meh to the new year

Seriously, I don't get the new year hype. New's Years is just an excuse to woot it up and being that I have two babies and no *real* friends (cept for Loo who'll be partying it up tonight, and Disso who lives a bazillion miles away).... well... sorta makes the woot'ing very non-wootful lol.

I was thinking the other day that the whole friend and family thing is a myth. It's all temporary cos people change over time. Either your friend changes in some way - either their lifestyle changes or they move or get married or have kids or get depressed or, heck, get happy lol - or you do. The two things that top the list of the friendship-breakers are 1. getting divorced (holy crap yes... friends will drop like flies when it comes to a relationship breakdown) and 2. having a baby. People are soooo self-centred, its true, but only hard core dedicated friends will put up with nappy changes and extended wait times (while you're doing baby stuff) and all the limits on where you can go and what you can do. Movies, yes. Clubbing... yno. For some reason the bouncers won't let you take a newbie baby with you to the bar. Whats with that.

All of which goes to make net buddies so much easier. Friends you make on the net aren't limited by one's babydom... not really anyway. You just go afk a bit lol. And net friendships aren't affected by things like divorce or marriage or new jobs. And yet... they may feel real but they're not *real*. Sorry Kus... you're not real lol. :P

You know... sometimes I love the net bud thing and sometimes I frickin hate it. This week I hate it lol.

Hmmm. Rambling about nothing again? Where was I? Oh yeah.. new years.

New Years is pfft and meh and all those other meaningless phrases. And yet I still want to make some new years resolutions. So here goes...

• Get rich. Um... lotto or something. Woot!
• Move. We so don't fit in this house and there's really nothing keeping us on the sunny coast cept for my kids. Gotta sort out the custody arrangements with my ex and then move I think.
  
• Get my body back. Atm I'm so depressed and stressed I don't give a toss if I'm a size 8 or 10 or a size freakin 20. I don't care. I just had two pregnancies in a row, both of which entailed complete bed rest and I'm still in the high risk stroke zone so I barely give a flying fk. But while I'm all like "meh its only 5kgs" everyone else is all "ewwww". I'd like to tell em all to gtfo but I guess instead I'll just do the whole boring diet/exercise thing. Frickin shallow people.
• Work or study. Something. Need to do something. I realise I have no babyfree time but heck... I'm quite literally losing myself in washing and cleaning and nappy changing.
• Get on top of my emotions. I don't know if its the stress or the depression or the health crap, or maybe all of them combined, but I'm sick of being emotional. I despise weakness and vulnerability lol. And yet here I am cycling from depression to anger with small burts of ok-ness in between. Too many thoughts, too many feelings, its just too much most of the time. I must be terrible to live with lol. Pity my family.
• Maybe play WoW less... maybe. Thats a hard call. It's my escapism lol. At least in WoW I'm leet. :D
  
• Sort out my marriage problems. A toughie. I'm lost as to what the right thing to do is. On the one hand I don't want to be in stress-filled relationship where I feel like crap most of the time, but on the other hand... I like living by myself, all that personal space... but I'm not eager to be a single parent again, certainly not with the two babies. Besides, I can still remember the utter loneliness I felt last time... no thanks.

Wow. An honest post for a change. I was gonna make new years resolution jokes... not sure what went wrong there lol.

I think my main new years resolution should be to simply find my "self" again lol. Such a cliche but true. I want the old easy going, flexible, fun, risk-taking, happy, psycho jo back. She's gotta be around here somewhere lol. Maybe I should check behind the tv where all the other missing things tend to go.

So this is Christmas, and what have you done, another year over, and a new one just begun

Hmm. So thats another christmas and another year gone I guess. Is it just me or does time seem to be speeding up?

Thats my whole blog.

Not much else to say.

Ate too much, drank too much, giggled online too much (apparently lol), talked to the family too much, hid from the family by using the old "must go feed the baby upstairs" excuse too much... basically just did everything too much lol. And now I have a head ache. Although thats probably got something to do with the whole drank-too-much bit.

