5 posts tagged “me”

It's my birthday - the numbers are getting way too big and grownup for me....

When Travis and I were driving around in northern France a few years ago, one of my geekier pleasures was listening to the BBC World Service.  Buried in amongst the news were little documentaries about all kinds of odd things.  I remember one about birthday songs because it aired a couple of days before my birthday, so I figured it was just for me.  Songs they played - Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday and 50 Cent's In Da Club.

Song I wish they'd played - the one by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds that begins "your happy day is here again", sung in his usual dirge-like tones.  I can't track it down on Youtube unfortunately, but I can give you a taste of his unique gloom-making ability.  Here he is with Shane McGowan singing Wonderful World
And, if you Wikipedia your birth date, you find all kinds of interesting "on this day in history" stuff.  Here are some events and birthdays for 21 April that appeal to me...

Events
753 BC - Romulus and Remus found Rome
1509 - Henry VIII ascends throne
1944 - Women in France receive right to vote
1989 - Tiananmen Square protests begin

Birthdays
1816 - Charlotte Bronte
1923 - John Mortimer
1926 - Queen Elizabeth II
1947 - Iggy Pop
1959 - Robert Smith (from The Cure)

Life's been a bit hectic at my place this morning.  I opened the vertical blinds in the spare bedroom and the pelmet, or cornice, or whatever it's called, fell down with a crash, hitting my hand on its way by.  It's now lying in several pieces on the bedroom floor and I'm nursing a bruised thumb.

After a restorative cup of tea, I started in on the laundry, beginning with a pile of dirty nappies.  When I moved them, I found that the bottom of the tub they'd been sitting in was black with crawling ants.  It was like something out of a horror film.  You know that moment when the violin screeches and you know you're about to see something nasty and gory?  It was like that.  I washed the ants down the drain and washed the nappies in the hottest, soapiest water I  could produce, but I still feel creepy and itchy a couple of hours and a shower later.

I've given up on housework and am listening to This Sceptered Isle (a history of Britain) on the BBC - I figure sitting quietly in my lounge is the safest thing to do....

Here are a few photos of Petra playing with Travis and with me.  Every day there seems to be more of Petra, more personality, more skills, more engagement with the world.  It's very fun. 

She can face out in the Baby Bjorn now and has been going walking with Travis.

After Petra was born, finding time to do even the simplest things was much more difficult than I expected.  For the first few weeks just getting dressed in something other than sweatpants or pajamas was more than I could manage.  Even showering and cleaning my teeth twice a day wasn't always doable.  Despite all the sleeping they do, newborns fill all your time, or Petra did anyway.  Thankfully those days have passed - I'm washed and flossed every day now.

And I've finally gotten around to doing a few Janette-maintenance activities like going to the dentist, getting my back tweaked, and making an appointment for a hair cut.  I now have shiny clean teeth and a relaxed back.  And as of Saturday afternoon the hair will be out of my eyes.  I feel like a whole new woman.

What family member do you most aspire to be like?  Why?
Submitted by MalieKai.

My little sister.  She's doing a wonderful job of being Olivia's mother in often tricky circumstances.  Seeing what a good mother she is inspires me to believe that I can be a mother as well.  Should/when I have a baby of my own I'll be phoning Carla every two minutes to say, "Now what do I do?

Carla's funny, smart, cute, and strong - the kind of person who makes things happen.  Her enthusiasm lights up any kind of gathering.  She knows all the words to all the songs, whether she likes them or not.  And right now she's watching a whole lot of movies that I haven't gotten to see yet.

We're eight years apart so I remember her as a baby, but now that she's all growed up into a fabulous woman our relationship has changed from big sister/little sister to a really really close friendship.

We were remembering a couple of big sister/little sister stories yesterday as it happens.  When Carla was very little, she used to crawl into bed with mum and dad if she woke up in the night.  Eventually dad got tired of that and she was banished to her own bed.  After a few nights of tears and tantrums, she realised that they weren't going to give in, so she quit trying.  Instead, she got crafty and decided that she would sleep with me.  For the next year or two, I spent most nights with a hot little toddler jammed against me, filling up most of the space in my single bed.  I didn't mind actually - I was flattered that she'd picked me, although I suspect that her motives were mostly mercenary.

I had to collect her from mum's work every day after school, a chore that I disliked because it cut into my play time.  The trip to our house was all up hill and Carla walked painfully slowly on her little legs.  She was too big for me to carry which meant that we were stuck going at her pace.   To distract me from my impatience and Carla from her tiredness, I told her stories.  I had a few in my repertoire, but the one we both liked the best was a very long and complex telling of The Three Little Pigs. 

In my story, the wolf dressed up in a bonnet and shawl and followed the pigs to market after he failed to catch them in the forest.  I can't remember all the details now, and I've never been able to find again the version of the story that I borrowed the market scenes from, but the story finished with the wolf rolling helplessly down a hill inside a butter churn, and the pigs going safely home.  No one got hurt in my version - humiliated, but not hurt.  I did the big bad wolf's voice - "Little pig, little pig let me come in."  And Carla did the pigs' voices - "No, no, not by the hair on my chinny chin chin."  If we timed it well, the story took us as all the way home.