Naughty Forty...I'll keep you posted.

I turned forty a couple of months ago and it wasn’t so bad. Thirty was much worse and I wasted far too much of my late twenties dreading the oncoming birthday milestone. At thirty I was unsure of who I was, where I was going and what was important in my life. I was wishing I was twenty-five again but not realising what that really meant.

 At forty I looked around and realised that to wish away even one year would delete people, experiences and relationships that I cherish.

The dirty thirties were good to me as a decade with marriage, stability and two beautiful little boys who make my life deeply satisfying every day. I’m not saying my life thus far has panned out as I imagined but it's pretty good.  I have my boys including the adult one, my health, good friends and a supportive loving family.

I haven’t been nominated for a BAFTA or shared the stage with Judy Dench* but I’m okay with that. You move on. You grow up and you become thankful of what you have achieved.

I’ve spent years lying about my age and it is common in the acting business where age defines you.  I’ve always looked younger so I blatantly lied on my CV for acting roles and my age was never questioned.  I then moved to Australia and thought I could do the same not realising that you have to give your employer a tax declaration form before a job starts. In the UK you do your own tax and those producers who can’t see beyond the number written on your CV are no more the wiser.

Luckily I never got a paid job through my useless agent so an embarrassing situation was avoided!

 How ironic that we spend years pretending that we are older to get in to dodgy establishments. Spending hours memorising false dates of birth and star signs fearing a lack of preparation would reveal our not quite so legal selves.

I was asked for ID until I was twenty- three and generally I was flattered but on some occasions I was incredulous at the person’s obvious stupidity or concerned about their optical health!

People thinking you look younger is flattering and a boost to the ego. I myself don’t like to guess peoples’ age, as I am generally wrong. There is nothing worse than somebody estimating you are older than you are. Let’s face it we all have our good days and we all have those days where we look every sleep deprived minute of our actual age.

Age is really a number; it just happens that my number is increasing at an alarming speed. It really does seem two minutes since I was graduating from University, inhaling five pints of lager in London town and doing twelve-hour shifts at Heathrow airport dressed in a Hawaiian skirt!

So I am embracing the fabulous forties. Many amazing people don’t get to celebrate this milestone because they leave this world far too soon. I am one of the lucky ones so middle age come on down! I’d say do your worse but I’m far too vain so please be sparing with the wrinkles for a few more years.

* I did meet her once and she wasn’t very nice to me but I don’t think this counts.  Even though you snapped at me I still love you Judy!

There's a mouse in the house..well actually quite a few!

We’ve got mice! Not the patter of tiny feet that you want to announce on Facebook but many peoples status’s seem to suggest we’re not the only ones.

Bunnings sold out of their lethal wooden traps last weekend and there was a week wait for the exterminators.

There seems to have been a population explosion in the mouse world, mice copulating like mad in order to get the baby bonus. Don’t they know you don’t get it all in one payment now- chances are they’ll be dead before they get to spend it!

They’ve chosen a good house with two small boys throwing enough food on the floor to feed an entire African village! The first mouse probably bragged so much about the easy life he was having that all his friends decided to move in too! Especially on a Kinder day when i rush out of the door without scooping the food off the floor, i'm sure the mice have been loving the all you can eat buffet!

So we’ve got smart mice, so smart that they haven’t fallen prey to the many lethal traps adorning our pantry shelves. They do like to have a little poo right next to them though just to let us know they haven’t been fooled! I’m sure they’re high fiving each other on a nightly basis on that manoeuvre!

After we spotted the first mouse we believed that maybe he had just come in through an open door. I popped down to Bunnings and being the committed Vegetarian* that I am purchased a trap which would capture rather than decapitate. It is so spacious that you could convert it in to a granny flat with plenty of room for a conservatory and even a pool! You place the food inside and they are supposed to run in with no escape route. Needless to say this trap was useless and is still open for inspection!

No more Mrs Nice humanitarian minded for me, snap their little neck traps now adorn our house! Last week the husband was staking out a mouse, he was wearing rubber gloves and armed with a broom. When the mouse jumped in to the laundry trough I shouted “ Turn the taps on- scald him alive”. I really have been watching too many episodes of the Tudors!

