House renting nightmares and the postal service...

After five months of humming and hawing, we've finally decided that in order to keep our collective sanity intact, we really do need to move out of our tiny treehouse. It has served it's purpose well; we have settled into our little community (by which I mean I know three people), the children are happy in their school, and the beautiful surroundings have provided a dramatic backdrop for our introduction to life in Australia.

However, the truth is that pretty as it is, the house is really not much more than a glorified apartment, something which really doesn't work for a family of seven (albeit with the largest member absent two thirds of the time). It offers so little privacy that when I shower the children tend to gather in the bathroom to ask me questions through the misty glass (the bathroom door doesn't close) and our living room also serves as a kitchen/dining/dressing/occasional-conjugal-quickie-before-the-children-notice-room (there's no privacy in our bedroom, which is located off their TV area).

It's a bit like when the family in Angela's Ashes move into the upstairs because the downstairs has been flooded by the unyielding Limerick rain. Well, if you exclude the typhoid, bleak poverty, head-lice and feckless alcoholic father. But you get my gist.

And so we are once more obliged to dip a reluctant toe into the murky waters of the Perth rental market, a cold, unfriendly and disheartening place.

In Ireland, finding a house to rent is relatively straightforward.  You phone the local estate agent, identify a house you fancy viewing, then you go and have a look at it. If you like it -- and presuming you don't rock up to the viewing in a large white transit van, with 12 children and a roll of carpet hanging out the back -- then in all probability the landlord will agree to rent it to you, often for less than the asking price. Job done.

Here in Perth the cycle is radically different. After scouring the internet for something you don't hate, you phone the estate agent -- who is totally indifferent towards you, they really don't need your business -- and arrange to attend a 'viewing'. A viewing means the house is open to the public for 15 minutes or so, and is often an unhappy experience spent wandering through dark, dingy and ugly rooms -- which often smell of feet or cabbages -- while fellow 'viewers' furiously open and close kitchen cupboards, as if the particular swing of a door might help make the decision for them. And as the musty air fills with the feverish desperation to secure a home, all aesthetical merits -- or lack thereof -- are put aside.

The application process involves filling out a lengthy form, divulging information such as your bank details, car registration, passport number, employement details, PAST employment details (jeez!), as well as supplying either a urine or blood sample. Sometimes both. (I made that last bit up).

You are also often obliged to pay a weeks rent as a deposit, just to prove that you are serious, which will be forfeited should you change your mind. It is also advisable to offer more than the asking price, often significantly more, in order to push your application up the list.

Now think of it; if you were renting out a property, and had ten couples interested, would you rent it to the couple with five small children?

No, me neither.

So you see our predicament. Yes of course there are landlords who might possibly accept us, but like  Groucho Marx's doubts about wanting to belong to any club which would have him as a member, any house that is willing to allow us to live in it, is unlikely to be a place I actually want to rent. Take a look at this little gem below for example, which is on the market for the bargain basement price of $400 a week. Yes, you didn't misread that - A WEEK (which is cheap, $650 per week is a more realistic average around here), and were it in Ireland would in all likelihood be bulldozed in favour of a nice dormer bungalow...

'Lovely spacious family home with traditional retro features' according to the unintentionally hilarious brochure.

And it continues: 'comes with a Gourmet kitchen'....

'Recently renovated'? Laurence Llewelyn-Bowan would turn in his laquered four-poster baroque bed!

Somebody actually went to the trouble of putting this picture into the brochure

A dream 'garden', I'm sure you'll agree...

The Postman

I mentioned a while back that I was yet to spot the postman, having no idea how my post found its way into the redback-infested post-box at the bottom of the drive each morning, so I'm pleased to report that I have finally laid eyes on him. Actually on reflection, I now realise I spied him months ago, but the moped and little flag threw me a little, and I was convinced that my invisible neighbours were regularly ordering Domino's pizza for breakfast. It's an easy mistake to make.

                                             

We have a different postman for the delivery of parcels, and since I began my little Boden online spree a couple of months back, have had reason to come face to face with the fluorescent-jacketed postie (yes, Australenglish for Postman) many times across the baby gate at the top of our wooden steps. To be honest I'm a little embarrassed at this stage, and feel the sharp sting of his judgement every time he hands over yet another delicious pink and grey spotted package. In fact only he, myself and Boden know the extent of my recent purchasing-frenzy, and at times even I've been surprised at the appearance of a new parcel, having totally forgotten I'd ordered it, on a late and lonely night a week earlier -- unhinged on Chablis and loneliness  -- unwilling and unable to talk myself into heading to the cold, lonely bed of a FIFO-widow...*

Empty bed syndrome? Not quite...

*A bit of artistic license there -- there are actually three small boys in my bed most nights...but you know what I mean...

Nesting, hoarding and why you should neglect your children...

