15 Things I have learnt this week

Being the lazy writer that I am and having no clue what topic to write about, I figure I can always go back to a tried and true format. Thanks to twitter my inner monologue only speaks in 140 character bursts so why fight it. Here's the stuff I should probably already know but didn't before this week.

1. No matter how much you try to plan your day, 15 minutes before you are due to leave to go somewhere, one of your children will fall asleep. It doesn't matter how old they are or how much sleep they have had in the last week. This will happen. Expect it.
2. If you mop your floors, within 24 hours straight cordial will be dropped on them. Even in houses like mine where cordial is no longer purchased this still happens. It's the universes way of saying 'you missed a spot'. 
3. You can have a huge backyard and all the outdoor play equipment a Toys-r-us catalogue can push on you but the best place for a family cricket match will always be the living room, according to all card carrying members of you household. Learn the phone number for O'Brien's Glass Replacement or put it in your speed dial.
4. Teenage boys can be awfully creative with their little sister's Barbie dolls if left alone with them for just minutes. These 'displays' will just confirm your suspicions that he was downloading porn in his bedroom all along. No need for that awkward conversation to take place.
5. You might think you have come up with THE best chocolate hiding spot in the house but those pesky teenagers will always sniff it out. You will only discover this when you are either frothing at the mouth with raging hormones or there is a torrential storm hitting your house and your hair is freshly blow waved.
6. Torrential storms ONLY hit your house when you have freshly blow waved your hair.
7. No matter how much you are repulsed by the thought, it is possible that your husband will open a beer at 9am when on holidays just because your shot him your best 'you have got to be fucking kidding me' look. Pick your battles. Your day will certainly end better than his.
8. Cocktail frankfurts should never, under any circumstance, be put in a Waldorf Salad. DID YOU HEAR THAT MOTHER IN LAW?
9. Having a hot podiatrist is a complete waste of an interaction with a hot person. They're looking at your feet for God's sake and you're not there because you're a foot model.
10. The size of luggage required for a person to go on a holiday is in no way relevant to their size. In fact, the smaller you are, the more you need. It is written.
11. No matter how many beautiful, colour coordinated outfits you buy for your daughter, she will always choose the most stained, stretched, ugly, misshapen, uncoordinated outfit she can get her hands on. Then she will be photographed for a newspaper article or kinder graduations photos. And people WILL judge you.
12. Your semi verbal autistic child will always manage to repeat any swear word you say with some little inflection which lets everyone know just who taught him that little gem. He may not speak all day but stub your toe on a rock and call it a 'son-of-a-mother-fucking-try-hard-lump-of-ugly-granite' and you can be sure he will find his tongue.
13. People only post the ugliest of photos of you on Facebook. You will always be taking a bite out of a burger, swigging a drink from the bottle or mid sneeze. Then they tag you.
14. Good photos of you were last taken in the late 80's. Even the ones with that perm you thought was hot but really wasn't are better than anything taken since.
15. All of this crap will pale into insignificance when your phone rings and your 7 year old ASD child picks it up and says 'Hello, Fletcher speaking.'

Have a great weekend guys. I know I will now.

Cockroaches and Glitter

If by some terrible turn of events in our future, we, as a planet experience some kind of nuclear holocaust, I have discovered there will be more than just cockroaches that will remain.

There will also be glitter.

I was unfortunate enough to have to take The Divine Miss M to a 5th birthday party yesterday. The party in itself was not the part for which I am unfortunate. The problem was that it was a fairy themed party.

Now before you go all grouchy ungrateful mum on me, I'm just not a fancy dress sort of person. I'm not into themed parties for any age celebration and don't even get me started on the awful trend of themed weddings. But I digress.

So, The Divine Miss M was invited to Olivia's fairy birthday party. Now, no where on the invitation did it say 'please dress your child as a fairy' but I took the safe option, having watched Bridget Jones live my worst nightmare of turning up to a party and be the only person dressed up, and I dressed her in girly sort of clothes and threw a new set of wings and wand in the car to match for good measure. At this point, there was already glitter on my hands, jeans, in my hand bag and my car. The car is not really a place that concerns me as glitter is just one of thousands of things you may or may not find in there on any given day. Animal, vegetable, mineral. You pick a category. But once again, I digress.

