My Trip To The, Er, 'Day Spa'

Yesterday I had a sensationally relaxing afternoon. I had a lovely sleep at about 2pm, woke at about 3.15, was served tea, juice and sandwiches in bed, then spent the next couple of hours lying blissfully in bed as a lovely young woman attended to my every need. All I needed was a mani-pedi and a hot stone massage and it would have been the perfect day spa.

There were three other women in the room with me, and all were equally delighted. Okay, so we'd all had surgery earlier on in the day, but it was such a treat to be in bed for the entire afternoon, sans kids, sans work, sans responsibilities, that we all declared it to be one of the most enjoyable few hours we'd spent in a long time.

Oh, and did I mentioned I was stoned to the eyeballs on pain killers? Because that probably helped too.

Kerri's Impression of her Hospital Stay

Now, I'm not saying that surgery is a fun thing. And I'm not saying my life is so desperately busy that I have to escape to hospital just to get a break. Far from it. Sometimes I escape to the supermarket, or the dentist, or my mother's house, or to space. (Ooops! Sorry. I don't think the drugs have quite left my system yet...) But even when I do escape, there is always something I should be doing. Even when I relax in front of the TV, I know I should be mopping the floor, or making lunches, or tidying the linen closet, or writing another article, or ironing the shirts. (Ha! There are those drugs talking again. I don't iron!!!)

But yesterday was remarkably fun. The surgery was minor (just some women's stuff I needed to get sorted out), there was no pain afterwards (just a few fuzzy elephants and the best cup of tea I've ever tasted in my life), and then I got to do nothing. Absolutely nothing. And I didn't feel guilty about doing nothing because I had no choice. I was in hospital. There was a cannula in my hand. I was wearing a gown. I was not wearing underpants. And there were elephants dancing around my bed.

Today I am back to business as usual, just with a certain fuzziness of head (and a pet elephant who is following me everywhere). I'm glad it's all over and I'd so grateful it went smoothly.

And girlies, have your regular pap smear. Get onto it. Okay?

It's Impossible. It's Intractable. What Is One To DO?

Here is the main problem with my life. It does not fit in with my circadian rhythms.

I am a Night Person, a Woman of the Dark. I function better in the evenings. I have never been a Morning Person - or if I was, it was so long ago that it has faded into the Eternal Night of my lost memories.

I do not jump out of bed perky and fresh in the mornings. I struggle into consciousness, blinking and foggy, and pull myself into a horizontal position by sheer force of will. I climb the stairs and check the kids are awake for school, and then drag myself to the fridge where I get out an orange and collapse again at the table to eat it*. If a child attempts to speak to me at this point, they will get a grunt. Perhaps a begrudging wave. I do not speak before I have had my coffee. At least not willingly. Or with any semblance of sense.

A problem of the ages (pun intended)

After my orange, I have my coffee, and then I am able to converse. But my brain doesn't warm up for at least another couple of hours. I can tidy and pay bills and maybe write a nice, light blog post, but I can't do any work of substance until later in the morning.

Sadly, though, it's when night falls that my powers of creativity really kick in. After eight, when the little one is asleep, and the big kids are watching TV and playing Minecraft doing homework, that's when it hits me. When the dishes are piled up on the sink and the school lunches are waiting to be made and there is a pile of laundry to be put in the machine... suddenly the genius idea strikes. I need to go to my computer and write.

And then I'm on fire. From eight until way after the kids go to bed, I am surfing the web and tweeting working like a demon. I feel energised and inspired. I could go all night.

Until it is midnight, and I realise I cannot see straight, and that I am never going to be able to get up in the morning. And then I fall into bed, and two minutes later the alarm goes off, and the whole maddening cycle begins again.

It's impossible. It's intractable. There is no solution.

Can anyone else relate at all? What is one to do?

*I always eat an orange first thing in the morning (see this old post, here)

I'm Sure I Can Blame My Parents For This

When I go to my parents' house I fall asleep on the couch. Every. Single. Time. I can't help it. It's a reflex reaction, a Pavlovian response honed over years of walking in the door and handing over my children to their grandparents. I feel unencumbered and unburdened, youthful and vibrant  (or at least, the kind of youthful and vibrant that likes nothing more than a quick cup of tea and a nice lie down).

The system has worked well for me over the years. There is just one tiny flaw. On occasion, I end up at my parents' place with my children when my parents aren't there, and on these occasions, I find it almost impossible not to fall asleep. Which is a problem considering that my children are very much awake, and are quite capable of causing considerable havoc even with the briefest window of opportunity.

