I'm not joking, she actually said this:

"Franzy, I think we just need to get a bigger TV - one of those high-definition ones. I'm sick of not being able to see the Playstation properly and we should just complete our home entertainment system."

I know.

She is awesome.

Thank you very much and suffer in your jocks.

Reasons Mele is an awesome lady #8093

"I think if you want that bottle of whiskey, you should just buy it."

I'd like to thank Goddess

While I'm building up a nice head of steam working out how to expound upon the utter contempt I have for 100% of the media of fatherhood I've come across since becoming its target, I would like to take you all through:

A day in the Life of Mele, UltraSuperMegaWoman

1. Up at 1:30 am. Change Charlie, keep cleanbits and dirty bits separate. Battle fatigue and urge to wake Franzy Snr while having nipples chewed on for around half an hour. Become draped in goo. Get yelled at.
2. Up again at 4:30am. Repeat. Get yelled at again. Battle with guilt at waking Franzy Snr on a work night to exercise his superior swaddling skills to truss the little feller up tighter than an inappropriate metaphor (see photo).
3. Up at seven. More poo. More yelling. Battle with guilt at asking a poorly-slept Franzy Snr to make toast.
4. Win guilt battle too late, watch Franzy Snr leave for work instead of making breakfast. Replace guilt with jealousy at having to stay home while Franzy Snr gets to swan about, interacting with real people. Eat cold toast while having nipple squashed unrelentingly.
5. Attempt to catch up on sleep. Be shouted awake 45 minutes later after sleep-deprived Franzy Snr's swaddling becomes unraveled and Charlie decides that having his arms out of the wrap = End of Everything Beautiful.
6. More nappy-changing. More feeding. Feel depressed at mountain of housework.
7. Trade opportunity for morning nap in for morning of scaling Mt Housework.
8. Reach summit. Receive guests. Make coffee, provide homemade cake, clean up after guests.
9. Walk to shop. Do shopping. Get gawked at for having tiny baby in sling. Walk home. Put away shopping. Begin to prepare lunch and dinner.
10. Drop everything. Change pooey nappy. Get pissed on. Change everyone's clothes. Get pissed on again. Change everyone's clothes again. Feed Charlie. Get pissed on again. Change third set of piss-soaked clothes in an hour. Finish feeding Charlie in the nude.
11. Dress Charlie. Dress self. Get puked on. Change most of clothes and put everything in washing machine. Wrap Charlie tightly and put to bed. Ignore screams of indignation. Return to five previously-unfinished tasks. Fight off life-ending fatigue.
12. Eat cold toast for lunch. Worry about appropriate nutrition intake from steady diet of cold toast.
13. Reach the summit of The Houseworkahorn (or Die Hauswerkahorn). Find air quite thin. Lay down to rest before attempting to pitch camp and slaughter a yak for food. Drift into dream of Swiss Alps and chocolate.
14. Roused by screaming seven minutes later. Change nappy, clothes and cot-sheets. Get pissed on. Have nipple chewed and thrown up on.
15. Keep grim eye on clock, waiting for Franzy Snr to return home. In four hours.
16. Attempt more housework, receive more telephone calls and visitors, just as Charlie seemed due for a long sleep which could be coordinated with a maternal afternoon coma. Repeat.
17. Franzy Snr arrives home. Thrust Charlie into his arms and skip freely about the house, doing all the two-handed chores which were pushed down the list during the day.
18. Cook dinner, give Franzy Snr various manly two-handed chores and feel guilty about doling out the housework so soon after the Bacon Bringer has returned from a hard day's slog. Be reassured that doing the vacuuming and taking out the garbage isn't exactly on par with the Gulag-style torture previously-envisaged for Franzy Snr. Continue to feel guilty, but less so.
19. Receive dinner guests. Battle mixed feelings of extreme fatigue and guilt at falling asleep in dinner.
20. Shouted awake for another nipple chew by Charlie. Listen to shouting as Franzy Snr performs a nappy-change and wonder why Charlie chooses to piss and puke only over his mother's limited range of comfortable house-clothes as opposed to Franzy Snr's seemingly inexhaustable supply of slowly-perishing t-shirts.
21. Have nipples chewed in front of guests. Get puked on. Go to bed at 8pm.
22. Woken by hungry shouting at 10:30pm. Overcome fatigue-induced nausea. Attempt to hold Charlie safely while being pissed on and shouted at.
23. Spend one and a half hours feeding, wrapping, unwrapping, changing, patting, picking up and putting down Charlie until deciding that since he's fed, mostly-dry and it's night, then it's time for bed. Go to bed and listen to half an hour of grumbling and screaming until Sandman finally gets off his arse and dumps a truckload of the good silica into the baby room.
24. Repeat.


