Notes on a Thwackless Day and Moving to Vietnam

on May 31, 2014

I am, today, sans Thwack. Just me.

For the whole day.

For, like, the first time ever. Or rather, for the first time since he rather impatiently forced his way out of me three months ago and proceeded to take over our household and our time and our energy like a chuckling, puking, wriggling, thwacking, cuddly imperialist.

Just me today.

And it’s wonderful.

Sure, over the past few weeks we have experimented (sometimes successfully, sometimes howlingly not) with me occasionally popping out for a few hours of stabbing small children with fencing foils or revisiting my lost abdominal muscles in an advanced belly dancing class, or with leaving the urchin overnight with the grandparents and twice as much organic, sugar-free, preservative-free formula as he should technically need (but will inevitably suck back because he’s a freaking glutton in a manner not unlike an infantile interpretation of Monty Python’s Mr Creosote) so that we can have a proper grown-ups’ night of debauchery and tapas.

Whatever you do, don’t open your mouth while Super Thwack flies over you.

Today is, however, the first time I’ve had the day and the house entirely to myself. Thwack and The Mr are off in the rusty borrowed co-op car for a day of male bonding (my guess is cheap lager, football and hookers, but I could be wrong).

As someone who has spent decades frequently and happily travelling alone, living alone, wandering alone, being alone, I hadn’t really realized how little real alone time you get when you have a fresh urchin in the house. Particularly one you decided in absolutist terms to breastfeed and cloth-diaper and co-sleep with. He’s always somewhere, laughing or howling or puking or flailing.

Later today, I’m going to go buy a big, fat weekend newspaper and sit in a cafe by myself and eat cake and drink coffee and read that aforementioned newspaper without a baby in my lap, one who is always giving me the knowing side eye, glaring at the existence of fabric between him and my bosoms.

I’m trying to fathom the freedom of movement I used to have. Remember all those weekends where I dashed off to cities all over China for my exam work? Remember cocktails with grownups after work? Remember work? Remember when I regularly used my brain?

It feels like a long, long time ago.

Like that time- or rather, all those times- when Nomadic Chick Jeannie and I spent our salaries on passion fruit margaritas in Shanghai?

Which is why we are moving to Vietnam.

Because I’m a really crappy housewife and and equally crappy stay at home mother.

Actually, no, that’s not true. I’m trying super duper hard to be good at these two new roles because we can’t afford childcare in the UK so staying here would mean either not working at all or paying out my salary in childcare costs until he’s old enough to go to school. TEFL gigs are thin on the ground here and badly paid, for the most part. I don’t know what else I could do, realistically.

The thought of staying at home that long makes me a bit panicky. I mean, I love being able to hang out with the Thwack and having time to cook weird stuff and drink more coffee than I should. But… yeah. No.

In Vietnam, we can actually afford to hire a nanny.

And I can go back to work and talk to grown ups and walk down the street by myself. And I can do things with both arms free for at least a few hours a day.

And Thwack can learn Vietnamese before he properly learns English. And we can stuff him full of rice noodles and mangosteens. And we can build up his core strength for riding en famille on the back of an overcrowded scooter.

And we can all throw ourselves into something new and unfamiliar and incomprehensible yet again.

It’s exciting.

I’m excited.

Hanoi wasn’t our first choice (Saigon was, based on friends’ suggestions), but it’s where a really good job offer with a lot of potential has led us and so we’re going where that takes us for now. It’s a foot in the door to a great big amazing room that could do us a lot of good in the coming years.

Hell, maybe we’ll thoroughly groove on the city. I hope so.

What’s the mop situation like there?