EWW: Hooray! It's the very first edition of Emily Writes Weekly

In which Emily is faced with an empty house, House of Drag is a nightmare, and there are some very good dogs on Instagram

Welcome to Emily Writes Weekly – thank you so much for joining me here. It has been a big week in the Writes household with my youngest heading off to school and I very nearly snuck a dog into the Michael Fowler Centre…

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I sent my last baby off to school today

I want to capture this strange feeling. I’m alone, in an empty house – absolutely staggered by the silence of it all. I sent my last baby off to school today. And as I’ll be having no more babies, this is it for this part of my parenting life.

No more lazy days with my baby. No more visits to cafes with playgrounds. Visits that lasted for hours as we sat in the sun nursing coffees and watching our little ones ride bikes and play at being birds. No more bad coffee at Active Play. 

No more screaming over having to have iPad-free time. No more screeching about some kid not following the trampoline law that the children hold over each other like dictators more extreme than anything you’ve read about in a history book. No more trauma-related injuries because you offered them raisins instead of a doughnut. No more hysteria over your request that they go to the toilet instead of clutching their knobs like they’re about to fall off.

It’s a strange feeling. I can finally make a phone call without assuring the person on the other end that there isn’t a slaughter happening in the background. I can work without a small person’s worryingly damp shorts pressed against the nape of my neck. If someone is punching someone for daring to spend more than 1,2,3,4,5 on the swing I don’t have to deal with it.

And yet, my mind is doing that birth thing where you think while you’re in it that there’s no way anyone on the planet can do this, and then the second it’s over you think – well, I could do that again.

In parenting the grass is always greener when you’ve dropped the grass off at school and you’re not listening to a 45-minute monologue about My Little Pony.

But – they look so small. They look so small when they’re sleeping. When you’re dropping them at kindy for the first time, when they’re sitting on the mat at school for the first time. As soon as they’re out of your grasp they’re so little. They’re so very little.

There’s celebration for getting this far, and a feeling of loss, a feeling of freedom and there’s worry and concern. What if he needs a cuddle? What if he can’t open the top of his lunchbox? What if he’s too scared to ask for the toilet? What if he cries? What if he runs out of the door and looks for me and I’m not there?

What if it’s all fine? 

It will be all fine.

What will I do with all this time? It’s only two days a week but it’s just there – without him.

They used to say “these days when they’re little are so short” and it never made sense to me. The days were always exhausting, long, filled with joy but draining too. The happiest days were still tempered by the feeling that you’d just run a marathon.

Then kindy came and you could breathe a bit more, work on things outside of just being mama. Work on bringing in some money to keep it all afloat. And you cherished those days together just a little more because there were fewer of them. But they still were equally wonderful but fallible. 

The days weren’t short but they were lovely too. 

The Duplo vehicles set on the window sill so they’re exactly as they are when they return from school. Just a few short hours. Those hours, stretching ahead of me just like when he was born.

I used to sit in the dark willing him to sleep. I used to push him on the swing for hours. I used to nap with him, my tiniest spoon. He used to cry for hours. I used to wonder how we would ever make it through the day. I used to.

The days were so long. They were so unbearably long. 

And now it’s just me. And I wonder if the day was ever truly that long?

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What I’m watching this week

I woke up from the loveliest nap yesterday to the truly horny sight of my husband covering the kids’ school books and checking we have everything ready for school. He then told me to go back to bed and watch some TV. So I chucked on season two of House of Drag.

I have an absolute love/hate relationship with this season. At the beginning, I was so excited for two reasons. 1) Willy SmacknTush is a mum and drag king and I can’t think of any other mum queens/kings that have been on the show and also 2) Claire Voyant! 

