Happy Biennial!

Dear Readers,

I’ll admit that I had to check on dictionary.com whether this was Not Drowning, Mothering‘s ‘biannual’ or ‘biennial’ . Both sounded too close to ‘bi-anal’ for comfort, but you can’t argue with Mother English.

In any case, today marks two years since I opened a WordPress account and started writing. 446 posts, approximately 223,000 words and 7,121 comments later, I’m still here.

To help celebrate this momentous occasion, I invite you all to share your favourite Not Drowning, Mothering post in the comments below. A loose description using key words (i.e. ‘vomit’, ‘Hugh Jackman’ or ‘lactating asian babes’) would be suffice – I will provide the link.

I thank you all for your valued readership and remain, as always, your humble blogging servant,

The NDM

Read Full Post »

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…

Read Full Post »

In My Mind

I was chatting with my friend Lady Ren the other day about why I’ll never be voted “Hottest Mommy Blogger” or given one of Cosmopolitan’s “Fearless, Funny, Female” awards. 

I claimed the reason was because I don’t stick to any single blogging genre. I just flit about from topic to topic, writing about whatever I goddamn feel like, like some slightly-unhinged flitting thing. Or, to be more precise, like some slightly-unhinged flitting thing with internet access.

Lady Ren said it didn’t matter what I wrote about, because I always told my stories in the same way. 

“Are you telling me I need to get some new jokes?” I asked her, somewhat horrified. New Jokes? Whose got time to come up with New Jokes? 

But then I realised that she meant I had what is known in the trade as “a unique voice”. Kind of like Michael Cain, Sean Connery or David Beckham, but just in written form. Actually, come to think of it, David Beckham’s is more “surprising” than “unique”. You see him and he’s pretty pleasing on the eye and all, and then he opens his mouth and sounds like he’s just wet his pants and wants his mummy. So while loads of people go ’round trying to emulate Cain and Connery because it makes them sound cool, nobody goes round talking like David Beckham. Nobody. Even David Beckham tries not to talk like David Beckham because it somewhat undermines all that time he’s spent at the gym and those expensive clothes his mummy dressed him – I mean, his wife.

“Anyway,” Lady Ren said, breaking into my little revery. “I enjoy reading your blog because I know you and I can just see all the things happening to you.”

Which raised the fair point about what the hell those people who read my blog without knowing me must think of me. For one thing, what do they think I look like?

For the record: in my mind’s eye, I’m just a bit like Winona Ryder in “Reality Bites”. But to be quite honest, I probably look more like that actress in “Back to the Future” who plays Michael J Fox’s mum in the unaltered Future (and not the tennis-playing future), except with unbrushed hair and slightly-askew glasses with butter-smeared lenses. Anyway, I know there is a sizeable disparity between my mind’s eye and reality because I frequently catch a glimpse of myself pushing the Valco Mobile Home in the reflection of a shop window and think “Who the fuck is that?”. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not who I am. I’m something far more magnificent (and a tad less frumpy). 

It reminded me of something Kurt Vonnegut once wrote which has always stayed with me. In the introduction to Welcome to the Monkey House, he said:

I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing.

In the water I am beautiful.

Vonnegut also drew a picture of his arsehole, which has also always stayed with me, but for very different reasons. Obviously. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is this:

In my mind, I’m young, thin and pixie-esque. In my mind, I’m absolutely knee-slapping hilarious and worthy of winning a whole gaggle of awards. In my mind, I never deserve a Late Pass and people get served legal writs with their Happy Meals. In my mind, it’s totally okay to get a stuffed bear drunk at the Gin Palace, to seek legal advice from Grizzly Adams or even to stage a musical theatre-style rumble between warring Kindergarten Mother factions in the Presbyterian Church car park. In my mind, it’s always Happy Hour and the cocktail of the day is The Flirtini. 

As far as I’m concerned, my mind is a pretty fun place for me to hang out.

Read Full Post »