Random Ramblings of a SAHM

Just Another Blogger

2012-02-23T08:30:00.000+11:00

I was interviewed by the Today show last week. It aired Tuesday morning, and both recording it and watching it back were awesome fun. The Chop is slightly in love with Syliva the reporter, which is understandable- she was gorgeous. But very tall. I felt like a midget. You can view the Today Show piece here.

I've done a fair few media bits and pieces, especially over the last twelve months. This was different though. Different, in a lovely kind of way. It wasn't so much an interview with 'the woman who talks about suicide' or the 'mum blogger whose husband died'. It was an interview with the Lori, who writes a blog called the Random Ramblings of a SAHM.

Just another blogger, telling her story, talking about random bits and pieces. And a bit of that story is that my husband passed away.

I got a comment a few weeks ago, here on my blog, that said "Lori, I have only just started following your blog and I had NO IDEA about your past". That was pretty freaking awesome. Meg read my blog and didn't know straight away.

Doesn't seem like much, I know. But it means a great big deal. Some days I feel as if I'm drowning in myself, in what happened to me, in what I carry with me. Some days it feels like that's all this blog is about too, as if the place where I write down my soul has been as totally swallowed as the rest of me.

That comment, and that interview... they've changed the viewpoint a little. Not changed where I stand... just the way I see things.

Sometimes I write about grief. sometimes I write about death and suicide and the ugly side of people and life and humanity. But I write about other stuff here too.

I'm just another blogger. Mum, personal, whatever. Just another blogger.

It's a good place to be.

The Nature of Grief, Part One.

2012-02-22T08:30:00.000+11:00

Grief is such a bitch. I understand it now in a way I just never could in the Before.

Tony's nan, who he loved dearly and was very close to, passed away while Tony and I were together. He mourned for her deeply and furiously. I look back now and I'm angry with myself, sad for him... I didn't understand what he was going through at all. I pushed him to get over it, get on with it...

But hindsight is twenty–twenty, as they say. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Didn't.

My daughter, my Bump, is two and a half now and she is, for the first time, starting to realize that there is something missing here, that her family is not the ’typical’ one they describe in books, TV shows, and life in general. I'm amazed how often character families are nuclear– I had really never noticed that Before, had you asked me if there was a need for more single parent families on TV I would have said of course, there is plenty of diversity there already.

The Bump having her 'pretty hair' cut.

Things look different from the inside, always, always.

Bump has a dolls house, and is so curious as she plays– the daddy doll is the focus of everything, the game starts only when he enters the pink plastic front door, and the mother and baby freeze in tableaux again when he leaves.

She points to the sky, questioning, her face a small frown, “My daddy up there?”. And what is there to say except yes, baby, he is, but much higher than the clouds, much higher than the sky, and of course, he can't come back– always remembering to add that on, to not create false hope and fantasy expectations?

My daughter will never know her father, except for what I tell her of him. She’ll never know exactly what his voice sounded like, or how warm and safe it was to lie in his chest, or how the world looked from atop his shoulders.

Grief, it’s a bitch.

And there are all kinds of things to grieve for.

Feminity

2012-02-21T08:30:00.000+11:00

Femininity is subjective.

I don't know why having short hair challenges it so much. I think part of it not having hair to flick around, to hide behind, to use as a fan in front of flirting eyes.

I've taken to wear bigger earring, chunkier necklaces, more makeup. I pay more attention to what I'm wearing now, it's not as acceptable to just run to the shops in my track suit pants and slippers. It's not anyone elses reactions to me– it's the way I feel about it, the way I see myself in my mind.

Everyone has a mental image of themselves, the way they see themselves. Their self image. I'm still adjusting to seeing myself with short hair. When I'm not a bit dressed up I feel... well... a bit masculine. I don't even like admitting that, it feels like another one of those anti–feminisms. But it's truth.

Faux glasses and red lippie makes me feel... a bit arty.

It certainly has its benefits. It makes me pay more attention to my general appearance, even the bits and pieces that no one else pays any attention but me. I shave my legs, do my bikini line, pluck stray hairs from my brows on a much more regular basis than I used to. With the increased focus on dressing in way that's flattering and feminine, and choosing different jewelry to wear each day; it's works subtlety on my self esteem. I find myself more confident, without hair to hide behind. I'm more certain of what I'm wearing, that it looks good, because i took a few extra minutes to choose it. I even pay more attention to my hair than I usually did when it was long– as matter of course I would throw it back in a messy ponytail, add some bobby pins to keep it out of my eyes. Now I wax it with care and am the Imelda of hats, scarves and hair bands. Ironically, it now takes me ten minutes to do my hair instead of two, because I wax it and press it down, focus on strands of it and exactly where they sit.

The image of me that rests in my head varies wildly between pretty and sparkly and spunky, to dull and chunky and masculine. Some days I feel bigger than I am, my cheeks feel over blown and chipmunk–full. But the sparkly me becomes more and more frequent as that confidence grows, flamed by the increased focus on how I look and what I'm wearing, of how much body maintenance I've done, and how that all adds up to effect how I feel.

It's so easy to be inherently feminine when my hair is long and flowing. This, struggling with it, simply makes me more aware of it. It's another bonus of that skin shedding that came with the pixie cut... the emancipation of Lori.