One of my kids used to think he was probably swapped at birth with someone else’s kid at the hospital.

He and his brother are SO different, it’s not funny. So different, that Spawn the Younger used to ask me quite often if he was adopted.  I realise now that he may have been quite concerned.

YS (after asking about being adopted for the eleventy-hundredth time): But do you remember actually HAVING me Mum?

Me (getting frustrated ‘cos I’d rather be sleeping or drinking alcohol or smoking crack than going through this AGAIN): Um YES! Because you was born after  just one and a half hours labour, and weighed in at 10lb 11oz.  I’d think I’d freakin’ remember it alright! The doctor was so eager to weigh you that he almost ran to the scales, and you were the biggest natural birth on record at our country hospital at that time. There was NO other baby in the hospital they could have swapped you with, unless they grabbed a visiting 6 month old, and I think I would have noticed that.

YS(not convinced): Yeah OK, then, whatever…

Me: *head explodes*

He’s got a point though. Some notable differences

Elder Spawn: Tidy (and THAT is some freaky shit for a teenage boy)

Younger Spawn: Untidy doesn’t BEGIN to describe his room. Or his school bag. At the end of term, we don HAZMAT suits to clean it out. Families could live for a week on the refuse in the bottom of the bag. The kid is a pig.

Elder Spawn: Tall, thin, tanned with brown hair and deep brown eyes.

Younger Spawn: Shorter, solider, tanned with naturally snow white blonde hair (even at 14), and blue, blue eyes.

Elder Spawn: Slow to get angry or upset, but when he does? Get the hell out of his way.

Younger Spawn: Quick temper. Goes off like a firecracker, then everything’s alright half an hour later.

Elder Spawn: Pretty quiet. A fairly cool customer.

Younger Spawn: Commonly asked to “Shut the HELL UP!”

There’s nothing about these two to indicate to anyone that didn’t know them, they are brothers, let alone related.

But seeing Younger Spawn with an hand on his older and much taller brothers shoulder, checking he was OK a couple of weeks ago? Seeing him taking him drinks because he didn’t know what else to do? Watching him, watching his brother with his brow all furrowed with concern?

That’s brothers are all about.

I wish I’d had the camera right then. Because at the end of the day - it’s not genetics that matter, it’s just you and your brother that matter - related by blood or not.

It’s this time of year when a young girls thoughts turn to Wimbledon. If she likes tennis that is, and I do.

I love a good tennis match. The problem here in Australia though, is that we have no decent players in the mens draw to support hence my undying love and devotion to the ever charming, likable and immensely talented Roger Federer. How dare Pat Rafter retire.

Because you see, the best mens player we have left is Lleyton Hewitt. What an ass. What a snotty little prat he is, and always has been, even when he was something close to being good.

I can’t stand him, and I’m sure my dog wouldn’t either. How can you like a guy that thinks the world (well, Australia, anyway) owes him admiration and respect because he’s a tennis player. He’s rude, he calls linesmen “spastic”, he screams “C’mon!” mainly just to try and piss off the opposition, and always has an injury excuse ready to trot out should he not do well.

And don’t get me started on the Lleyton and Bec circus. She’s an ex-soapie star (and I use the term loosely), and he’s, well, he’s just him. A pain in the ass.

They got married, and sold the pictures to a magazine for some ludicrous amount.

Then, when they managed to do the unthinkable and pop out a kid, - they pimped the first year or two of the poor things life to a womens mag for a cool million or so. Imagine that? Having a child. How the hell did they do that? No one else does - they were the first. Or so it seemed.

But it all went sour. Becs and Lley-ley weren’t getting the adoration they wanted, people were saying things like, oh I don’t know - he’s a asshat? SHe’s trashy and thick as a brick? And suddenly, they changed their tune. They wanted privacy. They resented the media intruding into their lives.

AUSTRALIAN tennis star Lleyton Hewitt has lashed out at the media over the amount of coverage given to his soap-star wife Bec and their young daughter.

Oh for fucks sake. They prostituted themselves and their infant daughter across any magazine or newspaper they could…and then when the money dried up, cried invasion of privavcy????? Give. Me. A. Break.

Now the media’s in overdrive because Bec’s up the duff again. Seems they must be low on funds because apparently? They’ve sold their story again for over 100 grand.

The supposedly now publicity and media shy Hewitts didn’t just announce the pregnancy to friends and family, then go about their private family business that Lleyton whined was so important to him. They rushed to OK! Magazine and announced the impending arrival with a 8 page spread. That just coincidentally paid a rumoured $100k.

Someone make them stop.

Bloody women’s magazines make me sick. But not as much as Bec and Lleyton. Money can get you a lot of things, but it cannot, and will not ever, buy you class.

And Lleyton? It won’t ever, ever, make you as good as Roger Federer, who last night gave you an absolute tennis lesson.

We have a largish house. That’s not a bragging thing, thats just by way of explaining the size of the pergola/awning/what-ever-you-call-it-in-other-countries (veranda?) we want built.

