Is It Just Me? (8 page)

We have decided to pull up stumps and move closer to the city. We live in a suburb that was settled in the '60s … all big blocks and fir trees and optimistic architecture.

And we've loved it. The peace, the quiet, the parking! But I suddenly got the notion that I wanted to be somewhere that smelled like garlic from restaurant kitchens on Friday nights, so we're off.

The house has, of course, never looked better. After four years of turning my key in a chipped mission-brown front door, it is now a glossy fire-engine red. The door I always wanted. We removed approximately five tonnes of weeds and nameless shrubs from the front yard and planted neat hedges and feature plants. It's beautiful. The garage is like something from a TV series. In fact, the whole house is dreamy. Why exactly are we moving?

Let me tell you, it is no mean feat taking a house from Octomom to Martha Stewart. Especially when I am a naturally messy person and I have two little fellas under age three to contend with. The solution? Hire a storage unit. One day, when my three-year-old, Leo, was at kindergarten, two removalists came and took away a truckload of our life clutter. Leo's room looks like no child has ever even breathed in there. Every so often he'll get a faraway look in his eye and I know it's coming … I know he's remembering his old room and the questions are about to roll.

He'll say, “Where's my cubby house?” or “Where's my train table?” To which I mumble something about aspirational buyers and selling the dream. He'll get his stuff back eventually, but right now it's important that his room resembles a still from a kids' manchester catalogue. I may or may not have manufactured a twee “reading station” with colour-coded books and a Pippi Longstocking-themed rug. The devil, or the profit, as my real estate agent tells me, is in the details.

On “open for inspection” days, I fly around the house like interiors queen Tonia Todman on speed. A bowl of lemons appears on the coffee table. I usually have to artfully turn a few around to hide the bite marks, because my toddler finds them irresistible. I scream nonsensical things like, “Those apples are not for eating, they're for SHOW!” and “Why is there still a sticker on that Packham pear?”

The en suite, usually the domain of a left-out hairdryer, charging toothbrushes and my fella's beard clippers, is now host to a solitary Oriental lily in full bloom, a green Venetian candle and a pump of Aesop handwash.

Hopefully, the prospective buyers never need to wash their hands, because what they'll find lurking in the fancy bottle is actually a cut-price refill.

I even have stunt towels. Bright white and never used, they are artfully placed on the rails ten minutes before the buyers arrive because, hey, doesn't every family have pure white towels?

Then there are the pillows. Nothing sells a house like 4000 pillows. I have them on the main bed, the living-room sofa, every easychair and even in the cot.

In my baby's bedroom, the poo bin is stashed away. No one wants to see evidence of an actual human baby. Lord knows they're not going to find any of that at our place. I am ashamed to admit that there is a chair in the baby's room, complete with cushion and small side table with three thoughtfully fanned out Beatrix Potter books. I have never sat in the chair, I have never opened those books. Hell, I've never even read
Jemima Puddle-Duck
to my one-year-old! But let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story, shall we?

And you know what? It's working. People love the house. They're eating it up. But I suspect what they're really falling for is not the bricks and mortar. It's the irrational belief that if they buy this house, they'll be the sort of person who has fresh tulips in the dunny.

They're buying being the family who always makes the beds and has a kitchen that is 90 per cent shiny benchtops and bowls of perfectly formed navel oranges. They see themselves entertaining their friends in the “alfresco barbecue terrace” and their excitement ignores that fact that it is just a patch of Lilydale Topping with a ten-year-old Super A-Mart table on it and a $10 blooming cyclamen in a terracotta pot.

Part of me wants to stop them on the way in and say, “It's all a dream! We don't live like this! NO ONE LIVES LIKE THIS!” But that would be beside the point.

I have been tempted, however, to include in the contract a small disclaimer along the lines of: “Purchasing this house does not include children who live like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Your husband will still leave chest hair on the soap, wet towels on the floor and abominable odours in the WC. And the indoor grill is a bastard to clean. You will use it once and stick to the frying pan.”

Let's see what happens come auction day …

 

23rd September 2012

My child has learnt to lie and it is both worrying and delightful to me. I guess you have to be careful what you wish for, because when he was about six months and I was getting impatient to converse with him, I remember saying to my partner, “I can't wait until he can talk! And, you know, start fibbing.”

I've always loved watching tiny people concoct whopping great lies. Mainly because they have no idea how obvious it is that they're lying. When you know, you can enjoy the performance.

Last week we noticed our above-ground pool (better than a beach in your own backyard!) had started to develop a slowly dwindling water level. If the slightest thing goes wrong with it I call the professionals immediately. Frankly, it's like a big blue moody mistress is living in my garden: great times to be had, but you don't want to hear about its problems. Within a few days, someone in a wetsuit had found a hole and patched it and we were all fine.

