Who knew!

No.2, Tween and Mate sitting in lounge room talking about farting (what else, lol!). Mate remarks that his mum farts. Sounds of amazement from Tween and No.2. "Girls don't fart!' said Tween. 'Yes they do!...Well, my mum does.' said Mate. 'Oh' was the reply.

Enough said.

Continued on from yesterday...
DH replied - thanked me for being honest, said that he was glad that he know knew where things were with us, said that he didn't hold a grudge (*cough, cough*), and hoped I would find happiness in the future. Then said that we would deal with it all when he got home and announced that he would like to take the boys on a long road trip not long after he gets back.

Well. Ok then.

I guess that is that.

Why am I feeling so emotional then?

I am going away tomorrow and I am more glad than ever that I have booked myself into a swish hotel with a spa, bought myself a nice dress and plan to have a good time at my friends wedding. I will toast the beginning of their marriage, and the end of mine. Touche.

The beginning of the end

of my marriage. Or had it already ended? Well, I think for me it had, but for DH, well, not quite. He emailed again and talked about spending more time with the boys when he came home and how he and I had some big communication issues and things were pretty messy between us and what did I think?

I wrote this...
I have already said that I don't really think this is a conversation for email, but I guess it means we don't have to look at each other and you clearly want to know what I think.

Personally I think that you have been the same person for the 9 years I have known you, no matter what has been said or done, and I don't think that is going to change. It is easy to think that things can be different when you are so far away, I have done that myself in the past. But come home and we will all slowly slip back into the same old same old, because trying to do more than that is just too hard, or goes against the natural grain (as you mentioned).

I don't think I knew you all that well when I pushed us into a relationship, and I still didn't know you all that well when we married because I had this crazy idea of not living together beforehand. If you recall, we didn't really live together before you left for the navy either, we had not long before decided to give it another go. But it seems that we go better together when we are apart. I don't think any marriage should be like that.

Do I think we can bounce back from this mess. No. Not this time. Too much anger, too much disappointment, too many unmet needs, too many differences.

You wanted to know where we stand? The speed hump is a mountain and my boots have holes in them.

When we talked about our problems in the past I would refer to them as 'speed humps', because we usually managed to get over them. DH asked me once (not long before he left, so lots of anger floating around) if I had ever thought about leaving and I was honest and said 'yes, every time we hit a speed hump.' I don't think he expected that answer, I think he expected me to say 'Don't be stupid' or something to that effect. But, as I said, this time I think the speed hump is too big.

So I have actually committed to 'The End'. I wish I could have a happy ending like they do in fairy tales.

I am afraid of the future.

I finished reading 'before i die' by Jenny Downham for the second time (awesome YA book, totally recommend it). I cried again and it left me feeling emotional all afternoon.

Baking

I have been baking.

This is what I made...

Pretty yummo, hey? Want the recipe? Here it is...

1 tin condensed milk

3 cups of dry whatever

mix together and put in greased and lined tray (or if you have Tupperware you can line it, or not). DO NOT TASTE TEST THE MIX! If you do there will not be enough left when you have finished testing to make anything with. You do have the option of putting teaspoonfuls of the mix onto a tray instead of making a slice. Stick in moderate oven for about 15 minutes. When it is a nice brown around the edges take out of oven (that is why I said ABOUT 15 minutes) and leave to cool. Slice.

Okay, so I can hear you saying 'what on earth is dry whatever?' Well, it is whatever you have in your cupboard. The first time I made this I had half a cup of dessicated coconut, one and a half cups of rolled oats and half a cup of cornflakes (crushed a bit). The next time I made it I had half a cup of dessicated coconut, half a cup of sultanas, a cup of shredded coconut and one cup of rolled oats. I also made it with a mix of a total 3 cups of dessicated and shredded coconut (this one I did as spoonfuls on a tray). This time I had one cup of rolled oats, one cup of shredded coconut, and one cup of rice bubbles (and some hundreds and thousands for on top).

