I had another little excitable reorganising fit today. It’s bizarre. We only moved in here two months ago and already I am bored and needing to rearrange the furniture. I had never really been happy with the organisation of the lounge room so I moved a bookshelf and rearranged some other things, moved the toys, cleaned, cleaned and cleaned, voila! A new room. It feels bigger and fresher and good(er). Beefcake was his lovely tolerant self. He smiled and told me he thought it looked good. He kissed me when I told him I would probably change it again in a couple of months. What more can a crazy person ask for?

It is a bad sign that after only two months I already need to rearrange rooms to keep myself sane. I think I need to choose some nice paint colours and do some more decorating. For now the reorganising has done the trick and I feel very cheerful. This is a good thing as people with dodgy pelvises should never move furniture. It’s a pretty hard and fast rule, just so you know. So I am cheery and a bit sore but as I would have been sore regardless I feel a  bit of extra soreness as a trade-off for a new room is pretty good really.

I saw a show about plastic surgery this evening. It got me thinking. I have always hated my nose. It is kind of large and lumpy. I have a deviated septum. It is just ugly really. I used to think that I would most likely get it done one day. Anyway, on this show I saw, there was a 16-year-old girl getting a nose job. At that age, had I had the opportunity, I almost certainly would have been rid of my ugly and monstrous nose. These days, I don’t mind it so much. Sometimes one of the kids will make a comment about it or for some reason I’ll have a self-concious day but for the most part I know it’s not too bad. It’s my nose, it makes me, well,  me.  And who the fuck has time to think about that sort of thing anyway?

I wouldn’t bother getting my nose fixed these days. I guess I put that sort of energy into fixing up the house and rearranging rooms. I wonder about getting something like that done at such a young age. Would you live to regret it? Poss looks like she will end up developing my nose and I’m pretty sure that I would not let her have teengae plastic surgery, unless there was some really important reason for it to be done.

Are there aspects of your face, your body that you would change? Are there things you might have wanted to change once but now are happy with? I’m curious.

Does anyone else start a blog post over and over again. I think it is a symptom of the fact that I really have very little to say.

The big children have returned to school as of yesterday. I did enjoy their company whilst they were on holidays but I must admit I am enjoying return to the familiar routine of children to school during the day. Beefcake works much of the day and for a few hours at night giving me this few precious hours of child and husband free time in which to stare at my laptop. Routine is a fabuloussanitygivingheavensentjoy in this instance. I feel bad for needing this time alone. Last night I had to ask Rhubarb to go and hang out in his room because I so desperately needed a couple of hours alone. He was most put out but I feel he should be grateful that I didn’t bite his head off. I was a little bit on edge.

Grub is not being a low-maintainence bubba at the moment. Well, let’s be honest, she’s never been a low-maintainence baby. I am feeling overwhelmed at the moment. She feeds and feeds and feeds overnight. She insists on being held while she sleeps. She is exhausting. She is getting some teeth, she is going through an unsettled phase. I have had enough.

It will get better. She will grow out of it but last night when I couldn’t even get a couple of hours of not touching someone, not being touched, I felt like I would lose my mind.

My pelvis, which I try not to bring up too much, is being horrible. I am having one of my little down phases. Sometimes I feel like it will never get better. By the time Pudding* was  this age I was better. I know I was. I was more functional. I was in less pain. I had really started to recover a bit. I mean, I was never entirely pain free but I was better. Why is it not getting better? I have these pitifully childish moments of  “it’s not fair” and “nobody else has pain each time they walk, each time they move”. I anger myself and try and pull it together.   I am a bore.

Chromic pain affects who you are. I watch people move. They walk, they jog, they lift, they climb. I see these movements and wince for a moment before I realise that there is no pain. It doesn’t hurt them to move. That is mine.

On the upside, the baking has been continuing. Perhaps not in the fevered cake-producing manner that it began but still. There has been cooking and baking of a satisfying nature in my nice functional kitchen. I will post some photos of it soon but taking a photo and then plugging the camera into the laptop seems like a world of complex procedure at the moment. But for now, food. Food is good.

