Sometimes I feel bad about it. Shouldn’t I be out there with them? It’s not a super-safe place, and they like to traipse up and down the slightly rickety stairs. The garage door doesn’t close properly and it’s full of interesting things, including brand new toys they know nothing about. All the junk I haven’t unpacked is downstairs, pins, needles, scissors. The laundry is right there, along with its various laundry products. They go rummage for treasure and take it outside to play.

About the only things I have taken care to put out of reach are the matches, staple gun, and power tools.

I’ll investigate certain cries or noises of course (or lack of noises). I do pay attention with my ears and intermittent spying, and besides the times I find the child from down the street has climbed over the fence looking for her cat, they are safely contained.

If a child galumps up the stairs complaining they fell over a hole, I’ll remind them that they were the ones who dug that hole, and perhaps falling into it afterwards was just a tad special. No pity here. Accidentally freed a guinea pig and now it’s running around? Not my problem. You let it out, you go catch it. Watch out for dog poo.Your clothes are all wet? Did you by any chance turn on the tap and stand under it? Go stand in the sun to dry off.

You couldn’t buy caring like mine.

Meanwhile, I’m doing things in peace, like making dinner or writing a blog post.

They’re kids, doing kid things in their own private outdoors.

So why do I feel bad? Because it’s the year 2012 and children should always be supervised closely. Because if they injure themselves they might sue me. Child services will flag me. Because I live in a metro area. Because I don’t know my neighbours’ names. Because helicopter parenting is now the norm. Because my children are 2 and 5.

And here I am advocating casual neglect.

I’ll be textbook responsible at a playground, extra careful at the beach, but the backyard is their domain and theirs to be explored and enjoyed in whatever manner they can think of that isn’t completely stupid. They’ll come dob on each other just for breathing wrong anyway.

Just don’t come running to me when you break your leg.

Don’t you hate it when you turn into your mother?
(linking up with Dr Bron for this week’s pick a post of rambles)

Can I just say WTF???

I’ve always been a bum fluff facial hair girl. Sure, my foundation makes me look like a buffed My Little Pony doll (the old fuzzy ones) and on occasion causes my bum fluff to glisten, but it’s all good.

What’s not good is finding my body has decided I should begin my slow metamorphoses into a crusty old lady. I’m only 34, my hormones are in tip top shape, as is my basket of eggs. I don’t deserve a mustache.

It’s bad enough I have a few grey eyebrow hairs, and the hair on my head can’t decide whether to grow curly, brown, black or straight. Yes, I have an internal identity crisis happening, right down to my roots.

Well body, thank you but no thank you. I plucked that bitch of a man hair, and I decline to grow any more. If I require a mo to complete my Captain Hook outfit, I’ll draw one on with eyeliner – the way nature intended.

Weasel doesn't do facepaint. Ever. But she does crash photos.

Are your hair follicles out to get you?

Seems the ‘Be a Librarian’ plan won’t pan out. Even if I get the required degree and work experience hours, I still won’t get a job at that level. One must work their way up the ladder. More precisely, one must wait for all the old lady librarians to kick the bucket. When they finally do that, the level below them will move up. Meanwhile, I’ll be shelving books for a pittance for 5 years. That’s if I can get an entry level librarian job in the first place. They usually go to obscenely chipper 20-somethings straight out of pre-school, not dark broody bitches who go around collecting educational trophies. Conversations with working library staff and online research have seriously burst my bubble.

New plan. Go back to specialised administration. It was always my backup anyway. So I start checking and applying for jobs. I was on $28/hr before my Mum career began, so surely with labour inflation I could walk back in to $30-35/hr for the same job type.

Big reality check.

Seems the past 6 years haven’t been kind to administrator pay packets. Job ads are offering $19-25/hr. I mean, come on! Also, I can’t go back to what I did before without working in the CBD, and I can’t make that work. I’d end up being that mum who rocks up at the childcare centre to find they’ve all left and locked my children inside.

Local part time jobs are few and far between. Employers seem to think they can pay you less for them too.

So while I continue to check the job ads, it seems I must consider Plan D E F. Tucked way back in the corner of my mind has always been the ultimate back up plan. I’ll just pop out another baby!

Kidding!

No. I’m able to do a teacher certification course and share my love of literature and computing with kids. Not little kids, I’d go mental. Kids as in grades 4-7. Ones who can have a conversation and wipe their own bums. I know teachers don’t get paid all that much to start with, and there will be a lot of work on my own time, but job satisfaction is worth something too. I’m not going to take a boring admin job for too little, but I’m also not going to get my forklift license purely because it pays more.

