On the edge

Dangerously close to another meltdown this morning. Everything became too much. Yes, I know what you are thinking, some of you have spoken to me as recently as yesterday and I would have said I was feeling really good. I am still desperately struggling with the face-to-face stuff. I do feel so much better putting on a happy face. I do try to convince even myself that all is good.

And then I think, am I just a drama queen? Aren't these all just first world problems? That everyone has.

I had a bit of a moment this morning. I was just recovering from a conversation with HM about insane work choices and realised something had to give. I simply cannot keep working day and night (and I mean till 2am and later) and missing out on all the good family stuff. Some nights HM has been asleep for six hours before I even get into bed. I cannot remember the last time I sat in the loungeroom at night without my lap top. I am either too tired to or I am working.

And I am a boring mum at the moment. Sometimes the only quality time they are getting with me is the bedtime story extravaganza. Which could soon to be made into a movie I might add.

So after my almost-crash, I buckled down to work this morning and lo and behold, an email from the publisher. Turns out there were a few things she forgot to mention about the books that I am currently writing. It would appear that the series has "evolved" since we signed the contract some months ago. Apparently the books I am writing are not even going to be BOOKS (!). They are going to be INTERACTIVE WORKSHEETS. This "evolution" of theirs seems to have happened sometime over the weekend. What goes on in that place?

Now I won't bore you with the details but the ramifications for this lack of  CRUCIAL information in the publishing brief are bigger than Ben Hur. Essentially, almost everything I've written so far cannot be used. MONTHS of work now rendered useless. Naturally, I remained extremely calm upon reading this news. I wrote a nice reassuring, carefully worded, soothing email expressing that I did not mind at all that everything I've done so far has to be binned. I did not feel at all put out that I have spent so many nights ignoring my family. I mentioned that I was more than keen to redo everything and start again following their impossibly limited, new interactive format that evolved since last FRIDAY. I also pointed out that I was not fazed in the slightest at having to forward on far, far, far more interesting and highly lucrative projects to my other colleagues, so as to fully focus on these BOOKS that aren't going to be books. Yes, that's what I did.

Just kidding. Of course that's not what I did, at all.

What really happened is that I fired off one of my horror angry-bird emails again. And I do have to say, my publisher--god bless--who I have never met face-to-face, is either VERY USED TO THIS KIND OF ABUSE or she is on serious happy drugs and whatever they are I would like some. She never writes anything remotely unpleasant back. She just goes with it and actually agrees with me. She even said, she will pay me for the book that is going in the proverbial bin. And that I do not have to rewrite it. I can just move onto the next books and she will give it to an editor who will "FIX IT" for me.

Isn't that nice.

So I'm stopping now. I think my posts are far too long anyway. And I just wanted to end on a happy note. Also, just checking, who of you are actually reading all the way to the bottom? I want a show of hands. No, I want a comment. Anything to prove that you read this far. I'm off for a walk in the sunshine.

Image by rawtoastdesign.com

Angry Bird

I'm angry today. Angry with everyone and everything. NO one has done anything in particular that bad. But even just the slightest whiff of disagreement with anything I've said or done has resulted in a verbal assassination of offending person, be they standing in front of me or at other end of a computer email.

HM made a hurried exit [see below] house to avoid the wrath. The Surfer is at school and thankfully oblivious to the storm. Barnstormer is actually behaving and has piped down about not having matching clips in her hair. I think she must not be feeling well. Hammerhead is knee deep in Angry Birds and informs me he is up to a level far higher than has ever been achieved by anyone else, EVER. Which is probably a good thing because he has a very, VERY angry bird for a mother.

That's me in the black.

Why am I mad? I do not really know. But it is a classic case of INSANE JANE. Where seemingly tiny things get blown right out of proportion to create a CATACLYSM of epic scale.

