So Close

Home sweet home

Ah, home sweet home.  It is fabulous to be home.  I've done a few loads of washing, I've been to Woollies to stock the fridge and I am about to plough through my inbox with my super dooper always-on FAST DSL connection.  Life is good.

I've put a few pics up at my Flickr account - see here if you don't mind seeing other people's holiday snaps.  You can thank me for not uploading the 745 photos Marko took of the ducks. 

Speaking of Marko, he is such an odd chap.  I suppose being a 'people' person, I don't quite get it, but inside that tough, strict, almost-bordering-on-unfriendly exterior, beats a really soft, kind heart.  Marko is SUCH an animal lover.  He loves all animals.  He took a million photos of the ducks, he befriended a wild cat who he named Storm and lovingly fed every morning and night (his mean, cruel wife said NO WAY ARE WE BRINGING THAT CAT HOME).  When I caught him feeding my expensive Woollies biltong to a stray dog I nearly had a heart attack.  One night I saw him slip outside with some bread in his hand.  "Where are you going", I asked.  "Um, to feed that big fish I saw earlier" he sheepishly replied.  Apparently he had also befriended a huge fish in the stream.  The fish was so 'tame' (according to Marko), that it let him stroke it.  Although that was the end of the friendship because when Marko went back with the bread, the fish was no where to be found.  I hope it didn't end up wrapped in newspaper, served with some nice hot chips/fries on the side.

Here is a picture of Marko's ducks and Storm.  Unfortunately we never did get a picture of the fish.

He should be thanking his lucky stars

I was sitting in the lounge tonight in my exceptionally unsexy towelling bathrobe and my fluffy slippers, sipping on my wine and tapping away at my laptop when Marko pipes up, "I can't believe I ended up with someone like you"

WHAT, I said, WHAT!  What do you mean?

What the fuck is that thing against your nose, he asked.

It's a piece of tissue paper, I replied piously. My glasses are broken and the metal thing is poking into my nose.  And you should be SO LUCKY that you are married to someone like me!

And so he should.  Where else is he going to get a slightly older, barren, undomesticated goddess like me!  The ungrateful little fucker.

On a positive note, I am feeling quite strong. Am feeling all zen about this almost pregnancy. What's meant to be is meant to be and all that shit.  All my pregnancy symptoms have disappeared, making me rather hopeful that tomorrow's beta will reveal a neatly falling HCG count, indicative of things like natural miscarriages and unruined holidays. 

On an even more positive, I am featured in the New York Times today.  I'm practically famous!

PS Please don't be alarmed at the size of the crevices on my forehead.  All donations to the Give That Woman Some Botox fund gratefully accepted.

PPS Thanks for all your supportive comments. You make me feel all warm inside. Like wine.

The Taming of the Husband

Marko feels really sorry for my dad. 

When my parents were first married, my dad used to be the one in charge. The head of the household. Although my dad is very liberal in many ways, the roles he and my mom played were pretty traditional. He worked and when he came home my mom had some lipstick on, the four of us children were bathed and in our pajamas and supper was almost done. Our dad used to be the Strict One and my mom would regularly threaten us with “just wait until your father gets home”. But over the years we began to realize that actually my dad was the one with the soft touch and if he said no, there was a chance you could cry / beg / plead for him to change his mind. Whereas with my mom, you could stand on your head and whistle through your arse, there was NO WAY you were going to get a ‘yes’ out of her. Cold, unfeeling heartless mother ;-) Only joking, you know how much I adore my mother.

But even with the realization that dad was the softy, we always knew he was in charge. Well, that was up until about 10 years ago when slowly, slowly, my mother subtly switched roles until she now calls the shots and my poor father complains to us that “you know, your mother bosses me around all the time”. 

“Paul! Here is your list of chores to do, you can either do them on Saturday morning or on Sunday.” 

“Paul, please hang that picture for me. No, a little higher please”

“No Paul, you don’t actually like that dish. Here, eat this, it’s your favourite”.

Marko can’t believe how my mother ‘makes’ my father do things, and even worse, how she doesn’t seem to feel bad about it at all.  I personally think it is wonderful that after 40 years of marriage, she has him so well trained. It might have taken a while, but just look at the results!

I still have to develop that skill. Making my husband do things, and even more importantly, not caring if he moans. I’m getting better though. Especially when it comes to helping out with the kids. (Marko is very good at DIY and I never have to ask him to do any of that, he does it himself)

For the first few years after the kids were born, I wouldn’t ask. I figured if he really wanted to do the chore he would volunteer and if he didn’t volunteer then he clearly hated me and the kids and so stuff him. Ok, not exactly, but I wasn’t going to ask for help. Stupid huh. (Please note that he didn’t sit around idly, but I often wished he would just take the kids for a morning, or bath them etc).

