Smokey the Magnificent

Tonight, the snortlepig upended a piping hot bowl of Hungarian goulash over my bare feet. Judges of human nature might be interested to note that, while Flatmate Man leaped to get a cloth to wipe said goulash off my scalded feet, Helpdesk Man sat stolidly on the window seat, chewing goulash and staring into space in a thoughtful manner. So nice to have a spouse who is above the mundanities of everyday life.

Would you rather die at the age of forty-one, or 110? I asked this question tonight at singing group and got a range of answers (well, two, although one seditious individual did attempt to divert the conversation by asking if we would choose to live to 1000, if we stopped ageing at 50. A foolish, futile question). I am inclined towards forty-one, although that could be the crippling depression speaking. Alzberger’s, as my small sister calls it, is no matter for chortles.

There is a stink bug on the ceiling. Friend Stink Bug, I call it.

1. OK, so there’s one thing I don’t get in The King’s Speech. It was established early on that Bertie didn’t stutter if he couldn’t hear himself speak - when he was listening to loud music, for instance. So why didn’t they just clap a set of headphones on him while he was making the speech at the end? Obviously it wouldn’t have been a workable solution for real-life occasions, but for the on-air wartime stuff, wouldn’t it have been simpler than making him suffer through it? Marvellous movie, but I think this was an oversight. Also, I don’t know why that radio broadcast had to be live in the first place. People wouldn’t have known.

2. I made a chicken dish tonight that tasted like it had bacon in it, but it didn’t. Isn’t that fascinating? Our cast iron frying pan does tend to retain flavours, but the previous meal cooked in it was fish. I don’t know.

3. I have started doing Hypnobabies. It is… interesting. Particularly when the Joyful Pregnancy Affirmations CD includes such Affirmations as “My iron levels are high”. What is it supposed to accomplish, I wonder? I know people can psychosomatically alter their blood pressure - there’s some surgeon bod who talks to patients during surgery, and tells them they need to get to 120/60 or whatever, and apparently they comply surprisingly often - but their iron levels? It seems to me that Affirming they were high might just prevent a woman from buying much-needed Floradix; so I’m not sure I approve. Also, the childbirth education guide that comes with the CDs includes a pregnancy diet based heavily on Brewer, and specifying four cups of dairy a day; and that just boggles my tiny mind. Still, the CDs are relaxing (although really, I could listen to death metal these days and still fall blissfully asleep).

4. If I ever have twin boys, I want to name them Basil and Thrip.*

5. As of yesterday, I am an aunt once more. Sister-in-law gave birth to a large, smallish child, whom the snortlepig has now visited twice in the birthing centre. All seems to be going well, except that the first time we visited we couldn’t see his face, on account of he was having the milks; so I asked sister-in-law who he favoured and she said “Oh, he looks a little bit like [Nephew Pig], but he has funny nostrils like y - I mean, um, heh”. And I was all “Is it”, but seeing as she had just given birth I forgave her. Upon inspecting his nostrils on the second visit, they are perfectly snortly; I don’t know what she was talking about. Anyway, we’re not genetically related.The pig also pointed out solemnly that he had no arms, but his parents insist they were just wrapped up in the swaddle; I suppose time will tell.

The snortlepig likes the new pig pretty well and gives it kisses on the head, but seemed disappointed there was only one of him, and more interested in his crib (”a tiny, TINY bed!”) than his personage.

That isn’t him. It’s a thrip.

6. Can parents override the Sorting Hat? If I sent my small, niceish child to Hogwarts and he got put in Slytherin, you can bet I’d be sending a strongly-worded owl to the management. Surely they would understand.

7. Helpdesk Man and I have been watching 30 Rock, which is greatly amoosing. Best line: someone mentioned the Solomonic “cutting the baby in half” thing to Tracy Jordan, who responded without missing a beat, “And I would choose the top half, for that is the half with the face!“, and I was like “Right on”. Incidentally, the word “solomonic” sounds ironically like a euphemism for dull-wittedness. Innit? A somnolent moron. And yet, “somnolent” sounds kind of wise. It’s a funny old world in which we live.

8. Would you rather die of an embarrassing boil, or be pesked to death by a bat? This question is not a new one; I formulated it some weeks ago and have been arguing with Helpdesk Man ever since. He insists that he could vanquish any bat; I have pointed out that a) that isn’t a possibility under the terms of premise, b) there could be plenty of extenuating circumstances in which one was unable to defend oneself against a bat, such as being tied to a tree, and c) for all we know, the Columbian Mega-Bat has yet to be discovered. The argument eventually grew tangential, with Helpdesk Man and myself deciding to produce a major motion picture about a mad scientist who created a giant mechanical bat, which then got loose and terrorised Tokyo. The title? I, Robat. And it will be awesome.

