Sign your name across my skin

I’ve never really got the fascination with tattoos. It seems to me a very extreme (and permanent) way of expressing how you’re feeling at that exact moment, but doesn’t really take into account how you might feel in years to come. After all, over the course of a lifetime names come and go, ideas and trends change and something that might be considered cute and girly at 18 will probably look downright stupid at 50.

And surely the effects of gravity on skin is not a tattoos friend? That bright and delicate flower you might have on your shoulder when you’re young enough to think it’s a good idea, will surely just become a faded pile of squiggles around your mid drift when you’re old enough to know better.

I’m not sure if my aversion to being drawn on is my reluctance to have someone shoot ink into my skin with a needle, or because I have absolutely no desire to have something covering my body that in a few years I would no doubt regret. More than likely it’s probably because even at 34, my mother would still kill me.

Whatever the reason, I have managed to reach this point in my life with a completely ink free body. Not a Tweetie Pie, Celtic cross or a initialed heart is to be found on any inch, nook or crevice of my being.

It was the girl in front of me in the spinning class yesterday morning, that got me thinking about tattoos in the first place. She had children’s names (well I presume they were anyway) written in huge letters across the bottom of her back. It’s not that it looked terrible, it just seemed an odd thing to do. And a very popular thing to do, judging by the number of people walking around these days with the contents of a baby naming book etched on their skin. In fact an hour later I was in a Pilates class (yes, I was feeling particularly keen that day), and I noticed that two of the woman contorting like pretzels on the mats in front of me were also listing their offspring – this time around their ankles.

I started to wonder if I was the only one who believed having their names on a birth certificates was no longer enough.

Now of course I can completely understand the idea of celebrating your kids. But wouldn’t a t-shirt, or a photo frame do? Do you really need to wear their names on your skin for the rest of your life to show how much they mean to you? Who knows, perhaps I’m an uncaring parent, but I can categorically say I have no wish to have so much as their initials on me, let alone their annual school photos tattooed all the way down my back.

I guess that’s something they’ll just have to live with. And perhaps discuss in therapy later. That said, I do however have a set of silver dog tags with their fingerprints on. These I can wear whenever I want – and take off whenever I want. Makes perfect sense to me.

Who knows, maybe there’s something about getting a tattoo that I just don’t get. Along with multiple earings, nose rings, tongue studs and bellybutton piercings. I’ll admit it does indeed sound like I have an issue with pain, but I’ve had two kids so it can’t be that. I think it just comes down to taste, and preferring my art hung up on the wall, rather than looking back at me in the mirror.

Why Perth will never equal Paris

Paris, NY, London and Milan – the fashion capitals of the world. Exciting hubs of cutting edge design and stylish good taste. Where the beautiful flock to see and be seen, and designers fight to outdo each other, sending one unwearable outfit after another down the catwalk.

Perth on the other hand – not so much a hub as a gaping hole. The universal dumping ground for the last 3 decades worth of dodgy trends. A place that shops everywhere send their unwanted stock to, and the fashion police earn more in a weeks overtime than your average divorce lawyer would in a year.

Lord only knows why some of the clothes shops are so bad here, it’s not like there isn’t online access to the rest of the world and a constant supply of current fashion magazines. Perhaps it’s because the city is so isolated that it’s inhabitants just don’t care, or because the over zealous customs officials are rooting out all the best stuff and selling it off on Ebay. Whatever the reason, I’d have to say trends here seem to be at least a good 20 years behind the rest of the world.

Think ‘Hillbilly Chic’. A sort of trucker meets 80’s Chav meets unwashed backpacker.

Of course the limited choice of shops really don’t help. They are enough to turn even the most fashion conscious into the worst sort of fashion victim – or phobic. The options range from the likes of Kmart, Target and BigW for your cheap and cheerful basics – with basic being the operative word. Most garments seem to fall apart in the wash, beg for mercy under the heat of a gentle iron or change several dress sizes hours after being removed from the hanger. You get what you pay for of course, so for kids clothes, which have a shorter life span than the average family camera, these shops are great.

At the other end of the rather abysmal spectrum is Myers and David Jones. Both shops are supposedly the ‘Creme de la creme’ of Aussie shopping. Say no more. I’ve been into each a few times, but have never seen anything either particularly special or stylish, let alone affordable. I had a voucher to use up for David Jones recently, and it took me several visits to try and find anything that I even wanted to buy. In the end I settled for a pyjamas top. I only managed half an outfit as the top alone came to more than the voucher, and I was loathed to fork out even more for something I didn’t actually need.

Several washes later and the stitching on the top had all but unravelled. The fabric had also stretched so much on the sides that if I’d leapt off our roof, I could probably have coasted all the way out to Rottnest on a wind current.

Funnily enough a set of pyjamas I bought from Big W 3 winters ago are still going strong.

When talking to other POMS here, the one shop that most seem to miss is NEXT. If I had a decent pair of well fitted jeans for every time someone asked why they can’t open a store in Perth, my wardrobe would be overflowing with denim.

