Quotable Quote #5

Sometimes our little girl is more like a teenager than a toddler and we get so used to her above-age shenanigans that we forget she's only four (almost five!).  Recently Madam has progressed from guided conversation on the phone to dialing the number and chatting away with the barest of parental oversight.  Nanny is the primary recipient of her calls and she's almost at the stage where she's memorised the number.  We still have hiccups, like sometimes forgetting to hang the phone up properly, but she's getting better all the time.

This week Daddy is away on business and she loves checking in with him so she can hear his "beautiful voice".  She dials while I recite the number but, unfortunately, Daddy doesn't always answer because he turns his mobile off while he's at work.  I never thought about this beyond warning her that he might not be there and telling her to hang up if he didn't answer.  I didn't even think about the missing piece of vital information she'd need to be making those calls. 

Last night I had half an ear out while she tried to call Daddy for the third time.  She'd wandered into the lounge room and I wasn't really listening for anything other than confirmation of him answering the phone.  Suddenly she exploded and started yelling into the phone.

"Why do you keep saying that?!  Why won't you just talk to me!  ARGH!"
And with that little roar of frustration she clicked the phone off and stormed back into the kitchen.
"Daddy is being so rude. I keep calling him and when he answers he won't talk to me he just tells me to leave him a message and he'll call me back!"

Whoops.  I have now told Madam all about how voicemail works.

My Happy Place - Building

So many of the things I love to do have their roots in traditions passed down generation to generation.  Sewing, cooking (especially jams and preserves), knitting, gardening - whenever I work at them I think of the many people before me through the ages that have performed those same tasks.  There's a peace to working at them and a satisfaction in their completion.  A quilt to warm my family, plum sauce to fill their stomachs or a beanie to keep them warm.

In comparison much of my work in my day job is relatively meaningless.  I write briefs for the Minister, letters to the public, apply the law in interesting situations the drafter of the legislation surely never even dreamed of and at the end of the day I feel like I've done nothing.  The same sort of things will wait for me tomorrow and the day after that and no matter how long I work at it I will have no discernible impact on the world other than a bunch of really annoyed people who did not appreciate the circuitous route I took to tell them gently that they're quite ignorant/crazy/misinformed/criminal.*

But working with my hands always produces something I can hold, something I can quantify and I know it has lasting meaning.  And that is never so true as it is for building.  Building is my passion.  It is my happy place.  I love the mental exercise of designing something in my head and using my hands and brain to bring it into being.  It is maths, inspiration, sweat and ancient tradition all in one.  People have been building probably for longer than they have been doing anything else.**  Way back so long ago that no one remembers people left their caves and decided they could live in a field without necessarily getting rained on and dying of hypothermia at regular intervals.  Building was born and we've been simply refining the technique ever since.

It's come a long way since those early wattle and daub days but much of how we build now has deep roots in the past.  Medieval castles sported the accumulated knowledge of the ages in flying buttresses, arches and other assorted structural ideas and that was the start of big things.  Almost everything we see in modern building is tied to those times.  Look at the language!  Joist, noggan, bearer, purlin, rafter, beam, lintel! My husband, literally the smartest man I know - a man who knows so many big words that his speech is around 5% acronyms - is forever saying things like, "You know, that really big piece of timber that's meant to across those...whaddya call 'em?  Posts!"  These terms are relics from the birth of modern building but we still use them.***

With respect to my own experience with building and renovating, I'm onto my fourth house now.  I can't help but buy fixer-uppers and, when I do, I always promise myself that as soon as I get it looking the way I want I'll sit still for a while and enjoy it.  I did not get to my fourth major renovation project by adhering to this theory.  Fortunately I am aided and abetted in my building endeavors by my willing husband.  When we first met he was skeptical.  Unconvinced that I would finish projects, not sure that I had the ability - doubtful that there would be any pay off.  All that changed with the building of a pergola attached to our little mobile home.  Three weeks of activity and then years of bliss out under the shade of the grape vine.  Husband = converted.

At first he was more than willing for me to do  it on my own.  "Do you think we can build a laundry" really meant, "I'll buy all necessary tools and materials but please build me a laundry".  But that's not really how my man works.  Because he knows that anything I can do he can do better by relentlessly questioning me and proving that he knows a better way.  Since those early days where he watched in amazement while I banged it together his love of working with his hands has seen him get more involved with each project.

