Reasons not to go shopping:

1. People without prams always take the 'parents with prams' car spots. I know. I looked. They don't have baby seats in the back. Then I have to trudge on the road while cars whizz around the pram and it generally starts raining (poor me).

2. Bubbie likes me pushing the pram around the shopping centre, but has a distinct dislike of me stopping. Which means I choose my purchases at lightspeed. So if you're a rellie or friend and get a very strange birthday present - now you know why. I've taken to internet shopping which is fun but kind of like the lucky dip at a primary school fair. You always think you're going to get something awesome - but it ends up being a plastic ring or miniture deck of cards. Last week, I bought hubby some nice Calvin Klein underwear and only discovered when it arrived, that sure it was Calvin Klein underwear -- circa 1985. lol. I was all 'honey, they're still in the box, the Op Shop will like them!' but he said 'no, i'll wear them' with the expression of someone sentenced to enternal dagdom.

3. I hate that I seem to be physically incapable of telling the salesmen in those temporary stalls down the promanades to leave me alone. Worse than that, I allow myself to be pulled into their makeshift space while they do the hard sell. I had to wonder about those Jericho people today though. This is perhaps the crappiest sales hook I've ever heard:

"can i ask you if you use any eyecream? because LOOK AT THOSE LINES AND BAGS UNDER YOUR EYES!".

I must be tired because I not only let him say this, I let him poke under my eye with some cream and then shove a mirror in my face to show me how the lines had miraculously disappeared. Yeah right. It was only when he said 'let me take a photo!' that i snapped out of my daze and ran for the nearest bookshop. Take a photo? What the?

4. Random people like to touch babies. Who knew? They peer into the pram, then after the obligatory compliment, paw her while she squirms. I mean, i don't have a problem with stopping and letting them coo at her, of course i don't! But keep your dirty-i-just-ate-a-dimsim-hands to yourselves people!

5. One step worse. They poke the baby and then say 'isn't she sweet. And wow, look at you, another on the way already.'
OH MG people - NEVER tell another woman she's pregnant unless she first volunteers this information. Now, to someone's shame (not sure if it's me because i obviously haven't shed the kilos fast enough or if it's them) I would usually let a person get away with this, not wanting to embarrass them like they've just embarrassed me. But heck, I've about had enough. So, for all of us who don't lose that baby fat like Nicole Ritchie, I said:
"No, I just haven't gotten over this one yet. But lady, you have *no* tact."

6. I always forget the one thing I actually went to buy and end up with a bootload of stuff I had no intention of buying. Am I the only one this happens to??

When it's good to have a sister who is a bookseller

1. Birthday time
2. Christmas time
3. All the time!!!!

Here is part of my stash from yesterday's birthday, my all time favourite - Anne Gracie. I've been waiting for this book for months and here it is, just in time for my birthday. Thanks Anne - thanks Jill!

If you ever want some wonderful reading at extremely competitive pricing - she's your girl. Years and years of research have gone into her business, she really knows her stuff! There's nothing she can't find if you want something really obscure (which I have - often).

www.romancedirect.com.au

Vacuum Bag Wrongtown

I went too far
I did too much
and the softies paid for it.

Wrap me up and call me slacker

Well...not really!

I mean, I've been very very busy since my last post waaaay back on the 27th of March.

Lots of things, but chiefly... I had a baby!

Along the way here's what i've learned since March 27:

PUPPS make your skin itch so bad that you'd cheerfully take to it with a Steelo.

All your obstatrician will do is look at them and say 'oh, are they still there are they? annoying.'

My chiropractor can work magic turning a breech baby.

Don't tell your husband how far apart your contractions are or he'll have you in hospital before you can say 'did my water break or am i just incontinent?'

Nothing is as comfortable as sitting on the toilet in labor.

At least until the wind changes direction and the rain comes in through the louvre window. Then perhaps it's time to tell you husband how close the contractions really are and hot foot it into hospital.

They expect you to *work* during your birthing time! Like, get up, walk around, do the hokey pokey. Visions of me having grapes peeled and reclining on a sofa GONE.

When you go to hospital, you can take all the blankets, lamps and teddy bears you like, but in the end you'll spend your twelve hours having face plant time with a pillow.

