The Joy of Tech.

So I just thought I could do some more work on the increasingly overdue report or I could squeeze in one more blog post for November so I am already fucked off since it turns out it is 5th December. One of my friends finds it highly amusing that My First Husband and I email other, mainly when he is at work but sometimes from the same house...after 12 years this kind of shit happens. So I thought I would give you all an insight into what these conversations entail. 

Conversation 1

Me: Just sponged mattress with lemon juice and apple cider vinegar. Hopefully by this afternoon it will be usable again.(If you are curious readers this is to remove human urine off a mattress)

My First Husband: You really do rock. Rainman and The Nazgul should feel very lucky

Me: That's what I am always saying. Drank the last of chicken soup out of bowl but started singing and now covered in soup. 

My First Husband: you were singing while drinking soup???

Me: Not when I started but then my current fav song came on...now my vag smells like chicken and corn soup. 

My First Husband:  Do you mind if I come home for lunch?

Me: Alright but you can't look at me or talk to me

Conversation 2

Me: Would you wear this style of 50's bowling shirt kind of thing. I really like it but don't know if you would go for it.
Its okay if you don't like it. Just want to know.

 

 My First Husband: Yes, I like it. I got you a Christmas gift ..  its should be delivered tomorrow or friday so don't open anything..

do you like these...

 

Guess I had better get back to actually working. Oh and an update to last week's parcel delivery, turns out I had ordered a night light in the shape of a cat and a heap of red polka dot plastic plates, containers and salad bowls. I opened the door and said "Hi" in such a sunny way a little bit of sick popped up, and the Aust Post guy replied (a tad accusationally if you ask me)  "Did I see you pushing a pram this morning?". I said "Ummm, Probably. I was taking my little girl to daycare?" and then he walked away. I am currently designing a poster for the front door that says JUST SAY HELLO. 

 

Brown Paper Packages.

So walking back from dropping the Nazgul at daycare this morning I composed the most outstanding blog post in my head, truly it was magnificent so it was deeply unfortunate that I got home and discovered that my brother will be speaking in the third person for the rest of the week AND (as if that weren’t enough) I got an incredibly exciting email from Tracknoreply@auspost.com.au and all the awesome fell completely out of my head. I then started this blog post but there was some kind of dancing/coffee/PC incident (I am not entirely sure of the details but we’re all fine) and it got deleted. Anyway, I have pasted the most exciting bits of the email below:

Please be advised of your article delivery status.

Article Number
Consignment Number
Total Articles	1
Date/Time	29.11.12 06:32:55
Current Status	Onboard with Driver
Location

Now this might be rather mundane info to many people but for several reasons I am so excited that I can’t possibly do a lick of work today (or most likely tomorrow). Firstly, I have very little contact with the outside world so I consider the postman to be a visitor. Secondly, I have discovered the awesome combination of on-line Christmas shopping, wine and My First Husband’s credit card number (Baby, If you are reading this just remember I am the best you can do okay?) so the contents of the packages are often quite a surprise. Please see below for an example of yesterday’s effort.

Now while this delivery wasn’t a surprise the fact that the cubby would arrive as my motivation left was. It stayed that way until My First Husband moved it outside with the resigned “What makes you do these things” which is one of my favourite quotes around here.

However, the third and most important reason is the parcel post guy. Now we have had the same delivery driver for years and he is generally quite a pleasant chap. I am still slightly miffed from the incident a few years ago when I realised after signing for a parcel the buttons on my shirt were undone and he didn’t even have the decency to look impressed. Seriously. But yesterday was the ultimate conversation

Me (opening the door): Hi

Post guy (handing me the electronic signing thingy): Do you even work?

Me (signing): Ummmm….I work from home a lot.

And he leaves without saying another fucking word.

I was/am absolutely delighted, it is not often that I meet someone worse at small talk than me but the fact that I know he is coming back today is just fantastic.  Even more so considering last night I had a couple of scotches and dyed my hair the colour that once prompted a co-worker to say “Did you mean for it to come out like that?” I really don’t think enough grown women dye their hair a primary colour that glows (I am not being hyperbolous here, it is glowing). Now my beloveds how to answer the door? So far I am considering constructing a facsimile of a lo-jack device around my ankle, or slipping him a note that says “Please contact ASIO, I need immediate extraction…they’re onto me”…..or I suppose I could just write my overdue report. Any suggestions?