So, The Divine Miss M and I hook on her wings and walk up the driveway of a house we've never been to, owned by a person I've never met for a party of a little girl I've never laid eyes on. This is not something which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I might write like someone who couldn't give a shit about what people think of me, in fact most of the time I look like that person but on the inside, I am absolutely cacking myself. I mean, what if it's the wrong house? Or the wrong day? (I've done that one before with Number 1 son but that's a whole different disaster post cos I put the 4WD in a ditch pulling into the driveway and, wait, I digress) Or they answer the door and say 'You? You weren't meant to be invited. What are you doing here?' Well, that's more like something that would happen in a B grade teen flick but you get my drift. And remember, I'm the parent. I'm meant to teach her how to be confident and have courage and independence. So I'm faking it.

Anyway, the door opens and there's this, I dunno, 10 year old looking girl dressed in a fairy looking dress who says 'Come in, you can stay, there's coffee and heaps of food and stuff' in a we really don't want you to stay sort of way as she looks at me. So we walk in. Mini me and I simultaneously cacking our fairy pants. Did I mention that The Divine Miss M goes mute with shyness when she enters group situations? Well she does and the only reason I don't is because I understand that people give you even stranger looks if you say nothing at all. So the mother of the birthday girl says hi and introduces herself and offers me a water. (What? No wine?) I realise at this point that all the other mothers have taken just a split second to check me out then gone back to their own conversations. I know no one and The Divine Miss M acts like she knows no one when really she knows a grand total of 1 person there. Lucky her. I'm feeling ridiculously uncomfortable and struggling to encourage her to appear any better. There are at least a dozen squealing little girls, covered in tulle and glitter. I sat on a chair and the woman next to me turned and introduced herself as Michelle then gave me her back. Yep, that's as far as socialising went. That's was about when I realised my nose was sparkling whenever the sunlight caught it. Argh! Freaking glitter!

Then Fairy Abbey arrives.

Yes, there are people, Adults, who dress in tulle and glitter and entertain children for a living. Personally, I would rather be forced to live in a cardboard box under the Westgate Bridge than resort to this as a means of employment in order to avoid it. I'm pretty sure this chick was dropping acid. I mean no one can be that chirpy and prance around in rainbow coloured wings or speak in accentuated syllables like that and be sober. Whatever she was on, I needed some. I was in a world of pain. I was bored to tears. I knew without a doubt, this was going to be 2.5 hours of my life I was never getting back. I was so relieved to hear the mum of the birthday girl say that it was time for cake because cake means an end to your obligations as a guest.

And the second those candles were blown out, mums were grabbing balloons, lolly bags and glitter covered hands and high tailing it out of there. I joined the throng, said my thank yous (for having such clicky friends that wouldn't even be nice to the loner woman and let her play with them. If only.) and headed for my car. I strapped The Divine Miss M in her glitter covered car seat, put my now sparkly keys in the ignition and went home.

When I arrived to my haven I went straight for the fridge only to find silver sparkles on the bottle of pear cider I was planning on using to wash away all memories of glitter and fairies and tulle and squealing little girls and snobby mums who didn't want to play with me.

12 things I discovered this weekend.

So it's been an interesting weekend in the house of the barely sane. We really didn't do a lot but I learnt many things. I thought I'd share some of them with you.

