An open letter to my tear ducts

Dear tear ducts,

For thirty years now you've done a prime job of keeping my eyes lubricated and nourished. And moist. I realize it's the same as lubricated but I just wanted to use the word moist in a blog post.

You were a tad over sensitive when I starting shoving giant mascara wands your way, but you learned quickly that I wasn't going to hurt you, and chilled out nicely.

You've been a real champ and have even gone above and beyond, putting up with me poking contact lenses around and keeping them hydrated too. Kudos to you.

But there's something about you that I'm just not happy with, and I would have thought after so many years of practice that you would have figured it out.

What the ever loving fuck is with the angry tears? I mean really?

I find myself having a heated argument with someone and you spring in to action and make me look like a dickhead who needs a Prozac Bex and a lie down, or worse still, a fucking cuddle.

How am I mean to look professional when I'm in a business meeting if the second I get a bit angry my eyes start leaking, my nose gets snotty and red, I choke on my words, partially convulse and did I mention ALL THE FUCKING SNOT?!

Your issue has led to people labeling me with the "emotional woman" tag as they hand me a tissue with a condescending look in their tearless eyes. The only upside to this is that I'm less likely to stab someone lest I drop that tiny little scrunched up wad of snot and tears. Because who wants snot and tissue debris on the floor? It's a bitch to pick up.

I blame you for all of this. I could be banging on about the limbic system and my hypothalamus but I figure the buck stops with you, buddy.

Now I'm not sure if you're cranky at me for that time I took medication that dried you up to almost nothing for the best part of a year and are now just finding a way to make me pay by overreacting, or if you're just a bit of a pussy and like a good cry. But here's a bit of a newsflash for you, I DON'T CARE! Just stop it!

Toughen up, Princess, lift your game and reserve the tears for sad things. Unless of course I'm menstruating in which case you can bring on the tears when I watch the talcum powder commercials with the cute babies.

Yours sincerely,

When She Loved Me

This weekend my Inlaws are coming to housesit. Every time they come I go in to a mad panic because even after all these years I’m still trying to impress them – I don’t know why, I’m pretty sure they like me, I gave them an awesome grandbaby after all. So a massive clean out was ordered. With that, Operation Furiously Unclutter and Clean the Kitchen (acronym, anyone?) commenced at Casa de Glow.

As part of the Operation, Map Guy and I decided it was time to donate some of our stuffed toys.

I was never a big fan of stuffed toys when I was a kid – I was a Barbie Girl (life in plastic, it’s fantastic) through and through so never really saw the point in them. You couldn’t dress them up, you couldn’t plait their hair, bor-ring.

Fast forward to my late teens and early twenties when my mental health was rapidly declining; Out of nowhere came the desire to cuddle a teddy bear. Call it a need for nurturing, call it regression, call it pathetic. But it was what it was and for a few years AS AN ADULT I found much comfort in my little blue bear, Sullivan. Why was he blue? Well, because I was too.

After those few traumatic years I grew stronger and I moved on from Sulli. But he never left; he just migrated to the bookshelf to watch over me. I think he may have even given the “evil teddy eye” to Olli, the new bear in town, who I cuddled every night of my pregnancy (the perfect bump pillow).

So when the time came today to part with Sulli, I couldn’t just chuck him in the garbage bag, it seemed so wrong. I had to cuddle him; kiss him; say thankyou and finally, say goodbye.

I then proceeded to wail like a banshee.

I cried so hard over a silly stuffed bear who was always losing fluff no matter how many times I mended him. A silly bear who has a half missing mouth because I used to twirl the cotton of his sewn-on smile. A silly bear who could barely sit up any more because years of teary cuddles had compacted all his stuffing. A silly bear who, for a time, was my friend.

I did for a minute consider taking him out of the bag and putting him back on the shelf, but the time had come for us to part ways. There is, after all, no worse fate for a toy than to sit on a shelf or in a box not being played with. Toy Story and Sarah McLaughlin taught me that.

Sulli has started a new chapter in his life now at the local Good Samaritans store. My hope is that he will bring joy to someone else. That someone will find him and take him home, and love him just as much as I did. As much as I do.

And I will start a new chapter of my life, too… right after watching this and crying some more.

Do you have any toys that you’re emotionally attached to? Or is it just me who projects characteristics on to inanimate objects?

___________________________________________________

Meet Glowless at the Aussie Bloggers Conference thanks to

HealthyChart and Baby Goes Retro and Simply Colors

Melan-colic

Hubby and I have had our first taste of that part of parenthood dreaded almost as much as the birds and bees talk... colic. As a result, the lack of sleep has been bumped up a notch so this is going to be a really short post!

