Matchmaking for beginners

I think I have a talent for producing great kids and if it weren’t for my advanced age and the fact that childbirth feels like a 32” TV set is being pulled out of your butt, I’d probably keep reproducing. Some of my friends have gotten around this by becoming grandparents. I know I don’t look old enough but I am sort of a nana - by marriage - because Beloved has a couple of extremely cute grandies. But my own kids have yet to advance me to the rank of family matriarch and grandkid spoiler. Somehow my gorgeous girls have reached 19 and 22 years of age without any boyfriends.

My son, M, is a great looking kid with a brain to match. He captains the Chess club, represents the school in Mathex, plays Lawn Bowls and is one of the “tech boys” at school assemblies. Sadly it seems that he’ll never move beyond Pokemon and Playstation.  My youngest daughter is 6 so it looks like the responsibility rests entirely at her feet (or uterus). In the meantime I miss having a baby in the house. I think I’ll make a clause in my will that the first of my children to marry and produce an heir (of heiress) can inherit my entire collection of dress up clothes and super hero costumes.

But at last there might be a light at the end of the tunnel. M invited a GIRL around to our house during the holidays! I’m serious! She was an actual GIRL with one head, two arms and two legs. She wasn’t even imaginary! Naturally I checked her out on the school record system (one of the perks of working at my kid’s school).  Her Facebook profile looks promising - no naughty words, intelligent and she does ballet in her spare time. She’s pretty and normal and NICE.  Great potential for the possible future mother of my possible future grandchildren!  In preparation for the visit I blew the budget at the supermarket to procure hip, adolescent snacks (not popcorn because I’d noted that she has braces). The plan was to win her heart on M’s behalf by plying her with biccies and coke.  I even went so far as to dress my little one in a renaissance costume, complete with headpiece, and thrust her into the room with firm instructions to be cute. Teenage girls love cute kids and I’m sure they find boys with adorable little sisters irresistible. I also instructed my littlie to quote the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet”, which she did rather well considering she’s only six: “Oh Rolleo, Rolleo with four art toes...”

Come to think of it, the teens didn’t appear too happy to have constant disruptions to their Pokemon Trading and I haven’t seen M’s friend since.  Ummm...do you suppose I overegged the pudding? 

There’s always Plan B. When Nay, my eldest, was visiting from Christchurch I saw her talking at length to a nice young man at church. He looks like good son-in-law material so we had him around to lunch. I’ve checked his Facebook page - and the profiles of anybody he may have commented on. Funny though, he seems to have ignored my Friend Request...

Making friends in the modern age

I got a text from someone I don’t know this morning:

Heeey hun (ooh, this looks promising I thought to myself) dis me. I’ll txx yu l8er den, luv yu.

It’s a bit of a long shot, but I have a hunch this was sent to the wrong number. Ignoring it seemed like the best plan but I hadn’t taken teenage love hormones into account. Texts were coming fast and strong. It’s okay though, I work at a high school and have teenagers so I’m fluent in Gangsta Text.  For the sake of the monolingual, I’ll translate the subsequent messages:

Heeey baby wht yu doing? Muwah! Xo (hello to the person I’m in love with for the next three days or so. I would really like you to reply. Big kiss, little kiss and a hug)

Babe (you haven’t responded to my many text messages yet. Could you please send me a message back?)

BABE! (I’m getting annoyed that you haven’t texted me back yet. Why are you ignoring me?)

I at da swings (I’m waiting for you at our not-very-secret place in the local community playground. I am lighting up a cigarette and beginning to get a little impatient that you’re keeping me waiting)

Babe whr yu! Txx me! (You’re late. I’m getting irritated. Let me know where you are)

BAAAAAAABEEEE!! (if you're not answering me it means you're busy and if you're busy it can only mean that you're cheating on me)

Aw baby im sozz i killd everything. Txx me pleeeze k? I miss yu  : ( (I’m starting to panic now that I sounded too angry in that last text. Please don’t dump me. Please let me be your girlfriend? My self esteem is pretty low and I’m not sure if I can be valued as a complete person without a boyfriend to accessorise with my ipad)

By now I was thinking that maybe the boyfriend was going to get his ears chewed for something he was completely oblivious to so I decided to take action: I’m not sure if you have the right number

But those texts just kept coming:

I ad th park, buh im on th courts, ws on bebo js den & read yur mail to me :( (I am still waiting for you at the park, next to the courts. I was on my social network site just now and read your private message to me. I am now morbidly depressed and having suicidal thoughts).

