Laughing at myself - I MUST CONFESS

I MUST CONFESS - Deep inside, past all the grown up, mother of 4, responsible working nurse me, way past the mortgage paying, grocery shopping, bed making 42 year old me, there still dwells a bemused 18 yr old.

I regularly have moments of wonder.

Wonder that anyone thinks I'm mature enough for all this responsibility, that I have even a quarter of what it takes to raise another human being, let alone four of them.

I'm stunned that I am deemed trustworthy enough to work, to drive, to supervise teenagers.
And yet here I am.
Sometimes I talk to myself, from old to young, or from young to old.... one girlfriend to another.

Sometimes 18  year old me is stomping her feet saying "I don't want to do this".  Often she is looking in the mirror saying "Holy crap Lisa, what the heck is going on with your hair? "
Regularly she is shaking her head and chuckling "Wow, 42 years and you still can't put on eyeliner !"

 She laughs out loud at me ... ( she doesn't LOL becuase at 18 years of age for me there was no such thing as text messages, or mobile phones. )... she laughs out loud at my rules for my teenagers. Giggles when I lay down the "Rules when your boyfriend comes to visit", and snorts when I'm demanding that my teenage girls do some homework. She mocks me and asks "How are you going to handle this one" when my teenager declares (again) that she hates school and is quitting, and high-fives me when I manage to convince the same teenager to stay at school, at least for the rest of this week.

When my teenage daughter is telling me she hates a subject or that some teacher is boring, on the outside I am maturely trying to problem solve and explaining the importance of a complete education.
But 18 year old me is reminding me of how many times I told my parents I wanted to quit. I'm reminded of how frustrated I was at having to do subjects I hated, and how I thought most of my teachers were idiots.

18 year old me shows me a flashback, of my Mum sitting on the end of my bed, gently asking if I would consider doing just an hour of study for my HSC.. and of me laughing and saying "Nope" I had a boyfriend to visit, friends to catch up with.

When my just-turned-18 year old daughter asked if she could go to Melbourne for a night with a group of friends, 42 year old me at first said "Hell, no". After several discussions she got permission to go but only after I questioned her for details, rang the motel they were all staying at, checked on who else was going, lectured her on the possible dangers of drinking and going out in the city and the importance of sticking together.


A little whisper in my ear was again reminding me of how, just one month after turning 18, I announced I was going away for a weekend with my boyfriend, and that there was nothing my parents could do to stop me. I was bold enough to go, to just expect that I had every right in the world to do as I pleased and that they would just have to get over it.

I'm pretty sure that 18 year old me is a bit shocked at all the seriousness of this parenting gig. She's certain that this isn't at all like we had imagined. I think she thinks I'm a bit of a bore.

But that's because she's 18, and she doesn't know what I know now.

-x--x--x--x--x--x--x-

What would your 18 year old self say to you now? 

On Mondays I love to linkup with Kirsty from My Home Truths for I Must Confess.

She is having a teensy little break from blogging so I am hosting the I Must Confess linkup this week. Please join in - add you post confessing anything, or just sharing what's going on in your day. We love to see new faces so add your link and have fun visiting the other blogs. xx

Prompt for next weeks I Must Confess Post is  'If I could go back to one single moment in my life, it would be...'  hosted by Emma at fivedegreesofchaos.com ... get typing bloggy friends.

I'm also Linking with One Mother Hen for Open Slather 

Taking care of spiders - I must confess

Fear is a strange thing.

It can take perfectly normal, sensible people and turn them into shrieking toddlers.
There are degrees of fear.
A general feeling of disquiet over a thought or possible event.
Anxiety and worry about our loved ones. 

A raised heart rate, dry mouth, wide eyes....
Then there is the 'fight or flight' adrenaline pumping full blown : Holy sh*t I'm about to lose it, jumping around like a ninja kind of fear.

I feel it when I think about snakes. When I get surprised by a picture of one, the idea of one.

I wrote about my INTENSE fear of snakes in Snakes Alive. 

I understand the feeling, the fear, the irrationality of the reaction. I understand the superpowers a person can instantly develop in their need to escape. I want to vomit at the notion that one might be in the backyard, near my kids or my animals (or me!). I will argue loudly that snakes should all be rounded up and sent to the Galapagos Islands. Far away from me. 

