I am not one to rate being stuck in traffic - especially in Sydney I absolutely detest it.
In fact, I actually credit the before-school-pick-up Sydney mummy-traffic as one of the leading causes of my slow and steady descent into madness. However, since all the recent traffic (online, that is) is being diverted my way – I have to smile.
No, actually I have to shriek with gleeful delight.
Call it good karma, call it misdirected google searches, Read the rest of this entry
Nigella Lawson loves to drizzle thick blobs of honey over her entire face and eat slabs of cake out of the fridge late at night on camera. For me, it’s the simple, guilty pleasures that sort me out best.
I use the word “guilty” not because I derive pleasure Read the rest of this entry
Sep 12
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Actually, I left the pram at home for this one. But – only because it was an evening event and I actually wanted to come out at night on my own and without food on my top and knots in my hair. I attended the Online Anti-Ageing Event and Expo at Hugo’s in Kings Cross. Great night, great […]
The other night my husband gave me a leave pass and I made my way to an awesome underground club called White Revolver with my going-out friend (also a young mother and fellow member of the dying breed of sometimes truant housewives who still manage to tear themselves away from the toilet scrubbing-brush, the hot coal oven and the laundry).
So, we were having a fabulous time in our too-tight tops and too-short skirts and trying out our fake, ‘do not attempt to contact me or befriend me on Facebook in the “real”-world’ names (“Kristell” and “Serena”) when this adorable 22 year boy who thought he was old enough (and good enough) to talk to me approached and decided to engage in some friendly chit-chat.
The young, good-looking gentleman gave me the top-to-toe cursory glanced and asked me “what my story was”.
In the interests of almost full disclosure and an expensive wine list, I proceeded to tell him fragments of my full story, being that I’ve been married for 6 years and have two little baby boys – a 2-year-old and a 7 month old – and that I had not slept in 2 years. Judging by his raised eyebrows and blowfish lips he wasn’t so inspired with “my story” anymore and was shifting his gaze around the room for more worthy benefactors of his weekly entertainment allowance! However, before he could tip his baseball cap, say “G’night Ma’am” and scurry away, and in the interests of preserving any slim chance of scoring a future-free drink, I decided to reciprocate and asked him what “his story” was.
Turns out he was an aspiring model and hard-working supermarket basement car-washer by day. Upon reflection, if he had to ever wash my car one day, I reckon it would be the oldest driveable car he’s ever washed, let alone seen, in his entire life.
The funny thing is that just before we said our goodbyes, he actually thought he would pay me what he thought was a parting compliment.
Here goes.
He told me that I was a really cute cougar - GROSS! I mean I am only just 30 years old – I really thought that you only entered cougar territory in your early 40s. That little backhander made me feel really old and suddenly, very tired too. He could not even believe that I was out at all. given my age and ‘circumstances’. So I gave him my signature reply in this type of scenario “I’m not here for a long time, I’m here for a good time!”
Crickets….Crikey.. Cue my ostentatious, Princess Mary-like wave to a fake friend in the smoky distance, dramatic glance at empty cocktail glass and epic dash and stumble to the powder room via the bar!
As I sulked and stared at my crows feet and frown scars in the queue of skimpy Lindsay Lohan clones I was genuinely shocked and mortified that I was being labelled as cougar. I never usually look, or feel old, and 9 times out of 10 I’m carded at a nightclub door. (Mind you, I am starting to feel my age lately in some respects. I’m coming to realise that hangovers are way worse at 30 years old and can be excruciating when coupled with the dead of the night wakings and early starts brought to you by your little offsprings. Also, things become less palpable when you’re getting on and still going out. For instance, the only thing worse than a 30-year old with a hangover, is a 30 year-old with a hangover who needs to scrub toilet bowls the next morning.)
