Holding on: thin threads and tight smiles

The actual tagline for Feral Bells is "Because anyone can fall in love". It's been changed here to reflect mummy's mood.

MY two separate sides crashed together during a radio interview last week. In my very best “phone voice” (louder, an octave higher and filled with witty – maybe just silly – repartee) I discussed my book, my work, my ambition, how far I’d come since I left my family home.

And then my daughter woke up.

She couldn’t find me. Of course she couldn’t, I was hiding in the carport hoping to get through a 15-minute phone call without tears or demands for yoghurt or my son’s shouts that my daughter had “JUST DONE A POO ON THE GRASS, MUM!”

I could hear her coming and somehow, while my brain was racing with thoughts like ”do I lock myself in the granny flat? Will I get reception if I run down the street a little? Is that abandonment?”, I managed to keep speaking about my book in that same “isn’t it wonderful” voice.

She found me and her cries intensified, leaving me completely satisfied that I had caused her much distress for a quick bit of publicity.

I apologised to the interviewer, probably laughed, plonked her on the couch and ripped open a packet of Tiny Teddies, all the while thinking “fuck my life”.

And that’s really unfair, isn’t it?

I’ve written a book – an actual, 70-odd-thousand word book, self-published it, had it picked up by a distributor and even managed to talk on local radio about it. How lucky am I? I mean, it was bloody hard work too, but I’m still very lucky. Why can’t I roll about in that happy moment?

If I have chosen to work from home, shouldn’t I embrace the chaos it creates rather than squashing it? Why can’t I laugh honestly and point out all these wonderful imperfections? After all, I chose this. Not my children. I chose to make my parenting a statement – “I can do it all with my kids, they’re that important to me”.

Instead I’m freaking out, smiling between gritted teeth and hoping the words tripping delightedly from my tongue are not the same colour as my frustrated, bleak thoughts. Desperately hoping I don’t sound like the dithering SAHM that I can sometimes be.

…Even more desperately hoping that my work ethic and cranky pants don’t leave little pin-pricks of scars that a psychologist will one day point out on my children’s souls.

Every day I must decide whether I want to stay on this punishing treadmill or don an apron and get serious about being a mother. Would that make me a better mother? Or infinitely worse?

But instead of deciding once and for all, I inch through every day, surreptitiously moving the goal posts a bit further back and wondering about it all again tomorrow.

The idea that I won’t surrender my own goals is now more a sad fact, than a celebration. It’s not easy and the kids don’t love wandering shopping malls as I sign books for people that mean nothing to them.

My son hates my books the same way I used to hate the smell of beer on my mother who worked as a barmaid.

I can’t really know if my children will come to appreciate having me for a mother or whether they’ll instead search for people who would make that sacrifice.

As I’m writing this, I’ve been asked to “take my fairy dress off”, ”come and see the pink thing on my bike”, “read me the Christmas story”, ”put my fairy dress on” and listened to my son’s beatboxing and I’m trying so hard to give them the attention they deserve. To not get angry as my words, wading through muddy PND run-off and dripping down to my fingertips, flinch back to the dark recesses of my brain.

You can listen to the interview if you like. It’s almost all there. He left in my daughter’s cries and my apparent delight. He took out the Tiny Teddies. And I’m glad for that. Even though I was exasperated, he saw the life in that moment. Appreciated the exchange from worker to mother.

But there’s one shuddering breath in that interview that says it all.

In that one breath I can hear all my anxieties, all my frustrations, all the FMLs unvetted… I’ll let you see if you can hear it too.

I am not a crook.

  “Ninety percent of the world’s woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.” – Sydney Harris.

I HOPE by the time you read this, the malady has passed. I hope by Monday I’m skipping with the exquisite relief that is only known to come after trials (plural) come blustering through your door, unapologetic and aggressive.

But today, I’m unwell. The kids have been sick too and the only good part about that is their thirst for nurture is dulled. Hot babies are generally quiet ones. If you don’t leave the face washer on their forehead for too long.

I had to drop my work in the hands of others but just before I did, I received an email. From a man. “Can I have your number or can you call me back?”