Then, as they got bigger, I started asking him to do more kid chores. And he did it, but not with great enthusiasm. Which made me think ‘stuff you, I’ll do it myself’. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face.

But the kids are now three years old and I need some time on my own. So every Sunday morning I ask him to please take the kids out for two hours and give me time to do some email / blogging / personal things. He does it, but not without an exaggerated sigh or a slight rolling of the eyes. AND IT DRIVES ME CRAZY!! I know he does it mostly to wind me up, and like my mom, I should just not care, but it gets on my nerves!!!!

Which is why I can’t wait to be like my mom. Make them do the chores and just don't care. 

I am so tempted to say ‘well, if it is THAT much of a hassle, don’t do it’, but I need my time and its good for him to spend time alone with the kids. He works so long and hard during the week, he hardly sees them.

I’ve tackled him before about this and he says he is just doing it to wind me up. But why does he do it!!! And why do I care so much!!!

I want him to VOLUNTEER to do the kid chores. I want him to say “sweetheart, let me take the kids out for the afternoon, you stay behind and catch up on your blog, emails, egg donor business, IBM stuff, writing etc”, I don’t want exaggerated eye rolling and wringing of hands.

Sister Mel is quite good at this. She makes her husband do chores too, and mostly doesn’t mind too much about the moaning and ‘poor me’ attitude she sometimes gets back. But even she sometimes takes the high road (‘fine! I’ll do it then’) instead of the right road (make him do it and just don’t care). And she has been married for less time than I have! I know I shouldn’t care, but I do.

Look, it only took my mom 40 years to get it right. I’ve been married for 8 years this month, so I only have another 32 years to go. 

Please note that Marko is FAR from a lazy husband. This weekend he has done several DIY jobs around the house, went out to get take outs etc etc. Plus he is being very loving etc, and I really am quite fond of him. I just wish there would be more enthusiasm and less eye rolling when it came to kid chores.

Please note: This blog post was written in the peace and quiet of an empty house. I’ve dispatched Marko off with my in laws and the kids to the Play Place. He might moan, but he does listen. Eventually.

 

Weekends are for___________ (fill the blank)

Adam has an amazing repertoire of bedtime delaying tactics. He has just come to tell me, with great dramatic effect, that HE CAN’T HOP ON ONE FOOT!! I told him to hop right back into bed or else I am calling his father. Yes, I handle discipline by avoiding the issue and making Marko the bad guy.

Speaking of my dear husband, Marko and I are frighteningly alike in many ways. People often remark how amazing it is that two such anal people who were from completely different backgrounds managed to find one another. Appropriately enough, we met at a bar.

Have I ever told you that Marko doesn’t drink? He drank when I met him and gave up three weeks later. I think that could be construed as false advertising.

Anyway, as I was saying, Marko and I are a lot alike about a lot of things. But we are very different when it comes to other things. Like weekends, and how they should be spent.

Marko feels that weekends are about chilling, watching TV, sleeping in and cuddling. In other words, being lazy relaxing. I believe that weekends are for getting up early, doing a load of washing, spring cleaning the study, sorting out the toy boxes, sorting through the old clothes, tidying up the cupboards, doing all the chores, fixing up what needs to be fixed up, returning emails etc. In other words, getting things done. 

I do realize that perhaps there is a small chance that my view on weekends might be marginally annoying, and so I try to pencil in some cuddling and quality time between 8 and 8:15am. On a Saturday. Weather dependent.

What are your views? Do you and your partner agree? Complete the sentence:

Weekends are for _____________?

I might be a moaner, but he is a PITA!!!

Marko says I whine all the time. I happen to think that is not quite accurate but even if I do perhaps moan a tiny little bit, it is because he never listens. Ever. And when I do happen to complain about something, he says I am moaning. 

Now, you tell me whether this is moaning, of whether it is in fact HE who is being an industrial strength enema:

If you are fortunate enough to be a mother you will know that sleep is a very scare resource. Getting a night of uninterrupted sleep is the male equivalent of getting a blow job. With swallowing. (In other words, happens infrequently and feels like heaven when you are lucky enough to get it).

And as any mother will tell you, if it you are going to get woken up at night, it better be a child crying out and not for ANY other reason. Barking dogs and snoring husbands take their lives into their own hands if they do it loud enough to wake you.