Our latest building escapade is a fort for the kiddies and a pergola with deck for us.  We're well and truly into it now and I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that it is the first building project I've ever conducted where I really feel that Charles is a partner and not just an annoying part of the system of checks and balances I have to satisfy before I'm allowed to drill anything.  It's true, he's had to adapt to my method of building.  A treated pine pergola over an existing paved area is not going to sport the engineering accuracy the Opera House enjoyed and that Charles clearly prefers.  I also swear like a sailor while building, something I learned along with all the medieval terminology.  And despite all my previous experience, my building is nowhere near perfect.  I occasionally still "learn the hard way" which is secret builder's code for fucking up.

But building is fun.  It's passion, joy and life.  Having Charles by my side is the icing on my treated pine cake.  Stay tuned for a how-to and some photos of our work in progress.  And hopefully a finished product.  Eventually.

*  I won't go into some of the people I've come across but let's just say that when I eventually leave the employ of the government there will be an almighty blog post that no one should miss.

**Okay so we can probably conclude that people were eating, drinking, having sex and fighting for a long time before they started building.  And hunting.  Gathering.  Whatever.

***The majority of building terminology comes out of the 1300s and 1400s - largely because that's when buildings were reaching grander scales and needed joists, purlins, bearers as well as a common language that the builders would understand.  Fortunately we've dumbed down a lot of the language and use terms that state the obvious. Joist hangers, triple grips, griplock nails, etc.

PS While I do love building and renovating, there are some things that I will never, ever do again.  And one of those things is bathrooms.  See the photos below for my very recent total bathroom makeover in the house we just sold - right down to replacing the floor and walls under the tiles.  I will never, ever do another bathroom again as long as I live.  No other project has ever made me cry - repeatedly - to say nothing of losing all the skin on my fingers during the grouting process.  Yes it looked amazing and yes it was cheap ($3,000 for the whole lot vs $15,000 minimum quote) but it was JUST NOT WORTH IT.

The Art of Cleaning

I am the first to admit that Charles and I are not super clean or tidy people. We have jobs, kids, hobbies and social engagements all of which gives us about two hours on a Saturday morning to clean, if we're lucky (apart from doing the dishes at night and a cursory tidy up). It's obviously not enough and occasionally that really bothers me. But when it comes down to it, I'm not really willing to sacrifice any of the other things going on in my life in order to clean more. Cleaning, while satisfying, is not something that will make it into my memoirs and it certainly won't be a shining life achievement I look back on with pride.

Anyways, this weekend I was madly trying to finish a uni assignment and Charles was left to clean the house alone.  I should stress that this rarely happens. If I'm not cleaning he feels no obligation to clean although he will do it if asked.  So I asked him to clean and after watching a whole day of him "cleaning" I was struck (not for the first time) by the startlingly obvious differences between us and how we clean.

Charles will start with a pile of stuff.

He will assume an air of industriousness. A veritable flurry of activity will ensue.

Time passes while everything is sorted into careful piles. A lot of time. Finally...

He will be very proud of himself. He will seek my approval.

It's a good thing I love him.

Hyperbole and a Half

Recently I discovered one of the most awesome blogs ever thanks to my sister-in-law. Hyperbole and a Half is hysterical. My first experience with it was this post here. It was so funny that it reminded me that I have a lot more pelvic floor exercises to do before I can consider myself 100% recovered from the last kiddy. A sad side effect of reading it is that my blog is now taking shape in my head in weird little Paint drawings. It's worth noting that about the only thing Allie from Hyperbole and I share is a total lack of skill at drawing with anything other than Paint. I suspect that I will quickly get bored with illustrations, so enjoy them while you can and be kind with your comments.

Dipping My Toes in the Beauty Pool

Anyone that knows me knows that conventional beauty and the reams of products, treatments and associated paraphernalia tend to leave me cold. With two kids and a Christmas list of activities application of makeup is haphazard at best and almost completely limited to a bit of sunscreen foundation and lippy, providing I remember it, before I go to work or out to dinner. I have an almost paralytic fear of beauty salons and parlours which means I've had a grand total of three facials in my whole life - one for my wedding and two that were gifts. Consequently any new beauty-related experience involves personal armour in the form of my confidence-boosting beauty-saavy best friend Kat von Z.

Recently I entered a salon for the first time in about five years. A few days before my brother's wedding I realised that the three other bridesmaids had made the effort to get fake nails applied - beautifully french polished and buffed to perfection - and my fresh-from-digging-in-the-strawberry-patch claw-like appendages were clearly not going to cut it. So I entered "Love Nails", one of the many mall-based salons staffed wholly and solely by young ladies of Asian descent that barely speak English. For the princely sum of $15 my nails were cut, shaped, buffed and French polished. Most excellent. But while there I noticed they also do pedicures for a whole $32.

