#Love

jdettmann

Feb 14, 2017
3 min

Romance Club

In the past I have been very bad at giving Valentine’s Day gifts to H, which is a great shame because he is far more romantic than I am and deserves better. Once a couple of years ago, he was cranky because he found an old globe in the recycling. He had given me the globe some years earlier, as a Valentine’s Day present. The arm that makes the globe stand up was broken, and no, I’m not a totally heartless wench, I didn’t just chuck it straight in the bin. I let the kids kick

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Things Are Gonna Slide, Slide In All Directions

jdettmann

Nov 11, 2016
4 min

Things Are Gonna Slide, Slide In All Directions

Here instead is a list, which will show you how deeply embedded in my life is the music and lyrics of Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen Song Titles That Are Also Threats or Reprimands Made By Me To My Children This Week. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong That’s No Way To Say Goodbye Is This What You Wanted? Why Don’t You Try? If It Be Your Will Here It Is That Don’t Make it Junk Going Home You Want it Darker? It Seemed the Better Way I didn’t grow up listening to Leonard Cohen. My mother

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jdettmann

Apr 1, 2015
3 min

Ten Years? You Get Less For Murder!

I settled on going as a snake charmer. I do know that’s not an actual carnival or circus thing. I didn’t dress as an Indian sitting on a carpet playing a flute to lure a snake out of a basket. I wore a tight black dress, knee high boots, and a huge amount of mascara. I even curled my hair. I bought about twenty rubber snakes and draped them all over my person. When I arrived at the party, some of my friends were sitting in a fortune teller’s tent in the back garden. I joined

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jdettmann

May 27, 2014
2 min

Cross

It took half an hour to even upload this far-too-small image, due to iPhoto (or iFighto as my Dad has long called it) deciding that nothing has happened in my life since 2012, which may be a bit true, but still, it’s not my laptop’s place to judge and rather rude for it to say so. I can see all the photos since then but they won’t appear when I search to select them for the blog. If there’s anything more boring than your own computer troubles it’s hearing about someone else’s

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jdettmann

Sep 20, 2013
3 min

Things Are Good When Things Are Good

Thing 1: Since one or other or another of his or my recent colds or ear infections or other random maladies that have blurred into one long misery I like to call Winter, baby Garnet stopped sleeping in his cot at all. He now sleeps in our bed at night, or in the car, stroller or carrier during the day. This is good because he sleeps much more soundly at night when he is with us, neither H nor I have to drag ourselves out of bed to resettle him, and he is a delicious bundle of

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jdettmann

Aug 9, 2013
3 min

In The House

Remember when I used to write things on this blog? Those were the days, eh? Well, those days might be returning. Things are finally, hopefully, starting to settle down around here, after a few months of complete upheaval. We sold a flat, bought a house, moved all the things in the world, which it turns out we own, into the new house. And we all got sick multiple times, playing Pass The Bacteria over and over until one illness morphed into something else and no-one could remem

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jdettmann

May 22, 2013
2 min

True Romance

Because I want this to remain a mummy blog, and not morph into a beauty blog, I shall refrain from giving you the contact details of the salon I frequent for manicures. I will only reveal that it is run by the seven-year-old next door and she charges by the fingernail. In a marriage, it’s the little things that keep the romance alive. Tiny, thoughtful gestures that show your beloved that they matter. Things like taking pride in your appearance. Not letting yourself go. Becaus

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jdettmann

Dec 25, 2012
2 min

This Is Just To Say

Our little boy was born ten days ago. Sorry it’s taken me so long to put him down and write a post to announce it. But if you smelled his head you’d understand. He is, like a Christmas blockbuster novel, unputdownable. His name is, you can rest assured, excellent, but I won’t be using it on the blog. Like his sister, he’ll go by a pseudonym. His is Garnet. That’s a nod to an ancestor of the same name ( an uncle with some large number of greats preceding) and a nod to the most

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jdettmann

Dec 4, 2012
1 min

You Give Me Fever

In the event of finding yourself over thirty-eight weeks pregnant and suffering from a virus that makes you burn with fever and shake with chills for twenty-four hours (so far…) this is all I can suggest: 1. Go to bed. 2. Have people around who feel sorry enough for you to take full charge of your toddler, take you to the doctor and make you jugs of iced water with slices of cucumber and mint in them – like pregnant invalid’s Pimms. 3. Watch something where worse things are h

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jdettmann

Nov 28, 2012
3 min

My Patience Is The Only Thin Part Of Me

But, weirdly enough, it was one of the loveliest nights I can remember. Partly because nights in general, in my opinion, are for sleeping and not for making lasting childhood memories, but mostly because I just lay and stared at my daughter’s face in the moonlight and loved her. On her other side lay H, doing the same thing. We are sappy idiots. Yesterday she was still ill: feverish and not hungry. The GP diagnosed tonsillitis and so our old friends antibiotics are back for a