Case #1

The publisher I am dealing with casually mentioned a few things of concern about my latest manuscript. In a fit of rage, an email that one MAY perceive as nasty, sarcastic and accusatory, was fired off by moi. I shouted and muttered over my computer while HM made coffee. He read the publisher's initial email and could not really see what I was so peeved about. At this, the volcano inside me erupted and verbal lava spewed out all over poor unsuspecting HM, but obviously not aimed at him. Exit HM stage left.

 
So then I reread her email. And turns out there wasn't really anything that bad in it at all. I quickly fired off another apologetic, begging and grovelly more coherent reply.

Case #2, hey

The surf mum that follows HM around like a BAD SMELL--even worse than NAIL POLISH--has also copped it, hey. HM innocently mentioned to me some of the questions she had been asking him ABOUT US and it was all too much for me, hey. She has been defriended on Facebook, HEY. Thankfully he thinks the same about her as I do, hey. What is it with some women, hey? And she's married, hey. I would possibly understand a bit more if she were single but to blatantly stalk attempt to flirt with another parent at every surf comp is just not on, hey. The fact that she ignores me ALL THE TIME just adds fuel to the fire, hey. HM says she is one step away from being a bunny boiler.

But really, on another day her inane questions to him probably wouldn't even bother me, hey. And I think she just stares through me in wonder as she knows that we do not have A SINGLE THING in common, hey. Or maybe it's because she knows I am onto her bunny boiling aka "Play Misty for Me" strategy, hey.

Case #3

HM {home again hoping that good calmer karma has come my way} informs me that it is going to take MONTHS to get an appointment at a skin cancer clinic with a specialist. He's had conflicting reports from two GPs and wanted a third opinion before they go all Jack the Ripper on his back. All of a sudden I find myself drafting out an email to The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP with some key recommendations to funding priorities for mental health skin cancer screening. 

Some time later ...

Ok, breathe in, breathe out. I'm calmer now and the angriness seems to have passed. Relax. It's Friday. It's whine wine night soon.

 

Oh and why the new look? {What new look I hear you ask?} Well, dear sister said she traversed upon a blog that had my retro pic background. It was just an image off the net. Hmmm, so I've found a new one. As they say, a change is as good as a holiday. I think I may leave the old image on the FACEBOOK page which is here for anyone who hasn't gone there yet.

* Late note: Have reverted to original look. It was a short holiday.

The perils of living with a sniffer dog

Back from Dongers. Nothing like glorious sunshine to really lift the mood. I didn't even feel melancholy on returning home. It's all good.

Had a splendid time EXCEPT I made an initial, monumental, a what-the-hell-were-you-thinking-type faux pas while doing my last minute packing. This horrid error involved the packing of not one, but two bottles of nail polish--as you do when you are going away to a small, sleepy country town to hang on the beach with tomboyish hardcore surfer mums who put "hey" on the end of every sentence.

What do horses eat, hay?

I'm very good at joining in these conversations.

Now I should mention at this point that HM has a nose like a sniffer dog. He can smell a cigarette being lit over a kilometre away. If there is a fire in Fremantle, he can smell it. If someone burnt some eggs in Armadale, he knows about it. If someone is spraying toxic fertiliser in Yanchep, he winds the windows up. Already, there are rules in place at home to accommodate his sensitive olfactory problem. I am not allowed to put nail polish on inside the house. I am not allowed to use fish sauce in ANYTHING. I am not allowed to use Mr Sheen. I happily abide by these rules and The Surfer has to be ultra careful with his daily teenage angst-ridden application of Lynx.

So as we embarked on our road trip, HM enquired as to whether I had been painting my nails. I said of course. YES, the toenails got a pre-holiday coating outside in the backyard as pre-arranged (see house rules above). Nose was turned up at this comment. We got to the end of the freeway and HM could not stand the smell any longer. I was questioned on the contents of my bag. DID YOU PACK NAIL POLISH IN YOUR BAG? Why, of course I did. Who doesn't when they are going to Dongara?

No one else could smell a thing and the little people were concerned at the kerfuffle.

