Beyond Comprehension

[This is a backdated post]

I want to start this post with a general spiel about what people consider normal, or refer to an article I've read recently, or any of the usual intros that these things often kick off with but this time I honestly can't.

What I'm starting with is this: my 21 year old cousin does not know how to cut her own fingernails.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I've always known she was sheltered, a bit lazy, and that her parents do more for her than they should* but this was the first time that I truly grasped the magnitude of the issue.

We were at a family gathering and halfway through she realised that she had netball afterwards and had to trim her fingernails first or she wouldn't be allowed on the court.

She didn't have anything useful with her so she started biting them off.

Seeing what she was up to, I pulled out a basic set of nail clippers that I keep in my handbag and passed them over.

These sort of dealies, you know the ones.

She thanked me, put them over the end of her nail without opening them and then proceeded to swivel them about, trying to get them to work like a man unsure of how to apply a can opener to a can in a way that will produce food.

Starting to get a bit worried now, I said 'oh here let me get that' and popped them open for her and demonstrated the clipping motion.

She thanked me again, applied the clippers to her fingernail, clamped down and then instead of clipping through, ripped the end of her nail off, then calmly applied it to her next fingernail to do the same.

At this point I think my brain started screaming, and a nail later I managed to get my body to move, plucked them out of her grip and said 'let me tidy those up for you'** and cut her nails for her because Jesus Electric Sliding Christ!

How do you get to 21 without learning how to cut your own nails?

This means that someone else has been doing it for 21 years!

Outside of the times she's presumably gnawed them off.

And if she hasn't learned how to trim her own nails what else hasn't she learned?

There have been a lot of articles written about helicopter parenting*** in the last decade particularly.

Articles about how helicopter parenting is leaving adults stuck in adolescence because overly helpful parents have sought to protect them from disappointment too effectively or have not been able to step back and allow them to learn from their own mistakes.

Articles about how parents are pushing their children into learning environments or professions that make them miserable in the belief that they're setting them up for success later in life which will counterbalance today's misery with future happiness and security.

One of the most extreme manifestations of this inability to deal with 'the real world' or life in general comes in the form of Japan's Hikikomori, individuals so overcome by the pressure to succeed or the fear of social missteps that they lock themselves in their rooms, barely emerging for years.

This of course the extreme but it all has to start somewhere.

Wanting your child to be successful, to achieve their potential, is an admirable goal but it has to be seen within the context of a full life.

Kids also have to be taught how to manage their time, to cook, to take care of themselves, and to balance priorities.

This means introducing chores, encouraging them to manage their own responsibilities during childhood and letting them experience the consequences of failing.

I know my parents bailed me out more than a few times when I panicked about having left an assignment until the last minute or accidentally left it at home and begged for someone to run it to me at school during lunch time so I wouldn't get in trouble.

They also let me fall on my face sometimes so that I realised that I'm the person who needed to remember to do my homework because no-one else was going to do it for me.

My Dad wouldn't give me the answers, he would ask me questions until I started forming my own.

It was a balance that did see me wide-eyed and more than a little nervous at the idea of failing academically but in a position where I could - after having a bit of a panic - manage to talk myself down and through what I needed to get done.

I'm still a bit prone to doing things at the last minute because I know I'm smart enough to get away with it in certain situations but I've also come up against enough situations where being smart doesn't cut it because the task required time and effort to be put into it that couldn't be papered over with a good vocabulary.

But I learned this through trial and error, sometimes having to run smack bang into consequences multiple times before the lesson stuck.

Without encountering natural low-risk failures during their younger years, kids can't possibly get a realistic view of what failure means and how to cope with it or overcome it as they get older.

Every prospective failure will be seen as terrifying.

And you will end up with someone who can't cook, doesn't clean up after themselves, drops out of multiple university courses and can't cut their own fingernails.

Because good lord, there is an age at which children should be put in charge of their own personal grooming and it is a lot younger than twenty-friggin'-one!



*She's been diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder in the last 4 years so now the waiting on her is more of a 'keep an eye on her so she doesn't hurt herself' thing rather than anything else but I can't help but think that if they had given her more rules to follow and boundaries to respect that 'none', she would have been in a better place to deal with her mental illness.

