A short, sad story

I was so excited as I searched on the Internet for any lost superannuation Mr de Elba or I might have forgotten about. We don't have any. The End.

Hi! We're ALL called Holly, and we'll be your hostesses ...

To those of you who were reading me in 2008 and were subjected to The Saga of The Bed Bugs, I am truly sorry.  For those of you who have joined me more recently, count yourselves lucky you missed out on it. All my readers reported scratching while reading my posts.

It was such a depressing time of our lives, right from the initial stage of not being able to stop scratching my arms and legs until I bled, and wanting to stab anyone in the eye who said, "Have you changed your washing powder?" as if I'd never considered it, indeed, as if I have ever had any allergies to a washing product in my life.

For the record, it had nothing to do with washing powder.  It had to do with lots of these guys ...

... who were brought back (most probably in strong healthy breeding pairs) in our luggage from a posh resort in the Whitsunday Islands.

Stupidly, I was so delighted to find the bed bugs!  I thought we'd easily kill them and life would return to normal!  Unfortunately, the trouble with bed bugs is you have to physically find the nests to kill them, and after six pest treatments, throwing out and replacing furniture, books and clothes, repeatedly washing and drying all fabrics in hot water causing the death and subsequent replacement of both the washer and dryer, completely evacuating a few bedrooms, living out of boxes in the living room and kitchen, placing entire rooms worth of clothes and books in the sunshine to kill bugs only to find they have all been ruined by freak rainstorms, sleeping in a completely empty bedroom on air mattresses for a few months, and finally giving up and sleeping in the living room on couches for more months, ... finally after all of that, we found the final nest in our ceiling cavity above the fitting for the ceiling fan from where they would drop onto us in the night, have a feed, and walk up the walls to their nest before dawn the next morning.

After we realised that was going on and the pest guys put chemical bombs into the ceiling and then through the whole house, we began to get our lives back.

During this time, I made a blogging friend called Faith who lived in Seattle. She doesn't blog there these days, but in 2008 she was a great friend to me - she found weird merchandise from a company called Parasite Pals, and knowing my plight, she sent a care package to us full of interesting things.  Here is the front page of the Parasite Pals website, so that you can familiarise yourself with the wonderfully cute little characters.  I'll turn the image into a hyperlink so you can click it and go straight to the site, if you wish.  Or don't, if you have sense.

Adorable.  It turns out that my nemesis, the bed bugs that had cost me thousands of dollars, were in fact cute little characters with a name - "Zzeezz", and came complete with friends!  Dig Dig the Head Louse, Tickles the Tapeworm and Blinky the Eyelash Mite.  How charming.

Not only that, but there was a cute little "Hostess" called Holly.  Interesting that she doesn't appear to have any fingernails, given this particular meaning of "hostess."  One can only hope that the expression on her face wasn't prompted by the presence of Tickles.

Faith sent us little trinkets from each of the Parasite Pals.  Our family's Parasitic Mascot, Zzeezz the Bed Bug, featured on this little LED torch.  How wonderful to read the joyful words, "When you are sleeping, I am biting."  Ooh yes, we believe that.  The packaging reads "The sleepy time of the night is hour for many bites!"  Substitute "scratchy" for "sleepy" and I'd totally agree.

At that stage in our lives, we thought to ourselves:

• It's understandable to have Bed Bugs.  
• They are not after dirt and squalour, they are after blood, so they live wherever people live.  
• The high turnover of travellers in backpackers' hostels makes the hostels ideal places for bed bugs, and that's what give the bugs their stigma.  They are not just the purview of homeless people and people who are woefully negligent in personal hygiene.
• But the OTHER Parasite Pals?  They would be far too awful for US to have!

Unfortunately, the truth is that with a young family - particularly if you let your children associate with other children in a place like a school - one is very likely to come across Dig Dig and Tickles.

Despite many treatments, Dig Dig the Head Louse continued to trouble us.  Treatments can be expensive - the last one we tried cost $60 to treat all the heads in our house - but they can also be emotional torture.  Jessie has very thick hair, and although we keep it as short as we feel we can without her ending up looking like a Troll Doll, combing with The Special Comb can be a screaming nightmare.  Frequent and thorough treatments only end up in defeat, as small fingers scratch small scalps a few days later.  I can only assume that a mother who reads stories to her children at night with heads close together, is an ideal carrier for Dig Dig the Head Louse.

NOT too awful for US to have, in fact. But what's $60 per treatment, in the grand scheme of things?  If a parasite does not cause you to throw out and replace a perfectly good Queen Bed, it's better than Zzeezz.

Now to Tickles the Tapeworm.  We don't suffer often from this Parasite Pal, and I haven't actually seen the offenders.  So I can't be sure it's actually Tickles we're talking about, or one of his equally disgusting cousins, perhaps 'Pongo the Pinworm,' 'Revolto the Roundworm,' or 'Hobo the Hookworm.'

