Why I have become the Christmas grinch

I used to love Christmas. I used to make my own cards, decorate the house, buy the advent calendars so the children could eat chocolate first thing in the morning. The carols. Mariah Carey blaring out at odd times with 'All I Want For Christmas'. It's a wonderful life on the DVD player (sniff). But each year it has become infinitesimally less bearable and believe it or not it is because I have fewer gifts to buy.

Every year I would start a fresh list in January because I am a very organised ( some say anally retentive) person. If I saw something I thought someone on the list would like I either wrote it down or bought it then and there. I have two siblings with spouses, six nieces and nephews on my side. Four of them now have live in partners. Three brothers in law and three sisters in law and eight young nieces and nephews on the other side ( yes THREE sisters in law people). Three children of my own, spouse, two cats and a dog who also get presents. Sadly my kids lost two grandparents this past year so down to one father and one mother in law. Oh and add in the teachers, the nanny /housekeeper, my husband's secretary, various friends, my hairdresser and physiotherapist and that is over 50 people to buy for each year. But I LOVED it. If I am lucky my current spouse will remember to buy a gift for me...but I have been known to buy that too.



A few years ago one of the aforementioned sisters in law decreed that NO MORE would we be buying lots of presents - rather we would, for the adults, put names in a hat and draw them out, creating a secret Santa style Christmas for THAT side of the family. I was outnumbered as all of the lazy members of the family thought this was a brilliant idea.

However after the initial email telling us who was buying for whom ( and let's be honest I still had to buy the gift my husband was suppose to buy), there was a follow up email. Telling us we had to inform our gift buyer what we wanted for Christmas. Jesus wept (and so did the three wise men).

Again, outnumbered and not wanting to create a scene, I dutifully told my sister in law that I would very much like a new avanti teapot thank you very much. Come Christmas day there was an envelope under the tree with my name on it with $80 inside and a note which read:

I'm sorry I couldn't find you the teapot you wanted

Crushed. I was crushed. Is this what Christmas had become? a surprise would have been better.

This went on for a few years and this year I have said in no uncertain terms that I no longer want a gift nor to participate in this cluster fuck. We may as well all go out and buy ourselves a present, wrap it, place it under the tree, and feign excitement or surprise. So I am donating my secret Santa money to charity and THAT feels good and is what christmas is all about for me this year.

So I say to them all AMFYOYO with the secret Santa bullshit

I want to marry Dave and have his babies

I have a new man in my life. His name is Dave. He is a taxi driver. I met Dave last night. Dave had dropped a friend at dinner and it being the festive season I had another party to go to after dinner. I asked Dave if he would be able to come back at a certain time to save me standing in a queue for an hour or waiting on hold at the cab company for the same amount of time. This was no problem for Dave. He took my number, texted me when he was 15 minutes away - very thoughtful, so I could finish my last drink - turned up at the appointed time and off we went

But that is not the best bit. HE SPOKE ENGLISH. HE KNEW WHERE TO GO WITHOUT A GPS. HE COULD CONDUCT A CONVERSATION.

And then he came back to my second party at a pre agreed time to take me and current spouse who was already there to our home. I have Dave's number. I will keep it forever. I am never letting him out of my life.

The awkward moment when you proposition your daughter 's boyfriend

We are renovating a bathroom. 'two weeks' the builder said. We are now into week four. In a classic case of bad timing the building work started just as my darling daughter Elle started studying for her uni exams. And she is not good in the mornings at the best of times, so hammering and sanding at 6.45 was a recipe for disaster.

I was feeling sorry for her one morning in particular - and as I was going out for the morning after dropping Harry at school, I thought I would be generous and let her sleep in my room which is at the opposite end of the house away from the noise.

I carefully opened the door, crept over to the bed, in the pitch black bedroom (gotta love blackout curtains), reached my arm out to the shape under the doona. I gently shook her on the hip and said: 'come into my bed - you'll be able to sleep better in there. I've put the air conditioning on for you'. There was a slight movement and a grunt. Then another movement. As my eyes adjusted to the light i realised it was a second body.

I had just prodded my daughter's boyfriend and invited him into my bed.

Excellent. I asked her later if he realised what I had said. 'Yes' she said. 'It was a bit awkward'. Awkward? Understatement of the year

Men say the stupidest things part 2

The other day, on a weekend, I had done a load of washing. This is not unusual as I seem to do a load of washing every single day. Current Spouse came home from his bike ride, showered and took his sweaty Lycra clothes up to the laundry. He usually places them in the washing machine waiting for the washing fairy to do the next load of washing.

Current spouse - 'do you want me to hang out this load of washing?'

