Playing Pirates with my Imaginery Friends

Last night, I helped my friend’s daughter with her maths homework. Algebra. 

“So what?” I hear you say…

Well, she lives over an hour away and we did it via MSN. (I don’t know what’s more noteworthy – the MSN homework help or the fact that I can still remember how to do algebra 20+ years down the track…) We worked out the answer, she worked out what I was doing and it was all good. At the same time, I was chatting to another friend and comparing really bad family snap shots. This friend’s at least 200km away and here we were, comparing family shots like we were sharing a cuppa and a biscuit.

Now, I am not a total weirdo, I do have real life, flesh and blood friends that I interact with on a face to face basis. But what with one thing and another; my friends seem to be scattered far and wide across the countryside. Even the closest one at 5km away is still a tiny bit too far to just pop in for five minutes and a cuppa. Assuming she’s home…

Since I started delving into the World of Flylady, though, I have discovered the joys of chatting whilst I do my housework with a pack of semi-strangers. These are a group of women brought together by the simple fact we’re reluctant housekeepers who forgot to queue up on the day they were handing out the Domestic Goddess Badges. All of us can think of a thousand million bazillion things we’d rather be doing than cleaning up after other people. A few of us work as well, which brings its own particular challenges – juggling those domestic responsibilities in the limited time remaining after putting in a 30 hour week. So we chat to each other… Encourage each other on a bad day; reward each other with coffee breaks and loads of virtual vodka.

Back in the Olden Days, people tended to grow up, go to school, go to work and raise their own families in the same area for generations. In fact, in some places – they still do. But lots of people move around, be it for education, work opportunities, for love for just the simple fact that they CAN. In the Olden Days, too, it was customary for Mother to stay home with the kids, and for Father to go out and work. 

So people stayed closer to home and they knew their neighbours. Pop in for a quick cuppa tea and a biscuit; borrow a cup of flour, pinch that recipe for Aunty Edna’s Prize Winning Scones, quick whinge about Little Johnny tracking mud through the house *again* and back into your own place. Have a chat over the fence whilst you hang out the washing, watch the kids playing some death defying game involving sticks and rocks. There was a sense of community.

Now though, people are in and out of their cars in their driveways or straight into the two car garage and inside the house. Mothers are just as likely to be at work as Fathers, and children move away from their families. People don’t talk to other people. Ok, they nod and wave; but that’s the limit of their interactions. One of my neighbours is an octogenarian dope fiend – not the type of person I’d be hitting up for recipe tips – gardening tips, maybe, but not cooking. My other neighbour plays drums. Badly. And the only reason I know his first name is because I can see his wireless internet connection.

But my on line buddies are like my “neighbours”. We hang out over our virtual fences and chat about the kids, pinch recipes from each other. Ok, it’s a tiny bit difficult to borrow that cup of flour when you need one, but hey the service station round the corner has all of that. When you’re having a bad day, the kids are finger-painting with your $100 a jar moisturiser, you’ve just dropped a brand new box of Rice Bubbles all over the floor and you just discovered the neighbour’s cat has killed a bird in the laundry. And in the bathroom. And is eating the head in the middle of your bed…

*PING* there’s one of Lovely Ladies calling out “You Flying today, Harriet? Come and join us…” I get it off my chest, and 15 minutes later, the cat is evicted, the Rice Bubbles are swept and the soft and sweet smelling children are doing something less expensive.

The Bloke of the House calls them my Imaginary Friends. He also doesn’t quite understand how my chatting to Imaginary People means the housework gets done… However he’s conceded that if the cost of a clean house is having the Missus on the computer; it may well be a small price to pay. 

There’s something about a burden shared being a burden halved or something – and whilst we’re not *really* sharing the housework, we are. We are sharing the drudgery and the repetition. Taking the mindlessness out of it… Work for 15 minutes, chat for 5, work for another 15 and brag about what you achieved (or moan about what you didn’t) and at the end of the hour or the day, the washing’s done and kitchen is shiny; dinner’s on the table and hey, we’ve actually eaten lunch. One of us will remember, for sure. 

And it’s not all about doing the housework…

Sometimes, we play Pirates!

(Arrrrr)

 

Can you remember….

The bloke of the house and I were having a discussion the other day about the humble mobile phone.

Now, I was a relatively early adopter of this technology – I justified mine as I needed to be contactable when my father was very ill. My parents were even earlier adopters – they had one of those Bag Phones… Gigantic and cumbersome, the size of a rather large shoebox – but for the parental units who liked to go off the beaten track – quite a practical, and really awe inspiring device, despite the need for both of them to stand on the roof of the 4WD – one to hold the bag and one to talk on the phone – in order for them to get any reception at all…

It was a lot better than having to leave messages at umpty dozen caravan parks in the (usually) vain hope they would call in there for a shower on their way to somewhere else wild and savage.

My first phone was a lot more modern… Mine was a flip phone, it was small enough to fit in my pocket and I didn’t need to stand on the roof of anything in order to use it! The main problem I had with mine was its tendency to go flat if I made or received more than three calls; accidently changing the language to Norwegian when I was on holidays (but my housemate had the same phone, so I could call him to get instructions to change it back); oh, and my housemate having an identical phone to mine and neither of us realising for two days…

But I sure felt special, I tell you.

There are indeed some benefits to having a mobile phone – if you break down in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, you don’t need to walk for kilometres in the dark and knock on the door of some freaky potential serial killer’s house and ask to use their phone. And you don’t need to walk back to your car with the certain knowledge that the aforementioned freaky serial killer has just cancelled your call to the auto club and is right this very moment stalking you down their very long driveway. Oh, and you’re not getting wet, either, because it is in the rules that cars must break down in the middle of the night when it’s raining.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t have a specific work number – I have a mobile, so can be contacted on that if there’s anything wrong with the kids. And when my dad was ill, I stressed less about being away from home for any length of time, and thus uncontactable.

I remember sitting at home, waiting for a call, for hours and hours when I was an angsty teen ager (and I have the hand-written angsty teen diaries to prove it… “why doesn’t he call me? I know there’s a phone at the cricket club. I’m sure he’s got 20c to make the call. I’m not going to drive down there…” I guess if I was a teen today, I could send him progressively angrier text messages, whilst I messaged my girlfriends on MSN. Or just plain go out and if he called, he did…

Now, though, my leaving the house litany is “purse phone keys” assuming I am alone, of course. Otherwise, it takes me ten minutes to reel off my list of “must haves” when I walk out the door – kids, nappies, snacks, toys, change of clothes, hats sunscreen wipes purse phone keys. I rarely leave the house without that tiny, pocket sized anchor to the rest of my life.

I rarely use it for “emergencies”, most of the calls I make are “darling, how much milk do we have?” or “can you bring the washing in?” and not forgetting the “where the hell are you?” call that I was not able to make when I actually was an angsty teen instead of the mature and responsible adult I am now.

Except sometimes I forget it…

And you know what?

It feels good, it feels free…

And really really naughty.