V is getting to celebrate Father's Day by taking the girls to get some potting mix and a visit to the Dump Shop.
I am celebrating by pegging out.
Now, before you get all "oh my goodness, but you call yourself a feminist and we live in the 21st" (or is it 22nd - that is one part of history or maths or wherever that fit in the curriculum where you learn the wherefores and whys - or is that whies - of centuries that was explained on one of the days that I missed school. One of the very very few days, no doubt. That is the downside of living at the school - wagging is that much more complicated) "century and hello! technology and skin cancer rates and global warming" on me, there is a method in my madness.
I. Have a thing. For pegging out.
Not a good thing. Not a bad thing. But a thing. Well, several things.
Hear me out.
Thing number 1. My family made me.
Always best to start with an excuse, and my excuse is that my Uncle Stu (who was an artist with the welding rod) made us a clothesline.
(Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he only made the awesome billy-cart created from a tractor seat and pram that had steering, primitive brakes and went like a rocket down the hill to the loading ramp and I have transferred the memory of that with a bog standard picked-one-up-at-Ostwalds children's sized clothesline. Enough with the interrogation, okay?)
Can you imagine? A clothesline that you could borrow your mum's pegs and clip up your doll's clothes (or even your own if Mum let you) and have them dry JUST LIKE REAL?
That young innocent's loveeeeeeeeeee (thanks keyboard for that little addendum) has rarely dwindled, and no matter how much it has been rumoured that I have been known to shirk on housework, the inner bask given by pegging out has (nearly) never been bemoaned.
Ahem.
Thing number 2. Smells like Teen Spirit.
I have read - in magazines, on blogs, on forums - that the teen years are cesspits for rebellion, gremlins and stomping on the rules.
Don't get me wrong, I was no angel.
But my teen years were defined by boarding school (and therefore studiously creating arguments for broken rules that would result in me being exonerated of any wrongdoing - and the search for just the right rules to apply my torch to), double-church detention (perhaps resultant of the smart-assery displayed above), "holidays" at home, stints of truly dramatic and cringe-worthy self-loathing and Paul Young.
However - pegging out often soothed nerves rasped by parental "advice", being in the sunshine (or fighting biting winds or burning rays - this is life, after all) choosing clothing, choosing pegs, chosing patterns or pairs or colour combinations, bending and stretching, bending and stretching - well, let me just say that if more therapists embraced peg therapy, the happier (and drier and greener) the world would be.
Ahem.
Thing number 3. The Sydney Effect.
1990 I moved states, I started my brilliant career and I moved into an awesome share house in Leichhardt. Life was sweet. I had spent two months in this city of promise the Winter prior but now I was THERE and it was REAL and the possibilities of life were within my grasp.
Picture this. Hand-made or second hand-clothing, generally quaint, BRIGHT or brown. Thin for the second time in my "adult" life (the first time had been an abject failure - but its amazing what jaw surgery can do for a girl's figure), my hair funky and orange (often with nails to match) and feeling rich as I was actually receiving a wage! Watch out Sydney!
And Sydney - that sneaky city - did. She turned on a record number of wet weekends IN A ROW to welcome me.
She alerted me to the fact that, just because I was receiving a wage (if you could call it that, with a twist to her lips), there is NOTHING to do in the bask of her glory when it is raining and you are broke.
She put pizza shops within walking distance and awakened my workaholism which meant that my clothes were oft washed and pegged in the dark.
(She allowed me to be lured to a home with fantastic new friends, a huge kitchen and a taste for red wine and backgammon, so no matter how much of a bitch she can be, she has her upsides)
She made that home with marble conglomerate floors (and yes, apparently concussion can occur if one bangs one's head against it whether one is inebriated or not. It hurts far, far more if not), a pebblecrete front deck and a concrete rear garden.
Did you know concrete can (and does) grow moss if left moist - nay, even drenched? Which meant that my clothes were oft washed and pegged in the dark with an additional degree of difficulty.
The Sydney Effect- hung across whole stretches of time, getting tighter, getting bleachlines across the peg-line and advising you to just GET OVER yourself.
Ahem.
Thing Number 4. Focus, Ladies, FOCUS.
Once upon a time, I was a young mother. Well, okay, a younger mother than the old mother that I am today.
But anyway, once upon a time I was a mother for the first time in my life to a baby who was a baby for the first time in her life. I was suddenly economically reliant on factors other than myself and had another being suddenly completely reliant on me. Let me let you in on a little secret.
That. Freaked. The. Heck. Out of me.
But there was one thing that my mother taught me, throughout my childhood and reiterated when I first brought that baby home. And that thing was - no matter what, there is always the washing.
With a degree of difficulty of being your average hippy mother of the day complete with terry nappies and a partner supporting the nappy nest method, I have a belief that, while pegging therapy may not have pulled me back from the abyss of insanity, it gave me something to focus on while going bonkers.
So. Me. Alone. Pegging. Happy Father's Day, Vince. Thanks ;)
(I was meant to be doing a Garden Update blog for the Garden Share Collective hosted by Liz at Strayed From the Table with this time, but the photos have been downloaded to another computer and the pegging out needed doing and one thing led to another... So my Garden Update this month will be late. Oops.)
Over to you. Pegging - have you done any lately? And was it good?
