24 Aug 2015
It’s true.
My beautiful first born turns five today.
And in all that time she has never sworn.
Despite the prolific profanity from her mother, the closest my baby girl has come to swearing is when she misheard her father and yelled ‘Sausage’ instead of ‘Tosser’ at a car that cut us off on a country road.
That’s right.
Five profanity free years! Take that #TeamNuture. And take a bow #TeamNature.
She uses many of my other oft uttered words like ‘conundrum’ and ‘goose’ and ‘darling’ and ‘discombobulation’ and ‘riddickerlous’ and ‘hiwearweus’, so it’s not that she’s not listening.
She can name a dozen different kind of dinosaur and speak some Spanish. But that’s down to Playschool and Dora. She can sing most of the Muppet’s soundtrack but that’s car trips for you. She thinks singing “It’s all about the cake, bout the cake, NO SALAD” is the funniest thing ever but that’s because of Meghan Trainor and a recent visit from Dillon and Lachie.
Not a one.
Not. One. Swear.Word.
I honestly want you all to stand up and punch the air and yell ‘FUCK YEAH’.
Not because I care if she swears. I really don’t. She’ll sort out appropriate and inappropriate and do her own thing regardless of me, regardless of her father and regardless of what is considered socially acceptable. I know this because we all do.
But we spend a lot of time worrying as parents that our own lack of perfection outweighs anything else that we do. We think that our stuff ups are far more visible to our children than all the things we get right. We worry that our quirks are more powerful than our personalities.
We’re fecking idiots.
And arrogant with it.
Our children do not look to us to be perfect if we give them the same luxury of imperfection. They do not look to us to be right if we are gracious enough to admit wrongs. They don’t mind our cases of overwhelm if we allow them to yell too when they don’t have the words to express themselves quietly.
They basically don’t give a shit what we do as long as we are not holding them to higher standards then we adhere to ourselves.
My five year old is not stupid. She knows the difference between adult words and kids words. She knows that saying something is ‘boring’ drives me to distraction. She knows that words like ‘hate’ are not tolerated and that being unkind is unacceptable. She knows that ‘patience’ means waiting quietly and yet she doesn’t do it because she doesn’t understand why waiting quietly is any way a virtue.
I don’t either. We have that in common.
But my profanities are not the words that matter to her. At all. And that’s a powerful message for a mama.
She knows that I don’t always get it right. If I don’t own up, she’ll call me on it. She is fierce in her loves and her passions. She is loyal to her friends. She feels all the feels.
All. Of. The. Feels.
She is kind. She adores her sister and is adored equally in return. She and her father can say ‘bottom’ out loud for days on end and never fail to find it hilarious. She is grumpy. She is cheerful. She is a morning person.
Like a real live bonafide morning person.
She loves reading. And songs. And music. She is tired. She is brave. She is funny. She is clever. She is interesting. She is interested.
She is human.
And she allows me to be human too.
Happy 5th birthday to my peaceful, my powerful, my bright and my beautiful Tullinator.
Thank you for loving me. Just the way I am.
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18 Aug 2015
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| What a blogger looks like ‘at conference’ |
Over the weekend I attended ProBlogger conference which is (drum roll) a conference about blogging.
Somebody said that getting 700 plus bloggers in one place to talk about something they’re fanatical about made us sound a bit like Hillsong but I can assure you that there was way too much wine without water, no Justin Bieber and way too many times the word ‘vagina’ was mentioned for that comparison to have any validity.
I was a little bit (read: hugely) chuffed when somebody described my blog to another blogger as “kind of social good and people focussed, pretty funny, a bit ranty and with a touch of swearing”.
Humanity with profanity. Who knew I had a niche???
That said, it’s no secret that I feel all the feels and generally feel quite strongly about them as well. And I’m okay with that. Mostly. Except when I’m not. And then I generally blog about that too.
Somebody asked me what drove me to blog in the first place and it was simply being stuck at home with two small people who were unable to engage in any meaningful discussion about why Tony Abbott was such an arsehat or why tuna has to feature so prominently in lunch recipes. I can’t say it was a calling as such but I am happy to repurpose that should I ever write a memoir.
