Why we only watch one episode at a time!

I have a very active imagination. If you think Ally McBeal without the neurotic self interest, you're kind of on the right track. My brain is forever putting a strange slant and a technicolour luminescence onto the ordinary things I see every day. I personally blame Roald Dahl. I read that man's books so often growing up that he actually moved in, became my inner monologue and never left. Mr Dahl is why I have that special knack with metaphors.

Roald aside, my over-active imagination doesn't need a lot of stimulus to shift my brain into a different gear. For example, if I watch enough episodes of one particular television show, my brain starts living in that particular world. This is one reason why I am limited to a maximum of two Scrubs episodes a day - I associate far too well with Perry Cox and in real life cutting monologues just make people cry.

When I went through my Buffy phase there was a whole three month period of my life where I couldn't go out after dark because I would almost have a panic attack because I was so convinced that I was going to be leapt upon by some fell beastie. Then there was the X-files phase...same concept, different type of beastie. House was worse...every weird tingle was some unusual form of terminal cancer pressing into an interesting part of my brain. Neurotically speaking, I peaked with "Dexter". The concept of living with a man who was secretly a sociopathic serial killer at odds with the rest of society cut a little too close to home (read my husband's blog yet? It's a curious mix of angst, anarchy and other things starting with "A". Check it out at http://seekingxen.blogspot.com/ Be warned, it's much darker than anything you'll read here.)

Aside from the interesting impacts on the way I view my world, watching a bunch of episodes of one show all at once also gives you a glaring insight into the fact that almost every TV show is formulaic. Spread out with one episode per week you don't really notice. Crashed all into a day and they're annoyingly repetitive. See if I'm wrong;

The Simpsons; Homer is an ass, Marge is doubting and yet subservient, Bart is naughty, Lisa is angsty and Maggie is almost as vapid as Santa's Little Helper. Homer will run afoul of either Flanders or Mr Burns, Bart will run afoul of Skinner or Nelson, Lisa will agonise.

Sex and the City: Carrie is the most annoying, whiny swizzle stick on the planet and is pretty much responsible for all of the drama in her life. Originally, when I was watching this one on a week-to-week basis, I thought Mr Big treated her terribly. Then I watched a whole season and realised that actually, he was just trying to have a good time with what appeared to be a sane, hot chick and it turned out that she was a neurotic stalker-type psycho. Every new season was pretty much that theme on a loop against a backdrop of various men.

Supernatural; Dean, stop being so immature and Sam, quit whining.

Medium; Alison will have a premonition. Everyone - especially her husband - will doubt her, but she'll be proven right in the end and he will eat crow.

NCIS: Some horribly obscure crime will be related to the Navy, Gibbs will butt heads with some other agency, Abby will be gothic, cool, nerdy and clingy all at once, at some point Gibbs will get to hit, shoot or glare at something... yeah...you get the drift.

Voila. I bet I can do that for almost every show on television. Anyone else had their favourite show reduced to a formula after watching too much of it?

From little seeds tall trees grow

Tonight I did my most hated of tasks on the domestic schedule. I sorted through my baby's clothes and packed away the ones that are too little. Most people think I rank about the same on the emotional warmth scale as plankton. It's true, not much can reduce me to a jellied mess - I'm slightly cynical about most things. But get me to pack away a baby jumpsuit that my little man wore hours after he was born and which will now not even fit on his giant melon head as a weird hat and I am a wreck. Even while the little guy grins and squints up into my face shouting "a-ya-ya-ya-YA-YA".

The only thing that gets me through it is knowing that the next likely candidate for those little clothes will be another Jenny-Chris masterpiece. Cousin Chloe gets about in Charlotte's clothes quite a bit (Jenny inherited EVERYTHING of Charlotte's and, happily, she actually uses it) and it is enormously satisfying to see those things getting about on a little person that we all adore so completely. Far more satisfying than dropping them into a Salvos bin. I take comfort that one day they will have a little sprout of their own who can gad about in the super-cute overalls we bought for James. But still there are tears.

This is not a new phenomenon. I cried every time I did the clothing sort with Charlotte. You'd think I'd be over it by now. But I still cry every time I have to do it for James. Charles caught me at it once and the look he gave me indicates that he clearly thinks I'm mental. As a father he's thrilled that his offspring are growing by the second and for him, there's just nothing tocry about.

This time it's worse because in all likelihood he will be my last baby. Charles and I always agreed that two children was the right number. We think it's financially responsible, environmentally responsible...and aside from all that responsibility there is the niggling thought at the base of my skull that one more baby will actually kill me.