But one of the above is possibly NOT too awful for US to have.  The occasional complaints have caused our family chocolate stash to include (just to be on the safe side) not only white, milk and dark chocolate, but also Combantrin.  Because nothing says "young family" quite like Combantrin in the chocolate stash.  This though, is usually Step 2 when dealing with the complaints.  Step 1 involves manic shrieks of, "Dammit son, wash properly!" and a good deal of undignified demonstration of technique.

However, we do still use the cute little pencil case pictured above.  It reads: "Good Day.  Tapeworm of the tickles.  The stomach living within is for fun.  Likes much the good food.  Great friends we are to the extremity.  Love me Tapeworm."  Uh - no.  No love for the tapeworm.

One day recently, my children were asking questions about some of the items from our Parasite Pals care package from Seattle, the ones that are still in use.  I sheepishly admitted that we have, in fact, suffered from three of the four Parasite Pals featured, not due to problems with housekeeping or personal hygiene, but simply because parasites love hosts and being humans who do not sequester ourselves from society, we make pretty good hosts.

"What's an eyelash mite?" they wanted to know.

"I don't know," I replied.  "Probably though, they live on dirty people, and are much too awful for US to have."

It got me thinking.  A short amount of Googling later, I had some shocking answers.

There are two species of eyelash mite that inhabit humans - Demodex folliculorum which lives in hair follicles on the face and and Demodex brevis which hangs out near the sebaceous glands on the follicles.  Yes, much too awful for US to have.

Then I learned that a third of children and young adults are likely to have Blinky the Eyelash Mite.  As you get older, the news gets worse, possibly due to having more sebaceous glands.  Half the adult population is likely to play Holly Hostess to Blinky the Eylash Mite, and in the elderly population, the odds increase to two-thirds.  Blinky usually goes unnoticed and causes no problems, so you can't point the finger at any particular Parasite Pal-afflicted family in particular, as you may very well have Blinky yourself.

I thought that having had such a rough trot with the Parasite Pals, I might be able to claim that our family is possibly free of Blinky, at least.

Then something rang a bell with me.  Demodex ... Demodex ... hang on a minute.

The species Demodex canis lives on dogs.  Like the human species, they can go unnoticed, and cause no problems.  However, they can also go rogue and cause the pleasant-sounding "demodectic mange" which which creates rough, thickened bald spots on the skin.

Just like Bullseye had on her eyebrow when she was a young dog.

At the time, the vet confirmed the presence of Demodex canis and I even saw the little critters on the microscope slide.  Hmm.  NOT too awful for US to have, as a matter of fact.

And with the discovery that in our average suburban family, we had played Holly Hostess to a clean sweep of the Parasite Pals, I went disconsolately about my week.

I try blogging, for a change.

I wrote the drivel below yesterday, as a poor attempt at blogging.  It's already out of date.
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What I achieved today: Heaps, for once! Of my 15 holiday jobs, none of which I completed on the holidays, I've done four and a half this week. This makes me feel good.

What I wish I achieved today: Well the place looks like a dump, so a small amount of cleaning-up would have been good. But given what I did do, I'm not too sad I didn't get that done too.

Baby: 27 weeks, busy, and hiccupping whenever I have a drink. I am not sure why.

Me: Energetic and refusing to care about ghastly pregnancy symptoms that occur fourth time around when your body decides it's going to give up.  If it's not life-threatening, I choose not to care about it!

Buzz, Jessie and Woody: play like little sweethearts, then fight like wildcats. Then back to play, often without intervention. Cool.

Mr de Elba: busy with multiple complex issues at work. He's trying to create down-time each day to help him stay sane, and this means he's going on bike rides with Buzz and coming home early to chat about his day and spend time with the kids. It's great to spend deliberate time together like that!

Bullseye: we survived taking her for "Entertainment Time" (the year 2 equivalent of "Show & Tell." but she continues to kill and leave bandicoots all around the yard, and so I still don't like her.

Things bothering me right now: my list of things to do continues to be long, and frightening deadlines loom menacingly.

Things I am looking forward to: Monday, strangely!  This weekend will be a busy one, and I can't wait until schoolweek routine is back so I can recommence that scary list of things to do.

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Next up: should I blog about my poor daughter's bruised and swollen nose, the problem of Bullseye and the Bandicoots, the distressing truth about Parasite Pals and the de Elbas, drivel similar to this post, or should I just go back into hibernation because it's all too boring?  Opinions please.

Why I No Blog?

I received an email from my sister today, which said, in part, this: "Why you no blog? Things must happen."

Sigh. I shall attempt to answer her fully and truthfully.

Why you no blog? Because I bore myself.

Things must happen. They do, but if I don't care to write about them, does anyone care to read them?