And to be fair to me – those two small people are still disinclined to participate in solid discussions like that but can name every single Disney princess known to mankind, 7894 reasons not to eat vegetables and most of the planets. We basically don’t have a thing in common apart from the odd gene or two.
So I blog on. Or carry on. Take your pick.
If I was asked to identify what drives a lot of my posts – it’s my aversion to apathy. This is of course beautifully summed up by The Lorax.
The rest of the time I just blog for the conversation. I’m an innately social person who works for herself. I like the connection. I’m not on a journey. I have no fashion sense. Can’t cook. Won’t craft. Think that if you’re kind to your children you’re probably doing okay. Only run for money. Reflexively sarcastic and with a very black sense of humour.
I don’t have ‘a thing’.
But I like people. I genuinely do. Even the ones in velour. Unless you’re a dick. Then I’m less inclined to like you but I TRY not to be a dick back. Not always successfully. Because, you know, human.
So there is my one thing. My contagious message.
On another note – I am an active supporter of a couple of organisations that are incredibly dedicated to the #dontbeadick philosophy – one of which is, as you know, World Vision Australia. World Vision are bringing the awesomely talented voice play skills of Naturally 7 to Australia in the next few weeks.
Naturally 7 have #madskillz.
Naturally 7 have supported Michael Buble world tours, duetted with him, played with Coldplay, Ludacris, Mick Hucknall and so on and so forth. You can check them out-voicing The Voice here and all you have to do to win one of ten pairs of tickets is to comment below or on my Facebook page telling me the name of somebody you think is ace and the show to which you would like tickets if you won! (Comp closes at 6pm on 28 August 2015 AEST)
What about you? What is your contagious message when it comes to life? Got one? Wanna borrow mine?
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7 Aug 2015
When I was younger I used to love participating in the 40 hour famine. I’d like to say that it was just because I am a nice person and raising money for people less lucky than myself was a driving part of my personality from birth, but I suspect my early social activism was driven by a love of barley sugar lollies.
Plus you probably got a certificate. And who in the 80s didn’t love a certificate?
Everybody did back then – why even the cast of Neighbours participated and in the years that followed the cast of Heartbreak High had a sleepover together to participate and then even later Hugh Jackman participated and thus eating barley sugar for 40 hours became a bonafide sexy time activity.
For some inexplicable reason Australia and New Zealand are the only people that ‘famine’ for 40 hours. Every other country that participates does it for anywhere from 8 – 30 hours. This is a sensible amount of time because you can sleep for the entire time. We definitely missed a trick there.
The 40 hour famine and the MS read-a-thon were my introductions to social activism when I think on it. And with the 40 hour famine gig turning 40 this year, just like I did last year (I’m such a trendsetter) it’s interesting to reflect on how the notion of social responsibility has evolved from my point of view.
The 80s were famous for capitalism, greed, high pants, bad perms and flat tops. Activism was something that people did in the 60s while smoking weed and social good always had to be a school approved activity. We had receipt books, and sealed envelopes and while we thought the notion of starving sounded awful, we were DOING something helpful and wasn’t that nice.
Fast forward to now and social justice is one of my driving passions and I struggle to find proof sometimes that anything I do, or that anyone else does, makes any difference at all. Capitalism and greed have become the hallmarks of our government policy, plastic sandals are back, and people wear 80s hair styles and smoke weed as part of their retro stylings. It’s like nothing and everything has changed.
My fundraising efforts have evolved over the years and I lost the taste for barley sugars about the same time as I discovered West Coast Coolers were yummier than Passion Pop. What I haven’t lost is my intrinsic belief that apathy is far more destructive than any other single human approach and that we must be proactive in our quest for a world that is about ‘us’ and not about ‘I’.
It’s worth me remembering that if the 40 hour famine is still ticking along after all these years, evolving to meet the lifestyles of a new era of young social activists, that apathy is not actually the defining element of our society. People do care and in their own small ways, are striking out and making small sacrifices that contribute to change.
And that is something that truly electrifies me. That all of us, in our own small way, are contributing not only to the sales of barley sugar but towards a world that allows for kindness, compassion and empathy to be the hallmarks of a decade. And that my friends is awesome.
