The Ben Tense Party

I always find the best way to unwind from hosting a Ben 10-themed party for 14 screaming kids is to take a trip to the local monster mall. Yes: on a Saturday. 

To help you out a little here: imagine my mind is a little like a snowdome where my thoughts gently float around in the liquid. Now, the Ben 10 party was just a little like shaking that snowdome to fuck. And the monster mall? Like taking an AK-47 to said snowdome, blasting its contents into a million trillion pieces and embedding many of them in a nearby wall upon which some teenage punk seems to have tagged their name but upon closer inspection turns out to be a picture of their penis. 

Just sayin’. 

Look, of course I’m being a touch melodramatic. The party was just a normal kids party: you know, kids running around high on sugar and food colouring, screaming and whacking each other with sticks. And the mall was just the usual Saturday arvo consumer bitch-fight. But chuck in a visit from the silent red ninja, a headcold and the promise of a migraine and you’re starting to get the picture. And it’s of someone’s penis on the wall, apparently. 

Still, I feel suitably removed from the whole experience now to share some highlights of the Ben 10 party with you all. 

THE CAKE 

This cake was a labour of love upon which I worked late into the night before the party. When I proudly showed my husband my masterpiece, his informed opinion was that it should be “more green” and “perhaps have a bit of white somewhere”.

At which point I grew exceedingly irate and shouted at him “What is WRONG with you? Don’t you know the difference between a Ben 10 Alien Force Omnitrix cake and a Ben 10 Original Series Omnitrix cake?? Have you never discussed the finer points of differentiation between the two with our firstborn child? I mean, have you even met our son??”

Sheesh.

Luckily I was able to jump onto Twitter and show off about my creation. And there, I felt the love that I was due. Of course, while I was busy showing off and feeling the love, I heard the tell-tale jingle-jangle of bells and stormed into the kitchen just in time to see the cat jump up on the table and get *this close* to licking the cake. What was that old saying again? Was it “pride comes before a cat with an rectum-coated tongue”?

THE PIÑATA

For those of you who have read “The NDM Guide to Making Piñatas” and are curious about where this Jetray lay on the NDM Piñata Spectrum (upon which all piñatas should measured, if only it actually existed), let’s just say Jetray ended up being the love-child of the Impenetrable Shark and The Bad, Bad Butterfly.

You see, I had somewhat overestimated the whacking power of the average seven-year-old boy and had built the piñata to withstand a direct nuclear blast. But somewhere in the painstaking paper-mâché process, something had gone terribly terribly wrong. When the pinata was finally cracked open (thanks to some king hits from my husband), there were cries all around of “Ewwwww! These lollies are all soggy!”. Oops, I did it again. 

THE OMNITRIX BREAD

Nothing to say here except the the age-old question of how to serve fairy bread to a bunch of seven year old boys bearing makeshift weapons has finally been answered. 

THE AFTERMATH

What you see here are Mr Justice’s brand new presents, all ripped out of their wrappings, tossed around the room and firmly ground underfoot with a few handfuls of party food thrown in for good measure. In the cleanup process, I found a grand total of three frankfurters hidden in very surprising places. Which literally put a twist on the adult party game “Hide The Sausage”. 

But when I asked Mr Justice which was his favourite part of the party, it wasn’t the cake. It wasn’t the piñata. It wasn’t even the lame-arse game where I got them to squirt warm water at a plastic alien frozen in an icecube (true story).

It was “hanging out in the bedroom playing with the presents”. 

This, more than anything, sent me a very clear message and that message was this: Next year, don’t be the über-mum party planner, NDM! Just cheerfully usher the guests straight into the bedroom… chuck in a packet of chips, a bottle of lemonade and a bucket to pee in…  And then lock the door for two hours.

Now that’s a party plan that I feel that even I, utterly destroyed as I feel right at this moment, am willing and able to get behind.

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Winding Down (Just A Little)

It is upon us: it’s been almost one year since The NDM burst onto the internet with her children’s bottoms a-blazin’. Yes, it’s my blog-a-versary! By rights, I should be writing this in my birthday suit except, well, I don’t want to frighten the kids unnecessarily. 

So how did this happen? How did I find myself one year and 281 posts into my blogging career? 

Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start (apparently). Friends JS and Mr C gave me the idea for the blog as I lay, a broken woman, amongst the ruins of Mr Justice’s Star Wars-themed sixth birthday. Basically, like all good pushers, they got to me when I was vulnerable… Before I knew it, I had signed up with WordPress and found myself staring at a blank text box. 

But what will I say? I thought to myself. Who will read it? And where on earth will I find the time to do this?

But the time was found, albeit in units smaller than a three year old’s appetite, and I persuaded a few friends to read it (I think the words “I know where you live…” were involved). As for the words? Well, all I can think of is that line from The War of the Worlds: “And still, they come…”.

And then the ego kicked in. I stopped being [insert real name] and became (drum roll) “The NDM!”. I became unhealthily obsessed with my blog stats and dreamt of being discovered by a literary agent who would write me a cheque for three billion-zillion-trillion dollars On. The. Spot because I was that fucking great. And I started wondering how I might “monetize my blog” without selling out – which is kind of a contradiction in terms, if you think about it. Mmmm…. selling out….

And most certainly, being courted by all those cyrillic spammers on your blog can really go to a girl’s head. They were all “кухонная шлюха бедра грома кувшина мамы” and I’m all *swoon* and before I knew it I was buying stuff by the truck-load on bigdick.com.ru and trying to encourage the local school to sell Viagra or Acai Berries as part of their next charity drive. As I said in no uncertain terms to the school council: “Yo’ bitches won’t catch a class act like Yuri from Big’n’Busty Babushkas slangin’ Freddo Frogs. We got to get where the money’s at, peoplesss!”

Okay, so that hasn’t happened quite yet. But it might if I continued on my current trajectory…

So yes, I’m stepping back a bit. I’m winding it down, if only to stop pushing myself so hard and start enjoying my patch o’ internet turf. 

From this day forth, The NDM will now be posting on THREE BIG DAYS… Monday!… Wednesday!… Friday!… (AEST) which is the blogging equivalent of commercial TV’s “now at a special new time”. You know, when they move your favourite show to 11:30pm when even the VHS player is dead asleep. 

Or another way of looking at it is “The NDM: Now 40% shit-free!”

Anyway, thanks for being part of The NDM experience so far. You know who you are. And remember, I really do know where most of you live…

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The So-Called “Benefits” of Pet Ownership

Here’s my confession: the joys and benefits of Pet Ownership are somewhat eluding me right now.

Let’s put it this way: if you were to get all the Happy Pet Owners of Australia and gather them together in the Melbourne Cricket Ground, I would not come along to your little pet-lovin’ shindig. So don’t bother inviting me, okay? Look, don’t even talk to me about it. Sheesh. 

And before you judge me too harshly, let’s just say that Genghis Cat (resident pet) represents just another member of this household who:

a) follows me around the house, hassling me to give him food;

b) turns his nose up at whatever food I give him;

c) wants to sleep in my bed;

d) wakes me up by crying loudly when I won’t let him sleep in my bed; and when I do let him sleep in my bed…

e) keeps me awake by biting my toes (admittedly the kids do it by jabbing my kidneys with those pointy toes of theirs)

f) unexpectedly shits, pisses and vomits in equally unexpected places around the house; and 

g) gives me worms. 

To add insult to injury, the cat makes a point of sitting right in front of me and licking his anus for, like, 20 minutes while I’m trying to eat my chocolate brownie and then leaping over and running his tongue across said brownie the minute I leave it unattended. At least the kids don’t do that – if only because it’s physically impossible for them to lick their anuses. 

Experts say: pets make good friends.

I say: even my worst enemies haven’t thrown up on my bed.  

Experts say: pet ownership has many health benefits.

I say: as long as I don’t eat that brownie. 

Experts say: pets are good for stress-relief.

I say: as long as they don’t create more stress than they relieve. But then again, I sure feel much better after shouting “STUPID CAT!” at the cat. And it certainly feels way more comfortable than shouting “STUPID KIDS!” at the kids. Plus I can lock the cat outside when he’s really pissing me off. Or I can even lock him outside when the kids are really pissing me off. I mean, better the cat, right?

Shit, no wonder he’s so unreasonably angry. And I can’t even blame the cat for that one. Which makes me unreasonably angry. 

Stupid cat. 

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