Seriously: Mele is my hero. Watching the birth was like watching someone lift about half a ton of bricks in one go and doing it. Impressive, non? Watching her do the above list for a month on no more than 3 hours sleep at a stretch, for a month, is simply unbelievable. Bear in mind that the above represents the minimum of activity in a typical Mele-day. Minimum. That's not counting regular things like doctor's appointments, family commitments, the mind-bending minutiae of housework (washing machine, set, dry, hang, over, on, off, look for medicine, towel, phone, pen, puke, wipe), the baking - she regularly makes utterly delicious cakes and slices and thinks of things I can make for my lunch for up to three days in advance. In between all this she is still able to carry on intelligent conversations and continue to be the beautiful, kind and generous woman I know and love more every day.

Here's to you, darlin'.

You know you're on Bribie Island when ... (No. 3)

... getting hospital treatment for eczema is an all-weekend merry-go-round.

Comparisons: Adelaide vs Bribie Island

Adelaide: Fully-operational day-time outpatient dermatology clinic specialising in eczema and psoriasis. Check in at 8am. Check out at 3pm, home in time for tea and biscuits. Experienced staff, etc.

Bribie Island: Hour-long drive down to the Royal Brisbane Hospital on a Friday afternoon after being told that the best chance of securing the state's single dermatology bed (yes! One!) is to be admitted via the emergency department and weasel in from there. Wait in emergency department breathing in that sterile fug of boredom, depression and pain, scratching your skin off, while every type human being limps in with a sore foot and gets called up. Immediately. No waiting. At least half of whom seem to have your first name so that when they call out you get hopeful for about three tenths of a second. No liquids because the drink machines have been inexplicably switched off. As the evening wears on, the dregs of the Ekka start waddling in. 'Got pissed, fell down'ers start taking up the few seats with their showbags and over-sized plush toys.
Finally get an emergency short-stay bed, four hours after arriving. Walk past literally dozens of empty beds on the way to an empty ward. Restrain yourself from asking why the fuck we couldn't have had one of those beds three hours ago. Have your prescription medication taken from you without question by nursing staff. Get uneasy night's sleep while husband drives home.
Visited by husband next day and the two of you manage to convince everybody that they should probably give the prescription meds back. Pay $45 for four days of "free to air" television to pass the time in between refusing the "food" and running eczema-care tutorials for nursing staff until Monday when all the dermatology consultants return from golf.

Did you spot the difference?

***
Been watching the Olympics? Have I got an amazing Olympic fact for you. Inspired and infected by Blue Milk's excellent post "White babies saving the world, one nappy at a time", I've started watching a lot of other ads for that kind of assumption. No, I haven't even been watching The Gruen Transfer because we don't get Channel Two. Anyway, I digress. Olympic fact:

Did you know that middle-class white women are the only reason we play sports as children?



I'm sure that if you looked into it, they probably would be a driving factor behind a lot of Australian Olympic medals, but does this ad make anyone else roll their eyes and stomach linings? Where are the dads? Where are the kids who aren't too retarded to make their own fruit smoothies at 4am? Where are the coloured people? And when that clumsy buttface bumps his own breakfast-making mother aside while she's preparing his breakfast, why the fuck doesn't she grab him by the scruff of the neck, pull his ear off and chuck that in with the team's fresh geggies? A smile too much for an over-grown, over-indulged penis in a leotard? Let's see how hard you row with a pair of tongs up your tights.

I suspect this commercial has a lot to answer for where modern feminism is concerned. As far as I can read it, all of these mothers are the unsung heroes. However, they are heroes because of the things they are doing (preparing meals, playing taxi, putting up with insolent children) and definitely not because of the things they aren't (forging careers, sleeping in while male parent does the driving, teaching junior how to prepare their own meals, doling out some lessons in manners, actually winning medals themselves, etc). As far as Coles is concerned, women are there to cook the meals, drive the car, get trampled on and clap about it. None of the women in this film are depicted even talking. ie. "Jesus H. Christ, Charlene, it's fucking freezing out here! Let's go an get a coffee and a paper and come back when the girls have finished training."
No, according to Coles, acquiescent motherhood is the highest possible peak of achievement a woman can reach, and the only one.

***

In other news ... I have removed all references to my place of work (hereafter known as "CC") after a man came in on one of my days off mentioning this blog. Didn't know the guy, didn't want to. Went home, googled, deleted, prayed. Their are still a few cached pages around, but they don't return as high a search ranking as previously. I will ask all commenters to refrain from mentioning the CC by its fully searchable name from now on. Thanks.

***
GTH - Points go to Neil for the mental image of Mavis the Masked Midget going through or garbage and to Ninja for a) referencing The Wombats so stylishly and b) having a kid. New GTH rule: Have a kid, get a point. From now on. No retrospective children allowed.

News and a half

We are moving to Queensland.

And let it never again be said that I beat around the bush for the sake of a story build-up.
Not all the time, at least.

Those of you who know us personally will understand completely the reasons for moving. For those of you who only know the humbly-represented superhero versions of us depicted on this blog, I will give a brief explanation: health reasons.

I did say brief, didn't I?

