Defamatory? Or just offensive?

My neighbouring editor and I are having a disagreement about a letter I printed.
The writer borders on both our areas and I printed it and he chose not to.
I've included the letter so you can appreciate just how extreme it is, especially in a conservative parochial community where, even when you have extreme opinions you're expected to shut up & keep them to yourself.
At the same time, I believe that 'shut up' ethos will stop people replying to the letter, which is a real shame.
When we had an equally viralent letter about immigration and refugees I was heartened to see the horrified response from our community.

We currently have a sector of our society (clutching at straws of respectability) seeking State legalised marriage, to cloak their sordid practices of sodomy and formication.

At least these warped souls are ware that they do rate abysmally low, in respectability stakes of humanity.
They also have the audacity to shrug off the scourge of ‘Aids’ as no big deal!
These folk need to be reminded that the Holy Bonds of Matrimony were devised for the natural procreation of our species, to raise children in a safe, stable and caring environment.
It has been said very, that “No man is an island unto himself.” On the contrary – we live in a tangled web of humanity and we all contribute daily to the uplift, or the digression, of mankind?

When I saw this letter I wanted to gouge my own eyes out but I was taught, very early on in my career, that if the media's role is to represent everyone - then EVERYONE gets a say.
Not just the people I approve of or agree with. Not just the reasonable people.
Even crazy, nasty, horrible people should have (and don't really have) the right to free speech.
And I wish there were a few more openly gay people in my community to give this woman the public serving she deserves.
But instead, I think I'll just get my car keyed one weekend for printing it at all.

Revelations

I took the family to church on Sunday (I know *gasp*) for their friends' nativity play & Sunday School wind-up.
And yes, this was the church that announced my pregnancy in the daily prayers a few months back to a chorus of gasps.

So I'm sitting with friends (in the front pew, even better) and the kids are telling the story of Mary's virgin pregnancy complete with sandwich boards that read *gasp* and *wow!* and renacting the gossip that would have obviously accompanied the great biblical event and meanwhile my friend is pinching me and sniggering, while I kick her back in the ankle.

So as Mary and Joseph in their teatowels and smocks struggle their way to Bethlehem (despite the controversy) I notice that of all the kids, I don't know the little 'Mary' and I lean to my friend and ask 'Who's Mary?'
The smart arse turns to me with shocked eyes and replies, in a stage whisper: 'Well, Mary was the lady who gave birth to our Lord Jesus'
...and that was it, we spent the rest of the service sniggering like six-year-olds.

If church was always that fun (and had Christmas carols every Sunday) I might reconsider my atheism.
I especially liked the bit where, when we finished our huge pooled lunch of angel cakes and home-made quiches I ventured outside to find my son leading the game of cricket between all the parked cars.

It was a standout day of loveliness that cured my severe case of Bah Humbug-ness for a while...Merry Christmas!

Va-va-va-BOOM!

oh my god my tits are ENORMOUS

I can't see my belly let alone my feet
& I am literally EXPLODING out of clothes

god, finally gravity (or at least whatever zeppelin force is buoying these puppies up )is back on my side & it's totally wasted
i have to sleep on my back to avoid the altitude-induced nose bleeds but then I have nightmares about being pummeled in the face with volleyballs

The Great Aussie Bogan Bus Adventure

I didn't go overseas as a high school student, because I was at boarding school with a scholarship.
I didn't travel as a uni student because I was working & volunteering while I studied.
I didn't travel after uni because I had a good job, and then I met my husband-to-be, and then I had kids...so I've been waiting for the kids to grow up to travel and WHAM! I'm pregnant and the cycle starts again.

But I'll be buggered if I'm going to keep waiting.
I'm pretty sure in a year or two I can shove two almost-teenagers & a not-quite-toddler in a bus and spend a year freelancing, blogging & living cheap.
It's time to assuage the itchy feet...if all my careful plans and secure job are going out the window, well I may as well enjoy the view on the way.

Not for the squeamish...

I've been reading up on this gallbladder stuff & it's just frightening/fascinating.

& yet it all fits.

My being told off for being Vitamin D deficient (essential for baby brain development - isn't it crazy how you have to ask straight out, to have someone explain to you why something is important? do other people just nod & take their tablets I wonder?) fits with gall bladder disease

Caffeinated colas & fatty foods, mainly animal proteins & dairy, are danger foods - so it explains why vegetarianism worked so well for me.

Sunshine is also essential for the body to process Vitamin D - so with more work going on & me being less active & therefore outside less, voila! low Vitamin D

& for today's 'too much information' - shut your eyes if you're squeamish - if you don't process fat properly your poo floats. I just thought everyone's poo floated eh?

It's all very interesting when it all fits & you can see how it affects your body/health - now I just need the mental energy & enthusiasm to do something about it.

It could be worse...

My one night and one day in hospital left me with a terrible feeling of sadness.
As I tossed and turned (and constantly jolted the alarm on my IV - well who can lay still with their arm sticking straight out for 24 hours, really?) I could hear two voices, constantly through the usual din of buzzers, a burnt-toast fire alarm, phones, breakfast trays being rattled and nurses with their jolly voices and clumping feet and loud laughter.

Somewhere in the distance I could hear a little child's voice, too worn out to even really cry anymore, just moaning 'mummy. I want my mummy. mummy' over and over again.

And somewhere, a little closer, was an old lady who'd had a fall who was in so much pain they couldn't medicate her enough to make it go away.
Even in her sleep she was groaning and crying.

I may have gone into hospital with a pain in my chest, but I left with a broken heart.
I can't imagine being that alone and that sad.

Third time's the charm...

I was leaning over a hospital bed at 4.30am in the morning, vomiting, crying, shaking - and my first thought was 'oh God - I don't want to do this again'.
The only way I can describe the whole experience was labour, but in my chest, with no break between the contractions.

Turns out I have gall stones, or pancreatitis or both - and the pregnancy probably made it worse but it's probably been the reason for my back and chest pains sometimes, late at night, which I'd attributed to the curve in my mattress.

But the scary part was waking up clammy & shaking at 2am and convincing myself it was indigestion...and then having to admit at 4.30am that I'd have to wake the kids up, wrap them in doonas and shovel them into the backseat in the dark, drive myself up the road to hospital & admit that I wasn't coming to work.

The nurses & I were all assuming it was something easier to explain, like indigestion gone wrong, until I started vomiting mylanta & fluro-yellow bile everywhere.

I was desperately writing instructions for the local staff and the potential replacement as they debated whether to give me morpheine as well as the codeine.
I was messaging my boss and kept bending the IV in half and sending off alarms because you can't text without bending your arm, let's face it.
I was fighting the morpheine to make sure the kids were still asleep on the visitor couches and no one rang my parents before they'd normally be up, unless the kids did get up, or were upset.

...how am I going to do this on my own again?
How am I going to manage the midnight runs to hospital for rotavirus or high temperatures?
How am I going to stretch myself between 13-year-olds and 3-year-olds and their different needs?

And you know what broke me, in the middle of all the drama and the vomiting and the pain and the drugs was a nurse I know just a little, rubbing my back and saying quietly 'and maybe you're just a little bit stressed as well eh? maybe you've been worrying a bit'.
It's been a long time since I cried like that.
And when my parents came & picked up the kids I just turned off my phone, rolled over with my head under a pillow & let someone else deal with it all for a little while.

Bully for me...

I've never felt so bullied in my life as I have this past month or so.
So many people with their questions & advice & demands & directions.
Why did my suddenly becoming a mother again mean that I need to be directed like a child?

Ok, so to set the record straight...