The mouse escaped but I did give it a whack with a rolled up newspaper before it ran in to the spare room. We barricaded it in with a rolled up towel and the weekend papers. We really are the most hospitable of hosts!

Apparently, mice are a little bit obsessive compulsive and follow the same route on a nightly basis. Once you know their travel plans you can set the traps accordingly. They are also wary creatures so they have to get used to where the traps are located first and then they get cocky enough to try the bait. You would think mice relatives would warn them! “ Son you don’t get nothing for free in this life. If it looks too good to be true it probably is!”

What do you tell your kids though? Their perception of mice is a little bit different to ours, they think Rasta Mouse or Micky while we think vermin. We tell them we are catching the mice to put them outside but neglect to tell them that the mice will be dead! 

I wish we could live in harmony but I’m sorry mice you are disease carrying little f***ers! You give me no option but to end your winter holiday prematurely with a severe bout of food poisoning. The exterminators are coming today, pack your cases and get out of my house.

* Not that I would eat mice or think that any of you do.

Job un-satisfaction.

Coming from a self employed family business I have worked since the age of thirteen. My formative years gave me a good work ethic and taught me to be loyal to my employers. I rarely took a sick day and often worked through my lunch break. Why then would I be replaced in a heartbeat and not notified of the decision? Welcome to the world of a returning mother to the workforce.

I had a good job that I enjoyed immensely when I became pregnant with my first child. My employer assumed that my pregnancy signalled the end of my working life and did not think to offer me unpaid maternity leave*. Did I mention my employer was a man?

I’m fairly certain the question “You’re not thinking of getting pregnant are you?” shouldn’t be included in a job interview.  Incredulous I know but my employer had just lost his previous manager to motherhood and so another woman was a gamble! Fortunately we (me and my working ovaries) had the most experience so we got the job!

A year later I too was pregnant, the difference being I wanted to take my entitled leave and return ten months later. My boss simply believed that I wouldn’t return, after all no other female employee had returned so why would I?

Not being married to a Murdoch or a Packer returning to work for me would be a financial necessity.

Ten months later I returned to work to find that my role had been assigned to somebody else on a permanent basis. You see my ‘maternity” cover replacement had left prematurely so they decided to promote the assistant manager.

He happened to be a good friend who was happy to share the role with me and we approached my employer with our working vision.

Our idea of job sharing wasn’t given any consideration although we had raised excellent points in how it could benefit our department. I was told that the company was moving in different directions and that there was an exciting role for me that would be ideal for my new three -day week.

I was given an office away from all my old colleagues where I sat day after day alone doing nothing! Great for slackers but I wanted to work, to talk to grown ups and stimulate my brain. I could get poked on Facebook at home!

My employer was attempting to placate me and asked me to think of what my new title might be. Strictly speaking it was his job to tell me what my job was making it even more apparent that there was no job!

In the end I returned to my old work place and took up office in the room where everybody got changed and ate their lunch. I wasn’t relinquishing my title though or my pay structure, my employer would simply have to pay two people for doing the same job!

Such a ridiculous situation when there was easily enough work for two managers over a period of seven days. We worked well together and divided our duties according to our strengths. We were able to cover holidays, sick days and countless meetings with ease. I had the respect of my team which was what mattered most to me.

 My employer only thought of me as a manager when it suited his own purposes. I think secretly he just wanted me to leave in case I decided to sue him for workplace misconduct. Maybe I should have sued him, maybe I should have left but deep down I convinced myself that I was just using him until baby number two came along. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to return once I had two children that needed childcare. Baby number two took a while so I ended up working for a further two years.

On finally leaving the company after nine years of service, my employer remarked, “really you left the last time.” Obviously I was just pretending to work for the last two years! Infuriatingly on many an occasion he did infer that I couldn’t possibly do my job as well as I could prior to having a baby.

Employers’ take note- mothering involves multi tasking, time management, a sense of humour and patience. These are all skills required in the workplace and whilst I may have possessed them prior to motherhood they were definitely much sharper on my return.  Mothers also generally want to be in the work place, working is “me time” with uninterrupted conversations, coffee breaks and private toilet trips!