Did you eat any good cupcakes recently? No.

Is anything growing in your garden? Only weeds. The horrendous state of my gardens does feature on my Massively Long List of Things to Do, but it's so far down the priorities that I probably won't get to it until it's way too late to salvage anything.

Do your children carry jugs of wee around the house? No, but I know someone whose kids do!

Would you put Joe's singing on your blog? Well now. That would require videoing and converting and uploading, and prior...

Here there was a nose injury from some silly play inside a sleeping bag on the floor, and I was distracted for a few hours with the possibility of a small broken nose (definitely small, probably not broken,) dinner, the coming home of Mr de Elba after a long and difficult day at work, bathing kids, dressing kids, brushing kids' teeth, reading stories to kids, and spending 3 minutes deciding that the first item on my Urgent To-Do list was too difficult.  And here I am again.  Where was I?

Putting Joe - pardon - WOODY'S cute little singings on my blog would require videoing and converting and uploading, and prior to that it would require caring enough.  And completing my list of things to do, which will take the rest of my LIFE so I don't like your chances.  Grr.  My life used to be so CLEAR and I used to do things like blog!

Is "Too Many Bandicoots" too depressing to write up?  Oh my.  That reminds me that there is a rapidly decomposing bandicoot currently in the sandpit.  Mr de Elba's schedule will not allow for the bandicoot to be disposed of by him, meaning that Buzz and I have to try.  But that will remind me that the lawn needs mowing and the passionfruit resembles a triffid and needs controlling, and the entire garden is a total disgrace.  And I really am in no physical state to be disposing of decomposing bandicoots, pruning triffids, mowing the lawn and claiming dominion over the garden.  Which brings me nicely to the next question:


Is your girth larger than your bust? That milestone always shocked me during pregnancy.  Well lucky, lucky you.  I remember celebrating that milestone in my first pregnancy, but then I struggled to see my girth deflate to be smaller than my bust ever since.  Is my girth larger than my bust?  My dear, my entire front looks like a poorly-disguised collections of basketballs vying for space.

I was within a few centimetres of my bust-larger-than-girth goal at the time I conceived this newest little one and thence began inflating again.  Over the last 48 hours though I seem to have had a growth spurt every-jolly-where, putting the extremely expensive recently-purchased maternity bras in definite doubt, and the recently-purchased maternity clothes in possible doubt.  Oh doom and disaster.  I bet you're glad you asked.

How did that whole mouldy roof episode end up - do you need to rant about insurance tradesmen? My insurer was very good about the whole episode, and although I wasn't left out of pocket in the end, the insurance company was.  The dodgy building company who outsourced to really good tradesmen were the winners.  That was a while ago, and I'd forgotten about it.

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Was that what you were after, dear sister of mine?  Would you like a commitment from me to regularly update my blog with such drivel?  I could, you know!  Well, I could promise, and then I would no doubt begin to bore myself again!

Lost Gems

I have a very old computer which has too many disorganised files collected all over the place in no particular order.  The benefit of this is that when I go through the "Pictures" folder, I find things I laughed at years ago, but had forgotten all about.  Check this:

Something has reminded me, and I thought I had to share...

If you have one, please comment with your worst/funniest nappy-change story.  You don't need to have copyright on the story or legal ownership of the child in question in order to post it.  I'll go first.

I won't mention which child was involved in this story, suffice to say I was quite inexperienced, and it happened many years ago.  Impenetrable barriers of confidentiality here.

I was woken in the middle of the night to change a child's wet nappy.  I had no contact lenses in, and therefore I couldn't see much.  I removed the wet nappy and put a dry one on, only to become aware that the child had dirtied it immediately. 

I sighed, removed the dirty nappy and put a clean one on.  Once that nappy was on, it became obvious that I'd changed it too quickly, and the child had finished the job by unloading the other half.  Dirty again.

I removed that nappy and I was too tardy in putting a clean one on.

The child weed.  Into my mouth.

Good story, no?  Now it's your turn!

Blog your memories, keep on laughing!

I have been reading back through posts on my sister's blog recently.  Whenever I need a pick-me-up, I go to her "Too Much Information" tab on the left, and I am guaranteed a huge laugh after which I always feel better.

I was reading old posts the other night when I came across one that reminded me of one of the funniest nights of my life.

She was staying with me once and we were talking, talking, talking.  We must have been standing in the kitchen or somewhere like that, because she was in dire need of somewhere to sit.  After a while she announced her need to relieve herself, and find a place to sit.

Only she said, "I'm going to the toilet and I'll bring back a stool."

After reading that again, I laughed so hard that my tummy muscles were too sore to go for a swim the next morning.  But I think I'd got my workout anyway.

Good Self vs Bad Self

It could be Life, it could be Hormones.  It's probably both, neither of them having much respect for me at all.