VERY YUMMY

I am going to make the version with just coconut and condensed milk for christmas presents. I will wrap the 'biscuits' in pretty paper and ribbons.

Check out this blog. I think you may have noticed that I like parenting blogs, this is a good one.

It has been an eventful few days. Tween was diagnosed with a middle ear infection on Friday. The two boys played their soccer games on Saturday and both won. Tween moves on to play in the Grand Final! Woo Hoo!! Toddler turned 2 on Saturday. On Sunday No.2's right side of his face was all swollen and he had a temp. Took him to the dentist on Monday and they had to pull the offending tooth out because of infection. He is feeling much better today and the swelling has almost disappeared. He was very brave at the dentist. I was happy to pay the dollars to see him happier.

phew, that is enough.

I am off to a wedding this weekend, I will get photos of me looking glam!

I had an interesting email from DH today, that I wanted to share, but I am having trouble logging onto my email account, grrrr. Anyway, he acknowledged that our relationship is in a pretty bad way and that he would like to work on it.

He acknowledges the fact that he spends very little time with us as a family and that he watches alot of tv, he talked about activities he could do with the boys and activities that he would like to do himself, and he would do some housework every day, and (he said) surely that would mean he could watch some tv at the end of it. After writing that I realised that he is using the tv/kids as a bargaining tool. If he does this, then he should get that. Is this okay? It''s like with the money he has saved while he has been away, he says, well I have done this (worked), so I should get that (large screen tv, PS3, etc).

I didn't reply to the email. I needed to go away and think about it and investigate my feelings again.

Do I dare get my hopes up? - so many times I have hoped and been disappointed. It stems right back to when we met, when I sat by the phone waiting for him to call when he said he would (and didn't), to more recently, when I hoped for respect for the job I do as a working parent. Am I wrong to have had any expectations at all?

Can I really be bothered? - my head is saying 'no', my heart is full of wishes. I never wanted to have a failed marriage, but I honestly think that I made the wrong choice when I pursued a relationship with him in the first place, and then accepted him back after we had split for a while. In 9 years he has not changed, and I won't be asking him to, since that will mean he will have to be untrue to himself. He says he wants to makes some changes, but perhaps it is too little, too late.

Would I be staying for the right reasons? - by that I mean - do I love him? Do I respect him? Do I enjoy his company? Do I trust him? Unfortunately at this point in time I have to say 'no' to all of those questions. That makes me really sad. I can see that if I stayed with him it would be - for the kids, so I could keep my job in Sydney, so I could stay in this nice house in a nice suburb, in Sydney. Those are not good reasons. The kids are adaptable, as long as they know they are loved and accepted I think they will be ok. I would miss my job alot, but there are other jobs out there, and other towns with nice suburbs. *sigh*

I never wanted to have this conversation with him via email, and he knows that, And now I feel like I am being put on the spot because he wants to know where he stands when he gets home.

Got to start somewhere

Today I committed to the possibility of getting some exercise this year (god forbid!). Seriously, I registered to join a social women's cricket team. Ok, those of you who know me can stop laughing now. please.

Look, I like Cricket, I really do. Not fussed on watching five day matches, but the one dayers always get me excited (in between housework and baking, of course). My DH has probably fallen off his seat laughing and having alot of difficulty imagining me playing cricket. Well, after all, I resemble this...


Actually, if you google pumpkin images there are some really neat ones, like this...
and this...

Anyway, I have to start with something, and if it is an organised sport, then I have to turn up. It is an easy version of normal cricket and should be a good introduction to the sport. The season starts in October.

Today I discovered that if you want to teach your child to catch, use balloons! They drift through the air slowly enough that the child has time to react and catch them. Toddler and I had a lovely game of catch using a balloon.

The balloons were left over from his birthday party yesterday. He is now 2 years old. We just had a couple of friends and family over to celebrate, it was a pleasant afternoon.