Yesterday, my gorgeous, cooing, smiling little Tricky turned in to a monster! He became a total fuss pot and would not settle. Jiggle him up and down = cry. Pat his back = cry. Rub his tummy = cry. Cycle his legs = cry. Put him in his little vibrating seat = cry. Put him in the sling = cry ever so slightly less while he bobbed his head around looking for the good stuff. It lasted almost twelve hours and my back is now aching from holding 4.5kg of cute for so long! On the upside, since I wasn't going anywhere I watched half a season of House on DVD - even though I couldn't hear all of it over the crying it didn't really affect my viewing pleasure because who really knows what all those long hard to pronounce diseases are anyway?

The only time he would stop crying was when he was feeding – he's so polite not to talk with his mouth full. After his meal he'd fall asleep and I would feel myself physically relax a little bit. But alas, it only lasted for about half an hour or an hour at a time and he'd be awake again, screaming. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Grumpy, irritable and only satiated by food... I think I have colic, too!

Did colic get you down? What did you do to soothe your bub? Leave a comment below.

Culture shock

I love observing and learning about other cultures. I might be too chicken to actually totally submerge myself in them, but I'll watch and respect as long as I don't have to eat anything I would normally assault with a full can of bug spray (hence my refusal to eat crickets on a kebab in Thailand).

One of the cultures that both delights and baffles me is that of Japan. I'm fascinated by their contradictions; the quietness and respect for others right along side the loudness and vivacity of the Harajuku and Gyaru fashion trends. But something I saw this week truly baffled me so much that I just had to share it.

On the 25th of April this year a competition with a 400 year history was held at a temple in Tokyo. The contest is considered an opportunity to pray for babies' health – so how would you expect they did this? But bowing their heads silently? No. Chanting rhythmically as loud as they could? Also no. This is a competition after all, there needs to be something measurable... how about how fast can a Sumo wrestler make a baby cry? You think I'm joking, but I'm not.

The Konaki Sumo (crying Sumo) requires two Sumo wrestlers to each hold a baby and face each other and wait to see whose infant cries first (if they cry at the same time, the louder baby wins). They're helped along by a local priest who waves, shouts and holds up scary looking masks, but the children are never physically harmed.

For more photos see here

To me, in my closeted Western life, this is just bizarre! But according to the Japanese a crying baby grows faster and therefore healthier, plus the louder the infant cries the more the gods have blessed it. When you take it from their point of view I suppose it makes sense. It just shows you how differently we are all raised from one culture to another... which brings me to my next “discovery” of sorts – a documentary.

Before I get you too excited, I cannot find ANY details on the Australian release dates for this movie, but it launches in America (if you happen to be there) on May 7th. Known as Babies – The Movie, this documentary follows four babies from around the world; Ponijao from Namibia, Mari from Japan, Bayar from Mongolia and Hattie from America “from first breath to first steps”. Watch the trailer (I've watched it at least a dozen times now) and you won't be disappointed! I'm not sure what I'd do if a goat started drinking Tricky's bath water... 

Cry me a river... or an entire flood plain

I've spoken about pregnancy hormones on Where's My Glow a few times already (here and here) and how they've been playing havoc with me. Whilst I'm still experiencing this phenomenon (which Hubby refers to as the “Psycho Bitch from Hell” phase) a new symptom has decided to rear its ugly head. The tears.

Everything, and I really mean that, no exaggerations here at all, everything makes me cry.

I have always been a bit of a crier and see it as a disability of sorts. If I get angry or frustrated, hot tears start to prickle at my eyes and WHAM I'm crying. This is fine if you're mid argument with someone, but in a work situation it makes me look like a silly little girl who can't control her emotions. Well you should see me now! I don't even need to get anywhere near anger or frustration because I start crying at “oh how unfortunate” and even “that's so adorable”.

The other morning I was getting my Weetbix ready and managed to spill the milk (can you see where this is going?). My interior monologue went something like this: “Oops. That was stupid. You're so stupid. You can't do ANYTHING right EVER AGAIN! You're going to be a TERRIBLE MOTHER.” I cannot say what happened in the nanosecond between oops and terrible mother – a strange force had taken over me. So the tears started. Just really small, almost cute tears until Hubby thought he would try to cheer me up by saying with a giggle “Haven't you heard the saying about crying over spilt milk?” Then the real tears started. Big, fat, slide down your face and plop on to the table tears. I swear I could hear a little splash as a giant pool started forming. At this point a rather shocked Hubby suggested very gently (quite possibly while protecting his manhood with a chopping board) that maybe I should go back to bed for a few minutes and try again soon while he cleaned up the 2ml of milk from the bench. So I plodded off down the hallway, wailing like a banshee to bury myself under the doona.

I think I could handle the crying if there was some sort of pattern I could prepare for. But it is totally unpredictable and so frustrating that it brings me to, well, tears actually. I'm not sure which is better, being a psycho who you don't want to mess with for fear of losing valuable body parts, or “that pregnant woman who cries all the time”. Either way I've started counting down to Tricky's birth not just because I'm looking forward to meeting him, but because hopefully it means the rollercoaster of hormones will be coming to an end.