Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The exploding nappy post

Yesterday I was reading the fabulous Mrs Woog from Woogsworld where she posted about her Roadtrip from Hell. I had a good chuckle about her travel story and the stories her other readers have shared in the comments. (Go have a read, and comment – there’s a some neat prizes being given away too).

I left my own travel story comment; the short version of an event that occurred almost exactly 6 years ago. It’s a story that’s been sitting on my iPhone “Writing List” for a good while. Mrs Woog’s post finally gave me the push to write it. (Thanks for the kick up the arse Woogsy).

I often hear childless people commenting that parents shouldn’t bring children on planes. Shame on you all.

I have few clear memories of the journey from Dublin to Melbourne. Post trauma induced amnesia I think. I am returning home, bringing my Irish partner and our 14 month old son here to live. The whole journey takes something like 32 hours, door-to-door. R and I don’t sleep on planes. Terrific.

Dublin, Birmingham, Dubai, Singapore, Melbourne.

Child is too big for a crib and too small to sit in a plane seat without help. So we take a car seat with us and strap that into each seat. We each carry a backpack and I have one extra bag. On each plane. All four of them.

Birmingham

The flight from Birmingham to Dubai is delayed by four hours. Now we have a hyper 14 month old to entertain for four hours.

We’re carrying loads of on board luggage. Spare clothes, nappies, bottles, instant formula, water, medicines, entertainment. The weight off all those accusing eyes saying “HOW DARE YOU BRING A BABY ON BOARD A PLANE”.

We think about walking but we don’t own any scuba gear. Or a submarine.

My face when we found out we had a 4 hour delay

A woman in front of the child turns around and asks us to stop him from kicking the back on her chair. We sympathise. We have no clue how to stop a 14 month old doing anything. It’s one of the great mysteries of science. Controlling kids.

Dubai

It’s 8am and about 40 degrees. In a cruel twist there’s no aerobridge. So, a bag in one hand, backpack on back plus a car seat in other hand, I WALK out to the plane on the tarmac.

I walk up the steps to the plane and feel my hypermobile hips rotate, one after the other, as I climb. "There go my hips" I say faintly to my partner. He’s wrangling a feverish 14 month old monster and two bags himself.

Singapore.

Nothing…

Finally the last leg... nobody except the child has slept.

He's feverish (and we are incoherent with exhaustion). Six hours from Melbourne, I smell THE SMELL. Yes, the child has filled his nappy. I pick him up and queue FOREVER for the only toilet with a change table. I stand in a faint green haze of fetid stench, avoiding eye contact.

Oh god please hurry!

OH MY GOD SHE NEEDS TO CHANGE THAT NAPPY IT STINKS!

Hint: The nappy in question looked nothing like this

I finally get there. Lock the door. Wrestle the pathetic excuse for a change table down - it's more like a toothpick than a table, designed specifically to endanger your child and make nappy changing virtually impossible. I lay the child precariously on it.

OH MY GOD.

The nappy has exploded. All over his front, up his back. Now smeared all over the front of my t-shirt as I'd been clutching him, waiting for the toilet, swaying in a sleep-deprived fugue of desperation.

Now I have to somehow clean him up - with only baby wipes - in a space barely large enough to move an inch in any direction. In the bin go his old nappy, almost a whole packet of wipes, and his clothes.

New nappy on. Sorted.

Now for me. When I'd packed the cabin luggage I had loads of stuff for the child. Then comes to horrifying realisation. I HADN'T PACKED SPARE CLOTHES FOR ME.

So now I'm washing out my shit-covered t-shirt in a plane toilet while balancing my child, for his safety, wedged against a wall with my thigh.

And now I'm putting my shitty wet t-shirt back on. And praying that nobody else can smell what I can smell.

I finally finish up and exit the toilet, to the icy stares of a dozen people waiting for the toilet.


HOW DARE SHE NEED TO CHANGE THAT CHILD’S NAPPY.

I’m sure they were wondering what the hell took so long. Some might also be wondering why I took a clothed baby in and brought a naked baby out.

I stalk back to our seats. Partner asks why I'm wet. I fix him with a steely gaze and reply "Nappy explosion". A fellow passenger beside us laughs.

I sit down and ponder, with six hours of shitty wet t-shirt travel left, how many years I'd get for strangling that guy. Preferably with my shitty wet t-shirt.

Next time you’re on a plane and grumpy that someone has brought a baby on board – put yourself in their shoes (or shitty wet t-shirt, if you like) and cut those parents some slack.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Send for the negotiator...

Today there is only this:


I have my family held captive. I won't eat their still beating hearts if you send:

  • junk food
  • red wine
  • Valium 
  • cheese
  • good science fiction TV
  • a great big dose of leavemethefuckalone

Oh and you should probably throw in a rescue team for my loved ones.

Looks like nobody's gettin' out alive this time.

P.S. Normal service will resume shortly (in about 3-5 days)

What does that bitch horrid teary aggro unbearable shit the glory that is womanhood do for you each month?

Friday, June 22, 2012

Did you know... slothful Friday...

Hi everyone.

I know I've been quiet for a week - lots going on with work and home and inspiration seems to have taken a holiday.

So, in the spirit of my Did you know... series (the series that fills in for my brain while it's AWOL)...

Did you know... that the sloth is the world's slowest mammal, so sedentary that algae grows on its fur?

Perhaps that explains my faint green tinge.

Happy Slothful Friday!



Thursday, June 14, 2012

The bog blog

Dear Cistern Sisters,

Today, not for the first time, when I went to the bathroom, I sat in someone else’s pee had an unpleasant experience.

So I have a bone to pick with some of you.