Cake Shown Not Blogger's Own
(it doesn't come out of the oven fully iced)

Take yesterday, for example. I had workmen at my house so went to hang out at my parents' house with two of the kids. My parents were out, so I took out some toys for the kids and sat on the living room floor to play.

But the soporific effect of my childhood home was too much for me. Within moments, my eyes got heavy and I could feel myself drifting off.

"Mum!" I woke up with my 11 year old was poking me in the ribs. "Can you turn on the oven for me? I'm baking a cake for Nana and Papa!"

"Sure," I mumbled, and stumbled half conscious to the kitchen. I turned on the oven, stumbled to the couch, and was immediately fast asleep.

About half an hour later, I woke to the sound of alarms and the smell of smoke.

"MUM!" my daughter was shouting. "THE CAKE IS ON FIRE!"

I jolted alert and ran to the kitchen. And yes, the cake was, in fact, on fire. It was fascinating. I mean, I knew cakes could burn, but I didn't realise they could actually burst into flames like a sweet,  flour-based bonfire.

I turned off the oven and tried not to panic. How, I thought, does one extinguish a cake-based fire? More importantly, I wondered, would said cake still be edible?

"THROW WATER ON IT MUM!" my daughter screamed. But the cake smelled delicious so I decided just to blow the flames out, much as you would with candles. And it proved effective, though did take considerably more energy than blowing out candles on an actual birthday cake. And about fifteen minutes longer.

So then we sliced the top off the cake and sampled it, and it was, in fact, delicious. My parents came home and didn't notice anything at all, apart from the acrid smell of smoke throughout the whole house, and little piles of charcoal all over the kitchen floor.

And later when we returned home, my daughter offered slices of her cake to the workmen.

"It caught on fire," she told them, "but it still tastes good."

I do love my parents' couch.

They Tried To Make Me Go To Rehab

.... and I said YO YO YO.

I didn't realize at all that this is where I was going. I thought I was headed to a resort in Malaysia with my husband, because he needed to destress after a hugely difficult year (actually, I thought I was going to a resort in Indonesia - I tend to be a bit sketchy on geographic details).

I truly didn't understand how much I needed this trip too. I didn't realize until we'd been here for a couple of days, and I found myself shedding layers and layers of tension and anxiety and anger and other detritus that had built up in my psyche over the past few months.

The first couple of days I just slept. I would wake up after a ten or eleven hour sleep still feeling tired, just waiting for another chance to sleep again later in the day. I thought the exhaustion would never pass, that I would sleep twelve or thirteen hours out of each twenty-four and arrive home still shattered.

But it did pass, and that's a lesson. You sleep and sleep and eventually just don't feel tired anymore. Exhaustion is like anything, like pain, grief, fear, happiness... if you immerse yourselves in it and allow it to take its natural course, it passes and makes way for something else. Some other aspect of life.

In between sleeping, I read. I read and sleep and eat and drink and then I read some more. And in breaks I do nothing. I sit and I think. Sometimes my mind has been like a crazy, LSD-induced kaleidoscope of images and memories and sensory replays; at other times, it's been almost empty. This is the closest I've ever come to meditation. I feet like a sponge that was heavy and filled with grime and grit that's been rinsed and gently squeezed clean. I feel new.

I know not everybody can get away to a resort, and I wish everyone could. But if you can't, try to get away somewhere, sometime, for some downtime and sleep. Or find someone to take the kids or the pets and do it at home. Switch off the phones and the internet and take time out for you, to regroup and renew and become clean again. In three days, you can recharge. And it's the greatest gift you can give yourself.

I hope you get to go to rehab, very soon.

The Day I Drugged Myself

Yesterday, I had a lot to do. My house was an utter pigsty after the excesses (of children) of the weekend. I had an article to write, invoices to send, and several phonecalls to make. Oh, and I had to shop for food, as we'd used up all the sausages on the weekend, and I didn't think I could feed the family apples for dinner. Again.

I woke up fired with energy and ready to take on the day. That is, until I tried to get out of bed, at which point I realised that I had a problem.

My back had gone. I have a back injury which plays up now and again, and this time, it was playing a game of dodge ball with my spinal chord. I hobbled to the mirror and looked at myself and gasped, because I was, quite literally, bent sideways at approximately a 45 degree angle. Imagine a gingerbread man, broken at the waist, and rearranged on a plate with the head now positioned at 2pm on a clock face.

That was me.

