When did that happen?

Paul Hester is dead. I'm shocked.

Not because I knew him, not because I was cool enough to listen to much Crowded House, and not because I was a groupie or anything.

I'm shocked because I've been going along thinking that this musician I had vaguely heard of was alive, and it turns out he died.

THREE YEARS AGO!

I like to keep up with the news, and I guess I thought that if something noteworthy happened three years ago, I would have learned about it, assimilated it into my world-view, and moved on.

Apparently not.

Then I realised just why I'd missed the news that Paul Hester had died three years ago. It was simply because Paul died three days after Sonny Ma-Jiminy was born.

Ah yes. I have some fuzzy memories of the post-birth period. I might as well have done four days of solid movie marathons then tripped when walking out of the movie theatre, sustained bad gravel rash on my nipples, and bathed them in lemon juice. Yep, that's how I felt and that's why news and current affairs were pretty much washing over my addled brain for a few months.

This got me thinking: what other things did I miss when I was in that fuddled brain haze after I gave birth to Sonny Ma-Jiminy on 23rd March 2005? Wikipedia helped me.

In the Post-Sonny-Ma-Jiminy Haze, I managed to catch the news that Pope John Paul II died and Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles were married. Yeah, the big humanitarian issues.

I also remember hearing that Crown Princess Mary of Denmark announced her first pregnancy on 26 April. Sort of stealing my thunder as I'd just given birth to my first child, but hey, sail on the wings of my success. Whatever.

What I missed was considerable. There were the news stories I wouldn't have cared about, like the first 13th root calculation of a 200-digit number being calculated by a mad Frenchman with way too much time on his hands.

But news items I would have been interested in included the Court of Appeals' decision regarding Terri Schiavo's feeding tube and Terri's death soon after, the revolution in Kyrgyzstan, the demonstration in Taipei, the earthquake in Sumatra and the State of Emergency in Ecuador. But these things happened, along with the deaths of Anne Bancroft and Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, without my knowledge, permission or blessing! Huh!

What on earth must I have missed in the Post-Smoochy-Girl Haze (then known as the Post-Chubbity-Bubbity Haze) that started on 14th April 2007?Well, I wasn't totally living under a rock. I did mourn with the world over the Virginia Tech Massacre and felt sick in my stomach at the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

I became very suspicious of Crown Princess Mary of Denmark who, after giving birth to a baby boy just like I did in 2005, gave birth to a baby girl who looked startlingly like then-named Chubbity Bubbity a mere week after Chubbity's birth. She seemed to be stalking me. I formulated a cunning plan to test my stalking theory by scheming to next give birth to a multiple or a monkey. Copy that, Princess!

Again though, large chunks of current affairs sailed unnoticed right by my sleep-deprived, milk-engorged existence. Some were uneventful - what do I care if the Pound Sterling hit a 15-year high against the US dollar? - but other news would have been of interest to me. If only I was accepting new information.

Chess Champion Garry Kasparov was detained for participating in a banned march(!) American cartoonist Brant Parker, embarrassing Russian ex-President Boris Yeltsin and Billy Graham's wife Ruth Bell Graham died. Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President of France, and here I am with a world view that still has Jacques Chirac smugly sitting on the French Presidential Throne.

Wow. Whole chunks of history passed me by when my babes were tiny. And I didn't really care. I was too wrapped up and do you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way.

Notes To Self: Paul Hester is dead. Things happen without my reassuring presence. Must investigate birthing multiples and monkeys, and closely watch the Danish Royalty. And it's hard to find a baby photo of your kids that doesn't have a breast pump in the background.