Listmania 2

Well, as I look out the window today, it's hard to believe this is summer. After a night of wild weather, lots of rain and the temperature dropping to winter degrees, we've had to pull out the long sleeves and jackets.

My Listmania list today is all about the pros and cons of my summer in Melbourne. 

I found it hard to think of the pros of a Melbourne summer, or a summer in general. I don't like the heat and the heat doesn't like me. I become a whingy, sweaty pain in the bum. If I learn that the next day will be a scorcher I am already hot. It's hereditary - my grandma was a psychosomatic heat freak, too.

But I have found some shiny brightness to list as the good stuff anyway...

Pros:

Daylight savings. I love watching an orange sunset after a warm day at about half past eight at night, wine in one hand, baby in the other.

Enjoying Christmas outdoors. 2012 saw me host our first outdoor Christmas dinner on a beautiful day in our garden. Fairy lights overhead, swiping flies off the turkey and a lurking dog. An almost-Aussie Christmas, despite the traditionally hot food.

Kids on school holidays. Summer in Melbourne means loooong school holidays. I will be listing this one as a 'con' as well, but as a 'pro' it means no routine, sleeping in, staying in pj's longer and not rushing.

Dragonflies. I love dragonflies. Around our yard in summer I love to watch them dart about, stopping to hover in front of you as though they are examining you, and then darting away. Magic little alien pods.

Smell of the beach. After a scorcher of a day, and as the cooler night air starts to roll in, so does the smell of the beach of Port Philip Bay. It reminds me of my childhood.

The beach. My kids want to go to the beach. We live near the beach. I hate the beach. The beach is a scary place for me to watch five kids from 9 months to 13 years by myself. However, I have listed it as a pro, because I could lie on the beach all day and listen to the waves roll in, the seagulls overhead and other people's children playing happily in the sand. My kids would just scream.


Tennis. The Australian Open in Melbourne. Love a day out there without the kids. Sadly I missed out this year - because of the kids.

Storms. There is nothing sexier than a thunderstorm after a hot day.








Cons:

Daylight savings. The sun gets up too early and sets too late + My kids get up too early and go to bed too late = I get up too early and go to bed even later.

Too hot and sweaty. I'm a big chick. I don't dig the heat. Especially 42 degree heat. I have trouble beyond 25 degrees. Summer in Melbourne can mean a couple of stupid hot days in a row, followed by Antarctic weather. Airconditioning can only work so well.

Spiders. The Huntsman, Red Backs, Orbs and White Tails. We always know when summer has arrived here when we catch a glimpse of an arachnid outstretched between the trees. Or on the fence. Or on the wall watching you go to the toilet.

Kids on school holidays. From just before Christmas to the end of January is a bloody long time to entertain kids. Kids get bored too quickly and many places to visit are either too expensive for all of us to go to or not age-appropriate for someone at one end of the birth-order spectrum. In my day we made our own fun by dressing up our cats or pushing billycarts without brakes down steep driveways. In my day...

Writing these lists has been quite therapeutic. I've been feeling a bit down lately and this has been a great way to reflect on the little things that have made me smile over time but were long forgotten. Don't forget to have a look at other Listmaniac's lists, by clicking on the link up the top. Let me know if you start one, too. I'd love to have a peek.

43 Freaking Days

Oh my God! It's wonderful! Sniffle, sniffle. Wipe away tears. Bloody wonderful!

It's the last day of the Victorian School holidays for my kids! I can't believe it's finally here. And boy, how those 43 days just flew by...

Nooooo.

I've been reading through friends' Facebook posts of beautiful and sometimes teary stories of their youngsters returning, or beginning, school. Lovely photos of tidy uniforms, rows of bags and homemade lunchbox treats. That's not me.

Tonight, as I count down the hours until Big Grade Six Girl returns to class, I have jobs to do. Jobs that I'll admit I've been a little delayed in doing. With Ella just settling in bed after several curtain calls to remind me to wake her at 6 (WTF?) and to iron her school dress (again, WTF? - in her six years of primary school I have never ironed her uniform, and I do not intend to start now. You will not teach this old dog new tricks) I have decided the most important thing I could be doing with my time now is to blog. You are welcome.

I should have learned from last year's 11pm run to Kmart. My nearest store is open until midnight and is specifically designed for mums like me. We walk through the store with purpose, make-up-less and daggy, heading directly for those last minute first-day-of-school purchases. This would be a great place to meet likeminded mums who are just as crap as I am at getting their shiz together. However, we all walk fast, heads bowed, eyes bleary, moccasins shuffling on the vinyl floor determined not to make eye contact as we race for the checkout before they lock us in there overnight. 

I'm proud to say I will not be doing the Kmart run tonight.

