail unexpectedly.

3. Periodically I shall send out an email acknowledging receiving your entry. Please reply so I know your email addy works (see above point about deal addresses) Get cracking on that wonder post with which to bedazzle new eyes and introduce yourself to a new audience.

4. Closer to the date (at least a week beforehand) I shall email you with the name of your match. You then email each other your posts.

5. On the 9th december, you post the cross-pollinated entry WITHOUT SAYING WHO IT IS FROM, but WITH a ‘click here’ hyperlink to THEIR blog (so your own readers can find where YOU are hiding on that day). Just for fun, ask people to see if they can recognise the guest blogger in a different home in the comments section.

See? Easy.

I will keep a masterlist of participants here, so on the day, EVERYBODY can have fun clicking hyperlinks and guessing who posted what, and where. Hopefully along the way everybody shall make lovely new bloggy friends.

I really do adore hosting this, so please sign up. The more the merrier. It really is fun.

For those who like buttons on their sidebar, this is this year’s linked button. Feel free to grab the code and put it up on your own blog. Actually, that would positively fill me with delight.

Here is detailed instructions as to how to snaffle it, if you need a hand.

Now, please sign up? Pretty please?

May I utter the universal cry of truly browned-off women everywhere?

Men!

Humph.

Bloody silly creatures they are, really.

Honestly, I  actually happen to love LS, despite my many written allusions to possible acts of physical violence upon his person, really I do.

Most of the time, at least.

Even if  he dosen’t have the faintest idea just how it is his underwear drawer never runs out, or that the fridge is always full of food. Let alone a sensible understanding of how to hold a vacuum cleaner the right way up. I think he might do himself an injury if he turned the blasted thing on successfully, so it’s probably a good thing he doesn’t even know which cupboard it lives in.

It must be jolly nice living in a world where the sorting fairy, washing fairy, shopping fairy, cleaning fairy, dusting fairy and diary fairy keep your life neat and tidy all on your behalf behind the scenes like that. Really, it must.

Typing the above paragraph makes me wish I fancied the fairer sex, because surely a two woman household would run MUCH more smoothly.

Just think of all the loo seat  and piddle on the floor palaver I wouldn’t have to deal with.

But, anyway. My weekend point is the following belated observation.

Men come without and not in any way WITH the tact chip in the factory standard model, don’t they?

Because otherwise, I think mine has a broken one.

How else can I explain LS telling me that I am, and I quote ‘moody and grumpy’ before bidding me goodnight to retreat to my decidedly-separate-shall-not-be-poked-all-night bedroom and then being shocked when I tell him to get stuffed?

I mean, really?

What part of calling your spouse a cranky witch in those sort of circumstances doesn’t deserve cutting the crotch out of every single pair of jocks, simply as a warning shot?

I think I was quite restrained in the circumstances.

Dear Internet,

I am home, I have slept (although see below for further details on that one), I have been blissfully reunited with my mascara, deodarent and (praise-be-to-the-dental-gods) toothbrush, and now I have a question for you.

I do so hope you can help.

So, Internet, oh wise and all-knowing Internet.

Can you tell me something?

Because I really need to know the answer.

At what point in a marriage does a quirky trait in a spouse shift from endearing to more irritating than wearing sandpaper underpants horse riding? 

If I am alone in my dilemma and your own loving spouse never does anything to cause your eyelid to twitch convulsively, just where do I get a Husband 2.0 upgrade from? Should I try reading the user’s manual for the version I have again first?

Can I reboot the sucker?

Or am I simply an uncaring bitch?

Also, how do you make it goddam stop already?

Is electroshock therapy even legal?

Would it really be too juvenile to file for divorce on the grounds that your spouse irritates the living snot out of you?

Because something is REALLY chafing my bum and I am this close to, oh, I don’t know, probably simply fuming impotently between my own ears about how bloody pathetic LS is when it comes to his precious SLEEP, combined with a little gentle week-old-kipper fishwacking of the facial region the very next time he refuses to get his arse out of bed in the morning on accounts of how tired he is.

