We are reborn, renamed and still kind of maladjusted

So where have I been for the past 3 or so years? In a nutshell, I got distracted. If you need to ask how one can be distracted for over three years then we are not cut from the same cloth and you should probably ask yourself some long, hard questions. Undoubtedly, I will unfold my tale of hair-brained ideas, behavioural issues, windows updates, dislocations and social inadequacies, in the future but for now, I really can’t be arsed. I’m already really tired by having to address all the things spellcheck is throwing up.

Life has moved on in the Crap household yet still resembles a rabid dog chasing its own tail. This epileptic seizure of time has resulted in the renaming of the children: 

Rain Man has started high school and is excelling at being a mumbling, surly arsehat yet 90% of the time has no idea what is going on. So we often refer to him as Towelie. When you begin referring to your son in general conversation as a South Park character (a genetically engineered towel who is perpetually stoned and often says “I have no idea what is going on”) it should probably raise some red flags regarding your parenting style. It hasn’t. Although I did take pause recently at the horrified reaction of a by-stander in the chemist when I said to Towelie “If you didn’t behave like a fucking stoned towel all the time we might actually get something done”. Then I realised that no one should be swayed by the opinion of filthy eavesdroppers and glared at the man because he was so clearly in the wrong. In the interests of full disclosure, I have to report that this didn’t prompt Towelie to move any faster or become at all aware of his surroundings. He just laughed his tits off. 

The Nazgul no longer screeches and due to her extraordinary ability to style herself to look like she woke up in a skip we have christened her The Bin Baby. It has developed three primary pastimes:

1)                          Crying whenever it doesn’t get its own way. This requires dedication and training and it can often be found sitting in front of the mirror studying itself crying. Recent crying catalysts include not be allowed to stab her father in the arm with a fork, asking what is for dinner and being told, mandarins are the wrong temperature, and after being told off for drawing on her own scalp coming to me sobbing to me because “Daddy disrespected my skills” which leads me to…

2)                          Constant acts of petty vandalism. My first husband and I naively bought white furniture for her room and allowed her possessions so I spend a lot of time trying to remove various scribbling from a variety of surfaces. Honestly, it is like living with a shithouse Banksy. It can be quite confronting for visitors when they first encounter her room which resembles a crack house and they notice all her dolls are sporting Russian prison tattoos and crosses on their eyelids.

3)                        Relentlessly trolling her brother when she thinks no one is listening. Although I do devote a lot of time doing this to my own brother it does bother me because at six years old, her skills have surpassed mine. She has moved on from the simple “you’re adopted” routine to saying things such as “Oh when we were at the zoo we went to the monkey cage to tell your family how you are going” and when looking at a picture of Towelie and his friends telling him “Why do you have that? You only have one friend and that is a cat”.

A bit over a year ago my closest friend went overseas for a few weeks so there was no one around to remind me that as a cat hater I probably shouldn’t get a cat. I got a cat.  Ostensibly, I got it as companion for the Bin Baby which backfired spectacularly. They have so much in common they rarely get along (although there has recently been a cessation of hostilities). If I am truthful I got it because I have really poor impulse control and can’t get a dog as a result of my first husband being dead inside.  Despite the Bin Baby giving the cat a name (I wanted to call it Sharon but was out voted) I call it Destructor the Idiot because it is really fucking stupid. My first husband has always been a cat person and previously claimed that they are intelligent and that it is dogs that are dim-witted. He has conceded that it is a myth that cats are intelligent creatures that choose not to be trained due to their self-reliant nature, and now accepts they cannot be trained because they are simply too fucking dumb. Towelie adores her and is yet to accept that Destructor the Idiot is thick. It pisses him off to hear me call her Destructor the Idiot. I know cat people will side with Towelie on this one but let me provide some anecdotal evidence to support my claim:

In order to turn the alarm on we need to lock the cat in a section of the house and as I have been running late since 2001 it usually falls to me (since everyone left the house some time ago and I have drunk 2-5 cups of coffee and watched several comedone extraction videos on YouTube rather than get ready).  It follows exactly the same pattern every morning (except when I can’t be bothered and lock her outside and hope that Towelie doesn’t find out). 

a) I pick up Destructor the Idiot who proceeds to bite me then abruptly remembers she loves me and starts licking me. 

b) I carry her through to her food bowl and put her down at which point she looks around confused and then assumes she must be hungry and starts eating. 

c) I spend between five and ten mins looking for my keys, sunglasses and shoes before leaving during which even a semi intelligent creature would realise it wasn’t hungry and is about to be locked in which it hates. 

Every single day for over a year and it still hasn’t seen a pattern forming.

And so now I leave you until next time I have something really important and time critical to do.

 

 

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.

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. 

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.

