10 Dec

Beginnings and endings

This morning my sister in law gave birth to her second daughter. She was about a week overdue, and then yesterday afternoon texted us to let us know she thought she was in labour. It was all very exciting. Then, around 1am this morning we got another text announcing the baby was born.

Call me grumpy (and also call me pregnant, exhausted, and insomniac to get the full picture) but I probably could have waited till the morning to find out. Sure, we went to sleep wondering how she was doing, but we were asleep, you know? We weren’t hovering near the phone or pacing the floor, and we already knew she was having a girl. (I’ll certainly wait till the morning to tell people.) But I understand, this is immense, it’s wonderful, we’re so happy for her, so we went, “Aww,” and tried to go back to sleep. Which in my case involves a lot of tossing and turning and trips to the toilet. (Do I need to go? How about now? Dammit, how can I need to go again?)

I could definitely have done without the second text an hour later with a photo attached. Yep, it’s a baby! Looks pretty much the same as the photo of her friend’s baby she showed me on the weekend! Look, I am just not maternal. I am really hoping that everyone who says it’s different when it’s your own is right, though on the other hand I don’t want to turn into a squeaky babytalking ball of goo, I do that enough with the budgie as it is.

Shortly after the second text I realised that crap, this is going to be us in less than four months, and I told Dave, and then neither of us got anymore sleep. This is why my phone doesn’t make a noise for texts.

But I am really happy that baby girl Name To Be Determined is with us at last, and I’m really looking forward to going and seeing her tomorrow night. Hey, at least there’s someone for me to watch and learn from over the next few months because seriously, about babies I have no idea.

*

And then this morning I got an email from a good girlfriend. I’ve known her for almost 12 years, we met when I did Jenny Craig and she was my consultant, and I used to distract her when I hadn’t lost any weight by talking about books. We haven’t seen much of each other in the last 8 years, after I moved to London in 2001 we discovered we were both really crappy at emailing, but I still consider her really close. In 2003 I was her bridesmaid, I came back for it specially, and I was so honoured that she chose me over people she’d known longer and spent more time with. She was my bridesmaid earlier this year, and then she moved straight up to Queensland with her husband. I couldn’t get mad at her because hey, I went across the world, she was still only a few hours away.

Anyway, over the last couple of months we hadn’t spoken or emailed, both still being crappy at it, but it was her birthday on the weekend so I thought I’d better email and also tell her all the news of the last few months (including the pregnancy). And this morning she wrote back and told me she and her husband had separated. She was sorry that she hadn’t been in touch to tell me sooner but she hadn’t wanted to tell me while I was still in the honeymoon period. And it’s just so sad. Partly because they were such a great couple, so loving and relaxed that I thought they’d make it for sure (but who knows, what with the stress of moving and losing their dog and whatever else goes on between couples) but also mostly because I wish I’d been there for her. If I’d not procrastinated on emailing her she might have told me sooner, and I could have helped. God knows, I know how it feels; my first marriage broke up one week before I went on the 3-month London business trip that ended up taking over 7 years, so I know what she’s been going through. And I might be bad at emailing but I’m really good at empathising and helping people, and I wish I’d done it for her. I guess I am still a really shitty friend.

But, she emailed me now, and she says she’s feeling good now and excited about the future, and possibly travelling overseas. And then she mentioned the new Katherine Kerr book and asked if I’d read it, so I’m going to write back and say no but I bought it for mum for Christmas, and then I’m going to talk about other books and what it was like going overseas, and I am damn well going to be there for her and be a better friend than I have been lately.

I love you, Tam.

 

 

 

18 Nov

get a life

Something bad happened on Saturday. Well, not bad, looking in hindsight, just unpleasant. Not nice.

Dave was away for the weekend and I’d taken myself off to the local shopping centre to look for some maternity clothes and generally have a pleasant time out; I don’t often shop so it was a bit of a treat to get away from all the boxes. Unusually, the undercover carpark was already full at 11am with cars circling round like vultures. I hate doing that so I decided to park out in the sun (that’s why we buy cars with air conditioning, dear Henry), but as I got to the end of the last row I noticed a guy getting into a car. Score!

So I backed up a bit to give him some room and put my indicator on, and then I realised I hadn’t quite backed up far enough, so I moved back a bit further, and my car hit something. Odd, I thought, had I reversed into the curb? I hadn’t thought I’d turned the wheel. And then I looked in the rear vision mirror and saw a big red angry face with a shouting mouth and I realised, oh shit, I’ve hit another car.

