As I peck this post out one-fingered, I am pumping for what will probably be one of the last - if not the last - time.

You all know how much this means to me. Didn’t I subject you all to the endless obsessive details?

I think we had a pretty good run, in the end. Considering. BB weaned himself at ten months, but I have continued exclusively pumping for another six. That’s sixteen months altogether. Sixteen months of breastmilk for my son.

Lately, though, it’s been becoming more of a hassle. I’ve been frustrated by the extra time needed every morning and the sacrifice of my own time in the evening. I have found myself worrying about the possible effects of ingesting high dosages of domperidone for more than a year. I have been plonking BB in front of bad television in order to buy myself time to pump his bottles.

Enough is enough. He is old enough for cows milk now, or soy milk. He doesn’t care what squirts out of that rubber teat. It is time to cut myself some slack. I know it’s time.

But that doesn’t make me less sad.

Hi friends. Hi.

So, seems like my blog is now one of those rarely upated, unlikely-to-say-anything-of-note personal blogs. Do you know I don’t even have Statcounter on it? Ah, how things change… Perhaps I will change the title to My Ramblings.

Heh.

I have been doing ok. You know. Whatever.

At the very least, I am pleased to report I have been doing a fantastic job of channelling my best OCD-ness this last three weeks, having commenced the dreaded Weight Watchers points system. I discovered this website  a few weeks ago, and have found it gratifyingly like Fertility Friend for fat people. So far, I have managed to get my bum to fit back in my old jeans (the ones I got after the ones I got when I started to get fat, anyway. I have several generations of old jeans to fit back in now. They are in storage as an act of hope.) so that is good.

So that has been occupying my time. And so has my writing project, which now has a whole seven pages to it. Those seven pages took me a month to write. I love me a bit of self-criticism, see. Just can’t get enough of it. I could self-criticise all day: M, your writing is a piece of shit… M, you can’t characterise for the life of you… M, this is all indulgent , sentimental twaddle… M, you don’t have the skills to pull off a first person narrative… 

Et cetera.

Oh, I also had a lovely big blow-up with my boss, which I care not to write about except to say it resulted in a confrontational, intervention-style meeting where she faced all the rest of us at the staffroom lunch table and we told her how much she sucked. And then nothing changed becasue she is a nutcase.

Hmm. What else?

BB is still dragging his arse with the walking. I had no idea he was so cautious! We have to trick him into it to get him to walk. But he is clever - any tricks only work once - then he realises what we are doing and plonks himself whining back on the ground. He has taken also to walking on his knees, which seems to satisfy the urge-to-be-upright to the exclusion of getting on his feet.

Funny little critter.

He remains the delight of my life. I feel bad about cutting off his mullet.

How have I been, Thalia asks.

I answer: Good.

Except when I haven’t been.

The last couple of months have been intense. I am out the other side of the worst of it, and battling through with good(ish) time management, but yes, it hasn’t always been fun.

Highlights of the last two (TWO!) months include:

1. Trying to complete long and incredibly boring assignments in the two hour gap between putting BB to bed and collapsing into bed myself.

2. Dealing with a boss who sometimes seems to be virtually a workplace psychopath, and with whom I have a soul-crushing love/hate relationship with.

3. Facing my 13-years high school reunion (I know, a rather arbitrary anniversary, isn’t it?)

4. Going a little bit crazy and actually having to google “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” and face the fact that in a crisis, on a bad day, it is more than eccentricity. Mental health assessment with GP ensued. Referral to clinical psychologist occured. Awaiting appointment. Feeling better.

5. Realising I was tired of cataloguing books and feeling like a piece of shit about not writing. Fear of never writing a book at all starting to be worse than fear of not being able to finish one. Have commenced work on first novel, and am chipping away slow sentence by slow sentence. Trying not to be overly critical of my work, but not succeeding one little bit.

6. Finding myself needing to be reminded of the reasons that I only wanted one child as well as why it is risky and impractical and traumatic to try for another considering huge risk of another placental abruption even if IVF did randomly work again and knowledge that outcome of abruption is likely not to be so positive a second time. Husband completely resistant to idea, also, and will never bend on that. But still feeling twinges of pain on being asked (frequently) when I am going to have another and jealousy on hearing two second-pregnancy announcements in my mother’s group.

7. Quitting smoking again. Yay for me.

8. Delighting in BB, who is now very close to walking and talking. Words we have currently: woof, ta,  and hello.

So that is me.

The last two nights, I have been attempting to get BB back into his cot.

Effectively, this means the dreaded CIO.

The first night wasn’t too bad. He cried and all, but T. took over after half an hour, and once the worst of it was over, at around 7:30, BB slept throught till after 4am - a miracle.

Last night, not so easy.

He was hysterical. Really hysterical, to the point where he actually vomited.

I couldn’t do it.

So there we were, snuggling on the mattress on the floor again.

Except after all that being worked up, he was still unsettled.

I have no idea how any of this will be resolved. Most likely when he eventually grows out of it of his own volition.

When he is five.

I wanted to write a post, for myself really, about the reasons why I want to quit smoking again. Yes, shamefully, I am still at it. Shamefully.

I have started the second A.lan C.arr book (word of mouth must have spread it to you at some point, yes?) and hopefully his bad writing and cheesy metaphors will work their mysterious magic, the way they did when I quit before.

I give you: Reasons Why I Hate Smoking.

1. I hate the feeling of slavery that you get when you’re a smoker. I hate, for example, that I “have” to race outside at lunchtime, and duck around the corner as if I am one of the students. I hate that I look around me with paranoia, and come back inside praying that I don’t encounter anyone I know before  can get to the bathroom to freshen up. The fact that I lower myself to this is sheer embarrassment.

