Maybe Baby!

Seriously, I'm a natural, right?

Every time I set eyes upon a squishy, beaming little infant, I am instantaneously possessed by a primal urge to procreate.  A deep, aching longing sets in such that it’s all I can do not to grab the thing and run.  Friends, upon witnessing what must resemble a junkie greedily eyeing off someone else’s smack, will take my hand and wordlessly steer me away, my head swivelling on its axis like Linda Blair from the exorcist as the bundle disappears from sight.  There’s clucky.  And then there’s me.    

 

For years I have been waiting impatiently to reach that magical point at which maturity, age and financial security combine sufficiently to justify producing my own squishy infant.  That time is not yet upon me.  So I placate myself with the secret hope that maybe, just maybe, it will happen by accident.  Who am I to question the gods of conception if they decide that the time has come to bestow upon me a foetus, despite being utterly, desperately unprepared? 

   

It was with this secret hope in mind that I stared at the inside of my undies the other day.  There was nothing, not a speck.  I had missed my period.  You’ve been stressed, I told myself.  There’s a perfectly good explanation for it.  But nothing could stop my pounding heart.  Maybe it was time! 

As one day passed, then another, I couldn’t help but analyse every twinge.  Was that a slight burning in my right ovary?  Must be an early pregnancy symptom!  What about that dull ache in my lower back?  I rushed to consult doctor Google.  Yes!  Pregnancy symptom!  No matter that a back ache is also symptomatic of precisely five thousand other afflictions.  When combined with the ovary burning and the sweaty left foot, there was simply no other explanation!

Quietly, I became a pregnancy forum addict.  At every opportunity I would pull out my phone, an exhilarating sense of curiosity and stealth spurring me on.  I would devour the stories of my cyber peers like delicious morsels of hope.  Mary from Toronto had also experienced slight cramping in her left side before getting her BFP (Big fat Positive); Stella from Liverpool described being too tired to get out of bed.  It all sounded just like me!  Convinced of my state as mother-to-be, I looked up baby names, pregnancy diets, the relative merits of the controversial but effective bedtime technique controlled crying. 

I dared not tell Tom about my secret pleasure, for the exact same reason that I dared not piss on a stick.  I was having so much fun conspiring to be a mother, I was wary of anything that might burst my bubble.  I did, after a few days, give in to the urge to interrogate my mother. 

‘When did you first know you were pregnant?’  I asked in the most casual tone I could muster as Mum watered her vegetables.

‘Well, the first thing I noticed was my boobs were sort of tingly.  And I would have waves of nausea but I didn’t actually vomit.  The biggest thing was feeling like I had the flu, all hot and bothered, especially in the morning.’  Mum paused.  ‘Katie?  What’s wrong?’     

I had stopped short and was staring at my mother, immobile, a weed that I had plucked from a pot plant dangling limp from my clenched fist.  I WAS PREGNANT!  I rushed inside the house and grabbed the pregnancy test I had been carrying around in my bag.  Wrestling it frantically from its plastic casing, my mind was a cyclone of fears.  Where would we live?  How would I afford not to work?  Did Tom really want to call it John?  That name was so dated!  Anxiety threatened to consume me as I waited breathlessly for the three minutes it takes the test to work.

I turned it over.  One line.  Relief poured over me.  A tiny, tingly bit of disappointment lurked amongst the feels, but mainly, I was relieved.

I want a baby.  And some day soon I’ll be ready for one.  Until then, I’m happy to get by on my fantasising and forum-trolling.   

Tales from a Ten Year Reunion

If you have been reading this blog, you would be aware that I spend an unhealthy chunk of my life fretting about the comparative failings of my life, as compared to, say, someone with the word ‘regional’ in their job title.  My thoughts are divided in relatively even quantities between; dreaming up characters and plots for my writing; berating myself incessantly that I’ve elected to spend my life dreaming up characters and plots for my writing.  Hence it was with great fear and trepidation that I scrolled through the Facebook invite to my ten year high school reunion.  Ex-classmates.  With careers.  Careers that pay in currency other than Facebook likes.  No matter, I said to myself with sudden and intense glee, I would lie.  Lie my little fucking ass off.  I wouldn’t even tell a far fetched lie.  It would entirely plausible.  I would simply add, like, 10 extra published books to me portfolio.