My stomach dropped through to the floor. I was about to receive a copyright bollocking. How much, I hear you ask, is a copyright bollocking? Well aside, from the frustration that despite all my best endeavours – the ongoing emails, the 2am calls to the US, the cheques, – I did not conquer copyright law, the cost incurred is $1400. Give or take.

I checked my records and saw that, indeed, I had secured and paid for licenses to all but one company. Despite the burning in my eyes, I put on my happy face and called him up. My “I’m just a girl” voice didn’t seem to satiate. Figured as much.

I could hear the authority in the smooth silence of his phone line. No screaming children or store-music. Not wedging his phone between his shoulder and chin while he irons, cooks, wipes a bum. I could imagine the vhooooop of his heavy oak door closing as he took the call from that vapid little thing in Queensland.

“I can’t deal with this right now. I have a family emergency. I will email you on Monday.”

I have a family emergency too. You’re it.

I rang my husband and cried – something I save for horrendous cash-blowouts. This setback – hey, it’s only money – has a flow-on effect that I know will prevent me from sleeping till Monday.

And I need my sleep.

My husband’s 30th birthday is on the weekend. We have relatives staying – fresh, full-bloodied rellies whom I adore but am stricken to consider that I may shed undignified tears in front of them (again!). (Must not bow to FIL’s well-meant offerings of alcohol. Must say no. Drunk mummy in 1920′s gangster get-up is Not. Cool. Flashback to younger days when my nephew watched an inebriated aunty tackle his father with due concern… Must not drink.)

When you’re feeling this way everything seems insurmountable. Everything conspires against you. While I have possibly the biggest deadline of my life looming (probably shouldn’t call it that since I’m trying to stress less), I’m also juggling work (relaunch anyone?), school lunches (a new horror that I already hate. Am I really meant to do this until graduation?!), book PR, website upgrade (which could be as simple as a phonecall that I never seem to get round to making), trying to exchange my husband’s birthday present, worrying about a new vaccine that I’m meant to book for my daughter – shouldn’t I research first?, returning my doctor’s calls who (three times now) books me in when my husband is working and I can’t leave the children with anyone, finding out what happened to a refund I was meant to get for the last present I bought my husband, visit two banks once a week to pay a painter who may be traipsing amongst snakes for the next fortnight because our tenants have – apparently – lost their lawnmower, and remember all the other little details… such as not breaching anymore copyright laws.

Of course, there’s all the good stuff. The fact I have the most important deadline looming in my life. Kids (one of whom, when asked what he did at school today, replied: “I didn’t push a pencil in anyone’s eye.” To which I effused: “Mummy’s so proud of you!”). The idea that buried somewhere in the recesses of my poor, poor brain lies an answer to any conundrum presented.

But as the saying goes (see above)… woe is begot from people who are strangers unto themselves. I think of this everytime I’m assailed with furious optimism in people’s Facebook status updates. And when I’m crying on my desk. I’m trying with every inch of my being that wants to be in a hot tub, to find an unedited - free from litigation - version of myself here.

So, what’s up with you? Sinking or swimming? Floating?!

Keep the NY noise down, I’m trying to sleep

EVERYWHERE, everyone is spewing out saccharine odes to the New Year, bellowing out positivity into the universe.

Oh, for it to be any other time! Between everyone’s obsession with The Secret-method of living, the well-wishing, the doco my husband’s watching on the relentless pursuit of dreams… I am SPENT.

It’s not inspiring if it’s overwhelming. And, now I’m privy to everyone’s furious status-updating, it’s all I see (very close to disabling my FB account as my NY resolution, but seems kind of infantile – like taking my ball and going home. I’m undoubtedly as guilty as the rest).

I’ve been pursuing my own goals so vigorously for so long – and I doubt I’ll quit - but I definitely need some “down time” once in a while. I kind of feel this need to switch it off.

Apparently there is a market for this now (of course there is!)

This deafening noise of other’s ambitions is exhausting my already-fatigued brain. And my thoughts are in this blinding strobe-light effect of ideas and sorrow. It’s impossible to think straight.

I’m pretty sure I’m staggering around grabbing blindly at random tasks to accomplish, half-finishing them and then groping for something else, poking a child in the eye in the process, probably. Generally feel shit about the shit job I’m doing.

