Contrasts

Image is not of my friend but is from here . Though she would rock those sunnies. And undies.

I've written often about how radically different your life before and after kids can be, especially if you've hung up your pencil skirt and high  heeled shoes for trackies and trainers so you can work from home, or parent full time, rather than schlep into the city and your corporate desk at your corporate office like I use to.

Yet mostly our partners still have the same life they did, maybe it changed a little as they head off to work with a dot of baby spew on their suit lapels, or leave office drinks early and head home to another meal of spag bol.  Or have some kindy art pinned to their office wall. Small changes.

And this difference was perfectly demonstrated by a friend I chatted with yesterday.

It was our school cross country, and these things can't function without parent help, so she had volunteered to do her bit and was positioned out on a path in a bushy area to guide and encourage the kids as they ran past.  It was a full day commitment, and the volunteers were told not to "leave their post", and when you watched the hodge podge of abilities from speedsters to stragglers, you could see why.

Before the days of kids, my friend had been a high flyer, a successful and intelligent go-getter.  But yesterday her smarts had deserted her and she hadn't gone to the loo before she headed out onto the track.  And on a hot day with plenty of water drunk, but not able to wander off in search of a loo, she did what any intelligent woman would do.

A bush wee.

"Is this what I've become", she'd thought as she squatted, "a school mum doing a wee in public".

Not long after, she got a call from her husband.  He was going to be late home, he was at a long working lunch at one of the city's best restaurants and they had just opened some very very nice bottles of wine.

Bush wee vs vintage wines.

The perfect juxtaposition.

Do you sometimes look at yourself and go "when did this happen?"  What have you done that you'd never have thought you'd do?  I carried around a potty in a plastic bag as if it was an accessory for a good chunk of one son's toilet training period. What about you?