Sometimes, I get ugly

Usually we go away with I and M (who do not approve of being named on the interwebs, so I will just use letters) for Australia Day.  Of course, usually we get a long weekend for Australia day.  Not this year.  This year, Australia day was on a Wednesday.  So instead, we went to I and M’s  house with Hannah for dinner, games, sleep (for some of us) and then breakfast, lunch, and more games.

Being a mom, I can now no longer stay up past 10.  Fine, I’ve never been good at that, but whatever, that is not the point.  9pm rolled around (I put Hannah to bed at 7:30, FYI), and I was already struggling to stay awake.

It probably didn’t help that I don’t really like the game we were playing.  Games with lore checks, this check, that check, and what have you (where you roll a dice to see if you can or can’t do something), bore the pants off me (not literally, don’t get too excited).  Sigh, they are so slow!  And when you have 8 people playing, it seems like 5 hours of people rolling dice before they can actually do something before it finally gets back to your turn, where you roll some dice, inevitably roll a 1, can’t do anything (or die), and then it’s someone else’s turn again.  Ugh, no thanks.  And I like board games. Most anyway.

No one could remember whose turn it was to bring drinks, so 2 whole cases of beer ended up coming, in addition to the home brewed spirits that Johno and Adrian brought.  Oh goodness, recipe for disaster.  Not for me of course, I know that drinking with a bun in the oven is linked to F.A.S., which I definitely don’t want my future child to suffer with it’s entire life.

Alcohol, and being quiet, don’t mix.  A lot of the people there that night are loud anyway, but add spirits, and bang, it’s like being next to a bunch of hyena’s who’ve had way too much catnip.  Eventually, I was so tired that I fell asleep anyway. Not a good sleep, a fitful, restless sleep that ended abrubtly at 1:30am when loud banging woke me up.  Not just me, but Hannah too.  Adrian was so drunk that he was banging his head on the table in attempt to be able think more clearly for game playing.

Hannah didn’t seem to mind being awake, she just laid in her port-a-cot next to the bed, rolling around, singing to herself and reciting her name.  I, on the other hand, laid in bed tossing and turning, fantasising about what I would yell at these loud obnoxious people if it were my house they were being loud and obnoxious in.

I don't mean for Hannah to shut up, I mean the loud people

Of course, I couldn’t tell them to shut their loud annoying mouths if I and M were there because that’s just rude.  I, wouldn’t like it if they came over to my house, and told me how to behave.  No, instead, I stewed in bed.  And I went to the bathroom because I have nanna pregnancy bladder and have to go at least once per night.  I did attempt to glare at them on my way out, but I’m not sure if they actually noticed since I wasn’t wearing my glasses and can’t see my own hand in front of my face unless I do.  Maybe they were doing an obnoxious ha-ha-we’re-going-to-keep-being-loud-and-obnoxious-all-night dance, I don’t know, to me they resembled blobs of fuzz, all meshed together.  I couldn’t even slam the door in passive aggressive annoyance on my way back in because I didn’t want to upset Hannah.

At 4am, they were really giggly and loud.  I wanted scream, yell, kick, bite, and scream at them some more.  How could they keep me up all night??  I listened in bed.  Hmmm….it seems I and M weren’t there anymore.  They must have gone to bed.  In the other house.  They would be sleeping soundly, with no interruptions from loud drunken people.  I could tell they were playing Telestrations (oh how I love that game.  So so funny).  Telestrations is always funny, but it sounded so much more funny when drunk (judging by the loud obnoxiousness anyway).  That was it, I’d had enough.  I put on my towel (it was 45 degrees celsius that day, there was no way I was going to sleep in clothes), went to the bathroom (nanna pregnancy bladder again), then I couldn’t contain myself anymore.

I marched up to the table (so I could see them a little bit) and let loose.  “Do you know what time it is?!”  I didn’t let them answer, I kept going.  “It’s 4am! FOUR AM!!! Do you have any idea how loud you people are?  Do you know how hard it is to sleep?  I went to bed at 10, and I have hardly slept all night!”  They all looked at me, like I was a lion and they were tiny little baby zebras, about to be devoured by me.

I pointed my finger straight at Aaron, “and don’t think that I’m going to watch Hannah all day tomorrow just because you stayed up all night!”

“Are you mad?”  He asked me.

“YES I’m MAD, I haven’t slept all night!  How can I sleep when you people are so loud and someone is banging his head on the table?!?!?!”  Everyone continued to stare at me like I was some sort of nutcase escaped from the asylum.

Then I huffed off back to bed.  And they packed up the games and went to bed too.

Sure, it seems really mean of me to point my finger at Aaron and yell at him like that in front of his friends, but at 4am after hardly any sleep and no good sleep?  No, it didn’t seem mean at all.

The art of stealth

Now a days it seems everyone is in such a rush, being stealthy has nearly died.  “But why would I need to be stealthy?”  you ask.  There are plenty of scenarios that demand a person brings on the  stealthiness.  For example, if it’s 5:30 in the morning and your spouse and child are sleeping and you want to use the door to the outside that is only separated from your spouse’s head by a thin wall.  Oh, and did I mention this door in particular is extremely, annoyingly, obnoxiously loud?

The Jess used to be the worst person ever in the art of stealth (maybe she still is, but she no longer lives in the same house as us, so I don’t really know).  She’d come home at all hours, open the front door and traipse inside.  Problem was it pretty much sounded like a herd of elephants had just rammed the door down and somehow managed to fit themselves inside.  And she thought she was being quiet.

I know, my friends and I were naughty

I learned the art of stealth when Hannah was a baby and any tiny little noise would wake her up.  There was no washing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, or sweeping the floor when Hannah was asleep for me.  No, no, no, that would be disastrous.  When she napped, I would have a nap, read a book, or, if I were feeling really daring, watch TV extremely quietly.  No, that’s not true, I learned the art of stealth in my naughty teenage days when I used to sneak out with my friends and change those moveable letter signs to say rude things instead of their normal advertising (at least I didn’t smoke, drink, do drugs, or steal things…).  There was one sign that was

Even got my initials on this one

particularly fun to change since it belonged to a girl at works dad.  I didn’t know that the first time we changed it, but the next day she came to work and told us all about it.  So of course we did it the next night too.  It was so much more amusing to change it, then hear about how annoying it was.  Plus my dad used to work the graveyard shift (overnight) and sleep during the day.  He’s a pretty light sleeper and would wake if we so much as farted, so I guess I learned to be stealthy then too.

My husband, and his side of the family on the other hand, are not so stealthy.  I guess they didn’t sneak out when they were younger, or have any other reason to be quiet.  I tried to teach them how to open and shut a door in a way that doesn’t make noise, but they just got offended (I thought I was being helpful) and told me that they are not 5.  So, doors are still loudly opened, I still wake up every time, and sometimes Hannah wakes up as well.

Being stealthy is easy.  All you have to do is turn the door handle all the way until the little thing that holds it in place in the door frame (whatever that is called) is all the way inside the door, then push or pull the door open (while still holding the knob, keeping the thing inside the door).  Viola, silent door opening.  Closing is just the same only opposite, turn the handle all the way, push or pull the door shut, then turn the handle so the thing is in the door frame.  Turning and pulling/pushing at the same time, on the other hand, makes lots of noise as the thing hits the edge of the slot it lives in when the door is shut.  Oh, and you have to do it slowly, with care, not hastily, with reckless abandon.

Now if I hear you’re using the stealth strategy for not so good purposes, I will sick ninjas on you, so do yourself a favour and don’t.