 

Conversations with Rainman

It will probably surprise many of you to know that Rainman isn't actually mentally deficient (we have had him tested). In fact, he has been put in several of the gifted classes at his school, is very athletic and can be quite articulate and charming...apparently. This makes me gravely concerned for the other 120 odd kids in his year. Below is very typical of the conversations I have with Rainman 20 - 30 times a day.

Rainman while swinging badly on a swing. (How can you not be able to operate a swing? I didn't even know it possible): Do you have a piece of cloth?
Me: No. Why would I bring a piece of cloth to the park?
Rainman: Because you don't have my hat in your bag.
Me: WHAT???
Rainman:  For you to hold onto and for me to try and grab but you didn't bring anything so it doesn't even matter now. Rainman suddenly  becomes extremely petulant at my horrendous neglect.

Now this is reminiscent of conversations such as the public argument because he wouldn't accept that the milkshake flavour was caramel not camel as he insisted, or the time he got mages (popular in fantasy novels and games) and paramedics mixed up but would not concede that paramedics can't alter time.

A day in the life: Friday 9th November

Heard the best phrase ever: "Fuck you lamp and fuck you Jeff".

Discovered their are no images on google for "salami baguette dildos"

My son handed in homework with his invention 'The Vibrator".

There are bonus fly-buy points at liquorland all weekend.

I laughed so much that I foamed at the mouth, dry retched and suspected I was having a heart attack.

It was the best day ever. 

A Day in the Life: Thurs 8th November

People often ask me: why are you so angry all the time? Why can't you complete a sentence without a minimum of 15 swear words? Did you mean for your hair to look like that? Why are you so obsessed with alcohol and breasts? Do you think mocking your own children on the internet is good parenting? I think that the answer to these questions and quite probably many more can be seen below.

My First Husband is away at a conference. It is only overnight and like many, many of the married females I know, I was damn excited at the prospect. Last night was fine, the Nazgul was ticked off that a minion had left without her permission but soon enough she was in bed and I was kicking back with a glass of sparkling and watching a show about stupid British dog owners. This morning saw in a darker day for Crap Headquarters. 

6am: Got my usual wake-up call of "I waaaannnnntttt my MUUUUUUUUUMMMMAAAA" on repeat. I really must applaud the Nazgul on being able to shout but keep the whinging tone in tact while at the same time making a mockery of the "gentle alarm" I so diligently set on my phone each night. As soon as she sees me the whine changes to "I want you carry me" which considering I have a chronic joint condition and she is built like the cross between a garden gnome and a front row forward, poses quite a few technical problems. After I say no, she informs me she is an elephant and rolls around her bed laughing her insane little arse off (must remember to take this child to the zoo at some point because that impression needs a shit load of work). 

6.45am: After 12 of her personalities taking turns to be in control (Postman Pat and assorted minor roles, the entire cast of Yo Gabba Gabba, Bob the Builder, and some random cats) The Nazgul announces her breakfast is over. Seeing her take a deep breath, the kind she does before a whinge so intense that a catholic would consider it speaking in tongues, I head it off by asking her to wake Rainman up. She whines in a way that has me making moon eyes at the booze cupboard "Is not Rainman. Is Brobee", "Okay, then sweetheart can you get Brobee up” which causes her to launch into a complete mental fit crying "No I is Brobee". I have kind of blacked out what happened next and replaced it with scene from 90s sitcom Father Ted but the end result was she woke up Rainman by climbing into bed with him and singing sweetly to him. I was misty eyed as walked past and they were cuddling while playing with a torch...fool that I was. 

7am: The Nazgul adds foot stomping while crying and shouting that she wasn't finished breakfast and she was still eating those two sodden spoonful’s of porridge I had cleared away. After calming her down and furnishing her with more porridge. I watch my two shaved chimps happily chatting away and decide it is safe for me to go to the toilet in the next room rather than shit my own pants.