Toddlers new words are - kick, awick (warwick), who's this, mine. Of course there is more that I am not remembering right now.

Bus = boyfriends!?

I am amazed at how my brain works sometimes, and how it can jump around all over the place.

Today I saw a bus. It got me thinking about old boyfriends! Which got me thinking about my first boyfriend, which got me looking at the types of boys I chose a boyfriends, which got me thinking about how some of them had turned out! All because of a bus…

I was surprised to realise that my first three boyfriends were short and blond, much like my husband. I had this perception of myself always being interested in tall, dark, and delicious, but clearly, after some thought, that is not so.

My first two boyfriends were in primary school. I don’t know where either of them ended up. Number three was in my first year of high-school, he was three years older and thought himself madly in love with me…for a whole week! Even bought me a gorgeous little ring. He ended up covered in tattoos and a house-painter (with a thing for fishing). I thought he was rather sweet when I was with him and I was devastated when he dumped me (I was rather young and his mates were giving him a hard time about it). I had a couple of momentary boyfriends later that year, I recall being a bit of a bitch about it. I wish I could remember more, actually, as the memories are very dim, blips on the radar.

I remember a couple of crushes I had. One boy I played chasies with (with him and other friends), but we never ‘went out’ together. He was a fun kid, from a rough home. He ended up being a druggie with a few kids. His partner was a girl I had gone to school with too, nice enough, just a bit rough around the edges. Another boy I had liked sat up the other end of ‘my’ verandah with his mates. They were a couple of years older and very full of their own self-importance (except for the one I liked, he was shy and quiet). I asked him out a couple of times and he would blush and refuse and then I would hassle him about why not, lol. He ended up a police man in the big town nearby.

I was very forward in my second year of high-school. My first year was spent finding my place, who my friends would be, where I fit in with everyone else. I wasn’t a loser, but I wasn’t too far from it either. I hung out with girls who were like me, a little shy, not so confident, a bit different in their hobbies (we weren’t surfie chicks, and living in a coastal town that put us definitely in the out crowd straight off). One of the girls is still my friend, twenty years later (we were friends in primary school too).

I came into my own in my second year of high school. I looked good physically – I had filled out a bit, got my hair done nicely, got contacts instead of glasses, the package was pretty good. I look at photos of that time and wish I had managed to look after myself better in the following years, because even I think I was pretty damn cute. I had also grown in confidence. I was working in my family’s fruit and veg shop, so had gotten used to talking to people, I had managed to attract a bit of interest from boys, and I had friends who knew and accepted me. What more could a girl want. However, I made a choice at that point in time that was to put me in a completely different direction.

Over the holidays before my second year I had met and started dating a tall, dark, and cute boy who was 4 years older. He worked in the shop next door, had quit school and was training to become a baker. He was very cute. I was surprised my mother and her partner allowed the relationship because I was only 13 and he was 17. Later it turned out that my mother had allowed my relationship with this boy/man and his family as a way to get out of her relationship and the town we were in. How? Well, she didn’t like her relationship and when she found out that my boyfriends family were moving out west and a good distance away from where we were she convinced them to help her move out there as well (in secret, in the middle of the night, when my stepfather was away fishing). Now, I don’t recall life with my stepdad being all that bad. He was a firm disciplinarian and had a bit of a temper, but if you knew how to handle him he wasn’t an issue. I loved living on a farm and didn’t mind working in the shop and I wasn’t aware of my mother being unhappy (but really, what teenager notices their parents lives?). So perhaps things were bad. My mother found a way to leave and that was that.