My story is one of countless where women are given a rough deal on returning to work.  Some women I know have had no choice but to return to their position full time even though their job could be done in a shorter time frame. I was fortunate in that I could shorten my working week and spend valuable time with my baby.

 Ironically, going back to work made me realise what was important in life and for me work was not the answer. No longer would I stress over the small stuff when I had my own bundle of small stuff at home! My work home balance at this time was perfect regardless of how I was treated. I cherished the days with my little feller but loved the freedom that work gave me.

Now I am a stay at home mum and I have learnt that you can’t win either way. If you work you feel guilty for leaving your children, if you stay at home you feel guilty for not financially contributing to the household.

It is hard to get used to not working when it is something you have done all of your life. At first I felt guilty in answering questions about my work status but not any more! Staying at home with small children is hard work but it is rewarding too and I’m lucky to be in a financial situation where I can spend so much valuable time with them.

 * At this time in Australia there was no paid maternity leave. 

Sweet Little Lies.

The season of lying is over for another year! A time where you love every present from your in-laws, your partner pretends he knows what he bought his mother and every person over a certain age is complicit in a fantastical story about a chubby old guy in a red suit.

Parents tell their children lies all the time and Christmas is definitely the time to be selective with the truth! The whole Santa story keeps the magic alive both for them and for us. The bonus is that for months leading up to the big event behaviour can be kept in check by the threat of a Santa no show. In my house the laundry became the place where we did the washing and was completely redundant as a mini Alcatraz!

 Children will believe anything we tell them because they are innocent and in some ways we abuse this for our own means.  One of my friends told her children that Santa was watching them via the alarm sensors throughout her house.  She found her four year old confessing to the sensor that he hadn’t hit his sister on purpose! Another friend tells her kids that when the ice-cream van plays a tune it means they’ve run out of ice-cream and then there are my catholic friends and God knows what they’re telling their kids! Or does he/she?

Our children trust us so implicitly, that you really can feed them any old bullshit to keep them in line. My lie of choice involves spiders, which are always present in places that I would prefer my son not to explore! The downside of this is that he now has an irrational fear of all insects and this is something that I will have to rectify in years to come.

Last week I found myself telling my son that the dummy fairy is the sister of the tooth fairy and that she had broken in to the house and stolen his dummy! Luckily he’d forgotten about the tooth fairy that worked in a toyshop where previously he’d exchanged his daytime dummy for a toy garage.

Children like to ask questions so you need to get your story straight and think about tangents they may follow. I remember asking my mum why there were so many Santas; quick as a flash she had an answer so I never doubted her story. Children want to believe and why would you their loving parent lie to them anyway?

We often lie to our children to protect them from the harsh truth of a situation and in a few years time they will be doing exactly the same to protect us.

 I don’t want to incriminate myself here as my mum does read this blog but we all end up lying to our parents. Sometimes parents don’t want to hear the truth especially in those late teen years when alcohol, drugs and sex come in to the equation! We reason that it is so much kinder to be economical with the truth or if that fails we blame our friends!

Parents are their children’s first and most important teachers. We teach them all manner of things and they look to our behaviour as an example of how they will behave towards others.  Naturally they learn how to lie from us too so really we shouldn’t be too shocked when they start telling some porkies of their own

Plane Crazy

There is nothing worse than having to do a twenty- three hour flight with two children under the age of four. Okay maybe doing a bungee jump over crocodile infested waters and the rope breaking comes a close second!

I’ve never been a huge fan of flying but a few gins and catching up on all of those movies you missed at the cinema made it bearable. I used to feel sorry for those people chasing their toddlers up the aisle and irritation at the noise coming from wailing babies. Now I am that person and those are my children who are interrupting your night snooze or even worse kicking the back of your seat.

I recently flew to the UK for Christmas, I’ve done this flight a couple of times by myself with our eldest child but it was the first time since having two children. Conveniently my husband claimed he had to work so he was following on two weeks later!

