The Queen Of Sheba Does Her Bedroom

So these are the midway photos of my bedroom makeover. I could have taken 'before' photos but I would never have been able to show my face in public again, the shame would be too great. I diagnosed every storage/mess/cesspool problem in our house as stemming from our lack of shed. For eight years my bedroom has doubled as the shed, it wasn't sexy. Our bedroom is a beautiful space, on a mezzanine level, with a funny little landing leading to nought but a window letting in some northern light.

The ceiling is pitched at 40 degrees with exposed beams - I lie in bed feeling like I'm in an upside down ship's hull. It's airy and gorgeous (when clean) (it hasn't been clean for eight years). In all this time we've had nowhere to store clothes and I've struggled to think of a creative way to solve the problem.






Lying in my bed you can see the ballustrade of the stairs, just to the right of this lies our solution. A clever partition wall, behind which sits an Ikea Expedit to hold our folded clothing. Across from the Expedit is a small bit of hanging space. Repeat, small.
























Still to come ... floor coverings and a little paint. And that chair needs some serious attention.

Ker·fuf·fle/kərˈfəfəl/ (Noun: A commotion or fuss)

“The chief function of propaganda is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time so they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind."

Thus spake Adolph Hitler in his opus, Mein Kampf.

And so to the gigantic twisting of knickers over a primary-school kid dressed as Hitler (for a school shin-dig) wherein kid wins prize for best costume (repeat Best Costume not Nicest Historical Figure) and then parents complain and then the principal of this school is probably going to have to spend the rest of his life apologising for the incident. Because dressing a ten year old as Hitler is like finding Voldemort’s final Horcrux and bringing him back to life. For real.

I feel sorry for the kid, the parents of the kid and the principal but mostly I feel sorry for the people who complained. Them with the twisted undies, the folk whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time.

In Nazi Germany, under Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, public events were censored, like maybe it would’ve been less risky at 1939 school book-week to dress up Aryan rather than Jewish. Are you getting my drift? Is it all so tiring or is it just me?

A number of parents also complained about children dressing up as vampires and the grim reaper, so clearly the only kernel of truth in the whole internationally newsworthy kerfuffle is that a number of parents at that school are really, really thick. Which is maybe why the BBC ran it, that whole “Look how thick they are in the antipodes” thing.

Russel Brand dressing up as Osama Bin Laden on September 12, 2001, dumb. One of The Chaser crew dressing up as Osama Bin Laden in the Apec restriction zone, hilarious. A generation of parents losing perspective, heartbreaking.

This morning I was listening to Little Secrets by Passion Pit where a bunch of school kids sing the chorus refrain “higher and higher and higher” which is about taking drugs and I was gob-smacked they’d gotten away with it, that there hadn’t been a public dunking of the parents and the band for allowing children to sing in a song ABOUT DRUGS. A happy song about drugs. A song, that makes you feel happy, ABOUT DRUGS. The song makes you feel happy, not happy about drugs… see? Now I’m all confused.

I looked all over the internet and couldn’t find a single reference to a major freak out about it. And I was glad. Common sense had prevailed, teenagers were listening to this happy drug song and they were okay! It was a major hit and it got heaps of airplay and, astonishingly, there wasn’t a concurrent spike in children using drugs. I know. Fucking amazing.

I also know that Hitler isn’t the same as a pop song and that the holocaust is not like a pop song and I know that constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on my mind so that I can join in when there is a collective huff going on about something stupid.

Here’s the idea:

Children must not ever, ever be exposed to the darker realities of life, particularly not in an historical context, where there might arise the opportunity for discussion, reflection and learning.

Intergenerational Fun

Every time my Mother comes to stay she leaves something behind, which is fine, as long as it’s not a prolapsed uterus.