7.03am: Both children (and I use this term in its loosest possible sense) are screaming and crying. I don't mean shouting, I mean screaming like when the TV gets turned off in the rec room of a secure unit screaming.  I call out to Rainman to tell me what happened. I keep calling out more and more desperately for him to come here so was quite shocked to hear him running off to the other end of the house crying. I keep calling out for him to come here until I am shrieking. Eventually he turns up sobbing and says "Nazgul threw a spoon at me and just shouts at me”.  By this point The Nazgul is contributing to the symphony of horror by shrieking "I no love mummy and Rainman. Me love my daddy. DAAADDDY. Me no love mummy. Me no love Rainman" over and over.  Somehow I manage to calmly say “You go to your room for a few minutes and calm down, mate” Of course Rainman showed his acting skills by walking off as if he was going to his room but actually just stepped out of my line of vision and started provoking the Nazgul until she was in a berserker frenzy.


7.05am: Come out of the bathroom to assess the damage and using my Dexter-like skills to analyse the porridge splatter and spoon position quickly ascertain that Rainman was being a crap-pony once again. The most the Nazgul could have been guilty of was pushing her spoon away. Eventually exorcize the Nazgul enough to determine that despite her spoon being perfectly fine while I was in her eyesight as soon as I am no longer visible the only spoon she can eat from is the one Rainman is eating with. After every other spoon in the house had been rejected as “I no love that one” I brokered a deal whereby The Nazgul would take possession of the spoon equivalent of the Gaza Strip as soon as Rainman was done. 

7.15am: Tell Rainman to hurry up with the spoon. He puts the spoon down and stares at his sister. He has apparently forgotten the above in its entirety. 

7.25am: Trying to get The Nazgul ready for the walk to drop Rainman off at school and her at Day care but am constantly interrupted by Rainman, who despite being unable to get both shoes on in under 20 mins feels that my parenting of The Nazgul needs correction (the entire time The Nazgul has whined that it doesn’t want to go to day-care and has developed an alternate reality in which I am taking her to the park). While I am telling Rainman that he needs to put his other shoe on and shut up, The Nazgul disappears and begins shouting “I no love mummy. I no like my school. I not going my school. I going back to bed” and sure enough she is laying in her bed shouting out bitter recriminations. 

8am: Despite being told at 5 min intervals all morning we were leaving at 8am on the dot (to drop both children off I have to walk for 2 hours) As I am grabbing my keys Rainman walks past me, headed for the toilet with a magazine tucked under his arm. 

For the first half of the walk to school Rainman refused to talk to me and just walked one step behind me, glaring and muttering under his breath. This didn’t bother me so much as The Nazgul was still relentlessly protesting that she was not going to day-care and I was to take her home. Halfway through the trip his innate desire to drive me insane by monologuing kicked in. However, after he found the need to stand in the middle of a driveway of a construction site, adjusting some astro-turf they had put down and ignoring all my pleas to get off the driveway until I was shrieking like a mental woman so insanely that people in cars were staring, he returned to the sullen muttering about my intolerant ways. 

The Nazgul did not let up on the whining; whinging and general insanity about not going to day-care for the entire walk there. After dropping her off, I walked straight into a near-by McDonalds and shoved a bacon and egg muffin into my mouth like a proper mental. Which might not seem particularly remarkable or concerning to those of you who don’t know one simple fact about me – I wouldn’t have eaten McDonalds in a good decade. Generally my reaction to it is the same as most people would have to being asked to eat a live frog. 

And dear readers, this is why I am angry, swear, have hair in worse condition than a witch’s pubes, drink, and look down other ladies shirts at the supermarket.

Highly developed time management skills

So it has reached the point where I have actual work to do and have run through every distraction I possibly could (do you know how hard it is find a pictures of dogs that look like Roy Orbison?) and so it came down to the choice of finally write the blog update that you have all been nagging me for, or do housework (I couldn't actually write the report I am meant to be writing, that would just be weird and wrong).