Still, tonight over dinner, when Charles casually mentioned that he thought it was time to arrange a delicate snip to ensure there are no further offspring, I felt the rise of panic. His eyebrows shot up in total disbelief. "You want another one?"

"Ygnooooo..... But what if we change our minds later?"

Charles' expression left me in no doubt that "we" will not change our minds - he firmly believes I'm the only one who would (and he's almost certainly correct). It's interesting because, while I love my kids, I really, really don't want any more. I'm happy with the way things are - I ride the knife edge of insanity quite comfortably - I manage to wrangle, not strangle - and I am almost 100% certain that we're operating at the safe working load limit for my maternal machinery. Any more pressure and gaskets will start to blow.

So why all the angst? Frankly I'm blaming the biological clock. There is no logical reason at all to have another baby. I don't want another baby. Another baby would probably sink my career, our finances and our marriage. And yet some horrible part of my brain, which appears to be impervious to logic and reasoning, whispers "why not have just one more?" As soon as the technology is developed, I will have this traitorous group of rebel synapses excised neatly. In the meantime I'll probably go along with Charles' plans to take permanent steps to end the debate just to spite those wretched little brain cells. But I doubt I'll ever stop crying as I pack away those teeny weeny clothes...

How clean is your house?

I am convinced that once you have kids you've got two choices. Either you've got time for fun and parenting or you've got time to have a clean house. I'm thoroughly convinced that you can't do both. I've mentioned before my "essentials plus one" cleaning theory. I'm devoted to it because it is the absolute limit of my cleaning capacity and it maintains a perfect balance between sanity and appearing on the Foxtel "Hoarders" series. My mother in law claims that having a clean house is all about having "processes that work". For us the only process that would give us a clean house would involve four brand new shock collars and special dispensation from DOCS and the domestic violence network to use them for "reprogramming" purposes.

Today I cleaned our bathroom. It's only been two weeks since the last time it had a thorough clean but it is a perfect example of why there's no point trying to institute processes. Charlotte has the largest rubber duck collection known to four-year-old-kind. It is extensive, colourful and every single one of them is full of black mould. They have their own bucket - which I religiously put them into almost every single day - and yet the rubber ducky migration patterns continue. They are determined to make it into the central-heated-enabled hallway for the winter. The black mould infestation also resists my attempts to oust it. Charlotte will die of bleach poisoning before the mould succumbs to my manic ministrations of White King. We've talked over the possibility of allowing the ducks to move on to a new life (at the bottom of a landfill) and Charlotte has made it clear that this will cost me a lot in therapy later in life. So the ducks stay.

Then there's the mouth wash. In theory Charles and I are the only ones that use it but somehow there is forever a puddle of congealed evil-smelling green. Sometimes, for variety, the puddle manages to super glue a bobby pin or two to the surface of the vanity. If I'm lucky I'll notice it before the rust stain sets into the porcelain. How the rust can permeate the green when it takes me and my good pal Easy-off BAM a solid ten minutes of soaking followed by a frenzied bout of scrubbing remains a domestic mystery.

There are other bathroom horrors, too many and too disgusting to list here, but I always find myself mentally checking my dates to make sure it's only been two weeks since the last clean. Clearly there is a weird warp in the space time continuum that allows six months of soap scum to accumulate over a mere two weeks in my bathroom.

While we're on the subject of domestic matters, I should note that since I mentioned the "essentials plus one" method in my blog it seems that a number of you have adopted it with great success. It would be enormously ironic if I became associated with a cleaning movement that sweeps the nation (haha "sweeps" the nation, get it? - boom tish!). The E+1 (catchy, no?) method seems to work for the time-strapped domestic goddesses among us. Anyway, the positive reaction I've been getting has been enormously encouraging and I've been more diligent than ever in my attempts to achieve this goal. The results have been amazingly good. I seem to be slowly clawing my way forward in the domestic cleanliness stakes.

My Dad used to say that life is full of "have to dos" and "want to dos" and that it's important to make sure that the "have to dos" get done first so you can enjoy the "want to dos". Remember as you go through life that "have to dos" shouldn't always be about your chore list. Sometimes the most important "have to dos" aren't chores at all. So, with a nod to my Dad's domestic rules, I'd like to say that I "want" to have a clean house - but I "have" to be a good Mum. And that probably has more to do with the migrating ducks than the build-up of soap scum. Remember what's important folks - it's not always about the shiny clean surface.

Happy Mothers Day

Most of the loves in our lives are conditional. Few are constant and unfailing. Our parents are often the only people who will love us no matter what we do. And so often we forget to appreciate them while they are here. It's not until that foundation of love is gone from our lives that we suddenly realise how unstable we are without it.