2. I hate the way it makes me feel, physically. Since starting again, I have really noticed the difference in my energy level. I had no idea back in the days of pre-quit, that it made such a difference - I honestly thought I was just one of those people who isn’t very vital, like the frail sister with consumption in Little Women or something. I actually thought that lethargy was my temperament.

3. I hate the fact that if I don’t stop, BB will most likely have to watch his mother die a slow, painful, and worst of all - self-inflicted death.

4. I don’t want to die a slow, painful and self-inflicted death.

5. It makes me stink, something I am uber-conscious of when I lean down to help a student with their work. Small, but I’m constantly aware of it.

That’s the top five. There is, of course, many other powerful reasons to stop. Then why haven’t I? That’s the question, really, isn’t it?

I think that in some part of my brain, I associate smoking with youth. With the immortality of youth - with Summer days and house parties and late night coffees with friends. I associate it with driving my first car along the freeway, into the city, or cold mornings at the bus stop. Drinking tap beer, performing my poetry, wearing Doc Marten boots with retro print, babydoll-style dresses.

I remember being fifteen and sitting in a small town cemetary with my best friend, eating fish and chips and singing Simon and Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound as we smoked our gold-tipped, skinny cigarettes.

It’s hard to let go of that in some ways. Back then, you always intend to quit later, before it becomes a problem.

Problem is: It is later.

In reality, cigarettes were never any of those things. Or maybe they were, but it was only for a moment. In reality, they were only ever what they were - chopped up bits of leaf wrapped in paper. The memories would have existed with or without the smoking; it wasn’t cigarettes that made those moments special. The reality is that smoking was just as it is now –

 A big fat five minutes of nothing in particular.

Last year, when I applied to do my (coursework) Masters (ie. it sounds more impressive than it is) I put all thoughts of being unable to cope with the load at the back of my head. Seeing as it was my principal’s condition of starting work in the library, I figured that it was be overwhelmed by studying or be overwhelmed by marking in a regular teaching position. I chose the former.

I don’t regret it. But fuck, I am stressing about what’s coming up. It’s just the early days now. 

In terms of work, it’s sometimes hard being in a new role  when I don’t have the energy or inclination to be 100% open to it. I’m struggling with working under someone again, after beng the master of my domain for so long. The head teacher-librarian is one of these dynamic, lateral, quirky people who are lots of fun and quite visionary… but at the same time are ridiculously disorganised. She has a bit of a despotic streak too, in that she’ll often tell me (off) to do things a particular way, yet not have the organisational skills to do it that way herself.

It’s a little frustrating. I find myself unintentionally locking horns with her occasionally, my adolescent rebellious streak flashing up.

At these moments, I try to remind myself it will be my library one day.

I am excited about the possibilities of it, though. I’m enjoying getting into the meaty theory of the study, even though the reading list, even for the one unit I’m taking this semester, is almost more than I can cope with right now. Would you believe there is more to teacher-librarianship than checking out books and telling kids off for eating in the library?

So that part of it is good. I won’t get bored, something my teaching colleagues keep asking me if I am.

So there you go. Work update. Am struggling through. Certainly wouldn’t want any more than the three days, but am mostly enjoying those that I’m there. Not can’t-wait-to-get-to-work enjoying, but not watching the clock or being repulsed either. I’ve made some pretty handouts.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s all we can ask for. Is there actually anyone who really loooooves their job?

Or just people who say they do?

Last week, I got dumped.

Not by my husband, but by a girlfriend.

It was kind of my fault. Well, not really my fault, but I started it. I was the one who sent the confrontational, impulsive email bitching about the fact that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t  rather, make it to my son’s birthday party.

But it wasn’t about the birthday party. It was about every other time I’ve made plans with her in the last year, when she has called and broken them. It was about the fact that she has met Buddha Baby precisely twice. It was about the fact that somewhere along the line, she changed the rules on our friendship.

When I got back from work after our to-ing and fro-ing, T. asked me: Are you sure she wasn’t just breaking up with you?

See, I read an excerpt online recently, on a book about female friendships, and about how there are no protocols for ending them. It talked about the way women do this, how they just ignore calls, break plans, act like they’re “just busy”. It talked about how all of us do it - that we have all been the dumper and the dumpee at different times. And how hurtful and how painful that is respectively.

I thought about it. 

And there was a little cartoon lightbulb that flashed up above my head for a moment.

Isn’t this so simple and so true? I’ve had this happen several excrutiating times in my life - and worse, I’ve done it to others. I’ve groaned at the thought of having to call certain friends back, and just not. I have actually inflicted that crap on other people.

Anyway, so then I felt guilty for being so forthright about it all, and I composed a very neat, very gentle and not-at-all-pissed-off email to her. And I basically said all that - about the book and whatnot - and apologised for being confrontational and last-strawish and said that I hoped that wasn’t what was going on.

And she returned my emails. No answer. No nothing. Just the old Mailer Daemon flashing pixels of rejection at me in my work inbox.

I can’t believe we are grown women doing this to each other.

I just, like, posted on my old blog.

I kind of miss it.

Some dotpoints, without the dots:

Work has been ok. Weird to have new role, and be working under someone. Know so little so as to not even know what I don’t know. A somewhat uncomfortable position.

Attempting to navigate through online study and being unsuccessful and freaking out.

Going to two yoga classes a week, which helps.

Still struggling with smoking.

Organising BB’s first birthday party, in two weeks. Argh.

Pumping twice a day.

Still sleeping with BB for the second half of every night. He is settling better overall but is still wakeful unless I’m with him. But he doesn’t hate his cot quite as much as he did, I think.

And well, I have no time. Absolutely no time. Apologies to those who have emailed and/or facebooked me without reply. It’s all just that bit overwhelming right now.