On one occasion I recall being almost bounced from entering a club because the doorman (or clip board dude? Not sure what the youngsters are calling them these days) surmised that I was completely smashed, drunk and didn’t believe me one bit when I told him that I had only had 1 drink before I got there! The dude was adamant that my bloodshot eyes were a dead giveaway for a drunk and disorderly patron. I attempted to rationalise and justify my bloodshot eyes by explaining that they were due to me not having slept at all for the past 2 years (my excuse for EVERYTHING these days!) – which he totally did not buy at all!
But back to the cougar label. Not only was I insulted, I felt annoyed by the fact that I was expected to take it as a compliment!
I then proceeded to drink ’til I no longer looked like someone who would be expected to produce ID at the bar that night, trying not to think of the fatal 30-year-old, age-appropriate hangover that would present in just a few short hours.
So, how old do you have to be to be considered a cougar? Forty? Fifty? Not less, surely!
Lately everything I have been doing is completely absent-minded, forgetful, and verging on negligent.
I am so out of it that I am beginning to think that either I must be going senile, or early demetia has set in? I know it cant be ‘baby brain‘ – how could I possibly claim that as an excuse 2 years after the fact?
Even the most mundane things are complicated for me to process, I am struggling to set my brain on track and the exhaustion from having an almost 2 year old who has harnessed the power of the tantrum and can sustain all night no-bed strikes for the entire night every night is probably not going to help!
I really, really hope that this is not permanent damage and that things will improve because I can’t continue on this path of destruction – denting and pronging my poor old car every time I’m in it, not concentrating, being short with my kids
and husband and anyone else who looks at me funny at any given moment.
Worst of all is that for a control freak, I’ve completely lost control – I’ve been letting bad language slip, letting my temper get the better of me (Jon Jon, go the F?@@?@” to sleep so I can get this off my chest!) which leads to bad skin, lost keys, leaving the car unlocked whenever I park, leaving the car door open and almost having it blown off by an oncoming car, daydreaming and staring into space when the preschool teachers are giving my child a dressing down , walking confidently into the grocery store with my skirt tucked into top of my stockings at the back with not a soul to rectify the situation and then getting back to the car park and wandering around in the abyss of the carpark combing each level for my poor, old, lost car. Then I finally get kids home by getting them to remember for me by rote learning the number of the carapace where we parked.
But it gets better, because then I get home, haul them into the house and try to run the bath water while cooking dinner. Then, I hear the sounds of torrential fooding and notice water seeping through the cracks in the staircase wall. Little did I know, I’d let the bath water overflow through the whole entire house. At the time it was pouring with rain outside so I innocently thought to myself “Ahh, must be a leak in the ceiling”. Nightmare. Classic example of too much multi-tasking gone bad.
Actually, there is a definite pattern in this brain deterioration. It is always triggered by a series of multi – tasks which, when put into overdrive in conjunction with exhaustion leads to a spiralling situation of chaos and lost marbles. Like a few weeks ago when I was cooking a huge fancy Friday night dinner and I as doing the washing, roasting food in the oven and cooking rice on the stove, taking out the rubbish and chatting to a friend. Next things I know, the fire alarm is beeping like a lost firetruck, the house is consumed with smoke (both kids upstairs aasleep for their lunchtime nap!) and then when I finally dash into the house, disconnect the fire alarms and run around like the a mad march hare opening every window and door I can think of I hear the front door slam behind me while I’m outside. I then start hyperventilating and sprint around the side to jump the side wall and thank Gd the backdoor was unlocked because I had forgotten to lock it earlier that day! Needless to say, there was absolutely no rice for dinner that night, and the house smelt like a stale nightclub for the better part of that week.
So, if anyone, anyone at all has seen my lost marbles, please, please let me know before I do anything else to render me commitable to a place where all the others have permanently lost their marbles!
Well said!!!!! Agree with you 100% If only every parent thought like this though :(
I absolutely agree. A man that does his fair share of the housework (includes looking after children
My son 5 would love the transformers pair
Hi Kerry Congratulations on winning the boys pack! Please contact us with your postal address and we
Congratulations to Kerry and Carolyn for winning the draw! Your gorgeous gift packs will be on their
