Why it's hard to surf after a feed

I have forgotten how to surf.

I used to be quite good at it. I could do it for hours on end, as time seemingly stood still until at last I came up for air realising that I was suddenly hungry or cold. These days I can barely manage ten minutes at a time.

We’re talking internet surfing here. If you ask me, it’s not entirely my fault. The decline in my agility is largely the result of the feeds delivered by a mob of little round-edged squares. Using a secret password, these guys have infiltrated the mini computer in my handbag, which, in medieval times, was once used for calling people. The bosses, Frankie “fb” Baloney and Enzo “Insti” Gramma, have convinced me that I’m no good at it anymore, that I can’t choose my own adventure in cyberspace. Their power is so influential and far-reaching that I now seem to spend 90% of my time online looking at content they’ve arranged for me instead. And I, like a poor sucker paying protection money, thank them as I pay their ever-increasing costs. 

What really happens when role reversal becomes a reality

I’ve just finished my second week back at full time work since Seth was born nearly two years ago. So far, it has been awful.  Forget all that pie-in-the-sky talk about how I will work to support us while Tim will stay at home caring for our son and it will all be fine and dandy.  Turns out it’s not that rosy when it comes time to actually swap roles and responsibilities.

The first day of work was the worst.  For a pretty unemotional person, I was almost in tears leaving home at 8am, kissing my son goodbye and knowing I was no longer his primary care giver.  Are all working mothers evil and insane?, I thought. Because that’s what I felt like.

How to get that fresh New Year feeling all year round

Well it's now four days into the new year and that lovely feeling where everything is new and possibilities are endless is quickly starting to slink away into the dusty corner where it lives for 360 days of the year.

Something about the simple progression of the four numbers we write at the end of the date imparts us all with a fresh sense of wonderment, opportunity and imagination for what we can achieve, not just in the coming months but in our entire lifetime.

In the real world, nothing has changed since I went to bed on December 31st and woke up on January 1st. I still live in the same house, sleep in the same bed and eat the same food. The sun still rises and sets at around the same time and people all over the world still face the same trials and challenges that they faced the day before.

A loyalty scheme that rewards me for being me. It’s a supermarket’s bread and butter.

I just signed up for a supermarket rewards program. 

I hate rewards programs. I joined one in the past, but then I realised I needed 50,000 points to get a $29 blender and it would take me 45 years to accrue that many, by which time I would be 67 years old and could hopefully afford my own blender, not to mention the fact that the points would have expired after the first three years. So I cancelled my registration. I have even come to cherish the two seconds of freedom and wind blowing through my hair as I casually answer “no” when the checkout person asks if I have this or that card.  

Turned 30. Still, it could be worse

I just turned 30. In the week leading up to my birthday I put a colour in my hair, got a facial, and started wearing suncream every day like the beauty magazines advise. All of a sudden my DIY moisturisers (aloe vera, olive oil) just didn’t seem to be doing the job, and my knees hurt when I went for a run. Not to mention when I played netball against girls half my age. The furrow in my brow has signed a long-term lease rather than holiday letting and I am officially ineligible to apply for those competitions aimed at “youth” pursuing artistic or community projects. 

But I can’t be 30! When I look in the mirror I still see the same face I had when I was at uni, the same one I had when I got married. That girl wasn’t 30. I haven’t even learnt how to correctly apply my own makeup, or change a car tyre. Isn’t that something 30 year olds should know?  

What’s more, I’m not convinced that 30 is the new 20. Rather, this milestone looms in my mind like a cliff over which I will tumble and keep on tumbling until I get old. I have visions of myself as a crazy old nanna with muscly Madonna arms, a wrinkly body and my current face, only the skin is all saggy skin so it doesn’t fit properly. On that note, perhaps my mind is already going. 

But that’s all in the future. Right now I have a gorgeous son and a wonderful husband, who also happens to be turning 30 with me. I am comforted by the fact that he finds this event just as irksome as I do. He is noticing marks on the backs of his hands, going to bed earlier, and comments on how regularly he finds himself tuning to Classic FM these days.  

When you’re little, I’m talking primary school little, you have no idea what 30 year olds actually do. Well, it appears they do pretty much the same stuff as 20 year olds, only with higher health insurance premiums. We haven’t got a mortgage, high flying careers, bulging bank accounts or even a will. But we do have a lot of fun. Too much fun for a bunch of 30 year olds, I think. It’s probably best we settled down and started acting our age.  Now where’s that walking stick...

I can see clearly now the dishes are clean

I'm starting to think that a little bit of hot water and a little bit of suds does more than just get egg off a frypan. In fact, the waters of your kitchen sink can hold deeper truths than a Dalai Lama quote on facebook. As dirty dishes are immersed and sparkling clean ones are raised up, they reveal more than simply what you had for dinner. It's WHO had what for dinner, and HOW. A microcosm of life at this particular instant in time.

Take my sink for example. Your standard one-large-one-small-plus-drainage-area kitchen sink, in your standard early-1990s-light-peach-with-cream-lino colour palette. Each day it gets filled with small, brightly coloured plastic bowls, of which I clearly don't own enough because I am forever washing the same ones. Floating under those are several small, multi-coloured plastic spoons, some with rabbits on the handles and others with heat-sensing rubber technology. Into the murky broth goes the stick part of the Bamix, some Tupperware containers, and I like to finish it off with a nice cheese grater or potato masher.

If I'm feeling celebratory, I might chuck in some wine glasses (pun intended, of course I wouldn't actually chuck them), but that's a rare occasion. There is the odd tea or coffee pot, but even these don't get to feature as much as they probably would like. Let's not even mention the juicer, which has not made it near the water's edge ever since I ran out of time to contemplate drinking fruit and vegetables instead of eating them.

Yep, I currently live at the Mini Meals capital of the world. On any given day there will be various flavoured soups and stews making their way between the stages of stove top, blender, ice cube tray, freezer, tiny bowl, microwave, tiny spoon and tiny mouth that make up the kitchen circuit. Sometimes we add extra stages, called hands, hair, ears and floor, which I try to avoid but my little munchkin quite enjoys.

I can recall a time when my drainage rack displayed a vastly different lifestyle. There were fancy cocktail glasses and espresso cups, steak knives and sushi mats. And these probably sat there for several days on either side of the clean/dirty divide because who has time to hang out in the kitchen when you're working full time and socialising every other moment.

If I look hard enough I can also see into the future through my sink. I can see school lunch boxes, sports bottles and endless cereal bowls. I wonder how many Weetbixes my boy will do? I'm smiling right now just thinking about it.