And yet, weirdly when someone else is experiencing that same level of fear, over something  that doesn't really bother me, it's hard not to find their reaction hilarious.

On Thursday night my friend came to visit for a while, we chatted, made some plans...
Then she got ready to go home. I walked her out to her car in the cold winter darkness. She climbed into the drivers seat, flicked her hair and  promptly LOST HER MIND !

I have never seen anyone climb out of a car so quickly, she leapt over the centre console, levitated across the passenger seat and threw herself out the door on the other side of the car all while shrieking like a fire alarm. A spider which, according to her ,was "as big as a walrus" had dropped past her hand.

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This is the point when you would think that as a caring friend  I would have be gentle and caring, soothing and full of compassion. And I would have been, had I not been laughing so hard I nearly peed my pants. There she is begging "Lisa, Lisa, you have to find it. Now, You have to !" And I'm snorting, doubled over in the middle of the road. 

Eventually I found some composure. The spider had of course taken itself into a small dark corner and I couldn't find it. We sprayed an entire can of fly spray in the car, closed the doors and she took my car home.  The next morning I checked again and returned her car to her, twitching from the nerve gas lingering in the car. I had checked under the seats, flipped down all the sun visors, searched in the glove box and found no spidery evilness. No doubt the poor little thing jumped out of the car as quickly as she did and went to find more welcoming accommodations. 

That's why we are friends. I will take over when walrus spiders attack her, and she will protect me when nasty evil snakes cross my path. 
Because that's what friends are for.

What is your irrational fear? Have you ever had to face it?

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Linking up this week with Raychael from Ms Mystery Case for I Must Confess

Please visit Raychael for more bloggy confessions, and the prompt for next weeks exposé.

Dealing with Teenagers

I must confess, when we decided to start our family at the tender ages of 21 and 22, we planned a pregnancy. A baby, maybe we projected far enough to toddler-hood and the first year of school. But honestly, most of the "Let's start a family" discussion was really "Let's have a baby".

But babies have a strange little habit of growing.

And they become tantruming toddlers, and boundary pushing children. They become smelly and busy school kids. 

And then... then they become teenagers.

Dealing with teenagers can be fun and funny, it can be enlightening, rewarding and awesome. It can also drive you demented and make you want to stab yourself in the eye with a teaspoon.

Trying to communicate with teenagers and anticipate their moods is a hit and miss game of epic proportion.

I can't remember a day in the past 4 years when at least one of my teens wasn't defensive, moody and offended by something I said.

I know I know, just let it go... 

... except it's bloody hard to keep on trucking through the bewildering and unpredictable spurts of anger and still lovingly care for the large darlings.

Today in the space of an hour I managed to annoy Miss 18 by asking her to write her work shifts on the calendar ( you know, so I can DRIVE HER TO WORK ! )

I am now receiving the silent treatment from Miss 16 because I bought the wrong sort of bread ( actually someone else bought the bread but apparently I am the Grand Pooh Bah of food stuffs in our home so the buck stops here). 

Someone called the house asking for him, so I made the outrageous decision to wake Mr 20 at 8am and clearly he's not appreciating the gesture, given the huffing and muttering from his bedroom.

And Miss 10 , a newly minted tween as of last Thursday has begun teen-practice, so she was truly angry, sulky and generally unpleasant because she had to brush her hair for school.

Right now, the only ones in the house who aren't displeased with me are the fluffy four legged members.

(actually the cat doesn't like me much either).

Linking up with Ann from Help I'm Stuck for I Must Confess Monday, 
holiday hosting for lovely Kirsty who is having a much deserved break xx

A House Divided

Our home is clearly divided. 
Four who do and two who do not.
I'm on the larger team, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing remotely attractive about crossing to the other side.

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Four Sleeper-Inners.  (Sleeper Innerers. Sleep Inners, people who stay asleep after the crack of dawn)

On my team I am the captain, after many years experience of that delicious snooze-state. I love the blissful moment when you emerge out of a deep sleep, remember that there is nothing urgent on the calendar for today, and roll over to submerge into dreams again. Heaven!

J-man is 20 ( holy shamoly, my heart stutters when I write that number.. 20 ! But I digress) .. ahem J-man perfected the art of sleeping in around the age of 12 and has refined his skills to the point where we are lucky to see him before lunchtime.