A few months after we left she started trying to stop my relationship with D and his family. I guess that she had got what she wanted and had decided that it was inappropriate for us to be together after all. Um...bit late now! I was now hooked into a relationship with someone who made me feel all the things my mother didn’t have the time or energy for – I was wanted, loved, thought about. Mind you, it wasn’t perfect; he was controlling and jealous. I did try to break up with him at one stage after my mother had moved us again, to a large town close by, but he convinced me to stay. So what was the choice I made? After going to three high schools in 6 months, and feeling completely unwanted by my family, I decided to leave home. I ran away to a big city and lived with a member of my boy friends family. I sent a letter home telling my mother I was fine. That was the last contact I had with her for 3 years. I left because I felt it was the only choice I had. It turned out I was pregnant (I was 14 years old, so that was not a good thing). D and I set up home in a country town and stayed there for the next few months, waiting for baby. My partner, by this stage, had grown even more controlling, to the extent where he would have me come to work with him (as a baker he worked nights) and I would sleep in the back of his car in an alley, so he could check up on me.

Bub arrived (a boy) six weeks early. We enjoyed him for a while, enjoyed being parents, until he contracted meningitis and we discovered what hell on earth felt like as we watched him die. He actually died the week he was due, so I am grateful for the weeks that we had with him. I think our situation could have been avoided to some extent if we had family nearby, but because I was ‘in hiding’ and a minor, we had to be well away from both our parents. It left us very isolated and completely unsupported. Our relationship deteriorated and became emotionally, and at times physically, violent.

When I turned 16 we moved back to his parents home, my mother had moved on to another town by this stage, so we felt comfortable being there. After he found work in the big town we set up home there. We had the bare essentials, and it amazes me now how little we had. I was miserable though. I was scared to watch cartoons in case he got upset, I never went anywhere without him and he controlled all money. It got to the point where I had to leave and so I did, I packed a bag and went to the nearest youth refuge. Fours years after our relationship had begun, I was getting away. I started back at school and could see a future for myself. I stayed at the refuge for four months, then decided to return to my partner for a couple of months. He started seeing someone else while I was back, so we made the decision to split and I went back to the refuge. None of this was easy. I was 17 years old and had already had a lifetime of experiences that no-one should have.

And I was pregnant.

I discovered this after D and I had split finally. I told him and he made it clear he was not, and never would be, interested in this baby. His family, on the other hand, were, and were supportive of me to some extent. They had seen first hand D lash out at me, and had tried to intervene on my part a few times. But he was their baby boy, and ultimately they were never going to choose me over him. They were there for the birth of my son and they gave me some emotional support before and after and that was enough for me. I found myself a little apartment and settled in to life with my little boy.

Hmmm, didn’t I start out just having a general thought about my boyfriends? Where did this saga come from?

I spent 3 and a half years pretty much alone. I moved towns and lived with my best friend when she started uni. I completed high school by correspondence and got into uni into a degree that has almost nothing to do with what I am doing now. I had one short lived fling with a delicious Italian who drove buses (which is what got me started tonight in the first place, seeing a bus and thinking about him, lol), he couldn’t handle the age gap and the fact I had a small child (he was about 10 years older and had grown children). I kept pretty much to myself. Even though I was having a small social life with my girl friends and flat mates, there just didn’t seem to be any men interested in me. Sometimes I felt a little overshadowed by my very pretty friend, since I certainly wasn’t quite as cute as I was 5 or 6 years previously.

This is when I met DH.

His ex-girlfriend introduced us. When I was first getting to know my husband he was studying at a technical college to be a Teacher's aide. He was the first bloke to show even a glimmer of real interest in me in a long time, and I grabbed on to that and held on. Oops, my mistake.

Read a rant here, lol, but only if you want to.

These days I find I prefer admiring the tall, dark, and yummy types again. Especially ones in fireman/policeman uniform, lol.

What makes us select our mates? Is it desperation, pheromones, lust? What is the motivation for pursuing an unhealthy relationship? Fear of the unknown, lack of self confidence, lack of choices? How do you know when you have found a 'keeper'?