I know DeadBeatDad and DeadBeatDad2Be should pay maintenance. But I have handed that over to the government to chase - and maybe Legal Aid when I am officially unemployed - because I simply cannot spend my days and my sparse cash on crying, demanding phone calls to invisible men.
My family can do without the money, we have until now, but we won't survive if I'm a nervous, crying wreck.
I still remember the day my six-year-old daughter told my mother 'I think it's good now - Mum doesn't cry all the time anymore'...and she was talking about before the divorce (so don't ever think they don't notice).
I will NOT go back there to that dark, desperate place again.

I know it's only going to be harder once I can't work the same way I do now, or expect the wage I get, but I cannot imagine coming back to work six days and two nights a week when the baby is a year old - and I cannot bear to see all my hard work full apart while this place waits for me to decide what I want to do.
The people I work with deserve a boss who cares and is committed and will still be here in a year's time.
Yes, & maybe my employers can afford to wait around for a year with 'fill-ins' for my job, but can my community? Can the paper?

The 'advisors' tell me I should quit, I should stay, I should demand my fair share, I should squeeze 'them' for all they've got...why do I have to be a blood-sucking bitch?
Aren't I already a cliche without being a bitter, angry, free-loading single mother of three as well?

My kids, all three of my kids, are going to need me at home this time around.
It's the bravest decision I've ever made because I couldn't do it when I had a husband there alongside me, I couldn't trust him to make it all ok while I stayed home to be a Mum. I couldn't risk him fucking up our world again.
But I'm going to trust ME to make it all ok.

& for all those people who have a piece of advice for me - well hold onto it.
Maybe you'll get to say 'I told you so' later - or maybe I'll surprise us all.

Generation X-cellent

I have convinced The Girl that Generation X were so-named for the X-Men and as such we all have phsyic powers like Jean Gray.
And, because the baby has double mutant genes it will simply teleport out of my womb when it is ready to be born and save me miles & miles & miles of stitches!

If this is so, however, I have been reminded that it will be ineffective to send him/her to his/her room when s/he is bad.

Goldilocks and the D3

I received a phone call from the doctor’s surgery today to tell me my blood results are back and that I’m pretty damn low in Vitamin D.

Fair enough, it explains the tiredness and bruising a little but when she first introduced herself on the phone my breath stopped.

Now, just this week I started taking a general pregnancy multi-vitamin that has already made me feel a little better, especially in the heat when I didn’t want to eat anything but iceblocks.

To put things in perspective, instead of working solidly to my usual Thursday routine today I’ve had ‘the talk’ with my boss and the idea of being officially unemployed next year is making me squeamish, then I had a meeting with a community group that sucked up the rest of the day on patting backs and kissing…cheeks.
So I was very self-aware that my own patience was already at stretching point and I did not want to go to the pharmacy and I had things to do back in the office.
I was already frazzled, I admit that.

…so here’s where it starts heating up.

I front up to the pharmacy with my instruction for 1000 units of Vitamin D.
The pharmacist I’m talking to speaks English as a second language and has a habit of saying ‘yes’ when she means ‘no’ and vice versa.
She pointed out that they had a few choices for me.

There was a choice of 1000 units of Vitamin D (there was something called D3 but we won’t even go there), there was the 250 units and the 500 units but that comes with calcium built in.
I am already taking 250 units of D in my multivitamin and 59mg of calcium.
The instruction says I can take two tablets of the multivitamin daily – I’m only taking one (my argument is we eat well, I only need one, one has made enough of a difference).

…are you keeping up?

Ok – so I can’t take the 1000 unit tablets. That’s too much.
I don't want to buy the 250 units - that really isn’t enough.
But the 500 units has Calcium.
And I asked ‘are there any dangers associated with taking too much calcium’? And the pharmacist said ‘no, your kidneys’, with a worried look on her face.

…still with me?

Now in the middle of this we’ve had three visits behind the desk to consult with the other pharmacist and check the computer for information about this cocktail of minerals, vitamins & trace elements.

Ok – so I walk back to the wall of vitamins and I pull down the one I’m already taking and arrange about $220 worth of bottles in front of me on the counter and start playing that game where the fraudster shuffles cups around in front of you.
‘Ok,’ I say. ‘I can’t take this one,” slide to the right. ‘But this one and this one,’ slide to the left, ‘aren’t enough?’
Then she has her turn.
‘Ah, but this one,’ slide to the right ‘you should be taking two of, and that is too much to take this one as well,’ slide to the left.
‘But I’m only taking one of these,’ feint right, slide back ‘do I need to take two if the one I’m taking is making me feel better?’
‘But your doctor said…’

...stop. Recoup.

‘Can I take too much Vitamin D?’
‘mmmmh? Maybe you should ring your doctor to be sure.’
'But I won't see my doctor until the 30th and I'd like to sort this out now as they implied that I really need to get some more Vitamin D into me.'

And then I asked again.
‘Is there a level of calcium that is unsafe?’
‘No. But your kidneys’
What?! What is that? Is that a ‘no’ or a ‘yes’?

I tried again. From a slightly different angle.
‘Is there a problem if I take too much calcium?’
‘Oh no, calcium is very good for your teeth and bones and when the baby’s teeth and bones are forming…but you should not take too much because it is bad for your kidneys.’

…now, this is where you stop, and breathe.
Because it’s sure as hell what I had to do at that point.
I actually felt myself step back from the counter in some kind of self-censorship of my thoughts...or in preparation for leaping over the lipgloss testers and jelly beans to throttle the mild-manner chemist.

So, while the pharmacist went back to her computer (I'll just check) I stormed out of the pharmacy with two bottles in my hand (unpaid for mind you & valued at roughly the same amount as my eldest child's annual school fees) to where I’d seen the local GP taking getting her hair tinted in the hairdresser’s next door.
The poor be-foiled, be-smocked medico was confronted by a red-faced virago shaking a giant bottle in each hand like maraccas and shouting: ‘can I take this with this without my baby growing tusks or having a concertina spine?’
Her answer: ‘yup – no problem’.

…oh no. I’m not done yet.

Back through the swinging doors of the pharmacy like a gunslinger I strode, slapping down my two bottles amidst the cornucopia of supplements now littering the counter, along with the $80 of giftware I’d somehow collected by osmosis in my half hour of prolonged negotiations.

Shocked by the final amount, I split it between my card and account, already itching to be back at my desk and put as much distance as possible between me and the pharmacist’s eager but uncertain expression.
I stormed up the street like a madwoman with my arms full of rattling bottles and gift-wrapped boxes (I’m sorry, that won’t fit in our bags) only to discover as I unpacked all the bits and bobs into my bag at the office that I HAD JUST SPENT AN EXTRA $66 TO PURCHASE THE ‘EXAMPLE’ VITAMINS I HAD ALREADY BOUGHT A WEEK AGO!

…I may, just possibly, have been sobbing by this point.

So back went the virago, waving a bottle the size of a teapot in front of her.
‘I don’t want this one!’
And the lovely, sweet, mild-looking pharmacist said to me ‘but I don’t know how to refund an account purchase’.

Which is about where the retail assistant made eye contact with me from the depths of the shelves (her eyes urgent and placating, mine wide and manic), leaned over to the pharmacist and whispered ‘F2’.

…and that was juuuust right.

Change of fortunes...

A month ago my Tarot was full of 'surprises' and 'relationships'.
Today it's full of 'long journeys' and 'coping'.

Bwah! If I have to have a long journey that I'm going to struggle to cope with, can't I please at least have a tall, dark, handsome stranger who brings me an unexpected windfall?

You just can't get good fortune telling these days...facebook really should have factored the 'customers only want to hear good news' preference into their online Tarot permutations.