But to do this, I have to enrol before Jan 2013 or the training requirement doubles. Seems the powers that be have decided teachers need to know more than the how of their craft, but how to spell and not have sex with students. You know, important aspects of teaching that have fallen by the wayside lately. Future career shifters will now be required to train for 2 years, not 1.

Being that I already know teenage boys are not for getting jiggy with, and would never accept an assignment written in text speak, I have no desire to extend my training requirements. Which means if I’m going to be a teacher I have to do it now, or that Plan F will also become defunct.

Dear student. Your spelling makes me feel like this.

So, universe…here I am, looking for a well paying job which utilises my skill set, or I’ll enrol in teacher training this July.

I can’t do both, and the clock is ticking.

Has an accidental deadline ever led you down the right path? Wrong path?

Coming up next week – my plan to be a proctologist!

(linking up with BBeingCool & WithSomeGrace)

It’s because I haven’t seen a 3D movie since my early teens. The glasses were paper cellophane red and green, and the movie was Nightmare on Elmstreet 6.

Yep, I’m THAT old.

Stupid 3D always gave me a headache. The glasses didn’t fit over my actual glasses, and my vision was obscured with cardboard. And honestly, the 3D part only went for a few minutes and the worms barely flew out at me.

So of course I have no interest in the blockbuster movies they keep making in 3D for no apparent reason. The Great Gatsby in 3D? Ok…is that so I can see smoke waft towards me? Sexy. Until I see for myself that 3D has a place in literary adaptations, I’m going with my current viewpoint that 3D for the sake of it is just selling to kids and fanbois.

I finally conceded to try it out though. Mostly because I had a free movie pass. Hey, I’m not going to pay to be annoyed. Off we all trotted to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D. Since I loathe these simple minded princesses whose only goal is to marry a guy for money, I was extra-skeptical to start with.

Turns out 3D glasses have come a long way. They fit over my actual glasses moderately well, and provided I don’t move my head, are tolerable.

Not attractive though.

D mocked me for asking if there would be a signal to put them on, ready for the 3D section of the movie.

Yes, once again, I’m THAT old.

Weasel loved it. She’s going to be a fan, she even refused to give the glasses back so she could try watching something at home.

Bubba did not enjoy it. Things were moving too close to her, so she hid for most of the movie.

Okay, so I tried it. I didn’t mind it. The trailer for Despicable Me #2 made for better 3D-ness than Beauty and the Beast though, proving me right that pretty much all 3D releases are techno-pandering.

That’s what all us oldies think, isn’t it?

 3D movies  – love them or loathe them?

Compared to my own tragic children’s birthday party hosting, this one really stood out.

Of course, Weasel has decided she wants fantastic parties now too. You know, instead of boring ones where people sit around and pretend my cooking reheating skills aren’t shit.

Before I agree to it, I have to justify the expense.

How much would you spend on a kids party?

A Blundermum glances at it while firing it up, and despite seeing this:

decides to push on anyway. After all, my car runs on empty. “EMPTY” to me is more a kind of warning, not a state of being.

For example: Empty toothpaste tubes have tons in them. Empty milk bottles have enough for a coffee. Empty tissue boxes always yield at least one more if you shove your hand in. Empty shampoo bottles just need some water added.

Obviously empty is not really empty.

And hey, the BBQ lit up nicely, proving my theory correct.

I closed the hood, let it warm up, then threw in my snags. Sizzle sizzle sizzle.

Then the sizzle stopped.

My sausages were warm, raw, dirty and floppy. Another cooking triumph.

Apparently empty is a state of being when it comes to gas bottles.  Stupid physics.

When was the last time you were happily running on empty?

It is a fearful sight indeed.

Except that’s not what happened. I swear! I promise I was not trying to steal my neighbour’s rubbish. I have no interest in whatever was in the bin. Honestly. I don’t even like touching my own bin. It has cooties.

You can imagine how many cooties a stranger’s bin has.

But being the good neighbour I am (who only coincidentally has no idea of anyone’s names), I’d noticed the old ladies next door hadn’t put out their wheelie bin in some weeks. They weren’t dead, I was pretty sure of that, since they take the bus to the leagues club every night to play pokies. Unless zombies like gambling? I figured it was too much for them. Too heavy or too full, and I therefore had a hero opportunity. I even set an alarm on my phone to remind me to do this nice thing for them every week.

I overcame my bin revulsion to very nicely move it out to the kerb for them. I know, how nice am I?! In my mind they were going to call the local paper and give me a public tick for modern day awesomeness. No, it wasn’t full of cats.