It was on this pool guy that my three-year-old decided to unleash his very first lie. Leo loves a visitor, even a tradie. He follows them around, chatting and inspecting their work. First stop with any pool problems is the filter-and-engine thingy. In our case, the machinery is housed under the decking in a dirty, spider-infested crawlspace. I've never been in there because it gives me the creeps, but pool guys and three-year-olds are clearly impervious to its perils and in they both went. It was a beautiful day so I was standing outside holding my one-year-old and listening to the barrage of questions that Leo was firing at the pool guy: “Is that a spanner?” “Is that your tool bag?” “Did you know my dad sometimes locks me in here?”

Ummm … what?

That's right. My son was telling a total stranger that sometimes, you know, just for kicks, his dad LOCKS HIM UNDER THE DECK WITH THE POOL MACHINERY.

Before anyone calls the authorities, I can assure you that I have spent many hours with both the accused and the alleged victim, and Leo's dad has a hard time keeping a straight face even while telling him off for breaking his favourite Star Wars figurine.

I mentioned the Pool Guy Incident to my friend and she said, “Yep. He's nearly four. That's when they start lying like rugs. It's hilarious. But also scary. Caitlyn told everyone at kindy I had a hairy penis.”

Another friend confessed she'd been called to the school because her daughter told her teacher that Mummy had chopped up her bed and stopped giving her breakfast.

I must confess, I remember the first whopper I ever told. It was 1979 and I was playing at the Penrys' house at the end of the street. For some unknown reason, when Mrs Penry asked how I was, I feigned sadness and told her my dad had died … in the war.

Maybe I'd been watching too much
Apocalypse Now
, who knows? The strangest thing is that now, as an adult, I have no idea why those adults believed me. Sure, there was a war going on between Vietnam and China, and the Cold War was yet to wind down, but 1979 wasn't a big year for Australian involvement in wars of any kind. And besides, they'd probably slowed down the Falcon and had a quick chat to Dad while he was mowing the lawn that very weekend. Why didn't they know I was lying?

Nevertheless, Mrs Penry turned up on our doorstep with a CorningWare pot full of curried sausages and a message of condolence. I came to the door behind Mum just at the moment Mrs Penry was mouthing something mournful to her. The penny dropped as I realised what the curried snags meant. My immediate reaction was to bundle my things into a handkerchief, attach them to a stick and hit the road forever, hobo-style.

But I had to face the music. Thank goodness my mother was sensible and realised I was four years old and just, well, lying my bottom off. I'm not sure Dad was even told about it. It might have hurt his feelings, actually …

Perhaps it's tales like these that prompted the story I heard recently about a local primary school slipping notes in the schoolbags of its pupils, cutting a deal with parents: “If you don't believe most of what your child says about school, we won't believe most of what they say about what goes on at home.”

Deal? Deal!

 

30th September 2012

There are some things you should never say to a woman. You know what I mean: sometimes things are said to you that strip the oxygen from your lungs.

The annoying part of such an unexpected assault is that you very rarely have a quip at the ready. Your arsenal of smartness is almost always empty. And you drive home or walk away shell-shocked, only to spend the next few hours coming up with the most brilliantly crafted and scathing retorts. Why do we NEVER get the chance to say these to the actual people who've insulted us? Damn them!

There's a great TV program called
The Catherine Tate Show
. In it, Tate plays several characters and one of them is an androgynous man called Derek who everyone assumes is gay. But every time someone says something that infers that, he exclaims in horror, “How very DARE you!”

It's something that my friends and I have worked into our everyday language. Here are some great ways to use it (and yes, all these exchanges really happened):

A woman went to see her obstetrician as she was expecting her second child. She was maybe a size 16. And thirty-six weeks pregnant. In the room were the doctor and a student nurse. The doctor asked if she'd been using the services of a specialist pregnancy dietitian and she replied no, that she'd used one for her last pregnancy and was using the skills she'd learnt during that time. The doctor looked wryly at the nurse and said, “Looks like she ate him.”

“HOW. VERY. DARE. YOU!”

Fiona and her husband had been through a rough year. He'd been diagnosed with a terrible illness and things were not looking good. Six months after the grave diagnosis, a “friend” sidled up to Fiona at a barbecue and said in a hushed voice, “You might want to try to lose a little bit of weight, because when your husband dies you're going to have trouble finding a new one.” (This actually happened.)

“HOW. VERY. DARE. YOU!”

My friend Jane was coming home with her first baby – a magnificent baby girl. Her next-door neighbour met her at the gate and asked excitedly, “What did you have?” Proudly, Jane replied, “A girl!” To which her neighbour replied, “Oh. Doesn't matter. Next time you'll get a boy.”

