Sir Wrecks-A-Lot

Life got a bit chaotic. I found a dinosaur sticker, covered in dog hair and random fluffy bits (perhaps a feather), stuck to my bum. I found said sticker at around 3pm on my way to a radio studio. I had been at work for almost seven hours with a skanky T-Rex stuck to my big butt. It did not lie. I was tired. Life was chaotic.

So last weekend I overpacked the Trunkie and headed off to my folk’s house in country Victoria. The plan was to palm The Kid off to my mum while I peeled off my face and buried my sunken sockets into a pillow.

Alfie LOVES going to Granny and Pa’s house. Their house has ALL the things: a massive yard, lawn, rocks, a fireplace, a worm farm, a passionfruit vine, an orange tree and a trailer. Sometimes the trailer is filled with horse poo for the garden. But most of all, and the absolute highlight of the trip to Granny and Pa’s, is the dollhouse.

My mum built my three story dollhouse when she was pregnant with my younger brother. She thought it would keep me focused while she was busy with my little newborn baby brother. It’s painted mission brown and cream, the colours of the early eighties, and stands over a metre tall. It’s deluxe. I played with my dollhouse right through to my early teens, redecorating the whole three stories, putting floral fabric on the walls and corduroy down for carpet. It was super plush even for my Sylvanian Families.

When we arrived at Granny and Pa’s house Alfie ran into the spare bedroom where the dollhouse sits, pulling open its doors and sweeping all its contents onto the floor in one swift arm movement. I bit my tongue seeing all the teeny tiny porcelain cups and saucers being thrown across the floor, then swept up by my son’s chunky club hands only to be placed in the back of a plastic cement mixer truck. I felt the tension fill me to my brow as Alfie shook the cement mixer, allowing the porcelain set along with two Sylvanian Family baby bear cubs and a makeshift washing machine made out of an old Keen’s Mustard tin, clash against each other creating a big nostalgic milkshake of doom. Then he tipped the contents out and walked over the precious items, not even feeling the teeny tiny bear cub in its teeny tiny handmade gingham playsuit squishing between his toes.

He was on a mission. I could see it in his eyes. He was in T-Wrecks mode. He was looking to smash up a storm.

He grabbed two trucks, one in each club and drove them through the plastic windows, bulldozing the baby bear cub’s parents over and tearing through the corduroy carpet, knocking over the tiny vase of dried flowers, the miniature sink with teeny tiny taps and ripping the makeshift books off the tiny shelves.

‘Evacuate, evacuate’ I cried. I was too late, the dollhouse was on its side, its contents spilling onto the floor. I stood and stared at the scene like I was seeing Janet Leigh hanging out the bathtub in Psycho. 

I was devastated. My mum rubbed my back.

Alfie was already off and running. Apparently Pa was burying a dead rabbit under the passionfruit vine (apparently it helps them grow big and strong – country style blood and bone).

I spent the next hour resetting the dollhouse, putting everything back in its place, the way it should be. The babies were put in their cots, ma and pa bear were sitting in the loungeroom watching an eighties-esque TV (Alfie asked me what that was) in front of their cellophane paper fireplace. The three story house became warm and friendly. I felt relaxed again. I closed the big doors with a big satin bow. Sigh.

I went outside to play with Alfie who was building jumps for his trucks and digging holes in the garden. He was filthy, like he had been eating soil and drinking from the hose. The house had been turned inside out with a trail of destruction, like Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs, behind him.

Before we left the country to head back to Melbourne, I untied the bow of the dollhouse and took one more look inside. Everything looked just right, except, lying in the corner of the bathroom, next to the makeshift toilet made out of a matchbox with a circular hole cut in it, was a T-Rex sticker, similar to the one I found on my bum a few days earlier. I put it on the toilet. It felt right. Big butts don’t lie.

Granny Peanut

I recently called my mum and bawled my eyes out.  Like an adult baby. A 30 something year old baby, wearing a big baby nappy, crying to her mummy, sucking her thumb and sooking up a storm.

It went something like this:

Mum: “Hi Al”

Me: “Muuuummmm…mummma….mum,” sob, sob, gasp, sob.