My mother was a study in maternal love. For birthdays she would let us choose which cake we wanted out of the Woman's Weekly children's cake book and then it would magically appear at our party. She would sew the most amazing dresses for my ballet concerts and even made me a white, frilly party dress when I was six and had outgrown my pink one. Later, when we moved to the farm she would keep us at home when it snowed and we would spend the day outside making snowmen followed by hot chocolates inside in front of the fire. Our birthdays were always special days, tinsel decorating our place at the dining table, the dinner of our choice, and fun activities all over town. I can still remember the warmth of cuddles in bed with her (she was not a morning person)...I can even remember her smell.

When I was four my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The lump in her breast was so large by that time that I had told her in the shower one day that it was getting bigger. She'd been to doctors about it from the day she'd first found it. Every single one of them had turned her away without ever conducting any tests. You're too young for breast cancer. It's probably because you're still breast feeding your son - he's one now and too old for that. I am still filled with unholy rage about this. If I think about it for too long hot tears of rage spill over and I can feel my anger raging like black thunderclouds boiling through my head. Their cavalier attitude and glib dismissals cost her everything.

She died on a bright January day when I was ten. It was two weeks before my brother's eighth birthday.

Throughout my life I've had days of deep depression when I can't even get out of bed because I miss her so badly and nothing makes the pain better. I've always felt so angry because I didn't have the chance to know my Mum beyond a maternal figure - to grow up and become friends and share adult secrets. I envy mothers and daughters shopping in the mall, meeting for lunches and giggling over coffees. I'll never know what that's like.

When I was pregnant with my own daughter I was overjoyed to find a new connection with my Mum. I realised that I was probably feeling a lot of the things she felt when she was pregnant and suddenly I began to understand her and see her in a whole new light. When Charlotte was born I felt even closer to her and it was easy to imagine, as I struggled through those first few months, how she must have struggled too. I needed her badly then and the pain was fresh again. But it was finally touched with the soothing balm of understanding and closeness.

The biggest revelation out of that has been an understanding of why she fought the cancer so hard and why she lived so long. Her battle raged for so many years - long past the time when life was pleasant or easy for her. All my ignorant youth this baffled me and I swore that if I ever faced such a thing I would allow the waters of inevitability to take me along into eternity. But when I became a mother I finally understood why she would choose to fight so hard. Because when you have children you are suddenly anchored in life and love. They root you in this existence, holding you fast. Every instinct urges you to hang on, provide one more day of love and protection for them because you know that no one else can love them like you do.

I'm a mother myself now. Ironically, to an older girl and a younger boy, just as my mother was. My life in many ways echoes hers. I find myself saying the things she said, standing in anger the way she stood, cuddling my children in bed, making cakes out of the Women's Weekly cake book and sewing pretty dresses for my delighted daughter. It's a kind of immortality, those echoes of love rippling through my children's lives. She may not ever know them but in many ways they know her and for that I am grateful.

In loving memory of my mum Sharon 11/11/1950-13/01/1990. I will always love you.

Wait...she did what?

No matter how vigilant you think you are as a parent there will always be a moment in your life where your attention is elsewhere and it costs you. And I’m not just talking about the interference of third parties – not every parent will have a Madeline McCann moment but I guarantee that every parent has a moment where they glanced away and their kid did something soul-destroyingly destructive. Kids are like demi-Gods. Maybe it’s because no one’s explained the rules of space and time in a way that they understand, allowing them to bend them at will. Maybe they have superpowers. Maybe they are just so darn fast you can’t see them. Having been a mother for four years now I can confidently say that something’s up and the little blighters have figured out ways to get into mischief no matter how closely you watch them. It’s uncanny.

Charlotte is shockingly creative on the naughty front. She commenced her career of doing my head in at the tender age of eight months old. I was swapping some cakes over in the oven, a two minute non-event, when I noticed how eerily quiet it was. This, as all parents will tell you, is a sure sign that trouble is up. And sure enough I returned to the living room to find that Miss-I-Can’t­-Even-Walk-Yet had grabbed a box of nappies, pushed it in front of the couch, used it to climb onto the seat of the couch, then the arm of the couch and was now balanced precariously, picking books off the bookshelf that the couch was there to protect one by one and tossing them to the ground below.