We’d chosen night flights thinking the boys would sleep but the four year old was too excited and the baby just knew something was amiss to his normal nightly routine. The entire car trip to the airport was peppered with screaming and questions about where the airplane was and when were we getting on it.

As my husband waved us goodbye, I resembled the children’s game Buckaroo with hand luggage that was overflowing with bribery snacks, toys and anti-depressants! One gust of wind and I was sure to topple over!

Then the queuing began which has to be one of the worse parts of travelling.  There I was, overladen with bags, baby in the front carrier and a four year old loudly lamenting the fact that we were still not on the airplane. People began staring at us and I loudly remarked that my son was just expressing how we all felt. Luckily we had all visited the toilet otherwise it could have been a much more harrowing experience!

Eventually we reached the gate after more queuing and the boys could play on the floor. Unfortunately, the baby had just mastered the art of crawling and isn’t one for sitting still. This is the time when most responsible parents resort to the drugs, however, I thought I better refrain! Seriously, I refuse to give my children phenergen to render them unconscious, as I am both a sadist and secretly scared that it would have the opposite hyperactive inducing effect!  

The pitying looks from other passengers began and I could almost hear them sigh with relief when I walked past them on the plane. Luckily we had the bassinet seats, which meant we got more legroom and nobody sitting in front of us. They are probably the best seats on the plane but the catch is you generally have to be travelling with a baby!

Both boys slept for the majority of the first flight while I inhaled a bottle of red wine and snorted my way through Bridesmaids (I may have even slapped my thigh a couple of times). There were a couple of breast feeding on the aisle incidents where the baby was in danger of serious head trauma and lots of patting the baby to sleep which went against all my sleep school training.

On arriving in Hong Kong we had to depart the aircraft with all of our hand luggage and children! Even though we would be returning to the same seats, you could not leave anything on the plane. So we all departed the aircraft to join a queue to scan our bags that we had just brought off the plane in order to get back on the plane! Such a pointless exercise and I was not going to queue for thirty minutes carrying more weight than a Biggest loser contestant. So I sat down and watched every other sucker queue up while the children played.

Back on the plane and only thirteen hours to go! My four year old was great and apart from me having to slide his headphones back on to his head every five minutes, was easily entertained by ‘on demand’ viewing. The baby was hard work, no sleeping for him or me or the people sitting directly behind us!

Toilet time was fun with the three of us squeezing in to the cubicle and on one occasion the dummy went for a swim in the toilet bowl! It had a quick wash but ended back in the toddlers’ mouth a little bit faster than it would have at home. He’s too old for a dummy anyway I reasoned in my sleep deprived brain and it was his wee anyway!

After lots of child wrangling, the occasional flirt with the stewards (baby not me), checking of the flight path every two seconds and throwing food at baby in the bassinet, it was time to land. Naturally this is when my preschooler decided to fall in to a deep sleep! Our flight ended with him being carried off the plane by three airhostesses!

Having to fly with small children is not easy but it does give you something to focus on throughout a long flight. Airports would be easier to navigate if people with children were treated more kindly. As a lady at the airport remarked: ‘I can’t believe they didn’t usher you through first, in France people travelling with children are given priority.”  An unlikely occurrence in a country that has only just acknowledged paid maternity leave.

It might not have been like flying prior to children but its success can be measured by my answer to everybody's first question about any flight -
“ Bridesmaids.”

Stranger Danger!

Stranger danger is everywhere, if only my son were able to digest this information. Every person he meets is greeted with a ‘Hello, do you want to be my friend?' He is a sociable boy and it is adorable in one sense but also extremely alarming. If he were making friends with other children this wouldn’t concern me but his frequent question is generally aimed at adults.

A person wouldn’t have to promise my child any confectionary item or puppy viewing for him to gladly accompany them home!

I’ve tried starting the ‘chat’ about not talking to strangers but he is too young to understand. Danger and consequences are not within his realm of experience, as becomes apparent when approaching main roads! We live in a brutal world where you can lose somebody forever in an instant without as much as a goodbye. I can’t really get my head around it so I don’t expect him to.