*My brain does not work. I typed his real actual name to begin with and it took some minutes to realise. Does anyone else who uses pseudonyms for their family ever do that? Nope? Just me then.

I just wrote a post and deleted it.

I am feeling indecisive.

I keep reading other people’s blog posts and then marking them to comment later because I never seem to have the time, right that minute. I mean to come back and comment later but I almost never do.

I have sick babies again, and Foxtel (to those who have enquired, we do have the IQ and it is now being well used to record things) both of which are keeping me very busy. Ooh and let us not forget the oven, which has been used to create something at least once each day since it was connected. There has been cake wallowing left and right.

I have had a rather all-consuming pregnancy scare. I am still a touch dubious about it but two pee-on-a-sticks later I must suppose that my bizarre pregnancy-style symptoms are either in my mind or a sign that my hormones are just doing something odd. Unfortunately, despite PMS style mood swings, I still have no periods so I am prone to paranoia about a fifth child. Especially when (as happened on my birthday) we have one of our patented “crap contraception moments”. So, I have what I call “burning tits of fire”, which has always been a dead-certain sign that I am up the duff. As I am not, I suppose it is just a feature of Grub’s around the clock feeding or something. It is messing with my fragile mind.

Beefcake is back working today, which has been surprisingly lovely. You wouldn’t think it would be different at all, considering he is still here in the house, cluttering it up. But it is. When he is working, everything goes just fine. There is total harmony. What terrible creatures of habit we are.

The big kids are still on holidays and, despite the fact that they are both noisy and smelly, I am mostly enjoying their company, although Rhubarb’s love of Spongebob is driving me slightly mental. Every time I leave the room with the tv on I come back in to find it (or something equally awful) on the screen.

I used to manage to blog almost every day, or at least several times a week. Where did I find the time to do that? How has that time just evaporated? Who bloody knows.

I am not the brigtest of sparks. I think we have established this before.

I have been reminded in no uncertain terms that I am very stupid indeed.

Beefcake, love of my life, has been working very hard lately (prior to the last couple of weeks leave, that is). He has been doing a ton of overtime and working bizarre hours and being on call. He has been worn out, he has been stressed and to top it all off he had to (help me!!) build a kitchen and carry out any number of other assorted DIY tasks around the new house.

I took pity on the Beef and allowed him to get large numbers of tv stations piped into our home. Something he has been whining about for some time.

Now you see, I am reminded of why I did not want fucking F0xtel in the first fucking place. He is an annoying nerd who only wants to watch cartoons or sci-fi. He never wants to watch any interesting tv, like trashy reality programs or documentaries about the food of Puerto Rico. I am in low-quality television hell. There is plenty of inane bullshit I would like to watch but, since he has his hot little hand on the remote, I am forced to watch his inane bullshit.

I knew I would live to regret this decision but I had no idea how soon.

It was installed yesterday.

I am sure that blog worthy things have been happening in our lives. I am sure I should be writing them down but I seem to have lost the part of my brain with a little light bulb that turns on when something happens and sends forth the thought “I should blog that”. I am not sure where I have put it. There is a significant pile of washing in the laundry* and it may well be at the bottom of that. Alternatively it could be in the car, where we seem to accumulate bags and bags of rubbish and jumpers and half-eaten apples, it could be there.

Anyway, until I do find it. Here are some interesting bullet points related to things:

• We put up the very lovely acrylic splash back that looks exactly like glass but is not. We did it ourselves, we did. It looks good. The kitchen is nearly finished now and just needs a coat of paint. Most importantly a coat of lovely black paint to the frame of the very special and important  most favourite window. I will post spectacular unveiling of the kitchen photos when we get around to it.
• Slightly related to the above point is the fact that the rangehood is up. It is not connected to electricity yet and it does not have a flue going into the ceiling and is therefore non-operational in every way meaning I must open the windows every time I cook but it is up.
• Also slightly related, the oven is being connected to electricity tomorrow, slightly later than expected. I shall season the oven and then I shall bake and bake and bake until we are wallowing in cake. Doesn’t that sound lovely? Wallowing in a room full of assorted cakes? I thought so too.
• I’m not sure if I have mentioned this but I can’t be bothered to check so: There is not enough electricity. What I mean is, we have an ancient electricity connection. It has never been upgraded so there is literally not enough electricity coming into the house. Not enough, that is, to run the oven and any other major appliance at the same time. Not enough. The old meter is very quaint and cute. The very colourful previous owners of the house considered it the guardian of the house and as an artist, the female of the couple had even painted it’s portrait, yes they were totally normal. It is going to cost us thousands of dollars unless an electrician will agree to be paid in cake, which I may have some trouble providing if the electricity is not upgraded. Hmmm.
• Pudding threw a coaster at Grub. It hit her cheek just below her eye. It split the flesh open and she has  a bloody scab on her face. I am very glad it did not hit a fraction higher. She really would have lost an eye. He was so distressed by our displeasure that he became hysterical and claimed that the dog had thrown the coaster. This is despite the fact that I was in the room and witnessed the whole thing. He is not good with taking responsibility for his actions.
• We took Grub and Pudding to the museum today as the older two are with their father. Pudding was chasing pidgeons in the grounds, being actively encouraged by Beefcake. I was very tut-tutty, as is my way, and Beefcake was all disagreey, as is his. This went on until I saw a young girl, no older than Pudding and dressed in a very pretty pinafore, race past and kick out at the pidgeons yelling at top volume fucking pidgeons, fuck. I decided Pudding could do worse than run at the pidgeons and left him to it.
• Beefcake has fallen asleep on the couch and I am now going to wake him up by flicking water at him because that’s just the kind of wife I am.

The end.

*Not sure if I have mentioned this before but, hah! It is not, in the strictest sense of the word a traditional kind of laundry. That is to say, it is a laundry. It is the original laundry for the house, which was built in 1895 (not sure when the laundry was built, probably not then but not long after either). It is a corrugated iron outbuilding, which the previous owners disconnected from the water supply and sewer. The plumber has connected a cold water supply for my washing machine but there is still no sewer so the washing machine drains into a large plastic tub, which we then empty with buckets. Good for arm strength. Arses for my pelvis. Also full of Beefcakes tools and a chest freezer (and redback spiders).

As anyone who reads this regularly will know, Beefcake works from home. His hours are very flexible as he works for a company on the other side of the world. This means that he can sometimes have meetings at 1am and the like but for the most part it’s great because he can organise his work around our family a fair bit. He gets to be around for things that a lot of working parents aren’t able to take part in. It’s great for the kids and we manage pretty well spending so much time together (as a general rule). Like any other job, Beefcake accrues leave, which he likes to take and have a total break from the stresses of his job. He is currently halfway through the first week of two weeks of annual leave he has booked.

It’s a weird thing. Ordinarily we get along well. We have occasional brawls in the street disagreements in an ordniary week but we are usually pretty okay. We like each others company and we don’t feel too much need for time apart. When he is working he is relatively easy to get along with. When he is not, he’s a nightmare.

I swear, he is having hormonal problems or something. He must be about to get his period any day now. It’s unbelievable. He rants and carries on like a pork chop. This morning he claimed that I was “persecuting him” because I asked him not to open a packet of bacon. Those were his exact words. I couldn’t help it. I got on the phone to my sister and the two of us had tears of laughter streaming down our faces as we giggled about it.

He’s like a tantrumy child. It’s as though his brain can’t cope if he has nothing to do. I need to find more DIY for him to do before he suffers a complete meltdown.

