I was rudely awoken at 4 o'clock this morning by the smoke detector in the hallway outside my bedroom telling me in its own special language (emitting a loud bleep every 15 seconds) that it's battery was dying and if I would be kind enough to put in a fresh one it would shut up and let me go back to sleep.
So up I got and blundered around the house hauling out the ladder, getting shoes on to not blacken my feet with dirt and dust from the steps. Not having new batteries to satisfy the detector, I yanked the thing off the ceiling, took out the batteries, plonked them down on the floor, and trudged back to bed, imagining becoming a headline story on the morning news - "A young woman has perished in an early morning house fire south of Melbourne. The fire also claimed the lives of her infant daughter and two cats. Initial investigations suggest the fire was caused by an electrical fault, but investigators are baffled by the discovery of a smoke detector lying disabled on the floor outside the bedrooms of the deceased..."
It's my own fault, of course. The fire authorities encourage people to change their smoke detector batteries when daylight savings begins and ends, and it ended last weekend. I neglected to change the batteries, so I really have no excuse to complain. It just would have been nice if it would have delayed its pathetic bleeping another 5 hours to allow me to have an unbroken night's sleep.
The Boy and I are still together, which is a relief. Things kinda culminated on Friday afternoon when we were both so frustrated and pissed off with each other that it was just a matter of who was going to get in first to do the dumping. We established that our inability to communicate issues we have coupled with the fact that we don't get to spend much time together alone is crapping up our relationship. So we've made a deal that we're going to discuss any issues we may have as they arise rather than letting it go and stewing over it silently for weeks until the point when it finally comes out and has been blown out of all proportion and takes the other person completely by surprise, and we're going to start spening more time together without the Babe so we can focus on our relationship rather than on the Babe and how cute she is and how she looks like me, no she looks like meeee.
When the Boy suggested we go out more I was initially hesitant because of what to do with the Babe. I could get a babysitter in from an agency, but they cost a fortune and I don't really want a stranger alone in my house with my daughter. The only other option open to me is to ask my long-suffering mother to come sit with her, which she unhesitatingly agreed to do, but I feel terrible. My mother works full time and her start time varies from between 4 and 6 in the morning to sometimes as early as 3. If she's started at 4 that morning and is starting at 4 again the next morning, it's so unfair to make her stay up until 11 at night. When I point this out to her she says she doesn't mind, but she should, and I feel guilty. And I feel that the Boy doesn't give that much thought - when I asked who was going to look after the Babe when we were out, he shrugged and said to ask my mum. It doesn't seem to occur to him that it may be inconvenient and unfair. I will bring it up with him when I see him next, in accordance with our deal.
14 April, 2008 @ 1:56pm