In other news... I think you were right Kus. A fake woot that feels like a real woot only after beer is added probably has the makings of a fake woot by the end of the day. Wow you Americans aren't so dumb after all, go figure.

Oh and, yeah, my head hurts. Woest me.

10 Alana-specific baby facts

Baby blob @ 4 weeks

1. She needs to grow into her huge round cheeks in much the same way a Great Dane puppy needs to grow into its over-sized paws.
2. Her nick should be fart girl... she's so loud that she makes Noah laugh.
3. She's actually little and skinny and not the budda baby she appears to be in this photo.
4. Similarly, her hair is darker than it appears here.
5. I think her eyes are gonna be blue, dammit... *swears*
6. Her hair... hmm. It has this whole standing straight up tendency. I think she needs a heavier shampoo lol.
7. She not only looks like a little monkey, she constantly grunts and groans like an animal too. Constantly. I've gotten used to it now but for the first few days it used to keep me awake lol.
8. She's currently average length and weight for her correct gestational age i.e. 37 weeks. But her head is a tad smaller than average... a fact which is made up for in cheek size I think. *points to fact #1*
9. Speaking of growth... she's gone up a whole dress size already! She now fits her 0000 clothes perfectly! Woot, no more tiny baby in giants clothing!
10. So far I like this one. She might not be the cutest baby on the block but I think I might keep her anyway. I'm getting soft in my old age lol. :D

Forget Santa, forget over-indulgent food, forget exy gifts... the thing I could never survive christmas without is panadol

Joey, you'll survive Christmas by Rolling in Commercialism

Gifts. Gifts. Gifts. That's what the season's all about. Sure, friends and family are great. The food? Delicious. But when it comes to celebrating the holidays, you say, "I love you," with a thoughtful and expertly-wrapped present...and you expect the same in return.

Call it nostalgia, the fun and festivities make you revert to childhood — where waking up at 5:00 am meant you'd be the first to tear into your goodies beneath the tree. Now that you're older, you get that same joy from last-minute shopping sprees and sure, waking up at 5:00 am to tear into your goodies. It's only once a year, so enjoy it while you can!

Hmm. I'm not sure I like Tickle anymore lol. I swear I'm not a gimme-a-present-or-i'll-remind-you-forever-and-ever type of person... honestly. Grr.

Christmas for me is just a time for family and friends to eat, drink and be merry. Thats it, simple. And by family and friends I mean only the real ones, the ones I like. The others can nick off lol. Christmas is about the kids... their excitement etc. The rest is all bullshit.

Christmas... pfft. Anyone want to escape it by running away to a secret tropical island just for, say, all of December? Except of course I'd need to get my pre-baby body back before I could go sit on a beach, sigh. Oh well. Wanna book an island for next year then?

... its me, and I can't get myself to go away... unfortunately lol

Check out the newbie @ 3 days old

I guess I've not blogged in a while. The last two months or so have been a tad hectic, what with the unexpected-early-by-almost-8-weeks arrival of the newest addition to our brady bunch-ish brood... the 2kg+... who just hit 3kg, woot!... Alana. Yippee, a girl! If I hadn't just given birth I would have jumped off the bed and given a Tom Cruise on Oprah style woot. You know, the whole jumping up and punching the air "I'm so in love" crap. Only not the love crap, the baby girl crap. So it would have been more like... *jumps up, punches air, and says Yes! No penis!* Imo, the male appendage is way over-rated.

Where was I? Got carried away rambling... shock.

Yes, the baby. Alana. Born. 4 weeks ago last Friday. Damn, we should have had a birthday party for her. Cake, balloons... Noah would have loved it. A monthday party, no a firstmonthday party... or something like that.

Speaking of Noah - he's playing the role of big brother quite well so far. No jealousy really. He's very loving and caring towards the bebe. He's a little TOO interested if you get my point. Constantly wants to hug her, tries to pick her up, tries to give her toys, his bottle, wants to share her dummy... and so on. He even tries to run his toy trains and cars and stuff over her as if she were a train track! Oh and he likes to "help" by pushing her swing faster. "Help". Hmm. But yeah, we don't need a baby monitor cos he hears even the slightest noise she makes and goes off running in the direction of her cot. He's like our little alarm system lol.