I'll expand a little. Mele suffers from eczema, which is exacerbated by a dry climate. We live in Adelaide. Adelaide happens to be one of the two worst places in the world for sufferers of dry skin-related conditions (the other is Tucson, Arizona) - this is according to Mele's brilliant (and rather dashing) dermatologist. The pain caused by her dry skin is so great that moving states is actually a reasonable and sensible solution as opposed to the alternative of remaining here.
Eczema and dry skin dermatitis are common ailments. Until I met Mele, I never realised how common. Everyone has it. However, no one has it like Mele does, except for a nineteen-year-old fellow from Port Pirie. You might think you, or your mate, or your Mum, or whoever, gets it really badly, but those people can still go outside and don't need expensive drugs that require monthly check-ups in order to simply keep it at bay. Strong drugs and buckets of petroleum jelly are the only things that work for her. Others may find relief in natural remedies, olive oil, steroid cream, altered diets and any one of the thousands of off-the-shelf moisturisers containing everything from vitamin E to stem cells and piss. Not Mele. Moving to Queensland is one of the last options for relief on a much-shortened list.

So, in the spirit of turning lemons into lemonade and cow-shit into hypo-allergenic roses, this blog will become something of a travel diary. We don't plan to remain in Queensland forever,* just over the Adelaide winter until the dry, cold winds have blown themselves out and the Unbelievably Stifling Heat returns. (Those thinking along the lines of increased evaporation in summer vs increased precipitation in winter being better for dry skin can think again - Adelaide never gets so much rain that it actually becomes humid and the cold winter winds make a girl's skin seize up, whereas warm weather aids in movement).

The first step in the journey has been Moving Out Of The Tiny, Dark, Loud and Frequently Odorous Flat. It was nowhere near as traumatic a move as last year's was, complicated as it was by the multiple factors of:
1) Me being away for my week-long buck's show at the Byron Bay Bluesfest during the time in which I should have been packing, finding a new place, etc.
2) The mansion at Second Avenue dividing into two separate households in one day of moving with a truck.
3) Smallacombe Real Estate being arseholes
4) There being other things going on in our lives.

Trent and Ben turned up, dealt with the discouraging fact that the espresso coffee I had promised had already been packed away, like the granite-jawed hombres they are and swiftly set about the manly business of tossing heavy articles of furniture into the back of a cheaply-hired three-tonne truck. We didn't even smash anything expensive.

The furniture is at Nonna's farm (along with the possessions of at least three of her other grandchildren who are all in the process of either moving or building houses), the valuable gear and heirlooms are at a secret mountain location and the rest of the miscellaneous crap that I thought I wanted, but now can't remember why I kept it in the first place has travelled with us to the house I grew up in to join the rest of the miscellaneous crap that my mother and I have insisted on storing and saving throughout the years because you never know when you might need fourteen cloth bags from various sociology conferences or an envelope full of receipts from an overseas trip which show that you paid 15,000 lire for lunch! I did manage to eBay a few items to lighten the load. My old Garfield comic books were hilarious when I was eight, but are now sliding into Fred Basset territory and are interestingly becoming the target for increasingly creative post-modern critiques. I flogged them off for forty bucks and now I've started sizing up everything around the house, weighing it, making mental notes to check the average eBay price, wondering if my folks would really miss this or that. I can't find a reliable buyer for the fourteen conference bags, however.

The best part is that we're in. Step one to Queensland is the most pleasant. Living in a place with an actual garden and in which you can't hear Cantonese soap operas between 11pm and 7am is truly the meaning of happiness. Throw in a loving parent, adequate bench space and the thrilling access to more sunlight than a winter in north Finland and you have a heady combination. Mele and I traipse around the house in blissful ecstasy, skipping down the hallway and spinning around in the middle of rooms, arms outstretched crying to one another 'Look! I'm not touching anything!'

Ahead of us we have much to look forward to:

* Finding a place to live on Bribie Island which isn't either a temporary carpark or the rented-out cavity under a Queenslander.
* Acquiring transport which will fit more than one person and a second pair of undies (hopefully a station wagon).
* Continuing PhD research remotely and from the various as-yet-unsuspecting university libraries of Brisbane.
* Fishing.
* Finding some kind of employment up there that doesn't involve faeces.


Wish us luck and please join us on our travels. I promise more rambling anecdotes, run-on sentences, pleading for charity, self-indulgent photos, videos of questionable taste and value and a slightly-embellished account of what happens when two writers embark upon a journey north to a place where almost everybody is retired, although, let's hope, not retiring.

*Not a guarantee.

***
GTH - The winner is the largely brilliant, yet puzzlingly scoreless, Brocky, not for guessing that the header was a picture of me as a child used to symbolise the assumed age of most of those who enjoy the comic arts, but for linking the brilliant xkcd in one of its many well-timed, perfectly-weighted, nerd-alert pieces. Before T.O.o. Sam did. Brocky, welcome to The Board.