I thought I did very well ignoring the unremitting beeps as I was driving to the shops.  Many messages later I was standing at the checkout at New world and decided I’d had enough.  M tried persuade me to tell her that he gave the wrong number which means he's "just not that into you" He's a boy. He should know these things. But my thumb starts to ache after three words and truthfully, I didn't want to break her heart.

Wrong number! That seemed pretty clear and to the point.

Es dis sonny?

I thought I’d lighten the mood. "Only to my mum and dad". I had short hair when I was a kid and was often mistaken for a boy, so technically that wasn't a lie. I think my humour was a little too high brow for my new friend and the harassment continued. Evidently she knew I was Sonny and it seems that our boy Sonny may have been cheating on this poor kid. I tried to tell her that Sonny was an egg for treating her badly and that she could do better for herself and even threw in a smiley face for good measure. She was having none of it. Even telling her that I’m a 47 year old mother of four couldn’t sway her. Just what was it going to take?

Zeeb grabbed the phone off me and sent the following:

I’ll pray for you

I told Zeeb she’d better be praying. “If you say you’re gonna pray for someone you’d better do it. Well? Are you praying? PRAY!!!”

Funny, I didn't hear back from my friend after that. She’s a smart girl is Zeeb. Probably saved her life. Meanwhile, I've just had a text from someone asking me to buy them a hot water bottle tomorrow. I would, if only I knew who to give it to...

There's a mystery afoot

I’m not sure what one of the fosties has been up to but if I look at the 5 standard question starters, I have the “Who”, the “Where” and the “What”.  I just need the “When” and the “Why”.  Beloved was the first to notice that something had gone down and alerted me to the situation.  Not that I was alert. I was facebooking on the laptop with my eye mask hooked around my neck, ready for a good night’s kip, and I wasn’t eager to get out of a comfy bed.

Here's the scene: The downstairs kitchen window (normally locked) - open; ornament on windowsill - broken; benchtop and floor - covered in muddy footprints.  Was it a break in? Had we been robbed? I checked my Tom Jones CD collection while Beloved examined the scene to determine if it was an inside job.  The evidence was mostly circumstantial, but Nick* was our prime suspect.  However his denial was almost convincing.  This kid needs to go to drama school.  As Beloved was preparing his speech about bunking off school to break in while we were all out, I donned my Sherlock Holmes hat and went into CSI mode, searching for forensic clues. I think the photo says it all:

Note the tread of the shoe compared with the mud print - we have a match!

Suspect - size 6

Shoe - size 6

Here’s the interesting thing - mufty shoes. Since Nick is only spotted in school shoes during the week, the misdemeanour had been committed outside school hours. We haven't been able to pinpoint a time because...ummm...I haven't actually cleaned the downstairs kitchen for quite some time...or...ever...

The good news - he didn’t wag school (as backed up by further snooping with my contacts in the trenches).

The bad news - he didn’t confess.

The good news - he gave up denying it.

The really good news - he knows that we know pretty much everything he gets up to and he can’t get away with anything. Poor sod.

Meanwhile, his brother Tee* is obsessed with his hair. He’s had me put highlights in and keeps doing that  dreadful head-flick thing.  Let’s just hope he doesn’t dislocate it. How do you explain a dislocated head to the Social Worker?

I blame Justin Bieber. Don’t we all?

Potty Talk

It’s time to educate a few people on “Toilet Etiquette”. While I understand that nattering on about loos might be embarrassing for some, I need to affirm that rather than lowering the tone here, I am essentially raising a few standards. But first there is one thing I want to clarify: what you do in the privacy of your own bathroom is your own business and I don’t want to know about it.  It’s what takes place in shared rest rooms that concerns me, predominantly the staff toilets that I visit five days a week, on the trot.

My primary observation is that our unisex toilet in the English block at school NEEDS to have a ping pong ball installed for the benefit of female users, such as myself, who don’t appreciate sitting with their feet in a puddle of wee. I’m just saying...

Now, about the ladies’ toilets - there are five cubicles and I prefer to frequent Numbers 3 and 4 only.  There’s nothing wrong with numbers 1 and 5, it’s just that I like symmetry and prefer both of my walls to match. That’s normal, isn’t it?  Not weird at all.  As far as Number 2 is concerned, a couple of years ago I had the misfortune of having the pungent stench of vomit attacking my nostrils as I entered the main doors. There were some worrisome noises coming from Number 2 and before I could say “Who’s doing the multi-coloured yawn in there?” I was drawn into the situation. Hey, I am a compassionate person after all. Although the vomit was eventually cleaned up, that pong lasted for weeks.  The incident has scarred me.