From that kicking off point she has gotten better and better at avoiding detection while she quietly wreaks havoc. The permanent marker incident is widely considered the pinnacle of her career, but other notable mentions include the painting incident that took place shortly after we moved into our new house. In this case she’d been outside for a while and, as usual, it was the creepy sound of nothing that tipped us off. I looked out the window to check on her and found her studiously running a paint roller up and down the bars of the stair rail on the back steps. It took me a few moments to realise she’d found the paint roller I was soaking after painting James’ bedroom.

Charles and I hurtled outside and snatched it off her and then commenced rapidly washing the brand new Colorbond fence, the side of the house, the sleepers in the garden, the stairs and the stair rail to try and get rid of the paint before it dried. While we did that she disappeared inside and put painty little hand prints all over the brand new leather couch.

A lot of these incidents stem from wanting to be like Mum and Dad. She’s dying to sew like me, cook like me, paint like Daddy and, in general, grow up and be our best friend. As a result, we can’t really leave anything we’re working on lying around. I learned my lesson a year ago when her cousin Chloe was on the way. I was working hard at a baby quilt for Jenny’s baby shower and went to bed shortly after finishing the main panel for the front of the quilt. The next day I started attaching the borders but couldn’t find the fourth and final piece.

I looked high and low. Charles helped and I had to convince him that I’d cut a fourth piece at all. Finally, in sheer desperation, I raided the garbage bin where I’d thrown all the excess scraps and finally realised what had happened. Madam had taken it and my scissors, cutting it up so she could “help” me. I’d grabbed it with the rest of the scraps because, by the time she was done with it, it looked like it had been fed through a lawn mower.

Quite pregnant myself I had to drive clear across town to Spotlight in Queanbeyan to buy 20cm of that wretched fabric so I could finish the quilt. The 98c cost of the fabric was surely more than the petrol but it was worth learning the hard way not to leave my sewing within her grasp. It could have been worse…it could have been the main quilt panel which had taken me a couple of hours to make.

Charles has learned this very same lesson over the weekend. He came home yesterday and attempted to use his top notch utility knife to cut open a box of goods for our business. Unfortunately for him someone had super glued it shut. Further exploration revealed, to his horror, that Charlotte had taken quite a few of his delicate modelling tools and carefully glued them together. She was very precise and quite accurate. Only two drops of super glue on the dining table and none at all on her hands. Poor Charles didn’t know whether to be proud or cross and had to settle on something in between. We’re lucky it didn’t wind up in a trip to the emergency ward. It will, however, cost Daddy a trip to Bunnings for a new set of modelling tools.

Madam was totally unrepentant despite being sent to her room in deep disgrace while I tried hard not to giggle in the kitchen. As soon as Charles and his thundercloud left to go and fetch us more dinner ingredients (surprise dinner guest), her sunny little face was beaming into mine in the kitchen.

“Hello you. You’re in trouble and you’re meant to be in your room.”

“I’m in trouble with Daddy,” she corrected me brightly, “and he’s not here!”

“Mmm. And do you know why you’re in trouble with Daddy?”

“Because Daddy doesn’t want me to have any fun?”

“No – you’re in trouble because you glued Daddy’s tools together. And you know you’re not allowed to touch Daddy’s tools.”

“No Mama, I’m not allowed to touch your tools. You tell me all the time.”

“Well you’re not allowed to touch Daddy’s tools either and I think you know that. Daddy loves his tools and you glued them all together. How would you like it if I took your Roly Moe* and glued him to all your other toys?”

There is no metaphor that can accurately convey the horror that passes over her face when I say this. Roly Moe is her everything. I send her back to her room to think about that and when Daddy comes home she darts out to deliver her genuine apology.

“Daddy I’m really, really sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. Really sorry.”

Everyone knows that Daddys mean fun and Mamas mean business. Daddy is probably not mean enough to threaten the sanctity of Roly Moe’s perfect furry existence, but Mama certainly is. Mind you, I’m not the one whose tools are being glued together!

* Roly Moe is the ugliest soft toy you can imagine. He is a grey mole with weird goggle eyes and features in the recent Disney movie “G Force”. I have no idea what his name is in that movie but Charlotte has christened him “Roly Moe”. She won him on her own out of a skill tester and he is prized above all others, including “Nyamie”.

And today's plus one event is...

I have just dropped both of the kids off at daycare. It's one o'clock and for a while there I didn't think we were going to make it at all. They were ready at ten but it quickly became obvious that James was thoroughly out of sorts and needed his morning sleep before he went anywhere (especially important since he is continuing to protest against his placement in daycare by refusing to sleep there). It is only my second day at home without either of them. I feel like someone has cut off a limb and I keep having mini panic attacks where my brain says, "Oh my God, where's the baby?!" and I get halfway to the toilet (where, my irrational brain presumes, he has drowned) before I remember that he's safe at daycare.