Like, say, tomorrow.

I can forecast this with complete-and-absolute 100% confidence on accounts of it happens every day. Every. Single. Morning. I get to hear how he is just exhausted and tired and has not slept a WINK all night.

I am possibly a small and petty person, but oh BOY and I fucking sick to the back teeth of hearing that whine.

I am also fornicatingly-unwell to the point of dental caries in my molars with the current status quo of picking up the slack, being almost literally drowned in baby shit solo before midday and making excuse after excuse to the universe at large when people ask about why husband almost never appears in public. Seriously, I have friends that don’t even know what he looks like.

So, what the flipping feck is wrong with LS and why the hell do I always end up the bad guy because I cannot remain forever sympathetic to his dozy plight?

After so many groundhog-day years of this rubbish every damn morning I just have this irresistable urge to kick his lazy arse until he gets it out of bed, is all.

Is that not perfectly understandable?

Send help at once, because I now refuse to even contemplate sleep in the same bedroom on accounts of I cannot take any more bleeping fingers poking me in the arm, chest, back and eyeball at random and all night, nor will I endure repeated nocturnal wake-ups and interrogations as to which position I may or may not be choosing to enjoy my repose.

Also, he turns the fucking light on to check I am telling the truth. If I don’t divorce him I may possibly kill him. With a blunt spoon. Slowly.

Seriously.

Mayday.

Or at least a supply of ready-matured old kippers, please.

Alternatively entitled ‘What I Did On My Holidays: The Extremely Edited Edition’.

Dear Internet,

Did you miss me?

I am HOME, praise-be-the-jetlag-that-permits-me-to-be-a-grizzelling-insomniac-in-my-OWN-bed, but I shall be brief.

Because, well.

I’ve just spent several days travelling with two small children. One of whom is now officially A Climber of anything not nailed down and, additionally, is a lover and not a fighter and thus half the plane have been snogged to loving death. The other requires a fairly hands-on approach for different reasons.

Jen can attest that I do not exaggerate when I make cracks and Saag and Naan’s temperaments. She’s now seen the evidence first-hand.

Regardless, coming back to the fact that we all inconveniently can’t have the same amount of night and day at once and the issues this may or may not cause the average frazzled thirty-something travelling with twins, because I think I had a point to make.

Ah. Got it.

I have indeed learned that it is true that relatively small and unobtrusive time zone changes, designed to be gentle to the smaller traveller, actually suck much MUCH harder than the big ones where you just suck it up, grit your teeth, and push on regardless until collapsing in a sleepy heap at the other end.

THIS version has had me trying to explain to two fifteen month olds that it is dark and not breakfast-time on accounts of it is THREE-Bleeping-AM ForTheLoveOfAllThatIsHolyAndWhyWon’tEitherOfYouSleep?

Also, my (and please note ONLY my) luggage did not make the last connecting flight and is due to arrive some time today in a more leisurely fashion. Presumably after enjoying a nice lie in, a cooked breakfast and taking in the local scenery. Unlike me.

I’m quietly convinced this means the universe hates me, because now I have to go and retrieve the blasted container of fresh underwear, toothbrushes, MAKEUP and clothing without having the prior benefit of access to the aforementioned items.

So, do excuse me.

In summary, I went to WALMART and I LIKED it.

Is that so very bad?

Discuss.

….to the land where you all talk funny and persist on driving on the wrong side of the road.

Could you all try the left for, say, the next two and a bit weeks? Thank-you in advance and all of that.

Also, I would like to request a few jargon amendments for you all:

The ‘bathroom’ shall temporarily be known as the ‘dunny’, or ‘can’, and in a pinch, possibly the ‘bog’.

‘Diapers’ are now ‘Nappies’. Don’t argue.

The plural of ‘You’ is now ‘Youse’. None of this ‘y’all’ business, okay?