I sailed through several days placated by the by the brilliance of my ruse, until of course it hit me that I write a blog.  A blog which serves as a soapbox from which to spew my life’s failings onto the internet.  FUCK!  I screamed loudly into my cereal.  Because I had already decided what to wear and was kind of looking forward to it and now I would have to face the taunting mass of alumni sans vocational alibi.  I WOULD JUST HAVE TO BE MY SOMETIMES SHIT SELF!

I had a panic attack in the taxi.  Not a full blown I-think-I’m-dying attack but enough to fuck up my breathing so I was audibly sucking air in and out, in and out.  The taxi driver asked me if I was ok.  I ignored him and continued to plan my entrance.  If I could just get to Helinka, I could hide behind her and only pop out intermittently to speak to people I wasn’t intimidated by.  No!  I thought suddenly as the taxi pulled up to the pub.  That is a really fucking dumb and fundamentally flawed idea!  And with that I was there, walking in, with no career and no plan. 

Since I was late I had no choice but to stumble right into the action.  This is what I thought, in a twisted muddle, as I wormed my way through the crowd feigning an irrational fascination with the floor:  Everyone looks exactly the same!  Do I look exactly the same?  Probably not!  I’m probably the only one who doesn’t look exactly the same!  Oh shit there’s the popular girls.  Katie you idiot you’re 28 years old they are not the fucking ‘popular girls’ anymore!  Still think I’ll avoid them for a while.  I spotted Helinka and was inserted by default into a conversation with Dave, an ex-drama enthusiast who had been known for his eccentricities and sometimes bullish nature.  ‘I’ve read your blog!’  He boomed.  I winced.  ‘It’s really good!  It’s great that you’re so honest!’ 

Not for one second had it occurred to me that my pathological penchant for over-sharing might count as a plus.  I peered up at Dave, confused.

‘I especially like the one where you have an enormous anxiety attack and end up crying into the floor!’ 

A wave of vomit threatened to make itself present and I swallowed, hard.  I had been half hoping the more embarrassing details of my blog might have escaped my peers’ attention.  But as Dave began chatting animatedly about his love of craft beer, another feeling began to materialise.  Relief.  If everyone was savvy to my lunacy, there really wasn’t any point putting on airs.  I had been relieved of the burden of trying to seem accomplished!  So, having been spared the colossal task of bullshitting everyone, I excused myself, went to the bar, and began drinking wine with gay abandon.                    

As it turned out, I had once again managed to make a colossal drama out of the sparsest of materials.  No one gave a fuck that I was just a writer.  No one accused me of being a deadbeat.  And as I caught up with friends of yesteryear, I honestly felt a bit stupid for having believed people would have been invested enough in my life to care.

 

There were a couple of hours of polite chit chat, and early leavers could have been fooled into thinking we had all grown up.  But come 11 o Clock, we had fallen under some sort of high school spell, and regressed back to teenage-party-mode.  One ex classmate who I was yet to talk to pulled me suddenly and violently in for a hug.  That’s nice, I thought, until I realized he was simply using me as a means of remaining upright.  ‘How are you?’  I said into his hair.  He looked up at me and tried to speak, but instead just spat a bit and smiled wide.

I talked to all the ex popular girls, two of them were married which somehow rendered them not scary anymore, and they listened politely as I explained in great detail the feeding habits of my pigs.  

       

In true teenage party style we ended up back at Terry’s house.  I somehow forgot my plans to make a dignified early exit, and instead sought out my old crush, as I had every time I’d seen him since high school, and spent a lengthy amount of time lamenting to him the difficulties of having been so in love with him.  I would be embarrassed by this memory but I’ve done it that many times I’ve become kind of desensitized.  He listened politely for a while before going to the ‘toilet’ and never returning.

My last memory of the evening is of waking up on the couch in a puddle of my own drool whilst singing the lyrics to ‘We Can’t Stop’ by Miley Cyrus.  I had obviously passed out and, to the delight of the other stragglers surrounding me, been miraculously roused by the pop anthem.  ‘Do you like that song?’  Taunted one.  And, considering I’d been literally singing it in my sleep, I had to admit that yes, I did.  But it didn’t matter.  Any hope of appearing cool had long since been squandered.       

About Me Going Crazy Which Happened Recently

Do I look crazy here? I look kind of angry so that'll do.

The last few weeks have been full on.  My anxiety got the better of me, which hasn’t happened for ages, but when it does I feel like I’m drowning; totally out of control.  Most of the time I’m at peace with my neurosis.  I learnt some really effective techniques years ago and spent a lot of time and energy implementing them till they were like second nature.  But sometimes things just hit that critical mass and bam, it’s like a switch is flicked.  The techniques stop working and logical thought is subsumed by relentless, brain jarring chaos.    