Last time she left three pair of her undies on the trampoline. I don’t know why she didn’t use the traditional drying method of pegging them on the clothesline (3 feet away from the trampoline), maybe there was dog poo on the lawn, or she was afraid of sniper fire, who knows? But there they lay, three pairs of Granny britches, the kind that reach up towards the armpits, with reinforced gussets, one pair alarmingly black and lacy. They lay there for three whole weeks. Seriously, what was I supposed to do? Bring them inside? That would involve TOUCHING THEM. I don’t think I’m out on a limb here, but there is something really oogy about the under-dacks of other women, shared DNA or no. I would probably be more willing to subject myself to blind testing in which there was the vague possibility of contracting Anthrax.

When I was eventually able to muster enough maturity to bring the dang things inside (I was expecting guests) I tossed them in the ironing basket. Loads of washing have come and gone but those three pairs of gunders remained languishing there.

It’s Mum’s birthday next Monday. At some point today I’ll make it to the post office with her gift, it would be sensible to post the undies along with the gift, right?

No.

My Mother took many opportunities to torment my sister and me. She hid in dark corners so she could leap out and scare the shit out of us. She made me listen to sex education type talk WAY BEFORE I WAS READY. She left a trail of mis-matched shoulder-pads in her wake during the eighties, poorly anchored under her bra-straps; they were forever escaping and embarrassing me in front of my friends. Lately she’s going through a phase of being platinum blonde.

But it’s not about revenge, that’s not my style. It’s about passing on her legacy to my children, to teach them to stand tall in the face of knee-buckling self-consciousness and shame.

Which is why I put the black lacy ones on my 14 year-old son’s cushion. (Scroll down, go on!)

And Here They Are!

P.S. Upon entering his bedroom, the teen in question thanked his Mother for making his bed (Mother staked out in hallway quivering with anticipation). And then he began speaking in loud capitals. OH NO! THAT'S NOT FUNNY. GET THEM OFF. GET THEM OUT OF HERE. And then he picked up the corner of the pillow between his thumb and forefinger and began trying to flick the undies off with a metal ruler. I totally knew I would love Motherhood.

Getting our merde together.

So this looks like a post-it note with four different ways of saying “shit”, which it is, written by a fourteen-year-old boy. Here’s the context; it is stuck where said teen’s Father will see it first thing in the morning as he makes his way, bleary eyed, downstairs and gets ready for work, long before anyone else in the house has stirred.

Ten years ago the foulest insult the child in question was capable of hurling was, “Do a poo!”, so on some levels things haven’t progressed a great deal.

Perhaps it is maternal hubris to suggest that excrement, feaces [sic] and stool represent new levels of sophistication in the blossoming teen, but there’s more to it than that. I think what it really means is;

(a) There is eternal humour to be found in anything related to the anus.
(b) His vocabulary is totally on the up.
(c) He set up a remote control gag, one that would go off while he lay soundly sleeping.

It’s not that we don’t show each other affection in this house, we do, mawkishly, frequently, heartily and occasionally with a lick, but the currency of the belly-laugh is equally valuable around here as a means of expressing devotion.

Which is why a yellow sticky-note with four different words for crap on it makes my heart swell.

Here's what other people do with sticky notes.

Fear and Loathing In Perth

According to a very bold headline in a weekend newspaper, we’re living in fear. I hadn’t been aware I was living in fear until reading the headline, suddenly I felt very afraid. Mainly of newspapers, headlines are running rampant in this town.

I’m mourning the untimely death of Hunter S. Thompson who had to consume quantities of hallucinogens and go to Las Vegas in order to feel the kind of fear that we’re experiencing in Perth. According to the newspapers, fear is readily available, one need not tamper with one’s synapses in order to experience a shoddy, chemical version of it. Perth fear is organic and FREE! Surely this is a contributing factor to our ranking among the top twenty cities in the world lifestyle-wise. Baghdad, where fear is inorganic and very, very expensive, was the worst. So there.

