Archives for December 2009

The year of the very sharp pencil

2009 has been a year of great change for me.  Not change enough that will allow me to pour out my heart on my blog (yes I know some people do – I am not some people……although the initials are frighteningly similar).

If I look back to the Pencil that was in January and the Pencil that is now – I am pleasantly surprised.  I am sharper now, more colourful and I can stand up really well on my own.  I went through a bit of a sharpening mid-year and believe me, it hurt like hell.  But, here I am all pointy and new. Fresh and ready to write.

There were the physical changes

  • My hair is dare I say, quite blonde now. Ok not blonde per se but it has blonde in it (and in dodgy light some lovely, olive green streaks)
  • The chip in my front tooth has miraculously disappeared.  I call it a miracle.  Mr Pencil calls it thousands of dollars of dental work.
  • I have lost 5 kilos and I have decided not to look for them.  Ever.  At all

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And the work changes

  • This was my area of greatest change – it was the year I became The Sharpest Pencil (last year this time I was a piece of plasticine)
  • I left a very unhealthy work environment for Twitter.  Well okay, I did not leave for Twitter but when I did leave (with half my soul still residing in the job) Twitter carried me on its little, blue wings and got me to my next station
  • I found great work, work that I love and that fulfils me and pays me not very much at all.

And of course the relationship changes

  • Mr Pencil, Little Pencil and Fluffy Pencil know how much I love him – they know that this love grows daily, if not hourly and they also know that this is not my chosen forum to express my deepest emotions so let’s leave them out of this one.  Let’s focus on you.
  • I have met the most amazing people this year – many of them through Twitter.  There were some pretty dark times this year and you tweeps (yes you!) kept me going and laughing.   Thank you from the very bottom of my heart
  • I met an alien who lives in a spaceship who has brought oxygen and light from her planet to my planet and given me more than I could ever have asked for. And I promise I did very few drugs this year but that really happened.

I grew, I stopped worrying so much about, well about everything and although at times I hated this year (like really hated it with the force of a sledgehammer cracking an egg) I think I am glad for the year that was 2009.

I am quite sure next year I will still worry, for worry is in the fibre of my lead and I am not so naive as to believe there will not be many challenges (hey we are renovating this Pencil Case – therein lies an entire can of challenges just of the physical type).  My heart will still be over sensitive and my emotions will still be strong, my fears will still be real and I hope my dreams will still be tangible.   I will still be The Sharpest Pencil and I hope to share the journey on this blog and with you all.

How was your 2009?  Did you grown and learn from it or will you just be shoving this year under a carpet and hoping it never trips you up?

Feed them sugar and tell them that you love them

I love having Little Pencil’s friends over at my house.  I want them to feel happy and comfortable in my home and I want them to hang around here a lot.  Especially when they turn 16 and I need to keep a very close eye on them.

Unfortunately most of the mothers I know feel the same way – everyone wants their home to be the go to place.   It has become like a war – my house versus your house.  We need weapons and tactics, genius and military like manoeuvres to get these kids to our homes.   Some mother’s use swimming pools and Wii games, picnics on the trampoline (okay that one was me) and gazillions of toys to get the kids to their houses.  But I, being the, ever resourceful commander that I am, have a few tricks up my maternal sleeve.

Sugar is my first weapon.  My house is stacked with sugar and delectable treats all very accessible and at child level.  This is part of my bid to encourage Little Pencil to eat (it doesn’t work.)  Given that some of the children have homes where junk food is restricted and the only treats they are allowed are organic bio-dynamic flower petals, my house is like a fantasy.  A sugar induced fantasy but a fantasy no less.  These kids, who would eat a marshmallow squashed into the bottom of their friend’s shoe, think my house is the one where Hansel and Gretel wandered off to (without the witch I hope).   There is never a complaint about food, there is however a well worn path to the snack cupboard and I do believe some of the friends have no idea where the playroom is.

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My other tactic is to spoil the friend and favour him in all arguments or decisions.  I realise that this is a cruel and unusual punishment to inflict on my own child but it is simply brilliant (and I make up for it by spoiling Little Pencil every other minute of the day).  Coming to my house is like a sanctuary for feral children – I just compliment them all the time and tell them how perfect and gorgeous they are.  Again, a two-fold tactic.  Firstly – it makes them love coming to my house and secondly it confuses them so much that, more often than not, they are stunned into behaving well.   It is really true what they say about children conforming to the expectations we have of them.

