Blogging and the bright side

There are two groups of people who have an unlikely but uncanny resemblance to each other they are:

Eternal optimists you know the glass-half-full types that can turn being shat on by a bird, for example, in to a life lesson. “Bird poo in your eye, a lucky day is nigh” they sing song, smiling a smug smile, as they reach for a tissue.
And Bloggers normally the glass-half-empty types but that was until they started blogging! Now every “bad” situation is an amazing opportunity for a blog post of comedic proportions.

Tripping over slippery dips, previously a painful shock, now at the very least a hilarious tweet. Locking yourself out of the house, once a terrible and frightening inconvenience, now the basis for a soon-to-be-documented fantastic adventure to Mr Shu-Fiks. Being caught naked by a lorrikeet, usually relegated to the top ten dreaded moments in life now becomes what you live for. Being terrorised by a small furry creature, other than your husband, becomes the stuff you only thought you couldn't read about

There’s only one disclaimer, one red light in your new world of greens, that is: did you get it on camera? Those dark moments can suddenly turn dark again if you didn’t have the foresight to whip out your iPhone mid-spew, slip, spill, crash or poo moment.

Bloggers are the new paparazzi for their own disasters among other things. Here are a few I was lucky to catch.

I can't work out whether the Emu attack or the poo bath(not shown)
is my favourite disaster life lesson...

So once a whiney negative moo moo, blogging has transformed me into an annoying optimist, cheerily philosophising “well it’ll make a great blog post” as I get splattered with projectile poo...Tissue please!

What are some of your favourite proverb-making moments?

©My IdeaLife, 2011, All rights reserved

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Baby Brain

What happens when you only communicate with
early-verbal humans?

My husband’s new gig means he keeps coming home with VIP tickets to all sorts of events. Last month it was the Open air Cinema in Sydney and this month Enlighten in Canberra. Three years ago I would have been ecstatic, and part of me still gets a little excited, but another part of me just fills with dread.

First there’s the finding clothes that aren’t tracksuit pants, jeans or t-shirts. Then there’s the hair and makeup, ‘is my hair even washed?’ I panic. Then there are the high heel shoes that seem so much harder to walk in after a year in a variety of trainers. But the worst part, the part no quick trip to the dry cleaners can solve, is the irrefutable need to make adult conversation on the night.

You see I now only communicate in baby language, which is simplified verbal shorthand, delivered with often over-the-top tonal expression, distorted facial animation, and punctured by incomprehensible sounds such as ‘toot toot’ or ‘ba ba ba ba ba ’ (dependent on which child I’m with). Imagine first year acting student or those hideous corporate icebreaking exercises. That’s me most of the day.

And the content of conversations, although extensive, would not really grab the attention of the usual VIP guest. Imagine excitedly yelling, “Garbage truck, look, beep beep beep” at the top of your voice as everyone around you recoiled at the smell and noise of its’ untimely arrival. Or congratulating your husband’s colleague on his return from an extended absence in the loo, “Did you just do a big Poo? I think you diiiid, bet that’s made you feel better, good job!”

Don’t worry I haven’t yet had my husband fired as have managed to keep these thoughts as thoughts when at said functions. But it’s just a struggle to think of other things to say after nearly two years of trucks, poo and snot dominating most conversations. Basically give me a bath or just 3 hours on my own to do anything as long as it doesn’t involve up-to-the-minute small talk.

I like to call my current situation ‘baby brain’. There has always been talk of ‘baby brain’ during pregnancy, but once you are “back to normal”, expectations are that you will mentally revert, as you have physically reverted. When in fact ‘Raphael-Leff (1994) suggests that upon becoming mothers, women are "plunged into a state of inner disequilibrium and external upheaval quite unlike any other encountered in adult life".’~

From my experience ‘baby brain’ kicked off after the birth of my first child and it’s really come in to it’s own now I have two under two. Research backs this up but only so far, as they have found that women only suffer a loss of spatial memory* from the later stages of pregnancy to at least three months after birth. My youngest is 6 months and there are NO signs of my brain returning to normal any time soon.

I figure I may need to put research aside and fight baby brain with its’ worst enemy: going out. Yes the effort is annoying, the thought of conversation threatening and there is in all likelihood a cranky backlash usually directed at your husband the next day because you are doubly exhausted. But once you get out you remember for a second what it’s like to be your old self, rather than a mother (although my conversation starter is usually ‘do you have kids?’).

And who says new mothers need to always have the grey film of sleep deprivation coating their skin? Who says tracksuit pants and trainers are the only things we should wear? Well, me for one, as most days just getting out of bed is a strain. But my point is that occasionally getting out and putting on makeup and a black slinky number (of course accompanied by some nancy ganz) may be the cure for Baby brain!?

I’ve only ventured out a handful of times so my brain impairment is still quite severe, but I’m taking my own advice I’m off to dinner and drinks (!) tonight with a girlfriend. The same quandary is running through my mind ‘Are you too tired to move let alone go out and talk to another adult?’ and I am likely to bite my husband’s head off when he reads the paper instead of feeding our son tomorrow, but I think it’ll be worth it, for me anyway, so I’m giving it a go. And who knows maybe the power of the English language will return to my lips just for two hours. At least I hope it will, otherwise I’ll be seeing the inside of a bathtub a lot more often and remaining content with putting the frozen peas in the pantry while yelling “Dada don't forget we need to iron the car^?” 

Researchers catch Baby brain on video for the first time!

Tell me I’m not the only one…what’s your ‘baby brain’ experience?

* The recall of locations and positions of objects, Read more: http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/body-soul/baby-brain-is-real-after-all/story-e6frfot9-1225848946456#ixzz1HIIiKlM9 Baby brain is real after all, The Sunday Telegraph, April 04, 2010
^ Meant to be 'vacuum the car' if you hadn’t already guessed
~ Motherhood experiences from the perspective of first-time mothers. Clinical Nursing Research, November 01, 1997, McVeigh, Carol

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