This afternoon though, he gave me such a little gem of blog fodder to share, I have been chuckling to myself ever since. He has an aversion to fish, you see. Fish of all kinds, even the smell of a fish makes him freak out and feel ill. He’s very dramatic about it. I was having a grumble to him this afternoon about the fact that we don’t have a lot of fish in our diets because of his dislike for it and the fact that the kids need their Omega 3’s and all that jazz. This is what my grumpy old man of a husband had to say about that:

“It’s all a conspiracy from the fish producers, anyway” …… “You never needed fish in my day”

And there you have it. No word of a lie. He really is that much of a ranty old fart. I have often joked that as he gets older I will need to buy him a “ranting chair” which he can sit in and lecture everyone as they go by. He’s shown signs of heading that way for a while but I think by the end of this fortnight, he’ll actually be ready for it.

P.S. I am gonna be in so much trouble when he reads this. I’m evil, me. I know it’ll piss him off but I just can’t seem to help myself.

Edited to add: I have been corrected. I actually said something about eating fish three times a week  as well and Beefcake actually said something about fish industry propaganda NOT a fish industry conspiracy. Important details people. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. You shouldn’t believe a word I write.

We have the pestilence.

Beefcake was the first to be struck down a couple of weeks ago and we have been dropping like flies ever since. Actually, now that I think about it, all three boys seem to have been hit very badly. Rhubarb required more than a week off of school, and just returned today. Pudding only really became ill yesterday and is now a shivery, coughing, feverish, dripping mess of snot and watery eyes. It is awful. My poor baby. I have just come off a shift of holding him and giving him sips of his drink while he lays on me, not sleeping, just resting. He says he can’t even move. I am actually a bit worried about him but I will keep an eye on him overnight and make sure he doesn’t worsen.

Poss has had a touch of it, as has Grub and I feel pretty ordinary today but all in all it is the male members of the household who have suffered most. Weird.

Not only is it weird that the boys have all been affected, it is a touch annoying. My boys take their man-flu seriously. Now pudding is too young to really have a case of the man-flu but Beefcake and Rhubarb can certainly milk it for all that it’s worth. From Rhubarb’s need for the sugar-coated pain/fever medication so that it went down his poor widdle gag-prone throat easily* to Beefcake’s conviction that he had pneumonia despite the absence of any pneumonia-like symptoms.

Amidst all of the pestilence, we have continued to work on the kitchen, adding another pantry and a lovely built-in bench height table that Beefcake built. We are all very impressed that he has built something so lovely. Not to mention quite a bit surprised. Even he didn’t really think it would come out quite so well. I spent the afternoon doing some plastering in the kitchen in preparation for the  new acrylic splashback, which should be all made and cut by the end of the week.

One thing I didn’t do today was enjoy the fruits of the large internet shop that we had home delivered to us. The reason I did not is that the delivery truck had a bad crash on it’s way to us the other day. The driver was unharmed, you’ll be pleased to hear. Our shopping, however, was not. They couldn’t salvage it, they tell me. They cancelled our order and I was left to try and schedule another delivery slot. They gave us a small credit to our account to make up for it so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.  I could not get another slot until tomorrow morning  though so I will be waiting excitedly for my shop and hoping that nothing terrible happens to it.

It is rather vital that we receive our shopping soon. I have been resisting the urge to go out and buy things that we need as that will be “doubling up” and we are quite strictly budgeted at the moment. This means that we are close to having to make use of the garden foliage for bum wiping and will be shortly reduced to brushing our teeth with salt. If it doesn’t work out tomorrow I will be forced to admit defeat and go to the supermarket. I don’t really want to do this as I have taken a rather bold step and purchased the entire month’s worth of food. I have planned a month’s meals and drawn up a chart on the wall. I purchased the meat in person so we have all that in the freezer already but I don’t know how many trolleys the rest of it would take. A few, I think. Even with my love of shopping I think I may find buying a month’s worth of food for a family of six a bit tedious. It is just serve me right really that I try to be all organisey and good and end up with it backfiring all over me. The shiny and organised and super-duper housewifeyness was not meant for the likes of me.

*Easily that is, after a fifteen minute coaching and gentle persuasion session about taking tablets (with whimpering, bribery and moaning), despite it not being the first time he has taken them. He was feeling a touch fragile.