I was in agony. I managed to get downstairs and fumbled my way to the medicine chest (which is actually an old box painted by my daughter, but 'chest' sounds far more OH&S approved) and swallowed two Voltaren and two Panadol. Then I remembered the pills my doctor had given me to help coat my stomach when I took Voltaren, so I took one of them too. Then I got all the kids to help each other get dressed (my husband was helpfully showering himself so at least I didn't have to worry about helping him), and somehow got out the door and to the car.

I'd dropped the kids off at school and was driving back home, waiting for the sweet relief to kick in so that I could get on with the day's chores. And it did kick in.

Only it wasn't that sweet.

About two streets away from my house, I suddenly felt strange. Very strange, indeed. Like, jetlagged strange. Like, I-haven't-slept-in-a-week strange. I got home and inside and started to take off my coat when I realised that I needed to lie down. Immediately. I crawled to my bedroom, lay on my bed (still in my coat, seemed too challenging to take it off) and glanced at the clock. 8.45am. I'd just shut my eyes for a moment and then get to work.

A minute later I opened my eyes. It was 11.15. I'd slept for two and a half hours.

It took me a while (and two cups of coffee) to figure out what had happened. Apparently the pill to coat my stomach wasn't actually the pill to coat my stomach at all, but was the pill to take in event of a migraine (and one which clearly works by making the migraine sufferer unconscious until the migraine passes). Small mistake. Big nap.

My back was much better when I woke up, though I did need another little sleep later in the day until the medication was fully out of my system.

Then, whilst putting Dencorub on my back in a shopping centre toilet cubicle, I managed to get a bit of the searing hot gel on my vajayjay.

Still, that, my friends, is another story.

Guilt And The Nap Trap

Today I was given a very precious gift.

Time.

Pinkela is away on camp, and my (beautiful, kind, generous) mother agreed to pick up Little Man and Boo for me so that I could have the whole afternoon to myself. An empty house.

Bliss.

Things have been pretty crazy recently. I've edited my first book for the UK release, edited my second book for it's Aussie release, written three regular columns, and taken on a new writing project, as well as several other bits and pieces that have flown in at different times.

Oh, and I've looked after my three children, their father, the house we live in, the finances, the bills, the laundry, the shopping, our social lives, and pretty much everything else.

I. Am. Exhausted.

I need a break, desperately. And whilst a real break isn't coming for a while, I realised that today was the first day without a deadline looming, and that I could afford to take a few hours off.

I'd been up at 5.45am to get Pinkela to camp and the others to school, then had a meeting with my publishers. I got home at 11.30am and realised: This is it. This is my chance to relax. Do it.

But I pretty much had forgotten how.

I wandered around the house for a while, occasionally tidying, or wiping a surface with a cloth. And then I sat down on the couch and thought, What now?

I didn't know. It felt.... odd. Discordant. Where was my computer?

I watched an episode of Modern Family and then one of Sex And The City (the Modern Family I hadn't seen, the SATC I'd seen around 17 times), both in slight agitation. I was enjoying the shows, but something was wrong.

I didn't feel relaxed enough.

I decided to try to nap. I went upstairs and lay on the bed.

I couldn't sleep.

I COULDN'T SLEEP!

What was happening to me? I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow! I fall asleep BEFORE my head hits the pillow! I fall asleep at my desk with Boo yelling in my ear and my laptop grinding a dent in my forehead.

WHAT WAS HAPPENING TO ME?

The answer, people, was guilt. Guilt was what was happening to me. Guilt for taking an afternoon off. Guilt for doing nothing. Guilt for stopping.

Guilt is bad. Guilt is a useless, stupid emotion. I shouldn't feel guilty for taking time off. I shouldn't feel guilty for stopping. I deserve some relaxation and I deserve to stop and enjoy my life. And I deserve a nap, god damnit, even if my tick-tick-ticking brain won't pause for a moment and let me.

So from now on, I'm having a rostered afternoon off every fortnight. It's going in my diary. I'm going to watch TV and lay in bed and roast marshmallows and eat bonbons (okay, so I may have lied about the marshmallow part).

Life is short and guilt is stupid and Sex And The City is on endless rerun on pay TV. And I am going to learn to enjoy it.

Pain And Knobs In Melbourne

Yesterday I flew home after a whirlwind 27 hours in Melbourne. I'd flown down to conduct an 'In Conversation' with my friend, the author Kylie Ladd, which consisted of Kylie and I sitting on high stools in front of an audience as I fired questions at her. This worked out very well for both of us. Kylie got to talk about her fabulous new book 'Last Summer', and I got to indulge my Oprah fantasies, only without any tiresome speculation about my sexuality, or the need to hand out cars to the gathered crowd.