It wasn’t so much a single event that triggered the switch as one shit thing after the other.  First my housemates announced they were moving out, and fuck did they have a lot of stuff to move.  The colossal nature of the task apparently getting the better of them, they transformed into.  Ahem.  Less nice people.  And we copped the brunt of the niceness decline big time.  Combine that with the mountain of shit being moved out of our tiny house, and you get stressful sitch number one. 

I moved to my parents’ to escape being impaled by a trampoline or something.  And so did Tom.  And so did my sister, coz she’d had a fight with her housemate.  So now we were all stuck in the house together again and trying to make the best of it when work became suddenly and infinitely harder.  Trying to learn a new section on an insanely busy night with no help from anyone who has a fucking clue how to do it equals MORE STRESS.    

I had a fight with my sister.  And Tom’s mum.  Snails ate our rocket.

I entered a major writing competition, and right on cue myself started hating on myself.  Why are you even entering?  You don’t stand a chance with this piece.  It’s incoherent and overly earnest!  And then it was late and we had to hand in the lease to take the house over and that was late and I got a traffic fine and an extra shift which I had to rush back from Wang for….. Cue meltdown.

When it happens, I loose agency over my own mind.  I can no longer elect to shut the nagging, niggling voices up.  On top of that, they go into overdrive, and cease to make sense.  I’m worried about anything and everything at once, but instead of a capable, organized voice sorting out what I should prioritize, there’s just delirious, nonsensical mile-a-minute chatter, which in its discernible moments utters things like, OH FUCK MY LIFE IS OUT OF CONTROL I’M LATE, CAN’T AFFORD FINE, AM SCARED OF MY OWN SISTER, OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK.  Not much gets offered up in the way of a solution. 

The problem is, when the roller coaster starts, I don’t have the faintest idea how to stop it.  The techniques I apply to my milder, everyday anxiety seem ludicrous in their flimsiness, and I just feel like a moron whimpering, ‘Excuse me, calm down!’ over the infernal racket.  I can’t write, which is the worst, with that shit going on in my head.  Writing gives me my sense of purpose so when I’m not doing it I feel like a useless oxygen sucker who shouldn’t be here.  I start thinking that I’ll never be able to pull myself out of it, that I’ll never write again, and those thoughts just feed into the problem and create a self-fuelling anxiety tornado.  Which eventually creates panic.     

During this latest bout I found myself on the floor of my parent’s lounge room making intermittent loud heaving noises.  Mum came in and looked at me.  I said I was beyond help so DON’T EVEN BOTHER.  Mum gave me two valiums, probably because my hysterics were unnerving her, and after a proper sleep I started to feel better.  So basically, the answer is valium.  Just kidding!  I don’t know what the answer is but it usually seems to ease up after a while.   

We’ve moved back into Footscray now, with new housemates and a fresh start.  The chatter has subsided and, at least until next bout, I’m still not crazy.      

Almost Losing the Lambs!

I didn’t notice it happening, but somewhere in the course of their little lives, I’ve grown very attached to our brood of lambs.  Yesterday they gave us quite the scare, and I was overcome by a terror I hadn't realized myself capable of.

The time had come to dock and neuter them, a process I'd been dreading since I'd found out the awful truth; we would be placing the tight rubber band around their tales, and worse still, around the poor little boys’ crown jewels, manually and without sedation.  What kind of barbaric world did we live in?  Wasn’t there another way?  Tom told me quietly that this would be the quickest method and the least stressful for the babies.  

I felt like a betrayer as I chased the first boy around, knowing that when he eventually surrendered, he would be calm in the knowledge that like every other time, the only fate that awaited him was a big, smoochy cuddle.  Not so.  I got him, panting, and led him over to the log, where Tom instructed me to sit with his tale accessible.  Tom nursed the tale and slid the band on like a pro, and I made myself look, determined not to close my eyes lest a mistake get made.  I had expected the little munchkin to be squealing, but he had adopted an eerie state of resignation, as if he knew that it would be easier that way.  Even as I lowered him awkwardly to the ground, his limbs dangling so Tom could get to the second job (cough cough), he simply lent back against me, pulse quick.  Tom had the worst job because he had to grab the poor little bugger’s balls and slide the band on... and then, thank God, it was done.  We cooed wildly over the lamb, told him how brave he was and dropped him back into the paddock.  