“HOW. VERY. DARE. YOU!”

About five years ago, I was sitting with my back to the office door. I was deep in concentration reading something. I didn't even notice my colleague come in the door, so I didn't lift my head. The first indication I had that I wasn't alone was an index finger poking me in the back and then under my arm and a familiar voice saying, “Back fat! Back fat! Side boob! Side boob!”

All right, it's true that both of those things exist on my ample body … but do you really have to poke them?

“HOW. VERY. DARE. YOU!”

A friend was getting a spray tan – now, I've never done this, but I imagine you feel pretty vulnerable when you're nude, apart from a paper G-string, in front of a total stranger.

My friend is not even vaguely overweight, yet the spray tanner started off by asking her to “lift your saggy boobs”. Great. Step two was to offer some extra service. “I'm going to help you out,” she said, “and give you some definition on your tummy where you have none.” And for the finale: “Arms up! Let's not forget those bingo wings!”

Two things. Firstly, my friend will find somewhere else to get both her tan and her insults. And secondly …

“HOW. VERY. DARE. YOU!”

So there you have it. The ultimate weapon when someone says something unbelievable to you. It's my gift to you, and it will let you deal with the offence immediately, instead of mulling over it for days and muttering the ultimate comeback under your breath to no one but yourself. You're welcome.

 

7th October 2012

Something happened last month that restored my faith in the human race. In fact, it happened twice. Someone, a complete stranger, changed my tyre for me without having to be asked.

The first time, I'd taken off on a short trip to get milk. Leo was with me in the car because, Lord knows, even popping up to the servo to get some milk is an adventure when you're three. After a few minutes I noticed a hideous burning rubber smell.

Now, I'm no mechanic, but even I know that when a car smells like burning rubber it's not a good sign. When I followed my nose to the source of the odour I saw my tyre was flat, down to the rim, and about 4000 degrees in temperature.

I had absolutely no idea what to do. I was stuck with a pre-schooler, a molten-lava wheel and lapsed (of course) membership to one of those roadside-assistance thingies. When I'm in a situation that I can't see a way out of, I get hot and sort of huffy. And I'm not afraid to tell you that by now I was hot as hell and huffing like a Biggest Loser.

Enter Paul: kitchen designer by day, anonymous wheel-changing superhero by, er, day as well. He waltzed over to my car, asked where my spare was and got to work.

I was flabbergasted to see that lurking under a secret trapdoor in my boot was an emergency tyre. And all this time I thought my boot was a mobile storage facility for kid-size hard-hats, dried-out packets of baby wipes, half-gnawed rusks and a stroller I've used twice. Who knew!

If you've never seen someone changing a wheel (as I hadn't), imagine yourself with a stranger who is writhing around on the ground in a fashion not dissimilar to those wildlife warriors who try to tag crocodiles. Those tyres sure do put up a fight, by the looks of things. But Paul got me all sorted out. He even called his mate at the local tyre shop, so when I arrived there they knew what sort of tyre I needed and I was fixed up and on my way in no time.

I was actually teary when I thanked Paul for his kindness. It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me.

Until a week later, when I was turning into an eight-lane freeway and I heard a bang. My first instinct was to check my head for a bullet hole (don't you worry, I've seen
Underbelly
). My second was to utter under my breath, “Not another tyre!”

So there I was, stranded again for the second time in a week with a flat tyre and no idea. I should have paid attention to Paul, but I seriously didn't think I'd need to so quickly.

However, within five minutes a handsome fellow with a ten-year-old son had pulled over, taken my keys and was reversing my wonky vehicle into the service road. Again, I pushed aside the rubbish in my boot to reveal the by-now well-worn emergency wheel and he set about changing it for me.

This time he made me work for it a little bit, and I had to loosen a nut. This involved me bending over, bottom in the air, whispering “Righty tighty, lefty loosey” at the rims so I'd get the direction right. Eventually, the wheel was changed and I was on my way. I looked at the handsome man's son and said, “Your dad is a hero, you realise?” He just shrugged and went back to playing his Nintendo DS.

What struck me about the kindness of these two gentlemen was that they absolutely did not have to help me. They both had things they were doing and could have easily just stuck to their schedules. I've done that. Plenty of times. I've seen someone in a broken-down car looking frantic and I've thought, “Well … what can I do?”

Now I'm paying it forward. I paid a lot of attention when the handsome stranger was changing my tyre and, having also done a crash course on YouTube, I'm confident I can now change a tyre without creating a dangerous situation à la
Wacky Races
.

And next time I see a woman with a flat tyre, gesticulating wildly while on the phone to someone, I'm going to pull over and change her wheel. I bet it'll feel really good.

 

14th October 2012