Wordless Sunday: Colour

Everyday I'm Shuffling :|

I've been on the verge of a full-scale laughing fit all day. I'm not entirely sure why, but I'm guessing the self-inflicted sleep deprivation has something to do with it.

It began last night when, during an intimate moment with J, I called him Spock. It's not my fault. I blame it squarely on that single wayward eyebrow hair of his that caught my attention (and nearly took out my eye). "Spock" I struggled to say through peals of hysterical laughter, as fat jolly tears rolled down my face. The laughing fit was eventually stifled, along with the 'intimate moment' by the time I was done with tweaking his eyebrows and laughing anew...

And before it seems the whole purpose of this post is to poke fun at J and his eyebrows (they're really not abnormal at all, it was just ONE stray upward-curving hair that set the whole thing off...) I should probably get to the point.

Inappropriate laughing fits.

I'm not sure how common they are amidst the general population, but I have suffered from this affliction for as long as I can remember. And truely, it's no laughing matter, this sickness of the mind really has caused distress at times.

Like the time my sister and 15 year old niece arrived for an impromptu visit, and revealed that my niece was having a baby. I know they were expecting me to understand the predicament, as I too was once a teen mum. They were probably hoping for understanding, advice, or something half-way rational to come out of my mouth at least...

Instead, I gave a wee anxious giggle. Which erupted into a snort. Which was followed up by a full-scale laughing fit to such intensity that I was absolutely incapacitated. Unable to speak or even close my mouth to swallow back the drool. My family walked out of the house, and I could do nothing to stop them. They walked out, and didn't speak to me for six months.

Again, sleep deprivation was the root of my hysterical evil. But at the root of the sleep deprivation? Depression and escapism.

Fortunately, depression and escapism aren't an issue for me right now, I simply choose to stay up late because I'm working on website projects I never have an opportunity to catch up on through the day.

However, I should probably think about having an early night sometime soon. All afternoon I've been singing Everyday I'm Shuffling inside my head, and with it comes a mental image of Yours Truly breaking into a crazy dance in the middle of a serious or mundane situation (a parent/teacher interview, a supermarket checkout queue) and this in turn causes the bubble of insane mirth to rise in my throat once more...

Yes. Tonight would be a good night to get some sleep. Tomorrow is grocery shopping day.

Always Blow On The Pie.

Dear Mum,

I know you only have the best of intentions when you tell me I've done a fabulous job, made a great effort etc, when even a blind man could clearly see I've made a right cock up. I realise you're trying to protect my fragile ego, spare my feelings and apply some kind of 'glass half full' reasoning to what is in actual fact a really bleak situation.

To be completely honest, I'd prefer it if you'd stop feeding me with your lies of kindness and admit the truth.

Clearly, I burnt the pie.

Okay, so maybe it was not burnt as such. Not quite. But, your efforts to try and tell me the pie was 'just a little brown', 'slightly darker than golden' and 'just a wee bit well cooked' failed to subtract from the fact that the pie was 'almost as inedible as an old shoe', 'slightly less scorched than the rim of Satan's asshole, and 'drier than a nun's nasty'.

It's okay, I can accept the truth. And I take full responsibility. After all, this is the direct result of me going to bed at 4am the previous night. I also ran a red light into turning traffic and completely forgot where I parked the car after walking out of the supermarket this afternoon. Clearly, I shouldn't be allowed near motor vehicles, heavy machinery or ovens today. (Gods only know what excuse I'll think up for tomorrow.)

Things a sonographer should never say to a pregnant woman:

 In the midst of preening through my old blogs in search of some of my favourite posts to regurgitate here, I came across this one from  23 March, 2010. Ah, the memories of that day... I swear, I came home from having that ultrasound and cried and cried and cried...

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Things a sonographer should never say to a pregnant woman:

6. This baby has an unusually big stomach  - I’m just going to measure that again.
5. Now I’ll get someone else to check on those measurements…
4. Let’s just go with my measurements - hers were even larger.
3. Well it’s certainly looking like a big baby - do you have any Tongan in you?
2. I’m glad I’m not the one pushing this one out! 

And the all-time #1 thing a sonographer should never say to a pregnant woman…

1. And here’s baby’s squished up face.

WHAT does that even mean??!!

Girl Loves Her Cars (but only if they're her own. Or yellow.)