Clothes aside, there also seems to be an underlying scruffiness ingrained into the WA culture. The mullet for instance is incredibly popular over here, and it’s not uncommon to see an entire family out and about, all sporting matching scraggly rats tails down their backs. I think that like the fashion, photos in mens barbers over here must be somewhat outdated.

The other trend, one that never ceases to amaze me, is the notion that footwear is entirely optional. Now I’m not talking about going barefoot to the park or the beach – that would be understandable. I’m referring to those I’ve seen without shoes in IKEA, the city centre, restaurants, supermarkets, the cinema and the most dangerous of all, or so you’d think, Bunnings.

Revolting, dirty looking feet aside,  surely there have to be some serious health and hygiene laws being broken as kids run across the urine soaked floors of the public toilets and straight down the fresh produce aisle of the neighbouring supermarket.

And needless to say, if such people don’t ever wash their feet, it’s highly unlikely they’d wash their hands..

I followed one such woman and her snot encrusted child around Coles last week, and snapped her for with my phone for proof. Given that she looked like she was probably capable of beating me to death with one of those blocks of cheese, I’ve airbrushed her features slightly. But to be honest, I very much doubt she’d ever stumble across my blog, or be able to read this post.

This shoeless woman I have to say was certainly not alone. I spotted several others, overgrown toe nails and all, hot footing it through the freezer section.

asfa

asfa

Perhaps people in WA feel there’s no point bothering with their appearance, because there’s really nowhere to dress up and go. I can relate to this, and know from experience it’s a very easy and highly dangerous trap to fall into. Before you know what’s happened, you can find that you’ve metamorphosed into a homeless bag lady, wearing the same old tracksuit for 6 days in a row and have forgotten to change out of your PJs on Sunday.

Now I’ve never been one for making a huge effort with clothes, or really caring that much about how I look, but a while back I realised I was starting to stoop to such a level. This was around the time I arrived at the school to collect my daughter and realised, as I went to get out the car, that I’d left the house in my slippers.

So the following weekend, when heading out to Coles to do the weekly shop, I dug around in the back of my wardrobe and put on a jacket, a scarf and my high-heeled boots – the sort of clothes I’d have once worn in the UK when popping out to fill the car up with petrol. Taking it one daring stop further, I took my hair out of a pony tail and dusted off my mascara,  pumping the tube vigorously to break the old clumps off the brush.

My son walked straight past me in the hallway, and then did a double take as he disappeared around the corner. I don’t think he actually recognised me. How sad is that.

“Oh you do look pretty Mummy” my daughter said as I appeared from the bedroom, clearly impressed with my ‘Extreme Makeover’. I loosely translated this compliment to mean that I normally didn’t.

“So where are you off to then, seeing as you’re all dressed up?” enquired my slightly suspicious husband.

With that I realised that I had better start making more of an effort, before I reached the day where I would think nothing of going to the shops still wrapped in my duvet, or end up with skin as thick as a rhinos hide on a pair of black and scaly feet.

One of those nights

Last night was one of those nights that just makes you want to crawl under the duvet and sleep for a week.

It was one of those nights when your children don’t want to eat what you have cooked and you wonder why you bothered in the first place. It was one of those nights where their bedtime simply can not come soon enough, and then when they are in bed,  you are faced with a counter stacked ceiling high with a days worth of dirty plastic bowls, plates, spoons and beakers. It was one of those nights, when you do summon up the last remaining ounce of energy to empty and reload the dishwasher, you find that it never actually did it’s job properly the last time around.

Yes, it was definitely one of those nights.

So lets get past the bit where I had to hand wash all of the crockery, just to get yesterdays dry, crusted on food off. And lets get past the massive tidy up operation, namely finding, regrouping and re-boxing 40 Thomas the Tank Engine books, re-parking a ride on fire engine in it’s respective corner, rounding up 6 cars (of varying size and spec) that have been hidden behind each cushion on the sofa, and trying to contain at least half the contents of my daughters bedroom, which was by this point, now strewn across the entire dining table, and beyond.

I should say that this type of military operation is all pretty normal stuff in our house, or indeed I imagine, in any house that is inhabited by humans measuring in at 5 feet or less.

Yes, lets get past all of that. There I was, at the end of such a day – a day when for every minute the clock ticked forward, it ticked back 2. I was, to put it mildly, rather tired. So, after spending my allotted ‘me time’ washing my hair, I re-emerged to get on with what was left of the day, namely eating, putting my feet up and watching ‘Greys Anatomy’.

Unfortunately, but hardly surprisingly, this was not to be. Before my soup could even hit the bowl, never mind make it into the microwave, my daughter appeared, scratching her head and complaining of an itch.

Now she had said the same thing the last 2 nights, but being the sometimes unsympathetic and always overtired mother that I am, I had sent her back to bed. The first night I gave her hair the once over and then gave her a spoonful of Claratyne, for the allergy itch that she always seems to get when she doesn’t want to go to sleep. The second night I just sent her back to bed.