The entire trip went almost perfectly. I had an excellent time after the 'In Conversation' at the nearby pub with Kylie and various friends from the online world, and then more fun the following day having breakfast with Kylie and her son, and later lunch with my aunt and cousin.

The problems came in between. And yes, there are always problems at some point. At least, there always are for me.

Kylie and I got back to her house about midnight, which is rather late for me. We'd also been drinking very heavily, which in my case meant two glasses of Cab Sav. It took me a little while to fall asleep in Kylie's daughter's bed, but once I did I slept the deep slumber of one pleased with a job well done, much as I suspect Oprah does after a satisfying interview with Tom Cruise.

Suddenly, at an unknown hour in the middle of the night, I woke with an agonising pain in my right eye. It felt like someone had taken a shard of glass, inserted it beneath my eyelid, and was punching my eye with a blunt fist. I was blinded with the pain, except that I was blinded anyway, because I couldn't open my eyes.

I covered my right eye with my right hand and opened the left eye. To my surprise, I was blinded anyway. Kylie's daughter's room was pitch black. I put my left hand out in front of me to feel for a landmark and groped around in the dark. I literally couldn't see my hand in front of my face, not that I could actually put my hand in front of my face, because one hand was clutching my right eye and the other was feeling around in the dark.



Eyepatch: Attractive and practical

I knew that I had to get to the bathroom, to look in the mirror and try to flush whatever it was out of my eye. Before I could get to the bathroom, however, I had to get out of the bedroom. And this wasn't easy in the utter blackness with an excruciating pain in my eye.

I floundered around endlessly until finally my hand landed on the door knob. It was round and large, which confused me a little as I remembered the knob as being horizontal and thin. Still, I didn't care about morphing door knobs at that point. My eye was burning and I had to get out of there.

I tried turning the handle but nothing happened, which could have had something to do with the fact that I was turning it with my left hand, and perhaps was turning it in the wrong direction. I tried to focus, foggy with sleep and pain, but to no avail. Finally I just pulled the damn thing and fell into Kylie's daughter's closet.

I was tempted to give up, but the pain in my eye was searing, and I needed to fight on. I negotiated myelf backwards back onto the bed and tried again. I plotted out the room in my mind, remembering that the door was to the left of the cupboard. I held on to the cupboard and felt my way along the wall, frogmarching through the bedroom until I hit the door. Thank god!

Now, I knew I had found the door because I could feel its outline, and Kylie's daughter's dressing gown hanging on a hook on the back. My problem now was to find the handle, because there didn't seem to be one. Or at least, my left hand couldn't find it.

After about a year, my hand found the door. Finally,with overwhelming relief, I tripped into the hall and made my way into the bathroom. Once there, I turned on the light, which was another shocking mistake. I nearly fell over in fright and agony as the glaring light burned into my one exposed retina.

When my eye finally adjusted I began the horrible task of flushing out my eye. It didn't work. I couldn't see anything in there, and it was making the pain worse. I tried crying, but that felt bloody uncomfortable too. I considered waking Kylie up, but I didn't know what she could do except for putting a bandaid on my eye, so I decided to let her sleep.

In the end, I took a couple of Panadol and went back to bed. By the morning, my eye was still sore but manageable. Today, it is all better.

Of course, there's something to learn from every experience and I learned something from this. For one thing, my body is utterly unpredictable and never fails to surprise with its range of ailments and discomforts.

For another thing, I should always travel with a night light. I'll never know when eye might need it.

An Australian Girl In America: Day Zero

I arrived at the international airport on Friday morning with high hopes (that I had actually packed the right things in my suitcase). My husband and I checked in, went through customs, and then proceeded directly to the bookshop to check on the placement of my book (which, to be honest, was really the purpose of my trip – after all, you can’t visit the international airport bookshop without a boarding pass).


The book was placed appropriately and I took the opportunity to tell the salesman how utterly fantastic it was and that he should recommend it to all his customers. He seemed both unconvinced and unimpressed (his exact words being ‘Well, whatever rocks your boat) but I felt secure in the knowledge that he would not recognize me as the author, given that my makeup-free, eye-bag ridden* face bore no resemblance whatsoever to the glowing, heavily made-up woman on the cover.

After an hour delay (during which I didn’t pace or worry the plane was never going to take off) we entered the aircraft and took our seats. I immediately began investigating the on-board entertainment system, which was comprehensive indeed. I watched several episodes of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ before I began to experience difficulties. You see, the high-quality headphones were simply too small for my gigantic ears, and my ear-flaps were aching where they had to be folded back to fit.