So imagine my joy last night when in between getting up twice to tell Adam to go back to sleep, Marko’s fancy new phone beeped and vibrated THREE times on the bedside table next to him. That’s right. In my scant 7 hours between the sheets, I get woken up five times. This does not make me happy.

I turned him sweetly this morning and said through gritted teeth, “sweetheart, why is your phone making that beeping noise and grating vibration during the night?” Oh, he says, it must have been some email coming through”

O.M.G

Switch the fucking notification thing OFF!!!!! You, no, let me rephrase that, WE do not need to know at 03:31am that an email has come through!!!!! SWITCH IT OFF!!

Apparently that is “whining”. 

Whining? He is lucky to be alive. The next time his phone informs us at 3 in the morning that an email has come through, I am going to email his fancy new phone up his bloody backside!

Best wife EVER!

Poor Marko is working SO hard at his new job.  So hard that he doesn't have time to eat during the day. As in, not a thing.  Unacceptable.  So being the domestic goddess I am, I now make him a packed lunch every day.  I am the best wife EVER!

Contents clockwise from bottom left:  Two sandwiches with smoked chicken and mayo, mini Pringles pack, two rusks, apple, melrose cheese wedge, two slices banana bread.  Do I rock or what!

You underestimate him

I get the feeling that in light of my recent posts, you are feeling a little sorry for Marko. Please don’t. You are seriously underestimating him if you do.

Up until I met Marko at the ripe old age of 29, my longest relationship was 10 months. All my other relationships (bar one) had fizzled out because they ended up with me dominating the relationship, and the man, in such a way that I lost total respect for the guy. Until I met Marko.

Even though Marko is five years younger than I am, he is the first guy I have ever been with that absolutely does not take my shit. I am an old fashioned girl at heart; I need my man to be a take charge kind of guy. I need a man who is strong enough to deal with my forceful personality, and gentle enough to look after my fragile soul. Marko is all of that, and more. 

That stuff about making him stand there and do that when he is picking the kids up from school? Please don’t think he listens to me when I say stuff like that. (The man NEVER listens to me about ANYTHING!) It doesn’t worry him in the slightest. He does his own thing, no matter what I say. He listens to me when he knows it is important to me, but Marko has a mind of his own, and he does what he feels is best. 

It makes me cross sometimes; how stubborn and unpliable he is, but I secretly love it. I love that he doesn’t take my crap. I love that he is his own man and I can’t walk all over him.  Even though I pretend to moan, I need him to be just the way he is. He is perfect for me and I hope that I am perfect for him.

So, don’t feel sorry for him, at all. That man is the strongest man I know. He has to be, with a wife like me.

PS you DO know that I write for effect and I obviously caricature myself in a way that is far worse than reality? Right? I am bad, but not that bad. 

Marko: Not a big chatter

On Monday the teacher mentioned that Thursday was baking day at school and all the kids were invited, even the Monday, Wed and Friday kids. Because I had already arranged to go to the Geek Girls lunch (which was very, very nice btw), I asked Marko to fetch them from school. First time he has done so. Which made me VERY nervous. (Anal / sensory / anxious part of me gets very nervous when things out of the ordinary happen. Must Not Deviate from The Plan. EVER.)

Because Marko had never been to the school before, I insisted we drive past the school the night before. “There is the school. This is where you park, and here is where you wait…”

I’ve been sending him reminders the whole week: Do NOT be late. Make sure you are waiting outside the gate at 12:05pm SHARP. The gates will open at 12:10pm, and you need to be right there, among the first to enter the school. (All the kids wait on their chairs for their moms or dads to fetch them, and it is very distressing for them if their moms are late) I told the kids in the morning that their dad was going to fetch them and how exciting it would be.

I reminded him via email, text message and telephone. I called him on the way there to make sure he was on his way (Oh my word, I am VERY painful). Totally unnecessary of course, as Marko is exceptionally reliable and as anal punctual as I am. I told him to call me once he had dropped them off at home to let me know how it went.

And I waited, and waited and eventually at 2, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I called him, “so! How did it go!” Fine, he says. “Well, what did they say? Were they excited? How did it go?” It went fine, he replies. 

FINE? Fine? It is like getting blood out of a bloody stone! I want to know everything. What he thought, how he felt, what he thought of the school, what he thought of the other mothers, what the teacher said, what the kids said, how they were….. It’s a big thing after all! The first time he has fetched his little babies from SCHOOL! “Fine, everything was fine.”

Aarrgghh! It is amazing how something can be so significant to me and so run of the mill to Marko. And how he is SO bad with telling me stuff. I have to DRAG things out of him. How was your day? ‘Fine’. What did they say at work about XYZ? ‘Not much’. 