So while I am supposed to be all academic and scholarly, I am throwing myself whole-heartedly into watching videos of cysts being drained on YouTube (I thoroughly recommend "Operation Kill George" for any of you who are faced with competing and stressful deadlines) and inventing things. This week I have invented a nut sack holder attachment for gaming console controllers (it cups firmly and reassuringly yet is sensitive enough to transmit the varying intensities of the controller vibrations) and the perfectly positioned bar area in supermarkets where parents get discounts based on the decibel measure of their child's screaming and/or the length of their child's whining...Which while I am on the subject, reminds me of discussion I had with one of my friends recently, why did we spend so much time in the 90s ingesting dubious substances in bars and clubs?  These were places where we were having a good time anyway and we should have been high enough off the fact we were lithe and young. If ever I needed to drop a few of the old disco biscuits it's taking Rainman and The Nazgul through the supermarket or on public transport. Like bras without built in scaffolds, the days of experimentation and recreation are far far far behind my friends and I so the irony is not lost on me that now we are enduring experiences so excruciating that we could do with class A narcotics to get through. I saw the episode of the show ER years ago where there was a soccer Mum who was taking crystal meth just to get all her house-elf duties done, I never understood that episode before. I have also invented a cocktail for one of my friends who is going through hell with her son's sleep apnoea and surgery, I call it the stayin' alive: 

• 2 spoons of instant coffee
• 15 spoons of sugar
• a generous dash of vodka 
• 13 crushed old school cold and flu tabs containing pseudo-ephedrine 

mix with boiling water and drink until the sound of your kids no longer bothers you.

I have also devoted a fair chunk of my time to inventing new swear words, breaking one of the first things My First Husband ever taught me which is that any swear word can be infinitely improved by the addition of the word "rag" on the end (go and call someone a cunt-rag right now, their reaction really is a life changer). Indeed I married an artist. I have found my true linguistic skill is getting incredibly angry at Rainman in public and being surprised at what almost-swear words loudly escape from my mouth. Most recently I accused him of being an "ungrateful little crap-pony", I was surprised as the mother and children next to me but much less disapproving that she was.

I would love to fill you in on more of my inventions (I am thinking kleptomaniac vacuum cleaners might be the way of the future) but you know this has taken almost 16 mins and I am bored. I have better go watch clips of dodgy dermatologists excising 30 year old blackheads from an old guy's face. 

Night time wanderings of trainee humans.

Of course it has been a while since my last post, it always is. I have been very busy trying to retrain to be incompetent in a completely new arena, and have been delighting in savagely bi-polar behaviour from the Nazgul. The resulting stress levels have been spectacular and I have indulged in such hobbies as forgetting to turn the gas stove-top off for 6 hours, drawing very odd characters such as "Kevin the Ant thief", "Ralph the King of the Purple Lizards" and "Jack the BAD frog" for the children, completely forgetting then getting disturbed when I find the pictures. Fun times indeed.

Things wouldn't be so dire if the Nazgul hadn't started a new hobby, where between 9pm and 2 am is WAKE TIME. This mainly involves her laying in bed yelling "My Mummy. I want my Mummy" then when I go in, tenderly stroking my face saying "My Mummy. I wake my Mummy up" and then demonically laughing for ages. In a fit of desperation the other night, I hurled There's a Hippopotamus on the Roof Eating Cake at her and said "Just read this in bed" and stumbled off into a wall. I was so sleepy I had forgotten her reading that book just involves her sitting there shouting "HOMO" at every page, so the sounds coming through the monitor from her room sounded more like a group of bogans on train platform, than a toddler reading session.

Anyway, I am not alone in this. I am actually comparatively lucky, it seems the new craze sweeping the nation's 2.5 yr olds is waking up in the middle of the night and running amok through the house. Many of my friends seem to have discovered they have tiny little Keith Richards' rampaging through their homes any time sleep is attempted. There has been a lot of buzz on the inter-webs that "this too shall pass", "it is a developmental stage", "you just have to stay consistent" blah blah blah, bottom line being that it will improve and you just have to wait for their developing brains to finish this particularly phase of rewiring. All I can say is BULLSHIT. I have developed a fool proof strategy for getting the little bastards to stay in bed (and this is heaps better than my other ideas of getting Brian Blessed to do Jane Austen audio books, roller pants, and us changing our surname to Eastwood). I have written a meditative story to read to young children, with a clear subtext that they can relate to their own existence and therefore be aided in developing new strategies around sleep.

Night-time Meditations for Naughty Little Boys.

Are you snuggled comfy under your covers? Ok now, Mummy will read you one story and then it’s time for lights off and time for sleep.

Once upon a time, not as long ago as you might think, there was a little boy/girl who used to get out of bed every night. Every night their Mummy would tuck them in, kiss them good night but they just wouldn’t stay in bed. Their Mummy was so beautiful and worked so hard but was so sad because their little boy/girl was so horrible.