Yes, like severely obese people who require two seats on a plane to accommodate their girth, I require special, giant-sized headphones to accommodate my ears. And the airline did not supply them. A clear example of discrimination.

In despair, I decided just to have a glass of wine and a sleeping pill and go to sleep (despite it being only 1pm Australian time). I ordered some red wine with my lunch and drank it all in a big gulp. Unfortunately, though I ordered red wine with my lunch, it actually arrived before my lunch, and I drank it on an empty stomach. With a sleeping pill. So by the time my lunch arrived, I had pretty much lost control of my limbs, and knocked the empty glass on the floor, shattering it into a thousand pieces. As the flight attendant picked it off the floor, I tried to offer to help, before realizing I couldn’t really speak properly, and focused on carefully eating my lamb-something-messy before lying comatose in my seat.

I awoke two hours later feeling remarkably refreshed and rejuvenated. At least, that’s what I thought, until I got up to go to the toilet and found I had troubles walking down the aisle. When I returned to my seat I asked my husband ‘What is time now confused?’, thought ‘That doesn’t sound right,’ then explained ‘I don’t think had enough tired still sleep’.

I lay down again for ten minutes, then suddenly felt much better. Except it turns out it wasn’t ten minutes at all. It was two and a half hours, and the trip was nearly over.

If you call ‘six hours of flying time left’ nearly over. Which I didn’t.

And I longingly eyed the sleeping pills…

A Sex Dream.... About WHO???

Have you ever had an inappropriate sex dream?

No? Oh.... er.... no, no, neither have I. But my... er... friend has. Her name is... um... Cherie. Yes, Cherie. And Cherie's had quite a few.

Now, some may argue that any sex dream that is not about one's partner is inappropriate. Others may argue that any sex dream about one's partner is inappropriate. Others may argue that any sex dream at all is excellent, and that we shouldn't be looking a gift bonk in the mouth.














In my Cherie's opinion, however, an 'inappropriate' sex dream is one which stars someone one should not be dreaming about - a relative, a close friend, a close friend's parent, someone of the same sex (if one is heterosexual), someone of the opposite sex (if one is gay) or just someone one finds really unattractive.

Cherie's inappropriate sex dream was the last kind. Oh, though she may have occasionally had the second kind too. And maybe, once or twice, the fourth. But if so, she didn't tell me.

It's always disconcerting to wake up from a dream in which you have done something utterly bizarre. I mean, dreams are not visited upon you from beyond. They arise from your subconscious. You create them. So when you dream that you're doing the wild thing with someone really, really unexpected - well, you can't help but re-examine your mind. You wake up and wince and think, where the hell did that come from?

At least, that's what Cherie tells me.

And then, when you see the person you had the dream about, you feel all weird. You look at them in a completely different way, because you've suddenly seen them without their clothes on (except that you haven't, of course, your subconscious has, and even your subconscious hasn't really seen them, it's just seen some version of them that it created). But it still feels weird. It's almost like you really have had sex with them, except that you haven't at all, or at least you have, but they haven't had sex with you (unless they have too, in a dream of their own, which is getting into a whole different realm of bizarre).

Or at least, that's what Cherie tells me.

Happily, though, I haven't had any such dreams. I dream only of my husband, and of failing my university exams (even though I finished uni about a hundred years ago). Oh, and of houses floating in the air, which really freaks me out. But that's a whole other story.

As for Cherie, however, I'll make sure she keeps me posted.

So tell me - have you ever had a totally inappropriate sex dream?

Free Advice From Kerri

I expected a lot of things when I published my first book. I expected to be recognised in the street by adoring readers. I expected to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. I expected to be offered my own TV show. I expected to be treated with respect for the first time by my husband and kids.

Of course, none of these things have happened (though I was once recognised in Westfield by a friend of my mum).

However, one thing has happened that has been utterly unexpected. I have received emails requesting my parenting advice.

Now, these emails make me very despodant. Anyone who is requesting my parenting advice has clearly not read my book, as anyone who has read my book will realise that I have no parenting advice to offer whatsoever. However, I still feel compelled to answer the emails as I am a very nice person (and am hoping that at least my correspondants will recommend my book to others).

Still, I am a very busy* girl and do not have time to be answering thousands* of emails a month. So I have put together a list of commonly asked questions and my expert advice. Using 'expert' in the sense of 'who the hell am I to be giving advice anyway?'

How should I discipline my three year old?
Discipline never worked well for my older kids, so with three year old Boo, I have taken another tack. Instead of punishing her when she draws on the white couch with texta, I say 'stop doing that and I'll give you a Smartie'. Of course, some may argue that this just encourages her to engage in bad behaviour so she can be rewarded to stop, but at least it gives me an excuse to have Smarties in the house.