I'm the first to admit that my feet are a disgrace. If nine years of ballet didn't destroy them then my inherited love of getting about barefoot from my mother did. Charles has a morbid fascination with them and tries to trim my toenails into something resembling human. Occasionally he'll give me a foot massage and tut-tut their appalling state and suggest - delicately - that perhaps a pedicure is in order. Mostly I don't worry about it but recently they became so rough that they were actually catching on the carpet like a macabre skin-velcro. I knew I was way beyond a pumice and professional pedicure was the only way to go.

Luckily Pippa's about to head to France on another junket so she was willing to humour me and have a moral-support pedi. We headed back to Love Nails where we're shown a wall of nail polish in every colour under the sun and told to choose. I go hooker red with a glittery sheen. Pip goes a similar colour only a shade darker. We're shown to two beige leather massage thrones that come complete with mini-spa for feet. The water looks and smells like blue mouthwash and honestly, who can blame them if it is? I certainly wouldn't be getting up close and personal with my feet until they'd been decontaminated.

Buttons are pressed and suddenly my chair comes to life, vibrating away under me. It's a bit like that moment on the runway when they power up the jet engines - fear, excitement, anticipation all set to a humming, vibrating chair. Oh Lord, here we go. And then the chair starts doing its thing. We are not here purely to vibrate - things are happening to my back, butt and thighs that feel for all the world like the firm palms of a Swedish man. I am so caught up in it that I almost fail to notice my attendant patting the towel for me to put my foot on so she can start her work. She will be earning her $32 today.

These ladies are models of efficiency and it takes them all of five minutes to trim, shape and de-cuticle our toe nails. They cluck away in whatever language they speak the whole time and their furtive glances, tight mouths and narrowed eyes scream disapproval at how bad my feet are. When they come to work on the feet themselves Pip gets a quick pumice but after one look at mine my attendant disappears and comes back with something closely resembling a vegetable peeler. My heels are duly peeled and only then am I allowed a pumice. I find myself apologising a lot for the state of my feet. It's clear from her arched brow that my attendant feels there are no excuses. I give up, lean back and enjoy my massage.

Sven the chair has decided we're past the friends stage and it's time to hit a home run. He's working my body in interesting ways and appears to be working up to some sort of crescendo that involves pummeling my back so my torso shimmies burlesque-style. This makes me giggle. Sven responds by running his talented hands up the back of my thighs and massaging my - er - upper-thigh region. Meanwhile our toenails are painted and then we're left to the tender ministrations of our thrones while we wait for our toenails to dry. Thirty minutes later and we're practically drooling and comatose. I can't remember the last time I felt so relaxed - I feel like curling up and sleeping right there on the couch.

I am told as I pay, "Next time you no leave it so long, okay?" and I promise to return within the next month to let them have another go at the tough hide covering my feet. It's a promise I won't mind keeping - $32 for beauty probably isn't worth it to me but 30 minutes with Sven? Absolutely.

Lessons in Sole Parenting

Looking after the kids by yourself is a lot like running a marathon. You sidle apprehensively up to it, not entirely sure you've got the stamina for it. Once you're doing it you just grit your teeth, eyeball the finish line and force yourself to do it through sheer bloody-mindedness. There are times when you're sure you won't make it. It's bone-dissolvingly tiring and as soon as it's over you swear you'll never do it again. You toy with the idea of never even jogging again, even when you're late for the bus. And two days after that you're enormously proud of your achievement and that insane little part of you whispers in your ear..."That wasn't too bad. I could probably do that again..."

This is not at all a criticism, a mere statement of fact, but Charles does not understand what it's like to be left alone with the kids. Since I'm breastfeeding he's never had to watch them both for more than a few hours. He has no idea what it's like to do the parenting thing solo for a whole day, let alone a weekend - no clue how awful you feel when you're on the verge of losing your temper and they say, "You're so mean Mama, I want Daddy". No idea how hurtful it can be to do your best to fill the void left by your partner and still wind up with a child sobbing "I just want Daaadddddyyy" into your shoulder come bed time. And all of that is peppered with, "Daddy would let me do it," "Actually I think I'd like to wait for Daddy to do that" and "Mama, can you make Daddy come back sooner?"

So while Charles is sympathetic, he's not really empathetic and he does tend to go away quite often*. Death metal concerts, football games, business trips, etc and good ol' yours truly gets to watch the kiddies while he's gone.

Despite having looked after them fairly recently while he went on a business trip and again while he completed my brother's buck's night, when the opportunity to go and see the AFL grand final came up I knew that if he managed to get tickets I absolutely had to find a way to get him there. I tried my hardest not to think about having to look after the kids by myself while we found a way to make it happen.