Above average already...

After my flying trip to the nearest city for my somewhere-around-14-weeks scan to ascertain my birth dates, I was assured by the ultrasound team that everything looked 'normal'.
It wasn't until I was sitting with the local ante-natal (ante-natal? lol - anyone who is pregnant ends up anti natal) nurse that I asked 'yes, but what counts as normal - it's a big curve eh?'.

She said to me "I've been doing this since before you were born Sasha and no one has ever asked me that - let's look it up".
So, according to the approved Country Health SA literature my baby should be 'around' 4cm at 14 weeks.
According to my scans though, at 12 & a bit weeks, the baby was 6.7cm.

Now for someone who had almost 10lb babies this is not reassuring.
I remember with The Boy that they could never decide on my numbers because the baby's size was always bigger than its other development factors would suggest.

Hey, I'm not panicking yet.
Bubbles is not even touching the sides of his/her 'bowl' yet, but my nurse is making bets (according to her own heart rate theory which the locals assure me is pretty spot on) the baby is a boy & I've got to say that the numbers suggest, at least to me, that she's right.
Because, while this baby may be 'normal' it's also 'above average' already (we're just that kind of family really).

And damn it! I'm just not as stretchy as I was a decade ago...

Amazing...

I stayed overnight at a friend's birthday party at the weekend and woke up for a walk on a beautiful slice of secluded beach.

I was amazed to get within a metre of a wild dolphin, playing in the shallows, we found a sealion lounging on the sand and The Boy even picked up a cowrie shell the size of my hand.

In the middle of all this turmoil, a day like that is a blessing, and a reminder why this is the place I want to raise all my children.

Dawn of the damned...

Do I know what I'm having?

Well, according to the scans it's a little alien with a big head & I'm expecting it to break through my skin & start eating brains any time now...

Phew!

This week things started to fall in place.

In a flurry of people desperately trying to work out the gossip without me realising they were gossiping (facebook people? really?) finally a friend just walked up to me, laughing her head off, and wrapped me up in a big hug. She's the same person who rang me up, sotto voice, to tell me baby bottles were 50 per cent off at the pharmacy this week.

My dad, whose been having a quiet breakdown of his own after a friend had a mini-stroke in front of him, he learned that my Aunty has advanced breast cancer & his divorcee daughter announced her unplanned pregnancy all in the same week - bought a second-hand cot this week.
So I'll take it as a good sign that he's getting warmed up to the idea of another baby in his life.

My mum is shopping.
It was she who, when my dad had a little schitz fit, told him to "man up and be happy".

The Boy told me "I'm happy if it's a boy, I don't know how I feel if it's a girl" and The Girl just doesn't want to share her room so we'll be spending the maternity leave months setting up the shed as a teenage retreat.

A (harmless but ditzy) friend was full of congratulations and, when she asked about the dad I simply said he wouldn't be around, she asked me outright "he's not married or anything is he?" which was a relief in that I'm sure that's what people are discussing but wouldn't dare mention in my hearing.
I think my splurt of laughter may have been more convincing than my actual denial.

Turns out we still had a high chair & car seat that I put aside for my brother's breeding years.
I've got a baby bath, a few clothes, started buying nappies, bottles & a nappy bag now.
I've got a lead on a cheap but reliable car and just need a sturdy pram and a rocker/feeder chair.

Fingers crossed my boss will take me on part-time afterwards, but I definitely won't be coming back to work this much. I've already turned down two promotions this quarter because I decided I couldn't move the kids or take on more responsiblity - turns out those were EXACTLY the right decisions to make.
I'm glad I made them before the baby came along too, so I'll always know I chose to stay here no matter what.
The kids are happy - they think it'll mean they'll have more time with me. Ha ha - little do they know ;)

Mr Right & I are still friends. It's kind of sad to take that step backwards again but all the reasons I like him are the reasons he knows better than to take on a pregnant woman with two almost-teen kids.
I guess I'd be suspicious of anyone desperate enough to think my package would be a good deal - but we are you know.
And I'm starting to feel happy about the future again now that the shock is (slowly) wearing off.
It's important that I'm happy before this baby comes along - s/he deserves all the love in the world and I refuse to do it any other way.

Sad...

BUB is having a breakdown.
So far he's considered abortion, adoption, abandonment, suicide, probably homicide, denial, unemployment & self-exile to a non-extradition country.

I tried, I tried to be patient, I tried to understand that he's as panicked as I am but when he started talking about the deep depression he had been plunged into I kind of lost my last thread of sympathy.
I believe my reply was something along the lines of 'hey, you were holding the gun when the trigger went off and now you've left me to carry the bullet - you're talking about your back pocket while I'm developing a hunchfront'.

I hope he gets it together. I hope it all works out one day and this baby doesn't have to fight to know his/her own family, but right now I'm too busy building arms & legs to deal with a grown man having a sook about maintenance & gossip.
I learnt my lesson the first time - better a happy, stable family with one less person in the mix than a mixed up angry environment where everyone bears the bullshit.

So Bubbles - right now, it's just you, me, your big sister, your big brother, your Nanna & your Grumpy, a loving Aunty & a cheeky Uncle, two evil cats (you can't play with them right way, ok?) and a giant huskie dog that I'm training to pull a sandboard.
When you look at it that way - I guess you're gonna be ok.
That's a lot of people to love, & to love you back.

Schadenfreude

God I am over the gossip.
If I've kept my private life private this long, you think people would get the hint.

The day the kids were allowed to tell their friends, the day I told my boss, the same day they were discussing potential fathers at the pub and two days later someone stood up at the local church and asked 200 people to pray for me.
Apparently the gasp that swept through the congregation was like the holy breath of God, blowing everyone before it.

How come they didn't want to pray for me when I was just a sinning aetheist divorcee?
Maybe if they'd done it then I wouldn't be shifting priorities so suddenly now?

Earth mother

Why am I so tired?
I don't remember being so tired?
According to my (slightly rose-tinted) memories I was an earth goddess last time I was pregnant a whole decade ago.

This time, I just feel like mud.

Surprise!

Ok - the world has turned upside down in a comedy of errors I was never prepared for.
At the same time that I met someone special, I was still knocking boots occasionally with BUB.
About the time Mr Right & I decided we should do something serious about our feelings & shed the baggage, well, turns out BUB & I might have had one 'one last time' one time too many.

I'm pregnant.
More than that though. I'm 14 weeks pregnant.

Let me explain. I'm not one of those Amish tweenies who doesn't know how it all works.
It's just, well, I don't have normal periods & I've been seriously sick in the past 'down there' so when the periods stopped but the two pregnancy tests came back negative (two! count 'em two!) and after all, we used condoms, I just assumed the worst.
And the worst meant seeing a doctor, which is difficult to organise when your GP is muslim & won't touch anything below the tonsils but you can't drive the hour & a half to an alternative medical centre because you work six days a week and you have two kids to pick up after school for basketball/cricket/scouts/dance/insert activity here.

Then, still no periods, and I started to bruise for no reason. And I was teary & tired and obviously something was wrong so I took the afternoon off & made the drive...but then the GP I was scheduled to see got called into surgery and no one else was available.
So two weeks later I finally get in to see a GP & she's only booked me in for the normal appointment but yes, with my history, it does sound like what I'm expecting but we'll do all the tests just to be sure.
And so, the next day, half way between a meeting with grain cooperative shareholders and the local mining alliance I get a phone call from the medical receptionist who has news that I need to know but she really doesn't want to have to tell me but the GP is already on holidays and...WHAM!