I have a story about Claire Voyant. A few years ago I was doing a fundraiser for something – I think it was for a kindy. But anyway, we needed someone to hand out the raffle prizes and I asked the bartender at Fringe – “You don’t by chance have a cutie in a loin cloth behind the bar?” and he was like, “I can organise this”. I swear I was joking when I asked. Kind of. An hour later a gorgeous boy turns up, cheekbones that could cut glass, covered in gold glitter and wearing a gold loin cloth. In no time mums were lined up begging to touch his V, which he obliged to happily – enjoying the attention from a bunch of wāhine who were flipping between being turned on and wanting him to wrap something around his waist so he didn’t catch a cold. And then I paid him cash and he disappeared into the night.

Later at Ivy I saw him as Claire Voyant and thought it was entirely unfair that he was so gorgeous in any gender expression he inhabited. And when I read Andrea Lawlor’s incredible book Paul Takes The Form Of A Mortal Girl, he served as my guide for how I imagined the irresistible character of Paul slash Polly. 

ANYWAY MOVING ON… every episode since has been a worsening nightmare and I hate watching it but I can’t stop watching it. Honestly, it’s a big old mess of a show. The editing is nightmarish – apparently the show is filmed over a week to save money so maybe that’s why it’s all such a mess. People are voted off based on absolutely nothing, but that’s not even the biggest issue I have with the show. There are just so many incredible conversations we could be having that are ignored in favour of shade cam BS. Imagine if there had been a discussion about the fat shaming and body shaming happening in the house instead of relishing the bullying like it’s some kind of hallmark of our community? Imagine if the discussions about privilege had lasted more than five seconds and had happened organically? A queen (the magnificent Jen Tré Fire) left in a political move but it was somehow swept under the rug as “she was just overwhelmed”. She was angry! Let’s talk about it instead of all of this YAAAS QUEEN WHAT’S THE TEA bullshit. Please! 

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What I’m reading this week

I’m also obsessed with this 2002 article by Susan Orlean originally published in The New Yorker – but this is a link to her blog. I don’t even know where to begin! This is about the Free Willy whale Keiko, who they tried to release after the movie. And it’s just full of the most batshit stuff – like Michael Jackson tried to buy Willy??? The billionaire who financed Willy’s release rode on his back?!?! People eat puffins sliced thin, like carpaccio!?!? My fave quote of so many is this: “One of his trainers carried pictures of Keiko rather than of her children in her wallet.” Imagine telling your therapist that.

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The best local dogs of Instagram

1. Scout @scoutandnoodles – Inexplicable surf dog, best ears on Insta, lesbian, sometimes wears a hat, very hot owners.

2. Ghost McLeod @ghostmcleod – Floofy, pointy snoot, beautiful baby face, Fringe Festival celebrity.

3. Dougal @dougal.schnoodle – Happiest good boi, tours regularly worsometimes wears a bandana, boppy tail. 

4. Prince Chilli @prince_chilli – Poet dog that had babies and melted my heart, somehow shady for a dog – looks like he’s judging me and I love it? 

5. Pops @gurtandpops – Not local to me but the bestest pup. A sausage who just had FOUR chipolatas. Is also the most famous dog in the list because she’s in the very beautiful children’s book Bob ‘n’ Pops. She was so round when she was pregnant, I felt an affinity.

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Story ideas that never went anywhere 

• Bees do not deserve the good PR they get.

• At what point are we going to say we’re done reading books by white women writing about how they’re going “natural”?

• Eating cheese before bed doesn’t cause nightmares if your life is already a nightmare.

• The Free Stuff Facebook groups are so wholesome (one week later it proved to be just as toxic as every other group).

• Wow, I literally forgot Ronan Keating existed until this moment.

• Pierce Brosnan looks like Colonel Sanders

• Is Tina’s real last name Arena?

• Russell Crowe looks like a retired mall Santa but his voice is like valium

• Can we actually attain KD Lang’s kind of lesbian art gallery owner aesthetic or will we just look like lost cult members?

• Remember that Vanity Fair cover of KD Lang and Cindy Crawford – that’s how I realised I was gay as.

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