Look, I have no fucking idea how it happened. I looked behind me when I reversed the first time, there was no one there. The carpark row is at least 150m long and there was no one. There was maybe 15 seconds between my first reverse (and check) and the second. He must have come out of a parking space, there’s no other way. And I have no idea why I didn’t check the second time. It was stupid. In my defense, I’d not moved more than a foot and it was only a soft nudge but still. Careless.

Anyway, the parked car drove off and I, mortified, parked and got out. The guy with the red face drove next to me and wound down the window.

“Really well done,” he snarled. He was your typical older aussie bloke, maybe in his 60s, red faced, overweight, in a singlet. His car was a big old red Holden. If I had to put an occupation to the stereotype, I wouldn’t have said he’d ever worked in an office. And he looked really fucking mad.

I said, “I’m so sorry. Is there any damage?” Going into submissive mode. I mean, I was in the wrong, I felt stupid. And he was pretty angry.

His lip curled. “You have no fucking idea, do you?”

“I’m sorry, let me see, is there any damage?” I mean, how could there be? He had a big old car, I barely touched him. But still, my mistake, try to make it right.

He shook his head in disgust, and shouted, “You’ve no fucking clue lady. Get a life.” And then he sped off.

The whole thing was over in a second. And hey, there was absolutely no damage, not even to my little plastic hatchback (thank god Dave had the sportscar). But I was still really shaken. By his attitude, and by the fact that I did something so silly – the first time in 19 years of driving that I’ve hit anything – and so I went straight inside, found the toilets (which I needed anyway: pregnancy bladder), and shocked myself by crying my eyes out for 10 minutes.

I’m not sure why. I mean, I hate confrontation. I’ve never been bawled out like that. I was so embarrassed by what I did, and that anyone could have seen it. Also I’d had a bad dream the night before that had left me feeling sad and vulnerable to begin with. I was just so frustrated and angry, and I never got to stand up to him. It didn’t occur to me, I just rolled over and showed him my soft underbelly. As he drove away I got angry and I wanted to shout back at him, but the words wouldn’t come. It upset me for the rest of the day, I ended up just giving up on the shopping and going home.

What I’d really like to know is, why did it bother me so much? Yes, I’m crappy at confrontation, always have been. But why do I care so much that he yelled at me? He was clearly unreasonable. I barely touched him, I barely moved, there was no damage, his response was out of all proportion. But ever since then I’ve wanted to wind back time so I could shout back, Bite me, asswipe, I’ve apologised and there’s no damage so stop being such a fucking bully. But also, probably closer to the truth, is I want to say to the world, Hey! I am a nice person! I’m really smart and kind, and I do have a clue! Don’t judge me like that!

Maybe he’s right, and I do need to get a life.

01 Jun

the ebb and flow of friendships

I don’t have a lot of long-standing friends. I joke that my ex-husband got all the friends in the divorce but the real truth is that I’m just not that close to a lot of people, and not that good at keeping in touch with those that I am. So we separated, I moved overseas, and friendships lapsed. Not that there were a lot of people to keep in touch with. Acquaintances yes, workmates and pubmates yes, but real friends, no.
 
Blame it on being an only child if you want, or on a mother who is very insular herself. I just don’t have the knack. I find it hard to reach out and make friends, I’m not sure how to. How do I go about turning the idle chatter at work into lunch or weekend things? What would we talk about then? What if we don’t have much in common? And would they look at me weird if I tried opening up and told them what I really think about?

 This is why some people have blogs. On the net, no one looks at you weird.

>Dave on the other hand, Dave is different. Dave has a million friends, you can’t help loving him. I’m still not sure why he ended up with me. A lot of his friends are from back in high school and university, which is a completely alien concept to me, but they’re all still friends and most are long-time married with children. Needless to say they are all fantastic. There’s one group in particular that gets together whenever there’s a Formula 1 Grand Prix on, to cook themed dinners at each others houses. And not only are the guys really close, but so are all the girls. They all live reasonably close together and phone and email all the time. They visit each other when there’s a new baby. They know what’s going on in each other’s lives. It’s so strange to me. I love it.

As well as the GP dinners the girls also have a monthly craft night, which they were nice enough to invite me to, and I make sure I go to as many as possible. There was one last Thursday and I went along with my laptop and futzed around with this blog while we talked about kids and relationships and things. (Do you like the new theme? Isn’t the font a little bit small?) I was cracking jokes, as I tend to do when I have got over the Oh-my-god-these-people-might-hate-me shyness but don’t have a lot to say about the topic, thus disguising that I would be sitting there as a lump otherwise. One of S’s other friends had come along for the first time and at one point I made her laugh out loud.

“I forgot to explain about Nicky,” S said. “She has a wicked sense of humour.”

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