Now a number of responses went through my head as I contemplated taking a fork to his eyeballs. The easy option was to say 'no don't worry I'll do it'. What came out instead was this:

'no just leave it there. It will eventually smell so horrid that the neighbors will start to complain and then you can hang it out'

Current spouse complained i was being sarcastic. But really, do they think they get points just for asking a question like that?

Men say the stupidest things.

AMFYOYO

Men say the stupidest things

I have lost a lot of weight in recent times. I had put on a lot of weight over a period of years but having put on 12kilos in three years and then losing 21 in 8 months I was pretty damned pleased with myself. The only down side was the fact that when overweight I had developed a cleavage and it quickly disappeared with the weight loss.

Standing naked in the bathroom one day I mentioned to my current spouse that it was a shame the weight loss had resulted in very little breasts. Without looking up, he said:

'hmmm...and at your age gravity isn't helping either'

Men say the stupidest things sometime. And then they wonder why they are not getting much sex

Punk'd by a teenager

I have three children who pretty much live up to the definitions of eldest, middle and youngest children. 

 

My middle child, Billy,  who is now 16,  seemingly has only a few simple aims in life:

 

• To torment and embarrass his older sister, Elle
• To torment and pick on his younger brother, Harry 
• To break the world record for sitting on his arse in front of the x box

 

I adore him,as I do all of my children of course. He is helpful to me which is a nice bonus for a mother  He is also hilariously funny which can be difficult because most of his quick wit is directed at one of his siblings and apparently you get motherhood demerit points if you laugh at a joke made at the expense of one of your other children. I have been known to almost have an aneurism holding in a laugh while pretending to be cross with him.

 

Just recently though he pulled a beauty.

 

I was driving him home from school when I received a text from my current spouse (I call him that just to keep him on his toes). He had had a grievous injury to his pinky finger some time ago which had required weeks of visits to a hand clinic. . Well that's what he called it. The text excitedly announced 'last visit to the hand clinic'. I handed the phone to Billy and, trying to be responsible while driving, asked him to reply 'excellent news' to his father. This seemed to take a bit longer than two words but I assumed he was having trouble spelling one of the two words.

 

Within seconds of him putting the phone down it rang. When I say rang I mean there was a sound of a dog  barking which is the ring tone I have assigned to my spouse. I didn't get a chance to speak. He was clearly panic stricken. It went something like this 'what did you say?  We're really going to have to think about how we handle this. I suppose with three kids on the law of averages we were always going to have to deal with it with one of them '

 

I calmly said I had no idea what he was talking about- that Billy had typed the text he received from me.

 

Silence - then Billy started to laugh. Uncontrollable, evil, body shaking laughter.  Spouse asked me first if youngest son Harry was in the car, which he wasn't, and to put the phone on speaker and, through what seemd like tears of laughter, said 'Billy, I don't know whether to kill you or congratulate you'.  I started laughing not knowing what I was laughing at but knew it had to be good.  He told me that the text he received from me was 'Excellent news.  And by the way I meant to tell you that Harry told me today he is confused about his sexuality '. Harry is 11 by the way.

 

I started to laugh. I had to pull the car over to the side of the road. Spouse was laughing so hard I thought he was starting to hyper ventilate.  Billy was in heaven - it was such an excellent prank.  Gold.

 

Harry is a sensitive soul being the youngest of three and also  based on years of put downs and being picked on by his siblings. He can never know - he would think we were laughing at him. But we were laughing at Billy thinking of this brilliant prank in a nano second and his father's reaction. I am proud of my husband - as panicked as he was,  it was about how to handle a supportive discussion  with our youngest child. 

 

We are still laughing about it days later - excellent prank. I am so proud. But we can't tell Harry

 

 

 

The Hun - brilliant lawyer or just insane?

Before Vlad became Vlad with the power of being in management having gone to his head, so he could cause widespread mayhem, he was merely a partner - a big earning and therefore incredibly important in the big scheme of things partner.  Never mind that he was at best politely described as possibly insane and a bit OCD.  Or at worst certifiable.   His atrocious behaviour was always excused with 'oh but he is sooo brilliant'.

I first met this man - let's call him 'The Hun' - on my first day at work after completing five years at University in order to qualify as a lawyer.  But first I met his secretary, who was supposed to be my secretary too, who greeted me with a cheery 'I hate working for women, the Hun takes up all my time anyway, so if you want to get any work done I suggest you find someone else to do it for you'.  Fair enough I thought as I looked at the large collection of files on my desk, thick copies of the rules of the Supreme Court, a pad of timesheets by which I was to start recording  my working life in 6 minute increments, and a dictaphone.  This should be a piece of cake, I thought optimistaclly to myself.