Older kids are good too. They were a godsend on the morning that I went into labour and my waters started leaking, like, everywhere, and I kept telling myself that I couldn't be in labour... where was I? Oh yeah, the kids. Thank goodness the kids were here lol, and not at their fathers. It was 7.30am and we were almost ready to leave for school when I started leaking watery shit everywhere. Like, wtf. Childbirth is seriously unpleasant. So my mate Laura who was our scheduled "look after Noah during the birth" person just happened to not be local... she was housesitting up north for her jetsetting mother lol. So my 11 and 8 yr old (thank goodness they're responsible... ish... well the girl is lol, no comment on the sometimes-responsible, sometimes-stupid-and-silly boy) looked after Noah for an hour or so while we raced to the hospital and Laura raced to our house. Eek. If the kids weren't there... omg, Noah in the delivery room... omg... Mind you, the kids got a day off school so they weren't complaining. And they were able to see Alana within minutes of being born (well, ok, maybe 45 mins or so... and it was only through the glass of the special care unit where all the sick and premmy babies go lol). But the point is, they got to see her straight away, ish.

Anyhoo... did I mention the baby was born lol? She was really healthy considering her prematurity - and in childbirth terms, the birth was a breeze. Waters broke at 7.30am, I finally realised at 8am that with constant 5min apart contractions I would have to wake WK up and get to the hospital asap, so we left at 8.05am after WK vomited on the front lawn lol, with lightning speed arrived at the hospital about 8.25... and so on. She was born at 9.25am, woot. Only an hour really. Hour and a half if you count the early labour.

Funny but gross story... I was leaking watery shit everywhere, like, everywhere (I might have mentioned this already lol). I got in the car with only underwear on and my shorts in hand. I actually stood up and put my shorts on after getting out of the car at the hospital front entrance lol. I didn't give a shit who was there and tbh couldn't remember if there was 1 person or 50 people standing there lol. Knowing my luck, probably 50. And then... the slow walk through the hospital, up the lift, etc... the watery crap was running so badly you could literally see my footsteps through the hospital lol. How disgusting is that! Hilarious in retrospect but yeah, gross. When we arrived at the birthing suite, the admin girl behind the desk was someone I knew so the first thing I said was "Oh Sam, I've leaked watery crap all through the lift and the hospital, someone might fall over". Cos yeah, I had a huge leak in the lift lol. Not "blah blah, my name is blah blah and I'm only blah blah weeks pregnant and blah blah". Nope, I told her about the watery womb juice that was spread from one end of the hospital to the other lol. Gross.

So, since the birth... Alana only stayed in the special care unit for 2 weeks despite their whole "she'll be here for a long time" attitude. She was healthy and feeding well so wtf leave her there lol. The midwives basically convinced the doctors of this point and helped us get her home faster. And she's fine, good, growing. Sleeps better than Noah did... actually, some nights she sleeps better than Noah does now lol. I think he has my insomniac genes. Might have to get him some... crap, memory loss, word blank... what are those sleeping pills called again? Meh, you get the point lol.

My health, sigh, is still not quite right. I'm still in the risk zone for blah blah *insert doctor ramble here* and I'm still taking my bp meds. Stupid doctors lol. I have to wait a few weeks and then do the whole barrage of tests and craps again... the same stuff that we do after each pregnancy lol. When are they gonna realise just to give up? Heck. Like I said to a mate yesterday, sometimes I wish this brain tumor would just burst and get it over with. Not that I have a brain tumor lol, but maybe I should. At least that would explain both my health crap AND my occasional psychoticness. Stress, depression... pfft to those! Brain tumor ftw. Sigh. My bad. Apologies blah blah.