I’ve no doubt this will severely temper the audacious positivity radiating out of social media presently and I am sorry for that. I love a good bit of schmaltz as much as the next person.

Just think of this as the quiet back room at the New Year’s nightclub. The “behind the scenes” of other’s people’s shining light.

A moment for mummy

I’VE been running on the Mummy Treadmill.

Do you have one? Where you only sit still if you’re nursing a baby or folding the washing?

It occured to me… alright it didn’t “occur to me” so much as someone pointed it out to me (hi P&J!)… that I don’t stop running. I’m on the Mummy Treadmill.

They may have been using larger brush strokes than I’m about to draw here (hey, some things are for me alone). But the example used was J who would bring a book to the couch when they were sitting down to watch a movie. Her argument being that  if the movie sucked, she could start reading. No muss, no fuss.

I understand the logic entirely. They’re probably not the first person to notice my ‘multi-tasking’. My sister stopped me tidying the shed while she was paying a visit recently. I wasn’t being rude, we were standing right there, I was still talking with her, just picking up a few things at the same time. She told me it “wasn’t going anywhere”. Well, of course it wasn’t, but would I have the time later to come back out to the shed specifically to tidy up?

There’s the rub. I have so much on…

On an ordinary day, I spend the morning on ‘breakfast shift’ before we go to playgroup/day care/kindergym/toy library/the bank/the shop/the doctors/the chemist/the park/a playdate/the beach… It means two sets of tummies must be filled, two bodies clothed, two heads brushed, two sets of teeth scrubbed, two water bottles packed, yadda yadda yadda and, somewhere in there, I’ll rip on some clothes and hopefully remember my shoes.

Then we’ll spend approximately two hours ‘playing’ by which, of course, I mean I will stop one child from throwing sand, push another on a swing, break up a fight, clean up some poo, find someone else’s mum, pry apart glued fingers, help unpack and pack a shed full of toys, clean counter tops at the bank, blow up balloons, break up another fight… and all the while explaining EVERYTHING I’m doing and why we can’t STAY at playgroup/friend’s house/the beach.

After that I come home and switch to “lunch shift”. That consists of feeding, cleaning and naptime. Probably clean up more poo… if they’ll tell me where they did it. After that there’s the laundry, the dishes, the “chocolate milk drawing” on the coffee table, the avalanche of blocks across the floor.

Somewhere in all this, ‘my time’ is whittled back to: sipping a Milo while I try to wake up and simultaneously feed the children around 7am; suck back a coffee milk while pushing a kid on a swing and talking about excema to another mum at 10am; writing a blog while my children eat lunch (words ARE my diet!); and sometime after 8pm tonight I’ll get to sit and watch TV. Argument with husband about what to watch, optional. It’s Monday though. His turn.

I don’t mind. I’m used to it… I mean, the entire drill in general, not the remote control situation.

But it means there’s the unexpected side-effect that I don’t know what to do when I’m sans children. I’m like Marshall on How I Met Your Mother when he’s trying to act natural. “What do I usually do with my hands?!”

Pre-children I indulged in entire days with NOTHING on… as in no activities (still wore clothes, I’m funny like that). Sleep in, eat something, watch TV, sloth around.

But now, because my time is such a precious commodity, it ought NOT to be wasted. Not a millisecond of it. So, if perchance I get a moment’s peace, I will research a new family car online, make about six work calls AND prep tea.

I’ve forgotten how to slow down. Though, truth be told, it was never my strong point.

I once tasked myself to “do nothing” but sit and watch TV only getting up for food and the toilet. I wound up rearranging the house.

A much-loved colleague of mine used to say (probably still does): “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.” The idea being that they’re so busy, they’ll get it out of the way simply to concentrate on The Rest.

Now I believe it’s safe to say: “If you want something done, give it to a busy mum.” She certainly has no time to waste.

I Don’t Know How She Stays-Home-With-The-Kids-All-Day

I DON’T think the notion of a “supermum” is an outdated one. Juggling kids and anything else requires Herculean strength some days. Which is probably why Alison Pearson’s 2003 novel I Don’t Know How She Does It, is just now released as a film. Women are still relating to it powerfully.