Miss 16 has been sleeping in since a similar age, she works hardest at it on days when she has stuff to do, like.. school. But on the weekend, she will slumber away until she can hear the sounds of morning tea or her frantic Facebook updates become too urgent to ignore.

Miss 9 may not actually sleep in all the time ( although she regularly hits 9am before she opens her eyes) but she understands the importance of a leisurely rising. Playing on her iPod, reading in bed, talking to her dolls. She is that rare blessing of a child who waits until someone tells her she can get up.

Leading the opposing team of Annoyingly Cheerful Early Risers is The Man I Married. He jumps out of bed at the first break of dawn, happy, chipper and annoyingly loud. He makes a coffee LOUDLY,he munches toast LOUDLY, he greets the dogs LOUDLY, he ponders what he'd like to do today with them LOUDLY. He is crazy enough to get up at 6 am on a sleep-in-able morning to pop down to the gym for an hour. He is tinkering in the garage by 8 am. Mowing the lawn by 9am.  A ridiculously chipper morning person. 

Miss 18 is also a morning person. She is much more quiet than her Dad, but she is often in the kitchen by 7 am, sweet and cheerful. She does go back into her room and tried to not disturb Those Who Won't Wake. She accepts my grunts and growls and brings coffee to soothe the morning beasties. 

Back in the days of three wee small children ( and Miss 9 was just an idea) sleep-ins were but an elusive dream. Now they are attainable and plenty, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would deny themselves the glorious pleasure. 

Which team are you on ?

I must confess - March tales

This week for I Must Confess, I am being prompted to link to a post from March 2013,

There is the one where I talk about getting fit after a looonngg absence from the gym ... turns out I did exactly the same thing in December, staying power is not my strong suit.

There is the one where I confess I have gone back to the Dr for help with depression (again!!!) and am hoping for sunnier skies. Since then the skies have been sunnier, cloudier, storming, shining, snowing, hailing and glorious. I don't think the black dog of depression is ever going to move out of my yard but I do think I've got it on a short chain (for now)

There is the post about DPCON13, a conference for Australian Bloggers, mostly from the parent realm and how I LOVED the conference last year... Last week I went to the DPCON14 conference on a cruise ship (OH MY!) and it was magnificent. Once again, the tribe has spoken, I belong.

There was a post about my very naughty raggy Cavoodle who is like a little Houdini. When he gets out the front door, he runs like he will never run again. He still does it. It is less amusing now.

So the post I am sharing is my 20th Anniversary Post. I love it, for all the things it says about us and me. Twenty One Years Last week, still here.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2013

20 Years

Once upon a time there was a little boy

and a little girl.

They grew up in different cities, in very different families.

She was (mostly) a good girl who came home on time, who got good grades and who had only had one boyfriend.

He was a bit naughty, left home at 16 and had plenty of girlfriends :-)

And then they met.

After three weeks of dating the boy told the girl he was going to marry her.
She laughed.

18 months later......

Just babies were we, me at 20 and he just 21.

What a spunk! A very tall spunk!

She's still (mostly) a good girl
He's still a bit naughty.

20 years.
Happy Anniversary Babe. 
I love you

Alone time

Today I am alone in my house.

Not such a big deal for many but for me it's huge.

It's the first time in months that I have been entirely alone.

The Man I Married has gone to work

The girls have gone to school.

J-man is out for the day.

Six glorious hours of just me, myself and I.

My choice of what music plays.

My choice of how loud it plays.

My choice of whether the air con is on, whether the front door is wide open or locked shut.

My choice of how exactly the day will run, no demands for drop offs, pick ups, trips to Kmart or to collect other peoples children for play dates.

I'm not answering the phone. 

I'm shutting the world out.

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Somewhere chanting in my mind is a little voice saying "Use this time, use it wisely" 

And so I did.

I did the dishes.... and they have stayed done.

I swept and mopped. The floor remains footprint free.

I hung the washing on the line, without having to stop and answer 300 questions about the storyline for iCarly or Victorious.

I snuggled with the bunny and no-one nagged me to let them hold it instead.

I made a coffee and used the last of the milk, guilt free !

I sat and drank that coffee while I read the paper. The whole paper. The whole coffee. While it was hot.

I had a shower and didn't have anyone talking at me through the closed door. No-one flushed the toilet or needed to fill the kettle while I was in there.  

