BLOG 36: If ONLY I lost hat No. 1!!!

IF ONLY I LOST HAT No. 1!!!

“We should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of” Carl Sandburg, Pulitzer Prize winning writer and poet

I just can’t keep my big mouth shut! Maybe I should pull the brim of my hat down over my gob… actually that wouldn’t work… I had a balaclava once and I STILL managed to talk through that!

Now I am a huge aficionado of hats. I wear them in all seasons. Hats are often a shorthand way of communicating my mood – some say I’m fun, some say I’m sophisticated, some say I am sporty, others say I’m mysterious and others say confident, classy or this person is nuts. It’s amazing the transformation to your appearance a hat can bring.

Of course we all wear metaphorical hats every day too. It seems these mythical hats are popped on when ever we need to change into a different role life asks us to perform. We have our work hat we pull on and between 9-5 we are a professional person, we have our family hat where we fall into the roles our nearest and dearest have ascribed for us, and we have our social hats where we are whatever the occasion demands… and many more I’m sure.

Sometimes we are like actors with a costume box… change hat, change role. A range of hat changes that ask you to be Competitor, Caregiver, Catalyst and Career person, and more. Now that’s a lot of hats!

Carl Sandburg’s quote, with which I began this blog really made me laugh… 3 hats indeed! Then I thought about it and I thought how true… My number one hat is to say “Yeah, I’ll give that a go” My Number two hat is me talking up a storm about how great a job I have made of giving it a go… and my Number three hat is the one where the magic happens (or not!).

I have to admit to being pretty damn great with hat’s two and three. It is very rare that if someone is not convinced by me wearing hat two that I can’t pull a rabbit out of hat three. I even surprise myself when that happens… but it does… more frequently than not. BUT when it comes to hat one… I need some criminal action!

Someone please burgle me and take hat one. If you did then maybe I wouldn’t over stretch myself so much.

The musical Oklahoma! has within it the song “I Cain't Say No”. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of this song from the fabulous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (and you should have it crops up on everything from re-runs of Fawlty Towers to this seasons House)… the lyrics go:

I'm just a girl who cain't say no,

I'm in a terrible fix

I always say "come on, let's go!"

Jist when I orta say nix...

You see if there is an idea bubbling around… and I get to hear about it… no matter how personally inconvenient, no matter now I can’t afford it, no matter whether or not I will enjoy it…. I throw my metaphorical hat into the ring. I can’t help myself. It’s not even like anyone actually asks me to do this stuff… it’s just the subject comes up there is silence… and then like the song says… I always say come on… when I should be saying nothing.

I’ll give you the latest list of stuff I have agreed to… hosting 3 parties (a Bar Mitzvah, a coming of age and a dinner party for Vegans… when I am neither a jewish teenager, turning 18 nor given up my love of meat)… taking care of two sets of my friends kids during the school holidays and having them sleep over…writing a puff piece about a new launch business (when I know nothing about that line of work)… and storing a friend stuff in my garage while she is between homes (lucky I don’t have a car cause nothing else is getting in there now!)

I hasten to add… NO ONE Actually Asked Me to do any of this.

And so, like I am not wearing enough hats as it is, I found myself on Saturday night prepping food for Sunday Evenings Vegan delight. Now I’m a great cook… but with meat, fish, dairy foods, and honey off the menu… I was struggling (hence why I started a day early) … WHY did I put my self through this! When I go to their house they hardly break out the chicken stock and whipped cream! We could have just booked a table in a restaurant… but NO… big mouth HAD to say come over to mine….

This weekend the coming of age beckons. Now this was stupidity personified… the kids mother started talking about a jelly/ice-cream/ pass the parcel affair… I saw the look in the girl’s eyes and I HAD to step in. She’s grown up watching My Sweet 16 on MTV… she was two years over that… she needed a proper party. And so I am sitting here surrounded by boxes of pink accessories which apparently MUST be pinned to my walls filled with dread as my house will be invaded by late teens in 4 days… and I have NO ONE TO BLAME. WHY couldn’t I just stay schtum… NO… big mouth had to say…lets have it here! (Who am I…Judy Garland?)

Now I’m a Baptist. Yes we worship a Jewish Carpenter who lived in what is now Israel…. But am I Jewish?? NO I AM NOT. So how the hell is a Bar Mitzvah happening here??? I don’t even have two fridges so good luck with the kosher food… and my house is where Bacon breathes its last air. BUT… due to a Venue Malfunction I now have a team of very pushy party organizers measuring my garden for a marquee. We know how this happened don’t we. Big mouth tossed her hat into the ring AGAIN!

I’m a freelancer… I work from home. But it was only a few months ago when I filled with terror at the school holidays. Six, sometimes Seven weeks of childcare to find… and THAT ain’t cheap. But did I HAVE to say to friends that have MANY more children than the one I managed to produce… NO WORRIES… I’m at home July to September… send them to me!!! How exactly am I going to entertain, feed, water and keep safe all these extra kids! It’s not like I even drive… I can’t take them anywhere? NO ONE ASKED ME TO DO THIS… but I just couldn’t stay silent in the pregnant pause where we all sighed and mulled over the length of the summer break. I just can’t keep that damn number one hat out of the ring… before I knew it there it was sailing through the air towards a solution to everyone else’s problem.

And Yesterday afternoon, two large men with a van arrived to store possibly the world’s largest wardrobe, and a double slide store divan base in the garage. They instructed me to keep the boxes they brought with them at a more stable temperature as I wouldn’t want the Egyptian cotton therein to go moldy. BUT… it’s not like I was ASKED… I offered… so what could I do?

Well I could have said nothing the subjects came up. It’s what everyone else did! But then what the hey! This is who I am…the person who has hat number one sailing through the air before she even thinks it through. Most of the time I am saved by the fact others say: “You know what it’s really kind of you but… No, you are ok”.

But when they don’t… I get to learn a whole heap of things I would never know in the general run of my life. Vegan food is a total pain in the arse, but can actually be quite tasty and freezes well. Eighteen year old girls have some really HOT divorcee dads. Bar Mitzvah parties are like an extravagant wedding (and I’ll get to keep all the left overs!). Level 6 of Mario Kart can be achieved if a kid teaches you how. No one will ever know that I am using all my mates Egyptian cotton sheets and towels and by Jupiter they are sooo much better than mine.

You won’t tell will you?