****
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4 Aug 2015
I didn’t blog much in July. My brain was basically overwhelmed by the world’s general dickishness and I really felt that if people were going to be such arsehats to each other, there was nothing I could say or do that would change that.
But then just this morning, the fug lifted and I remembered that if I quite liked being that pain the arse friend you all have with an opinion that none of you asked for and so I lifted my hands to the keyboard and started tapping out all these letters, one after another and words are appearing before my eyes. It’s freakin’ magic I tell you.
So today is the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day which is dedicated to celebrating the strengths and culture of indigenous children. This year’s theme is Little People, Big Futures.
Which is ace. Most parents like to do that with their own little people. Celebrate their strengths. Explore their culture. Dream of their possible futures. Give them opportunity. See them soar.
And then some numpty wrote a comment on an article saying “Why did they need a special day? – Don’t all kids matter?”
And I yelled at my computer “OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE”. Out loud. Really loudly actually. Because when you work on your own you can yell at your computer as much as you like.
Because of course all small people matter BUT some adults are idiots and racist and discriminatory and so not all kids get the same opportunities to realise their strengths. So we need to do whatever we can. And if that means our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have a whole day dedicated to reminding them why they are beautiful and worthy and wonderful – then BRING IT ON.
The reason we need to celebrate the strengths and cultures of our indigenous children was made evident with the furore around Adam Goodes last week. You know, the bit where every racist in Australia spent a lot of time explaining that they aren’t racist it’s just they don’t like Adam Goodes.
Fine. Whatever. I don’t care how you justify your racism to yourself. Just don’t try and justify it to me.
The simple fact is that following 227 years of systematic and institutionalised racism, not all of the children born in Australia can count on a big future.
And we know that because small Aboriginal girls dressed up as Elsa from Frozen are colour shamed in shopping queues by adult women who think only small blonde girls have a right to play dress ups.
We know that because 60% of our Aboriginal children are lagging behind their peers by the time they start the first grade and only 10% of them get to finish Year 12.
We know that because we boo our Aboriginal sportspeople for performing indigenous dances at matches but not the fair skinned rapists, wife beaters, drug takers or the idiots that shag their best friend’s wives at family barbecues.
We know that because 26% of our prison population is Indigenous but yet they only make up 2.5% of our population.
We know that because 20% of Aboriginal teenagers are not living with either parent. We know that that Aboriginal children are more likely to be in care, deprived of the opportunity to know culture, know self.
We know it because non-indigenous children grow up unable to speak a single word of a local language but can go to schools where they are taught in French.
We know it because girls like Samantha Harris and Jessica Mauboy can never just be models or singers, but have to learn to navigate the tricky and sometimes ugly political and media landscape that dissects every word they utter and every move they make to ensure that they are being ‘Australian’ correctly.
We know it because we know about the American Civil War but not about Myall Creek, Risdon Cove or the Tasmania “Black Wars”.
We know it because we know the story of activist Martin Luther King but not that of Vincent Lingiarri.
We know it.
So to all the beautiful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who see and hear the very worst of what we have to say, hear this also.
Those people that speak badly, they do not speak for me or mine.
We who do not experience the adversity of racism nevertheless recognise it’s impact on those who are afflicted.
We will try to speak up when people speak down.
We will challenge the placidity and laziness of everyday racism.
And most of all we recognise that we can not change what has happened, but that we can change what will happen, by trying to raise our own small people to be the kind of people you would be proud to call Australian.
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16 Jul 2015
Virgin Australia has posed a challenge to the Problogger community to put our top travel tips into a blog and share it with our readers. There’s even some frequent flyer points up for grabs for a few lucky bloggers.
There is not a man or woman in the world apart from my darling friend Kiralie who is not excited about free points to go FLYING.
I’ve often read travel tips and thought how differently people travel. From those that love five star venues to those that prefer to sleep under a million stars – no travel experience is exactly the same. You can travel the same roads at the same time and meet the same people and yet have marvelously different stories to tell afterwards.