How can I get my kids to go to sleep?
Send them to their grandma's. My kids always sleep beautifully there.

How can I get my kids to eat broccoli?
What kind of sicko parent would force their kids to eat broccoli?

My two year old keeps having tantrums in the supermarket. What can I do?
Young children have a natural allergy to supermarkets. Even the sight of a trolley creates an extreme bodily agitation which can only be soothed by feeding the child continually until the shopping is finished, or he or she vomits - whichever comes first. Always carry a change of clothes and some wipes with you. Or consider online shopping.

My 12 year old is surly and gives me no affection.
Refuse to give him access to any technology (TV, Nintendo etc) until he says 'I love you, my beautiful Mummy'). Works for me.

Do you have any questions for me? Or any advice to give?

*meaning 'lazy'
*meaning 'three'

Let Me Go The F**k To Sleep: A Wife's Lament

By now most of you should have heard of the magnificent new children's book (that is definitely NOT for children) "Go The F**K To Sleep". Author Adam Mansbach and illustrator Ricardo Cortes have captured the frustrations of parents everywhere, longing desperately for their kids to go the f**k to sleep so that they can get some f**king rest.

Well, I have come up with a new version of "Go The F**k To Sleep". I don't yet have illustrations, but you'll get the general idea.

"Let Me Go The F**k To Sleep: A Wife's Lament"

The kids are finally in bed
With sweet relief I weep.
I go up to the bedroom.
Time to go the fuck to sleep.

In only seven hours my
clock radio will beep.
I need to catch each minute
of my precious fucking sleep.

It's been a long, hard day
of work and chores and problems deep.
I cannot wait to get to bed
and go to fucking sleep.

I tiptoe through the door and
to my bed I softly creep.
Don't want to wake the hubby
who - thank god - is fast asleep.

I slide beneath the sheets
and fall into a crumpled heap.
I close my eyes then hear a voice:
"Hey babe, are you asleep?"

I lie there very still and then I
start to count some sheep.
I'm hoping he will take the hint
and let me fucking sleep.

Just as I drift into my dreams
his hand begins to creep.
He thinks it's time for making love!
It's time for fucking sleep!

He snuggles in and nuzzles me
and out of bed I leap.
"Don't even fucking THINK of sex!
I want to go to sleep!"

He looks at me so hopefully,
his boxers torn and cheap.
"I bet I can convince you
that you're not ready to sleep!"

I shake my head and climb back in
and lie on pillows deep.
"There's not a chance in hell," I say,
"now let me fucking sleep!"

"We never do it anymore,"
says hubby. But he'll keep.
Quite frankly I don't give a fuck.
I'm already asleep.

She Hates Me

It's official. My daughter has outgrown me.

I honestly didn't expect it to happen so soon; after all, my daughter is only three. But Boo has obviously found her independence, and she is very clear that my role in her life has been considerably downgraded.

For a start, my daughter is no longer interested in lengthy embraces. "Enough cuddle time Mum!" she will pronounce sternly after seven or eight seconds, leaving me spurned and empty and yearning for more. Or a firm "No thanks, not now, I'm watching Spongeboy," when I offer to play Lego, which is really rather disheartening, as Lego is not at all fun alone.

What's more, Boo she has begun to deny my deep feelings for her. "You don't love me!" she'll yell when I do something to disappoint her, such as insist she has a bath or get into the car. And "You HATE ME!!!!" she'll howl when I do something really cruel, like ask her (very nicely, really) to stop scribbling on the couch.

Thankfully, though, she still retains some compassion. "Hug Mummy!" Boo will sing at random moments, when my arms are full of groceries, or she's sitting on the toilet. And I do it. I hug her, because I never knock back an opportunity, and because there's no way I can deal with another accusation of Not Loving Me.

But despite my unquestioning acquiesence to all of Boo's hug requests, god forbid I offer love at a time when it is not convenient for her. "Go way Mum" she'll tell me, if she's not in the mood. "No kiss! I wipe it all off !" It's not fair, I tell her, but she doesn't listen. Spongebob is on, and she has some scribbling to do on the couch.

At the end of the day, though, Boo is three, and she's old enough to make up her own mind. My role as her mother is to let her go, and respect the distance she has put between us.

When she's awake, that is. When she's asleep, well, that's a different story.

Have you ever kissed a sleeping child? BLISS.

The Never Ending Weary

I have a question to ask you.

Are you tired?

If not, what does it feel like, this 'not feeling tired' thing? Because I honestly cannot remember.