His bitch secretary was gone in a couple of months anyway - another notch on his antique rosewood desk.  Those in the know it turns out had a book going on how long each secretary would take to start crying (15 minutes in one case, and the clear winner) and how long they would last in the job.  One day was the record.  In those early days I was an eternal optimist about the law, being a lawyer, and the innate goodness in people so I always lost those bets being sure that the Hun would surely work out that if he was just pleasant to people they would enjoy working for him, or at least tolerate his eccentricities a little bit better. Stupid stupid me.
The secretaries in the group had a code.  The code word was Hibiscus.  This would go around the entire group like chinese whispers.  It meant he had started to go red in the face which was a precursor to a screaming outburst, and everyone knew to look sharp and look busy lest he vent his rage on you if you made eye contact.

The Hun called me into his office late afternoon on that first day just as the thought of a gin and tonic at the local lawyers watering hole on my first day of work was appealing.  When I say office, I mean lair.  Every wall was covered with bookshelves - even the windows blocking the view of the river.  The bookshelves were heaving with texts and law reports.  It was very dim as well.  The Hun was not blessed with height in his genes and he looked quite small and easy to manage behind that desk.

He wanted me to photocopy a particular case for him.  He didn't look up when giving me this terse instruction.  But off I went to the library found the case copied it and brought it back down - in record time I thought.  The gin and tonic was looking good.  He took one look at it and threw it across the desk at me and shouted 'That's not the authorised report'.  Oh dear - In those five years at Uni I mustn't have been paying attention in legal research class about the difference between authorised reports and the other clearly useless reports.  So I took my copy of the Australian Law Report  and went back to the library to ask ther librarian what the hell an authorised report was,  find the Commonwealth (and therefore authorsised) Law Report version and copied that.  Back I went into the lair.  Sure that I had done a brilliant and worthwhile job of photocopying.

Once again I had it thrown back at me. I didn't know about the 'Hibiscus' code then otherwise I would have shouted it out the door.  He had gone a strange colour somewhere between red and purple.  This is the exchange that followed:

Hun - 'who stapled this?' (read with angry tone)
Me - 'Me' (proudly)
Hun - 'Well go and do it properly' (read with angrier tone)
Me - 'Sorry?' (confused look on my face with possibly a lip curl)
Hun - 'I like my staples to go vertically adn the pages have to align properly' (said through clenched teeth)
Me - stunned silence
Hun - 'well hurry the fuck up'

Apparently he liked his staples to go vertically not horizintally.  How fucking stupid was I not to know that??  I also found out that he liked his filing done every day (fair enough) and that the documents on file had to be absolutely perfectly aligned in the top left corner or as he said to one poor young secretary 'he would take the spike off the file and shove it...' I won't finish that sentence dare I offend readers.

His other endearing qualities included making appointments with lawyers at 5 am as that was the only available time he had to see us, ruling through letters of advice with a red pen and giving them back with no feedback, asking people to hold his drink at functions (said lab rat thinking he was going to the bathroom or something), and then not going anywhere, and saying 'I just wanted to see if you would do it', and throwing text books at the wall in exasperation usually with some poor sod standing in the way.  The classic though was his phone not working and as  he  yanked it out of the wall he managed to pull one of his bookshelves on top of himself (he had had it installed over the phone jack, as you do).

But one fine day the entire group had a good laugh at his expense.  It was eerily quiet, everyone heads down, working hard.  No one had any warning in order for the Hibiscus code to go down the line.  He came rushing out of his office purple with rage, and shouted at his secretary, spit flying from his mouth:  'You forgot to remind me about my fucking stress test!!!!!!!'.  We all came to the door of our offices and  waited with baited breath,  Then his poor secretary started to laugh, a big loud, belly laugh, picked up her bag, handed him her security key and said 'I am not your fucking  mother, thankfully', and walked out.   Then one by one we all started to laugh and he just stood there looking at his downtrodden bullied staff laughing at him and he slunk back into his office, slammed the door, presumably to make another appointment to have a stress test, all by himself.

I think it was at that point I decided I didn't really fancy being a lawyer and while it took a while to change careers, in my head I was already thinking

Adios Motherfuckers, you're on your own

On becoming a motherless daughter and discovering a mother I didn't know

I became a motherless daughter a year ago. At 49 years old that may sound overly melodramatic but it is a very sad and strange feeling. Of course, I can't imagine losing a mother as a child or teenager but when someone has been in your life for your whole life their absence leaves a gaping hole, regardless of the relationship.

I got a phone call just after 5am. It was my Dad's voice telling me mum had died - very suddenly and unexpectedly. No warning, no chance of resuscitation. She hadn't even been sick.  It was all over in a matter of minutes.