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Red dirt, red rock, red face, red cardigan
I was adorable |
Here are my top 10 travel tips for tip top travellers
1. Stop bitching about the time it takes
It took Columbus months to sail around the world and Captain Cook absolutely ages to get from Plymouth to Sydney – you’re doing it in a day or so at worst thanks to a century of aviation and technological innovation. In addition you don’t have to row, you’ve got non-stop entertainment that doesn’t involve flogging people, and the food, while generally variable, is probably not going to result in scurvy.
2. Kids travel just fine if you let them
Feed them, feed them some more and when they’re done feeding, give them some technology or take them to the back of the plane to do some ‘physical jiggles’. And when they are bored with that, feed them some more. It is boring. Why lie to them? – just tell them this too shall pass and here, have another cheese stick. Kids are adaptable. And yes, sometimes they cry. The other adults can suck it up if it disturbs them. They were once small people too. A little life lesson in empathy and patience while your kids say out loud what everybody else is thinking is not going to hurt them.
3. It’s travelling – it’s not supposed to be like home
The whole point of travelling is to experience something different. People will stand too close to you, they won’t speak the same language, they will dress differently, you can’t buy decent beer and they do drive on the wrong side of the road. And that’s just if you go to America. If you don’t like things done differently from home, my hot tip is stay home.
4. Always keep your passport current
Because you just never, never know where you are going to get to go.
5. Talk to people
Whether it’s a smile as you try out ‘thank you’ in a language that’s not your own, or a ‘hello’ to the people holding the bag of chickens sitting wedged in beside you above the big hole in the floor of the bus in rural Mexico, the people are what makes every travel experience different. And it’s also through the people that you will have the most amazing experiences. Somebody always knows more than you, has a great insider tip or is just so completely hilarious you don’t know how you lived without them.
6. It’s okay not to love everywhere you go
Whether it’s Ulladulla or Paris – not everywhere floats your boat. Paris might be the most romanticised city on earth and I expected to adore it when I visited, but there is no getting around the fact that it’s expensive, smells of wee and there are far too many exotic things on the menu for my liking. It’s not that I didn’t have a great time and see some cool things, but I’d never recommend it. And that’s fine. Paris will get over it. So will Ulladulla.
7. Text your mother
Or your father, or your partner, or the anxious friend who frets a lot. No matter how old you are or how grown up and independent you are, it generally turns out that a lot of people love you and worry about you. Whether you’ve driven up the inland road to Queensland straight into a bushfire or are wandering around Turkey blissfully unaware of random bombings occurring roundabouts – somebody you know is glued to the media worrying about you. You might think it’s not important but it saves them the heartache and most delightfully, the lecture on your return.
8. Never argue with people carrying Uzis
Even if they did just try to extort more dollars out of you to cross the border and even if technically you are correct and speak enough of the language to be calling them ‘thieves’. This tip may be* for all little sisters with more chutzpah than good sense who are travelling with their less linguistically gifted big sisters who have no idea why people with guns are clustering around you, gesticulating wildly, and so will pretty much just throw money at them and pull you across the border anyway, which will make you mad but not as mad as mum would have been if I’d let you get shot.
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The three sisters.
I’m the big sister in the blue hat. One of the others inspired this tip |
9. Do ‘the thing’
We all have something we think is outside our comfort zones or our capability and mostly, it’s when we’re travelling that we encounter them. Just do it. If you don’t like it you don’t have to do it again, but if you do it and love it – how absolutely cool will that be?
Trust me. The ‘thing’ almost always turns out to be the most brilliant part of your trip. And the most memorable.
10. Take the photo
People talk a lot about memories and experiences being more important than photos and that’s not untrue, but memories are slippery little buggers and the amazing ones can hide behind the ones that remind you to pack lunch for work each day.
Everybody knows that a picture paints 1000 words so taking lots of photos is exactly the same as journaling really. The ability to record our journeys pictorially is one of the great marvels of modern technology and there is no shame at all in loving it stupid.
So they are my snappy little tips for you dear readers. If you don’t feel that travel tips are complete without a packing reference I am happy to add one more.
11. Pack whatever you want
You’re the sucker carrying it.
Happy travels my friends. May there be music, travel insurance and happiness accompanying you.