Hypnobabies is better than any drug in the known world.

Midwives don't believe you can be so relaxed in labor and tell you later they thought you were 'fluffing around'. FLUFFING AROUND MY ARSE!!! Did these women have any idea how long and hard i worked for two months to get myself to that state of catatonia without drugs? The hours of meditation, staring at my navel around the clock, and saying so many positive affirmations that I had enough for my own 365 day calendar.

I never expected labor to feel like such a beautiful journey that me and my little girl made together. I'm sure we'll never be as connected as we were for those twelve hours.

My friends really do love me.

My sister really is an angel.

No amount of breast feeding classes can prepare you for the real thing.

No amount of people saying 'ha ha, you won't sleep much now!' can prepare you for waking every four hours and wrangling with express pumps and nipple shields and hungry little bubbie.

No amount of 40 week pregnancies could prepare me for how much i love my little girl.

Revision

So, finally, finally the revision is getting very close to being done.
Oh, not the *final* revision - but the nuts and bolts - all my ducks in a row revision.
85% there in fact.
Hallelujah!

It hasn't really been so difficult - it was just not being able to achieve as much as I normally can due to feeling tired after work - but I've stopped working now - so going great guns.

It's wonderful not to have to schlep my massive stomach into work and waddle around there trying to look/sound/be professional. I can just mess around in my pajamas, drinking tea and being happy about things in general.

Hilariously, I was banging my head on the desk wondering WHY oh WHY all those words weren't piling up to something more impressive in the page count stakes, when I realised I had the manuscript on TNR in a small size. Upped it to Courier New 12 point and voila! I was MUCH further along than I realised. Which is just as well, because I didn't have a whole lot more story to tell.

More soon as I unclog my blogbrain.

Damn towel. Damn sense of smell.

It's hot here today. 39 degrees. The kind of hot where concrete radiates heat for hours after sundown, where we tip ice into the evaporative cooler and pretend like it's an air conditioner, where even having a lamp on makes it unbearable, where I have a shower because I can't stand it for another second.

So there I was having my 'can't stand it' shower. Popped out, wrapped myself in a towel that felt like it had come out of a hot box. Dried my face, breathing in, as you normally do after you breathe out.

But when I breathed in, the towel smelled just like my mother.

Not my mother's perfume, and not any bad smell, but the beautiful smell that was uniquely hers and no-one elses, warm, sweet and a little bit musky. Suddenly, I'm a child laying in bed, she's bending over to kiss me goodnight and i breathe her in.

I held my breath, hoping somehow to keep it inside me, knowing it was a trick of the mind and on my next breath it would be gone. But no, it was still there when I breathed in again, and again and again. I breathed it in until I felt stupid. I miss her right now, being pregnant and not having her here to tell me it's all going to be okay, that it doesn't matter if I can't breast feed or any number of the things I'm stressing about. I'd like to say that her scent in that towel (was it me? Do i smell like her and didn't realise?) made it seem okay for just a moment, like she was there with me and always will be. But the truth is that it didn't. It just made me miss her like it all happened yesterday.

New Year - Woot!

Last week - bumper week. No work, just play play play all the time.Went to the beach, sat up late reading books and eating chocolate. Walked in the sand. Made/burned some banana bread beyond recognition. Got up early early to write while everyone else slept off their red wine.

Manuscript VERY happy with the love, care and attention given to it. By the pale morning light, manuscript says 'I forgive you! we're friends again, in fact, I think i love you'.

Words, if not flow, definitely trundle along in an orderly fashion. Feel joy akin to cartwheeling along aforementioned sand. Unfortunately, massive belly prohibits cartwheeling across the sand and instead lends itself to feeling like beached whale.

Listened to a few hours of Eric Meisel talking about creativity. Felt happy that I found this FANTASTIC NEW WONDERFUL way of building a creativity practice in the new year when everything is fresh and good.

UNTIL

Fast forward to this week.Back at day job. Blerk week for the manuscript with only a trickle of words every day. Manuscript wonders where I've gone, and how I could've deserted it so quickly after we obviously connected. Feel like a heel and send manuscript some flowers and chocolate.
Silence on the other end of the line.
Lifting head off pillow seems like gargantuan task, even without red wine.

Moral of the story - go and live at the beach.