But nor do I think that women forfeiting their careers in order to provide better/more care are necessarily pioneers. I think most women are still stumbling their way towards an agreeable work/life balance and I do commend women who sacrifice their careers for the sake of their children.

But that’s not for everyone.

Some women can’t afford to stall their career while they procreate for financial reasons - as suggested by Michelle Griffin in The Age - but some others can’t suffer the person they become when they have nothing but the kids in their life.

I don’t know why it’s still so hard to say that some women are better mothers if they’re not doing it full time.

The response to Griffin’s article was kind of typical. “Not a mention of what’s best for the child,” say some. Well, this article wasn’t about effective child-rearing. It’s about a woman’s career and the hassle of maintaining it during motherhood. It’s about the dangerous assumption that quitting your career may be best for all involved. It may not be.

If you had to flesh out every component of this discussion, we’d be reading this article well into next week.

But that’s besides the point. Some women accept the fact early on, that they’re not built solely for mothering.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise. We groom young women into careers, put them onto the scent of success and hope they don’t become a teen pregnancy statistic. Young girls and guys are pushed into tertiary education, encouraged to embark on career paths and put off purchasing the people mover until much later in life.

What happens is a generation of people unprepared for parenthood. This is not to say they’re not good parents. But the trap is thinking there is a seamless transition during the nine months of pregnancy from fulltime career woman to mum. This was me.

I was shocked by the solitude of motherhood. By the confines to my day.

I was delighted to leave the office, which had begun to feel a bit like a prison. But the reality is now, sometimes, my home feels that way and I never expected it.

I know of mums who went back to the office part-time just for the novelty of having a place to be at 9am. The thrill of putting on her big girl shoes and talking with grown-ups about grown-up stuff. Gillard, Gaddafi, Gaga… anything but Giggle and Hoot.

Sure, finances would have been improved but it was more about her mental and emotional needs than anything else. This doesn’t make her a bad mum. This makes her a good mum. A better mum than she would have been if she’d grown to hate her lot in life.

For others, the work/life balance is not so black and white. It’s in fuzzy shades of gray that vary according to toilet training, ear infections, birthdays and mental health days. What Griffin points out – and I think this is the important part – is that making workplaces similarly prepared for employees’ parenthood may make it easier for us all to find a healthy balance.

Embracing parents into the workforce may even have the unexpected result that young people are exposed to the challenges of parenting well before they have kids themselves.

And, in turn, could make it okay for mothers to draw their own work-life line in the sand.

Dead.Line.

I GOT to have a lovely chat with one of my favourite mums today. She works from home, in much the same field as I and we discussed the stress of a deadline.

Deadline.

It’s just a word. But it changes your environment, and I’m beginning to believe it wears on your psyche a tad too.

I have friends who have jobs where they can say things like “I’ll do that tomorrow”. Such a simple sentence, but it would be so redeeming to be able to say: “Nope, can’t get that front page story to you today. You should have it by mid-next week.”

Maybe in some places you can do that – in a big paper where your round consists of “networking” with officials. But in a job like mine (drawing up regional news pages, reading stories, putting on headlines, photos and captions) you’d be laughed out of the room if you deigned to tell your editor it “wouldn’t be done today”. Journalists may have the luxury of not getting an interview that day, but subeditors must still put a paper out regardless.

And I wonder how much of that urgency translates into other parts of our lives. My diary is jam-packed with lists of things to do TODAY, as if there’s no conceivable way it can wait another day. And my friend confessed she and her partner “spreadsheet” out their week’s schedule. She laughed it off, but I totally see the sense in it.

On any given day I can fit in playgroup, shopping, cleaning, bill paying, and the necessary child-minding, while the whole time thinking the following:

1)My book sales have slumped. Must send out review copies STAT.

2) My daughter is two and still not toilet-trained. Must monitor her bowel movements and begin the nappy-less phase STAT.

3) My son is becoming defiant and ignorant of my requests. Must start being firm on time-outs STAT.

4) The front yard is riddled in dog poo. Must clean it STAT.

5) Haven’t heard from Mum/Boss/Friend/New Mum. Must call them STAT.

6) It’s been a whole week since I blogged. Must think of something semi-interesting to say STAT.

7) Must organise car service/daycare enrolment/birthday party/book signing STAT.

