Friday Night Lights - Part 1: Lasers

Friday night 2004-style:
Notice amazing dance moves and alcohol in background, of course they are not related!

When I was single I looked forward to Friday night the way a junkie looks forward to their next hit. It was a night of dreams and potential that instead usually materialised into copious amounts of alcohol and embarrassing dance moves (strangely enough this never dampened my hope for the next week and one of them must have worked out as I ended up married with two kids seemingly overnight). Seven years on and Friday night still manages a small bleep on my weekly radar but for very different reasons, and although watching Better Homes & Gardens is a cause for a small amount of tragic excitement (I like the pet segment ok!), it is more that Friday night is the night before a day that my husband is at home to help with the boys. WOO HOO!!!!!!!

Friday night just gone was looking like it's usual slightly exciting self at 11.20pm. I had somehow dragged myself away from Twitter and was snuggling into bed when an unfamiliar green light flashed on the wall. "Hmmm, I am either having a flashback to the many nights I spent in my ad agency's free bar or some idiot is shining a laser in my bedroom window" I thought in my near-dream-state. Unfortunately it was the latter.

 

The normal amongst you would have closed their eyes, put earplugs in and ignored the increasing hum of drunken teenagers gathering on the street outside. As you probably have figured out I am not that normal. So I went out the front door in my PJs, barefoot and braless no less (although I don't really need a bra anymore it seems), stared across the street and above the rabble politely said "Guys I've got toddlers asleep here can you keep it down and stop shining lasers at the house ok?".

Friday night 2011-style
Lose the smile, ugh boots and toddler and this is what a party of teenagers saw!
No wonder they dispersed so quickly!

I remember women like me when I was a teenager, I remember how stupid and boring I thought they were and how they needed to loosen up and piss off, but that memory seemed to escape me as I pressed on. "Seriously guys, stop with the lasers or I'll call the cops". This inaudible whining of the mad woman in her PJs was met with dismissive giggles and a few throwaway "stupid bitch" type comments.

Unfortunately the swarm of hormones and alcohol in front of me had no idea who they were dealing with, the guys probably will still have that look of shock as they stare at their equally sleep-deprived wives in years to come, but the girls will one day understand...poor things. I stormed off and with drama fitting of a good stage play I called the police right in front of them under our sensor light which flashed on and off as I paced on the balcony.

The poor boys throwing the bash started ushering their friends home, one drunken male headed my way, but was held back by a friend. By this stage although I stood my ground, belying my peaceful sky blue, cloud covered attire, I noticed I had started to shake a little. The stupidity of what I was doing was dawning on me, I was exposing our house and possibly my family to harm. Panic was setting in. As the last two boys wandered towards our house on their way out, one of which was the threatening one, I thought I'd try to fix things. I called out to the boys and explained that the only reason I was freaking out was because I had two toddlers asleep inside and having lasers shined in their rooms was not ideal. They said sorry and said they didn't realise about the lasers and it all became very amicable. I apologised for being so boring and said I know what it's like as I used to party hard too. (Shit I'm a dag!)

So everything was looking right with the world again and even more exciting both toddlers had slept through the whole thing. I told my husband, who'd missed the whole thing as he'd been at the back of the house with his head inside the idiot box (well that's my way of saying he was watching sport...again), and it was my turn to have strips torn off me. Calling me stupid wasn't unique to Generation Y it seemed. We went to sleep abusing each other, as you do, but it was not long before we were awake again.

(Click PART TWO to find out what happened next! )

How has Friday night changed for you?

©MyIdeaLife 2011, All rights reserved

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Holding on

I was about 30m away, my joyous 2 year old son, Bang, was running across a field, one he always heads for after we’ve been to the playground adjacent. He was not alone, he was with his Grandmother, but he’d picked up speed and was heading for the car, I yelled for him to wait as I began running. But before I could get to him he had passed through the railings and was on the road. I yelled again.

My story has a happy ending, because as he ran across the road, there were no cars. On the same day another family of a nine year old boy was not so lucky. Like me, his mother shouted “Stop, wait” but ignoring or not hearing her he ran across the road without seeing the bus that would end his life. This lovely boy was running to return a toy his younger sister had mistakenly taken from the Doctor’s surgery they were just at.

As I read about witnesses describing the mother’s screams my heart broke for her. Every time I think of her and so many other parents who have had to some how live through such a tragedy the agony pushes tears from my eyes.

I can only imagine how broken and lost she is feeling today and for so many days into the future. It is every parent’s worst nightmare. Ever since I became a mother I have these visions of horrendous things happening, like cars losing control and hitting the pram as we cross the road or them falling awkwardly at the local playground the second you look away. Despite these harrowing daydreams, I assume sent to heighten my protective instincts, I still don’t really grasp that by some wicked chance, I could be that mother screaming to fight against a reality too traumatic to grasp.

As I watched Bang not even glancing sideways as he ran across the carpark lane to the car, I got a little glimpse into the fragility of our contented lives. Even though I have drummed road safety in so hard that Bang told me off the other day for standing on the road behind our car, these things can still happen. He knows not to go on the road, but in a moment of thoughtlessness there he was. I suppose that’s why they call it an accident, you just don’t see it coming.

Nonetheless it is a timely reminder for me to be extra vigilant. And to pay tribute to the beautiful children who’s lives have been tragically cut short I’ll be holding on to my boys’ hands so tightly and trying to remember as I get distracted by a screaming toddler or a friend or a phone call, to never take my eyes off them.

©MyIdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved

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Hello my name is Nicole and it's been 6 hours since my last...Garbage Truck sighting...

Who's the nutter with the stop sign?

Today I found myself doing something I would never have imagined 2 years ago. After having a grown-up meeting with a colleague to talk about my return to work next year, I stopped to stare at a digger. Not content with just witnessing its mechanical genius myself I pulled out my iPhone and started videoing it in action.

This surreptitious manoeuvre not surprisingly caught the eye of the workman who started yelling at me – at first I thought they were flirting, (the wishful thought of a deluded mind), so I yelled back “It’s for my son” and when he answered “he’ll get more of a kick out of it if he sees you in it” I realised the guy was asking whether I wanted to be in the shot. Relieved at my mistake, no really, I handed over my iPhone like an excited teenage girl and started giggling in front of a moving digger.

You see garbage trucks, diggers, dump trucks, tankers, fire engines, excavators, road graders, street sweepers, cranes, cement mixers, grocery trucks, ambulances, big rigs, b-doubles and police cars are now the coolest things in the world. I have been brainwashed by my two year old and I can’t let one pass now without saying “Whoa look!” which can be embarrassing if you are not in the company of two boys under 2.5.

This obsession saw me; run with a double pram about a kilometre to see a fire engine parked in the distance (we got there!), get stroppy when we couldn’t stop to photograph an excavator because we were going to block traffic and get illogically excited about travelling (very slowly) on arguably the busiest, most truck-ridden road in Sydney. And now we can add stopping road works to my repertoire just so as to rush home and share the big digger I saw with my fascinated little boy who undoubtedly will say, “Woooow, look at that!”. My day is complete, not to mention my life. 

Do you hear a little voice from your backseat say
"Look! Garbage truck! Quick Mummy chase it!"?

©MyIdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved.

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The distance between us [not quite wordless wednesday]

One day sooner than I hope these little feet will be larger than mine. 

So until then I cradle him in my arms, I balance him on my legs, I catch him if he falls and encourage him to fly. 

 © My IdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved

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How to cope with separation anxiety...or not really

There’s something deeply disturbing about your two year old son waking in the middle of the night crying hysterically “I want my Mamma…Mamma…my Mamma… Mamma, I want Mamma.” Especially when you are his mamma and you’re hugging him at the time. And it’s not just in a whiney annoying voice, he makes this dramatic sound that seems to plumb the depths of despair. The type of cry you’d expect from whichever child Sophie didn’t choose*.

I know this is probably ‘night terrors’ but it should be called ‘how-to-kick-an already-neurotic-mum-when-she’s-down’ terrors. Knowing this doesn’t stop me worrying. In fact a Toy Story incident has sent me into a minor panic.

We have been watching more than a bit of Toy Story 3, or as it’s more commonly known as here ‘the garbage truck one’. At bedtime we were reading the book, (because of course we have to have a book, a sticker book, the movie and every other accessory we can find) when we got to the page where Andy drives off to college and the toys look longingly after him, Bang said “Bye Mama”.

"So long Partner Mama" What the?

My heart sank. 

My head screamed “why does he think I’m going to leave him, have left him, am going away, any of the above?” 

So I went to discuss it with my hubby, mainly because my 10mth old can’t really talk yet, and he said what he always says. And I’m not exaggerating, no matter what I’m asking he has one standard answer. I could be saying “Someone emailed me today and said they’re thinking of coming over and stabbing me to death with a fork”, and he would say “Don’t worry about it, you’re probably reading too much into it”. So I explained the situation and he said “Don’t worry about it, you’re probably reading too much into it”. Funnily enough this didn't help.

So unfortunately this is not one of those posts that miraculously comes up with an amazing epiphany that gets researched by scientists and published in a famous journal and picked up by Reuters. That was last week’s post. Today I’m afraid to admit I am at a loss. I adore my eldest boy in an almost Oediphus kind a way (although if you read about Oedipus, it seems his marrying his Mum was all just a bit of a misunderstanding). Anyway Bang and I are tight, and we do spend a lot of quality time together, well at least from my perspective.

But somehow, whether it be an ever-present 10mth old stealing his books, trains and Mum; going to kindy three days a week or the one I’m trying not to think about; a sub-conscious vibe I give him because I’m selfishly starving for time to myself; he feels masses of separation anxiety at the moment. It’s probably a combination of all these factors but I hate it so much. What I want more than anything is for him to feel confident in my love as I know all too well the destructive affects of the alternative.

So Mums with more experience, less insanity or who listen to their husbands, if you have seen this and come out the other side and know it’s just a harmless phase that I shouldn’t worry about and read too much into, then please let me know. And if, like me, you are going through this I’m sorry I have no answers, just know there is another soppy mess bumbling through this emotional phase.

UPDATE: We watched Toy Story 3 again tonight for the 1374th time and during the dreaded scene he said as clear as day, "Not Mama, it's Andy" I breathed out and heartily agreed "Mama stays, she doesn't go anywhere".


*Sophie’s Choice is a movie I watched when I wasn’t a Mum and bawled incessantly throughout, for the sake of my sanity and my family’s happiness I refuse to watch it now I have children and would not recommend it to any Mums...unless maybe your children are teenagers.

©MyIdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved, Image of woody taken from the Movie Toy Story 3 and it is not intended to infer any copyright

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