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jdettmann

Nov 21, 2012
1 min

The Cat’s Pyjamas

To celebrate my first ever blog post written on an iPhone in the bath, here’s a picture of May Blossom cuddling Gusto, who is wearing May Blossom’s pyjama top. Everyone should have someone who loves them this much. #Cats #Life #Love #Toddlers

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jdettmann

Jul 3, 2012
3 min

1-2-3-4 Tell Me That You Love Me More

This pregnancy I have been plagued with insomnia, which is not something I have ever experienced before. I was the kid who could fall asleep in two blocks in the car, or while sitting on the front step waiting to be picked up to go to school in the morning. I have, until now, remained a good sleeper. But these days, about four nights a week, I wake around 3 and don’t drop off again until ten minutes before May Blossom starts her morning litany of requests for pasta, peanut bu

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jdettmann

Apr 11, 2012
2 min

Holidays Make Me Sick

Things aren’t going exactly according to plan on our holiday. No sooner had we arrived and unpacked our Tetris-style car that took us a full hour to load, than I came down with some kind of horrible lurgy. Coughing like an old man outside the TAB, a headache like a horse kicked me and and a mood to match, I promptly retired to my bed and have barely raised my head since. Instead of being able to relax and clear his head, unwinding maybe just enough to start to let some of the

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jdettmann

Mar 29, 2012
3 min

Break It Down Now

My little family is about to take a little break. Not from each other, but from the city and work, from battling for parking and crowded living in a flat, from barricading our kid into the ungated backyard using a line of bins to stop her escaping onto the road while we hang out the laundry. H has resigned from his job and he will start a business of his own in one month. So for a month we are going to be all three together, mostly away from home. Thinking about this makes me

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She Is Sixteen, Going On Seventeen (Months)

jdettmann

Mar 21, 2012
3 min

She Is Sixteen, Going On Seventeen (Months)

May Blossom loves to play. Anything that involves chasing, shrieking and creating mayhem gets her seal of approval. Yesterday she and her mate Seamus (the same age) invented a game I dubbed ‘Letterbitch’. It involved both of them standing in front of the fridge and using violent flailing arm movements to swipe all the magnetic letters onto the floor, while shouting what sounded to me like ‘BITCH!’ over and over again. It was extremely funny. Only later, when relating the tale

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jdettmann

Feb 6, 2012
2 min

Old Man, Look At My Life

H’s beloved dad died on Saturday. It was expected, and a relief in that he was released from his suffering after a year of illness. It is also completely fucking devastating. ‘Silly Old Man’ is how he used to sign his letters and emails to his two boys, but of those words only the last described him. He wasn’t old enough to die. Whatever that means. He got to see his little boy become a dad though, and May Blossom was seriously the apple of her Pappy’s eye. He held her the da

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jdettmann

Jan 30, 2012
3 min

Summer’s Blood Was In It

The reason for the subterfuge is that since blackberries are a terrible pest in these parts, and you are supposed to keep them away by spraying them with noxious pesticides, Dad gets quite annoyed each year when he realises how many there are. We have a running joke where I pretend to hide their location from him, but he knows where they are. And he does try to keep them under control, but blackberries are serious invaders. This may or may not be the view from the hill where

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jdettmann

Dec 16, 2011
1 min

Early Christmas

All I wanted for Christmas this year was the chance to watch my grandmother gaze at May Blossom. I got it. This picture was taken by H just before we left Denver, when we staged a small photo shoot of the four generations of women of my family: Grandma, Mum, May Blossom and me. Of course we didn’t manage to do with when we everyone was awake, but seeing Grandma cuddling my daughter and whispering her love to her was incredible. There’s more than one hundred years between thei

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jdettmann

Nov 4, 2011
2 min

All Of The Five Little Ducks Came Back

I learned of Flora’s (a pseudonym) birth by a text message with a picture an hour after her birth, which was unexpectedly straightforward. I can’t tell you what a relief this was to me, since Flora’s parents (and now Flora, obviously) are the friends who live in Darkest Rural Victoria. When Flora’s mum was pregnant, people came up to her often on the streets of her village to share their birth stories with her. None of these tales involved making it to the hospital. Flora’s d

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jdettmann

Sep 27, 2011
2 min

The Loss of a Great Man

H’s grandfather, whom I’ll call G here, was a towering fellow, both in stature and personality, but he was also kind, handsome, and a relentless flirt. He flew planes over Europe in World War II and was the pillar of his church and community. He had a booming voice with a deep growling tone and an irresistible laugh, and I feel enormously grateful that I got to know him for a few years. He had a nickname for May Blossom that was so hilariously dumb that it epitomised all dad

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