8) Have inbox full of work emails. Must process them before they realise I haven’t read them STAT!

Fuck, it’s exhausting.

And I keep on my back as if I’m riding a useless cadet. I tick things off my list, and I put a cross next to it, if I haven’t done it (my own form of self-flagellation) and then write it in bigger letters on the next day in my diary. Maybe put a star next to it. Not like a gold star. More like a “Did you not see this last time? Honestly, I don’t know why I bother. Here. Here’s a star. Now TRY and remember to get morning tea for playgroup TODAY”.

Some days when I’m working AND minding the children and it’s going less than perfectly, I can feel my heart race. I’m sitting in an office chair and my heart races like I’ve just run a marathon (if only it had the same effect on my abdomen!).

When my heart starts to thump and my head races as I keep the hundred different thoughts in my head straight, I think of the lovely men I’ve watched in the newspaper/print industry develop heart conditions.

It’s not at all surprising really. Yes, there’s a thrill working in the media. Like the night they caught Sadam, we had to take our baby out of bed (refering to a paper that’s ready for printing, not like an actual baby!) and start again. A long night, but it was thrilling.

Putting together a newspaper is like a multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. So much must come together just right for it all to work and all the while the clock is ticking. But the closer you are to the bottle-neck end of a deadline, the greater the stress. How can you live life like that?

Some can’t. That’s the problem for some. They can’t switch that deadline off. A deadline makes you anxious, makes you cranky, makes you tactless when it comes to another’s incompetence.

Deadlines can encourage ambition and drive. They can make you super-efficient. It’s not all bad.

But if anyone can tell me how to stop my deadline eating into my personal life – I’m all ears! (Though may only give you 15 minutes *wink).

Bali and the bliss

HOLIDAYS have a wonderful way of rejuvenating the soul. And if you’re like me, perpetually wound-up and biting your nails in nervous anticipation of everyday life, then a holiday is a must.

I didn’t think I needed a holiday, per se. But it turns out I couldn’t see just how overwrought and spent I actually was. When I fell pregnant for the first time, I told myself I would have to slow down. Take baby steps into my new role, keep pace with a toddler and embrace days spent giggling and sighing.

But it never really goes like that, does it?

You hit the ground running with night feeds, teething, etc. I stopped working. But as my confidence grew, I attended a playgroup, then started working intermittently, took up kindergym, started a blog. Then I fell pregnant again. Two babies to mind, less maternity leave this time, moving house, more work from home, a second playgroup, swim lessons, a book launch… and suddenly this gentle pace is all-consuming.

And it’s deceptive in its consumption… when much of it is spent at the computer in your dining room, is it really work? And if your “appointments” are generally made at swing-sets or under parachutes, can you really say you’re run off your feet?

So, when I found myself in a luxury resort in Bali, both kids napping every day after trawling the street markets and splashing up a storm on the beach, I felt myself unfurl. Letting go of the angst, of when my next “thing” was, whether I could fit in a load of laundry, or get another chapter written…

This urgency I’d been living with dissipated. I did not nap with the kids (fool! I hear you cry). No, I sat in the heat of our balcony, sipping coke or UHT coffee milk (bleh), watching men clamber over a construction site metres away and let my mind drift. I sat and thought. I gave my brain a chance to decompress. I soaked up the silence, the lack of playdates and scheduling.

Heaven much?

I expected no revelations, no light-bulb moments, just the exquisiteness of an entire thought process without opening a popper for someone, or breaking up an argument. But I did realise something and, from the way my husband talks lately, I think he did too… that I love my life.

For all its maddening pace and daily frustrations, I wouldn’t change any of it. I love that I get to work with words, both as a job and as a hobby. That I get to be home with my children, see them hold hands when they think no one’s noticed. I love my playdates, the women I’ve met are becoming a support network I didn’t know I needed.

And my husband. My husband shares the cooking and cleaning, he tells me to leave the chores for another day and join him on the couch. He pokes fun relentlessly and when he comes through the door every afternoon, I can let go of some of that keen focus.

I, we, are blessed. And when you realise that, you consequently begin to enjoy it.