Within a few hours of getting home with them on the Friday night James was running a temperature**. He was cross with everything, lashing out with his little hands and all he wanted to do was sit on Mama and cuddle. Fresh from a day of school and sugared up from a party, all Madam wanted to do was play with her unwilling little brother all the while talking at a million miles an hour and spilling everything that came her way. Tipping them both into bed was challenging, but enabled through the use of Panadol, warm milk and stories. I myself was in bed not long after them.

Saturday was an exercise in martyrdom. James was still sick. Madam had cabin fever. There's absolutely a reason there are usually two parents. Because right around the time you feel sure the only way out is to drown them in the bath you can flick the towel at your partner and mutter "It's your turn." Of one thing I am certain - single parents deserve a bloody medal.

All Saturday it felt like I did nothing except tend to one child or the other in between trying to clean the house. Getting food, arranging drinks, cleaning up spilled drinks, ending the argument over whose drink it was, changing the television, fixing the television, explaining why we don't drink out of toilets, changing nappies, changing clothes, rescuing the dog, rescuing the cat food, rescuing the contents of the garbage bin, rescuing my son from the bathtub, explaining why we need to keep the bathroom door closed, fishing the remote control out of the toilet, explaining why we need to keep the toilet door closed, for the hundreth time, at the top of my lungs.

On Saturday afternoon my Dad landed for dinner and a bed. By this time I was completely frazzled and on the verge of screaming things like, "Why do you need to breathe so loudly anyway???" The situation was instantly improved by a fairly tired Opa antagonising the kids and mimicking them whenever they whinged. This gave me whinging in stereo. It did not improve my mood.

The thing that irks me the most about these little sojourns into the world of single parenting is that you never, ever get credit for managing to get the kids, house and pets (not to mention yourself) through to the other side in one piece. From Dad's point of view you've done your usual job with a bit less help and as far as the kids are concerned you've been a bit more on edge than usual so we'll take Daddy now that he's back, thank you so much. Daddy is the favourite, we've missed him so much and Mama's so mean because she yelled at me about something to do with the toilet door.

Lots of things hold a marriage together and in every marriage one or both of you are sure to think about leaving at least once. Most of the time there's something that makes you stay. For us that something is one simple rule. Whoever leaves the marriage has to take the kids...and the other one gets to keep the house. On weekends like this one I dream of alternatives to this arrangement and I have nasty revenge fantasies about divorce and shared custody. The lure of a week-about custody arrangement is more tempting than a Latin man who can salsa could ever be.

Despite this little rant on the darker aspects of single parenting, I did actually have a pretty good weekend. Sunday was a lot better - we made cupcakes, played and Charles came home early so we could have a late picnic lunch in the park. Having managed to clean the house on Saturday I spent the afternoon gardening and the house wound up in a better state than it's been for many months. I felt almost normal again by the time Sunday ended. I'm pleased with having made it...and swearing I'm never doing it again. At least for now.

* As far as I'm concerned.

** I may not have mentioned this but whenever Charles goes away for some reason one, or all, of us gets sick.

Customer Service WIN

Recently I have discovered a fantastic new restaurant - Zambrero. This place serves up the most amazingly fresh, tasty and HEALTHY Mexican I've ever eaten at a reasonable price and I quickly decided it would become our fall back for nights when we're not up to cooking. So on Monday night we headed down for some tasty Mexican and as we're waiting in line I felt James stiffen in my arms. When I turned to look at him he was holding a red little hand out and blinking in shock. The tears and squeals started immediately. For a second I had no idea what he'd done but it quickly became obvious that he'd reached out and grabbed the sandwich press which, when opened, came up above the glass partition.

As he started to cry I whacked his hand onto the cold bottle of Vitamin Water I was holding and he calmed down almost immediately. I kept his hand on the bottle and he seemed happy enough, so I assumed that the burn wasn't that bad and that the cool bottle had fixed things. But by the time we got home the tears had started again, and escalated, and when I finally prized his hand open under the cool water of the tap I could see blisters forming on his fingers. Unfortunately he was getting more and more distressed and we quickly made the decision to take him to the hospital.

By the time I got him there he was hysterical, his small body stiff with pain and his breath ragged and catchy in between the screaming and the huge gulps of air he was trying to choke down. My happy little guy was clearly in a world of hurt and I was slowly unraveling.