A few minutes later, in a complete olfactorial meltdown HM had to pull over at a servo and I was asked to check the contents of my toilet bag (which naturally was packed as deep inside the boot as one can get) for a leakage. Sure enough, one bottle HAD smashed but the damage was thankfully contained. I removed the offending bottle and wiped away drips--in the process getting a smudge or two of nail polish on fingers. Oh, calamity.


The ever so faint whiff of nail polish to mere mortals is of course a foul, toxic, pungent stench to HM, as bad as if someone had made him swim and breathe in the stuff. He could not think straight. It was all he could talk about and the entire trip there was RUINED by this acrid stink. Even my homemade gourmet salad rolls tasted of nail polish--for him.

When we finally got to our destination, HM scrambled out of the car like he had been locked inside the toilet cubicle on an aeroplane with a vomiting skunk. The offending toilet bag was not allowed in the chalet and was condemned to hang from a tree to "air out". {HM really wanted it buried but I reminded him it was a birthday present.}

All of the five sets of clothes HM has packed (for a trip which will see him wear the exact same clothes he drove up there in everyday) were hung out and aired in various parts of the chalet. It looked like a Chinese laundry.

But at least my toenails looked flash on the beach, hey!

Insane Jane with Barnstormer

Travelling north

Tomorrow we are heading off to Dongara to attend the third State Surfing rounds (actually held at Geraldton). I may have already mentioned the anticipation in this earlier post.

Hammerhead and Barnstormer are SOOOO excited and have been counting down sleeps for a week now. They have even packed their little suitcases for the first time. They have packed them full to the brim by themselves and lined them up at the front door. I was making dinner while all of this packing was going on and have only just checked the contents now that they are tucked up in bed. I have been pleasantly surprised to find that Barnstormer has remembered to pack her hairbrush, which is very odd as she rarely wants to use it at the moment.

Hammerhead's suitcase has his pillow pet crammed inside it with a new storybook (from Nanny) and his pyjama pants. He is clearly only focused on packing for the moment--bedtime.

Have pillow pet, will travel.

Barnstormer's case has eight pairs of knickers, an array of short and long sleeved tops, jeans, a bottle of bubble making solution (!), five random pencils and three different sets of pyjamas.

I have come down with a cold. It crept up on me this morning and is worse than the man flu I've been dealing with for the last month. It is a ruddy, great, big, horrid, blocked up-type cold that requires me to walk around constantly looking for tissues and working out if we have any suitable medication that has not expired. The sinus tablets I washed down with a glass of red at dinner time have done absolutely NOTHING.

HM also informed me that The Surfer "smashed up" his board this afternoon. Yes, two days before the big event. This is like Cadel Evans getting a puncture in LeTour and having no one to fix it. OK, I know Cadel probably has ten bikes stacked up on some Mini Cooper's roof just behind him, waiting hungrily for him to get a puncture so this is not a fair comparison as alas, The Surfer does not have this luxury at the moment. And there is no way a ding can be repaired in this timeframe, not even via the DIY backyard job, considering we are leaving tomorrow. What to do?

I could have sworn they were talking about a POXY repair kit.

For the record, "smashed up" will mean a tiny, seemingly insignificant indent somewhere on the board. It may even involve the need for a magnifying glass. Worse, it may mean he has to use a crappy older board. I don't know if I am a drama queen or not but when HM said "smashed up" I was at least expecting the board to be in two pieces. I know not the bounds of a surfer's sorrow.

Anyway, I am far, far more concerned about The Surfer or HM being eaten by a shark. But I dare not mention it ... it's the elephant in the room.

On a more positive note, I'm extremely looking forward to a getaway as it's been some time. I'm especially hanging out for more of this glorious sunshine. Have had an up and down week but am good now. One of those weeks where little things annoy me and I can fly into a rage at any given moment, usually over something that I wouldn't even care about at another time. But there's no point dwelling on it. It would be nice to know why because the very next day I won't understand why I felt like that.