So no more “here, let me do it, you’re taking too long”. I’m reminding myself to walk at the kids’ pace again. Experience it with them, rather than dragging them at break-neck pace through the day, until it’s bedtime and suddenly the week has gone, the years are gone.

I’m not relinquishing any activities. Like I said, I love it all too much to surrender it. But just remembering to breath, take it in, take your time… I’m not “on the clock” anymore. I had no idea my years in nine-to-five office work became so deeply ingrained. I need to remember my original sentiment… if the kids must come first, I must remember to walk slowly behind.

The mouse who roared… at her husband

IT was the third time I’d tried to finish my story when another scream came from the play room (the play date consisted of three mums and six kids – plenty of screaming).

I got up to intervene and by the time I came back the conversation had moved on to glazed donuts. Such is life as a mum. Lots of half-finished conversations, half-eaten meals and emotions left unresolved.

It wasn’t that what I had to say was important. But since I’d struggled three times to finish it, I thought perhaps it was just a little important. To me.

The story? Oh yes, some mild implication that I was a neglectful parent when I was of the apparently mistaken belief that I was an overly protective one.

I love having a girly catch up with my mum-friends (and my un-mum friends* but conversations with them sometimes require more witticisms than I’m predisposed to on most days) but the perils are two-fold: you may not get to talk and you may not get to hear it all.

Driving home, I got just an eency bit teary (have I mentioned I haven’t been sleeping? Yes? Yes, of course I have.) because I wanted that one story to be heard by someone else. To have another woman hear the crux of it and know exactly how I felt.

Instead, I came home and got on with my day.

Enter Husband, pale, with some sort of tummy bug. After a quick cuddle, he went off to bed. I sat down and got to work (I work from home). But the day descended into a rollercoaster of bum changes, getting drinks and snacks out of fridge, breaking up fights, nursing bruised shins and egos, taking toddler to toilet, taking calls for our couch that’s for sale… It’s a typical day, really, but I’m so tired. And a little overwhelmed.

And the sight of our bedroom door, shut, with my husband convalescing behind it wriggles its way under my skin.

I wonder if he can hear the countless things I’m doing when I’m meant to be working, whether he’s listening and thinking “I don’t know how she does it”. But I know he’s got his own problems right now.

So I get on with my day.

When he comes out for a chat, I’m amicable but Still Very Busy. It’s only when he informs the kids – screaming for his attention outside – that he can’t oblige them as he’s not well, that I clench my teeth.

Okay, he IS sick and he does entertain them as as best as he can, bless him. But it doesn’t stop the madness. It doesn’t stop them clambering onto my lap, or screaming nonsense as they thump-thump-thump through the house. It isn’t enough. And I start to blame him. Why can’t he keep them away from me? Just long enough to get my shit done, to get my head straight?

The day drags out with over-tired babies, sick husband taking over dinner as my work banks up, arguments over electricity bills and leaving the kids alone in the tub. And ringing in my ears is the untold story of Me The Mum: The Neglectful One.

It’s too much for one night. And though my Husband understands I resent that he gets to “just be sick”, he doesn’t know everything else that’s going on in my head, in my heart. And I know he’d ease my burden if I could only share it with him without pointing accusatory fingers.

And I’m just so tired, all I have are tears and blame. If he doesn’t wear it, then I will have to, and I simply can’t. Not tonight.

I’m trying to think of a positive note to end on here. Of the Small Potato that told me today not to give up on dreams, or my son offering to be my best friend. But before me stretches another night of restless babies, scared little boys and me, floating like an apparition in a blue dressing gown, tending to them and hoping tomorrow I get to tell someone how “neglectful” I am.

(* Un-mums as opposed to non-mums haven’t made the decision NOT to have kids, they just having got round to that chapter yet.)

Don’t read this… no, really… well, don’t say I didn’t warn you

I’M just a little tired, so you’ll have to excuse me if I a) finish a sentence in asdffffjklllllk;ljjjjjjjjjjjjjjj because my head hit the keyboard; b) take some weird tangent that goes from supermarket etiquette to changes in federal law; c) start crying.

I didn’t do my usual Monday rant, nor my Random Words on Wednesday and, since there are issues surrounding the camera, there’s most likely not going to be Foto Finish tomorrow either. Sorry. But as your consolation prize, I give you… this half-hearted attempt at blogging when I’d rather not blog.