I am tired all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. I am never not tired. My tiredness comes in several categories.

Weary - This tiredness is just a mild feeling in the background. A kind of 'Could do with a nap, but can hang out till bedtime' sensation. If I'm just a bit weary, it's a very good day.

Tired - This is my baseline level of tiredness. I haven't had enough sleep (for about, you know, 11 years) and it's showing. I can function well, because I have learned to co-exist with tiredness, but I would function much, much better with more rest. If I can get in a brief nap, I will, but I can keep ploughing through until bedtime if necessary.

Exhausted - This is the tiredness I feel after a particularly late night or rough week. I feel fuzzy all morning and I need a nap. If I can't get a nap, I feel a little desperate. Of course, most of the time I can't get a nap, so I end up falling asleep prone at my computer, or on the floor in Boo's room whilst I am trying to get her dressed. Sadly, this doesn't even alarm my kids anymore. They're used to seeing Mummy on the ground unconscious.

Shattered - When I feel like this, I have to sleep. Like, get into bed and sleep for two hours. I simply can't keep going otherwise. This is when I call my mum, or weep on the phone to my husband and tell him he has to come home early (which, in Kerri's Husband Speak means '7pm'). This is when I let the kids watch TV for three straight hours, or feed them frankfurts for dinner, or bribe them with money and chocolate to let me lie down. These days occur at least once a fortnight. Often more.

Being tired is the bane of my existence. If there was a pill to take tiredness away, I would gobble it down. Oh hang on... there is a pill to take tiredness away... and a powder... Okay, so if there was a legal, herbal, non-addictive, non-hallucinogenic pill that didn't make you dance to house music for hours and tell the world you love them and cause the inside of your nose to collapse, then I'd take it for sure. Oh, hang on.... there is and I do. It's called coffee. But they really need to make it stronger because I'm on my fourth cup for the day and I'm ready to go back to bed.

The last time I didn't feel tired was two years ago. My husband and I managed to get away for six nights to a beach somewhere without the kids. We'd planned to have a romantic getaway. Not surprisingly, my husband got an urgent call from work on the first day and spent most of the holiday glued to his computer. Not inclined to take romantic boat rides on my own, or sit up late at night drinking cocktails and looking at the sunset solo, I took to my bed. I slept twice a day for the first two days (as well as ten hours or so at night) and once a day for the next two. By the fifth day I reflexively got into bed after lunch, and realised I didn't need to sleep anymore. It was a strange and wonderful sensation.

Of course, two days after that we were home again, and within 24 hours I was totally exhausted. Three clingy kids who insist on paying you back for leaving them at their (utterly doting) Nana and Papa's place will do that to you. And now, I have no idea what that delicious sensation of being rested even felt like.

So if you know, please enlighten me. I promise to read all your comments.

After I've just had a little bit of a nap.

Cuddle? Fine. But Get Out Of My Bed.

My friend Jess has asked me to sleep with her. Just once. As a 40th birthday present. And to be honest, I’m not that keen.

I don’t want to sleep with a woman. I’m 40 years old, I’ve come this far in life without having done it, and I’m happy to continue not having done it indefinitely.

Of course, it’s not like Jess is asking me to have sex with her or anything. Neither of us have any interest in that (although I imagine it would give our husbands a tremendous kick). No, she’s invited to a girls’ weekend away, in a house in the country, with a bunch of friends. Sounds lovely so far, right? Except that there will be more women than there are actual beds, so some people will have to share, and she wants to share with me. And that thought fills me with horror.

Now, I’m not repulsed by the female form, by any stretch of the imagination. And I love my friends very dearly. It’s just that, well, I prefer to love them from a comfortable distance. You know. Where I don’t actually have to hear them breathing.

I don’t like to share my bed with my friends. To be brutally honest, I don’t like to share my bed with anyone. This poses a minor problem, considering the fact that I am married, and when I say ‘anyone’, I include my husband. Oh, don’t get me wrong; I like sharing a room with him, and I certainly like using a bed with him (provided I’m not too tired, the kitchen is clean, and all the kids are asleep). At the end of the evening, however, I would prefer us to have a nice cuddle, then move to twin beds and slumber – separately, but together – for the rest of the night.

I’m all for the concept of sleeping in the same bed as one’s partner – in theory, anyway. It’s just the practicalities that concern me. I’m a light sleeper, and my husband… well… he bothers me. He rolls over in bed (I know – how selfish is that?). He breathes, heavily at times (I know, inconsiderate again). He pulls the covers up. He pushes the covers down. He scratches himself. And he clears his throat. Of course, from the other side of the room, his throat clearing isn’t so bad. But from three centimeters away from my ear, it’s like being woken by a volcano erupting in my head. At two in the morning. Every single morning.

