Super me...

I feel like a spy. In my imagination, I am one half of a top secret crime solving duo. By day, I'm a mild mannered mammy whose greatest daily thrill involves catching the half off specials at the local supermarket. By night though, I am a sleek, sexy, seeker of justice who does NOT, I repeat NOT smell of baby vomit.

Our 92' Omega becomes a high powered vehicle somewhat reminiscent of the batmobile but without all the batty paraphernalia. Like me (well, my midnight persona anyway) it is fast and fierce. It does not have a backseat (gasp!) There are NO childlocks (double gasp!) There are NO CARSEATS (Oh my sweet mother of god!)

In this fantasy, I am slim and trim with an AMAZING gravity defying rack which no nursing bra could EVER contain. I am zipped into a black, vinyl catsuit and there is not even the slightest hint of jiggle in the belly area. I maintain my figure chasing criminals and using my incredible martial arts skills to take them down.

I do not know the meaning of the word "Stretchmarks."

For now though, it's bucketing down rain and I am merely a mom with an overactive imagination and two sleeping babies in the backseat who is way too impressed with mobile broadband and being able to blog while on the road home from nanny and granda's.

I wonder if that catsuit's waterproof?

The Price of Freedom

I have a day off! I have a day off!

Don't get me wrong, I love my terrible twosome (the big one is currently giving the leather couches a milk wash, thank you love) but a full afternoon to myself? Golddust.

And what, you may ask, will I do with myself during my 5 blissfull hours of freedom? What scintillating activities do I have planned?

A manicure? Pedicure? Full body hot oil massage ?

Nah!

I'm thinking maybe an eye appointment followed up with a root canal.

Let the good times roll...

Recessionary Fun

Who says a recession can't be fun? Tinygreenmama from tinygreenpeople ( love, love, love this site!) has thrown down the "No More Stuff" challenge and I for one have decided to take part. Here's the deal...

Basically, Tinygreenmama (tgm for short, too long to keep typing out) is this mad (as in crazy. She doesn't have rage issues or anything), eco - friendly Irishwoman I know. She's like some sort of pioneer/feminist/supermama all rolled into one except that she's not intimidating in the least (Mad, yes. Intimidating, no.)

For starters, she readily admits to being a shitty housekeeper. Secondly, unlike a lot of other green beans out there, SHE DOESN'T RUB IT IN YOUR FACE!!!!! Even though I have probably filled several landfills with all the disposable nappies the Snot Queen has gone through (I'm trying cloth on the tiny one) and that I have a deep fear of my compost bin (blech!), we remain friends and she has yet to call the eco police on me.

Anyhoo.... For the next three months, tgm has forsaken the cult of consumerism and thrown off the shackles of shopping. Basically, anything she needs, she will either make, buy second hand or swap for something she no longer needs.

Anything new that she buys must be the most eco friendly version available.

She will then blog all about her experiences here and maybe here too.

I have decided to join her.

Right after I get my new contact lenses that is.

How about you? Anyone else want to take up the challenge?

Oh crap. Snot Queen's eating crayons again... Bye for now!

Mammy's Wild Kingdom...

OMG!!!!! YUCK! YUCK! YUCK! YUCK! YUCK! I want to scrub the skin off of my body. Just for the record, I now HATE peaceful early morning earth mother time. BLECH!!! I was up early this morning (7:30! A.M!) and thought that I'd try and be useful, a proper earth mother sort hanging the laundry out to dry, barefoot in the backyard (well, wearing sandals actually, morning dew is rather cold and wet...) whilst the tiny one snoozed on the picnic table and the snot queen played earth child in the dirt (or pushed her imitation graco around the garden, whatever)

Being the big, brave girl I now am (I caught and released a wasp yesterday! Round of applause please. It only took fifteen minutes, one small panic attack and no more then three bloodcurdling screams of pure terror.) I swiftly ran the broom over the line to remove cobwebs and then set about hanging the clothes.

That's when I saw them.

