Celebration & Preparation

It's been a day of celebration, and preparation. We celebrated an event that occurred fourteen years ago. I recall sitting on a bed in a delivery ward, where a midwife was sitting behind me buttoning me into a gown. 'Oh darling!' she cried, 'I'm going to get all your lovely hair caught in these buttons!'

With my lower abdominal area being wracked by another ferocious contraction, I groaned, 'That's the least of my problems right now!'

'What's your body saying to you, Simone?' asked the other attending midwife.

'It's saying: Get this fucking thing out of me!' was my scowled answer.

'Want the radio on, Simone?'

Grateful for any kind of the diversion from the excruciating torment that is labour, I nodded. When the 'on' button was flicked, what wafted from the portable radio was Push Up by the Freestylers. Seriously, you can't make this shit up!

But less than an hour after I'd been brought into that room, I felt an almighty urge to sit up and push, and whaddaya know but the midwife's hurriedly snapping on a glove.

'Well done, Simone; your baby's head's out.'

Next instructions were to lie back and blow out short breaths.  I did, and exhaled a quick succession of puffs.  'Keeping going, Simone!' the midwives called to me.  I kept going.  'Remember: birthday candles, Simone!' was the instruction.  I blew out imaginary candles.  'More birthday candles, Simone!' I wondered to myself, Whose fucking cake? Methuselah's?, but obediently huffed and puffed.

Then, wonder of all wonders, I inclined my head and saw a slippery, slimy thing being pulled from my body, and the midwife handed me this little scrap with dark blue eyes and strands of black hair.  It regarded the monitors, baby-weighing scales, and the wall opposite with an almost holy insouciance. My delighted husband cried out, 'Another little mate!'

The cord was cut, and my husband sat beside me holding the precious bundle, all wrapped in a blanket. I started to feel the effects of the Pethidine that had been administered whilst I was in labour, but not kicked in before the birth.  It was a quick birth!

Anyway, in the intervening fourteen years this kid has brought us much stress (especially when his epilepsy started to manifest), but much more laughter and joy with his antics both on- and off-stage (the day he mooned the CCTV camera in Coles will live in infamy).

Happy birthday, my second son. You made our family complete.

So, that's my celebration. My preparation is lessons for the kidlets whom I am tutoring in English. It seems I might have to prepare a submission as to why we must have the Oxford comma. I believe this to be the most important usage of punctuation. If you don't know, it's that comma people put before the 'and' that precedes the final item in a list specified in a sentence. There is a train of thought that this comma can be dispensed with.  WRONG. I'll show you an example: 'It will be a raging party because we've invited the strippers, Donald Trump, and Pauline Hanson'.  This is grammatically correct.  Now, remove that comma and you're faced with this odious scenario: '...we've invited the strippers, Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson.'  Think about it.  Take all the time you need.  Then get on eBay and bid on a brain scrubber with which you can eradicate the mental image from your mind.

Pettiest thing I heard today: Malcolm Turnball has been slammed for eating a pie with a knife and fork.  Seriously?  Is this what we've got to worry about? The man helms a government that is maintaining the suffering of refugees in detention, and appears to be doing fuck-all to help our farmers who struggle through this oppressive drought, but people are worried about how he eats his pies? He was actually sitting in a café, where a knife and fork is likely the appropriate etiquette.  But seriously, folks, this is just infantile. He's a grown man; he can eat his pie with chopsticks if this is his desire.  Let's find other things to worry about.