I mean, I thought I was dying. Seriously dying. I'd sorted out my will & let my parents know who would raise my kids & that I wanted to be an organ donor but this?
Jeez, I was prepared for bad news - but I don't even know what kind of news this is?

I found myself crying in a running car on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere - breaking up with the bloke I was half in love with over the phone and breaking the news to the less-than-impressed father on a mobile phone.

I'm 35. I'm having a baby on my own. I'm absolutely terrified.

Achieving my goals...

In keeping with the spirit of the front line management training I am due to fly interstate for at 6am Monday morning, I have made myself a list of jobs that need to be done before I can head out.
I was so tired this week after not only getting the paper out as usual, but trying to achieve all the jobs on my list that when I finally woke up in the morning I had a list of six or seven booty texts on both my phones that I had simply slept through.

I still haven't finished Item 1: washing all the bedding or Item 4. packing the kids' clothes but I quite enjoyed putting a big red line through Item 7: putting Back-up Boy firmly in his place one last time before having mad, crazy goodbye sex on Friday

One more box...ticked!

A fish out of water...

I am an atheist - and I'm writing a front page story about how wonderful a christian community this is.

I am a leftie - and I live & work in the heart of Liberal's safest Federal & State seats.

I'm a greenie - in a town where mining & fishing are the big lifesavers & local farmers are pushing for GM moratoriums to be lifted.

A single, divorced mum of two in a town of five-child married-forever, five-generation families.

I'm feeling a little bit out of touch this week

The end is nigh!

The strangest little old lady in the world stopped me today to tell me that she likes my headlines.

I  was a little surpried because I always think my headlines are strange & cliched (it's not my most obvious skill).

...and then I looked at her, with her prolific letter-to-the-editor writing & her mismatched op shop dress sense & her evil dachshund dog & her prozac gaze & her random oh-so-chatty visits to my office & I realised that if she & I are on the same wavelength then I've just been offered a frightening vision of my own future.

The end is nigh!

The miracle of marketing...

My girl & I were curled up on the couch watching TV as the usual reel of KFC and McDonalds ads rolled past.
It was at this point that she observed that the people in the fast food ads don't look like the people we reaaally see when we stop for junk food on our long trips.

Out of the mouths of babes...

That's my middle name...

I don't go looking for trouble.
I can usually find it right where I left it last time.

A word to the unwise...

There are some very sexy things a man can do with a Mars Bar & a willing woman.
My advice to you...never EVER try and substitute a Snickers Bar.
To understand why, buy one & suck on it for a while. I will say no more...

Something to aim for...

Does anyone else enjoying the irony of watching Australia's Biggest Loser with a packet of Tim Tams and a can of Coke?
I like to watch Top Model in a tracksuit & ugg boots too.

Irony...

Do children not understand the irony of standing up and screaming 'I wish I was dead'?
...I could make us all happy, very easily.

First impressions count...

I'm pretty sure you don't need a marketing background to know that first impressions count..I think my nanna used to say something similar.
And yet, it's like the internet sucks all those common sense rules out of our heads.
With that in mind, here is my (humble) advice to the many patrons of online dating.
If you are serious about attracting someone quality...

• Please don't take photos of yourself with your shirt off. Ick! No one (serious) wants to know that you're sitting in your lonely, beige-walled bedroom with no clothes on talking to strange girls in Ghania who desperately need money to bring their mother/child/bulldog over from the UK.
• Just because you CAN pole dance/do the splits/touch your nose with your tongue...doesn't mean you should do it on your profile picture.
• Do NOT keep all your old girlfriends/boyfriends on your Facebook page so they can stalk your new 'recruits'. When it's over, baby, it's OVER!
• When you take your profile photo, try not to do it in front of wall of pictures of your ex-wife and kids, your mum & dad and the ex-in-laws.
• Maybe these aren't hard and fast rules for everyone but, for me, they sure are big fat squealing warning signs. Warning, warning! Danger Will Robinson!

Of course, if you're reeeally hot...maybe you should have your shirt off in one teeny weeny photo.
;)

A life in writing...

I love how the world turns on its axis back to the same place, over the years.
When I was a child I had pen pals. Strangers I talked with in England or Pakistan, even, that left their name in a magazine or a newsletter hoping to meet someone different, somewhere different.

In times of war, women at home wrote to the 'brave GIs', creating relationships out of nothing except shared memories and hopes.

Now we throw our personal information out into cyberspace in the hopes of making a connection.
We write to people we've never met, may never meet, and build relationships out of the fantasy people we create out of their written words.

And words are so fluid, so malleable. Words lie.
I can mould them to mean something here, in my mind, and send them out for someone else to mould into a new shape that fits them.
Is the internet reviving the poetry and romance of the written word? Or is it perpetuating pretence?

And yet, anyone who has ever received a postcard from a friend, or a letter from a lover, knows that they can be a window into a person's soul, a chance to be truly honest without guile or pettiness.
How freeing it can be to take the feelings flapping around inside us, capture them in words and press them down onto a page to keep. How revealing.
It's easy to fall in love with someone's words (distance makes it easy to ignore snoring & body odor & dirty dishes in the sink).
And just think - wouldn't the World War I veterans have preferred a Skype striptease to a Vargas postcard and a flimsy letter pressed between the pages of a bible?

Love, sex & food

After a crazy month of 70/80-hour weeks & kids grand finals & working through the night & slothing on the couch at 11pm at night utterly, utterly exhausted - I am enjoying my first Wednesday afternoon off.
Oh I love that idea - a weekday (even if it's only half a weekday after working all night) - sitting in bed reading books, napping, or sometimes curled up with a DVD on the laptop with the sun shining in on the bed. It feels so hedonistic.

And I finally realised watching the glorious Julie&Julia that I have been born out of time.
I should have been one of those 'hostess' wives - modern geisha who plan meals (but have someone else to clean up for them), who dabble in art & literature out of love (but aren't required to finish anything or put up with someone else marking them), who sparkle & chatter & debate (but don't actually have to DO anything).
In essence - I'm just plain lazy...and sadly, I'm not good looking enough to get away with being that way for a living! LOL

What is it about food? Why do we revel in it the way we do sex? We even use the same words - lush, sensual, moist, hot & juicy...or maybe it's just me who uses all those words. LOL

When did chefs become rock stars? The Nigellas & Jamies & Marcus Pierre-Whites?
It's like food porn.
We sit on our couches, eating spag bog off our knees & watch the Naked Chef plunge his hands into paella or Nigella purr about pomegranates.
Of course - like porn - some of us get brave & give it all a go at home.

At times like this, when work & sport & commitments start breaking down the little joys in my life I can't decide what I miss the most - good food? or good sex?
But ironically, food, like sex, just isn't any fun if it's not great.

Symbolic...

I attended an art gallery opening today, for community artists, who had taken the initiative of hanging some of their locally-relevant work in the public toilets as well.
So when I sat down on the porcelain expecting to read my usual public education literature about STDs and domestic violence, instead I was affronted by slightly surreal salmon-pink oysters and split pomegranates.

A few hours later, at the event dinner, when I asked the art coordinator if she was having a lend she looked at me with a surprisingly innocent & bemused expression for a mother of two - but her husband spat his red wine all over the tablecloth.

New skills...

I recently joined a certain alliterative weight loss program with a friend (and that’s the last time we’ll talk about it).
This involves the military-style planning of every meal and snack, every day, and the obsessive counting of calories.

In the words of my friend YummyMummy:
'I don't know if I'm losing weight but my maths is getting a whole lot better.'

Repeat after me…

NEVER blog drunk!

Spanish proverb...

Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables.

Bottom of the chocolate box...

I was discussing with Geek_Girl how I haven't slept with anyone in a long time and I can honestly say it's because I'm not interested in anyone I know – not because I've run out of options.

