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.

F-bomb

Someone has been wiretapping my bathroom. And they've made a million bucks out of it.

The loo is my swearing refuge. It's where I run to when my nocturnally expressive child won't be pacified for the fiftieth time. Here no one judges me. Here no one picks up verbal weaponry for strategic deployment at effing playgroup.

I don't know who dunnit. It may have been Nixon's ghost attempting revenge, but acting on bad intelligence. It may have been the out of warranty gremlin in league with the crap evil spy agency.

However it happened, a transcript landed on a printing press and ventured onto the interwebs where it met with a shi*tstorm of approval.*

'Go the F**k to Sleep', written by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortes, is a bastardized version of 'Goodnight Moon'. It has topped the Amazon bestseller list, converting the previously pro bono medium of midnight bathroom effing and blinding into a fat golden goose.



The title is certainly more memorable than 'Mummy is crying in the loo again', which would have been my best shot. The illustrations are lovely, and the tone of wits end soothery is perfect:

The cubs and the lions are snoring, wrapped in a big snugly heap. How come you can do all this other great shit, but you can't lie the fuck down and sleep?

Deja poo

From a sociological perspective, the short world is fascinating. You wouldn't suspect it from stock phrases like 'googalibababa', but short people are verbal hawks who are always watching for prey.

My research indicates that a favourite pass-time of short people is the old a 'accidental' profanity game. The scoring goes like this: one point for a flustered mum, two points for an embarrassed babysitter, and ten points for a tut-tutting room of smug observers (whose children will NEVER speak like that).

A prime example is the time (or one of the times) I stubbed my toe, shouted a word that rhymes with  'git', leading Ana to go off like a car alarm 'GIT! GIT! GIT!' thereby making her day.

Ana went through a very active patch of Pediatric Outburst Syndrome. She used to discuss male chickens in the context of clocks, and git in conjunction with torso-cover. She also liked to point out 'HUGE POOS!' usually when there weren't any around. The phrase, as you might expect of such a household as this, was introduced by her mama, spoken in a moment of anger at the neighbourhood's poo-hose cat.

Speaking of huge poos, in my younger and more impressionable days, I was once naive enough to let a naked baby run around the sitting room for several minutes. You see, midwives and health visitors have this joke they like to play on new mothers: they say in very earnest tones, that the best way to avoid nappy rash is to let a baby run around in her birthday suit for brief spells each day. In an infamous incident that has come to be known in this house as 'Poop Slide Gate', I discovered the punchline to this joke.

I left my smiling angel on the carpet of the sitting room and walked to the kitchen for two minutes. When I returned, I smelled the punchline. Then I spotted a big pile of punchline on the carpet. There were cute little baby footprints leading in a trail, like Gretal and her breadcrumbs, all around the living room, up the stairs of our plastic slide (on loan from the toy library), then a swerving streak of punchline all the way down. The baby at the bottom of the slide was covered in punchline, and deep in concentration, body-painting. Needless to say, I am more wary of visiting health advice these days.

Pants. 

Relative peace, in poo terms, returned to this house after Ana potty trained. But Ali is turning into a chatterbox, and has noticed that everyone in this house visits the toilet except for her.* She is very leery of being left out, so she likes to toddle along on toilet visits and, in the manner of a beagle shouting at the moon, unleash an ode to 'pooooooooooooooooo'. And she is starting to take an interest in mispronounced clocks too. Ali, like her sister before her, is getting to be a skilled practitioner of the accidental profanity game.

This post was written for the year's most illustrious event, the Carnival of Poo, hosted by the talented Ella of Notes from Home fame.

*Actually that's a lie: Ali frequently visits the toilet. I know when she has done so, because she kindly leaves evidence of her visit floating duck-like in the toilet bowl: toys, shoes, and hairbrushes, entire civilisations.

Parlez-vous Baby Esperanto?

I lied about byebye. It isn't Ali's first word, it's her first word in English. Pre-byebye she had many words, but what she meant by them only meant something to her, because pre-byebye she spoke Babish.

In the baby-tongue, Ali can opaquely discuss all things mysterious. My research indicates that each Babisher is assigned an individual dialect at birth—unique, like a fingerprint or a social security number. This dialect is super-indecipherable to tall people, and also mostly unintelligible to other babies.

Babish is the loneliest of languages; a means of burping loudly and giggling madly to oneself (and perhaps also the Invisible Clown, if his is indeed out there and listening). Being baffling is initially quite fun but quickly grows old. Ultimately a Babisher must learn English, or whatever the mama-tongue is, to communicate anything more sophisticated than hungry, sleepy, change me, cuddle me, burp me, play with me, ME ME ME (a non-exhaustive list of things that can be communicated by screaming and flailing about).

Living with a native Babisher has taught me a few things. For instance in Ali's dialect the most important word is 'ko'. Not 'coo', mind you. Ali regularly points at items, looks very serious and says 'ko'. She utters it with joy, surprise, rage and 200,000 other emotions. I've overheated my brain trying to figure it out. The best I can do is toodle around with Ali, point to an item and ask if it is ko. She ponders the question, then extends her pointer finger (she has just entered the pointy phase—more on this later) and gives the solemn ko-blessing. Or, she looks at me like I'm a nutter and blinks to indicate 'not ko'.

From left to right: ko, ko, not ko. 

