Big Brother is Watching You

I was reading recently about a local gp’s observations of the contents of residents’ recycling bins and the astonishing insight it gave into our culture’s drinking habits.

While disturbed, yet not surprised by her revelation of what goes on behind closed doors, it brought a relief from my own guilty pleasures of old. And I’m not talking about my own overflowing recycling bin.

As I’ve mentioned previously, motherhood opens up a whole new world – not only to the sleepless nights and endless feeding and washing etc – but to the daily goings-on in your own neibourhood when one would otherwise have been unawares at work.

The pace, compared to after-hours, is a whole lot slower – the people, unlike the workers, haggard after an eight-hour day, racing home to cook dinner, have a glass of wine and put their feet up, are friendly. Other than the roll-your-eyes ‘Thank god it’s Friday’ relieved small-talk, that comes out in a week’s worth of pent-up gush, interaction regularly happens.

And it’s at this slower pace that a stay-at-home mother has the time to go for strolls up the street, inhale the fresh air, smell the roses and get to know their neighbours. These include the the elderly - usually on-hand to cluck at the contents of your stroller - and the fellow stay-at-home mums, who greet each other on passing, while checking out the contents of each other’s strollers. These parents will likely get to know each other better years later when said contents end up friends in the same class.

Then there are the closed doors of the workers’ houses, the residents of whom you are never likely to lay eyes on, until you re-join the work force and come face-to-face with at the fish n chip shop on the way home. Until then, with one’s over-active imagination in overdrive from mind-numbingly mundane routines, one can only imagine what they are like.

And this is where the recycling bins come in. Dodging the bins on a Thursday morning with a double-stroller whilst taking the same well-trod route, it would be impossible not to, albeit slightly ashamedly, note their fillings.

Thoughts like “Gosh that person enjoys a good tipple after work”, or “Gee, they sure like their Coca Cola – I wonder if they know how bad it is for them” flit through the mind before anyone can say “Big Brother is Watching You”.

I’m sure, had I not lived at the end of a street, another stroller-manoeuvring mother with nothing better to think about, happening  upon my own recycling bin, might have noted the couple of ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ WoodStock cans and concluded that: either a boy racer lived within or, more correctly, a mother who doesn’t like beer, having posted to Facebook on a Friday afternoon asking: “Is it too early to crack a Woody?”

Long gone are the days where I have this luxury of voyeuristic observation and long gone are the days where I feel the need to drain a Woody to celebrate surviving the week. My own recycling bin is, in fact completely boring – more of the yogurt pot and milk bottle variety. Apart from the odd occasion where the family get together and the younger cousins and siblings manage to fill up two bins-full, much to my amused chagrin on a Thursday morning while carting the beer bottle (and odd Woodstock)-laden bins up the hill undercover.

So when you’re discarding the remnants of your week at the front gate, take note of what you are putting on show – and perhaps your consumption for that matter - for it’s not Big Brother who is watching you – it’s bored housewives, rubbish collectors and the family doctor, it would seem.

Mouse in the House

There’s a mouse in the house, as my son’s book goes. But in this fiction, the mouse is eventually welcome. The one taken up residence in my abode, is not.
 

I first became aware of my new ‘roomie’ a couple of weeks ago when, one night, I heard what sounded like something crawling over a piece of furniture in my bedroom, followed by the gentle thud as it landed on the floor - I no longer have cats.
 

However, out of sight, out of mind and it was easier to feign ignorance… until a week later at 4am when I came face-to-face with my miniscule dweller in the ensuite. I actually had to give way while it skidded out from behind the washing basket and into my room. Needless to say, I didn’t go back to sleep that morning.
 

It probably sounds utterly ridiculous to some that a person can be afraid of something so tiny. After-all they are supposedly more scared of us than we are of them right? I beg to differ.
 

It’s hard to describe the type of fear a rodent can invoke. It’s obviously not the ‘fear for your life’ terror, it’s just a creepy-crawlie angst. I will not set a trap because, heck, then I’ve got to deal with it – they are just as repulsive dead as they are alive. 
 