Speaking of Number Two - DON’T.  Unless you have been struck by a sudden episode of Guardia, save it for when you get home.  I don’t want to sit on a warm throne and I don’t want to you to share your personal fragrance with me. Is that clear? In many cases bowels are like animals. If you treat them well, they can be tamed and trained.

Do not disturb!

And speaking of speaking - DON’T.  I’m in that cubicle with a purpose and I don’t like Toilet Talkers.  It’s business only for me and if you want to have a discussion about what you’ve got in the crock pot for dinner tonight I will SHUSH you (unless you happen to be one of my many superiors, in which case I’ll attempt a few agreeable whimpering sounds) and you can guarantee that I'm sulking in there. Just leave me out of it. I don’t want to know that you’re listening for my answer or any other sounds I may make in the process.  Even I don’t want to hear any tinkling which is why I’ll usually begin by scrunching up a heap of toilet tissue to mute it before blocking my ears to avoid offending myself.

Something else confuses me. Why have I stumbled upon the toilet seat up in a ladies’ toilet stall? I know it wasn’t the cleaner because I’d seen her scouring the basins earlier in the day (V does a splendid job incidentally).  I’m further mystified by the footprints on the porcelain. If it’s a cultural thing I’ll try to be tolerant if you try not to use Numbers 3 and 4.

Finally, if there’s a soap dispenser - USE IT! Enough said.

I should have called my cat "Tabby Kruger

I had a fantastic night’s sleep last night although I can’t remember if I dreamed anything. Normally I have spectacular dreams that are very compelling and I get annoyed when my alarm breaks in. Not all my dreams are that great - there was a nasty nightmare a few years ago about some wig-wearing guy at work and a swimming pool. I still wince when I remember it, which happens often because I made the mistake of telling Ant and Smilie about the “incident-that-NEVER-happened” and they haven’t let me forget it.

Generally I’m a light sleeper and often wake during the night, but not last night. I think it must be the eye-mask keeping my eyelids warm (refer to previous blog: “Things Edison forgot to invent”). When I woke up this morning, I found that my nose was grazed. Here’s the really bizarre thing: my muzzle was just fine when I went to bed the night before.

My Beloved was my first suspect but he’s denied all responsibility for any violence towards my nose. He blamed the cat. Having eliminated him from my enquiries I threw the question open to Facebook World. There was speculation about the injury being self-inflicted or that perhaps Beloved had tried to pick his nose but jammed his fingers up mine by mistake. You’d think I would have noticed.

This leaves only one serious conclusion: clearly I was abducted and probed by aliens who further anaesthetised my stupor to ensure I wouldn’t wake up half way through the procedure and take photos with my cell phone before spilling the story to “Campbell Live”.  Later today I found myself explaining to some students how the ancient Egyptians used hooks for pulling out people’s brains during the mummification process. Coincidence? I don’t think so! Those Egyptians were most certainly using extraterrestrial probes and it’s quite possible that my own brain was pulled out last night, examined and then replaced - probably with the added feature of the ability to morph myself into a lizard when the weather gets too hot.

This hypothesis hasn’t been taken seriously by anyone. We’ll just have to wait until summer to see if I turn into an iguana and start sunning myself on a rock. This leaves the earlier suggestion of the cat. Montague has always had it in for me ever since she was a kitten and I gave her a boy’s name. She’s a malevolent old fleabag and I wouldn’t put it past her to take a swat at my face as I slept.  I need to take measures to protect myself in future.

I’m putting a restraining order on my cat and knitting myself that nose-warmer I mentioned last week. Let’s just hope I don’t knit it too big because I hear that chainmail is very heavy.

When is a hippopotamus not a hippopotamus?

Last week we headed to the zoo with a van packed with kids of all ages. It was a crisp, sunny winters day so it seemed like a brilliant plan. Trouble is, everyone else thought it was a bright idea too.  We pulled off the motorway behind an excited young mum who kept turning at every stop to wave to her kid in the back seat with a goofy grin on her face. After driving around the carpark a number of times and heading in a circle around a few blocks, her excitement was waning dramatically and the li’l guy was screaming.  I hope they found a park closer than we did.  We ended up on some cliff face a few kilometres North of where we wanted to be.   