But my best weapon, and the real reason that Little Pencil’s friends love coming to play, is that he is a magnificent and delightful child.  He is kind and generous and funny and intelligent.  He makes people laugh and he warms their hearts (and sometimes he gives them his toys just to make sure they come back).

Sk8 Park – not a place for old ladies (or young boys)

The skateboard park seemed like a good idea for Little Pencil.  He is a fanatical about skateboarding and seen that we were on school holidays before the majority of other schools broke up I thought that our local sk8 park (trendy hey?) would be a quiet and happy place to while away a couple of hours.  I know from experience that during school holidays and on weekends we don’t stand a chance of getting a spot.  Unless we want to be trampled.  And we don’t .

Unfortunately we got there and it seemed like a lot of other people did not have to go to school that day, but trust me they looked like they could benefit from a bit of schooling.

I like to think my child is pretty savvy but I will happily place on record that he was the” woosiest” child at this park.  Like there was Little Pencil then there was daylight then there was the nerdy kid watching the skaters.  Such was the divide.

  • Every other kid spoke another language.  Well they spoke a kind of English where every second work is f**k.  Sometimes it was every word but it conveyed the same meaning – I am young, hear me roar.  Little Pencil said things like “watch me mum!” and “do you think I will hurt myself if I try this ?” and “look mum – look at me ALL the time”
  • Each child, and I stress that they were children, walked into the gates muttering some obscenity about how out if it they were.  Charming.  Did I mention that it was 10:45am? Little Pencil walked in and asked me if he could get an ice cream later
  • Every other child was wearing boardies and no top.  Little Pencil was clad head to toe in protective gear.  And sunscreen
  • Little Pencil read and committed the sk8 park rules to memory.  Some of the other children had crossed them out and rewritten them, most did not know they exist.
  • I was the only mother at the park.

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I tell you it made me feel very old.  Very old and rather judgemental, much like one of those old women that sit at a skateboard park with a laptop and tweets about the decline of the world and the youth of today.  Hey wait a moment, is that a mirror ?

But I guess this is the culture of the skateboard park, the culture of the whole area in fact, because behind me there were two “muscle men” clad in hideous shorts.  They had transformed one of the table spots into their own little gym.  A perfect place to show off their not yet magnificent bodies.  Seriously these men brought so much equipment with them that they must have gotten up at 5am – and arrived with a ute.

Every time that they spotted a potential mate they suddenly flexed and preened and lifted thousand kilo weights and made terrible sounds like they were on the toilet.  But, when no one was around they stopped and giggled.  Yes these macho men that were swinging medicine balls above their heads like yoyos,  giggled.  And I know that I am really old and hag like because when I looked over to try to get a better view (for blogging purposes only) – they giggled not preened.

You just have to have a heart

A couple of weeks ago  I was privileged to attend a media conference marking the start of National Adoption Awareness Week.   I will preface what I have to say with the fact that I was grossly uninformed about adoption.  Grossly meaning  I knew nothing at all about it.

The media conference was an amazing experience in itself, held in a swanky hotel where they served teeny, tiny little yoghurts and bite sized portions of Eggs Benedict to the delegates and I got to see the woman who sleeps with Hugh Jackman, er I mean Deborra-lee Furness,  speaking so passionately about something she believes in so strongly.

I wrote a piece about intercountry adoption for mamamia.com.au which you can read here.  I focussed only on intercountry adoption even though I am well aware of the plight of many local Australians without families/homes/ love and care-  so don’t remind me of that, I know.  I tried so hard to be non emotional and factual and speak without bias or prejudice because, as I said, I am not an expert in adoption and I have no actual personal experience in that area.

And although I have now done quite a bit of research into intercountry adoption, I am still no expert.  I have some knowledge from the books that I have read, the legislation I have studied and the many, many opinions and stories on websites that I have perused.  That knowledge is important – it helps me understand the backgrounds to the law and the reasoning and rationale behind what lobby groups are campaigning for and why some people are so passionate and some people are so angry and countless people are just so sad.
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But I cannot help feeling that information will always be tinted with the images that I saw at the media conference and the impassioned, compassionate and extremely knowledgeable  voices of Deborra-lee Furness and Dr Aronson.