As for Ana, the acquisition of powerful words like 'no' and 'why' pretty much wiped out her interest in the Babish. Once upon a time she too had a special item-identification word akin to ko. It was pronounced 'DAT!'. For many months DAT! was absolutely everywhere and I had absolutely no idea what it meant.

A few whispers of the baby-tongue linger in Ana. For instance, sometimes she develops Babish-ears and can't hear a word of English from Mama or Papa. When she gets excited and isn't thinking before she speaks, little Babish phrases pop out. She is prone to laugh-shouting 'ning-a-ning-a-ning-a-niiiiiiiiiiiii! Fas-did-a-eeyiiiiiiiiiiii!'while running in circles and getting dizzy. When she bounces up and down on a forbidden item in muddy shoes, such as a friend's expensive new white sofa for instance, she stacatos: 'hothothot hothothot!' in triplicate bursts.

Babish is fascinating, fleeting and ultimately supplanted by the accidental swearing stage. Which is replaced by the purposeful swearing stage, otherwise known as adolescence, otherwise known as why Mama is developing Babish-ears for adults and constructing a fully-stocked underground bomb-shelter. Years away I know, but the inheritance of George Carlin and Lenny Bruce is inevitable.

Mattresside

Ali's first word is 'byebye'. It is her new response to anything and everything. Not yet a year old and already versed in the transitory nature of life.

Ali is petite for her age and wise beyond her years. She is just the sort of baby that sweet grannies on the street like to 'coocheecoo' (although Bog Standard Gran has learned her lesson with Ana). A typical encounter goes something like this: BS Gran says 'Hello poppet'. Ali crinkles her tiny brow, eyes brimming with a vast knowledge of life, the universe and everything. In this moment she reminds me of Odin, listening intently to ravens as they whisper about the end of the world. Solemnly, earnestly she utters it: 'byebye'. Gran giggles like a child, then totters away, her day made by this chance encounter with Chaos.

The raven quoth 'byebye' evermore.

There is something about earnestness in children that makes grownups bust up laughing. In my past life as a short person this used to drive me nuts, because like Ali I had concerns before I had the words to articulate them--concerns that I wanted people to take seriously. But the more serious I got, the more tall people laughed. Odd. As a serious tall person nobody finds me funny anymore.

Speaking of funny, something I really don't find humorous these days is pediatric insomnia. Every night I turn out the light and count fibs like sheep so my brain can drift off: tonight she will sleep, tonight I will sleep, tomorrow I will feel rested, tomorrow I will only drink one container ship of coffee to function, tomorrow Ana won't wear me out like a treadmill, tomorrow when my head hits this pillow and my body hits this mattress I will not crash like a beat-up old truck zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I wake at eleven to byebye tapping at my chamber door. Then one. Then four. Why do my ears hear her every byebye? Why does my baby wake up all night? Nobody knows, certainly not her. By six her good morning byebye seems less out of place.

To everything a season. This shall pass. I know that I will miss these younger days when she and I are both older and better-rested. Speaking of which, Ali has sprung from her nap and is calling for Mama. So byebye for now.

From the potty mouths of babes

'MORONS! There are some MORONS!'

This courtesy of Ana, high decibel, on our walk to the park this morning. The MORONS, or motorists, didn't appear to be doing anything particularly stupid. Next passing car, also MORONS.

MORONS, MORONS, MORONS. By the time we reached the park, an entire village of MORONS had been identified and shamed.

Ana has chronic pediatric outburst syndrome, a relatively common childhood condition. I first noticed it when she was about 18 months and could not yet pronounce the letter L. This didn't stop her from loudly identifying every clock she spotted. Fortunately we live in England, this just came accross as an interest in chickens.

*&£"*^$£-+^%*!!!

Around the same time she had difficulty with the letter R, but nevertheless became fascinated with shirts. She developed a compulsion to point at every one she saw, in a manner reminiscent of Dr Strangelove. This became a bit of a problem because we live in a village where about half the residents are sweet grannies, perpetually down the shop. Here's a typical sampling of dialogue from that time:

Bog Standard Gran: 'Hello poppet, how old?

Mama: 'Thank you Bog Standard Gran, 18 months.

Ana activates Strangelovian pointer finger salute.

BS Gran: 'Coocheecoo--"

Ana commences shirt recognition sequence...

BS Gran: '--cheecoochee--'

Ana launches: 'Sh*t! Sh*t! Sh*t!

Gran runs for cover, digestive biscuits go flying.

Ana: 'Sh*t! Sh*t! Sh*t!'

Pronunciation misunderstandings form the backbone of Ana's POS, but poor-taste word fixation brings up the rear. My neighbor's cat, Nemesis (I have no idea what his real name is), is essentially a poo-hose on legs. One afternoon I caught Nemesis red-bottomed in the middle of my front yard, where my kids play. I yelled at him to take his huge poo elsewhere. From behind me came: 'HUGE POO! 'HUUUUUUUUUGE POOOOOOO!' I should have seen it coming really.

HUGE POO was everywhere for weeks. The animals at the zoo were all taking huge poos (they weren't). Other kids were huge pooers. Trees pooed, cars pooed. Even BS Gran was implicated.

Ana's POS had been in remission for some time before rearing it's ugly mouth again today. It took me half the morning to figure out that it was my inane chatter about cars that had kicked it off: 'There's one car...there's another one...there are some more'. Ana fused these together into kid-speak: 'There are some more ones', or to my ears: 'MORONS!!!'.

I pity BS Gran. She won't deserve this. But the next time we see Nemesis, Ana will be ready.