**I know I should have shown her how to use them properly and returned them to her but by this stage I just couldn't bear the idea of her doing something else outlandish. I did point out that if you squeeze them firmly they cut right through and I had shown her how to open them and close them but I'm guessing the lesson won't have stuck.

***See, this is where I would have started this post if I could have stopped my brain wailing 'Her nails! Can't even cut her own nails!'

You Ain't From Around Here, Are Ya?

When I was younger my family lived in Canberra for a good few years and then Coffs Harbour for for a few years after that.

For non-Australians that means we lived in the Australian Capital Territory* (which is inside New South Wales**) and then coastal New South Wales for the first 11 years of my life.
Formative years.

Most of our other relatives lived down in Melbourne. In Victoria.

We only saw the aunties, uncles and cousins a few times a year but every time we did we ended up with a small child regional dialect stand off that was ridiculous in how seriously we took it.

The thing is, after living in Victoria for 19 years since then, I honestly can't remember which state uses which of the following terms.
I just know that I was using the right ones and my cousins (and then high school classmates) were using the wrong ones.
Because they're dumb and stupid***.

Anyway, for your edification, here are some state-specific names for very important thingies.

Prep vs Kinder

 

In Australia you have a year before school where you go to a sort of childcare to get used to the idea of school, your first year of school, then grades 1 through 6 and those are your primary school years. After that you go to high school for years 7 through 12 and voila! You're finished with basic schooling!
The important thing is what people call those initial two years because they use the same names but switched around.
In one state you attend pre-school (preps) and then your first year in primary school you are in kindergarten (kinder).
In the other state you attend kinder and then your first year in primary school you are in preps.

Now, it should be obvious here who is right and who is wrong.

YOU CAN'T ATTEND PRE-SCHOOL FROM INSIDE THE SCHOOL, GUYS!
PRE-SCHOOL OCCURS BEFORE SCHOOL!
IT CANNOT TAKE PLACE WHEN YOU ARE A STUDENT OF THE SCHOOL!

Hair Ties vs Pretties

 

In one state you secure your hair with hair ties, in another state you secure your hair with pretties.
Well lah-di-dah pretties! Your hairdo is sooooooo fancy now that it's being safe guarded by a pretty!
It's a hair tie, guys. It ties your hair.

Bubblers vs Drinking Taps

 

 

I honestly can't remember which one I used to say at school but I assume it was drinking taps because bubblers sounds so stupidly cheerful and effervescent like they're trying to make drinking water this wonderfully uplifting experience.

Potato Cakes vs Potato Scallops

 

This one is nice and simple.
These right here are potato cakes.

These are scallops.

And these are scalloped potatoes.

Nice and straightforward.

Bathers vs Swimmers vs Togs

 

We say bathers.
I am not opposed to the term togs, it is a fun word, it's fine.
I refuse to say swimmers. Swimmers are sperm. Bleh.


For all I know I'm using a mix of terms from one state and terms from another based on how much sense I think they make, rather than staying true to the terms of one state.
Because I'm adaptable and flexible like that.
Except when I'm not because other people are wrong and stupid.



*Usually referred to as the ACT
**Usually referred to as NSW
***I mean, they also put tomato sauce on their fish and chips instead of vinegar so bleh bleh!

The Guardian

[This is a backdated post] 

Wow.

Well this is timely after last week's post.

My friend Awesome rang me up recently and said she had something big to ask me.

Seeing as she's already married to her fella and has a 2 year old with him I was pretty sure it wasn't a proposal.

What it was though was this:

Would I be willing to be made the guardian of their child in the event that they both died?

Wow.

Taking into account this would only come about in the unlikely and really horrible event that they both got knocked out of the picture I had to consider the idea seriously because if I didn't look at it as if it were something that might one day happen I wouldn't be making the decision based on useful ideas.

He's a pretty awesome little dude and I definitely would want to make sure he was taken care of.

So it was time to run through the basic list.