She suggested that that's like saying you've stopped eating chocolates because the box is empty...or because there's only the crusty pralines and turkish delight left on the bottom tier.

Read between the lines...

Suddenly here is another ex-lover chatting away to me on email.

Don't they get it? When I say 'I understand, let's be friends'...after they DUMP me…what I really mean is 'your ongoing presence is a constant reminder of my perceived inadequacies and I wish you'd disappear or at least be publicly and completely unhappy without me'.

Duh!

It's all over now...

I recently realized that I've had my quota of good sex and there is no more good sex out there in the world for me to have any more.

So sad…

I can't believe that a grown man can get to this age and not know what goes where under the covers?
Don't you guys grow up reading porn and watching movies - shouldn't that count as instructional material?

I never knew that there was such a thing as bad sex until after I split up with my husband - if I'd know about this quota thing I would have saved it up for the NEXT 10 years not the last 10.

Why do bad boys fuck like tigers and good men kiss like serial killers?

Blogging...

This blog has become the inside of my brain, on the outside.

Whims, opinions, funny moments caught in time like insects in amber - and almost as bizarre at times.

I remember reading on a teacher's wall once, things that children had said, including one little gem that came in answer to the adult sobriet 'think before you talk"...the child had replied "but I don't know what I'm thinking until I say it'.

That's how I feel with this blog.
Without it I wouldn't know how far I've come, or how much lies ahead of me.

So welcome to my blog...and to the inside of my head. It's a fun place to be.

Generation gap...

For a while there I was talking to my boss on email and kept saying LOL.

It took us about five emails before he worked up the guts to ask me what LOL means.
He thought I was writing Lots Of Love at the end of each missive.

I don't use chat-speak when I write to him anymore...

Media wars...

I have my own opinions on Fairfax's cost-cutting and what mistakes may have been made over the past 12 months but I'm surprised at the way other papers feel free to comment on Fairfax financial decisions.

The one that struck me most is a comment in The Australian about the FFX CEO's decision to get rid of his chauffeur and use taxis or drive himself.
The Australian slagged FFX for putting a man out of work.

I wonder what they would have written if the company continued to put people out of work in all other sites but the Big Man continued to get driven around in chauffered style?

You can't win can you? At least not when you're up against News Ltd.

Nature v nurture...

Flinders University has proven that parents of children under 11 are solely responsible for their children being overweight.


Well duh!

I am a big fatty and, while they have MrX’s genetics on their side, to be sure, my kids don't eat the crap I eat and they are heaps healthier and have much better habits than I do.
I still remember a study that told us how children of skinny parents were inclined to be skinny, children of one fat & one skinny parent had a halfway chance of being either, & children of two fat (yes, I know, but ‘overweight’ takes a lot of typing) parents are more likely to have fat kids.

BUT…the pets of fat couples are something like 90 per cent more likely to be overweight as well.

Nature…or nurture? You decide.

Night manouvres...

Apparently snoring affects the brain.
So does being thumped in the head while u snore by a partner who hasn't slept a whole night in 15 years.

State v family...

A while back I read about an American couple ordered to get chemotherapy for their teenaged son after they chose to forego a second round of chemo and instead try alternative medicines.

Is it right for the State to be able to order invasive, intrusive health treatments? I can't say how I'd react to the idea of chemo if I found out I had cancer. I think I'd be more frightened of the treatment than of the illness - but then I have a lot of people I have to live for.

This issue is right up there with the vaccination issue and the family who skipped town to avoid their child being given vaccinations after welfare had already been called in (I'm assuming there's more to that story than it seems, as welfare seems very keen to leave neglected, beaten, underfed children at home in other cases).

I believe in vaccinations, I believe in taking the medicine if it'll help you stay alive to be with your family for as long as possible, but I'm not sure where to draw the line on the State making me make 'good' choices.

I remember having an out and out blue with a nurse lecturing me about HepC vaccinations for my newborn. I remember feeling very violated when I was given a vitamin injection after my daughter’s birth, but was too out of it to realise it was happening.
And if a doctor took a syringe near my kids without me knowing you better believe he better be carrying a metal bar in the other hand because I'd be flying over the counter faster than you could say 'Spanish influenza'.

We put a lot of faith in our governments knowing better than we do...and yet very few of the politicians I know can find their bums with both hands, let alone their moral centres.

Cutting ties...

Today, I got a bit sick of having one-sided relationships/friendships/acquaintances with my 'friends' (all of this while recognising that I'm the most demanding woman on earth).

I decided the best way to deal with my OCD need to constant contact people who don't have the time or the inclination to contact me back was to delete all those contacts from my phone, email, facebook etc and not reinstate anyone who doesn't contact me first.

It was very freeing...until I had to start reinstating people who suddenly had time to catch up all over again.
I swear, I'm just a walking irony magnet.

Hey - 'irony magnet' - that's its own kind of funny!

Emotional flotsam and jetsam...

Sometimes I feel like my kids are salvage.

Like here was something that was originally wonderful and important and then there was this disaster and it's been my job to take that original work of art, or craft, and rebuild it and polish it up to its original shine.

Sometimes, when I see them being perfectly beautiful and generous and loving, I feel this righteous pride because I made that possible.
Not their original glory, they're responsible for that I'm sure, but this slightly dented but still quality future they glow with - I made that possible through my choices.

That's egocentric, I know, but it's part of why I feel so protective of them.
I had to scrape and claw and hold my own falling-apart pieces together to make it possible for them to be this great.

It's my achievement as much as theirs...and my failure, as much as theirs, when it falls apart.
No wonder I take it all a little bit too much to heart.

The place where plants come to die...

After a rainless summer of hot winds and neglect, my front yard looks like Wharminda.

In fact, it's a perfect study of deforestation.
I'm starting to suspect some kind of acid rain (except there's been no rain)or napalm because when it did rain last week even the weeds didn't come back up.

I refuse to buy anymore plants and condemn them to dry and dusty death until the landscaper comes and puts in a watering system.

Online v print...

GeekGirl and I are discussing the future of online vs hard copy (yes I know, not an original discussion these days, but one that's still interesting).

I lluurrve books.
I am a complete bibliophile.

I love the way they look sitting on shelves.
I love the well-fingered ones with pages falling loose.
My bedroom is a fire hazard and I can't BEAR to give away books, or borrow them because I HAVE TO OWN THEM ALL!
All of them I tell you! Muah ha ha ah HAH!
I even keep library books longer than I should.

Ok, done now.
It's a very interesting discussion, especially in the newspaper business where we're being told get online or kiss it all goodbye.
For print to survive into the online age we must promote ourselves as a integrated service - we want people to want more!
The big nationals are telling us that the people who read daily newspapers online still buy a paper.
They check their news twice, three times a day for updates.

I love blogs - I have to admit it, but anything on the computer is just one more job pulling me away from my work. (must WORK at work)

I love the real-time human nature of blogs, and the allowance to be opinionated and biased or just plain silly - I like my papers to be hard, respectable news and my blogs to be fun, magazine-style sound-bitey jobs.

But isn't it funny that the internet is so 'magaziney' and yet we're still so addicted to magazines.
GeekGirl and I think it is the glossy paper (shiny!) and that lovely smell of ink.

I had to break my magazine habit though when my daughter yelled out from the toilet (where my pile of Cleos was) "Mum, what's an Oh, Rrr, Gh, Ah, Ss...?"

Naval gazing...

Today is my favourite day of the year.

Today is the day the naval oranges show up in the shops.