The girls were easier, lacking as they were in any private parts needing to be severed, but of course they made a huge fuss.  Drama queens.  With relief we grabbed the last boy, the first born, the big one.  He had gotten almost too fat for me to hold and I refrained from telling Tom as the frightened thing struggled and squealed that it was all I could to just to hang onto him.  My arms were burning, Tom couldn’t find the second ball... then, in an instant, we were finished.  I breathed a huge sigh as I lowered the lamb back to the ground... but the sigh caught in my throat.  He was limp, his legs flailing out at odd angles.  I took one look at him and screamed ‘He’s gone into shock!’  

My heart accelerated to an almost unbearable pace, and for what felt like a lifetime, the three of us, Val having heard the scream, were dumbstruck.  The lamb was opening and closing his eyes, groggy and semi conscious.   

‘Pick him up Tom!  He needs to be kept warm!’  It was my voice shouting.  I didn’t have a clue how I knew that, but some base instinct seemed to have taken over, and I wasn’t going to fight it.  Tom scooped the thing up, holding it tight as I massaged its legs.  Val ran for a blanket, and in no time the lamb was wrapped up and being carried at urgent pace back to his mother.  Skirting the edge of the front paddock, the Mum began bleating like crazy, and suddenly, the lamb had life.  He squirmed slightly, and then let out an almighty ‘Baaaaahhhhhh!’ 

We took that as our cue to return him to his mother, and he did manage to get himself under her.  We held our breath as he tried to extract some comfort-milk.  It was only when he fell clumsily onto his back that the terror took over.  He wasn’t better!  He stumbled around like a drunk, failing at the task of staying upright.  

‘Shit!’  I breathed.  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have put him down!’  

An intense and anxious debate fired up, and for a brief moment we were all a mess, yelling our opinion without hearing the others’.  

Tom: ‘It will stress him out more to catch him now!  We’ll just have to leave the care to his Mum!'

Val:  ‘It’s too late now!  We’ve done all we can!’

Me, crying:  ‘But maybe it’s the band that’s causing the shock!  Maybe we should catch him and cut the band off!’  

We were getting nowhere, and eventually I accepted Tom’s point.  It would probably be worse for him now to be chased and caught again in that state.  I hated myself for letting him go too soon.  Tom and Val went back to their gardening as a method of distraction, but I couldn’t.  All I could do was pace up and down next to the flock, crying.  Every time I looked over fear would grip my chest once more; the lamb was still lying down, eyes semi-shut, unfocused.  Every few minutes I would pace over to Tom; ‘There must be something we can do!’  Tom would assert again that he believed we had done the right thing.  

Finally, I got the idea to call the vet, and her tone spoke a thousand words.  It was like when you’re on a plane and you look at the Flight Attendant to gauge whether you should be nervous.  The woman on the end was calm, saying, ‘Don’t worry just yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if he recovered.  Remember, it’s a stressful procedure.’ 

And as I sat watching him for the next hour, he did.  First his eyes focused, then he sat up normally, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet.  When he finally stood up and succeeded in getting a drink from Mum, relief and happiness welled up inside me so much that I was overcome.  I had been very, very frightened.                 

The Joy of not being a Slut

Save for a few fancy-free months, I’ve spent my entire adult life in a relationship. 

My first real boyfriend was an introverted goth I’d had a crush on since he was an introverted nerd in primary school.  We were friends and one confused night we made out.  I grabbed my opportunity and claimed girlfriend status, and he was such a pushover he didn’t fight it.  A year later he changed his phone number and hooked up with the guy he’d been copping blowies from all along.  I was 17.

Adrian followed immediately afterward.  So immediately that when I tracked down Mr Gothy and stormed his house to express my dissatisfaction at his method of exit, Adrian was the one that dropped me at the door.  Unlike the first guy, he actually pursued me.  His romancing was good enough to secure a solid 6 year incumbency in my bed. 

When he got sick of me I tried super hard to stay single.  I was actually really enjoying it, once I got the hang of not measuring my worth by how many pick up attempts came my way at the pub.  (Way less then when I was attached!)  But Tom came along and was quite persuasive. 

Do I have an attachment problem?  Obviously.  I always think how effortlessly cool and independent it sounds when people declare, ‘I had to let another guy go because I’m scared of commitment’, as if it’s some sort of candid admission.  Scared of commitment?  I’m fucking petrified of being alone!  Now, that actually sounds uncool.    