Would I be willing and ready to:

• make the space in my home?
• make the time in my life?
• make sure he got a proper education?
• look after him when he was sick?
• support him trying out sports and hobbies?
• teach him the stuff he needs to know to get on?
• make sure he didn't grow up to be an ass?
• go through all the uncertainty and terror and heartbreak that whole package would bring?

Essentially the answer was 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhaaaaaarrghhghghghhhgh yes'.

I mean sure the idea is sort of terrifying, not only because it would only come to pass if something really awful happened, because getting catapulted into parenthood without getting to go through the beginner levels would leave you scrambling to catch up.

Like if someone decided to run through the development levels of a game you've never played before and then hand the controller over for the boss fight.

But like Awesome said, one of the reasons they thought of me because I have a big-ass family would support me and make sure he was OK.


So I said yes.

And then immediately started planning diet plans and exercise regimes and defensive driving courses for his parents.

Because he is a rad little dude and I want to be a part of his life for as long as I'm around.

But I also kind of like his parents and want to keep them.

So yay for the huge, touching declaration of trust in me but double-yay for the idea that it will never be necessary because his mum and dad will be there to bring him up, love him, and give him the flicks around the ear that he is sure to deserve along the way.

Expanding The Franchise The Old-Fashioned Way

Do you guys remember my mate Awesome?

Well she and her fella have been married for about a year and a half now and towards the end of last year she told me that the two of them were trying for a baby.

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Awesome has never been that interested in kids and had always said she was going to have dogs instead.

Of course that was before we met our friend Inky*.

Inky has three little boys.
When we first started hanging out with her they were 0, 2, and 4.
They're now 2, 4, and 6.

Over the last two years Awesome's time with Inky's kids has obviously convinced her that tinier humans are not in fact the devil's spawn that she thought they were and that having one of her own might not be such a terrible thing.

And now Awesome and her husband are expecting.

So having been informed I am going to be an auntie, I immediately starting thinking of ways I could help out.

For starters I've been reminding everyone that as a metal-head couple, Awesome and her fella are not going to be wanting any gifts in pastel.
They've already bought Awesome Junior this here jumpsuit...


...and most of the baby's other clothes are likely to be fairly similar in nature.

The other thing I started doing was research.

This is what I do.

I read up on stuff and just have it sitting in my head in case it becomes useful.
It's how I helped my sister and Awesome plan for their respective weddings and it has served me well in a lot of other situations.

So I did a bit of generalised reading here, a bit of asking all my kid-having relatives and coworkers what are the most useful things you can do to help out a new set of parents there, a bit of looking a baby paraphernalia when out and about.

Over Christmas I spent about four days getting some hands on experience with my cousin's 4 month old and 20 month old so that when Awesome is all sleep-deprived and serial-killer-looking I can pop over for a bit and wrangle the child as she has a shower and/or a nap and gets out of the house for a bit.

Two tips I learned from that particular experience:

1. Don't wear necklaces around babies and toddlers. Not because they will get a hold of them - though they will - but because they have this disconcerting habit of flinging their heads against your chest and you don't want to have to explain a Celtic cross shaped bruise on their soft head bits**.
2. If you've got a voice you use for telling your dogs or cats off it works perfectly with kids. You say 'put that down' in the 'no' voice you use for dogs and they put that right down. So useful!
   

Somehow I managed to not actually be in charge of said kids any time they needed their nappies changed which I just put down to being further proof that the universe loves me.

Awesome isn't quite ready to actually think about the Baby Exit Strategy just yet so I figured I'd have a look into it for her so that when she is ready to start planning I can have the information on hand.

So I started watching this documentary One Born Every Minute and Oh My Lord.

Apparently having babies can be somewhat painful!
I mean obviously it would be considering what has to come out where but until I watched this show I didn't fully comprehend how long labour went on and some of things that can happen during it.
Bloody amazing.

And some people's partners are completely [redacted] useless!
They just sit there looking fed up and making snide comments whilst their lady writhes around in agony.
I know you're only seeing a slice of their life and it's at quite a stressful time but you'd think that during labour would be the one time you'd manage to reign in your jackassery and be supportive!
Even if just to look good for the cameras!

But overall it's a fascinating series.

