Whinge Files

The last thing you want to hear about before Christmas is about the eggs that life throws at people. So tough luck, if you don't like it then don't read this blog post. This is, of course, Egg Splatter and is exactly the purpose of this site so be prepared I caught a few of of those eggs thrown at me and am about to throw them on our wall.

I hate it when someone says 'no' when their eyes say yes and vice versa. I hate it even more when they know that I can read them but they try it anyway. I hate the most when that person is my 'working husband'.

It hurts to see and it hurts so much more when the lie is about something serious - like your marriage. I think I have seen the truth now. His glasses provide no cover for those lying eyes.

It was clear that his heart was taken from me and put to something else a long time ago. Now, though, it is clear, the lines have been drawn in the sand. He has made his priorities clear and for the first time I know where I stand.

At first, all you can hear is your heart beating as you take in those final words that make it clear that love packed up and left a long time ago. Beyond that, it is as if your eyes are refocusing after a time with bandages over them after surgery. You blink and after a little while things become clear, clearer than they were before.

They say that love is blind. Maybe it is when the one you love is allowed to take your heart and walk all over it for days, then weeks, then months and then years of that I cannot be certain. Right now I think it is time to pick up my heart for myself and tend to it before it is broken permanently.

It is downright crap that he chose to put things out honestly just before Christmas. But is there ever a good time?

Anyway, Web Monkey has lined me up a second 'drink' button so that you can buy me a 'real' drink simply because life sucks right now or you can add a comfort food. (Yes, coffee is real too but doesn't have the same effect).

Well, with my partner out of training I have been slack. More slack than usual...

In fact, the day before yesterday, I even got myself a cup of coffee and headed to a comfy place on the lounge room floor. This is a sign that I am not taking care of myself in the way that I normally do.

The coffee is one of my first mistakes as it is something I need to avoid. I have a disposition towards addiction and caffeine wreaks havoc on my body first comes the dehydration, then comes the overdose from needing more fluids and then comes the late, late nights.

The second was the process that I sat down. Not that this is a usual problem but on this occasion it became the straw that broke the camel's back.

When I was about 14, I sliced my foot open on a piece of glass. This was an injury already subsequent to several breaks in my toes. Ever since that fateful day when I saw my own insides for the first time I have had problems with that foot, in particular, my small toe.

Yes, simply stretching my foot at the wrong angle would cause my little toe to dislocate and do damage to my soft tissue and nerve before popping back in. This would take days to recover and was destined to repeat on a regular basis. Then, there were the bigger injuries where instead of getting a stubbed toe the toe would dislocate and be pushed down the next bone before popping back or something equally gruesome that would take days to recover from.

Well, in my sitting down, I did it again. I am not sure if you can imagine this but I usually sit down on the floor without using my hands. Instead, I use my legs in the same way one would operate a scissor lift. Before sitting I cross one leg over the other and then lower myself to a seated position.

The process of lowering oneself like this is that the way that weight is borne on the foot changes significantly. In the first instance, weight is moved to the front of the foot and then, to the outside of the foot. This then leads to moving the weight to the side of the foot in the final few centimetres.

Two days ago, as I went to find a seat, my little toe decided that it did not want to roll so instead it dislocated again and rotated approximately 50 degrees inwards before snapping back after my decent. By the end of the day I had had enough and a lack of overnight recovery has prompted me to more drastic measures.

Yesterday, still in pain I arranged, in reverse booking, an Orthopaedic Surgeon to examine my foot today, X-rays to be taken late last night and an appointment with my GP to get referrals for both in the early evening. Now today I have a booking form for surgery in just under two weeks time.

I snuck a peek at the x-rays too and suddenly it all made sense. That deep cutting glass didn't just hoe it's way though muscle and cartilage, no, it severed off part of a joint as well leaving my foot open for dislocations at will. No wonder I have had these years of pain!

So, there is an upside and a downside to this story. The upside is that the Surgeon can do some work on my childhood burn scars at the same time to make shoe shopping, or rather, shoe wearing more manageable. This will be an exciting first!

The downside is that I am stressing out about anaesthesia. There are two factors playing into this. Firstly, I have never had surgery before like this and secondly, I have bradycardia - a technical term for a low heart rate. It is partly a fitness thing and partly genetic (I am sure) on my maternal line.

When I was just a teenager, on two occasions when my mother had surgery she flat lined. She was determinably gone for those seconds, possibly minutes, before they brought her back to the light of the living. When you are young these things mark your life and I am petrified of what most would consider a very low-risk procedure. My information pack says that I can speak with the anaesthesiologist about it which I am certain to do.

So with much intrepidation, my dear training partner, I will meet your medical trips from GP to emergency for bronchitis and raise you a day surgery procedure with a bung foot.

English literature and film analysis had it's place in my High schooling years. It was discussed, at the time, how often movies and television programs can act as a reflection of our society and that this can be particularly so for Children's movies which often reflect the values that the writers hold as important.