So we’re into the home stretch thank goodness. And with the end in sight it is normal for the heavily pregnant female to resort to ‘nesting’, an instinctual phenomena characterised by sudden spurts of cleaning and organising of her habitat in preparation for the new arrival. This manifestation is an early indication that labour is imminent.

I have my own personally adapted version of this phenomenon. I call it ‘hoarding’ and it is characterised by the frantic buying of clothes that I can wear on the other side. I’ve been trawling the Boden sale all week filling my virtual trolly with gorgeous items that will hopefully goad me into actually fitting into them as soon as possible. 

And last week I made a special trip to the Dubai Outlet mall with the pretense of treating the children to an hours play in the creche.  In reality I was on a mission to buy something gorgeous in Monsoon. It was disappointing to be honest but I still managed to leave the store with a gorgeous silk top. After hugging it for a bit I reluctantly hung it in the wardrobe, label dangling forlornly, where it will have to stay for another couple of months.  But it's a comfort just knowing it’s there.

It’s irrational I know, but I am in horror of being that rounded, milky, new mother wearing shapeless squishy tops in a look that says ‘I don’t matter…I’m comitted 100% to being a new mother for the next 6 months and I have resigned myself to wearing ugly crimes of fashion until society tells me I can start thinking about my appearance again’.

I don’t want the whiff of victimhood around me and so instead go to great lengths to prove ‘I’m fine, I've only had a baby for goodness sake!'  Besides, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that women in Vietnam give birth in paddy fields, then strap the baby to themselves and go back to work (I’m not strictly sure about this actually, but it sounds like something they might do).

I take it too far. On the birth of number 4, which coincided inconveniently with Christmas, I bumped into a friend in the Monsoon sale.  I was three days post-partum and looking wild-eyed and manic and ever so slightly deathly pale as I trawled through the party dress rack (my favourite) trying my best not to faint.

-‘Are you OK?’ she enquired, peering at my stomach ‘my god, you’ve had the baby….when?’

-‘Three days ago’ I whimpered.

-‘Good god woman, what on earth are you doing here?’

-‘It’s the Monsoon sale’ I protested weakly ’I couldn’t rest knowing it had started…I left the baby with dh’ I explained, beginning to feel I really ought to sit down.

I now see that I was probably a little over-enthusiastic in my pursuit of normalcy and should probably have cut myself a little slack. I shall try to be kinder to myself this time….although a dress from Monsoon is actually my idea of being kind to myself.

Anyhow, for now I shall confine my activities to amassing my post-partum wardrobe, both virtually and by shuffling around the mall like some oversized bag lady.  And nesting will continue to elude me since it exists in the realm of the unecessary when you have a maid service three times a week  ( I do live in the middle east after all where nobody does anything for themselves).

Free range kids

I was listening to that New York mother who wrote that book ‘Free Range Kids’ on the radio the other day and I have to say, I love what she’s doing.

Her theory is that our children are so over-protected that we are raising a generation who will grow up lacking the tools to actually take risks or think laterally or with imagination. Worse, we’re depriving them of a proper childhood while simultaneously making parenthood a hellish, guilty and anxt-ridden experience for ourselves.

The proponant of the theory, Lenore Skanazy, caused uproar when she wrote in her New York column of how she let her 9 year old son make his way home alone from Bloomingdales in New York city where they live. She gave him 20 dollars along with instructions as to how to get home, and then let him off to figure it out himself.

The response has been outrage by critics and parents alike, labelling her the worst mother in America among other equally hysterical names.  She does, thank god, have a large following and a blogsite where brave parents share their free range parenting stories, and has even highlighted a radical new movement 'the kids walk to school programe' which encourages children to (gasp) walk to school themselves!

Of course I support all this wholeheartedly, what she’s doing makes complete sense to my slummy mummy sensibilities and philosophy.

My nine year old daughter is smart, cynical and inciteful but I’m doing her no favours if I never allow her to walk to the mall without me. It’s a ten minute walk through a compound with security guards, across a road where a security guard is posted, and yet she’s never done it (and I shall tactfully side-step the whole issue of 45 degree heat being reason enough not to walk anywhere right now). This isn't because I object to her making that trip, but because she has no friends to go with her.

When I’ve mentioned to other mothers about allowing her to walk to the shops alone, I’ve been met with much head shaking and comments such as ‘Oh I wouldn’t take that risk’ which is precisely the problem. We know in all probability that nothing bad will happen, but as long as there is that doubt, and worse, the chance that if something DOES happen we, and everyone else around us, will point the accusative finger, we’re not going to take that chance. And so we keep them at home under our watchful eye or drive them to the mall ourselves.