Anyway, even the shame of being defeated by a regular, smallish fruitbat would surely be less than being known to all posterity as the girl who died from a boil on her *sotto voce* bottom? My sister once had a teacher who was out of school for months with blood poisoning after she picked a pimple on her nose - or was it her chin? - and that must have been bad enough. Discuss.

*It’s funny if you garden. Basil repels thrip.

Here’s the thing about the snortlepig: she dances. Always has done. When she was but a tiny pig, too small to stand alone, we took her to a screening of Mamma Mia! and she spent the whole time bouncing up and down on my knees, beaming her tiny head off. Now she is less tiny, she wages a never-ending campaign to watch ballet on YouTube, and copies all the moves for hours at a time. A talented pig. Put a Smokey in a well-equipped kitchen with some cream cheese and a vanilla bean and she is in her tiny element; put the pig in proximity to a tuneful beat and she is in hers. It is a thing marvellous to behold, not least because Helpdesk Man and her mother can barely scratch their noses between them.

So anyway, being a good or at least a guilty mother, I finally got around to signing her up for toddler dance classes, so as not to stunt her tiny dreams just in case Bolshoi requires a CV dating back to the age of two. It is, sadly, called Fizzin’ Fairies and Ballerinas, and is a weekly half-hour class designed to let 2.5-4-year-olds prance around in costume in a low-key way. Super, thunk I. I had a moment of doubt when the director told me that mothers had to stay in the other room and observe through a Viewing Window, but figured we could plow through it.

Today was the first lesson. We arrived a tad late, me still getting the hang of how long it takes to drive anywhere. I popped a fairy dress on the pig, shunted her through the door and scuttled to the Viewing Window in order to beam at her supportively, getting several strange looks from other parents in the process. Unfortunately the snortlepig is occasionally not the brightest star in the cinema firmament, and upon being faced with all of seven toddlers in fancy dress, backed herself into a corner in which she was unable to see me and began to weep. The director led her out and kindly allowed me to enter the inner sanctum, which I did (enduring more faintly hostile stares from the other parents in the process. Why?)

For the first fifteen minutes the snortlepig sat tidily beside me with a faintly disapproving, I-am-above-all-this air. We watched as the other toddlers waved plastic-bag pompoms in the air, danced with scarves, walked around on their tippy-toes, touched their noses, wiggled their hips, and did other weedy things to which YouTube ballet playlists never stooped. “Do you want to go dance with the girls?”, I would ask occasionally, and the snortlepig would kindly say “Later” and adhere more closely to the floor. Occasionally she would perk up a bit and say “I like her stripy dress!” or “She has a BLUE skirt!”, but she showed no inclination to participate.

Then the director put on a Hi 5 song, of much rhythm and catchiness. The snortlepig started to look interested, so I hauled her to her feet and whispered encouraging words. After a few tentative pirouettes, she was OFF. It was an inspired performance, doubtless helped along by the wall of mirrors in which the pig rather fancied herself. She twirled, she did high kicks, she waggled her hips, she did some kind of vaguely hip-hop inspired moves I have never seen before; all with an incredible Use of Space and a serene disregard for the rest of the class, who were meekly sitting in a circle pointing their ballerina feet.It was, to say the least, obtrusive.

Unfortunately I was then torn between being pleased that the pig was indeed dancing at dance class, and guilt that she was utterly ignoring the teacher, not to mention obstructing the Viewing Window. Knowing the pig, interrupting her dance was not likely to lead to anything good, so I compromised by sitting in the corner in a fit of giggles while she sashayed across the floor.

When the class was over - much to the pig’s aggrievement - I apologised profusely to the director for the pig’s unsocialised rampaging. “That’s OK”, she said. “Sometimes it takes them a few weeks to get warmed up. She improved a bit by the end, though.” And I was all “Improved? She pwned you, noobs!“, but it didn’t seem like quite the thing, so we tromped back down the stairs and came home. On the way, several parents gave us vaguely dirty looks again; but the pig was in a state of blissful achievement and did not notice.