Last night however a little voice (that would be the nagging voice sent to reprimand lazy parents) told me to check her head again. So I did. And ewwwwwww. There were nits, or head lice if you want to use the now more politically correct terminology, marching across her head.

Now having a child who has friends who sometimes have nits, this shouldn’t have come as such a shock. In the last 7 years however, she has somehow managed to sail, completely un-infested through every outbreak at nursery, kindergarten and school. I guess I had put this lucky streak down to her either having super resistant hair, or just a very uninviting scalp.

Winning streak obviously over, all the lights came on, the torch came out and I was forced to be the adult. I quashed my inner squeamishness and picked through her hair, strand my strand, until they were all caught, found and squashed in a tissue. My husband had the, I would say, slightly nicer job of going out on the hunt for nit killing lotion.

As I oiked out the little critters I tried to hide them from my daughter, thinking it would upset her. I needn’t have worried. She was, I believe, actually quite chuffed to now be in the ‘I’ve Been Nitted Club’. Children are odd like that. If I’d given her the option she might well have opted to keep one as a pet. She would probably have named it Fluffy.

We on the other hand, spent the evening with an imaginary itch. When we did finally get to sit down and eat, our heads were coated in conditioner and our scalps were on the verge of bleeding, after such a vicious combing with the metal contraption provided.

Like I said, it really was one of those nights. The sort of night you can well do without, especially when followed by one of those days.

Needless to say my daughter is having a hair cut next week, something as she rather smugly pointed out, that she had been asking me for for weeks. Yippee. After the recent hair related fiasco’s with both my son and my dog, I just can’t wait to make it a hat trick.

litt

Here’s some handy INFO on nits, and how to kill the little blighters.

litt

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Baby killers

Two weeks ago, an 8 year old boy in the US state of Arizona murdered his father and the lodger. By all accounts he had ‘methodically planned the killings’. 

Part of me thinks how is this possible. How could a child, not even into double figures, reach such a mentally and emotionally unstable place that they would even think to do such a thing.

My 7 year old daughter may be prone to bouts of stroppiness and the occasional defiant outburst, but I think I can categorically say (well I hope I can), that it would never cross her mind to kill me, no matter how much I nagged, moaned or reprimanded her.

Yes, I’m pretty much sure on that one. My confidence being based on the fact she is still too scared to watch Harry Potter, had nightmares after reading James and the Giant Peach (the mean aunts, not the life sized insects) and insists on going to bed with an army of furry protectors around her pillow at night, presumably standing guard to ward off any potentially unwanted bad dreams. She is not really the type to be hiding a killer instinct under her bushel.

Now while the story may have made me eye up my own child, as I refuse her a piece of cake right before dinner, I can’t say that it really surprised me to see an 8 year old up on a double homicide charge. A lack of surprise, that in itself, is even more shocking than the headlines.

The fact that this child had actually been taught how to use a gun at such a young age, and by the very person he used it against no less, says a lot. I wonder how the law works with something like this. If a child under a parent’s care is taught how to kill and then goes on to kill, is the parent responsible?

Now putting aside the whole debate about hunting and what part it plays in our society, should a child really be taught how to pull a trigger and dispense with life, when they have only just mastered the art of how to tie their own shoelaces? If it is deemed acceptable, normal even, then why do people act so surprised when the same trained assassin walks into their high school a few years later, with a chip on one shoulder and a semi automatic on the other?

I am certainly not making light of what has happened to this family or the increasingly frequent school shootings that seem to be taking place. I am merely pointing out what seems, to me at least, to be the blindingly obvious. If you teach an impressionable child skills that are both deadly and way beyond their levels of maturity and understanding, then one day they might just use those skills to ruin both their own life and that of the person who most annoys them.

It may be deemed by many a perfectly normal past time, to go out and kill animals, but if a child is taught to kill, who makes sure that they actually learn the difference between setting their sights on a prairie dog and on their fellow classmate? The workings of a child’s mind are a mystery at the best of times, so why would you possibly want to tempt fate? I personally don’t believe any claims that are made, saying there are no links between gun crime and those who shoot guns, whether that be at a wood pigeon or a zombie in a video game that glorifies violence.

Guns shouldn’t play any part in a child’s life or upbringing. Headlines prove that. After all, if you don’t have access to a gun and wouldn’t know what to do with one if you did, then however aggrieved you become with the world, the likelihood of deciding to go on a killing spree is considerably lowered.

Annoy the average child and they may stomp their feet or slam a few doors, annoy a child with a weapon and the word “No” suddenly doesn’t have so much clout.

Of course what drove the boy to kill in the first place will undoubtedly fuel the media fire and help to sell many more newspapers. If the media should be highlighting anything from this story, instead of focusing on the child’s young age and the ‘shock value’ of it all, they should be questioning why he was ever given a gun in the first place.

Bottom line is guns don’t kill people, people kill people. So don’t give a gun to anyone who is still young enough to think Power Ranges are cool and that reindeer can fly.

Actually, just don’t give a gun to anyone.