So what to do with my precious time? Yesterday the plus one in my "essentials plus one" domestic management plan consisted of Charlotte and I putting together the flat pack outdoor love seat/swing thing my Dad gave me for Christmas. This had reached the top of the list over and above dealing with the huge mound of kiddy clothes I need to parcel up for Jenny purely because I couldn't handle celebrating Yule in June knowing that a December Christmas present was languishing in its box in the backyard. You might think that's bad, but I assure it's got nothing on today's "plus one". Cleaning my car.

We have two X-Trails. One is white. It's mine because it has car seats for the kids and a steering wheel cover featuring pink and cow skulls complete with horns (you can take the girl out of the country...) The other is silver and is Charles' only because I made the mistake of referring to it on purchase as our "Silvertail", the nic name of Charles' beloved Manly Sea Eagles. Since the kids are largely my domain and my car has the car seats for them, my car also carries all their crap. I make an effort to clean it out every month or two and it usually takes me a couple of hours. I sort, I clean, I vacuum and then somehow within a week it's all back again.

This time is worse than most. It's coming up to two months now since the last frenzy and the contents of the car are starting to spill out when doors are opened. The boot is hard to close and stuff I don't recognise is floating to the surface of the mass which fills the footspace where the kids sit. The nature of the stuff involved is also getting weirder and weirder. I knew we were in real trouble when Pippa asked me why there was a plastic Christmas tree in the back seat of our car. I've checked. She wasn't making a poor joke. There is a three foot high plastic Christmas tree in the back seat of my car and I don't know how it got there.

This blog post is obviously an exercise in work avoidance as much as it is a confession. I'm scared that there will be something lurking in the car that will eat me. It might even wind up being the plastic Christmas tree which has taken on a kind of benign-sinister-lurking-presence in my head because I really don't know where it came from. I have a theory that the sheer volume and variety of stuff in the car, coupled with my emotional focus on it, has opened a weird "stuff portal" into a parallel dimension. Somewhere through time and space another mother is scratching her head at the appearance of a stainless steel sippy cup and the absence of her Christmas tree. This would also go a long way to explaining the column heater that has just appeared in the boot.

Pray for me people - I'm going in.

My most embarrassing moment as a parent (so far)

Charles has told me that there needs to be more blog posts, more often and that they should be shorter. So in the spirit of shorter posts, here's a brief little anecdote to amuse and disgust you.

Children are little germ bombs. Before kids I actually had accrued sick leave. After kids all that got swallowed up as Madam caught every thing going at daycare. The most frequent culprits are colds and bouts of mild gastro. They have become an almost fortnightly occurrence in our house.

When James was only four months old I was shopping in Lincraft with the kids. We'd made it all the way to the front counter when the cramps started. Since I was done shopping I reasoned that I had time to pay for my things. Unfortunately the cramps were ramping up fast and I had to excuse myself from the shop rather quickly.

"Mama!" Charlotte panted as I hustled her along, "Mama why are we going so fast?"

"Because darling, if Mama doesn't get to a toilet soon she's going to have a really, really bad accident," I whispered, leaning down as we ran.

"Okay Mama!" she squeaked and bless her little socks she started running as fast as she could and dragging me along.

"Come on Mama! We don't want you to have a really bad accident!" she shouted as we hurtled along.

I prayed that the other shoppers weren't paying attention or couldn't understand her squeaky little voice.

She barrelled around the corner into the corridor where the toilets are and slammed her hand down on the button to open the door to the disabled toilet (which we always use because it fits all of us at once, including the enormous jogger stroller).

To my horror, as the door swung slowly open, it revealed by degrees a rather startled looking gentleman with his tackle out, preparing to do his business. As I stood, frozen in shock, and he tried to mumble something about he thought he'd locked the door, Madam darted in and addressed him with her hands on her hips and eyes narrowed.

"You have to get out now so my Mama can use the toilet otherwise she's going to have a really, really big accident!"

"Charlotte! Come out and let that poor man finish what he's doing!" I gasped, mortified.

"Er...that's okay. I think it's going to be about fifteen minutes before I'm good to go anyways," he muttered, sidling out.

As I prepared to use the facilities, blushing madly and checking twice to make sure the door was properly locked, Charlotte addressed me with the same hands-on-hips-narrowed-eyes stance.

"Mama," she said sternly, "if we take things out of a shop without paying for them, that's stealing."

And she gestured to the bottom of the stroller where all of my items from Lincraft lay, waiting for me to go back and explain and pay for them. Happy days.