They coated the line for about an inch and a half or so, several hundred, tiny, round, SPIDER EGGS!!!! BLECH!!!! AAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Once I finished my obligatory "dance of disgust" (For the uninitiated, this involves a lot of hopping about and waving of arms with loads of creative sound effects to signify disgust) I considered my options.

1. Get tissue from the bathroom, wipe off eggs and flush them down the toilet.

2. Leave the backyard immediately. Lock the door and never step foot out there again. Consider clothes a sacrifice to the spider god.

3. Move.

Well, as tempting as numbers 2 and 3 were, I unfortunately love my house and the backyard is our amazing "No Cry/Anti Tantrum" Zone. Any tantrum, no matter how big, can be stopped by throwing the snot queen out back. It's like magic. Only better.

After a slightly longer and more involved "Dance of Disgust" I managed to rid the clothes line of the little unhatched beasties (eeeeeeeewwwww) my skin is actually crawling at the memory.

Patting myself on the back, I returned to the scene only to find the Snot Queen about to pick up what had to be the world's largest slug.

Right.

Whisking her under one arm, I grabbed the tiny one with the other and retreated to the inside.

Backyard time officially over for the morning.

P.S did I mention that our landlord paid a visit yesterday? While he was here, he rid the house of yet another MASSIVE spider and regalled me with tales of the SUPER COLONY of ants which used to reside outside our Utility Room Window and had to be BLASTED out. A veritable city of them, stretching waaaaaay underground.

I'm feeling weak.


Where the F@£k am I living?

Sometimes, I really miss the city.

Take it all off baby...

The snot queen has hit yet another developmental milestone. She can now take her nappy off ALL BY HERSELF. After much experimentation involving pulling of the velcro tabs and picking at the nappy itself, she has finally mastered the art of its full removal and like with every other new skill she develops, she is insisting on doing it again and again and again...

As she has long since had a deep fascination with foraging in this area, you can imagine how thrilled she is to finally be able to get a visual of the contents. Almost as thrilled as I was to find her examining said contents on the sitting room floor this morning.

I'll give you a moment to let that visual sink in.

Toilet training just got a whole lot closer...

My name is...

Oh God. I. Am. Mortified. Well, I was anyway. I've kind of gotten over it now so I suppose that for the sake of grammatical, political and all other types of correctness, I should really change that to " I WAS mortified."

A bit of background. About 6 months ago, myself and 3 other cash strapped mamas decided to split the extortionate cost of a year's membership to the local wildlife preserve. Now, while it clearly states on their website that this sort of behaviour is against the rules, they don't actually do much to enforce it. They don't put your pic on the card or anything and and when you go there, all you do is sign a clipboard and BOOM! you're in. To quote just about every teenager who ever walked the planet, "Everybody's doin' it"

And to quote my mother, "You're not everybody."

And therein lies the problem...

You see, I couldn't remember whether or not I was one of the official cardholders. HOWEVER, I did know that my friend "C" was, so on the off chance we were stopped at the gate, I'd just say that I was her. Not that it would come to that of course, after all no one EVER gets stopped at the gate...

We got stopped at the gate.

There were two checkpoints. One of them was being manned by your average, run of the mill "I'm not paid enough to care" employee. This line up was moving at a rapid pace as one by one, customers either paid the equivalent of a week's groceries for their family's animal viewing pleasure or else flashed their cards, signed the clipboard and waltzed off happily to watch cheetahs maul a poor dead rabbit before grabbing a bite to eat.

Meanwhile, over at border patrol... I mean, the other checkpoint, things were moving considerably slower as one by one, would be patrons were interrogated by a grim faced guard who I'm pretty sure was sourced directly from immigration and who, from the looks of things, took her job very seriously.

Guess which checkpoint we ended up at...

I flashed my card and my brightest "Just another Yummy Mummy out for the day with the family! Nothing illegal going on here!" smile and looked hopefully at the clipboard.

She narrowed her eyes.

"Last Name?"

Dammit. I took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eye as I gave her my fake last name.

She looked me up and down and then past me to himself who had refused to wear his summer jacket on the grounds that the sleeve was dirty and instead had insisted on wearing his winter coat, complete with fur lining despite the temperature being in the high teens. ummm... yeah. Not dodgy at all.