And so to loathing. We love an opportunity to loathe. Two weeks ago we were served a delicious chance to loathe two relatives of an eighteen year old boy called Wayne, who had died in a stolen car while being pursued by the police. The dead teen’s cousin pleaded for a change in the way police apprehend drivers of stolen cars. This plea for change was paraphrased in the story’s headline and read “...relatives plead with police to stop chases.” This subtle swap of the word stop in place of change gave the whole story a very different meaning. Suddnely it was about blame. And blame must always be met with counter-blame. Blame ping-pong.

Like fourth graders shooting their hands in the air, puffed up little smarty-pants exploding with the right answer, we wrote to that newspaper and said Wayne would still be alive if he hadn’t stolen the car. One has to admire such rigorous thinking.

Which forces me into a mind numbing chicken-before-the-egg spiral. Is this the response the newspaper sought to provoke? Is the newspaper serving up what we want or what it thinks we want?

I wonder how we would have responded if it had been the police officer who had wound up with a piece of fence piping impaled through his thigh, lower abdomen and exiting at his back, for this was Wayne’s fatal injury. Would we have written him off so neatly in smug little letters to the editor saying he’d got his comeuppance?

I don’t like to imagine what it must be like to experience the death of a child. I think I would feel angry at the universe. I’d make an acid freak like Hunter S. Thompson look like Mary Poppins. I’d blame everyone, including myself, no matter what the circumstances. I would also expect to be forgiven for this without having to beg. But comparatively speaking I’m lucky, rich and white. Wayne’s cousin made a plea for change and was met with vilification.

So our loathing comes at a higher price than our fear. Our loathing, it would appear to me, comes at the cost of our humanity.

Crimes Against Fruit

I am inspired to make a couple of points, perhaps the first in an ongoing series, something like a Rough Guide To Boring Things That Happen to Men and Women Who Live Together Too Much. Working title suggestions “I’m Okay, You’re Not” or maybe “The Wife Whisperer”. Suggestions welcome.

1. Never, ever ask a woman if she’s pre-menstrual. Particularly if she is in an hysterical state. The etymology of hysterical may interest you here. It was said that when a woman became of child bearing age and had failed to conceive (ie: she was pre-menstrual) her ‘hyster’ (uterus) broke free of its moorings and began to roam her body in search of said child, thus rendering her hysterical. That modern theory has moved away from this, having nailed it so concisely, is stunning to me.

There is enough legal precedent citing PMS as defence (homicide, credit card fraud - you name it) that the hapless male would be better off asking, carefully, if the angry woman before him had been bitten by a rabid dog. The repercussions might be less life threatening anyway.

I can offer up an affirmation which seems to help my husband. It goes like this:

I am a duck in a thunderstorm, my feathers are waterproof, soon the storm will pass.

Failing that, buy her a lovely, red Ferrari and everything will be fine.

2. Husbands, like children, require constant supervision while playing with secateurs and other pruning devices.

Recent events have forced a brief, qualitative research session with the men at my office “Have you ever been in trouble for pruning?” began the line of questioning. The response was fairly consistent. Hands went up in surrender, eyes widened, sphincters tightened. These overzealous pruners had all had to endure days of silent treatment and tears. They looked like they’d been busted at a 12 step programme called Pruners Anonymous and were working their way through things. Guiltily and with uncertain eye contact, they told me that since the “bougainvillaea incident” they had been careful to “ask first”.

The discovery of the top half of my lemon tree (the bit with fruit and leaves on it) on the rubbish collection pile last week is something I am struggling to process non-violently. Which means I am sulking. Initial talks degenerated into ‘tit for tat’ based on my treatment of a couple of tomato bushes some time ago. And while two wrongs don’t make an adult, he had a point. There was a history of crime against fruit in this family.

Whilst making way for a mass planting of herbs I had wrenched two tomato plants out of the ground, thinking them common, unattractive and unimportant. “It’s like coming home and finding your children with their heads chopped off!” he said, all high pitched and tense. “No it’s not.” I said, ducking a flying star picket. But his hyster had broken free of its moorings, and was looking for tomatoes, I suppose.