(Gentlemen, feel free to look away now. If you choose to proceed, don’t bitch complain to me. You have. Been. Warned.)

My Cubicle Colleagues, it’s time you and I had a frank chat. I need to talk to you about the way you use that most hideous of common structures; the Public Toilet.

You know the ones. The ones with undefinably nauseating smells, noxiously mystery stains and frightening tragic hilarious bemusing graffiti. The Laydeez Lavs. The bog. The loo.

I’m not going to talk about men’s public toilets. I neither know NOR WANT TO KNOW what those are like. The last time I was in one was thirty-two years a long time ago. Our family was on one of its frequent interstate road trips. At 2am we stopped and a bleary 12 year old me stumbled, half awake, into the (thankfully empty) wrong toilets at the petrol station.

Therapy has done wonders, although I still flinch when someone says urinal.

Which, as it happens, is surprisingly often.

I try to avoid using the public loo. Sometimes, though, the need outweighs the fear and you just have to go.

I know many of my fellow Porcelain Princesses share this abject horror of the Public Lav. If you work in an office, you also have to share a Corporate Loo. There’s no avoiding the fact that sometimes you’re going to have to use amenities that have also been used by revolting filthy alien horrid unknown humans.

Recently, some of you have told me of your techniques for avoiding contact with any surfaces in these offending amenities. Some of you have told me that you don’t sit on the seat.

Excuse me?

That’s right. You hover above the bowl in a feat of super human gymnastic strength, and don’t sit down. I get it – you’re trying to avoid sitting in someone else’s urine. Or maybe you’re just trying to develop the upper-thigh strength of a horse.

This has solved a mystery for me. See, I’m a Butt Planter. When I sit down on said bog, I sit on the seat. And no matter how hard I try, no matter what creative angles I use, I cannot get pee on the seat. It’s physically impossible.

Yes, I’ve tried. Why do you ask?

So exactly whose pee is it that we’re all sitting in avoiding? Who’s responsible for all these porcelain puddles?

It’s you. It’s all you Toilet Hoverers.

You’re trying to avoid the pee created by all the other women trying to avoid the pee of all the other women trying to avoid the pee… in a weird, self-perpetuating Obsessive Compulsive cycle of puddle creation that would make Howard Hughes proud (and revolted).

So here’s the deal, on behalf of myself and all other Butt Planters. If you Bowl Hoverers and Lavatory Levitators promise to plant your butt cheeks firmly down on the seat as it was designed, there will be no more pee puddles.

If you need to develop your upper thigh strength, go to the gym.

(And use the Public Toilets there. I guarantee I’ll never sit in your pee there).

If you don’t honour your part of this deal, I promise I will blog about my theories around why I often find the seat on the toilets in the Ladies Lav up, rather than down.

Think about it.

Don’t make me go there.

Are you a Lavatory Levitator, or Butt Planter?





Monday, June 4, 2012

Who do you see in your mirror?

The other day, a gorgeous mother of two was in the press, talking about her career and family.

Some people posted lovely supportive comments under the article online.


Some other people posted some extremely mean, judgemental, callous and arseholey comments under there, judging her on her mothering skills, her appearance, and mostly her weight. I'm not going to link to the article here. Don't feed the beast.

Chrissie Swan, you didn't deserve any of that judgement. Nobody does.

The wonderful Mrs Woog, and equally fabulicious BigWordsBlog blogged about this appalling turn crap. Then got their own fair share of nasty weight-ist comments as well.

Of course, all these keyboard heroes posted using anonymous handles. And they all said that weight was a health issue, costing us blah blah per year as a community, responsibility to our children to be healthy, blah blah wanky smug blah.

Fuck that shit.

To all the cowardly weight-ist anonymouses...

Before you get too smug about science, science tells us that people who are overweight have higher life expectancy than the under or "healthy" weight people out there.

Fitness impacts life expectancy far more than fatness.

So let's not hide our prejudice behind the great god of science, OK?

Let's get real here.

Being "fat" is an aesthetics issue, hiding like a coward inside a simpering faux-caring costume of health.

Being over size 12/14 is not currently within that narrow, ever-changing FASHION of how we're supposed to look to be attractive - to be ACCEPTABLE.

A couple of hundred years ago, plumpness was the epitome of sexy for women. But, fashion is a fickle mistress and a complete bitch to boot.

People are too scared to admit that they've been conditioned to not like looking at people over a particular size. It disgusts them. But saying "you disgust me" isn't very nice, is it?

So they hide their mean-ness, their shallow conditioned prejudices in talking about what's "good for us".

In the same way we should stop telling women what to wear to be pretty/age appropriate/safe we need to stop telling people what size they should be.

Be who you are.

Diet if you like, or not.

Exercise if you like, nor not.

It's your responsibility, not mine, what you choose to be.

Weight - like age, gender, race and sexuality should never be used to put people down, as a way to make you feel superior when you look at another person.

Frankly, I'd rather look at a nice fat person, than a healthy-weighted judgemental arsehole. And that includes looking in the mirror.

Who do you see when you look in yours?

In the previous edit of this post I had a picture of Nigella Lawson and a picture of Gillian McKeith. Nigella is, as most of us know, a food writer/chef.  Gillian makes her living telling other people what they should eat. I juxtaposed the two photos, stating which person I would rather be. In light of comments made - rightly - about the unintentional inferences this made about appearance, I've removed that piece of this post.

Keyboards breed cowards. But that's a subject for another post.

So come on, all you keyboard cowboys, disagree with this post? Tell me.

I'm an angry, fat, 44 year old woman with a severe cold and the first day of the first period I've had in 10 months.

Bring. That. Shit. On. I dare you.