You know, I am not expecting a 1000 word essay here, but you know, give me something! A few adjectives and a sentence with more than two words would be nice.

(If it was me, I would have set the scene, included various descriptions of how I was feeling, how the kids reacted, what they said, who was crying, if anyone, what I thought of the teacher, the school, what time I arrived, who I spoke to etc etc etc. I also probably would have been able to give a brief bio of at least 8 moms, including how many children they have, ages, what they do, how long they have been married, what their husbands do, where they went to school etc.) 

Can you imagine if Marko had a blog! “The kids went to school for the first time today.  It went fine. The end”

Men! Can’t live with them, can’t kill the little bastards without getting jail time.

His turn: Cashing in

Marko and I have an old fashioned arrangement when it comes to child care. I do most of it. It works pretty well for us (which means I only get resentful some of the time and not all the time) and he does lots of other things around the house (although CLEARLY not at much I do). But most of the child care duties remain mine. 

When the kids were babies, I said I would do it all. He just couldn’t do it; the new baby thing completely overwhelmed him. I really didn’t mind, in fact I wanted to, and he supported me hugely by tidying up, making bottles etc. But all along I said that his turn would come as they got older. And that time has come; I am starting to cash in. The last THREE Sunday mornings he has (not terribly enthusiastically) taken them out ALL BY HIMSELF, giving me two glorious hours in which to work. Bliss.  (Note – I said ‘work’. Not play, do my nails, have a nap, but WORK. This is still however regarded as ‘time off’.)

But old habits die hard, and it is still easier for him to let me do the majority of the feeding, bathing, dressing, wiping butts etc. So I am gently easing him into it by offering him a choice of chores that need to be done, which apparently is VERY irritating. (Side note: everything, and everyone, irritates Marko). 

I actually think I am being really thoughtful and considerate:

As he plops himself in front of the TV: “Marko, you can either get their rooms ready for bed, or you can wash their face and brush their teeth” or as he sits down with his Car magazine, “Sweetheart, you can either make them a sandwich, or you can get them dressed”.

Note how I give him the option of choosing the least tiresome chore! What a giving wife I am. He HATES it when I do it. Which is entirely his fault because if he VOLUNTEERED for his choice of chore first, he wouldn’t get the ‘either or’ instruction, now would he??

I can’t wait for when the kids are even older, because Marko is going to go camping with them for the ENTIRE weekend and I am going to have HOURS and HOURS of alone time, during which I will not only work, but I will sleep in, paint my nails, lie in bed and read an entire book, from start to finish…...  Oh boy, I am so looking forward to cashing in even more. *Evil cackle*

(Note that Marko does 99% of the tidying up, plus he works really long hours, way longer than me. So he is not a lazy asshole, he is just an old fashioned one. And anyway, no one else is allowed to call him an asshole. As his wife, that is my job!)

 

The bicycle – WWYD?

I don't like this post.  It came out all wrong. I think I was confusing two separate issues:  how one handles about other people's good fortune (whether it is fair or unfair) and as a separate issue, how do you feel about people who appear to take advantage of a situation to create their own 'good fortune'.   Gah.  I've done an appalling job of 'setting the scene'.  Am v tempted to take down the post because it feels messy and its making me anxious, but then again I half inclined to leave it up because one or two of you have seen through my shockingly stupid bicycle illustration to the point I was trying to make.

See! This is what happens when you blog so openly!  You can't use real life examples because then the person you were talking about would realize it was them you were talking about and then they would be hurt.  So instead you create a situation that is SO removed from the truth that is becomes as clumsy as the one below.  I swear, I am going to start an anonymous blog and not tell a single soul about it!

Yeah right. Like I can be anonymous about anything.

Anyway, the post is below. Ignore the family example, ignore the bloody bicycle.  Just tell me how you feel about other people's good fortune, and how  you feel about people who seem to take advantage of a situation to create their own 'good fortune'. Or don't read the post at all. Probably better. Lets talk about other stuff, like the weather.  About it has been windy here for TWO EFFING WEEKS NON-STOP.  Shit, I am sick of the wind.  Makes me on edge, the wind.

If the post is still making me anxious later, I am taking it down.  For some or other reason, I've had an anxious few days. Oh yes, I remember why. I stupidly ran out of my ADs and didn't get around to replacing them until two days later.  Stupid. Wont do that again. (Do you think it could be that? I thought these things put enough (half life thingy / whatever) in your system to tide you over for a few days. Clearly not)