So, yeah, that driving test. Well, the good news is that until the last ten seconds of the test I had 91%, and had in fact passed. The bad news is that while parking at the conclusion of the test, I panicked and kindasortaslightly bumped the car next to me, which is a thing I never do; whereupon the tester muttered a world-weary expletive and said “Come inside, we need to have a little chat”. (The car was fine, by the way. There was a young lady in it who found the incident amoosing, and was fortunately able to reassure the tester that the scratches above the wheel had been there earlier and were not made by me.) Anyway. Some other bod had cancelled his appointment for next Wednesday, so I shall get to take it again fairly soon; but still though. And the particularly peeving part is that she nearly didn’t let me take the test at all, again, because our registration card thingy was out of date; I explained that we’d updated it but the new one hadn’t arrived yet, and showed her the receipt, but she hmmed and hawwed and eventually oosed back into the AA to print out a new one; but it was a close thing. Also, apparently I coast too much. And I think I was a bit jerkier than usual with my gear changes, again on account of Nerves; not that she was going to fail me for that, though. 91%, as I say. So there it is.

Let us talk of happier things. Did you know a study has shown that women with D-cup or larger breasts are on average 10 IQ points smarter than women with A- or B-cups? This intrigues me. I read it in a book. Also, I am shortly about to make mango sorbet. And yesterday I finished knitting the back piece of a wraparound kimono-type top for the Auxiliary Pig. Also, the snortlepig calls me “flatcheeks”.

I was going to put up a photo of a spectacular car crash, just to put things in perspective, but on reflection it seems a tad tasteless. So here’s a tortoise instead.I bet he wouldn’t bump the sides of another tortoise while parking, even if very nervous. And yet, certain subspecies of the species are endangered. So it just goes to show.

Did you know there are different kinds of chopsticks? Chinese ones are square at the end you hold them, and round at the pointy end; Japanese ones are shorter and pointier; and Korean ones are flattish and rectangular. One can also obtain training chopsticks, which are held together at the end like tongs. This is a thing I did not know before.

Tomorrow I am having my 20-week ultrasound to check on the sex, wellbeing and possibly numbers of the Auxiliary Pig. The snortlepig is enthusiastic about the prospect, although I’m not sure she’s quite grasped it - she thinks the Auxiliary Pig will be wearing clothes, and that we’ll be able to see it smiling. She remains adamantly convinced that it is a boy; as do two Filipino couples from church, who feel it is my moral duty to produce one; and my brother-in-law, for reasons he is keeping enigmatic. Myself, I do not like to venture a guess, as my maternal instincts have proven in the past to be completely off the wall. It makes me feel a bit left out on Mothering.com, on which everyone knows their child’s sex and middle name from the night she was conceived, preferably in a Vision or Dream; but there it is. Anyway, if the snortlepig had fulfilled the dreams I had while gestating her, she would have been a) quadruplets and b) stolen from the hospital immediately after the birth. Which might have been a blessing, really, at least if the thief had been kind enough to leave one of her.

My health, thank you for asking, is creeping slowly back from the abyss. Today we ate sprouted French lentils for lunch, made by me; and I then went for a walk to buy groceries, made vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce, kneaded bread dough and baked a banana cake. To be sure, I then had to go lie down and eat a great quantity of olives; but it is Progress. Hopefully soon I will summon up the oomph to begin knitting.

Ooh, yes, I was going to ask. What is the protocol for revealing the sex of one’s unborn child? We didn’t find out ahead of time with the snortlepig, so it was easy; I just got Helpdesk Man to do all the ringing around after I was born, and trusted to the natural garrulousness of a small church to fill in the (no doubt vasty) gaps caused by his antisocial nature. But what does one do when one finds out beforehand? Should it be announced with pomp and ceremony? Should the family be reverently gathered to hear the news in hushed and thrilling tones? Should one barter the information for sweetmeats? I do not know.

Life goes on. I still find myself getting dizzy and having to sit down every time I stand up. Doctors are flummoxed. It isn’t low blood pressure and it isn’t anaemia, or hypothyroidism, or gestational diabetes, or indeed poor potassium levels. I had ‘em checked. So I have been informed that it’s probably hormone-related and may or may not last for the entire nine months, but that if I continue to feel worse I should get checked out for mono and/or hepatitis C. Also, while the second trimester has not delivered the relief it oughta, it has endowed me with intermittent heartburn and pelvic girdle pain. So there’s that.

