Five things

1. It's a glorious day here in our glorious city. After weeks of storms and rain and hail and lightning and general ew-ness, it's nice to be squinting into the sun again. The harbour looks radiant.
2. I despair at people sometimes. We're capable of incredible kindness, generosity, creativity and love. And then something like the balloon boy hoax happens.
3. Sweeney came and stayed at our place on Saturday night and gave me some insight into how children are crafty and will avoid going to bed with all manner of techniques, including quibbling over the distance the bedside lamp should be from the actual bed. I can remember my Nana and I having songs and stories in bed when I was little, and how I never wanted her to leave. Just one more Amazing Grace? I also loved getting into bed with her on cold mornings and snuggling up to her Oil of Ulan-smelling skin.
4. As part of Sween's staying over, we watched Finding Nemo. I hadn't seen it before. My new motto in life is keep swimming.
5. Only one week and two days before we move out of the cul-de-sac. I will be glad to not have to listen to our downstair neighbour doing his housecleaning at 2am anymore. Not to mention his other nocturnal activities.

I need to sleep

The final track on Pavement's Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, Fillmore Jive, has been running through my head all morning. It features a rather desperate sounding Steve Malkmus singing:


I need to sleep why don't you let me
I need to sleep why don't you
I need to sleep
I need to sleep
I need to sleep
I need to sleep, why won't you let me
I need to sleep
I need to sleep
I need to sleep
Why won't you, why won't you let me sleep?


He sounds so distraught and plaintive and his voice rises and soars like a little boy begging his parents. He sounds much like all of us in the cul-de-sac last night. Of course Malkmus is singing about coming down after a huge drug binge, not having a 17-month-old in the house who won't sleep anywhere but parked on Mum or Dad.
It's all come rather out of the blue. Harper's been ill for a little while with a cough and an ear infection, but after starting anti-biotics, he slept through the night just great for two nights. As he usually does. But Wednesday night after the funeral, he woke at 4am inconsolable. Not even a little bit sleepy, wanting to snuggle into us. After an hour of throwing our hands in the air not knowing what to do as Harper bawls his wee head off, I took him into bed with me and lay there with his bowling ball heavy head on my chest. He slept. I didn't.
Next night, same thing. He sleeps till 2am. Perplexed, we take him into bed again. Seeing a pattern here?
Next night. Won't go to bed. The boy who formally loved getting into bed with his special blanket and Mr Snuffy, now wants to sleep with us. Chaos ensues. He comes into bed with me. He sleeps. I don't.
Uh-oh. We've broken our formally good sleeper. And I have eye bags the size of suitcases.
So last night, after taking him to the doctor and making sure there is nothing actually wrong with him, we did what Plunket suggested - we put him in bed and let him try to get to sleep by himself. We took turns sitting in the rocking chair by his bed, and though he did get to sleep about 11pm, he woke at 2.15am and after an hour and a half of crying the Postie broke down and let Harper sleep with him on the chair. Even when I did manage some sleep, all I dreamt about were crying babies. And I spent a lot of time when H was asleep lying awake anticipating his next wake up call.
Man. This. Sucks. I want my good baby back.
Today I am as stupid as Stupid McStupidstupid's big brother Moron.

Weta are taking over our house ...

No, not the highly acclaimed animation company, but actual living breathing creepy crawlie weta. Earlier this week, I was feeding Harper at some hour in the morning when I happened to spy a pair of antennae waving around in one of the cubby hole things running alongside the change table. Closer inspection revealed a ginormous weta having a sip of gripewater from around the lid of the bottle. I duly woke the Postie to get rid of it.

Next night, after a rather terrible day of Harper getting zero sleep but still having the energy to scream the house down, the cat woke me up scratching at something amongst the piles of stuff in the spare room. What it was scratching at? A weta. I duly woke the Postie who chased it under the spare bed.

And then last night, as I lay dozing at some hour of the morning, wondering if the noises Harper was making were going to rev up to full blown hunger, I heard a scratching noise that I thought was Charlie coming in for the night. Then the unmistakable feel of legs skittering over my bare arm, then the revelation of a weta sitting quite calmly on the pillow next to me. I duly woke the Postie, who though he didn't have his glasses on and was in the middle of a rare deep sleep, managed to scoop it up in a towel and fling it outside.

There are only two other occasions I have been in the presence of weta. One clung to my leg as I showered in my Kilbirnie flat in 1998, last seen surfing towards the plughole. The other time was just last year when I interviewed weta expert George Gibbs at his Eastbourne house where he had weta 'hotels' nailed to various trees. They creeped me out big time. I just hope our house isn't becoming a weta hotel too.

To drink or not to drink?

It occasionally happens, that because you are a journalist and you know people who are journalists, you get asked for contacts or to comment on a story. Last week that happened to me, when my old pal Julie who now works for the Herald on Sunday asked me to comment on a story about drinking while pregnant, as she didn't know any other pregnant women. I said yes, and answered her questions by email. The story is centred on a pregnant woman ordering a light beer in an Auckland bar, and being told off by the barman. I was asked what I thought of that, and if I had had a tipple or two while pregnant.