Danger Words

This morning as the Nazgul force fed me a grape of indeterminable vintage, I got to thinking about how being alerted to imminent danger has changed. In the past, the warning of potential hazards and unsafe situations was pretty standard "Fire", "Run" and "Last Drinks" being the most notable. While the word gravity is now positively sinister, it is more of a slow creep than one that immediately freezes the bowels and makes legs twitch.

It has become accepted around Crap Headquarters that the word "igh-ees" (rough English translation: eyes), is usually immediately followed by a sharp poke in the eye and corneas scratched by sharp, dirty little fingernails and shrieks of delight from the Nazgul. In a similar vein, hearing the mutterings of "busybee, busybee, biz biz, busybee" is pretty much a sign to head for the fallout shelter, it is the signal that the Nazgul is rampaging through the house destroying then coating the debris in sunscreen or moisturizer. Recently I was trying to send a text message when I heard the dreaded mutterings to look up and see the Busy Bee sculling soy milk (football hooligan style) while attempting to key the glass doors. Busy Bee also has a penchant for throwing things into the bath (particularly electrical goods), putting popcorn in the toilet and ramming herself into the protective barriers we have placed around everything until she can get close enough to the TV to attempt to key that. I am not sure where she got the idea that a Bee is a vandalising serial killer but it has caused me to add one of those suits that police dog trainers wear to my birthday wish list.

The Busy Bee is not the Nazgul's only alter-ego. We often have prolonged assaults from "The Little Cat", who plays the sociopath to the busy bees psychopathology. The warning bell for the appearance of the Little Cat, is the Nazgul crawling up to you on all fours going "Ahhh Ahhh", then crash tackling you in a head butting frenzy of over enthusiastic kisses, cuddles and general unbalanced love, the Nazgul cuts an elegant figure with the body shape of a front row forward so this little game always ends with a shriek and an agonised "GENTLE, WE DON'T HURT MUMMY". Unfortunately, the main characteristic of the little cat is that is doesn't heed any advice, instruction or pleas for mercy. In the past fortnight alone, she has attempted to decapitate me with the broom on three occasions, attempted to tear my earrings from my ears daily and I suspect has caused life long damage to my septum with the kisses.

The reinterpretation of danger words is not the Nazgul's doing alone, Rainman has the superhuman ability to make a noise that can instantly induce rage in the listener. I am sure some sinister military agency will one day synthesise this sound to play at enemy insurgents - a modern version of the fabled 'brown note". This noise is usually an indication that you will turn around to find Rainman punching his own shoes, pulling at chunks of his hair or biting his own trousers leaving you on the verge of the parenting faux pas of screaming "What the fuck is wrong with your brain?". This is not the most dangerous or most psychically damaging of Rain Man's sounds, as soon as he utters the words "Pokemon", "Munchkin" (some overly complicated imaginary game he plays with his friends) or spies, you know that you are in for a 3-4 hr monologue which eventually degenerates into a nonsensical diatribe or argument (recently he claimed he had already completed some spy training as he had medical knowledge and went into a rant about 'clerics' and healing, when I gently mentioned he was talking about something made up from a role playing game, he had a fit that he was talking about the real world not a game and became so frustrated he was almost frothing at the mouth).


Similarly, I am alerted to danger from My First Husband when he says "Hi, I am home", but that is another post entirely.....

***The Crap Housewife would like to apologise for the delay in posting, she has been under constant terrorist attack in the form of an imaginary bee and kitten and has not emerged unscathed from the encounters. However she makes no apologies for the spelling and grammatical errors, she just can't be arsed***

The Cast

The Crap Housewife: President and founding member of the Crap Housewives Association, extremely qualified in the role, Career highlights include - Stapling as a form of hemming, completely cooking all moisture out of a potato, and dubious parenting behaviours such as paying son $10 to leave her alone. Also as you will note in posts, is never, ever, ever in the wrong. Currently played by Christina Hendricks (Well I dye my hair red and have big boobs, and like anyone in cyber space is gonna know the difference).

My First Husband: Also current and only husband to the Crap Housewife.Could be termed a lovable eccentric but that would be a fucking lie, he is an acerbic mental case who is hell bent on driving the Housewife insane. They have been together for 10 years and he is yet to stop talking.

Rain Man: The first born of the Housewife and the Husband, so named because when things go wrong he has the tendency to over-react in the same way Dustin Hoffman over-acted in the crap 80's film Rain Man. At present Rain Man is seven years old and appears to have no short-term memory and yet can monologue about computer games for upwards of 3 hrs.

The Nazgul: The 19 Month old daughter of the Housewife and the Husband, so named because she can screech like a Tolkien creature whenever she is displeased, the housewife quite often checks the Nazgul's back to see if she is indeed carrying a ring-wraith.


Together this mentally unbalanced group form the basis for a bizarre daily sitcom that no one really gets but kind of likes because watching them makes everyone feel better about themselves. There maybe a snap-shot of the Crap Housewife's day every week or so, or maybe just the bitter ramblings of someone who just doesn't understand when to shut up.