1. When you drive your husband's car and go to pinch $1 from his console to go through the Macca's drive thru, only to find the speeding fine he has hidden in there, you no longer need to feel guilty about pinching said $1. Just imagine a $1 coin in your left hand and the $282 you are about to hand over to Civic Compliance in your right. Guilt instantly evaporates.
2. If you ask your 4yo if she knows just how beautiful she is enough times, eventually she will sigh and just say 'yeah'.
3. If over the course of one weekend your 4yo asks to no longer be referred to by the beautiful name you agonised over for months but by the names Dora, Glassiola, Sweetheart, Lola or Princess Holly, she is not suffering from multiple personality disorder, she just watches too many cartoons.
4. I confirmed that I will always despise unpacking groceries but it can be made bearable if I also buy a couple of Rekorderlig Strawberry and Lime ciders along with the broccoli and toilet paper.   
5. It is possible for me to overreact when my Facebook friends keep hitting 'like' on the RIP Morgan Freeman page when the man IS NOT DEAD! No, I take that back. It is not an overreaction when all they had to do was Google 'Morgan Freeman dead' and they'd find it is a hoax. Seriously people, University of Google. You can learn a lot.
6. If you get very fashionable FCUK glasses and your 16 yo is dyslexic, he is probably gonna question what the hell you're wearing. And the word he uses may not be 'hell'.
7. Just because you have a 12 cup coffee pot and happen to be the only person in the house who sets it up each night, you're the only person who empties the old grounds and cleans to pot each day, you a not guaranteed any more than 1 cup from that pot. And really, even that 1 should not be taken for granted. It's the quick and the dead here.
8. I learnt that if you cook dinner while wearing a scarf there is a significant chance you will catch fire. Don't test this theory at home people, just take my word for it.
9. I also learnt that if you set yourself on fire cooking dinner you may need to change your underwear shortly after.
10. I learnt that if the guy who lives at your place decides to teach your children how to play poker on his iPhone you should not be concerned about early onset gambling addiction. As a glass half full kinda gal, you should look forward to a possible future in card counting for at least 1 of them. Be proud.
11. If your 16 yo son rings you from school and asks if you'll look for the wallet he is pretty sure he left at home, under so circumstances should you look in it after finding it. Just accept your baby is gone.
12. And finally, if the guy who lives at your place declares to the world that he's going to participate in Tough Mudder next year, YOU will be the one reaping the rewards. 

Bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored.

I'm bored.

It's one of those very rare moments when all of my family are home and awake and I have a serious case of the CBF's. (for the uninitiated, that stands for can't be f.....! ) There are a gazillion things I could or should be doing but none of them seem even remotely interesting enough to inspire me. I'm finding myself sitting here refreshing my Facebook and Twitter pages, praying that someone, somewhere is doing something so I might be able to comment or at least covertly observe (AKA stalk) them doing it and live vicariously, just for a moment, through them. But as I look at the top of my screen, there are no magical little numbers on the tabs letting me know that the rest of the world is not as bored as I am. So it seems the rest of the world either IS as bored as I am or they are so busy doing something so exciting or interesting that they have *gasp* forgotten to tell me via social media. Heaven help me, I might even have to wait till the phone rings and speak to someone to see how they're going and what they're up to.

Or, I hate to even suggest it but I might have to make the effort see someone IN PERSON.

Though if I think about it, that's not likely to happen because I am that person that might always be at every party or social gathering but only because someone rang me and invited me, not because I rang them and said 'hey, been a while, lets blah blah blah'. The odd thing is that it's the first Saturday night in forever that we have had no plans and usually I would love the veg night after so many weeks in a row of going out but I think I have gotten used to my dance card being full.

OOH hang on, a number 2 in brackets just appeared on the Facebook tab, must go check, be right back....

(8 seconds later...)

Okay friends, I appreciate when you 'like' my fb updates but if you don't comment there is still nothing for me to do. *big sigh* Right, where was I? Oh....

So I have a few choices. The first being accept my boredom and learn to deal with it. The problem with this option is that I don't really like being bored. My second option is that I do something. Hmmm. What to do...what to do... The book I'm  reading at the moment is bordering on shite, I refuse to do housework when everyone else in the house is bludging, doing almost any form of exercise means going outside and it's bloody cold outside and I (super-soft-cock-who-lives-in-Melbourne) don't like the cold, my kids have their heads buried in their own things (ipads, laptops and 30 Peppa Pig episodes on Tivo) and the guy who lives at my place has some game of rugby on the telly which means all he hears when I speak is some strange form of annoying feminine white noise.

Or I could just get a drink and keep on typing...

What would you do?

Cheers bloggers!

Ok, so I'm a baaaaaad blogger.