No matter how disconnected and sociopathic you are, your kids will be your Achilles heel. I am sure it's some sort of biological instinct thing because there's no way it's rational. My son has a minor but nasty burn to his hand but in my head he needs skin grafts and months of rehabilitation. He's going to be scarred for life. He might lose his hand. Naturally, it's all my fault. I cry while I hold him and the nurses attended to his rapidly-swelling hand. Mentally I flay myself alive for not realising he could reach something so dangerously hot, for failing to see how badly he'd burned himself...basically for being a bad, inattentive Mum who has allowed her son to be maimed.

Somewhere in all of this the nurse and I manage to force medicine down his throat and, about half an hour later he begins to calm right down...20 minutes after that and he's giggling woozily and laying back in my arms, clearly stoned five ways from Sunday. This is PainStop Night - a codeine concoction that has somehow been approved for littlies. His fingers and palm are swollen and blistered but he no longer seems bothered by it and he's clearly on his way to dreamland.

By the time I get home we've been at the hospital for two hours. Mentally, I'm wrecked. I'm also furious with myself and that stupid sandwich press. In a frame of mind we're going to call "something less than reasonable" I fire off an email to Zambrero's head office relating the whole thing to them. Here's a copy;

"Tonight my husband and I brought our family to your Belconnen store for some tasty Zambrero goodness. As we waited in line my 14-month-old baby son started screaming and I realised that he'd reached over and grabbed your (obviously very hot) sandwich press and burned himself badly. I've just spent the last two hours in emergency with a baby with badly burned fingers. He has blisters all over his fingers and the palm of his hand. I briefly flirted with the idea of sending you a photo but decided that that would be incredibly mean and totally counter-productive. Now the whole reason he was in my arms was to help him stay out of trouble. At first I spent a lot of time mentally whipping myself over what happened (and believe me I still am) and then I thought, why on earth would you have something so hot within easy reach of ANYONE without a glass panel to protect it or a sign to warn people?

I will give you a call to follow up from this email but, basically, I would really appreciate it if you would address this so no one else winds up burning themselves. I can't begin to tell you how horrible it is to nurse a screaming baby and be completely unable to relieve his pain. I would love to know that this will never happen to anyone else. Thank you for your time."

I think I got the balance between "totally psychotic mother bear" and "can we not fix this" just right. I am not proud of this email but in my defence I was very tired and very upset. I was not eloquent or polite, I'll grant you.

Anyways, in my head I brace myself for the "we're not liable" brush-off that I am 100% convinced will be framed in an email along the lines of "you really should have been more careful because your son is your responsibility, not ours".

I am pleased and ashamed to admit that I was horribly wrong. By the next morning the CEO of Zambrero had written to me in person. Here is his email;

"Good evening rebecca,

This is stuart cook, the ceo of the zambrero group. I will fix this immediately and please email me your address and I will send you a letter of apology and if you would be okay to call me so I can find out the full extent of the situation and make sure nothing like this happens again.

My mobile is XXXX. Please feel free to call me anytime tonight or tomorrow.

My deepest apologies,

Stuart Cook
Chief Executive Officer
Zambrero Group "

What a class act! Stuart's not lowering himself to my level. We have a genuine apology, a promise to fix it and all of it probably legally the equivalent of admission of guilt. If Stuart's lawyer saw this he would have had a fit and then tasered Stuart for even contemplating sending it. This was followed up by a phone call later in the day to check on James, reassure me that all Zambrero stores had been checked and perspex ordered to be installed in every store that had the same issue so that it would never, ever happen to anyone ever again. Charles went back to Zambrero tonight and, true to his word, Stuart has fixed the issue in less than 48 hours. Can you believe that businessmen like this still exist???

I am humbled and awed by this man's ethical, human approach to what was an enormously traumatic experience for us. The term "litigation" has been bandied around by people who have heard about this and I'm 100% sure that it crossed Stuart's mind the instant he saw my email. He could have taken a very different approach. He could have told me it was my fault for not being more careful and refused to address the problem. He could have...but he didn't.

When it comes down to it, we would probably have an excellent case for compensation if we decided to sue Zambrero. But the reality is that this was a genuine accident. I have no doubt that they had no idea that someone could be hurt the way James got hurt. Once he touched that sandwich press the damage was already done. No amount of money would have taken his pain away. No amount of money would have stopped the nightmares I had all night or made me feel better while I sat nursing him in the hospital.

But knowing that the same thing will never happen to anyone else does make me feel a lot better. Knowing that when I buy my next burrito my money will be going to an ethical business that cares about its customers makes me feel better. Learning that there are still people and businesses out there that value people more than the almighty dollar has been invaluable. Stuart has won us as customers for life. A big thank you to him and Zambrero for their concern and their efforts.

A little photo of the poor little hand the following day... blisters on his palm, all four fingers and his thumb. Poor little guy...