"Spell it." WHAT?!?!?

I rattled off the letters of my new last name with what I hoped was the boredom of someone who had been spelling the name for years. I again looked expectantly towards the clipboard.

"First Initial?"

A hint of indignation entered my voice. How DARE she question my identity! How did she know I wasn't who I said I was? I wasn't of course, but she didn't know that! Well, not for certain anyways, she apparently had very strong suspicions.

"C!"

"Full name as written on card?"

I gave my fake name and tried to keep the panic from showing in my voice. SURELY this was it! The people behind us were growing restless and you could almost see their ears straining forwards to hear what was going on. Would she not just grab the damn clip board already?!?!?!?
What else did she want to know? My date of Birth? My PPS Number? My favourite freakin' colour?

"And your address? "

Shit. My address.

"ummm.... I um... "

Desperately, I racked my brain, trying to remember "C"'s address.

"You see, it's just that we only just moved in..."

Oh my god! Were we about to get turfed from the park? Were they going to revoke our card?!?!?

THINK WOMAN!!!! THINK!!!! Wait! Wasn't there something about a bird? A crow or a.. a RAVEN! Yes that's it! Something about a raven!

"Raven something or other!" I exclaimed wildly, not sounding crazy in the slightest, " Yes that's it! Isn't it? Raven something! It's the first roundabout after the petrol station you see, you take a left and..."

She cut me off before I could give her explicit directions to "C's" front door and invite her in for tea. Her voice was patronizing as she explained the terms and conditions of using the season's pass and how only the cardholders "C" and Miss M....

WAIT A SECOND!!!!! Miss. M! THAT'S ME!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!! I AM ON THE CARD AFTER ALL!!!!!!

I adopted my best "between us girls" voice and leaned forward into the opening in the glass partition. My voice, I hoped, was suitably apologetic as I explained the situation and how I was only pretending to be "C" as I couldn't remember if I was on the card or not. I then proceeded to give my own address (the wrong one it turns out as we had in fact moved since getting the card) and various other unasked for and possibly too personal, details of my life.

Somewhere during my mindless rantings, right, I believe after volunteering to show her my id, the clipboard was placed in front of me. I signed my name and shamefacedly ushered my sorry looking crew through the gates.

Thankfully, she hadn't taken me up on my offer to show her my id. As it turns out, I'd left my wallet at home.

An Oldie But Goodie...

Whilst procrastinating doing any "real" work the other day, I came across this essay I wrote many, many moons ago at the tender age of fifteen. I was wise beyond my years...

Forever and Ever, A-Man

God is a man. After years of careful study and musch observation, I have come to believe that yes, our maker is indeed a member of that braindead, incoherant, ignorant species which has deemed itself superior. Why, you may ask? I'll give you three reasons: Pantyhose, PMS and Underwires.

Honestly, would any sane, self respecting woman, if given a choice,inflict such pain and emotional turmoil on her own species as PMS? I think not. IF men were subjected to just one gut wrenching, stomach bursting, excrutiatingly painful cramp, it wouldn't be long before menstrual leave days were put into place and made law.

How about pantyhose? I would love to meet the genious who thought those up. Sheer pieces of nylon used to slim, trim and shape every inch of the female anatomy, all for the visual pleasure of males. Siskel and Ebert give them two thumbs up. Thelma and Louise? Don't even go there. In my humble opinion, pantyhose are the number one cause of female stress. One small hitch and bang! Ladders up the leg! Do men have to worry about htis phenomenom? I don't think so.

For my final point, I'm dragging out the heavy artillery; the brassiere. When Christ said “My cups runneth over,” he didn't know what he was talking about! To me it makes no sense whatsoever. Why is it that the most sensitive area of the female body has been pushed, pulled, prodded, injected with silicon, deflated and to my chagrin, surrounded with wire? Please! The day that men walk around in jocks lined with barbed wire is the day I will think about offering debate as to the sex of the lord on high. A-Man.