 J arrived home from work this evening with a couple of Hot Wheels cars he'd spied on the grassy verge while walking from work. The Lily Bug's eyes lit, until she realised this meant another child had lost his toys. At first she was reassured that she could be the caretaker of the cars, but as much as she loved them, it wasn't long before she told her dad that he'd have to go and take them back. She wanted him to do it there and then "as long as it's not too far away daddy", but he promised to do so on his way to work in the morning. Except for the yellow one. She couldn't part with that.

I never expected something so conscientious to come out of a three and a half year old. She realised straightaway of her own accord that another child had lost his toys, and she didn't feel right keeping them because of this. Even though, chances are that some other random kid will end up with them anyway, but she doesn't realise this. She just feels the right thing to do is put them back where they came from and hopefully the Universe will see fit to reunite them to their original owners - or someone who doesn't already have two boxes full of Hot Wheels as our kids do anyway. :)

The Homeless Guy

While in the city with friends today, The Teen spotted a homeless guy shivering against the cold. She casually stood by him for a while and tried to block the wind a little, and wondered whether to talk to him and what/if anything she could do to help. Buy him a burger? Call mum to drive in and drop off a blanket? In the end she fished around her bag for some change. She told us he was so amazingly thankful when she gave it to him; it was just a couple of spare dollars to her, but meant a meal for him.

The Teen now wants to make a load of sandwiches and drop them around to all the homeless people she can find in the city. This of course led to a discussion about safety and how just because a person is homeless, it doesn't make them harmless.

I'm not sure if I convinced her; she has a beautiful tendency to want to save people. Some kids tote home abandoned animals and ask if they can look after them... Char asks if we can let Molly from Ireland come over and live with us, because she has a horrible home life. Or Samantha who's miserable since moving to England. I'll let her have my bed and I'll sleep on the floor. Could she just come and live with us for a little while mum, please?

She may not be doing a food drop off any time soon, but she's gonna make a fantastic career out of helping those who need it some day.

Time Keeps On Slipping...

The Teen has recently turned 16, and although she's still in the newbie stage of her 16th year, suddenly I am viewing of her as a 16 year old, especially in regards to decisions that make or break her social life. I'm not sure what it is about being 16 that makes a child seem so much older suddenly. Has she changed so much from who she was a couple of weeks ago, when she was 15? No... But a cosmic shift seems to have occurred nonetheless.

The Lily Bug starts kindy in a few weeks and likes to regularly remind me that she is three years old, and next year she will be four. She then sets about planning her fourth birthday party, and reminds me so much of her big sister who was also 4 once upon a time. Before she suddenly became 16. (She leapt from 4 to 16 in 0.12 seconds. Seconds, not years I tell you!) Soon I will have to surrender her to the likes of school. Time is slipping by too fast for my liking.

Guy Smiley has begun singing along to his favourite nursery rhymes. Sometimes he seems to croon in tune, or enough so that you can actually tell which song he is singing. While singing, some of the words come out plain as day even though he won't speak a word outside of 'ta' and 'mama' otherwise (I lie; recently he's begun saying 'dook' for 'look' and 'rah' for 'run'.). During Twinkle Twinkle he'll sing "wah-wah" for "wonder" and during Wheels on the Bus he'll say "rah-rah-rah" for "round and round".

My point to all of this (and I'm oh-so-quickly loosing the point as the time scoots closer to 2am) is that I would like to have moving pictures on a scrap page layout. Or a little doofer that plays for example, a soundbyte of Guy Smiley's singing when you open a flap on the page (like the card Nan bought The Teen for her 16th). Yes that's right, this is where all of my 1am ramblings have lead to. And I think I'm on to something here. Someone needs to make a chipboard-thin LCD screen that you can slot a memory card into, and stick to a scrapbook layout. Is that crazy 1am talk, or am I on to something profitable here? (If so, I have first dibs on the whole All Rights Reserved thing.)

So, at the same time that I'm wishing I could find a way to scrap the little videos I've made of Guy Smiley's singing sessions, The Lily Bug's rolly pollies and that section of time between coming home from school and sitting at the computer, where Char tells me about her day, I'm also painfully aware of how quickly my children are growing up. These cute idiosyncrasies that make them who they are today will change a little tomorrow, and a little more the day after. I will never be able to keep up with or remember them all, much as I try. Every day my children are born again. A little different from the children they were the day before. It is inevitable that unless I can write or scrap daily, I will forget all the many many daily precious moments I tell myself I will remember forever.

And on that note, I'm going to bed. I realise I'm literally squinting at the monitor and wondering why the letters have begun to dance a wee jig across the screen.