I have so many physical memories of being a little kid on hot days eating cold, juicy oranges.
The smell of the peel on your skin and face afterwards.
I love the 'belly button' and eating it like a separate fruit.
I love peeling the oranges with my fingers and tearing through the pith with my teeth to the sweet flesh.

I am so easily pleased...who knew?

In with the old, out with the new...

I HATE allen keys.


Seriously. Having to put together my own new furniture, squeezed in around my old furniture, because the guy who wants my old stuff and was going to move it for me has split his finger like a banana between two boats and is busy having microsurgery is not fun.

BoyChild is so sick of me yelling ‘get your feet off the new couch’ that the last time I looked he had stormed to his room, slamming the door, and muttering something about putting his feet all over his furniture if he wanted to.

I may have to invest in plastic couch covers.
I am officially old now.

North v South...

I have a theory that European people are grumpier than southern hemisphere people because they get less sunshine.


That's probably why they started so many wars, historically, before they discovered ‘conquest by Kontiki’.

Gals with guns...

WISH (women in shooting and hunting) are my favourite press release issuers. I love getting their stuff.
This week they're holding a press conference to protest the rising rate of violence against women.

Now we know why they want the guns.

The uniform does not maketh the man...

I made the mistake of dating a cop once.
I knew, from trying to get police reports out of him over the phone that he was dumber than a box of hammers but when he walked into my office, all Dwayne Johnson arms and khaki’d pecs I was already living my own NYPD Blues fantasy in my head about cops and reporters.

I swear I knew better but I just kept talking to his chest and hoping the rest of him would keep quiet. At some stage my eyes glazed over and I just ignored what he was saying and imagined stripping him down to his gunbelt on the desk and eating him from the crewcut to his steel caps.

I tried to be discreet but he was so keen to piss all over his territory - kissing me goodbye in front of my staff, picking me up from my pub in the paddy wagon.
The first time he offered me a ride in his police wagon I said ‘wow, that’ll be the first time I’ve been in the FRONT of a paddy wagon’ and he didn’t laugh. Just raised a speculative eyebrow at me and went back to his office and did a licence check on me.

Now, every time he stops me on the highway to breathtest me and asks ‘would you blow in this’ I want to answer ‘haven’t we been here before’.
I’ve blown 0.00 so many times now he just leans in the window and says ‘oh, it’s you – move along’.

A divine visitor...

I still remember having to take photos at an outdoor church service for 'the blessing of the animals' after a long discussion with the kids on what church was all about in the car on the way.

The discussion may possibly have involved the terminology: House of God.

So GirlChild, half way through the sermon, announces in her rock-concert whisper: ‘Mummy - when is Jesus getting here?’

Re-gifting...

I was extolling on all the benefits of my country living - fetes and fairs and cake stalls - and bewailing what will happen when there's no more old quilters and cake-bakers.

It was then that my workmate told me about one local lady who was supposed to supply a cake for her netball club's trading table so she went around the corner, bought a cake from the church stall, and passed it off as her own on the netball stall.
PMSL I just wouldn't have the balls to do it.
I'd giggle at the idea and then go donate them $10.

Not exactly Oleander tea...

I was standing alongside a friend at the supermarket while she was buying a Coke and crisps (which I found myself immediately lusting for).


‘They're for my husband,’ she told me with a real huff in her tone.
‘He's whinging about having a multigrain sandwich with alfalfa and he wanted a Coke. I added the chips because hopefully it'll put him that little bit closer to heart disease and I won't have to put up with his moaning for as long.’

And on the other side of me another woman said...
‘I don't see anything wrong with that. Occasionally I slip an extra spoonful of sugar in my husband's coffee and think 'just you wait'.’

New reading material...

The GeekBrainsTrust has put me onto a handful of demographic/social anthropology books that sound very interesting.


I loved Faith Popcorn's trend mapping and I fell in love with a book called Body Bazaar, as well as Victoria Finlay's 'journeys'.
These sound good - Jared Diamond and Bernard Salt, very apocalyptic - but, discussing them (and remember, I have yet to read them) we got talking about one in particular called 'man drought' about the perceived lack of 'prime males' as partners.

I wonder...can you be redefined as prime male just by being with a prime female?
Think about it. By definition, you've won!
You've taken up the spear and hunted down the ultimate prize (I guess the caveman hunter metaphor goes a bit astray here because they get to go out hunting at least three times a week and, you know, you wouldn't want to be eating the same bison every day...)

Can a beta man with an alpha female lobby for an upgrade?

I told my Wednesday Band about the 'man drought' and 'prime male' designations and every one of them went ‘shit, that leaves us out then’.

The Penisist has an interesting theory that all married women see themselves as prime females, that the process of having a partner is the definition of success (again, I'm fucked) but he's also feeling a bit sore because his friend was talking about someone getting divorced for the second time as 'damaged goods' and he's onto his third divorce.

How to get fired...

My office smells of sex and beer, I'm running late on my paper and I have a dirty great bruise the size of Alaska with teeth marks in it on my neck.

I also have a hand-shaped camel bite on my glowing white arse cheek.

It's all fun and games until someone loses their job!
Just incidentally, last night while christening my desk, my ‘friend’ demonstrated how to tie a 'handcuff knot' with my network cord.
Intriguing...

Dreaming...

One day, when I'm rich and infamous I will have a chef to create perfectly calorie-controlled but delicious meals in the morning, noon and night; a cleaner; a gardener; a personal trainer and a gym at home with my favourite TV programs on the wall where I can watch them while I run in airconditioned privacy.
I will also have a pony.

Kids these days...

My daughter just told me about this story she's heard about that's "a big take off of Scooby Doo".

Apparently it's got 'four crime-fighting teenagers and a loveable dog'...her words not mine.

She was talking about the Famous Five!

Definition of a dag...

I am such a dag...


Today I looked up from my computer and realised that I was 'popping and locking' at my desk and singing along to 'Billy Jean' on my MP3 player...in front of four staff members, including one who was only on her first day.

Way to impress the newbies with my professionalism.
Oh, hold on! It's the Jackson 5 and 'ABC'...I've gotta dance man!

Oh, & warning...never call an international friend a 'dag' without explaining that it doesn't mean literally that they are the poo that hangs to a sheep's bum.

On a roll...

Words are weird sometimes.
I had a blank today about how to spell electoral roll/role and looked up the word.
A roll - a list or database, comes from the days when a long list would be written on a long, rolled-up scroll.

I love words and their meanings.

Snooping...

Australia is a nation full of sticky beaks, apparently.

Here are some facts from a release I received recently:

 

10% of young Australians have been involved in a break-up as a result of text-checking (that's when you snoop through your partner's phone messages).

 

59% of text checkers check their partner’s phone when they’re in the shower.

 

Women (38%) are more likely than men (28%) to check their partner’s texts. (I wonder, these days, are men still more likely to cheat than women - and does the stat correlate?)

 

In fact, 900,000 Australians have admitted to checking their partner’s phones according to new research conducted by Virgin Mobile.

 

The research has revealed that Australia is a nation of paranoid text checkers with over one in three young Australians admitting to checking their partner’s text messages, and more than 280,000 having been being involved in a text-checking related break-up.

The research also reveals:

• 76% of text checkers do so in secret
• 73% of secret text checkers have found out things they later wished they hadn’t
• 44% of sneaky text checkers have discovered flirtatious or sexual texts, ranging from harmless flirtation (32%) to full blown sexual texts from someone else (19%)
• The most common places text checkers operate is while their partner is in the shower (59%), whilst in the same room (41%) or on the toilet (35%)

With the aim of squashing the nation’s obsession with text checking, Virgin Mobile introduces a new service for those customers concerned about their partner’s snoopy tendencies. Customers can simply text the word ‘snoop’ to 1978 99 99 to have a text from ‘SEXY’ sent to their phone. When the text message is opened by a paranoid partner, the message will remind the checker to have trust in their loved one.