In other, potentially more cheerful news, I am today sitting my restricted driver’s licence test. It is manly of me to admit it, as the custom among my family is to pretend one isn’t going to do it until one has passed, only to admit years later, once the sting has gone, that it was on the second try; but this is a weaselly attitude, and unworthy of a Smokey. If I fail, as is very possible, I shall darn well blog about it, and revel in the condolences of my friends (many of whom failed themselves the first time, and they’re much more savvy than me; so there you go. Of course, they were mostly like fifteen when they did it, which I am conspicuously not; but still though.) Plus, I need my father to drive me to the test.

Asking friends and family for advice on how to pass has proven to be an interesting exercise.

FRIEND WHO TEACHES BURLESQUE: Wear a low-cut top. Show a bit of leg. That worked for me.

LAID-BACK FRIEND WHO MEDITATES: Oh, you’ll be fine.

FRIEND WITH WHOM I DROVE ONE TIME, HAD TO PARALLEL PARK WITH REAL CARS FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND SHE SQUEAKED A LOT AND MUTTERED THINGS: [Don't know, too scared to ask]

FATHER: Oh, it all depends on who you get. There are some real rotters in the business; they fail you for anything. In Australia they always fail you the first time on principle. Just don’t take it personally. [This is, of course, a man who considered it his fatherly duty to tell me before the births of my little sisters that Mum might die in childbirth; before anybody had surgery, that they might die on the table; before my wedding, that most marriages end in divorce; before I had the snortlepig, that a lot of marriages break up after the birth of a baby; before Helpdesk Man started working from home, that most home businesses fail; and so on. It is his way.]

PREGNANT SISTER-IN-LAW: You should try some Hypnobabies techniques to relax you. Just don’t fall asleep.

FATHER-IN-LAW WHO MOSTLY TAUGHT ME HOW TO DRIVE: [doubtfully] Well, you’ve come a long way.

MOTHER: [tactful silence]

EHOW: Even if you’re not a makeup person, it’s vital to wear some matt foundation and a bit of lippy for your photo, or you’ll look washed out.You don’t want to cringe every time you pull your licence out to buy beer.

HELPDESK MAN: Honestly, stop being so negative! This is the problem with you, you never think you can do anything! If I thought like that, do you think I’d have started my successful home business, Information Highwayman? [He talks in hyperlinks. He really does.]

SNORTLEPIG: OOH, Mummy going for a DRIVING lesson! So clever! I come too?

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be one of those angsty blog posts where I wail about my directionless life and volumeless hair. As it happens, today I finished an article about child-led weaning, made dinner (to a certain extent) and did an hour of housework, making this one of my more productive days since Operation Auxiliary Pig commenced.

No, I’m actually falling to pieces. I was eating dinner and bit down on either a bit of rock salt or possibly a piece of burned potato (see above caveat re dinner), and a chunk - or cusp, as we say in the biz - of my back molar just up and left me. And I was like “Whoa”, and had to pause Wonderfalls - which is cool, but not as awesome as Pushing Daisies - and go and shove a hand mirror in my mouth.

I saved the tooth bit in an empty pill box full of milk, but I don’t imagine we shall be reunited. Oddly enough, it doesn’t hurt… kinda put me off my dinner, though. A brief Google search informs that it will probably be capped or filled. They’d better do something - I have a razor-sharp edge that could cut my tongue to ribbons if I held it at a really peculiar angle and waggled it about, and let’s face it, I most certainly will.

So… life, innit. Tralala. Flatmate Man thinks the auxiliary pig is leaching calcium from my teeth and causing the disaster, but that seems impressively speedy for a pig who has, like, a teaspoon’s worth of bones right now. Google said it could be caused by tooth-grinding, for which I blame the snortlepig, who has recently been behaving badly… and my mother, because once when I was a child - and lying on a motel bed, I recall, though I do not know where - I ground my teeth softly for the first time ever and Mother said “Don’t grind your teeth” and I was like “Whoa, that’s grinding your teeth?” and then did it for years. True story.

On the bright side, this has given me a good baby name: Cuspid.

Well, it’s been such a hideously long time since I blogged here that there’s no way I can segue back in gracefully, so I’m just gonna do it via a Facebook-esque pretend fill-in-the-blanks quiz. K? Also, I’m only here because I’m supposed to be writing an article on child-led weaning.

