An Apology

In my last blog I think I may have misrepresented what I've been feeling. I described a dying that I have only really come to realize. I meant death in a death to life kind of way. I think if pieces of me weren't dying or slumbering I couldn't be the mother I strive to be. Selfishness and even some of my more "important" pursuits have had to die in order for the mother-me to live. Now maybe some day I can study nursing and help AIDS orphans in Africa, but until then I am a super-hero mum, saving my child's life from his daily attempts to take it. I am glad to be able to stay home, but some days I get tired...( just a side note, I have a song for every bodily function, can you say the same?) I think that, as believers in Christ, our daily transformation can be tiring. As a mother, that transformation is excelerating. I have that daily battle of the dying me and the new-to-life me...and it wears me out and so I write blogs about it.

By the way, Congratulations Simon and Michelle on your new baby.

Just hangin out at home

I was speaking with someone the other day who asked me what I was up to. She answered for me,"Just hanging out at home?" I was speechless. I guess in some way she was right, in other ways, she was outrageously wrong. My job is a full time mother. No wait, I am working...ummm how many hours are there in a week? Well, I am working all of them. Every second of every hour I am on call. When I'm not on call, I'm on duty. I guess maybe it would be more impressive if I was in an office, or a surgeon. But no, I'm just at home. Just hanging out...(grrrr)

Lately, I've been burned out from working all the time. I'm running on empty...I have realized since my five minutes of aloneness previously described that I have died. I read a blog by a friend on mother's day discussing the life and death that lives side by side in a mother, and somehow it irritated me. I don't like death. I don't want to know that I look like death, or seem in any way dead. Yet in so many ways, I am. I have surrendered so much more than I ever thought I could. My old me is dying slowly and sometimes painfully. The things that used to make me excited don't anymore. I am forgetting what those things were. In some ways, it breaks my heart, and I wonder if I will find that person some day when I'm not on call 24/7. Some days I feel more dead than alive. Growing up my mom always said that raising children is about moments, that you survive moment to moment. I think it is those moments that make me alive...and so I am alive...but also dead.

A Piece of Me

A few days ago, I was alone. it only lasted for about 5 minutes, but I was alone. I stared down at the ocean below at dusk. There was no one around, no baby hanging from my pant leg, no messy house beckoning, no dinner to make, no one around. The kind of mystical aloneness where magic happens. I saw myself, just a glimpse, in a wave which was gone and another wave replaced. It was beautiful.
I was shocked how amazing those 5 minutes were. It made me realize how much has been surrendured in the rearing of a child. In some ways the waves showed me my life of permanent carer for a fit-throwing toddler who's too damn cute to punish. I realized with brutal reality that in order to have 5 minutes of sheer blissful aloneness, I will have to travel 3 hours on a rainy day in a tour bus. 5 minutes in which my pants are not being pulled down by my child, when I don't have to pack a nappy bag to step out of doors, when I don't have to punish a child whom I love so much it hurts, when I feel like a real person...and I can breathe...if only for 5 minutes.

The Man with Issues

We all the know him. The man who will email you luxuriant emails, he'll pray for you and tell you how much he appreciates you.He'll show you around, take you to his place, kiss you...he'll talk about a honeymoon...Then he drops the bomb. He's got issues. He won't be missing you because he's got issues. The poor man. He's got issues.

A *statistic I heard, probably on the scandal scoopers "Today Tonight",states that every 5 seconds a man is saying to a woman "It's not you, I've got issues." Every 5 seconds a woman's caretaking response is being triggered and having the opposite effect intended. Now, he is not rid of the woman he was planning to scare away by his shocking pronouncement, he has found himself a soldier who will battle all sorts of abuses to help him through his "issues". (Notice that what the issues are, are never really defined. They are simply stated "relational issues") So now, the man really does have issues. His poorly planned tactic has landed him in a heap of poo. His "honesty" has gotten him nowhere.

I would reccomend that the real truth is always the way to go. Claiming "issues", as we've seen, will backfire. However, if a woman is told that the man no longer is attracted to her, it hurts and makes her angry, but she will leave the man well the heck alone. And be better off for the truth.

So, please, we all have "issues" of one kind or another. If he really liked you, he would be willing to surmount those issues. If he's not that into you, well, we all know where that will lead...don't we. So leave him alone, the man obviously has issues.

*Note-Statistic heard is a complete and total fabrication.

Eating and other tedious activities

If there was one thing I would eliminate from the various needs of humanity it would be the need to eat. Eating is a tedious activity that begins with the loathsome trip to the shops. Buying up items that will either go off in your fridge, having been bought with good intention, or possibly worse, they will need to be boiled, baked, shredded, peeled, or mashed into a meal. You get the food home and then spend an hour trying to get it all put away while a toddler is trying to "help".
Food preparation is an all day activity. It starts with breakfast, that ends up leaving a wonderfully clean kitchen a mess that stays that way all day, because as soon as the dishwasher opens, there is the same toddler to "help". Lunch begins soon on the tails of the breakfast that is still not been totally cleaned up, and lunch leaves it's mark. As soon as the cheese and crackers from lunch have been put away, it's time for the toddler's snack, which usually ends up mashed into tiny bits by the "helpful" toddler and tossed onto the floor to be consumed at a later date. Once the snack has been cleaned up, it's time for dinner preparation. Which, having been pondered all day as to what to have, various ideas being shot down by the man of the house though no ideas contributed on his behalf, ends up being some mish mash of something "healthy" which will take at least an hour and a half from start to finish. That entire hour and a half beign spent with a toddler attached to my knee-caps, who has ceased to "help" and is intentionally just being a nuisance.

So what's for dinner? Pizza anyone?