The Woman Who Stopped

My oldest son has been asking for ages now if he could walk home from school. My excuses to avoid this have been many and varied but basically it boiled down to I’m lazy,  I don’t want to do that walk with the younger two stopping every twenty seconds to pick flowers, arguing over being in the pram or being allowed to push the pram, and I didn’t want to carry anybody once their legs got tired. Oh and did I mention I’m lazy?

So anyway, I finally caved, in a way that in no way compromised my laziness. He was allowed to walk… as I followed along next to him stalker style with the car and the other kids. This was actually a perfect idea, it means Jack gets to learn the way home for the day he’s allowed to walk home (I can’t even imagine not freaking out when he’s walking without an adult… maybe when he’s twenty something…) and gets the chance to practice crossing roads when I’m still there to keep an eye on him. He gets the feeling of responsibility and independence, and I get to know he’s safe.

There’s been a lot of stuff in the news lately about people trying to abduct kids so the first time I followed Jack home I was mentally prepared to explain myself to strangers or cops called by strangers. However nobody even blinked. I got home and Jack was giddy with excitement over walking all the way home. I jokingly mentioned to my husband that I was surprised nobody stopped me or called the police.

Then we did it again, same thing. Cars going past may not have had us in sight long enough to realise I wasn’t parked or something innocent, but we passed people walking and all they did was say hello to Jack and carry on their merry way. I like to think that this is because he was clearly not scared or anything, and had they glanced at me they would have been reassured by the aura of legally responsible innocence radiating from me. But after getting home I kept thinking about it and it worries me that a little boy can be walking alone down the road with a car following him and nobody does anything about it. In fact I think it’s safe to say that terrifies me. Granted I haven’t done this often, perhaps this is just a quiet day and usually I’d have cops tailing me at least half the way. Who knows.

Jack asked to walk home again today so I put the other kids in the car and off he goes. Followed by me driving stalker style, creeping along behind or beside him. maybe 2 minutes into the walk a car pulls over behind me. I think nothing of it and carry on. Maybe 5 minutes later this car pulls up next to me and a concerned looking woman is looking at me through her open window. I explain that he’s my son and he’s just wanting to walk home and she continues on her way. But honestly I am so grateful that somebody stopped when they saw something questionable. Eventually my son, or my daughter will be walking home from school without me, and maybe one day a different car will follow them. And while I hope I will have taught them what to do should that ever happen, I also hope that if anybody saw it, they would stop and check that my kids are ok. And I promise I’ll do the same for your kids.

Finally Mastering Adulting!

…… Just re-read the title I chose for this particular piece and just want to clarify, I mean “adulting” to be “being an adult” not anything to do with adultery….

I say this all the time, but three kids seriously threw me and I’ve yet to recover. I hate to think about the usual state of my house since baby number three became mobile. I shudder to think of the half-arsed meals I’ve thrown in the general direction of the older kids while I was busy. I imagine judgemental glares when I dwell on the steady decline in my parental involvement between children one and three. I envision divorce lawyers when I remember how my poor husband was waaaaay down on my list of priorities.

But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! My youngest is 19 months old now (by the way, this is how I know how old the baby is now, it’s embarrassing how vague my idea of his age is.) and finally, like only in the last month or so, I’ve started being able to act like a capable adult again. Some of the time at least. My house is clean at least 2 days out of the week, I’ll occasionally manage to have dinner sorted before my husband gets home, at least three days out of the week I find the time to do my makeup, and sometimes I even have super mum moments where I’ll actually do cool things with the kids like make play dough or get them involved in baking.

On one hand, my son is entering the terrible twos and has developed a fierce stubborn streak that endlessly aggravates my daughter and causes no end of conflict. My daughter seems to go out of her way to antagonise her big brother and he knows just what buttons to push to wind her up. On the other hand, when the planets align and my small portion of the world is at peace life is fantastic. When I feel like I’m kicking ass at being a grown up everything, including loud and frustrating children, is easier to deal with the way you imagined dealing with it before you have kids. It sometimes feels like I’m just an epic parenting fail, but knowing that slowly (oh, so very slowly!) I’m improving gives me hope that eventually my house will be clean more often than not, I’ll put my makeup on in the morning rather than while the kids are eating lunch, my husband and I will go on dates, and my kids will be awesome because I’m awesome.

I’m by no means out of the tunnel, but there’s a light and I know I’m heading towards it so it’s all good.

Coconut and Clay CP Soap

Don’t get excited, this post is nothing special (unless you make your own soap, in which case; enjoy) I’m mostly writing it because I keep being unable to find the recipe when I want it. I haven’t been making my own soap for very long but there’s something really satisfying about the whole process and this is my favourite soap that I’ve made so far, and I even made the recipe myself which I think is pretty freaking awesome. I can’t be arsed writing an entire post about how to make soap so if you’re interested here is a great introduction and there’s heaps of other cool soap stuff on the website.

Soap recipes are often written as percentage rather than in set measurements so you can easily customise to whatever size batch you are wanting, but also so you have to calculate how much lye to use yourself, thus keeping the author free of responsibility if a typo causes you to make soap that burns the skin from your hands. I use this lye calculator.

Coconut and Clay Bastille Bar

• Castor Oil – 5%
• Cocoa Butter – 15%
• Coconut Oil – 15%
• Olive Oil – 65%
• 5% Superfat
• Coconut Cream as a percentage of liquid
• Black clay

Add the coconut cream and clay at trace, cure for at least 6 month

I don’t know how big a superfat percentage this recipe ends up with, as it doesn’t take into account the fat from the coconut cream. Also I’m not sure how much coconut cream I use as it varies every time. Usually I’ll use the minimum amount of liquid suggested by the lye calculator, then the difference between the minimum and maximum will be how much coconut cream I use. The clay is also an imprecise art, I just go with what feels right, a heaped teaspoon or so for a 500g batch.

If anybody tries this let me know how it works out and what you thought. If nobody tries it then at least now if I have internet access I can find the recipe!