Click on over to Mamamia to see what I’m giving my cousin’s boyfriend this Christmas… I think you’ll be surprised. 

http://mamamia.com.au/weblog/2009/12/the-gift-of-lists.html

In my own experience, I’ve found the term “toilet-training” to be a bit of a misnomer (see “The NDM Guide To Toilet Training“). Training a child to use the toilet is like trying to train a cat to sit: the cat will sit when and where it damn well pleases. Same with kids and their piss and shit. To put it politely. 

So far, my toilet “training” with Tiddles goes something like this: I cheerfully suggest that Tiddles wear underpants only to have him start wailing as if the mere mention of the word “underpants” is a deep personal affront. I’ll then try to bribe him with the promise of treats but will be extremely lucky if he wears those damn pants for more than ten minutes before appearing before me, naked from the waist down and sobbing “WHERE ARE MY UNDERPANTS?” as if he himself had nothing to do with their removal. Of course, while I’m searching high and low for said underpants, he’ll suddenly cheer up and follow me around saying “Willy-WILLY!” in a sing-song voice and shaking his penis ’round and ’round like it had a tassle on it, until finally, he’ll slip over in a puddle of his own creation right next to the potty, inside which I’ll finally find the underpants stowed safely away. 

It’s not going well. 

You might be wondering, as many of my friends have, why I would even embark upon such a perilous journey with Christmas looming so ominously ahead. After all, many a PhD has been written about the lasting psychological scars inflicted upon older siblings who made a rush for the “mars bar” Santa had left under the tree, just next to where he’d spilt his “brandy”. 

But listen, this is not so much a journey that I’m undertaking here with Mr McGee: it’s more an occasional day-trip. I take us on one of these day trips when the pressure to have him “trained” gets too much. Like when I realise there are less than seven weeks to go until he starts kindergarten. Or when there have been one too many children in the neighbourhood younger than Tiddles making their debut appearance in underpants. Or I’ve heard one too many remarks along the lines of “Oh, he’s still in nappies, is he?” –  to which I usually reply something like “Oh, we all are! Who’s got time to go to the toilet?” and laugh ha-ha-ha-ha-ha but cry on the inside because nobody’s ever going to give me a plastic trophy with a sticker saying WORLD’S BEST TOILET TRAINER on it. 

Of course, the seasoned mum-of-three in me knows that it’s not a competition. That if it’s not going well, it’s because he’s not ready. That today might not be an Underpants Day but maybe, just maybe, tomorrow will be… Possibly not for my husband, however. But that, my friends, is a whole other story.

Menstruation is nature’s way of saying “Told you so!”. I mean, every month, I stomp around for a couple of days, sniping about this, that and the other and, if challenged, shouting: “THIS ISN’T MY HORMONES TALKING, THIS IS HOW I FEEEEEEEEL!” And then the silent red ninja pays a visit and I suddenly feel normal again (and just a little bit foolish). 

And, most certainly, there’s nothing like PMT to help get you into the spirit of Christmas. Why, just last week, I was galumphing about like I’d just had an extra large serve of BAHUMBUG with my breakfast, muttering “Stupid Christmas” under my breath at every opportunity. 

Everything just seemed TOO DIFFICULT. From planning our driving route to our Christmas Destination (“WHO DECIDED TO MAKE AUSTRALIA SO BLOODY BIG!”), to coordinating our social schedule (“WHO THOUGHT PUTTING CHRISTMAS AT THE END OF THE CALENDAR YEAR WAS A GOOD IDEA?”), to making Christmas Cookies with the children (“FARRRGGGGGHHH!”).

And then there were the Christmas Cards. Every day, The Pixie and Mr Justice have been bringing home a steady stream of Christmas cards from kindergarten and school. The pressure to reciprocate is so great that I’ve almost considered home-schooling the kids – for one thing, the class size would be much smaller and their attention span might last the duration of the task, as opposed to it being stretched over many many days and ending with me forging their signature on the last seven cards just to get the bloody thing done (true story). 

Anyway, on this particular PMT-enhanced day, The Pixie decided to DEVIATE FROM THE OFFICIAL CLASS LIST and write a spontaneous card for Tiddles McGee that meant we were then one card short of covering her class. So, instead of being happy she loved her brother so much, I completely lost it and, sweeping all the cards up from the table, I stomped into my room and threw them onto the bed and then slammed the door shut so I didn’t have to look at them for another second more. Nice one. Luckily, I stopped short of setting the bed on fire – although in the darker corners of my red-misted mind, I must admit that I imagined it for one brief thrilling moment.