Vowels will be returned to the words from which they have been stolen, for example ‘coloUr’ needs it’s ‘U’ returned immediately.

Also, psst, it’s al-ooo-min-eee-um. Try it on for size, because you always cut a bit out of that word. Refrain from any references to ‘Al-oo-min-um’, if you can.

Finally, ‘Thongs’ are something that goes on your feet. Also, in  reference to the item below, Naan likes to eat it. Consider your collective selves warned.

Any questions?

Dear World,

It’s Geohde and I have a bone to pick with you.

Yes, again. Do try and pay attention this time, please.

I propose a small lesson in milestone attainment.

Are you ready, class? Here goes:

FORTHELOVEOFALLTHATYOUHOLDHOLYANDPOSSIBLYMANYTHINGSYOUDONOTASWELL being SMALL or, ahem ‘Tiiiiiiiinnnny!’ does not mean a child is not entitled to ambulate bipedally if the fancy takes her. Trust me, the fancy takes her many places indeed.

The little snot machine is always running off in the supermarket and getting herself almost inextricably jammed in the soft drink fridge or under a shelf. The park is a veritable treasure trove of escapism from parental supervision. Our own street is an item that has the distinct potential to prove that road safety is learned, and not instinctive after all (even if it would be more useful than an inbuilt fear of moths), any day now if I am not continually vigilant.

The kid gets the whole walking idea, trust me. She’s been at it for some time now.

Small does not automatically equal ‘four legs good, two legs bad’.

Little people can walk, too, even if the pavements are much closer to their bottoms that the average experience.

Please let Naan do so in public without so much gobsmacked attention, or at least be fair and congratulate Saag on sticking both fingers right up her nose at once while she jumps backwards.

Now THAT’S talent.

Love,

Geohde.

BOTW, more comprehensively known as Blog Of The Week (ish, usually very ‘ish’). I post because giving back just a little bit of unsolicited niceness to others makes the blogosphere a friendlier place.

Once again I commence another un or semi-solicited blogaview. Blog of the week, the eleventh spin of the carousel….where does the time go?

Ta-Daa!

And so it begins again, the eleventh edition of BOTW. Double figures it is! Not sure what I’m talking about? Click on the logo to be taken to the reasoning behind my unsolicited blogaviews and previous BOTW’s.

BOTW. An unsolicited admiration of blog-ness. An acknowledgement of the road travelled. Putting my excessive Google Reader activity to good use. On some level, we all write to be read, don’t we?

This week (roll with it, please, and try not to point out that my personal sense of time must be rather distorted if I think I can continue to get away with calling this sort of frequency or rather INfrequency ‘weekly’.) I choose to review:

CharmingB!tch: by Deels and Shannon.

Firstly, the quickfire version:

In a nutshell?

A brilliantly sharp, witty as hell and at times tear-jerking blog about two truckers, life, kids, infant death, pregnancy loss and now, ovarian cancer.

The clever search terms version?

Guardianship, Children, Parenting, Pregnancy, Infant Death, NICU, Grief, Loss, Miscarriage, Ovarian Cancer, Surgery, Marriage, Difficult Family Stuff.

In more detail:

Again, I shall not over-revise The Charming Ones’s history (In case I stuff it up. Check out their blog for the story in their own words rather than my clumsy paraphrasing), but I shall borrow from their very well written ‘about’ page.

2005: Great except for round 1 with MRSA infection and Katrina eating my whole house.

2006: Banner year that included getting pregnant (and not finding out until 10-12 weeks along), getting married to my baby daddy and giving birth in September to Jackson. He was doubtlessly the most precious and perfect baby in all the land but sadly he died a little over a month later. It’s been incredibly hard as I think there isn’t a comparable loss to that of a child and if there is, in fact, anything worse I hope we never experience it or even hear of it, to be honest.