His presence was felt

There was an storm this afternoon that only the Almighty could have produced (not that anyone/thing else could be responsible for storms, it was just that this one was pretty full-on). It hit around 2.30pm and only lasted for a couple of hours. At one stage I was standing in the supermarket opposite Toddler's daycare when we (other customers and I) heard an massive bang and it felt like the floor rocked for a second. A light fitting came loose from the ceiling and was hanging by some wires. Apparently lightning struck an antennae on the roof of the building. What I saw of the lightning (when I wasn't hiding in the shopping centre) was beautiful and frightening at the same time.

Feeling a little sorry for myself today. I went to the dentist today to discuss a tooth that has been giving me grief for some time and he decided it needed to come out. I was actually very happy about this as it keeps getting infected and painful. So out it came! I now have a molar sized gap in my mouth. No pain as yet, even though the anaesthetic has worn off, I have stocked up on painkillers just in case. It did bleed an awful lot though, it has really only sttled down in the last half hour, 5 hours after I had it out. I don't know how vampires can do it, you know, drink blood, it tastes pretty gross to me and it has made me feel nauseous.

Been working my fingers to the bone at work the last couple of days, rearranging shelving and books in the kids section. I will be glad when I have finished.

Blogs for today...
A couple struggling with infertility issues, Xbox4NappyRash is written by the husband

Through the Looking Glass is a blog by a mum struggling with everyday issues like so many of us.

what's a mum to do?

I have a stunning picture as my desktop at the moment. I wish I could say that I had taken it, but I didn't, I got it from here. Well, I actually got it from this blog, which has so many gorgeous photos that it is actually hard to pick one. I stand in awe of the moments these people have captured.

Well, tonight was supposed to be Parent/Teacher night, but for me it did not happen. It was a drop in set-up, from 5pm to 7pm. Well that was my first grrrr, because I don't finish work till 5pm, by the time I collect all the kids it is usually 5.45, and they are starving and refuse to be temporarily sated with a drink of water and a mini bag of popcorn. No...must have dinner NOW! Which is why you find me cooking almost as soon as I set foot in the door.

Anyway, so the time it was on was a bit iffy for me, and this was exacerbated by my sudden desire to rearrange the children's area, organising that event for this Tuesday night, before coming to the horrifying realisation that I had double booked myself and wasn't prepared to let go of either.

*sigh*

SO I raced out of work, picked the kids up in record time, made it to the school by 5.45pm, to find a loooong queue of parents. My precious angels were already squabbling (perfect description), I was stressed because I was on a tight time schedule, and frustrated at the ridiculousness of having to wait in line with a toddler when, if they had set up a booking system, I could have had my set 5 or 10 minutes, been in and out and been done with it. Not helped by the fact that the picked venues were practically inaccessible for my Toddler's stroller, and no way was I letting Toddler loose! I looked at the queue, I looked at my kids, I looked at my watch, and I turned and walked out. Got back to work to find the job half done already (yay Jennifer!!), finished it off in record time and was home by 7pm.

I am annoyed that I didn't get to talk to my Tween's teachers, I really wanted some feedback from them that extended beyond the sameness they write in his report. I had a discussion with Tween about his report...

Me: So what's going on in your classes that you are distracted and talking?
Tween: I just wanna talk to my mates. But T** keeps talking and mucking around and I get in trouble cos I tell him to shut up
Me: hmmmm (disbelieving it is all T**'s fault).
Tween...plus I'm bored
Me: what, are you stupid? (this got a laugh from Tween, which is what I meant to happen). Is that why your classes are no good.
Tween: no, they just are (seriously, this is like me saying 'just because' when they ask me why I said no). Even English is (which he is good at and his teacher apparently thinks very highly of him).

*sigh*

What do I do? I told him his behaviour is his responsibility and he needs to make the choice to get his work done and muck around outside the classroom (the usual good mummy routine). I find him hard to relate to where school is concerned because I enjoyed it (mostly). I don't want him to screw up this early on. How do I motivate him (bribery does not work)?

On another, cmpletely unrelated note....

I am excited! My washing machine works again! It was a ten minute job for the repairman, there was a hair band (shame on me) jamming things up.