Instead, I will be finding matching, or close-enough-to-be-matching, socks, lengthening a school dress (which will probably not even be worn tomorrow as she'll change her mind, again) and labelling brand new lunch boxes and drink bottles. My bad - I forgot to clean out the lunch boxes from last year and they were stashed in a box of 'hide for Christmas' stuff until now. I didn't have the courage to open them. I just threw them away. Shudders.  

I had Ella empty her own school bag this afternoon. In front of me. So I can see first hand how she 'emptied' it at the end of the last school year without me present. Needless to say, the ghosts of bananas and ham and cheese sandwiches of terms past that had been fermenting in the summer heat, are still haunting my nose. Apparently it was my fault. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and just emptied it for her in December. I'm terrified of what might lurk in Campbell's bag. I know it's not school work.

You'd think that with my excitement to have them return to school I would have had them all packed and ready the first day of January. So would I. I just can't figure myself out somedays. But here we are, 10 hours before school starts, and I can't fucking wait. It's not that I don't love having them around. I just don't love having them around all the time. But after 43 freaking days, Mummy needs her sanity back and maybe her ears will stop ringing from the competitive shouting from dawn to dusk. 

Forget the Tea and Tissues morning at school - who's up for a Wine and a Whine at ten past nine tomorrow morning?

56 days until the end of Term.

Facebook - a place where stalkers meet.

29 Days & Counting

It is Day 11 of school holidays and I'm ready to return to full time work in another country, another time zone with no phone/email/smoke signal distance from the hatchlings. Not that I'm counting the days. But I am.

School finished four days before Christmas, and from the moment the school bell rang and Ella exited the school, I was faced with an 11 year old saying she would be soooooo bored if she didn't have anyone to be with. "I'm someone to be with," I had said. "Nooooo. I mean a real person. Someone fun. Someone interesting."

Oh.

Being the imaginary, boring and dull parent that I am, and remembering the state of my house that resembled a hard-rubbish collection that was not fit for human or rodent, I had said 'No' to entertaining extras that day. Ella explained to her friend standing with her that I 'don't try' to keep the house clean (Hello - in earshot) and that it makes me 'feel uncomfortable' (still here, listening) when people come over and I haven't tidied. Her friend turned to me and said, "That's ok, really. I don't mind if you have a dirty house. You have too many children to keep it clean." 

Ok, 1: It's not dirty, per se, it's untidy. Distinct difference.
      2: I don't have too many children, per se, I have five
          overindulged children who need to pull their heads 
          from their bums and help out more.
and c: I don't care. You're not coming over. Period. 

I know of families with one child who have a housekeeper or a cleaner who comes in once a week. I'd love that, but I'd be more stressed the day before he or she came, desperately cleaning the house from top to bottom so he or she wouldn't thinking we're pigs. Yesterday, a good friend came over and caught me by surprise when he walked in, stepping carefully over the toys, dress-ups, bits of toast, pencils and playdough to get to my kitchen. I accept full responsibility for my kitchen's condition. All I could do was hold my hands to my head, anxiety fluttering in my chest, and hope - no prayed - that he wouldn't need the bathroom. My husband, Tim, recognised the panic in me, and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. This will take me weeks to get over. Pathetic - I know, but that's me.

Being the imaginary, boring and dull parent that I am, I was told again today that it was soooo boring here, with nothing to do and nobody to do something with. Ella slumped over the table and sighed, "You don't know how boring the school holidays can be, Mum." 

Holy shit. This is going to be a very long five weeks. 

29 days to go...


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Go forth & be educated

With a tear in my eye I write this post.

It is the last day of the Victorian school holidays and my eldest two must return to their institutions.

There goes my labour force.

While many mums love the two weeks they can spend with their spawn, the idea of two weeks - two whole weeks - with my lot douses me in a hot irritable sweat that begins the week before the term break has even started. Other school holidays have left me rocking in a corner in foetal position, my left eye twitching. Why would these holidays be any different?

I'm glad you ask. These holidays were different because I'm now a smart mum. It occurred to me that I have a valuable commodity - on-site babysitters. My eldest two cherubs could 'babysit' the twins while Mummy helped Scarlett have a nap. In Mummy's bed. With Mummy. For a couple of hours. 

I even outsourced them to my sister.

One thing I didn't count on was running out of antidepressants towards the end of the first week. Including the middle weekend, I would be off my meds for 4 days before I could get to see my doctor for a new prescription of happy pills. The kids had the chance to run but they didn't. Poor wretched things. Didn't know what hit them.

But with school going back in only a few hours I'm faced with the harrowing reality of being with Grace and Lily. 

They scare me more than school holidays. 


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