The rows and rows of cots with little babies with no parents and virtually no hope.  The children growing up on the street in abject filth and poverty.  These children, who are no different to the children of my friends, the children in my son’s class except for the one thing that has dictated the course of their entire future – they have nobody in a position to love and care for them.  You don’t have to have experience to feel your heart break, you just have to have a heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0-B4Qo3-oM&feature=player_embedded

What’s for dinner?

My family is one of those irritating ones.  You know the type?  They like to be fed every single day, and most days, they require this feeding to take place three times a day.

Coming up with enough time to shop, prepare meals and clean up the unavoidable aftermath is one thing and somehow I find the time for it.  Some may argue that calling the local Thai and asking them to deliver is a cop out, but hear me out.  Although this one call does wipe out the inevitable list of chores that goes with actually preparing the meal yourself, it does not solve the problem we face every single day, at every single meal.

What the hell should we eat?

Usually I am eased into the day.  I send Mr Pencil off to work to fend for himself and forage whatever paperclips and staples he can find to sustain himself nutritionally (being a pencil, I do encourage him to stay away from erasers and over zealous sharpeners).   Myself, I am happy to eat the same thing every single day for breakfast (an egg is summer and porridge in winter – you know, just in case one day you are tempted to make me breakfast)   and so I am easily satisfied.  But then there is  Little Pencil.  And this is where the choices start.  Luckily breakfast is fairly limiting – eggs or cereal?  Easy you think.  But no.  Think off hand of how many ways you can cook an egg.   And now close your eyes and imagine the cereal aisle of your local supermarket.  There are a lot of choices implicit in eggs or cereal.

And then my day gets worse.

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As my mind slowly eases back into function after conjuring exciting and palatable ideas for school lunch, recess and nibble, it is brought quickly back into chaos by the thought of dinner.  Don’t get me wrong – I love to eat, I even love to cook.  But what?  What on earth can I cook every single night that will pass off as original, nutritious and healthy but still keep us all happy?.   Mr Pencil has high cholesterol – he shouldn’t eat meat but loves chicken.  Little Pencil is iron deficient and needs to eat meat – he loves chocolate.  I am verging on vegetarian and really do not like to eat chicken – I do however, love cake.

You see where I am going?

Okay now pretend, and I stress that this is a pretence, that we will all eat the same thing.  How do I prepare it?  There are thousands of recipe books around and hundreds of these are in my own cupboard.  Yet every single time I am faced with cooking dinner (ie around 350 days a year) I struggle to think of what to prepare and how to prepare it.

So I take out the Thai take away menu with its limited selection of 58 choices and I close my eyes and point three times.  And just like Dorothy I am home and hosed, dinner is prepared and I can start thinking about breakfast.

The ants go marching one by one

The other day I had to call in a pest control man and I was not happy. Admittedly ants had taken over our entire kitchen and the benchtops looked like they had a very modern, black streak pulsating along them but, I was not happy is because I felt sad about killing the ants. Yes I know I sound crazy and I have probably just lost about 7/8 of my readership but I am a very big softy and I don’t like murdering little creatures – no matter how small or irritating.

Anyway apparently Mr Pencil dislikes the ants more than I dislike killing them so the pest control man was called. I did try and soften the blow for myself by constantly calling it a bug “repair” man but no-one was fooled, especially not the Yellow Pages.

So the day of the extermination dawned and I put on my bravest face to greet the executioner. I knew him from a previous murder he had committed at our home so I was prepared for his work. Or so I thought. I led him to the scene of the crime that he was about to commit and made the terrible mistake of asking him if the ants would suffer. The mistake was NOT in caring about the ants. The mistake was in allowing this man to give me his views on life and death. Turns out that the bug “repair” man is an extremely religious man. An extremely religious, evangelical man. An extremely religious, evangelical man who can recite psalms at the drop of an ant.

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And as he left he was singing hymns and I wondered if the chemicals he uses come with a warning.  I also felt as sad for him than I felt for the ants because clearly this man was in more pain than they were (he did not paint a rosy view of the world), and well, because I worry about people as much as I worry about ants.

His attempts to change my views on religion and how I should live my life did not work but he did make me wonder. How polite do you have to be to a virtual stranger in your own home?

I froze my ex-boyfriend

Up until last week I was feeling positively jealous of my niece.  What’s not to be jealous of?  She is tall, dark and magnificent, she has just finished school and she has the whole world in front of her.  In fact if I am honest about it, her youth alone would have been  enough to make me jealous but coupled with the whole beautiful thing – positively green making.