You know, I thought as a society we were moving forward from an era of discrimination against anyone who is different. I thought the veil of ignorance was lifting and that we were starting to move forward.

Homeschool Mum had not had any issues of discrimination or name calling until her boys got their hands on 'Flushed Away'. Until then, the labels on characters were the 'good guys' and 'bad guys' and the 'good guys' played smart not dirty to get their way. Not entirely so in this Dreamworks creation.

You see there is a point in the movie where Rita, captain of the Jammy Dodger, was boarded by the rats (the 'bad guys') seeking to capture Rita and find her ruby. She was attempting to escape capture...

She deftly dodged the first one as he leapt at her, and a quick grab and a swing dealt with the next pair. But just when she felt she was in with a chance of winning, two big white paws grabbed her from behind.

"What?" she gasped, looking over her shoulder. It was Whitey. "Let me go, you pink eyed freak!" She yelled angrily, twisting to deliver a harsh kick to his snout, knocking off his glasses.

Source: FanFiction

Yep, she played dirty. She found something that made Whitey an individual and used it as a way to isolate him through discrimination. Bad move, Dreamworks, this is the first movie you have made that HS Mum now regrets allowing her children to see and that I will recommend others not to watch.

So, I found myself wondering today, how bad a parent I could be. How far would I go before someone, a friend, family member or someone else, would draw a line in the sand and say, "Enough, is enough. What you are doing is bad parenting! Change your habits now or I'll ...insert threat here..."

So, what makes me think about this? Well it was started by some of the things I subjected my children to in the last 48 hours but was then brought to my thought life through a discussion thread started by Essential Baby based upon an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald about a car jacking with a child in the back seat. The thread asks, 'Is it ever OK to leave a child unattended in a car?' Of course, this was totally irrelevant to what my children had undergone and it just happened to cross my browser whilst I was in a contemplative mood.

You see, in the last two days I have subjected my children to two of the most unhealthy lunches I have ever served. Yesterday I simply could not drag myself downstairs to the fridge to pull out fresh vegetables to serve with tinned flavoured tuna as is our usual practise. Instead, I found myself carving up rolls and plastering them with peanut butter and honey. Afterwards, once one child was having an afternoon nap I had an awful pang of guilt but pushed it aside.

Today things only got worse, ever half hour from 9.30am one of children would ask for chocolate. Today is the 14th day that my children have been in possession of chocolate from Easter festivities and this rationing approach had my boys believing that they needed three doses of chocolate daily and that half hourly reminders were sufficient to wear Mum down. They were right, so I cracked and made today the official training day for 'Bad Parenting 101' and made my home the training ground.

Lunch time rolled around and instead of scurrying into preparations I just called the children to the table before going to our 'secret stash' and pulling out each child's remaining chocolate. I sat the remaining chocolate in front of each of them and said 'go for it' offering the opportunity to declare that they had consumed enough and I would then put what remained away for later. Yes, my children ate nothing but chocolate for lunch. Their mother passed her training program with almost perfect marks.

I say 'almost' because I was unsuccessful and seeing my children gouge their way through all their chocolate. In fact, was somewhat surprised that two out of three actually left some chocolate for another occasion, albeit chocolate crumbs. None of them showed any signs of immediate ill health either, which is somewhat strange because I ate my chocolate stash, which was half the size of the boys, and found myself twitching with a caffeine and sugar high. Maybe their outdoor play in the hours beforehand prepared them for their chocolate feat? I am not sure.

Did they boys learn from their chocolate fuelled meal? At least two realised that they have limits, what those limits were and very sensibly, how to stop when you reach them. As for the third, I can say he had the smallest chocolate portion left and that really he just realised how much he liked chocolate since he usually has it so rarely. Did I learn from the experience? Sure, I realised that two of my children were growing up way too fast and that one way or another that chocolate would have been consumed it was just a matter of determining the time frame over which this would occur and how often I could be bugged for something before I would crack. The current standing is being bugged every half hour for ten hours a day over the period of two weeks.

Before you call the Right Bite 'traffic light' Healthy Food and Drink police, two other people can vouch that my children did eat a vegetable laden bolognese for dinner tonight and had curried chicken in similar form the night before. They also, of course, prepare their own cereal based breakfasts. So not all nutritional intake was lost.

It's okay now though, really. I survived the 'coming down' of my own high without breaking into a headache. The only chocolate left from Easter now is 'corporate' and to be shared with everyone in the family as dessert after dinner. I am sure there will be none left a week from now.

Life will again return to normalcy and tuna will again be cracked for lunch next week. No more chocolate shall haunt our home and pose as temptation for those with the weakest sense of self control. Of course, that means that they will be back to bugging Grandma for chocolate in the form of frogs when visiting for dinner. Fantastic - the, "Enough is enough..." lecture would someone else's problem and not mine!?!

If I have ever claimed that I didn't think I was a comfort eater then I was wrong, terribly wrong yet terribly good at self-imposed neuro-linguistic programming. Today was a day where I felt hurt and my gut instinct was to eat myself stupid. However, I did not indulge in that initial response.