 

Author, relationship expert and text-checking guru, Samantha Brett says that text checking is rampant in relationships across the world;
"With so many modes of communication available these days, it's difficult to keep track of your partner's whereabouts or who they're chatting to and when, and what it all means. No wonder so many of us are checking our partner's texts! But there’s reason to take note as Virgin Mobile's research proves that thousands of relationships are breaking down as a result of our text checking behaviour."

 

Now that's all lovely, except we need to point out that those 10% of break-ups as a result of texting MUST HAVE FOUND SOMETHING!
That it is RIDICULOUS to be upset about someone checking your texts after they've CAUGHT YOU CHEATING!

 

I think that once you get to the snooping stage you already know you're being fucked around on. And, let's face it, if your partner is leaving the room to take messages in the toilet at 2am in the morning, the alarm bells should already be ringing!

 

And shame on Virgin for defending 'every Australian's right to flirt'.
Greedy money-grabbing vice-exploiting twats. They should be called Slut not Virgin!

 

At the same time - I need to point out, as someone who knows:
There should be no need to check a partner's pockets, texts, phone bills, credit card statements.
If you suspect there is, if that person can't show you for themselves that they're trustworthy, life already sucks for you.

 

I know I don't ever want to find myself going through a man's drawers for anything other than when I'm scrabbling for the condoms one-handed and panting.

Missionary musings...

The missionary position - pfaw!

The only reason for the missionary position is to keep my sagging boobs facing the right direction.

Of course, there are bonuses, especially when you land on your back because you've been picked up and thrown on the bed and then you can grab him by the hair and push his face...

OK, got to stop now.
Celibacy and I are NOT getting along...

Round-heeled woman...

What a strange concept - a woman with 'round heels'. My first reaction was 'does that mean she falls on her back more easily when you push her over - like Mr Plod?'

I'm reading a blurb about an incredibly interesting looking book called A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance by Jane Juska.
It reads like I speak...I'm intrigued!
I love that style of unpretentious writing - like someone's letting you into their diary. It must be why I love blogs.

A round-heeled woman is one who sleeps with a lot of different men. The term 'round-heeled' comes from the image of being on your back in the missionary position of lovemaking and the view of your heels from the bottom, on the bed.

Round-heeled - is used to suggest that the girl in question tips backwards easily and is ready for sexual intercourse in the missionary position.

In Chinese the phrase 'broken shoes' has much the same meaning: one takes off her shoes too much - for sex - until they break.

Ha ha - I still like the Mr Plod imagery best...but stuff being restricted to missionary. If you are going to be judged as 'round-heeled' shouldn't there at least be some variety.
And I do actually remember a few nights of flinging shoes off and breaking them, or dancing till they broke and ending up with them not being the only thing with broken straps at the end of the night.

Every engineer knows...

The use of powerful tools by untrained people can be both dangerous and devastating.
The internet is just such a tool.

& speaking of tools? Why does anyone need four email addresses?
Are they spies? Do they need an email address to give their latest identity credibility?
Are they superheroes protecting an alter ego?
How many 'readers' or 'blogs' or 'feeds' or 'domains' does anyone need?
Just how efficient are these internet users being if, like me, they really don't know what the best medium is - just the latest or easiest.

An email is a gateway for someone to reach you.
You don't have four doorways at your home do you? You use just the one - the obvious one (unless the kids or the tradies have dirty feet).

What happened to one-stop shopping on the internet?
We collect identities on the internet like other old ladies collect novelty spoons, when they should be like cars - bought for functionality. Pretty colours and racy accessories should be a secondary considerations, surely.

I was warned to never trust a man with two phones.
I suspect that someone with several email addresses is equally duplicitous...or a great big sucker for 'the latest and greatest (and shinyiest) social networking site'.
It's cyber-schizoprenia for goodness' sake!

Of course I could be wrong and I welcome your comments...which can be emailed to sasha'ssoapbox@hotmail.com, sasha'ssoapbox@yahoo.com, or sasha'ssoapbox@gmail.com

Intellectual in-breeding...

There was a time when we all thought the internet would open up a wide, world of new learning for its users.
But instead, I think we are simply filling our lives with bigger volumes of the same ol' same ol'.

My BrainsTrust of IT-savvy friends are busy teaching me about feeds and readers and alerts to help me read more of what I already know or like.
But where's the reader that feeds me things I should be interested in, stuff I might like if I stepped outside the perimeters of my own head?
Where's the cyber-librarian catching me at the counter and saying 'you know, you might really like to give this one a go'?

We moan and moan about the consequences of specialisation of skills - but now we have specialised thinking!

Social commentator Faith Popcorn talks about clicking, clanning and cocooning that occurs as people ‘chat’ with their virtual clan, cocooned from the rest of the world, isolated in cyber-space with a handful of people with like interests.
People who have avatars - not real-life wrinkles, fat-rolls and guinea pig laughs.
It’s a filtered, airbrushed, abbreviated world that teaches us nothing about inclusivity or tolerance.
Now, all of you busy, educated, involved people out there who are just enjoying a little peace at home with the convenience of your varied, RSS-filled personal libraries – I congratulate you on your smart use of an amazing technology.
For the rest of you who are sitting at a laptop ignoring the child or partner sitting beside you (like I am) in favour of yet another article on improving relationships, at the risk of sounding like my Mum I say…get up, get out & get some fresh air in you!

An in-depth political summary...

Labor - Liberal
Tomatoe - Tomato
Let's call the whole thing off...

Sooks and censorship...

A while back, an Indonesian newspaper published a satirical cartoon depicting John Howard and Alexander Downer as slavering dingoes 'mounting each other'.

Now, to be fair, Howard basically replied to the media's hysteria with the very Aussie 'get over it'.
Up my way, however, local news stations were appalled at the evil Indonesian media's bad taste and political shortsightedness in depicting our national treasures in such an unflattering light.

Now I can’t say Howard is my favourite former politician and don't even ask me about Downer - but I was impress by their responses.

According to ABC online, Howard said...
'In relation to the cartoons, well I've been in this game a long time, if I got offended about cartoons golly, heavens above, give us a break.'

Mr Downer said the cartoon was tasteless.
He says people can choose to publish tasteless and grotesque cartoons in a free society

Now, don't quote me on this, but isn't one of the Western world's biggest complaints about Indonesia the continued evidence of empire building, a trend towards dictatorships and...ohmigod...even CENSORSHIP!?
And here we are condemning a newspaper for printing (gasp gasp) distasteful political commentary in the form of a cartoon!

What would Larry Flynt say, really?
And let's remember, there are no actual laws to protect free speech in Australia - just conventions, which many heretofore unnamed media barons have done their best to circumvent.
(Long live the Goanna?)

My least-favourite lecturer at Uni taught me, what I now believe is, the most valuable journalistic lesson I ever learned.
Free speech means even the wankers get a say...and let's face it, they're always the first ones to pull up the soapbox.
(And yes, I am not unaware of the irony of me writing this - but, please, let's move on)

So, what's the world coming to if Aussies are upset at someone taking a poke at the pollies?
The Indonesians aren't saying anything we haven't said a million times, about our own politicians - not to mention theirs, and the rulers of every other nation on Earth - so, in my eyes, this is really a wonderful step towards multicultural understanding.
(Ask me about Indonesia's role as the world's last empire-builders and you'll hear much worse language than dingo-rooter).