But it starts earlier. Having coffee with someone who insists on checking to see what the kids are doing upstairs every 5 minutes is an exercise in frustration and futility. Trying to recapture the dying threads of a conversation every time she returns to the room, coffee long cold ‘what were we saying?' leaves me wanting to pour aforementioned coffee over her head and beg her never to call again. And inevitably these same mothers will have those kids that must interupt the conversation every three minutes to tell mummy something inciteful like ‘mummy, I know about the life-cycle of a frog…let me tell you’ (bugger off kid and tell someone who cares…I want to hear the end of this story).

Now when I was a kid, interupting an adults conversation was tantemount to self- inflicted infanticide (is there a word for that?)…you just didn’t do it.

I used to have a friend who would stop the conversation every time her three year old boy came running into the room crying hysterically (which was every two minutes).  Grabbing him in panic she'd urge him to ‘use your words darling…remember your words?…tell mummy what terrible thing happened’ as my three year old son would stand guility by, waiting for the inevitable and collective accusative glare once his latest offence had been revealed.  I wanted to yell at her -'LOOK, obviously my kid hit your kid...much like your kid hit my kid two minutes ago.  The difference is that my kid can't be bothered to tell me since he'll get zero reaction from me!! Now, can we move on???'

And there is a 1,000% more chance that the children will cover the wall in lipstick or felt tip pen than meet an horrific and untimely death if left to their own devices for 20 minutes unsupervised. When I was a kid we genuinely got involved in some very dangerous and dodgy things during the long summer days when we disapeared from the house at 9am, not returning till dusk when hunger called, but amazingly we lived to tell the tale.

I have a friend who phoned one lazy Sunday afternoon for a chat.

-‘What are you doing?’ She asked.

-‘Oh we’re watching a movie’ I replied.

-‘Oh,which one?’

-‘You know that one about the paedophile…Kevin Bacon..yeah that one’

-‘But where are the children?’ she enquired, voice filling with alarm.

-‘Playing….in and out of the garden…why?’

-‘You can’t mean you’re watching that with them there? Oh my god!!’

She was genuinely freaked out and as I hung up the phone I wondered was it really that terrible. They were too small to understand what the story was about, and it wasn’t as if he was actively paedophillic in the movie, so what was the problem? Besides, they weren’t even watching the movie!

Mind you, she is the type of mother who will sit in the back of the car with the baby when her husband is driving. My god, but what the hell is that about? When we were kids we stood in the back of the car, no doubt playing with sharp objects while mother smoked ten cigarettes in the front of the car with the windows closed!! Judging by todays standards, I’m amazed any of us made it to our teens.

With child-rearing, I strongly (and some would say conveniently) believe that a healthy neglect is vital if you wish to produce useful and resourceful members of society for the future.  Children that can't fight their own battles or amuse themselves for ten minutes without mummy getting down on the floor to help them finger paint won't be much use in a crisis.  Plus, it makes parenting a whole lot easier and cheaper if you can say 'go upstairs and make a tent kids' without having to buy the special tent-making kit from the Early Learning Centre or do anything more than supply the sheet.  Plus you get to finish a conversation and drink your coffee while it's still hot. 

Everyone's a winner.

Planes and ageing brains

I've had bloggers block.  I think my brain atrophied and died slightly over the festive season from the massive consumption of alcoholic beverages I consumed.  It's not my fault; Ireland was so cold that anything more ambitious than sitting in front of the fire in a pub drinking hot whiskeys seemed sheer madness. 

My brain was further destroyed by the return trip from hell which featured an ill-advised stopover in Istanbul, something which I quickly told myself would be an experience when I saw the cost of the flights (half that of a direct flight).  The reality was something similar to childbirth in terms of the cyclical agony as the children ran the wrong way down the travelator in the departure lounge, over and over and over...

Predictably our plane was delayed,  and so as everyone gathered around the departures screen anxiously scanning it for updates, we started pushing our way to the priority boarding point to avail of our right to board first since we suffered the tragic affliction of 4 very lively children.  As the children, now thoroughly bored, rolled around on the floor, stopping occasionally to thump each other, a kindly greying gent approached my very cute three year old and patted him on the head 'go away athh hooole' he lisped, as the entire group looked on, furiously hoping they wouldn't be seated beside us.  Blushing I ushered three year old away but what can you say to that?  Like I said, childbirth.  Without the epidural.

The flight itself wasn't too bad, although a wriggling three year old wouldn't be my travelling companion of choice, not least because of his insistence on repeatedly flipping the table on the back of the seat in front of him up and down.  After the 89th time it just gets old and one grows tired of apologising to the person in front.  This tedium was only relieved by the appearance of a 'gift' from the airline to all the children on the flight.  This gift featured a plastic bag containing a mini Turkish Airways plane with stickers and an inflatable Turkish Airways plane.  The boys fell on these gifts enthusiastically although I had to clamp my hand over 5 year old boys mouth as he held up the inflatable plane and announced, loudly-

'mummy, I know how to blow up this plane!'