I did lose him once for a whole two minutes in a park. I literally took my eyes off him for a second and he was gone. Frantically I ran around the park, heart going like the clappers asking everybody I saw if they had seen my son. He was going through his pigeon chasing stage and had just followed the birds. He was blissfully unaware of the torment I had gone through when I found him but I had aged five years in those two minutes!

You hear about the good old days when children could play in the street without any fears of being abducted. In England, women used to leave their babies in their prams outside the supermarket as they did their weekly shopping. My mum never left me as I had a really good pram and I don’t think she wanted to risk getting it nicked! A friend of mine was left at the butchers once and it was only when her mum got home that she realised her mistake! I like to imagine her going through her list saying ‘Now I’m sure I’ve forgotten something but I just can’t put my finger on it”.

 On some occasions my brother and I would wait up to forty minutes to be collected from school. You just couldn’t leave children on the side of the road these days but back then it was perfectly acceptable. I’d had the stranger danger chat though as on one occasion my parents’ car had broken down and they phoned the school. The kind elderly caretaker came with left over cakes to tell us the news and offered us a spot in the warm. I refused to believe him and we waited outside in the cold. My mum reprimanded me for not believing him but she had done her job well.

So how do we protect our children but at the same time not make them anti-social?  A big question and not nearly as heart meltingly cute as ‘do you want to be my friend?”

Steep Learning Curve Ahead!

When I went on maternity leave with my first child, I stupidly believed that I would have time to work on that screenplay I’d always wanted to write. I thought babies slept all day with the occasional feed; that I’d have so much time on my hands I’d be bored senseless.

I might have been bored but it wasn’t from having nothing to do!  Your life becomes one endless cycle of feeding, changing nappies and attempting to get them to sleep. If you’re really lucky you might have time to shower or have lunch. Before you know it your partner is coming through the door and you feel like you’ve done nothing all day. The house looks like a war zone and the dinner is in the Supermarket. You feel inadequate and judged, particularly if you’re still wearing your pyjamas.

Caring for a baby is a full time job with no allocated tea breaks or lunch hour. It is hard to anticipate how much work one tiny individual creates and something that even the most supportive of partners could not comprehend. This is why it is in everybody’s best interests to give your partner home alone with baby time. My advice would be to also leave your mobile at home otherwise you will probably receive a call before you’ve reversed the car out of the garage!

Nothing can prepare you for the reality of having a baby. You can read books, trawl the net and have strategies in place, but once they arrive it all goes out the window. This starts at the birth stage - when you have a fixed idea of how you want your labour to run, but the baby selfishly doesn’t want to work to your schedule. You might yearn for a natural, drug free birth but your little bundle of joy may have decided that squeezing themselves down the birth canal just isn’t them! It is a common mistake to not factor the baby’s personality in to the equation. You might think you’re the boss, but they are in control from the very beginning.

The most common assertion would-be parents make is that their baby will not be given a dummy. I was in this camp, but two sleepless weeks and two ravished breasts later I caved! I was also adamant that my child wouldn’t have fish fingers for dinner, but after preparing three refused dinners in one night, out came good old Captain Birdseye! You come to realise that you have to do what works for you and to throw all of your idealised visions of parenting in to the recycling. When they’re a little bit older you can reason with them but toddlers are not rational creatures.

Another biggie is discipline, having watched many a Super Nanny episode in my post university days, I thought I had all the answers.  I knew all about the naughty corner and imagined my child sitting quietly on a beanbag reflecting upon their misdemeanours.  I had been horrified by my sister-in-law’s method of locking her misbehaving toddler in the laundry and thought she was a monster.

Well, now I own a laundry with its very own lock and my son spends many a ‘time-out’ in there. I’m not convinced the laundry even works, but it stops me from smacking him and I’m able to sneak a biscuit whilst he’s locked up!

You start out with pre-conceived notions of what parenthood entails and what kind of parent you would like to be but it is rarely as you imagined. It’s like starting a job with little or no experience, you gradually get better at it but you’re constantly learning new skills. I think I’m working much harder than I ever did at work but there is definitely more job satisfaction. As for the screenplay, that might just have to wait a few more years.