Instead, I pulled myself together enough to spend several quality hours with my family and resolve that the rest of this year would be dedicated to friendships. In fact, not just to friendships but specifically committed to Sisterhood, the friendship of other women, from today until the end of the year.

For years now I have felt almost shut out of my sisters lives because, at least I feel, they think I will judge first and be their sister second. Simply being their sister first is my priority but again they choose not to see that.

I invited my sisters to go out that night and they decided that they did not want to go even though both indicated earlier that they would. They dropped this on me late in the afternoon after babysitting and the like had already been arranged and I was at a point of getting quietly excited about it.

I knew what I had invited them to do with me was not necessarily their 'thing' - it was a production called 'Stations of the Cross' (rated MA) and was being performed in the city. In fact, I had expressed as much over coffee to my Mum - that I appreciated that they would let me be 'artsy' with them for 20 minutes of their lives. The plan was to then go out for gelati, which I'd shout for them putting up with my long unquenched desire for theatre, not at Cibo apparently as one of my sisters had another venue in mind - I don't recall where.

So, what happened?

I am not sure exactly what happened that they chose not to tell me their change of plans until last minute but apparently it's my own fault and I am to blame (according to their account). One claimed they never wanted to go and that she never said that she would only go if the other sister went. I agree, she didn't say that but she did say, "I don't want to go if it's just us". So I suggested friends which she chose not to invite, in the end only leaving time to work in the plans for another sister to come because if she didn't go too then it was off.

So I worked it out with the sister. I don't deny saying to the other sister, "If you don't go then your sister won't either". At that point in time it was true because all her friends either 'had plans' or were heading to Easter camp. So this sister agreed and suggested a 'better' location for gelati afterwards and we agreed to go there afterwards.

Somewhere in there I became the awful sister who tried to 'make' her sisters spend twenty minutes doing something they did not want to do in the name of spending time with them. Yep, only the most evil of sisters would do something like that and deserved to be punished by being insulted and snipped at too.

Of the times when we have spent time together outside of family events in the last several years I cannot recall ever doing something with them that I did 'want' to do because, for me, it was not about what we did but rather about who I was spending the time with. Kind-of-like those father and son camping trips that always go wrong - you do it because it serves a greater purpose than the activity in and of itself.

It is also a situation where we actively look for ways, if they choose to let us see how, to support their needs. To resource them financially, to provide transport to them or their goods, to joyfully feed them and their friends without obligation, and to be there to help wherever needed or even just to hug. That, however, aside.

I realised a few things later that day. That first, I can not expect my sisters (quite typically Gen Y) to see past the stupid 'if it doesn't make me feel good then I won't do it' attitude to do anything that I may be interested just for the sake of spending time together. No, but if all parties involved will enjoy it except me then that is fine.

Recently, the Fringe Festival drew to a close. That would have been something great to go to together. Instead of trying to organise something myself only to be shut down, like the year before, I waited on my sisters. They never asked what I might be interested in seeing (with or without them) but, rather, one insisted that she wanted to just take a couple of my very young children to the Garden of Unearthly Delights without me. Yep, like a slap to the face, I was told that I was not important and that she was only interested in spending time with my children and not myself or my husband. Ouch!

Second to the 'must feel good' requirement and because of this attitude (that comes across as pure selfishness) although I have been back in the city for over two years I realised my sisters know very little about my interests, my passions, my goals, my hopes or my dreams. To them I am only the labels that they choose to ply on me and there is nothing to me beyond this. Yes, my lifestyle means I am busy a lot of the time but it also means that I really, really enjoy indulging in my 'me' things - those interests, passions, goals, hopes and dreams when the chance comes.

It would have been so great if they could have indulged me in this and be happy for me even if it is not their 'feel good' experience. I think I have hit a point where I need to accept that they won't now and probably never will. And even if they wanted to they would always feel they were being asked to do something that they apparently are not prepared to do because they choose not to spend that quality 'us' time together to find out what I like in the first place.

So, what does this mean for my life?

I love my sisters and I want the best for them. I look at the generation that precedes them on my maternal side and see them following the same path of not fostering family relationships unless it is 'convenient', something that is a strong contrast to the paternal family values we have - the values that I appreciate in my life.

For me now, it is the realisation of how important good friends can be in place of family disappointments. Good friends will do things they don't want to for each other. It is not just what my friends do for me but the reciprocal nature of doing the same in return not because you have to but because you want to - you want to do things that bring joy to their lives. That your happiness also comes from bringing them joy too even if it means going out of your way for them from time to time.

This is the essence of true Sisterhood and I am now gearing myself up for spending time with women who have shared and varied interests to myself. To spend time with them chatting, sharing, working, playing, laughing crying, hugging - all the things that bring perspective to your life and make it worth living.

It has been a true blessing that a true Sister came out of the woodwork last night to invite me to weekend women's stuff (no boys allowed) and I appreciate that so, so much. Please expect more in the remainder of this year!