Look, I understand Christmas cards on a certain level. Amongst adults, it’s a kind of communication amnesty: it allows people to say “Hey, I haven’t managed to return your calls or reply to your emails or even send a postcard all year but here’s a cute picture of a puppy in a Santa hat to say I’m thinking of you (along with everyone else on my list).”

But I don’t understand electronic Christmas cards. All it says to me is someone typed my name and email address into a field box. If the sender had personally created the animated gif of Santa farting a snowball, then maybe… just maybe…  But still, I can’t put an electronic card on my mantlepiece to show visitors Just How Popular I Am. So it begs the question: “What is the frickin’ point?”

Okay, okay, I know I’m just jealous of the people who get their shit together enough to do Christmas cards – real or electronic. Those few years that I’ve managed the hard copy kind, there’s something really nice about a taking a stack of neatly addressed envelopes all the same size to the post-box. You feel all virtuous. It’s the kind of thing that can sanction a month-long drinking binge or give you a license to make everyone at the Company Christmas Party dance The Macarena. You can do whatever the hell you like because you sent your christmas cards.

Anyway, it’s too late for me to send Christmas cards this year, especially since I lost at least a week in Pre-Menstrual Tension and During-Menstral-Tension being grumpy about them.

Which makes me think that Ebenezer Scrooge must have been a woman in drag having a month-long run-up to her period. You know it makes sense.

The Love Bus was the First Love of my driving life, which I came rather late to at the age of 36.  The idea that I could just jump into it and drive whereever my heart desired without looking up timetables and working out connections quite simply Blew. My. Mind. I was happy. The kids were happy. The Love Bus was happy. My husband was also happy – mostly because it meant he could sit in the passenger seat and line up vodka jelly shots along the dashboard.    

Then the cracks began to show. The Love Bus started to let me down. It made me refine my skills at entertaining small children in roadside fields while it overheated. It made me flash my breasts in a country pub. Its door started falling off without warning. Every noise it made caused me the kind of anxiety usually only experienced by first-time parents. 

But it when it broke down the last time on The Long Journey Home, I was Officially Over It. As my friend MGK pointed out, it was like an abusive relationship that I had to just walk away from, never to return.

And she was right. The Love Bus became as good as dead to me. Whereas I’d once cried at the thought of decomissioning it, this time I was dry-eyed and cold. I never wanted to see it again. Not even to say good-bye. And in any case, it hadn’t taken me long to find myself a New Car. With functioning air-conditioning. And a key that didn’t require me to jiggle it around for half an hour to get it to turn. And a floor that wasn’t covered in 100s & 1000s, squashed sultanas and stale cake crumbs (yet).

And then my husband decided we should fix the Love Bus and sell it, rather than end up paying someone else to take it away for scrap metal. As far as I could tell, his reasoning behind this move was pretty much: “We’ve poured so much money into the thing already, why not pour some more in?”. 

And so The Love Bus went off to be rehabilitated at the mechanics and soon returned with a reconditioned engine and a new automatic transmission. At which point, it proceeded to sit untouched, unadvertised and (most certainly) unsold outside our house for one long month. 

Most of the time, I just carried about my business as if it wasn’t even there. It’s like I couldn’t even see it any more. But some nights it felt like The Love Bus was standing out there with a boom-box held over its head, blaring out some Peter Gabriel song, willing me to come out and play. Still, I couldn’t afford to open my heart to it again: I remained unmoved. Unmoved, that is, until the first Gentleman Caller arrived asking to look at The Love Bus.

The Gentleman Caller was a man with a small business who wanted an old van for his fleet of old vans. To be quite frank, he didn’t look good enough for my Love Bus. He kicked its tyres and even sneered at the little dent on its side that I’d caused while parking next to a trolley bay. I didn’t think he would appreciate its magnificent turning circle, nor its rainy-day picnic venue potential, nor the fact that its documentation listed its official colour as ‘Champagne’. And he quite obviously didn’t, because he offered us far less money than we were asking. 

“He’s not good enough,” I said to my husband. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

“Well, if we don’t get our reserve price, we’ll just keep it,” my husband replied. 

Um… Put that way, I wasn’t so sure. Especially since we were standing in the long black shadow of credit card debt thanks to its recent extreme makeover. 

But while I didn’t want the Love Bus myself,  I most certainly wished it well. I wanted it to go to a nice family. You know, the kind of nice family that would look after it and take it nice places and who didn’t mind spending quality family time alongside the highway waiting for the engine to cool down and/or the roadside assistance guy to arrive. 