I love my family. I do.

But I must confess I also LOVE being alone.

What do you do when you are all alone?

Linking with the Lovely Kirsty at My Home Truths

Weed Whacking - I Must Confess

I Must Confess... I am not ready for Spring.

There is nothing as pretty or as uplifting as the first few days of spring. Warm air, blue skies and freshly burst blossoms.
Ahh .. the serenity.

At this time of year I am overwhelmed by the urge to kiss the baby blossoms,  race to the chemist for Zyrtec and then the supermarket for extra strength wax .

It's time for the annual spring clean.

Not of the house mind you. Nope, the house has been just fine all winter. Floors mopped, bathrooms cleaned, kitchen sorted.
No, the spring clean I'm talking about is the Annual Weed-whacking, fake tanning, Get-ready-to-bare-your-skin event that takes place in the first week of September across our fine nation.

It's all very well, while snuggled in the Blue Jeans, woollen jackets and Ugg boots of Winter, to imagine that your lily-white shoulders and bikini line will never see the light of day.
But ,with the first warm days of Spring comes the realisation that there is maintenance to be done. In fact,  maintenance should have been done over winter and now we are looking at a total rebuild. A PAINFUL rebuild.

I prefer the  D.I.Y. approach to the great Winter Weed Whacking, because, lets face it, getting your girlie bits out in a beauty salon and hearing shocked gasps is not pleasant. Nor is it fun when your freshly graduated beauty therapist tells you she is going to have to ask for a Senior Consultation on this tricky job. Why show one stranger your Lady Garden when you can have a room full of strangers discussing the best plan of attack?

The D.I.Y. version is a private undertaking, usually aided with a couple glasses of whatever is available in the alcohol cabinet. Because ripping pubes out hurts. Those ads showing some tanned beauty smiling serenely as she Epilady's her hairs away are a crock of Sh*t. The ads where a pretty young thing whisks her (non-existent)  underarm hair away as she laughs into the camera are telling great big whopping lies.

Trust me when I tell you NO-ONE laughs as 500 hairs are simultaneously ripped out of their armpit. That is just not a funny thing. Watching someone else have it done- Hil-ar-ious!! Experiencing it yourself... not so hilarious.

DIY waxing comes with it's own special dilemmas. Sure, no-one is there to judge or gasp, but this also means no-one is there to reach the tricky bits. It takes some fortitude and brashness to apply a wax strip to an area of VERY delicate and sensitive skin and then willingly rip it away. The fact that the puppy dog is lying on the other side of the bathroom door, howling in unison with you, is a very good indication that THIS was not a good idea.

Grand ideas of a full Brazillian get rapidly down-scaled to being a minimal tidy up of any area outside the bikini zone.

And then once finished, you discover that instead of a silky smooth "Lets go to Bondi" Bikini Bod, you now have a spotty, red, angry plucked chicken effect going on.

 Very alluring !

Luckily, given the fickle weather in my part of Australia, the sunny Spring skies will give way to more rain and there will be time for the redness and plucked-chickenness to go away, before I am really expected to bare all in a bathing suit.

Are you ready for Spring?

Linking with Kirsty for I Must Confess On Mondays at My Home Truths

I Must Confess ... Recipe Reviewers make me crazy

I love reading recipes and recipe reviews.
I must confess sometimes I have a hard time not replying to people who post reviews saying they changed 7 out of the 12 ingredients, the cooking method and that it tasted bad.

Lets make Lemon chicken with jasmine rice.

I don't have any chicken so I'll use this leg of lamb instead.

Hmm I might substitute the lemon with tomato sauce.

Ginger is so expensive so I just used some old nutmeg.

I'm trying to cut out sugar so I left it out completely.

I didn't want too many dishes so I popped it in the microwave and just nuked it for 5 minutes.

My kids don't like jasmine rice, I served mine with mashed potato.

Here's a picture of my finished Lemon Chicken .....

And guess what?

In my review I'll write:
"It didn't taste anything like Lemon Chicken. Crap Recipe. One Star. Sad Face."

No Sh*t Sherlock!!!

 

People are stupid. Sometimes I have to work really hard at not telling them that.

Obsessive Me - I Must Confess

Who are you when no-one's looking?

I am a slightly much more obsessive version of the person I am when others are watching.