One night, the little child was EVEN worse than before, he/she jumped out of bed so HARD that he/she woke up SLICER-BEASTIE.

Slicer Beastie, has metal teeth and lives under the beds of children. When children get up when they are not allowed, Slicer Beastie wakes up and drags them by their ankles under the bed and eats their little faces off.

Now, Good night Sunny/Erin/Rachel/Lucy/Orion/Elijah/Fern/Amber. Sweet dreams. Mummy will come in and check that you are still alive. Love you poppet. 

The End

Now, off to work towards my dream of being a developmental psychologist.

Fuck you, Shannon Lush.

First before we get too far into anything, as usual it has been a while since I have frequented here and to those people that have been harassing me about when this post was going to appear...stop and think. You are following The CRAP Housewife. Not The Organised Housewife, Not The Gives a Fuck Housewife, Do you not think the answer to your question might be in the title? To me crap is not just a word it is a way of life.

So what prompts me to be airing my unwashed smalls on the internet today? Simply, housework. I hate it, I avoid it, I suck at it but sometimes, goddamn it, even I have to do it. Or more accurately, start to do it, then go on-line where I just look at a screen and not the chaos surrounding me. I would have quite happily avoided domestic drudgery for another season or two but fate has a funny way of kicking you in the ovaries, chiefly in the form of an 8 year old boy with absolutely no drive to aim his stream of urine...well anywhere really.

Now several years ago I actually purchased Shannon Lush's ode to vinegar and bicarb soda "Speed Cleaning", unfortunately I misunderstood the title and it is NOT a tome on the use of narcotics to aid in household tasks and I am now stuck with a book whose core philosophy makes a mockery of me and all I stand for. Let me tell you there is not one single chapter, paragraph or line in this book that advises one on what to do when you are sitting innocently on the toilet, hiding from your spouse and off-spring, only to be overcome with the smell of rancid piss. Not one mention of this phenomenon that numerous women across the country face every day of their lives. Do you know why? Because fucking vinegar and bicarb has absolutely no effect on fermenting human urine. Insert surprised face here.

Last night I would have much rather been laying on the couch shouting random insults at my first husband (I believe I told him he was like if Hitler and Captain Caveman had a love-child) but instead I was bleaching the area around the toilet which was covered in a layer of radioactive looking kid whizz. After which I felt akin to having spent all night in an inner-city nightclub in 1996 and felt sure that I would no longer be stalked around the house by a thick yellow cloud of stench. Imagine my dismay this morning when I enter the bathroom and become immersed in what can only be described as olfactory hell. Upon further investigation it turned out the smell of rancid piss was, in fact rancid piss that had become trapped under the toilet seat during one of Rainman's water-passing frenzies. Now did I run to the pantry like Saint Shannon and reach for the fish and chip dressing? No because only a moron would think of such a ludicrious response to such an extreme bodily fluid related event. Actually I retched for a while and then was determined to respond to this situation Crap Housewife Style, and got every cleaning product that had a skull and cross bones on it, and nuked the living fuck out of that bacteria ridden toilet all the while swearing profusely and inventively.

Now this is not an isolated event. Rainman pisses around and on the toilet much more frequently than he ever pees into it. I have seen him on many occasions standing in front of the toilet, willy popped out of the top of his pants, tooth brush hanging out of his mouth, with his hands on his hips as he stares at the ceiling and kind of sways thus drenching a 1.5 metre radius in liquid human waste. In the same vein, he can regularly be seen spraying the bathroom in pee as he reads a comic/book and then will flatly deny that he is in anyway responsible for the yellow rain running down the walls. Please see the below illustration and note the lovely white shine and it's contrast with the uric acid stains, I really believe it adds to the general ambiance of the space:

N.B: This is the AFTER shot, it had been soaking a solution of bleach and toxic chemicals for 4+ hrs when this shot was taken.

Now Shannon, on the whole, seems reasonably harmless for a cult leader but sadly, she is not alone in the tour of maddness gripping the world...stay tuned for a further rant on the destroyers of society and my private battle with a escaping body fluids.

P.S. My view on editing and grammar is also expressing in the blog's title, so you know, fucking shutup about it nit-pickers.