You get to see a snapshot of people's family situations, their circumstances, their personalities and witness an important moment in their lives.

It does make you think the human body is somewhat bodged together as it seems to take an absurd amount of effort to eject a fresh human being from the slot.

Inky is going to be Awesome's other birth partner (along with Awesome's husband) as she's had several children and is a registered nurse so I won't actually be there but knowing what is coming up is both incredibly interesting and rather daunting.

Both from a logistics point of view and from a 'holy crap, we're adults now' viewpoint.

Obviously we have been for a while, we're all about 28, but the events of the last few years have really driven it home.

Awesome has gotten married and is expecting a baby.

Eep has built a house with her fella and they're getting married at the end of this year.

I have a credit card and have used it to book international flights and hotel rooms like a real grown up and am routinely taken seriously despite constantly feeling like I'm play acting.

We've all had cars, had jobs, paid taxes, organised all sorts of weird and woolly grown up things and after Awesome Junior pops out of the chute everything is going to be different from then on.

Awesome will be the first of my friends to have a baby*** and even with all the reading I've done I don't think I'll be ready for how much that's going to change our lives and the nature of our friendships.

If nothing else it's going to be educational.



*She has tattoos. Lovely tattoos.

**This didn't happen but it was close, oh so close!

***Inky has babies but I didn't know here when she was having them. They came as part of the package with our friendship. Awesome is the first of my school friends to have a baby.

Fertility Conspiracy

Facebook, I understand that you data mine us and then try to sell us things.

That's practically a given.

But either you're really bad at targeted ads, or you're a complete bastard.

I mean, I was cross enough at the WiiFit when it started flinging thinly veiled insults my way but this?

OK, so my Facebook profile says that I enjoy certain kinds of music, so you put ads for different bands and related items on my sidebar.

My profile says I'm a certain age so you make other assumptions from that and mix in a few other ads about 80s cartoons and band reunions.

It also says I'm single and I'd gotten used to all the sidebar spots that were devoted to advertising various dating websites.

Then you gave up on the regular, run of the mill dating sites and started advertising almost exclusively that I should give single dads a chance.

I'm sure there are lots of single dads out there who are great guys who deserve a loving partner and what not but the way the ads are presented gave a very 'And hey, who are they to be picky? You've got them over a barrel!' vibe which I found somewhat creepy.

And when I didn't click on any of those either, Facebook, you took it a step too far.

Why are you showing me ads about IVF information sessions, Facebook?

Yes, I'm single.

Yes, I'm 28.

But no, I have not yet reached the turkey baster stage of life.

So if you want me to keep pretending that you're a social networking site and not the elaborate marketing research tool that you are, you will drop the IVF ads and I won't have to go completely effing mental on you.

The Fertility Faction

OK, I obviously spoke too soon.

Last year a coworker announced she was pregnant.

All the women in the office who have had children got intensely excited.

I congratulated her, anticipated chipping in for flowers in a few months time and forgot all about it.

I missed the predatory gleam in their eyes.

The first salvo was subtle.

The magazines on our lunch table - usually a reliable mix of culinary, design and architecture with the odd Cleo thrown in - was suddenly peppered with parenting periodicals.

The second salvo was slightly more direct.

They began including me in their 'isn't that cute' group emails of pictures of kids frolicking with dogs, drawing on walls, buried in piles of leaves and cosplaying with their parents at Comic Con.

Their stated reason for this was that they thought I liked dogs/vandalism/leaves/cosplay.

I was invited to and attended the baby shower, where I won several games.

They saw this as a promising sign until I made it blatantly clear with my gloating victory dance that my apparent baby-related prowess was down to being a competitive jerk.

At this point the campaign had been running at least two months* and I had started to get a little paranoid and had begun wondering how they got my private email and the ads on my Facebook sidebar to join in.

My junk mail had suddenly given up on selling me V14gr4 and c14l1s or trying to hook me up with my foreign lottery winnings and has been offering me singles of all flavours.

Black singles, white singles, Latin singles, Asian singles, Christian singles, Jewish singles.
All the singles.

My Facebook ad sidebar seems to be trying to kill two birds with one stone and every day urges me to 'Give Single Dads A Chance'.