2007: Today though we (Deels and I) are doing our level best to get on with getting on. My sister and her family have already moved to the North West and we will be following them (along with my parents) shortly. Hurricane Katrina fucked us up but good and it’s time for a change, as much as I do dearly and truly love the South.

Deels and I are back on the road (he’s a trucker, too) and that will be evidenced amply with terrible quality camera phone pictures until we upgrade to a proper digital camera. I also love my new bras with what is likely an unnatural passion. Plenty of proof posted already and you can expect regular updates.

And now, as of October 2007, another update. We made the move to the Pacific Northwest in April. This was after I quit my job (all dramatic like, heh) in March and we bought a house (one mile from my sister) site unseen in Vancouver. Moving was great, initially, and things seemed to be, finally on the upswing. I started therapy and then the final blow to our combined dignity was (another) unplanned pregnancy that ended in miscarriage and with Deels getting a (planned for but obviously delayed) vasectomy for his birthday in June. The miscarriage made me again sick with systemic MRSA and a hostage to a port and intravenous drug therapy for months on end. About this time my sister went into inpatient rehab and we had a truck-ton of responsibility for her three kids during that time. Good times, had by all, right?

Picking up from the studio in Portland, we separated in January of 2008 because D had an affair. I know, right? Was horrid. But we lived apart, fixed ourselves, worked too, too much and made things right again. Just in time for my dad to break not one but BOTH ankles in March 2008. And for my sister to chronically relapse, regardless of three trips to rehab in one lonely year. Her husband was also revealed to have a substance abuse problem his own self so we got guardianship of the kids and hauled ass back to Mississippi. Just after getting there, we discovered my former sister in law (I know, I know you need a chart to keep up with this shit) is in the throes of meth addiction so her 14 year old daughter lives with us now, too.

You tired yet? Fuck I am just updating this piece, dang. So. Yeah. Back to Mississippi, moved twice in a MONTH (w/o D being there either time, btw, b/c I AM BAD-ASS) and how we’ve settled into a 104 year old house that is both lovely and awful, is drafty as all fuck but full of so much character we think we’ll stay here awhile.

I mean unless the cancer means we’ll have to move. Ha! Gotcha. Yeah, shortly after all this kid collecting, moving cross country and such, I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Ovarian Cancer. It sucks, hard, especially b/c D is back over the road and home really sporadically but it was caught early, is treatable and a year from now will be just another fucked up memory buried amongst so much joy.

So. Yeah. That’s us and our family (C-14 girl S-6 girl H-5 boy J-3inJanuary-boy) – We rock pretty hard given the circumstances, I think.

I have to confess I’ve been lurking this particular blog for some time, mostly because they’ve been through the absolute wringer and the story really pulls at me. I don’t know of many people who can write about cancer surgery and be as funny as hell at the same time, I just don’t.

Care to read and support?

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

Want to see YOUR blog featured? Like to be in my blogroll? Let me know in the comments section below and I’ll gleefully add you, after all a girl can never have too many hyperlinks in her sidebar.

Dear Internet,

I may possibly indulge in just a little bit of light hearted sarcasm today, or at least (to put it another way) say things that I do not really mean merely in order to make my point.

I am working on my Manners and Deportment in public situations which by definition kills my fun by precluding me from being intentionally rude.

This means it is officially out of order to splutter and holler ‘You want to know WHATTTTTT?’ almost exactly as if somebody had asked me my feelings with regards to fell.atio on a particularly crowded train (due to express the next ten stops) whenever I am quizzed about my future reproductive career. Minus the blushing, obviously. Oh, and the almost irrepressible desire to make some crack about Italian Opera not being my kind of music.

Fell.atio is just such an awfully flowery word in just that kind of cultured, snobby opera sounding way. Or at least I have always thought so. I do welcome other opinions on the matter.

So, since I have digressed enough, let me regroup.

I am trying to explain why it is I feel I need to whinge to the Internet at large about people publicly taking an almost proprietary (You’re not getting any younger, you know! Wink, wink!)  interest in my future plans for my uterus, and therefore indirectly at least, a vaguely creepy curiosity about my probable future trysts with a transvag.inal ultrasound probe.