My memory of that first few hours will never leave me. The phone call to my sister while piling clothes on, the normally 60 minute drive to Mum and Dad's place which took 45 minutes that day.  Driving fast while sobbing and talking on the phone to my brother. Arriving to see my suddenly frail and shrunken looking father, tears streaming down his face, hugging me like he never wanted to let go.  Not wanting to let him go either.  Ambulance officers advising that because she had died at home the police would need to come and an autopsy performed. Asking to see her and having them stop me from pulling the blanket up over her hands because she couldn't be touched before the police photographer came. Feeling stupid for thinking she might still feel the cold.    Having to formally identify her body for the police to save my father from that task.  Watching my mother leave her home for the last time in a black body bag.  No amount of NCIS or Law and Order could prepare anyone for that and for a long time it was an enduring image.

That first ten days my dad, who was ten years older than my mother, was never alone as the family gathered to support him. Intense grief was ever present. It consumed me some days and I recall wondering if there were a finite number of tears the tear ducts could produce.  I remember thinking how on earth people who lose a child cope with their grief if this is what it felt like to lose your mother as an adult.  And I discovered a new grief-  grief for a mother I didn't really know well at all.

My mother was not an overtly affectionate mother and could be described at times, politely, as highly critical and judgmental.  I worked full time, have three kids and getting to see mum and dad was often difficult.  And just when I had that thought 'I must call mum' she would ring me and point out that I hadn't called in a while or the length of time it had been since she had seen the grandchildren. So I was a bit surprised oddly by the all consuming grief I felt and by how much I missed her, her voice and her presence in my life.  I am not romanticizing my relationship with her - it was, at times difficult and frustrating. But I would have, and often did, do anything for her, and dad. They both sacrificed a lot to give us all a good education, and all three of their children have successful careers. She objected if we helped them out financially, or bought extravagant gifts. But the one thing she could never do was show warmth. When greeting her she always proffered her cheek, never hugged back if I hugged her and seemed emotionally very remote. So visiting was something I came to look upon as a chore rather than a pleasure. And I regret that, knowing what I know now.

One thing dad wanted my sister and me to do was to clear out all mums personal belongings. He didn't want to open a cupboard and see her clothes there. So it took a few days with the help of a friend to do it - decide what to give to charity, what to throw away ( even poor people don't deserve used underwear or stained clothes ) and what to give to friends.

There were clothes and shoes in every cupboard  - some I remembered seeing when i was a teenager.

Once we were done dad casually mentioned that there were a couple of suitcases under the spare bed. And this is where the mother I never knew was hiding.

In those suitcases were kept every card and letter her children and  grandchildren had ever sent her. Newspaper clippings. Cards and letters from her own mother and father. From friends. Anniversary cards (some with racy messages) exchanged between my parents.  I read every one of them over a few days. Inside a very small cheap Xmas card written to my mother by my grandmother in my mother's neat cursive writing were the words 'mum's last card to me'. My grandmother had  died a few months after that Christmas. Things I had written as  a child - poems and cards- were there. I found the card that was with the flowers I sent her and dad when I finished uni thanking them for their support.

It became very obvious that my mother felt great and deep affection for us all and was incredibly proud of us all. She was just incapable of saying it or showing it. And I think I now know why.

I officially have two siblings - An older brother and an older sister. But I found out I had another older sister who died at birth - my parents' first child who was born and died in terrible circumstances which today would result in law suits and newspaper articles but which in 1954 was best put behind one. My sister Ann drowned in her mother's blood. It doesn't really matter now how it happened but mum never saw or touched her beautiful red headed baby. My dad was not there at the time.  She was sedated for some days and the baby taken away. My dad tells me he saw Ann and she was perfect. But dead. Their first baby.  My father was the parish priest in a small country town, so I suspect that the general view would have been that it was ‘God’s will’ – how hard to support the vocation of the man you love while questioning why God would do this to you, feeling rage and grief for so long and being unable to express it.

I have found out that Ann has a grave but the local shire council records her as the stillborn daughter of my father. My mother's relationship to that baby is not even officially recorded. It is as if she never existed.

In the year since mum died dad has spoken of their loss and grief a lot - something my mother could never do. He told me that she would shut herself away each anniversary and cry but never speak of it and he felt helpless for so many years. The birth of three healthy children after that did not diminish her feelings and we know now that parents of stillborn babies still think of those babies as part of their family.

I can't imagine having that experience and never talking about it. Never wanting to express it, holding it in. No wonder she suffered migraine headaches!  And no wonder she was anxious and  reluctant  about showing affection. Fear of loving something and losing it would make you like that I think.

I think of friends who have had miscarriages or still births and the support that is available to them today.  How different might my mother’s life (and indeed my father’s) have been had she felt able to express her grief publicly?  I wish I had known.  I wish I had been able to help her.

I am going to take my dad on a road trip one day to that little country town – after I have found someone who can beautify Ann’s grave.  We can go and acknowledge that perfect baby  who never lived,  and my mother’s loss.