Hmm, where was I? Oh yeah, we bought Alana home and have been busy settling her in. Atm I'm trying to do a heap of spring cleaning before christmas hits, but its hard when I only get brief moments of time between all the kids (yes, ALL the kids, WK included) to get things done. For 3 days now all of the furniture has been moved away from walls and everything is picked up and piled up on everything else cos, dammit, I'm gonna clean the walls. I get a bit further in my preparation each day lol, maybe today I'll actually get to start cleaning them lol. I think it'll be 2008 before I'm finished... and I've already told the family that there will be no christmas until its done, no tree, no anything... so maybe I'll save some $$ this year lol.

Sigh. I remember - vaguely - when life was fun and interesting and about more than just cleaning house and changing nappies and breast feeding and driving kids here and there. Oh the memories. :P

Christmas huh. I wish we could afford to go away. Actually, I want to move lol. Somewhere like Perth. That'd be good. I'm into escapism lol. *hands WK job ads for Tasmania and WA and Timbuktu*

On a positive note, Noah's getting some really cool presents this year, including a train set and a big ride-on thomas the tank engine car type of thing. He's gonna literally wee himself with excitement me thinks. I'm still hoping to get the kids a computer (amongst other stuff lol), but not sure hows that coming along. But tbh thats sorta a present for me as well cos it'll get them off my damn computer lol. Woot! And I won't have to put up with my daughter standing over my shoulder every time I do get a chance to sit at the pc... yep she just stands there and "waits". Sigh.

I guess I gtg. Alana's awake and whingey, Noahs trying to pick her up and getting distressed cos I said no... and now he's on WK's computer chair destroying everything on his desk lol. And meanwhile the walls are waiting for me, sigh. I wish I had WK's sleep ability. Just snore and fart and sleep through every sound - fire alarms included - until you've had your sleep quota and you're all refreshed. Sigh.

Fark, in the time it took me to type that paragraph Noah has made the biggest mess lol. More sighs.

I'll make an effort to take a new photo of Alana and post one up here just for you Disso... lol. I'll try anyway - its hard work walking all the way to the car to get the camera, and then recharging the batteries, and then finding time to take a photo and upload it and post it here... see, hard work! :D

meh

Ok so I've been to sunny - very sunny - central queensland and back. Did I mention the "very sunny" bit? Heck it was hot and dry. No earthquakes tho.

Sooo many funny things happened on the way there, the way back, while I was there... *points to Craigsy*... but as per usual I can't quite remember all those great blog ideas now I'm sitting in front of the pc. Sigh.

What I can remember -

• Cows everywhere, namely the one poor sod of cow who had its head stuck out of the side of a cattle truck. As if it were a dog with his head stuck out of the window of a moving car lol. And not on the safe side of the road mind you, but the scary "omg another truck could come past and whack, instant bbq meat" side of the truck. Poor cow. I wanted to keep him.
• Dog hair.. yep, dog hair. Disso has these two beautiful big long haired dogs... and omg you've never seen so much dog hair in your life ever. Still... I'd like a dog lol. Just one a bit smaller and with a lot less hair. A lot less, lol.
  
• The hilariously funny and hilariously gay male flight attendant on the way home. Gosh he was funny... kept telling jokes and little stories and stuff. And then - long story - when we were stuck on the landed plane for an hour just 10metres from the damn terminal... he offered to do a cabaret style dance routine to entertain everyone. Lol. I wish he had... I was gonna video it on my phone lol. Anyhoo, it was one of those "you had to be there type of things" I guess.
• The Rocky hospital has a giant - huge, simple lettering, gigantic - sign that says Rockhampton Hospital at the top of the main building. What the? I'm still trying to work out whether the sign is designed to remind the locals where they are (cos lets face it - inbreeding) or to make sure the helicopters land at the right place (well, the pilots are probably locals too lol). And btw... Rocky's a small ish town and there's only one hospital. Its not like you could get confused. Heck, even the out-in-the-sticks hospital where Disso lives only has a little "normal" hospital sign. It seems as if the miners are smarter than the Rocky locals - and if you've ever met a coal miner, thats a truly amazing feat.
• It was sooo hot and dry one day that as we drove Craigsy around, we kept noticing hoses everywhere. Any stream of water was like some type of mirage'y thing. From kids playing with a hose in their front yard to people watering their driveways and curbs (yep, it seems these country people actually want their cement to grow, I guess they hate mowing)... it was one of those "can't look away" type of things. Argh, give us a hose! In fact, give us YOUR hose now!
  