Mum: “What’s wrong honey?”

Me: “Whaaa… mummmma… it’s hard.” Sob, sob, boogas, tears. “It’s hard and I’m tired and there’s nothing to eat and I hate my internet provider because they’re mean. Mummmammum…”

Mum: “Oh. Ok. I will come down. You’re crying like a baby. I can’t understand what you’re saying. How’s my little boy?”

And with that, my mum is driving down from the country over three hours away to be with me. Ok, I admit it, she just wants to be Granny Peanut and hold and squeeze her only grandson and show me how to wipe his nose, but that’s ok.

My husband is a chef. He’s a real hard worker, so am I. He works some nights. So do I. We wing it. Every day. We work out who is doing the day care run the night before, and sometimes it changes during the day. The only tricky thing is that as a chef you can’t work from home. As a publicist, you can. Sometimes. So quite often when it comes to the crunch, it is me who has to re-prioritise at a minute’s notice. And that’s ok. BUT! For the past three weeks, my husband has had to work both weekend days and a bucketload of nights. Normally that’s fine and totally acceptable. I have a mighty fine friendship circle to play with on the weekend, but I haven’t had a chance for almost four weeks to switch off. And I have to admit, I’ve turned a bit loopy.

I’m buggered but I don’t have time to be buggered. I’ve been sick but I haven’t had time to be sick because my son has also been sick. I’ve lost weight, but I haven’t been taking my dog for his regular daily 2 hour walk. It’s simply because I’ve forgotten to eat. The house looks like a derelict brothel, the fridge is empty, the car is almost out of petrol, the sheets need to be changed, the dishwasher smells, there are loads of washing everywhere, there are emails fighting me for my time, there’s deadlines, there’s dog poo in the yard, there’s something in the hallway that I keep stubbing my toe on, there’s unopened mail, I’ve given up putting toilet paper on the roller thing, and the front garden looks like our house has been taken over by squatters. I feel like I have failed.

Earlier this week I caught the train to work, fell asleep and woke up in Richmond. I wasn’t even wearing a winter coat, simply because I forgot to. Passengers must have thought I had had a big night out on the turps.

So I called my mum and cried. Like a baby. In a the fetal position, surrounded by Duplo and half written press releases with A Current Affair blaring in the background.

Mum arrives tomorrow and I can guarantee that within minutes the house will be sparkling without me noticing her cleaning. There will be a mince dish in the oven, a hot tea in my hand, books for my son which she will be reading to him on the floor and some kind of sweet treat or fresh bread from the Beechworth Bakery. Within minutes everything will be better.

The last three weeks have been slightly hellish – Alfie has cut six teeth like a shark. Surely that’s all of them by now? He goes to sleep (and my God, some nights I can’t wait until he goes to sleep), then wakes up screaming at 2am. So loud, that even my husband wakes up (yay). It takes hours to get him back to sleep then Bam! he crashes. My husband crashes. I crash. Then our alarms go off and I cry a little inside. When did our 16 month old turn into a newborn baby again. I’m feral.

Work is like a break. I drink hot tea all day and I’m in control of my situation. However as soon as I hit that train platform and the loud speaker announces that my train is delayed, I start to crash and turn feral all over again. I get to day care, pick up my little man, hit the old home peak hour between 6-7pm: tea, bath, story, bed struggle and cross my fingers and toes that he goes to sleep easily so I can pass out on the couch in front of The Block.

So I need to know: how do mums, as in our mums, have everything so together considering they are that: mums. Am I the only mum that cries to her mum like a baby about anything from my internet provider service operator being mean to me or the fact that Channel Ten keeps cutting out? I don’t think I cried to my mum before I became a mum myself? I wonder if my mum cries to her mum about things as pathetic as slugs in the garden? I’m going to ask her when she gets here tomorrow, but before any questions are asked of my mum, I’m going to take off my leggings that I’m wearing as pants, slide into my freshly washed sheets and take a long sweet nap with a tummy full of bakery treats.

This post first appeared on Bubba West.