I just had a look at the 'edit posts' section of my blog and it seems that for every post I have done, there are 4 more that I have started, never finished or published. I think I have turned into one of 'those' people. You know, those people who hop from one new hobby to another and never really finish anything. I still remember my 18 year old cousin coming over to my house about 15 years ago and upon spotting my dinning table covered in rubber stamps, ink and glitter, said 'Tell me you haven't taken up another hobby?'

It seems I have become a 'gonna' person.

You know the type, I'm gonna de-clutter my house, I'm gonna stop buying shoes I don't absolutely need, I'm gonna go to the gym at least 3 times a week, I'm gonna write in my blog regularly and maybe one day write that book I've been dreaming about writing since year 9 English when I wrote a short story and actually got some praise from Miss Whateverhernamewas.

So tell me bloggers, what is the secret? How am I gonna the habit of hitting the 'publish' button?

For those of you curious, this post also ended up in the 'edit posts' file for 24 hours!

Jet lag, the silent killer. (first world problems)

I have jet lag and it's caving my head in.


Maybe I should clarify that. I don't have jet lag, I just want to sleep during the day and stay awake all night. That can't be jet lag right? 


The guy who lives at my place and I got back from the most fabulous holiday in the UK on Thursday night and now it's Sunday night and my eyes and skin are burning like I did vodka shots for breakfast. In fact, maybe it's just a delayed hangover from the morning after the opening ceremony of the London Olympics where I actually did do that. I think. Or maybe it's just and insomnia/age thing. But not jet lag. Definitely.


I just checked out twitter and there are all these people bitching about being awake at 5:45am and suffering from #jetlag. 5:45am is a freakin sleep in people, not jet lag.


I mean it WAS a 26 hour flight home and we DID cross more time zones than most think is humanly possible but that couldn't be jet lag.


In fact it could be a reaction to having my in laws over today where my father in law, who happens to be from the UK but I'm 99% sure has never set foot in London, sat here with his iphone out googling shit, telling me or better yet, correcting me on what I'd seen and done. It could be that.


Or maybe it's sleep envy cos the guy who lives at my place fell asleep at 6.30pm and will most likely sleep through where as I will be lucky to get 3 hours. Which would be 1 more than last night. it could be that.


Or maybe it's cos I just read that Jennifer Hawkins is suffering from jet lag and is going for a 30 minute run to cure it. Even if I HAD jet lag, the only way I'd run for 30 minutes would be if someone was chasing me with a knife (wouldn't bother if they had a gun cos I'm never gonna outrun a bullet). And even then, said knife holder would clearly be rather unlucky to have not caught me in 30 minutes. 


Or maybe I have a virus that is making me want to stay awake at night and therefore sleep during the day.


Yeah that must be it.

The guy who lives at my place with me and probably the only ugly view from the London Eye.

Introducing......Barely Sane

Hi, my name is Sane, Barely Sane. You might recognise me from such titles as 'The haggard woman staring back at me in the mirror' or 'Yes, I am wearing trackie pants to the supermarket' or even 'Fading memories of a flatter stomach'. I am Every Woman and not the kind Whitney Houston was thinking about, well, every woman with 3 kids, a husband, an ex husband, a dog, 2 fish, a business, a mortgage, a bunch of Every Woman friends and very little time. So I am probably just like you.

I find writing rather therapeutic. Which is a good thing because I probably should be in therapy and God knows I have neither the time or the money for it. When I was young I use to keep a diary. I'd write all my crazy thoughts in there. Not the kind where you make plans to go to school with a couple of guns hidden in duffel coat and get even with the kids who always pick you last in PE. I mean the kind where you practice the signature you will use when you and Craig Pearce tie the knot at the end of grade 6 or where you ask the universe if you should grow your fringe out. I loved it. I'd write in one for a while and when I'd recovered from my most recent crisis I'd promptly destroy it in a ritual I'd like to think was similar to a Phoenix bursting into flames so new life could emerge but in truth it was just because I had written such drivel I was terrified someone might find it.

This is my modern day diary. Problem is I can't burn it when I'm over my latest crisis for 2 reasons. First, I am under the impression that torching my laptop will not dispose of the evidence and secondly, my crises are usually overlapping. So I'm going to suck it up and accept that this will be out there for all eternity.

And I'm using an alias.