The upside of this whole issue is that Australia and Indonesia now, agree on something.
The avenues of communication are now, finally, open...
Let's reopen trade, we can bitch about the Yanks together, it's all good.

But what I really want is to find a site with the damn cartoon on it. Someone send me a link! It appears to have been expunged from cyberspace.
And where are the Chinese cartoons, the Bosnian commentaries, the Haiti satires?

And note to the media, rom one journalist to another, what the hell is all the fuss about?
Or to quote a short man – “golly, heavens above, give us a break!”

Winged ones...

Some days I look at my children and I feel all heavenly and divine, like the Madonna (the Christian maternal icon, not the pointy-boobed popster).
On those days my children are angels.

Today, in the car to my parent's home I felt like the Wicked Witch of the West (Coast) and they were my little flying monkeys.
And now, I have unleashed them on Nanna and Grumpy - 'fly my pretties, fly!'
Recounting this observation to my friend GeekGirl, she announced that she was WitchiePoo.
I'm still not sure whether that makes her husband Puff 'n' Stuff or the Magic Flute...and I'm not asking.

Legs and whiskers...

I have always been fascinated by spiders.

When other girls wanted ponies, I wanted a tarantula.
Not that I wouldn’t have settled for a pony…don’t get me wrong. I am still a girl.

When we were children my brother and I were given a pet mouse each, in a little plastic tank.
My mother was assured by the pet owner that they were both male but she got a very quick lesson in ‘buyer beware’ and we were delighted to end up with a dozen little pink mouslings each.

I obviously got over my affection for mice (as did my mother, who - right up until I was in my 20s - insisted that our cat Fluffy had, somehow, unlatched both mouse tanks without eating any of our little babies and they had all escaped into the back paddock – perhaps to join the Rats of NIMH).
But when the mice were gone I remember trapping a huge huntsman – a regular visitor in our rainforest home – and insisting that he was a ‘Tarantula’ and keeping him in the mouse tank.
This is what happens when you encourage your children to watch National Geographic specials instead of Saturday morning cartoons.

Apparently Fluffy set my ‘Tarantula’ free as well…she must have been a wily old Puss, that’s all I have to say.

Idiot-proofing...

aIf germ-proofing has resulted in the rise of deadly super-germs, what will come of making things idiot-proof?

We're living in the age of anti-Darwinism where only the idiots are still breeding.
The people you love - the ones you think are great parents with fantastic kids - stop at two, or even one, or spend their life travelling the word childless.
Then you meet people with three kids to three different arseholes. (What happened to once bitten, twice shy?)

Or the woman I met a couple of years ago with 12 children, who found a new partner when her teenagers stopped being eligible for pension payments and maintenance - and then found herself in hospital, in labour, at the same time as her 17-year-old daughter.
It was a joy to see them down the street together with matching prams, sharing a cigarette.

The people in your neighborhood...

Centrelink scares me…

I’ve only had to be in a Centrelink office a handful of times but I remember last time, that while I waited I sat next to a woman who, I thought, had burped – but when I turned to look at her she lifted her cheek off the seat to let another one rip.

Maybe she was part of a motivation program to get people back into work.
God knows I now never want to go back there.

Spiderwoman sans lycra

I was bitten by a spider once - a Redback the size of a grape.
Sadly, I haven't seen any signs of superpowers to date and I haven't miraculously developed the ability to squeeze into one of those lycra superheroine cat suits.
That's the superpower I really want.

Pets in perspective...

I don't want any more pets.
Love them as I do, I'm not sure I want the pets I have.

I'm not meant to nurture living things.
If my children didn't know where the peanut butter is they wouldn't make it through some days.
I wish, instead of dogs & cats & turtles & children I just had siamese fighting fish.
At least when they go postal at each other all the mess stays in one bowl...oh, and you're not allowed to flush your nine-year-old down the toilet when you're tired of him or he's torn off his sister's head.

Nyah nyah! My school's better than your school...

If you have a child in school, there’s a good chance you were one of the thousands of parents who helped crash the www.myschool.edu.au school comparison website last week.
How’s that for a show of parental competitiveness and involvement – so proud!

There’s a lot of concerns about this site, especially in small, country towns like mine.
How can an average government school of 50 kids – from Reception to Year 12 - square up alongside a private school with more than that many kids in a single grade?
Well, myschool tells us it just can’t.

The myschool site is confirming all country school parents’ greatest fear that:
numbers = resources = results = more resources & more numbers
Little country schools have an awful lot of red shaded rectangles showing up on their pages and yes, it is disappointing, maybe even demoralising, for those students, teachers, families busting their butts to find out that…well…it’s still not good enough.
But when we’re talking about resources I think it’s important to point out that the most important resource in education is people. Real live, sweating, bite-my-tongue-and-get-down-to-work people.
For instance, in schools where just one or two local teachers stick with a single grade over several years, their teaching ability becomes very clear in the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program Literacy & Numeracy) results.
And, at my school, I’ll make you a bet that that same Year 3 group that’s doing better than the school’s other grades will score equally high next year with the same teacher and different kids.
How’s that for an uplifting example of just one person making a real difference?

But it’s not just teachers who make the difference.
While a larger school, with bigger, better music or sports programs may be able to hire the best – in some smaller communities, equally wonderful people are donating their time, and getting great results too.
Maybe it’s about pride and ownership? And if so, then the big question is how do we get our students, teachers, communities and governments to take more pride in our schools – our small, country, red-shaded schools – and invest more resources?

I’d suggest we need to celebrate our successes better.
Support our teachers and school teams more.
Get off our arses and help out – before and after our own kids leave our local schools. It’s not just parents who have something to give to their local school communities.

But, you know what?
People in small country towns know that their kids are disadvantaged for resources and rich in great people. We’ve always known that.
But, conversely, not every city school is going to have better results or be better suited to your child than the small, underfunded one he or she is currently attending.

I’d rather have my hormonal pre-teens surrounded by people I know, who know me, and who care about all of us…and who are too embarrassed to lose their temper because they know they’ll have to front up to me on the netball court the following Saturday.
I want teachers who are invested in my kids, and schools that are working for better results.
I want a school whose team looks at those results on the (constantly crashing) website and says ‘bugger that, we’re better than that and we can prove it’.

So – I think www.myschool.edu.au should be the making of a lot of schools.
The ones who dismiss the figures (& pretty red and green boxes) as irrelevant, are fooling themselves.
Schools are quite happy to hand out reports - what's wrong with them occasionally receiving one.
This site isn't negative - it's just statistical. And we all know the old saying about statistics don't we? (You don't? Really? Well what did YOU learn at school?)

The idea that we shouldn’t be able to publicly publish those tables in the media is ridiculous!
We publish the top five holiday destinations, we publish the five most dangerous cities…crap, we’ve published the five favourite sex positions in 25 countries.
We publish who is better than who – every year, every week – on the footy field. And if we put in as much support, money and pride into our schools as we do our sporting teams then all our kids would be kicking goals academically.

For those who say you can’t compare schools…I say suck it up. Of course you can. Parents want to.
We are a nation of comparison shoppers and we want the best.
Now the challenge is to be the best.
And that’s not just about SACE results – it’s about nurturing, community involvement and opportunities - as well as academic success.
But let's face it, if you're falling down in the academic arena and you're a school - well, you better have one hell of a good music program going for you.

Rumbling tummies & wandering minds...

After a day of sightseeing with visitors TheKids were starting to lose interest and tummies were grumbling.
I realised it was time to go when BoyChild - standing in the sand just 20m from a sealion as it reared up like a furred, magnificent, Jabba the Hut - looked the creature up and down contemplatively and said simply:
"Hey mum, what do you think they'd taste like?"