What I do know, however, is that giving up coffee and wine didn't change anything in that respect. Which is somewhat of a relief ... imagine if you gave up coffee and wine and then EVERYTHING [as in mentally] was much, much better. And, even worse, you and every single person around you, felt that you should never drink coffee or plonk ever again !! I can honestly say that I didn't feel any better for it (other than experiencing some  'I'm purer than thou' feelings) and I know for a fact that HM missed sitting down for our glass of vino together while the fence jumper shows are on.


I had no trouble giving it all away but am now most content to have one long mac in the morning and a vino here and there. Not every night mind, but definitely one on a Friday.

Also, I must confess that despite having the best intentions, I still haven't packed my bag in advance.  I did, however, purchase a pair of thick three-quarter black leggings to wear under my skirts. As one friend has already mentioned to me, this is the closest I will ever come to wearing trackies.

Also, a number of peeps have mentioned that they cannot work out how to comment below. If you click on the link that says X number of gorgeous people have commented then you should be given the opp to do this. You can be completely anonymous. xx

Fifty Shades of Over It

Yes I've banged on about this before. And I don't know about you but I think I am Fifty Shades of sick and tired of reading about Fifty Shades of anything. I guess it's because I read these books on my iPhone some months ago now, and while I couldn't put them down--despite the author's very limited vocabulary (synonym for mercurial anyone?) and propensity for stating the bleeding obvious, not to mention her obsessive use of repetition as a literary tool--the love affair is completely OVER.

And the whole sexy-mommy-porn-thing was completely ruined for me because ALL I could think of was that Christian Grey was just a tad too Fifty Shades of American Pyscho  and the ONLY person I could picture as Christian while reading the entire trilogy was his somewhat scary namesake, Christian Bale. There were just TOO MANY references of bodywash to get over.

HOLY COW!

Sadly, one cannot currently open a newspaper, magazine or website or pretty much ANYTHING without some reference to Fifty Shades. And it is everywhere you go. While women may have once been secretly reading them on their kindles while on the train to work, you will now see all sorts of women [be they young, old or bogan] with the hard copy in FULL VIEW while eating their $9.50 combination Chinese meal in the local shopping centre food hall with their kids. I know this for a fact because I counted three women doing exactly this at Whitfords yesterday.

My online research into this phenomenon has been much more sophisticated than my shopping centre field work. In my travels, I did discover some very clever reviews and have linked them below for your perusal. These reviews are much, much better than the actual books themselves. Enjoy!

• Katrina Lumsden's review at Good Reads
• Fifty Screams of Hate 
• A Man Reads Fifty Shades of Grey
• 50 Sheds of Grey - Nothing to do with the book at all but very funny.

If you have nothing else to do on a wintery day, I seriously recommend reading some of the above. Katrina Lumsden's reviews, in particular, are utterly HILARIOUS and also illustrated.

I said "Don't bite your lip!"

But back to reality for a moment, an update on how things are going in the house of Insane Jane:

1. We still have no kitchen tap. Surprise. Lots of work is being carried out in the shed, however, I am still carting hot water via bucket from the laundry. I feel like Laura Ingalls. 
2. The boys are still surfing despite more tragedy in the oceans.
3. I am contemplating an early start to the packing fiasco for our mission to Dongara this Thursday.
4. You may have noticed that instead of doing (paid) work, I have been fiddling around with fonts and colours on this blog. I am the original procrastinator.

Incidentally, I mentioned to HM that I was actually looking forward to going to Dongers and that it was possibly the first time I was really feeling positive about a little family weekender rather than dreading the whole packing nightmare, clean up and more [see here]. Never one to miss an opportunity, HM immediately booked us in for an extra night into our delightful beachfront cabin - the same one we stayed in last year. Yee ha!

 

The little people are travelling well. Barnstormer and Hammerhead are living the high life during school holidays with parties, beach visits, cafes, movies, cooking, Mr Men stories and other non-stop entertainment. It's all good and this afternoon we will be making pikelets.

**** LATE NOTE**** Just looked up American Psycho author (Bret Easton Ellis) to see what else he has done since American Psycho and was SOMEWHAT PERTURBED to read that he is putting his hat into the ring in a bid to write the screenplay for the Fifty Shades movie.