But now the reality of her youth has caught up with me and made me feel enormously glad that I am an old, married hag. This week marked the breaking of my niece’s heart.  Yup, her boyfriend in all his ignorant youth decided they needed a break.

All this heartache and teenage angst has floored me.  It has transported me slap bang to the mid 1980s where my heart acted like a plate at a Greek wedding for some time and I am renewed with fresh heart ache for the pimply, curly haired boy that toyed with my heart.  It brings up so many memories of my first love and the first time I felt like my world would end because the boy in question did not return my affections.

In my mind 20 odd years later, the boy in question is still 18.  He is not a man with a family, a job and a past filled with growing experiences.  He is just the 18 year old prick that broke my heart.  I have frozen him there and will not be thawing him at any stage in my future – he broke my heart so I see no reason to hit defrost.  Essentially I learned not a thing from the experience at the time.
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With him safely tucked in the freezer of my mind, it is easier to philosophise and to explain all the teenage angst away but that is only because over 20 years have passed.  And, when the hurt is not so raw and open, it even feels like it may not have been that bad.  But I know it was awful because at the time I did not have the benefit of experience and therapy, all I had was the ability to freeze people in my mind.

Seriously, I know many people say youth is wasted on the young but maybe experience is wasted on the aged…. God knows I would have benefitted from it when I was 17.

Does the crack that appeared in your heart from your first break up still throb at times?  What were the things you learned or did you just use my freezing mechanism  and learn nothing at all?

Note to self: You are very lucky

Some days things happen to me and I think “I am the luckiest human being in the universe and I hope I never forget it”. This even happens when I don’t win the lotto or even get close to it, it happens when I realise how lucky I am to have people in my life.

This morning my car went in for a service. Huge big nuisance factor but not the end of the world – hopefully the end of that hideous scraping noise I hear every time I slow down. I dropped the car at the service station and being ever mindful of the fact that summer is around the corner I decided to walk home. Again not the end of the world – hopefully the end to my widening girth.

The call to tell me about all the extra costs was followed by a call to say that the car was ready for collection so I grabbed Fluffy Pencil (he has an even wider girth than me) and we set off to collect the car. At the busiest intersection on our route I leaned down to put a leash on Fluffy Pencil (FP). I snuck in a little pat on the head and while I was leaning over and admiring his beauty I heard a huge almighty CRASH. This was followed by a couple of smaller but still mighty bangs, some skidding and lots of glass breaking. Amazingly I did not see what actually happened to cause the accident but I did see the aftermath.

Two heavily battered cars pulled up onto the side of the road to exchange details and FP and I walked over to see if we could help. Out of the car that had done the actual colliding came an old, old man dressed in black. He was shaking heavily and had his wiry, aged hand held unsteadily over his obviously pounding heart. He looked shocking and shocked all at the same time. I walked over to him and urged him to please sit down and gather his breath. He was so shaken he could hardly hear me. At this point the woman from the other car emerged and she was equally shaken, however, my quick assessment of her was that she was able to handle the situation a lot more than the old man could. I have to admit to some enormous relief when an actual witness came and went over to the woman thus allowing me to concentrate all my attentions on the shaky man.

It is very hard for me to comfort a stranger without touching them, not in a hideous kind of way but you know that hand on the arm reassuring touch. But I was too scared to touch this man in case he fell over. He was that shaken. I tried to go to a nearby house to get some sugar water for him but he looked aghast when I tried to leave. So I stayed and stroked his arm from afar and waited for him to gather his strength.
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He told me that he had just come from a funeral and the tears welled in my eyes. He told me he never saw the traffic lights through his own tears and my tears pushed at my eyes. I asked him if I could phone a family member for him so that they could come and collect him and when he told me he had no family or friends to call, the tears flooded my eyes and streamed down my face.

And then I reached out to hold him and the fear of him falling over was replaced by my need to show him that he was not alone in the world.

So this blog entry serves as my note to self about how lucky I am to have the family and friends that I have and to thank them for being there for me, during my accidents, during my happy times, during my sad times and during those times when I have needed to have my arm stroked.

PS. I could not drive the man home as I had no car – remember my story? We did however get a tow truck to take away his car and an ambulance to check that he was okay. He did not want to give me his details (perhaps he was scared of all my crying) so I cannot check up on him but I just hope that he is okay and that he knows that I care.