Furthermore, I like a lot of personal space. I like to sleep in different positions. On my back, on my tummy, arms behind my head, arms to my side, arms straight up like a soldier (rarely, but I like to keep my options open), legs splayed, knees drawn up to my chest, hanging from the chandelier wearing bunny ears and a tail (okay, so that one is my husband’s fantasy). And I don’t like to be restricted in my movements by anyone pushing my limbs out of the way when I fancy a good stretch.

And it’s not just in the physical realm that sharing a bed can be problematic. My husband and I do, rarely, have little arguments (using ‘little’ in the sense of ‘medium to big’), and after one of these rare occasions (using ‘rare’ in the sense of ‘ reasonably regularly actually’), having to sleep in the same bed together is really annoying.

My husband just rolls his eyes at my attempts to expel him to the couch, so I generally curl up in a tiny fetal ball at the extreme edge of my side of the bed in order to demonstrate just how cross I am. (Of course, I could retreat to sleep on the couch myself, but that would be inconvenient and uncomfortable, so I’d rather just stay and make my point.)

Still, buying separate beds at this stage of our relationship seems like too much of a statement. We started off in a queen sized bed (before I realized the throat clearing thing was not just a temporary allergy, and when arguing seemed like a laughable proposition) and now we’re pretty much stuck with it.

But sharing a doona? Out of the question. It’s been two single doonas for us for a very long time, and that’s how we plan to stay.

And as for the weekend away? Well, I’m thinking that this time, the couch is probably a good option.

But if Jess wants to cuddle? Well that’s absolutely fine.

The Other Man

My husband is away on business for a week and I am sleeping with another man. In my marital bed.

Okay, so that was the scintillatingly salacious and just slightly exaggerated version of the story. I am indeed sleeping with another man, but he is stuffed. And no, when I say ‘stuffed’ I don’t mean that ‘he is really, really tired’ (though my husband would argue that after a few days in my company any man would be exhausted, and sadly I don’t mean that in a scintillatingly salacious way).

No, the man is, literally, stuffed. He is a toy. And, if you’re being really picky, he isn’t strictly a man, either. He is a Shrek. A stuffed, almost life-sized, felt-covered Shrek, a replica of the cartoon character from the movie of the same name. Oh, and he is green.

So how did I end up sleeping with a green, stuffed man? I needed a substitute for my husband. Turns out I’m not much good at sleeping in my bed without him. This confuses and shames me because I sleep perfectly well in other beds without him (which again sounds a lot more scintillatingly salacious than it is – I’m referring mainly to my mum’s holiday house on the coast).

The thing is, I really like to think of myself as a strong, independent woman. As put so eloquently by the Pussycat Dolls (a foxy young American girl band with whom I greatly identify, being an Australian, forty-one year old mother of three): I don’t need a man to make me happy, I get off being free!

And I do get off being free! With my husband away, I celebrate my powerful womanhood with glorious abandon. I hold the remote control when I watch TV. I eat cheese on toast for dinner. I walk around the house wearing depilatory cream and nose strips. I put the kids to bed really, really early and lie on the couch. Okay, so this may not be the kind of ‘getting off’ the Pussycat Dolls had in mind, but it works for me.

And yet, when it comes to bed time, I can't drop off. Why not? It’s not as if my husband and I sleep in each others’ arms all night. (Oh don’t get me wrong, we’re not in the Separate But Adjoining Beds stage yet, but we’re not newlyweds either.) So what am I missing? Is it the shaking of the bed when he turns over? The adorable throat clearing thing he does at 3am? The comforting knowledge that, if something goes bump in the night, he’s sure to wake me so that I can go investigate?

I don’t know. All I knew is that after he went away last time, I realised I needed a bedfellow. The kids aren't an option as they are noisy and wriggly. Friends aren't an option as they tend to have their own homes. My son’s life sized Shrek is the obvious choice.

My son looked a little nonplussed when I asked to borrow his toy but quickly regained his composure. (When you’ve seen your mum running around wearing a nose strip and depilatory cream, nothing much surprises you.) I tucked Shrek into my bed on my husband’s side, and pulled the sheets up high to disguise his pointy ears, flat nose, and rather vivid greenness. Then I climbed in next to him, and slept like a baby.

The Pussycat Dolls were right. I don’t need a man to make me happy!

Shrek, though, is harder to give up.

Does anyone else have troubles sleeping alone??? Or do you prefer it???