First though, let me justify myself.

I sat for four hours on the weekend, behind a desk, childless, bookless, pen and pad-less. I did this deliberately. Tempting as it is to have four solid hours of writing or reading, I knew no sales would be made – lest the passing public disturb my apparent creative process. So I sat, smiling politely, talking to various people and selling a couple of books.

I also took the time to think.

Thinking about what I wanted out of life, out of this little creative endeavour (the book and the blog). You’d think in four hours (only broken up with a handful of conversations and one was just someone wanting to borrow my pen – always good sign when you’re so busy at your book SIGNING that you can hand your only pen over for someone else to use)  that I’d have made some headway on what it is I want.

Nope.

In my head, I”m still stuck behind that desk, smiling inanely, letting my thoughts splash around in the shallow end but make no real strokes towards dry land. Still waiting for a master stroke or, as Oprah would call it, my a-ha moment.

I don’t know why I bother with such illusive concepts when I’m tired. It’s like wrestling with ghosts. And I almost always do it when I’m tired (which is all the time, lately).

Obviously, I want the book to be a best-seller. Loathe as I am to determine a creative endeavour’s success by fiscal terms, a small cult following (probably just family and friends) won’t pay the bills. And no following at all… well, let’s just start hocking furniture now, shall we? That said, I’ll continue to write a second whether I make more than $16 or not. It’s too firmly stuck in my subconscious to not be scribbled out on paper.

As for the blog, I started it as a way to showcase my skills Before I Had Kids in the hopes that a newspaper or magazine would pick me up and I could continue my much-loved column writing. Four years later, and I’m still “showcasing”. But in the interim, I stumbled into the cyber-metropolis that is the mummy blogging community. I love it and fear it in equal measure.

And it certainly makes me feel like a Staind song: “I’m on the outside, I’m looking in…”

Hmm, think you just met my Fatigue-Induced Tangent.

Anyway, these days I see this site less as a sample of my columns and more of a bridge from my career as a journalist to my career (she says boldly… then yawns) as a writer.

But I’ve reached an impasse. Where to from here? I have a variety of ideas: travel stories focusing on the beautiful region in which I live or a sociological experiment where I use old-school etiquette tips for wives in my modern-day scenario and share the repercussions online.

Okay, that’s two ideas. Not exactly a “variety”.

So I’m handing it over to you… what would you like to see on PetaJo.com? Less complaints about tiredness, I’m guessing. But be a little bit more inventive than that. Post comments … nnnnnnNOW!

Changing channels on parenting

MY kids watch a lot of TV. They get excited when certain shows come on, they sing along and also use certain character’s and their adventures as frames of reference for things in their own lives.

I’m not proud of this, but I take consolation that I only let them watch ABC. No advertising and less obnoxious cartoons that are more suited to young children.

But I don’t like that – even as I’m typing – they are glued to the idiot box.

Especially when I just read that the recommended “screen time” (TV, computers, video games, etc) for children aged from two to five is less than ONE HOUR a day.

“This is because their brains are undergoing huge devlopmental changes at this stage and it has been identified that younger children are particularly susceptible to the negative effect of complex TV interactions,” says the article in Totline, 2011 Issue 1.

Kids! Turn off the TV because I’m pretty sure you’re internalising Wibbly’s anxieties over a thunderstorm!!

I jest.

I would love for my children to watch the recommended one hour a day, but frankly I would get no work done if they did. Sure, mothers used to do it all the time pre-TV, but they weren’t working from home to a very tight deadline twice a week, trying to write a book and establish a blog audience that could one day garner some sort of advertising revenue!

It hasn’t escaped my attention that my life ought to be more geared around my children (and I’m working towards this) and raising them into rounded individuals. But it hurts my heart when I hear the injustices I am subjecting them to when I crack open books and magazines aimed specifically at parents.

I want to be educated. It’s good to know what experts deem the recommended dose of TV (I live by boundaries most of the time!), but some days (usually around certain times of the month) I don’t need to hear how rotten I am, letting my kids watch TV when I work, wash, cook, clean, work some more.

What well-meaning advice could you have done without recently?