Here's the whole story, but in a nutshell, this is what I said:

Pregnant women who spoke to the Herald on Sunday were divided on the issue.
Journalist Kimberley Rothwell, 34, said morning sickness meant alcohol was the
last thing on her mind for the first three months. Now, at 22 weeks, she has an
occasional glass of white wine.
"I know women who have had the odd drink
during pregnancy and have had perfectly healthy babies, so I'm not going to
freak out about a splash of wine here and there."
"I would be angry if a bar
worker told me I couldn't have a light beer. It's none of his business."

I can count on one hand the half glasses of wine I've had, with meals, in the last few months. They have always been a little celebration for me - a kir at Logan Brown, a splash in Noosa, a dribble with fish and chips on moving out of Moffitt Street. I've never been a big drinker - possibly haven't been drunk in years - the last time I was tipsy was at the Qantas Awards the week before I found out I was pregnant, and was told not to worry about all the champagne, oysters, mussels and other dangerous goodies I quaffed that night.

And yet, I'm "disgusting" and "idiotic" according to a letter writer to the Herald, which my friend Julie forwarded me this morning. The writer says that if women can't control themselves for nine months they have to ask themselves what kind of mothers they will be, and that women claiming the right to choose if they drink or not is "bullshit".

I think the letter writer has a point, and I've often thought things like 'I don't need that piece of blue cheese, and if it's a risk of listeria I'll stay away from it'. But what are the risks here? This is from Babycenter.com:

Drinking endangers your growing baby in a number of ways: It increases the
risk of miscarriage and stillbirth. As little as one drink a day can
increase
the odds for low birth weight and raise your child's risk for
problems with learning, speech, attention span, language, and hyperactivity.
And
some research has shown that expectant moms who have as little as one
drink per
week are more likely than nondrinkers to have children who later
exhibit
aggressive and delinquent behavior.

Ok, but I'm not talking about a drink a day, or a week. I'm not even talking about a drink a fortnight. And how big are these risks? One in ten? One in a hundred? The letter writer says that drinking while pregnant should be illegal, that women should provide as pure an environment for their unborn children as possible. So should wearing high heels while pregnant be illegal, because you may fall and miscarry? Should driving or being near roads be illegal? Should smoking while pregnant be illegal? Should not eating properly during pregnancy be illegal? Should pregnant women forfeit rights to their own bodies, and stay locked up away from any risks in the name of a pure environment? If anything, I should be hauled over the coals for the amount of sugar I've been consuming, not alcohol.

And in the end, isn't it me as the child's parent who has to bear the consequences of anything that happens to my child?

I'm going to be a great mother - my kid's going to be a great kid, and will have the most important things of all; love, love, and love. Cheers to that.

PS I would be really interested to hear what others think on this subject - feel free to comment ...

No comment!

A few months ago, someone commented on a post of mine about my flatmate and journalist extraordinaire Chris Bramwell and the TV show she hosted called Nailed Sorted Exposed. I was incensed that someone should make a personal attack on a friend of mine on my blog, and I said so in my response to that person. After all it's my blog and my rules apply.

Anyhoo, one of my every-now-and-then reads is The Dirtsailor's Observations - a blog kept by a member of the US military who recently 'served' in Afghanistan. I enjoyed his honest posts about being in the military, about being sent home to the States and others' attitudes towards him. I didn't often agree with his world view (America was delcared war on on September 11 etc) and was interested to learn about people who hold that view. However, recently he posted something that really made my spine tingle with fear and stress, like reading about wee Nia Glassie in Starship hospital. I posted a comment with an opposing view to his, but comments on his blog only appear if he wants them to, and so far, it hasn't appeared.

So my comment goes unacknowledged - which is his right, it's his blog after all isn't it? But it's made me pretty sad. It's almost like he doesn't want to acknowledge a different point of view from his exists. And isn't this one of the problems that got us in the situation with climate change, Iraq etc, that the world finds itself in? Call me a liberal moron, but am I wrong about this?

My house in the middle of a stampede

I’m starting to count down to the end of the university year, but I’m not a student. I just live under a herd of wilderbeests disguised as mild mannered uni students. One of them should take out a gold medal in Olympic stomping, and another who, though she is a wafer thin, short Asian girl, seems to be attempting to make holes in everything she walks on like she’s in a military parade. I’ve seen her walking down Aro Street using the same technique she uses on the floor inches above my head. Like a sledgehammer and woodpecker rolled into one highly irritating gait.

This is my first flat living under other people, and it can be stressful. I once lived in a flat above an old lady in Island Bay. The house didn’t get any sun until October and it seemed perpetually damp downstairs where she lived. I said hello to her the few times I saw her pegging out her parachute-sized underwear, but she only grimaced in my general direction. She was found dead sitting in her armchair one day, after a neighbour noticed she hadn’t opened her curtains in a few days. A friend of mine was her social worker – the old lady was schizophrenic – and my friend told me she would complain that the people living upstairs, that’s me and my partner, were trying to kill her.