At the very least, I wanted the new owner to appreciate its turning circle. In fact, I think I’m going to add the words “Impress your friends with your U- turns!” to the FOR SALE sign and draw some love hearts on it. Of course, that would involve me actually going over to it and touching it, which might give it false hope that we’re going to get back together after all. So I might just get my husband to do it – including drawing the love hearts. And then I’m going to make him drive around in it until he finds a genuine buyer OR it breaks down again. 

I think we all know which one is more likely to happen first.

Just last night I was making dinner when my husband said to me “Do you think those things on the back line are dry yet?”

“You mean those towels that have been up for three days? Uh, I’d say so,” I said.  

“Should I bring them in?” he asked. 

“Yes, please. I’ve been trying to bring them for two days now but, you know, things keep happening…” I said. 

“Sure, they do. I understand,” my husband replied in a way that told me he didn’t really understand at all. Or that he thought the things that “kept happening” included “blog posts to write”, “chocolates to be eaten in front of Oprah” and “champagne to be quaffed with KT”. 

On his way out to the line, the cat pounced out of nowhere and attacked his legs.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudddd!” he exclaimed. 

“The cat needs feeding,” I called out, adding helpfully: “You can either feed him now or just have him attack you the entire time you’re bringing in that washing. It’s your choice.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll feed him now,” he replied.

A few minutes later, he was about to open the back door when Tiddles McGee came rushing up to him with a distinct brown cloud in his wake.

“Looks like McGee knows who’s going to change his nappy,” I remarked, oh-so-casually. 

“Okay, okay, I’ll change him,” my husband said. 

When he emerged from the back room with a freshly-powdered McGee a few minutes later, I was (conveniently) chopping chili. 

“Could you please put the DVD on for the kids? I’d do it but I have chili hands,” I said, with a little shrug to show how much I’d like to help but really just couldn’t right at that moment. 

“Okay, okay, I’ll do it,” my husband said, between gritted teeth. 

Of course, I had cleverly referred to “the” DVD and not “a” DVD to give the impression that the DVD had already been chosen. Because I knew if he thought for a moment that the committee hadn’t reached its decision yet, that it would be an absolute and utter deal-breaker.

For one thing, the parent overseeing the decision-making process is required to read out all the DVD titles at least three times. You see, we’ve had to store the DVDs in various high places around the loungeroom because otherwise the kids like to strap the disks to their feet and go cross-country skiing in the backyard. At least that’s what I think they do with the disks. It’s the only way I can explain how scratched those stupid things get.  

For another thing, a typical decision-making process might go a little like this:

PARENT: Okay, so which one do you want to watch?

TIDDLES: I want King Lion!

MR JUSTICE: I think he means “The Lion King”.

TIDDLES: (shouting very loudly) NO! KING LION!!

THE PIXIE: “The Lion King” is boring. I want something for girls. Like “Barbie-as-Rapunzel”. 

MR JUSTICE: No way! That movie makes me sick. Let’s watch Ben 10. 

TIDDLES & THE PIXIE: Yaaaayyyyy!

PARENT: Series One or Alien Force?

THE PIXIE: Series One!
MR JUSTICE: Alien Force!
TIDDLES: King Lion! 

PARENT: Okay, if you can’t decide, we’ll just watch ABC Kids instead.

PIXIE & JUSTICE: Yaayyy!

TIDDLES MCGEE: Nooooooooooo! (starts wailing loudly). DON’T! WANT! ABC KIDS!

PARENT: Okay, okay, okay. If you can’t choose a DVD by the time I count to 10, you’ll all get nothing at all. One… two…

PIXIE: Um… I think…  (brightening considerably) I think “The Lion King”!

MR JUSTICE: Great choice! After all, we haven’t seen it for, like, five years. 

McGEE: (smiling through his tears) King Lion! King Lion!! 

PARENT: Great. “The Lion King” it is.

(PARENT then spends 10 minutes looking for DVD while children run around screaming and hitting each other with heavy blunt objects. Eventually Parent finds case down the side of the couch but with no DVD inside it and is forced to start the choosing process again).

Needless to say, as I’m writing this post some 12 hours later, I can see outside that it’s started raining and those towels are getting lovely and wet. With a bit of luck, they will take another three days to dry and will end up resembling sandpaper in both texture and foldability. And the next time my husband emerges wet and towel-less from the shower, I shall be very pleased to hand him one. Very pleased indeed.

Of course, I could go and bring them in myself right now, but I think I have a point to prove here. Don’t you?