I have not blogged for a hideously long time because… if I can put it real subtle-like, Operation Auxiliary Pig is go. I am eleven weeks pregnant. The previous nine weeks - gestation calculation being a weird and tricksy beast - have largely been spent horizontal, dizzy and abject. On the upside, the snortlepig has come up with a brand-new euphemism for upchucking - “spitting one’s dogs”. As in, “You gonna spit your dogs, Mummy?”. Current aversions include the smell of the butchery and fish aisles, large wodges of protein that require much chewing, and John Travolta - although the latter aversion significantly predates the pregnancy.

Also, practically my only sister got married last Saturday, which joyous occasion required me to make a dress for myself, ideally one which hinted at pregnancy rather than lax diet; a sort-of-flowergirl dress for the pig (she being cute in the face, but not responsible enough to do anything as vital as walking down the aisle); and a clockpunk wedding cake the size of THE WORLD. In between attacks of low blood pressure, of course. The smell of dried fruit soaking in sherry is strangely calming to the tum - why do you think this is? And as it turned out, the wedding cake was far more enormous than it had to be, and the father of the groom accidentally left the remains in the trunk of his car for several days after the wedding, but apparently it was still good. A really groggy fruit cake has the survival capabilities of a Twinkie made of roaches, and that is a comforting thing.

Today I reached the pinnacle of happiness when… I discovered a whole new method for cooking chicken. In the past, I’ve either made chicken stock by using the carcass from a roast, or by buying some frozen chicken carcasses from the butcher. Either way is fine - stock, yummy, frugalish. But the other day I sent Helpdesk Man out to buy the carcasses - a manly kind of task - and in his innocence he came back with a $13.99 bag of frozen chicken portions. So I was like “!” and then “.” and decided to roast the lot. So I did that, and poured off the juices into a jug, and then shredded the meat off the bones and used the bones for stock. And aha! I now had delicious stock, and enough shredded chicken meat to make toasted sammies, fried rice and a chicken pot pie, plus snacks for the pig, and a jug of delicious, nommy chicken fat with a kind of demi-glace beneath. And when you consider that a single pair of moderately-cup-sized Boneless Skinless go for $10 on a good day, this struck me as No Bad Thing. I will do this again.

My Christmas preparations are… happening. Smug? Why, yes I am. Today I bought the snortlepig’s first two presents - a packet of those twirly drinking straws to celebrate her recent mastery of drinking from them, and a pair of scissors with bees on. She also wants a baby Christmas tree. Where does one buy a baby Christmas tree? Also, this year I SWEAR I WILL MAKE STOLLEN. For the past decade and a half I have spent every year saying “Ooh, I should make stollen” and not doing it, and it has become like unto a splinter in my mind, driving me mad. Similar situation with hot cross buns, actually, but I conquered that this year.

Tomorrow night I am going to… watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One, and eat a chicken Caesar salad at a nice-looking Italian restaurant. It is exciting. It’s a shindig for a friend’s birthday, but unfortunately she is inviting several friends I do not know, and they will probably be competent and scary and have coordinated handbags and haircuts that are actually styled, and maybe know secret things about bronzer that I do not. So I am naturally angsting about what to wear, and the pregnancy issue isn’t really helping; but in a fit of feminine competitiveness, I have decided to wash my hair. Only I was supposed to do it tonight and I forgot. I will, though. Probably. Or I could just pretend I had taken a vow.

The snortlepig is currently singing… “You Raise Me Up”. Only it’s “I am scared when I am on your shoulders”, which makes a deal o’ sense.

Today Helpdesk Man took the snortlepig to the toy library to return a wee pram she borrowed and get a new toy. When they returned, it turned out they had chosen another pram, complete with a nasty plastic baby who - against pretty much every ethic I possess - was not only (probably) chock-full of pthlates and made in a sweatshop, but circumcised and equipped with not one but two bottles. As the snortlepig fondly fed it from one of the bottles, I mustered my Mothering.com stamina and said “Piggie, don’t you think the baby should have the milks?” The pig (who still breastfeeds and has never had a bottle in her life, mind you) looked around vaguely, as if expecting to see a pair of severed plastic breasts, and then said kindly “Baby didn’t come with milks. Has nappies and bottles.” “Couldn’t you feed it from your milks?” I ventured. “No, Mummy”, said the pig tolerantly. “Bottles are better.”

Well, I tried.

When your snortlepig’s library book about Homes features a mole in a burrow and she has never heard of moles, being in the Antipodes, and says “Oooh, possum!”, do not do a Google image search for “mole” in order to give her a crash course on the species. You will see things you will wish you could unsee.