I love lists, and while I can jot down a quick list in front of you, in private I will rewrite until it looks well spaced, has no spelling mistakes, is my best penmanship, on paper without blemish or tear and in the order I would like.

I like colour co-ordination, a fine tipped pen, crisp paper...
My whiteboard on the fridge looks like an easy plan...

but it took almost half an hour to complete and even now it mocks me in its imperfection. I am not certain about the spelling of potatoes, Sunday is unbalanced in comparison to the other days, and it definitely needs some green to balance the colours. (The bottom left corner of the page is also crumpled in this photo and that ANNOYS me.. perhaps I should retake the pic?)

I like colour co-ordination on the clothesline and it bothers me immensely that all the sheets in my linen cupboard aren't the same neutral tones.. what's with the random green one, and a set of floral purple sheets. With a bigger bank account I would just give every scrap in my linen cupboard to the op-shop and start over with just plain white sheets. No colours at all.

Book shelves annoy me. My counsellor (OH my gosh, yes! I go to one.. you don't think I keep all this crazy to myself do you??) has a messy bookshelf with different heights of books, different thicknesses and different themes all shoved in haphazardly. There are occasional piles of paper thrown in here and there... drives me bonkers! On my last visit I told her how distracting I found it... she thought it was hilarious and said this was all about challenging myself- gahhhhh!

Pantry items really bother me. Deep inside me is a woman who totally covets the Tupperware organisation system.

I crave it. But I also share the pantry with 5 people who totally don't give a crap that they put the vegemite back among the spices and the desiccated coconut alongside the pasta instead of on the baking shelf. Every couple of months I strip the pantry bare and re-shelve everything 'correctly', and then wait until it is unbearable again.

In order to tamp down this need to control everything into an orderly, pleasing format, I practice letting go, breathing, ignoring and accepting. I ignore the mess and crazy that goes with having a family. I don't let myself think about the towels on the floor or the bowls in the sink. The fact is, if I let OCD Lisa loose, I would clean until my fingers bled and still not feel like it was 'done'. I would scream at my kids all day for every fingerprint on the fridge, and I would probably vacuum the dogs.
Yes there is mess in my house, and I'm sure there are people who visit me who think I'm a little too relaxed about the house

But under the surface, there is obsessive compulsive Lisa just itching to get some order in the chaos, and she isn't sure she will find a balance between the two.

How do you find balance? What do you ignore to preserve your sanity?

 

Linking with Kirsty for I Must Confess On Mondays at My Home Truths

I must confess... I'm a Granny - Bedazzle me!

It's true! 

With so much focus these days on retaining your youth and staying hip, happening and fashion forward, the fact is I'm a closet Granny!

School went back today and I was so excited. Not because I have the house to myself again (although that is a very large bonus) but because I can get my floors mopped and my bathrooms scrubbed !

I love to stitch. As in hand held embroidery stitching. I like back stitch and stem stitch and have been known to turn a french knot or 20 in my time.

I like a good hot cup of tea, in a fine china cup, with an Arnotts Scotch finger biscuit.

I talk to my dogs like they genuinely understand what I'm saying. I might have occasionally put bows in their hair to add a little colour on a drab day.

I tend to look at 90% of what the teens are wearing these days and think to myself  "Why would you ?", and "What on earth are their parents thinking?".

I own slippers. Multiple sets. A granny can never have too many slippers.

I am suspicious of any meal that is entirely cooked in a microwave. No matter what the research, I still find it hard to believe it can be good for you. My microwave is for reheating stuff and steaming vegies.

The TV is too loud. Noises are too loud. When my kids have their music blaring I wince and look for dark corners to hide in.

But the one thing that confirms that I am a granny is... I own a Bedazzler .

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Shiny gems hot glued to any surface you like. I can't recall exactly how it came to live with me, I suspect a school white elephant stall, a small child and the need for the whinging to stop combined to bring this arts and crafts monster to our home.

Some people take Bedazzling to a whole new level of wrong...

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When you've run out of clothing to glam up, you can always bedazzle your car..

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Your face...

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Your Taco...

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Or your Va-Jayjay...

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Disturbing in every way. I'm not sure my household is ready for this level of sexy! 

So come on, it's time to 'fess up. What do you have hidden in the back of your cupboards?

Linking up with Kirsty from My Home Truths , for I Must Confess on Monday