So. Take note.

The best, the very best, time to ask a woman when she plans to spit out more children via either a natural or scalpel-generated orifice is ABSOLUTELY at that fun point in a supermarket visit where both spawn are screaming at dental drill frequency in the pusher over custody of a bag of unpaid-for grapes (which they only have succeeded only in ripping open and squashing half the contents all over themselves), precisely half of the shopping is already up on the conveyor belt, a badly timed spouse has chosen to call with a particularly urgent request to nick back inside to acquire bog roll, something essential has just turned out to be missing a barcode, andyou’ve just realised that there is no way to bend down and get the remainder of the groceries out of the pram baskets without showing an almost professional degree of Plumber’s Crack.

Really, keeping it to a look of stunned horror and the quip that I thought I got time off for good behaviour for having a two-for-one deal in the first place was quite restrained in the circumstances.

Otherwise known as ‘How do you know when your child is ready for toilet training?’, a helpful primer in one easy step.

Listen up, Internet, it’s simple.

When your fourteen month old takes the, ahem, golden opportunity to piss all over you on the change table, right when you are dealing with a messy explosion from the other main active orifice, it probably isn’t time.

For oh-so many reasons.

Especially if she doesn’t stop cooing at you while she’s at it.

Geohde.

PS. It turns out that girls can indeed generate enough of a stream to hit even the longest-upper-limbed parent. Don’t ask me how I now know this. Also, never EVER duck down to get something of the change table unless you are generally in favour of receiving unexpected mouthfuls of fresh off the press WARM infant urine.

Don’t ask about THAT, either. The rain is Spain may fall mainly on the plain, but around these parts it also falls snack-bang in your open gob.

Dear World,

I hate to be all pissy with you again, yes again, about this matter, really I do.

But it seems that you just can’t let it go. I have begged of you all under my breath on more occasions than I care to count in the last year to please refrain from presumptive gender assignment of my children, sadly to no avail.

You just can’t resist calling a baby without hair a boy, it would seem.

Gleeful erroneous cries of ‘OOOHhhh TWIIINS! A BOY and a GIRL, how positively LOVELY and generally splendiforous to have one of each!’ abound whenever the Twinmobile and I venture out in public.

You do tend to gush a bit, world. You could work on that, you know.

Even when I’ve coated both poor infants in head to toe matching pink in an attempt to subtly clue you in that there is no penis in the pram, you can’t help it.

Actually, you can’t help it almost especially when Naan is wearing a bleeping pink skirt and a t-shirt that all but says ‘Proud owner of a v.agina’. I do consider my views on the dress of my spawn relatively open, but trust me when I say I wouldn’t do that to a son of mine.

At least not until he was adult enough to independently decide he’d kind of like to get around in that fashion. Then we’d crack out the Master.Card with gusto. I like to shop.

To be honest I never understood exactly why people coat their daughters in pink until you all decided to summarily change Naan’s sex without consulting us first.

I have seen the wang-free-code light and now I own a lot of pink.

Just ride with it, please world. They’re BOTH girls. Trust me on my analysis of this one, will you?

I mean, sometimes you even have the temerity to exclaim ‘No!’, try to correct me, or look shocked when I gently explain that bald heads and Y chromosomes are not synonymous, even before the age of sixty.

One year is a wee bit early for the old male pattern to strike even the most unlucky of chaps. Just ask my husband.

So, in conclusion, to the three cretins who yesterday all exclaimed ‘Did you see the TWINNNSSS? They’re a BOY and a GIRL! Look! Over THERE!’:

1. I’m not deaf.
2. It’s rude to point.
3. No, they’re not.
4. The central requirement for boyhood (loosely speaking and with exceptions) is having your very own willy.

Now shove off, will you?

Love-and-iodised-salt,

Geohde.