The house is a C shape basically, and we pretty much want to fill in the ‘C’, plus a bit more, with this roofed structure that we can sit out under in the summer, and freeze our body parts off under in winter and as our fingers slowly drop off, we can declare loudly how glad fucking we are to have it and wasn’t it a grand idea…

So it’s all good, until we realise we need quotes. Oh. My. God. The quoting thing. I hate it. MOTH hates it.

Why? Because all the tradeys we have had around our place for various quotes over the last couple of years have pretty much been dickheads. Idiots. Asshats. You call to book them to quote? They don’t turn up. They don’t ring back, they don’t DO…anything. It’s SO hard to give them work and PAY them for it! If they do a job, you can bet they leave a godawful mess behind.

But we want our pergola, so we finally get 3 dudes to quote.

Dude 1. Nice guy from large company, measures up, provides computer generated drawings, spends time deciding on stuff with us in his showroom. But…..we expect him to be pricey due to the overheads large companies have - but it ends up being competitive. The dog likes him too - this is important.

Dude 2. Local company. Measures up, quotes on the spot. HAS THE CHEAPEST PRICE - booyah!!!!!! And? The dog likes him.

Dude 3. Larger company. Didn’t like him when I rang to ask for a quote. Jumped down my throat on the phone saying “I don’t come out of hours, you know!” Screw you bud, I didn’t ask you to.

So, he turns up anyway. The dog doesn’t like him, and his quote ends up being $5,000 more than Dude 2, and $4,000 more than Dude 1. Holy hell. How does THAT work?

Dude 3 called me yesterday (at 8.00 freakin’ am!) to see how we found his quote. I told him he’s way out of the ballpark in comparison to everyone else. He asked who the other quoters were. I wouldn’t tell him and said “I don’t think that’s either relevant, or any of your business. Shouldn’t you be more concerned with your pricing structure given it is so out of whack with everyone else?”.

Note: Never call me in the morning. I am NOT nice before at least 10.00am and generally don’t like anyone. Ask my kids.

Anyway, he pretty much hung up on me. I chuckled and thought see you dickhead.

I knew the dog was a good judge of character. She pretty much likes everyone. But if she doesn’t like a person, you can pretty much bet it’s with good reason.

Had any good experiences with tradesmen? Got an insight into their asshatty behaviours?

I can’t blog about anything at the moment, because I realise now after reading this post at Red’s, I have too much shit in my head at the moment, and my brain wants to explode and I don’t want to let it, and therefore it’s bloody hard to write a coherent blog post.

So there you have it. I am certifiable. Today, at least. Tomorrow? Who knows?

Cool, huh?

How do you deal with crap like that? Or are you totally together and awesome all the time? If you are, don’t tell me because I will most likely call you a freak and hate you. Seriously, though, how does one clear the cobwebs?

P.S. I will get back to answewring comments. One day. I’m slack like that. So…deal with it I guess. Or not as the case may be.

So my son, Spawn the Elder, has had an emotional week or two. As have I. There is nothing quite like having your teenage son literally crying on your lap, well half on your lap because he is over 6′2″ tall and I am 5′3″, despairing anything good is ever going to happen in his life.

Maybe it’s my Irish ancestry. Being born in Belfast, perhaps I have inherited that melancholy Irish heritage and passed it on. I am partial to a nice potato…

Anyways, thank you to everyone that expressed concern for him. It was greatly appreciated (by me at least, as he’d be horrified if he thought I had posted about him).

Our school has been abso-fucking-lutely brilliant. His year coordinator talked to me for ages, the vice principal called, all his teachers were advised of the situation within a couple of hours, and he was made a priority booking with the school counselor (the spawn that is, not the vice principal), and then was quickly booked into see our GP.

So the boy has talked his head off to a few people, and the general consensus is that he isn’t suffering from depression, but that he needs to work on a few coping skills. He has issues with some of the kids at school because he is more mature than the average 16 year old. Therefore, he can’t be bothered with the crap they spout, and although this isn’t a bad thing, it can serve to make him feel left out and thinking there is something wrong with him. As opposed to just recognising that some of the guys at school are nothing more than raving dickheads. As most 16 year olds are.

He is feeling much brighter however, and needless to say the stronger smell of teen spirit is like nirvana to me (heh, pardon the pun).

I’m telling you folks, this parenting gig gets exponentially harder when they are teenagers.

It sucks, and although I love my boys to pieces, and they don’t get into any trouble, do pretty well at school, have awesome senses of humour, and are generally pretty decent to hang around with….at the moment, I’d give it up in a heartbeat to be back when they were 1 and 3 rather than 14 and 16, because that era? Was a piece of cake compared to this shit.

What would you prefer, or think you would prefer? Toddler hell, or teenage angst??

Also, while we were going through this, I did a bit of research into depression in kids, and uncovered quite a lot of info. I’m thinking of doing a post covering it all in case anyone else is ambushed like me.

Do you think that would be useful??