Blog and butter in the gutter

Chaos HQ was born into the virtual world a year ago today. This involved much swearing and plenty of ineffective pain relief. I'm pleased to report that life at Chaos HQ has brightened considerably since those dark sleepless days in the trenches of shape sorter land.

Thanks to all who have tirelessly read and suffered through the monthly milestones. Your Mañana Points, redeemable precisely nowhere, are in the post.

Over the past twelve months, Chaos HQ has learned to spatter-paint in sweet potato, cram utensils into light sockets, and perform numerous complex maneuvers out of 'The Exorcist.' Which is to say, Choas HQ was born into futillity and remains fully useless.

What to expect when you're past expecting?

Blogging has been great preventative medicine: I have completely failed to engage in more productive work. But I've managed to keep a few of my marbles, which was more than I expected. And it has been fun, if fraught with translation hazards and avoidable dangers.

I've re-connected with beloved friends and relatives an ocean away. I've met a handful of wonderful virtual people. I've learned to hate sort of tolerate only mildly hate Twitter.

In spite of slack editorial standards here at Chaos HQ, and out of the kindness of your hearts (or your concerns for my delicate mental state), you lovely people leave wonderful comments all the time. Thank you from the bottom of my grinchy heart: you make my day.

In the beginning, when the cursor first moved over the face of the blank page, I had such a strong grasp on good taste and privacy that I password-protected my blog and blocked it from search engines.

I was literally writing for no one. Lame, yes?

I soon realized that blogging for no one is like the sound of a typewriter falling over in a forest where no one can hear it BEING REALLY LAME. So I slowly I baby-stepped into the stream, out into the harsh glare of the interwebs. I learned to ride without midnight training wheels. I became audibly lame, which is far more rewarding.

Naval browsing.

Of course the best part of growing older is birthday cake and adult beverages. The next best part is that wise realisation that you haven't grown any wiser and likely never will. And the next-next best thing is the birthday blues: that period of reflection that accompanies the act of counting down our finite days on the ceaseless conveyor belt towards the great end. Similar to to New Year's resolutions, but without the excess hope and faith in one's ability to crash diet.

Now that I am toddling wide-eyed around this wide world, eating worms and smacking my head on trees, I find I've run out of steam a bit. What's it all for? Where's it going? Why is my child on fire? Why am I on fire?

Readers, robots, friends - I'd love to hear your thoughts. Failing thoughts, please send LULAS, whiskey and fruit shoots. Prioritise the whiskey. Stocks are running low.

As a side-note, I was pleased to discover that Chaos HQ and Woody Guthrie share the same birthday. My musically gifted other half introduced me to this wonderful Woody song, and I've adopted it as the new Chaos National Anthem to help me power through another year of blogging nonsense. God save us.



Now if you'll excuse me, my blog has just lit itself on fire and is throwing pasta again.

23: Waiting for the miracle

Day 23 is born.

With child.

At my first maternity appointment, the GP actually said 'women have been doing this for thousands of years'. Boy do I hate the assertion that bearing children is trivial because it is common. True: every child born is first carried, and true: this usually involves a bulbous belly, a tired back, the better part of a year, and a rather rude exit. Thousands of years of hard labour, agony, loss, and joy.

Palm of wonder. 

Frequency simply cannot remove the peril or the wonder of the experience. So I don't think it's sappy to say that when a child takes her first breath outside the womb it is miraculous. Even if her plastic manger lies in a noisy ward smelling of disinfectant, staffed by toast and tea-wielding midwives instead of angels, beatifically illuminated by fluorescent strip-lights shining through some horrible hour of night.

Wondrous, even if women have always done just this.

Through a shape sorter darkly

A question recurs when I am in the presence of another mum of two and we experience a miracle: our babies drift off and our toddlers drop protocol and commence peaceful, bite-free playing for a vast stretch of several minutes (eternity, in two-year-old terms).

There is a pause. Then the question."Why didn't anybody warn me about two?"

Subsequent kids grow families in an exponential, not linear fashion. One is just one. But two is an army (and under-fives don't adhere to the Geneva Conventions). No one gets a break. There aren't enough hands, nor enough hours in the day. There aren't complete conversations, or even complete thought--

Which is why the question remains unanswered. Toddlers notice their respective social secretaries relaxing and  resume protocol. Kid A bites Kid B. Kid B smacks Kid A over the head with the COVETED TOY OF THE MOMENT (think the conch shell from 'Lord of the Flies'). Both babies go off like car alarms. Parenting resumes and the question is forgotten.

Shapeshifter fingerprints.

Perhaps no one warned me for the same reason that veteran mums to never tell expectant mums about the horrors of labour. Or maybe no one remembered to warn me due to a sort of Mama Stockholm Syndrome--eventually we learn to identify with our captors to survive. I suspect this because I feel myself slowly becoming one with the two-kid army. I am forgetting the horrors of the early months with two under-threes, just as a promised I wouldn't.

Recently I watched Ana repeatedly bash the round peg into the square hole of her shape sorter. In that moment I really identified with her. Most of my days feel like that. But there must be light at the end of this shape sorter tunnel, albeit faint, because I have time to sit here and write this.