At the end of a day like today, I wander around the house having an argumentative mental dialogue where my Good Self sounds like a diplomatic counsellor who is on the losing side, and my Bad Self sounds more and more like Basil Fawlty as the conversation goes on.

---

Good Self:  Well.  So.  Hm.  How do you think today went?

Bad Self:  What is WRONG with you?  You were there!  YOU saw it!  How do YOU think it went?

Good Self:  Hmm. 

Bad Self:  Clearly, these three children and this new baby would do MUCH better if they had a better mother ...

Good Self:  Now don't start that again.  You know where that leads you.  You end up crying and then you cry until you vomit, then you vomit until you lose continence, then you have to wash all the bathmats in the ensuite.

Bad Self:  I REMEMBER that!  You don't need to REMIND me!  Do you seriously think that other women manage the sort of rubbish I have to put up with, while maintaining an even temper and keeping the house tidy at the same time?!?

Good Self:  Look, I'll be honest.  They all do.  But let's have a bit of a think about how things are going here, and see if we can improve on them for tomorrow.  Now I know the laundry can get you down at times ...

Bad Self:  Understatement.  Anyway, it's only out of control because I had a billion sheets and towels to urgently wash and dry in the wet weather because of the You-Know-What ...

Good Self:  Do I?  I don't recall ...

Bad Self:  I only signed up for PARENTHOOD!  Babies!  Nappies!  Children!  Homework!  Teenagers!  Buying lots of food!  I didn't ask for head lice!  I didn't ask for intestinal worms!

Good Self:  I've heard that those things all come together.

Bad Self:  [withering death stare]

Good Self:  Now, you do tend to get a little angry when the children say they have no clean shirts and you tell them to look in the basket of clean dry things on the laundry floor and they come back after 6 seconds claiming that there are no items of clothing in there for them...

Bad Self:  What is WRONG with them?  Even Visually-Impaired Frederick could see the shirts in the basket!!  Seriously, if I got a little HELP around here then maybe the clean stuff would be in little piles in their own rooms instead of in a communal basket on the laundry floor!!

Good Self:  We could aim a little higher than that you know - we could consider folding and putting things awa...

Bad Self:  WHAT?!?  I could spend hours of my day folding things and putting them in places that people will take them OUT OF?!?!?  HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK I AM?!?!?!

Good Self:  Oh-kay.  Now tell me about this pile of laundry.  And those three in there.  And that one too.  What stage are they up to?

Bad Self:  Oh, WHO COULD POSSIBLY KNOW?!

Good Self, becoming a little scared, and wishing there were a Panic Button in this dialogue:  Uh - well, if you don't know, I'm not sure ...

Bad Self:  [Sigh.]  They're all clean and dry.  That's partly why I'm so angry - I did too much laundry today.

Good Self:  Maybe we need to take a break and calm down a bit.

Bad Self:  Good idea.  I am going to self-medicate with some bourbon.

Good Self:  Uh - but you're pregnant ...

Bad Self:  TEA!  I SAID TEA!!!  WHY DON'T YOU EVER LISTEN?!?!?!?!?!

---

The next few months could well be long and difficult.

I achieved something! And now I can barely walk.

Today I did something - something beyond the usual stuff that doesn't get noticed!  I made a homework corner for Buzz and Jessie so we can keep their books spread out and keep tabs on their pencils and stuff.  In the process of this I swept, vacuumed, tidied toys, cleaned tables and a whole lot of other things.  Now, it seems I will soon be announcing the divorce or at least temporary separation of my sacrum and my ilium.  I can barely walk.  It's great.

I achieved nothing today

Today seems to have been a write-off. By 6:15pm there was no dinner, no ideas for dinner, and no ingredient combinations that offered potential for dinner. Ergo, today was a lost cause.

I achieved nothing.

Except I went to my Mum's house to pick up some laundry she had spirited out of my house a few days ago (thanks Mum!) So I did nothing except pick up some laundry.

AND I had coffee with a friend. Yes. I achieved nothing except picking up laundry and having a coffee with a friend.

AND I took Jessie for a check up at the school dental van! I did that. I achieved nothing except pick up laundry, have coffee with a friend and take Jessie to the dentist.

AND I did three loads of laundry. Sheets, mattress protectors, even a quilt. Don't ask. So really I achieved nothing except picking up laundry, having coffee with a friend, taking Jessie to the dentist and did three loads of laundry.

AND I served and cleaned up breakfast, morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. I remember that. So really I achieved nothing except except picking up laundry, having coffee with a friend, taking Jessie to the dentist, three loads of laundry and served four meals.

And packed bags and lunchboxes for school. And picked up Buzz and Jessie after school. And washed some dishes. And a few other things. Gestated, for example.

But that's all.

I didn't prepare dinner. Funny how that can make one think one achieved absolutely nothing all day.