When I was with Adrian I was convinced I would eventually fall victim to the dreaded ‘trapped woman’ syndrome, whereby a previously sane person realises at 45 that they’ve missed out on the whole gallivanting about being a scallywag part of life, and is hitherto possessed by their neglected sex drive to go forth and be a raging middle aged slut, ending their marriage and forever fucking up their life.  But I’ve since re-thought that.  Seeing as none of my partners have been prison wardens, the only part of the scallywaging I’ve missed out on is the being a huge slut part.  Which if I’m honest I got in nice and early at high school.  As you would know, I’ve partaken in more partying and drug consumption than your average swinging singolite, so if you see me, fat, pasty and 50, gyrating like a desperate hooker in some ‘over 30’s’ venue in Moonee Ponds, it’s more likely to be a result of a disgusting attempt at reclaiming that part of my life than any allusions at having missed out on it in the first place.  I reckon I’m clear on the trapped woman front.           

What do you think, what have I missed out on?

I’ve never known the single life.  I am most likely missing whatever finely tuned set of social skills arise from that existence.  But, hey, I’m really good at whatever it is you get good at form being in a couple for freakin’ forever.  Compromise.  I'm swell at that. 

When I was with Adrian I used to do that thing where every time you get drunk you fantasize about what you’re missing out on.  In the morning you’re back to normal and you can’t work out which part of you you should listen to.  But it doesn’t happen anymore.  I feel truly fulfilled in the relationship I’m in now.  I’m at peace with being a serial monogamist.  It’s been officially removed from the incredibly long list of things about which I fret every day.  Hoorah.    

 

Not a Fuck Up; Just a Writer

 

It’s my birthday today.  I’m 28.  That’s pretty close to 30, and when you’re pretty close to 30 I figure you can no longer lay claim to the ‘very young’ tag.  I bade farewell to the rose coloured glow of uber-youth a year ago, in a fit of tears and snot and with about as much dignity as a cavorting drunk in the emerging dawn at Revolver.  

It was a year ago that I decided I wasn’t young anymore.  Youthful, yes.  But not the kind of young where people forgive you your indiscretions purely because ‘She’s just a baby!’  Not the kind of young where it’s perfectly acceptable to be flitting around from shitjob to shitjob to nojob, in fact it’s a rite of passage.  Not the kind of young where you can do just about anything- drugs included, and it’s all just part of the fun.   

   

The day I turned 27 I decided that no matter how I framed it, it would be both delusional and desperate to continue to lay claim to the young-and-dumb label.  I had landed un-ceremoniously in my late 20’s, and I wasn’t happy.  I didn’t have a job.  My writing was making about as much progress as my dole cheque increases, and my parents didn’t approve of my boyfriend.   I was homeless.  Tom and I were planning on traveling, taking some time out to figure out where to go next, so had moved out of our Brunswick share house.  For some reason we had done it just shy of Christmas, meaning we had to wait it out for the family gathering we had promised to go to.  I had parked at my parents house, in the tiny room at the end of the corridor where Mum had laid me down a few days after being born, and that’s where I found myself, heaving great gooby-laden sobs into the pillow, trying to figure out how on Earth I’d gotten here.  I was 27 today, and my shambles of a life could no longer be excused by tender youth.  I was just a fuck up. 

How had I gotten there?  I’d been swept up in the whole Brunswick-hippy mantra of abhorring the system while simultaneously suckling from its welfare-provisioning-teat.  I’d justified my lifestyle choice by squeezing under the ‘struggling artist’ umbrella with all the other drug-guzzling alternative types, and spent far more time partaking in the drug-guzzling than the artistry.  Somehow in the bubble it had all seemed perfectly fine, but now I was pushing 30 and with sudden and acute horror realizing that it totally fucking wasn’t.             

I’m 28 today and I’m not sobbing and I’m not in bed.  Nor am I freaking out about getting another year closer to 30.  My life isn’t within spitting range of meeting the expectations of 12 year old Katie; no highly paid career, still in hospitality, and not yet with child.  She would have been horrified.  But I have two pigs, and enough money to buy myself a new dress.  And unlike last year, I’m happy.  I spent so many years thinking I should be something more than a writer, but deep down inside, not really wanting to do anything else.  So I procrastinated, socializing and taking drugs, hoping that a career would magically manifest itself.  It didn’t, and I suppose the revelation of last year’s birthday was the kick up the ass I needed to go get what I really wanted.  I am happy now, because I’m finally letting myself be ‘just’ a writer.       

I wasn’t ready to be 27.  I am ready to be 28.  Maybe by 29 I will have actually sold a few books!