Discovering a tail hanging out of my slipper last winter didn’t help. They were promptly turfed in the rubbish (after the rodent had vacated of course). As a result, I cannot don a pair of slippers without checking them first.Last winter it was rodent-central, courtesy of our two cats. I had thought they were bringing them in the house when they delivered them to me in bed – both dead and alive and some more intact than others. But, in light of the latest inhabitant, I wonder if my cats were actually just doing their job.
 

This all sounds very peaceful the way I’m re-telling it but, believe me, it wasn’t: More like, screaming murder and cursing the innocent-looking moggies and simultaneously dry-retching into my pajama top while holding a bucket at arm’s length to try and catch it. All this in the dead of the night. Often the mouse, if it were alive, would run straight into the bucket, relieved to get away from the cat, after which I’d carry it, still at arm’s length and at great speed, downstairs and fling the whole bucket out the garage door. I’d need a sleeping pill after that.
 

I came home to a smashed window some weeks ago from an attempted burglary and, despite amping up my security, spent many nights thereafter on high-alert. So it is, therefore, amazing, that this little creature can have the same effect on one’s quality of life.

Reading last week of the Auckland boy whose ear was bitten by a rat as he slept didn’t help either.

 

Unfortunately the kids have picked up on my fear. It would probably never have occurred to them to be scared but, after the latest sighting, Master Nine screamed like a banshee as it scuttled under the fridge. We promptly went about barricading it in with logs of wood. But what next?
 

“Perhaps we could keep passing bits of cheese under the fridge until it gets so fat it can’t fit out,” he suggested.
 

The jury’s still out on that one. Anyway, I think I heard a thud later that night as it hit the kitchen floor and made a run for it after climbing over the wood.
 

Meanwhile, our fridge is still boarded up, just in case.

Mother Nature Wins

As the recent Facebook post went: ‘Kids don’t remember their best day of television’.

I was reminded of this when the skies opened up this week and promptly pelted the region with mini balls of ice.

It was 2.55pm and I was about to leave my roaring fire behind and set out on foot to pick up my three when this happened. All around me it sounded like a mini war zone. Staring out the window, I considered staying home – where’s the sense in four of us getting wet? – but decided I’d best be a good mum and deliver their umbrellas.

Setting out I wondered if my umbrella would soon be riddled in bullet holes, but it sustained the assault and we skidded into the school in one piece while ice pellets ricocheted in all directions.

In the school grounds there was high-excitement coming from within the class rooms. How cruel for this to happen with five minutes before bell time. I suspect those last five minutes was more tedious than usual for the teachers.

At 3pm the kids came tearing out, full volume, to frolic in the remains of the fast-melting ice and study it in their hands. They were in no hurry to get home in front of screens.

The first time my lot experienced hail they were not so enthused. Several years ago, while living on the farm, we decided to go for a walk and pick kiwifruit down the orchard. Just as we got our gumboots on, it started raining, turning into a full-blown thunder storm. At that point the kids began playing up so I told them it was the sky growling at them.

“Sorry,” called out Miss Three, chin upturned to the sky. It responded with another growl, followed by a torrent of hail and she recoiled in terror.

Delighted at the rear occurrence of ice falling from the sky, I decided to run back inside and grab their raincoats to allow them to play in it. After a lot of effort, I managed to get them bundled up and ready but the looks on their faces had changed from enthusiasm to fear as they edged closer towards the door. I eventually allowed a whimpering Miss Three back inside while the other two, seeing my displeasure, lingered, too afraid to admit it was game over for them too. Throwing up my hands in defeat, I stripped their dry, wet-weather gear off and, realising it my was my own fault for putting the fear of god in them, closed the door on the situation. Back to Play House Disney it was.

While Mother Nature seemingly lost out that time, I know which one they remembered: for a long time afterwards when it thundered they would turn on their best behaviour.