• I slept sooo much. Like, 12 hours a day. I think I slept more in 3 days than I do in 2 weeks, seriously. And I had all these weird assed twisted dreams, many of which were set in the nearby mining town where I spent a portion of my childhood. I'd wake up and think, wow I should go visit... but, meh, cbf. The dreams were enough lol.
  
• I read a book, two books in fact, but this one book in particular was really good - Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz. I highly recommend it lol. I did cry a few times reading it, but mostly it was just damn well funny. On the book jacket it actually says "horror", but... no way lol. The ending was silly and way too cliche, but thats ok. I never remember the endings of movies/books/etc anyway lol. Give me a month and I'll be like, how did that book end again?
• It "rained" one afternoon, and all the townspeople were talking about the "rain". And I use quotations because this "rain" included about 15mins of wind, 1 thunder clap, no lightning, 3 clouds and about, hmm, 2minutes of spitting rain. Wow. Rain... lol. Shivers, when it rains at home it pours frickin cats and dogs for days on end. That reminds me, I so need to buy a dryer before this next baby arrives by stork... that is what happens, isn't it? Be damned if I'm doing the birth thing again.

*yawns* tired.

I took way too long to write this blog lol. Theres heaps of other stuff but, meh.

I know, I know

Yeah, I've been blog ignorant of late. But its not my fault. I blame, well, everyone and everything except me.

To recap -

• I am still wow addicted. I now have a 70 lock, 70 mage and a 40 priest. Oh, and I just made another character lol, a little lvl 5 rogue. For when I get bored.
  
• Speaking of World of Warcraft, our guild leader Strag made a not so exciting wow video (for a first attempt at a vid it's pretty good lol) and uploaded it to youtube - The Boxer-World of Warcraft
  I mention it here cos my succubus is in it lol. She's one of the whores in old town... so I'm semi famous. My warlock Lileek is even mentioned in the credits, woot!
  
• We're over the scary hump of 28 weeks with this pregnancy... oh and we had an ultrasound yesterday in which it appeared that blob either has 1. a vulva or 2. a really small scrotum and even smaller penis. Either or. It wasn't clear enough to be decisive lol. According to WK the baby has girly lips like Angelina Jolie, so maybe it is a girl. Fingers crossed. Either that or I had a secret affair with Angelina. Meh, anythings possible.
  
• Baby Noah is not really a baby anymore. He's walking and even attempting to run... altho the toddler thing... he falls if he tries to run lol. He says a host of words like mum and dad and laura and toot toot and blll for ball. Oh and Dadada in a singsong voice for Dorothy the dinosaur lol.
  
• WK hasn't divorced me... yet. I'm sure its coming one day lol. I don't think I'd like to live with me - living with my daughter (who's way too much like me) is bad enough. :P
  
• I'm heading up to visit Disso in good ol' sunny central qld soon ish. A holiday in the sticks. Oh well, its not like I can afford to go to Disneyland lol. I mean, Blackwater does have some sort of theme park doesn't it? No? A water park? No? A beach? No? A cool shopping centre? No? A cinema? No? Sigh. Damn, and I've already booked the flights.
  
• Noah still loves Thomas the Tank Engine and the Wiggles... and I'm sick sick SICK of both of them. The Thomas dvds are full of phrases like "if I promise to go slow and take care can I be Edward's back engine?" and "blow harder Percy" and "you wouldn't be laughing if you were stuck in the middle"... point is I can't keep a straight face lol. Yeah yeah, dirty mind and all that. But are the English REALLY that naive they don't notice the double meanings in the Thomas dialogue lol?
  

Speaking of naive and disneyland... I stumbled onto this pic on the Moth's blog. All I can say is "umm". I always knew there was something a little strange about Donald Duck lol.