So far, I have not.

Disheartened by this lack of results, they gave up on both subtle and semi-subtle.

Any time an unmarried guy not biologically old enough to be my Father visited our workplace, they would comment on his various favourable attributes and ask me what I thought.

I thought it was kind of creepy.

I mean I'm all for the sexual equality of ladies having the freedom to perve on appealing dudes but the 'give him some slack, then reel him in, then give him some slack, then reel him in' language used by certain women in these situations make me feel incredibly skeezy.

Especially when the two very nice IT guys came through to do an equipment audit and the moment they were out the door, one particular coworker demanded that I picked out and started dancing the sideways rumba with whichever one I preferred because it was terrible to see a decent chunk of man meat like that go to waste.

When I declined her order to sexually assault the IT guy(s), she began listing friends of hers who were single and not old/crazy/destitute.

At this point two of my friends decided to come to my rescue.

Awkwardly, however, they did this by insisting that I could have had the pick of their friends at any point over the last four years but that I was under no obligation to make such a selection.

Choosing this as the moment to put my earphones on and never ever take them off again, I was spared the rest of that cringefest.

Luckily after the 'take that nerd and make him your own' conversation, they did seem to get the message that I was not going to be taken in by their cunning plan.

This reprieve can probably be more accurately attributed to the fact that our pregnant coworker has recently given birth and they now have a freshly baked bun straight out of the baby oven to coo over and the intense desire to see me opening my own franchise has abated.

I know this is temporary and that one day, they'll hear the bugle call to arms once more, but I'm just grateful for the cease-fire.

However long it may last.



*I say 'at least two months' because given my field tested obliviousness to signs, signals and hints I cannot rule out the possibility that this had kicked off the moment pregnant coworker finished enunciating the letter t in 'I'm pregnant!'

In Anticipation Of Silence

The annoying family nextdoor is moving out.

Turns out all the exciting and exuberant late night ball games they've been playing against the 25 year old wooden fence have completely wrecked it and the landlord is less than impressed.

I knew that already of course.

Not the bit about the landlord, the bit about the fence.

We looked after a friend's dog a little while ago and whilst our goofy-assed labrador has no interest in going anywhere without us*, temporary extra pooch is sly and curious and would have investigated the ever growing gaps in the fence. So I spent about three hours before it was dropped off levering two-thirds of the rusty antique nails out of the boards and replacing them with shiny new nails that actually secured them to the framework.
I was quite proud of myself really and probably kept the damn thing from completely disintegrating.

Anyway when the landlord went around for the rental inspection and found a busted fence was the very least of what had happened to the property in the six months since the last inspection they gave the family notice to evict.

But the notice was for 120 days.

That was at least two months ago so we've still got at least another couple of months unless they find somewhere else sooner.
But I don't think they will.
Because the mother works a lot and also uses phrases like 'oh I'll talk to them' or 'I'll see if they'll stop' when we've asked if maybe the kids could not go tearing through our front yard kicking plants and I'm guessing this isn't the first time this has happened.
The kids don't seem to care they're ruining their mother's rental record, they're too busy feeling rebellious and hard done by.

So in a couple of months things should be a lot quieter on our street.
But for the last couple of months I'm not going to be leaving anything important outside and I'll be keeping an eye out because the kids seem to be under the impression that somebody ratted them out to the six-month inspection police** and that they will have their revenge.
Sadly enough they're not bright enough to know that if they trash something the night before they leave the police would still be able to get their secret identities from the real estate agent.
Now if only the people who live around the corner would stop letting off fireworks on total fire ban days we'd be set.


*Or doing anything that doesn't involve collapsing against us, coating us with hair and wagging her tail so hard she verges on dislocating her spine...
**Uh durrrrrrrrr...

Children Should Be Jim Beamed, Not Heard

I know we're supposed to be encouraging the younger generations to cultivate a more active and healthy lifestyle.

To get out and about more.

But I really wish the kids next-door would take up some new hobbies.

Like video-games.

Or drugs.

Because it's two a.m. in the morning and they're playing basketball up against the wall next to our freaking house and I can't bloody sleep!