But noooo. They’ve gone all dark and suspicious on me. After I put the bin back where I’d found it, nice and empty, they went and moved it somewhere else. Somewhere out of my reach.

Because I am a rubbish stealing devil.

Old people are weird.

Do your neighbours trust you?

I do this sometimes. Maybe it’s hormonal. Maybe it’s seasonal.

Mrs Woog inspired me to look at my rants yesterday and publish them. Just like her, I’m not crazy, I don’t need therapy, I was just having a bad day.

Ready to visit the dark side with me?  You don’t have to, you can run away now if you’d like.

……Let’s go.

Samplings of a shitty day
(super awesomely imaginative title)

I’M ANGRY

I’m feeling unnecessarily angry at other drivers. How dare they drive in a manner I think breaks the rules? I haven’t bothered to look them up, because I don’t care. Other drivers are in the wrong. Why are they parking so shitty? Did they let their senile grandma drive them to the shops?

Oh for f****sake. If you don’t know how to use the self-checkout and need assistance, why did you try and go through it? Bitching about the lack of staff these days won’t help you be less dumb.

Why yes, I am wearing biker boots. Because that’s what bitches do. Now stop looking at me.

I’M SELF LOATHING

I feel crappy because I ate sugar and let my joints get inflamed. I feel crappy because I ate chocolate and flared up my reflux. I feel crappy because I stayed up past midnight, despite knowing the kids are up before dawn. All these things, I did to myself. Well done. Why not go get herpes while I’m at it?

Why did I come back to sugar after all this time, and why can’t I quit it again? The scales will just go up and up so long as I’m eating it, and my clothes won’t fit, and I’ll feel physically horrible. How pathetic am I that I can’t quit it when I already did before?

There are no job ads I want to apply for. They all suck. I’ll never get a bigger car or my own house. I should apply for public housing and go live with my own kind.

I’M SORRY

I love my kids. I love my life. Mostly I like myself. I just needed to eat some real food, decompress, detox and sleep.

Next time I’m in a funk, I think I’ll skip the emotional crap and just go straight for the burger.

]]> http://blundermum.com/2012/sometimes-negative-nelly-visits-shes-a-real-bitch/feed/ 3 http://blundermum.com/2012/sometimes-negative-nelly-visits-shes-a-real-bitch/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blundermum/~3/6HVhhDLngGE/ http://blundermum.com/2012/things-i-know-today/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 01:50:52 +0000 admin http://blundermum.com/?p=1730 Continue Reading …]]> 1. If I sneeze on the kids lunches and nobody sees me, it didn’t happen. If they sneeze on mine, I want a replacement.

2. Yelling “Mummy!!” as if it were an emergency when all you want to do is show me a ‘cool booger’, will result in me ignoring all further emergency cries. How long before the wolf comes and eats my children, I wonder?

3. Finally agreeing to fund extra-curricular activities results in requests to fund more extra-curricular activities – and to volunteer as well.

4. Every time one of my Facebook friends falls for a ‘Free Something’ scam, I lose a little respect for them.

5. The Wiggles are over.  I feel sorry for the new Wiggles and their future unemployment status.

6. On a related note, Anthony Field is as creepy as this guy on Masterchef. Fortunately for my current viewing preferences, creepy Masterchef guy is nicer.

7. When buying a fancy coloured toaster, and paying extra for the tinted privilege, I should probably check what colour my benches are first.

8. I’m not allowed to have pens at my desk. There’s a rule about that. If I want to write something completely illegibly, I have to work for it. Since I am also a habitual pen sucker, the pens that I find on the toilet floor are unacceptable.

9. Apparently shrinkage is acceptable. Fewer biscuits in a packet, less Vegemite in a jar…and now I can’t even win a car because so many promoters are offering ‘the use of a car’  for a short time instead. I already have the use of a car. I’m sure if I flash my boobs I can have the use of any car I like. Failing that, I could rent one instead of paying my own rego and repairs. Despite what anyone says, you can’t really defend shrinkage.

10. It’s hard to write a blog while protecting a 2 year old from the scary scenes in a movie she requested. For the bazillionth time. It’s okay though, the Disney Princesses scare the crap out of me too.

Never said the food I cook was edible though. Also, I should probably get a tripod and not balance my camera on a stack of books.

Also, I say Veee-Log. Because V & L don’t get to sit next to each other in the English language. Shh. Rules are rules.

Enjoy, the Lemon Meringue Pie Dare.

Hands up if you think I should exist solely on frozen meals.