But age does take its toll on mind and body and I find myself becoming increasingly desperate to stop this slow march toward inevitable decrepitude and a slow painful death.

Obviously the only way to deal with this decline is through a healthy diet, no alcohol, lots of exercise and positive thinking.  Personally I prefer over-priced miracle creams and moisturisers.   Although I must admit to being quite baffled by the huge variety of creams on the market.  What happens if you use a 'night cream' during the day for example?  Or 'hand cream' on your face? (I do both regularly)

And what are the seven signs of ageing?    They never tell you in the ads.  Could it be memory loss..(.lost keys, anyone)?  Or perhaps difficulty in straightening up when you stand up too quickly?  Maybe it's feeling invisible to the opposite sex (although the obvious formula to that is move to the Middle East where any woman, ugly or not, will most definitely be stared at with a curiosity usually adopted by your dentist or gynaecologist)?  Perhaps it's a gradual depression which descends slowly as it dawns on you that all your dreams have been unrealised and your life has been ultimately empty?  Or maybe it's wearing nylon-elastic-waisted pleated-skirts thus becoming an embarrassment to your family... or stress incontinence.  I could go on...

Another nuisance with the whole ageing process is the inability to drink more than half a bottle of wine without suffering from a hangover the next day.  I'm beginning to gravitate towards the whole never drinking again thing, as it seems the only sensible solution to these lost days spent quietly dying on the sofa.  Although, on the last day of our trip, we met with one of my oldest friends for a drink in our hotel.  I looked forward to a few swift ones while catching up.

During our hey day we shared a flat and my god could she drink.  Her favourite tipple for getting drunk was a pint of Smithwicks with a shot of whiskey thrown in to it.  She used to regularly fall into bed with a half eaten takeaway and a bottle of whiskey surrounded by dog ends and debris.  And vomiting in the street was no foreign country to her.  A sort of walking-talking real life version of Tracy Emmins 'unmade bed'.  She always made me feel pure and wholesome by comparison by virtue of the fact that she was so god damn unhealthy.  However,  to my dismay on this occasion she swept into the bar looking radiant with health and ordered a mineral water as myself and DH looked on open mouthed.

-'Don't you want a real drink?' I asked.

-'God no, I'm not drinking' she replied.  'Nobody I know drinks any more'

-'Really? Whoops!'  I gestured toward my half empty glass.

-'No' she continued, ’all my friends talk about now is running.  And community gardening, don't you know we're too old for this, have to start thinking about our health'

This was news to me.  Suddenly myself and DH felt as outdated and anachronistic as a pair of old drunks sitting at the back of the pub droning on about the 'good ol' days'.

DH got up to go to the bar and made a sly 'drink?' gesture as he passed.  I nodded guiltily.  But hey, it was the last day of our hols, we felt entitled, didn't we?

'I don't know how you do it to be honest, with four kids and all, since the baby I just can't keep awake long enough to drink' she observed.

She's not alone in these observations, practically everyone I know says the same.  Which makes me wonder if I'm hanging on by my broken fingernails to a youth which has passed.  Is it, in fact, time to hang up my dancing shoes, throw out the Chablis, and settle down to the task of being a grown up? 


Perhaps it is, but I resist with every fibre of my being and bristle at the 'I don't know how you...' speeches I so frequently encounter.

Here's my top 6 most hated 'I don't know how you's....'

-I don't know how you manage to read books, what with four kids and all  (why, did they remove my brain in the delivery room along with the child?)

-I don't know how you manage to email me regularly, I'm just soooo busy with my pregnancy/one child/school run' (I suspect there's time for Oprah and Dr. Phil)

-I don't know how you manage to go to classes and learn new things all the time (currently piano..and why do you have to stop learning new things after you leave school?  Assuming you live for 80 years, and you finished school at 18, that reasoning makes the assumption that you've learned everything you need to know in less than the first quarter of your life.  That's illogical )

-I don't know how you manage to go shopping and buy actual clothes (well frankly neither do I considering what's available in the shops these days, but you know, Boden DO deliver to the Middle East)

-I don't know how you can still go out to dinner, get drunk and end up in a night club (very occasionally, but still nice to bop around a dance floor believing I am THE disco queen)

-And my favourite 'I don't know how you can type at the computer with all those little ones pulling at the keyboard'  (err, well, I made a pact with the children from the start, 'I do what I'm doing, you do what you're doing' and never the twain unless they need feeding, changing, comforting....the result, quite independent and creative children who do not rely on me to entertain them...oh, and a huge amount of telly helps)

Anyway, as I recently pointed out to a friend after the 'I don't know how you do it ...' speech, 'I don't know what else I'm supposed to be doing'.  And that, dear reader, is the truth.

So anyway, it's a new year, new opportunities and lots of drama ahead methinks.  But that's for next time...