 Fortunately my Beloved was driving because I don’t take too kindly to hill starts.

Auckland is a very arty-farty place at times and the Zoo management has obviously paid someone far too much to install some ill-designed drinking fountains. The first was not far from the entrance and it wasn’t until later that I learned that it was sculpted in the shape of a koru, which symbolises all sorts of wonderful things about new life and growth. You see, from the front it looked like...THIS:

My advice - take your own bottled water. What WERE they thinking?

Zeeb might be 19 years old but she loves the kids’ area. There’s a big stone dragon there that has been around since I was a wee sprout.  Over the years the dragon has laid some concrete eggs and kids travel from near and far to crawl in and out of these things. Zeeb forgot that she was 19 and thought it would be fun to be a baby dinosaur hatching from an egg.  Cute.  I thought it was strange that she wouldn’t keep still while I was trying to snap her photo.  It took a bit of desperate whimpering to convince me that she was actually firmly wedged. (Oooh, that reminds me of a story about M when he was a lot younger! I must remember to tell that one)

Zeeb and I are pretty stoic when it comes to demonstrating affection towards each other. A sniff and a nod is as good as a hug where we’re concerned. It works for us. I haven’t carried Zeeb since she was about five and she certainly didn’t have boobs back then. Incidentally, where’d she get those things? It certainly wasn’t from me!  Still, there’s no need to join a gym when I can pump weights by lifting adult, teenagers out of concrete dragon eggs.

Animals are very good at hiding when there are too many people trying to see them.  We were squinting to see the well-hidden hippos (I wrote the abbreviated word because I don’t know the correct plural for “hippopotamus”). We decided that we could definitely see two of them. Wanting to outdo our super-spotting, my Beloved was adamant that he could see four. We had some discussion about a couple of blobs in the water. He said they were definitely hippo nostrils while Zeeb was pretty sure they were pine cones - not that there were any pine trees nearby. After weaving through the crowds to the other side we found that Beloved was the closest. The blobs were definitely hippo-related. They were two blobs of floating poo. I don’t think Beloved was going to give up on that one. There was some indistinguishable muttering about the hippos hiding underneath...yeah, right!

I think Zeeb's favourite animal was the serval: "The serval is so hot. It has stripes AND spots. It flauts all the fashion laws!"

So that’s the school holidays done and dusted. Kids are back at school tomorrow and so am I. Ooh, so many new adventures to look forward to!

I sit and knit a hat to fit...

...I sat and knat a hat too fat!

I am not a domestic goddess. I do what I have to do such as throw a peanut butter sandwich at hungry kids or spray the occasinal cockroach on the bench but every now and then my creative juices start flowing and I get the urge to...er...create. I think it comes from watching far too much television and reading too many homemaking blogs. It's a nice thought in theory but in real life it doesn't always quite work out. Refer to exhibit A. The wintery weather motivated me to knit a simple little hat for my li'l munchkin. Only it wasn't all that simple and it definately wasn't little. You'd think I'd have learned from the experience of trying to make that sweat shirt she's wearing, which was not without its dramas.

Meanwhile, there's this lady at church who is a real honey. Now she really IS a domestic godess. She can do just about anything. And she's so thoughtful - one of those quiet people who works away behind the scenes to get things done.  She's always baking gluten free slices and biccies just for me whenever there's a shared lunch and seriously, I can be bought for food! For ages I've wanted to do something for her to show how appreciative I am. I thought about baking her a cake but I don't bake and she does. I wanted to make her feel a bit special just like she makes me feel special, but how do I do something for Nigella, Alison Holst and Enid Gilchrist all rolled into one? I decided to knit her a scarf. One of those nifty ones I made for myself a few years back, with a hole in it to slip the end through so that you really only have to knit half a scarf. That should be pretty foolproof. What could possibly go wrong?

If that hat was fat, the scarf was even fatter. I couldn't undo it, I was in too deep. I had already dropped a stitch earlier and being that fluffy sort of wool, it was a real bugger to pick it up. My other knitting needles are safely stored I-don't-know-where so I had resorted to using a nearby thermometer to pick it up. Tragic I know, but at least I deserve top marks for ingenuity.

It would break my heart to undo it. So I bought more wool and kept knitting. Thankfully I decided to compare it to one of my earlier models and realised it was three times fatter than it should have been and my  friend would look like she'd been attacked by a woolly sack.  I started again.  Finally it's finished and all I have to do is give it to her only I'm a little embarrassed because...it's still...a bit...too...FAT.