When I hear that stomping starting to rev up in one of the bedrooms at the back of the house quickly approaching where my ceiling and their floor become the same piece of corrugated cardboard, I too think the people upstairs are trying to kill me. The pictures on the wall rattle, the little bottles of stuff on my dresser shake, and if I couldn’t actually hear the footsteps, I would think the big one was finally striking Wellington.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the girls upstairs. When I was sick with flu, they came down with a snickers bar, some roses and a paper doilie with get well wishes written on it. They’ve offered to feed the cat if I go away. One of the girls goes out of her way to chat when she sees me, and the Asian jackhammer is always really nice when she cames roaring past me on her way to uni in the mornings. When they had a party, they invited me up for dinner. I was going out, but when I got back, the party was in full swing with just-out-of-their-teens partygoers yelling random statements at each other from my front lawn. The dancefloor was right over my bed. I stayed at Matt and Nat's that night.

It just hasn’t occurred to them that having a mosh pit right over the small space where I sleep every night isn’t conducive to good neighbourly relations.

So I have made a decision. I’m going to drive them equally as mad. I’m to play Bad Guitar. I will practice really, really hard songs like some tricky Pavement or something, or maybe I’ll tackle Stairway to Heaven without tuning up first. I could borrow Martin’s amp and really give them a treat. Maybe I’ll sing along too. For hours at a time. It couldn’t hurt. It’s either that or one day they find my dead in my armchair with the curtains closed.

The Grizzler

Unbelievably, I was called a "grizzler" by a letters-to-the-editor writer for my review of Much Ado About Nothing, where I said I coudn't hear the outdoor performance over the sound of babies crying.

And another amazing thing - Nurofen Plus are the best painkillers I have ever used. Feeling kind of floaty...

Actually there is something worse than number 2 below - having to write a story about a couple getting engaged on Valentine's Day at 7am the next morning ...

All is quiet on Valentine's Day

Or, why Valentine's Day sucks
a short list by Special K

1. When you're in a relationship, it's quite uncool to expect some fuss on Valentine's Day, because then you're one of those women that husbands/boyfriends etc roll their eyes about when rushing to the Warehouse to buy roses the night before. It's also not cool to expect anything on Valentine's Day because you're bound to be dissappointed by those husbands/boyfriends who say things like "I don't need a special reason to tell my honey I love her" but never do anything special at any other time anyway. But with the amount of advertising and crap in the media about V Day it's difficult for us girls raised on fairy tale endings not to want at least a card in the mail.

2. When you're not in a relationship, there's nothing worse than one of your workmates getting flowers delivered at work, or your flatmate getting chocolates and a poem (as happened today), when all you have for Valentine's Day is getting perved at in the shower by your cat. No, actually, worse is getting asked by your dentist what you are doing for Valentine's Evening. Or listening to the smug marrieds talk about the romantic nights they are having ...

3. So you're damned if you're in a relationship, and you're damned if you aren't. Much easier to be in Cambodia where there is no such thing as the Valentine's Day Hell, and let it just pass by unnoticed.

If we took a holiday ..

I'm thinking of titling all my posts after songs from now on. That should last .. three days maybe? Prizes go to people who guess the song and artist, bonus points for guessing when it was released and what album it's from. Any takers on this title?
Anyway, today is Last Day of Work Before Holiday. That make Kimpy happy. Kimpy like sleep in morning.
This morning was fairly typical- excruitiating. It goes a little something like this:

5am - Charlie, who has been sleeping all night and day with brief spurts of extreme cuteness just before bed time, wakes up. Proceeds to pounce on non-moving creases in the duvet cover, my hair, face, bare back if I turn away from him. Makes little noises that could be translated as I'm bored, play with me. Where's breakfast? etc. High decibel purring.

6am - Alarm goes off. However, am already awake, see above. Bladder very full but fails to outweigh last nagging thoughts that there maybe a few seconds more sleep left to be had.

6.15am - Out of bed and into shower without opening eyes. Pour water on self, shampoo, rinse, do rest of sleep-deprived body, cry with tiredness.

6.30am - Greet perky flatmate. Make cup of tea in desperate hope it has cocaine in it. Beat Charlie off with a stick as he tries to eat jellimeat out of the packet as I feed him. Be ignored by Charlie if he likes that particular flavour, or have Charlie climb my leg in starvation if it's a cheaper brand than he can be bothered eating.

7am - Get in car. Listen to the end of the soporphic financial update on Morning Report, hear bird song, which signals I am late for work. Dodge enormous trucks at Burger King roundabout. Just close eyes and drive.

7.10am - 9am Stare at computer screen. Drink 18 more cups of tea. Avoid eye contact with chief reporter.

So on Friday morning, when it's 7am and I am still wallowing in bed, I will be very happy indeed.

Things I am going to do over the break:
1. Ride my bike over the Rahu saddle
2. Read the Journalist and the Murderer
3. Finish Chloe's christmas stocking
4. Go to the Reefton New Year's Eve races and eat a hotdog on a stick with sauce
5. Drink at the Inangahua Tavern where the red carpet is