*is.
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7 Jul 2015
Ten years ago, after a couple of years living in London, I was living in Dublin and working at Microsoft while my then boyfriend, now husband, Nick lived in London and worked at NADFAS. We maintained our relationship by telephone and contributing significantly to the profits of AerLingus and Ryanair.
On the Thursday morning of 7 July 2005, Nick was running late to work and had called me after his train to Bank was diverted to Tower Gateway. He was hotfooting it across town to his office which was located just around the corner from Russell Square and thought he’d fill the time by chatting to me sitting at my desk across the Irish sea.
He was hoping to jump on a bus if one came by but doubted his chances due to the volume of people being spewed up onto the streets due to closed train stations. We chatted for a few minutes, idly speculating about the train diversions and the other kind of irrelevancies people discuss with their lovers on an ordinary morning.
It was a number of hours before I spoke to Nick again. Shortly after I flicked between my work screen to the BBC news and read the first reports about a bomb on a bus in Russell Square.
I can still recall the sick feeling in my stomach when I read about the bus – described as ‘packed with people’ diverted from the trains. I started dialling Nick’s number, desperate to connect with him and hear that he’d relied on the good fortune of an understanding boss and stuck to walking rather than catching a bus. But nothing.
The phone lines were down. Or jammed. Or hijacked.
The simple fact was I had no idea what was going on beyond what I could find on the internet.
Conversation flowed between me and my colleagues as we sat glued to the news sites. My colleague G (who had a younger brother and two sisters living in London) and I fretted. He started dialling their numbers too. We joked about what they were doing instead of calling us to reassure us that they were okay. G joked that his younger brother had probably headed straight for the pub with his mates, excited about an unexpected day off.
To begin with, we only knew about the bus. As the news about the trains started emerging, our fairly nonchalant conversations became peppered with some very black humour as we attempted to cover up the fact that while we knew the chances of them being hurt were slim, we didn’t actually know.
And that not knowing was gut wrenching. The knowledge that you could do nothing but wait was paralysing. It is not a feeling I have experienced before and I never want to experience it again.
Finally Nick called. His work had been evacuated. He was fine but he couldn’t talk for long as he needed to free up the line for his colleagues to ring people. He loved me but he was fine.
I cried and cried and cried. So much relief. And guilty with it. Because the scope of the disaster was becoming very real and I knew that there were many who were not going to to be so lucky. G located one sister. And then the other. But still no news of his brother.
I had a very odd woman as a boss then, she could not understand why I cried so much that day or why G would worry without what she considered proper cause. “But he’s fine, she said of Nick. He’s going to be fine, she said of the brother”, and drew my attention to some deadlines for the day. G kept trying his brother’s number. Until he got a call to say that his brother had been in the same carriage as one of the bombers. He was hurt but he was alive in a London hospital.
I felt visceral anguish for G and his family because it could have just as easily that day been Nick’s family getting that call. He and his mother were unable to go to his brother because all flights and ferries were banned until further notice in and out of England. He had to rely on news bulletins and the kindness of friends and strangers to care for his brother and support his sisters until he could be there.
Other friends and former colleagues were on the trains that day. One was evacuated from a bombed train and despite a head injury walked 2.5 hours home because he knew his pregnant wife would be worried. Another spent hours sitting in a train waiting to be evacuated and then had to walk past the bombed carriage to leave and can never unsee what they saw that day. The stories multiplied – London might be big but the centre of it is quite small.
So many lives that day hinged on the complete random occurrences of missed trains, waking early, sleeping in, having to queue for a ticket, spilling their coffee on their jackets, arguments with partners, sickies, popping to work to finish one last thing before holidays, delayed connections, people pushing ahead of them in the line.
I am not in anyway trying to compare what I felt that day with the feelings and experiences of the people that experienced the bombings personally, or were impacted by the death and injuries of their family and friends. I do not assume to understand how they felt then, or how they feel now. I honour their courage and their rage and their pain and all the details that make up each and every story.
But 7/7 was in a small but definite way, a life changing day for me. It reinforced for me how much of life was down to chance. It underscored for me how strongly I felt about Nick. It showed me how resilient and supportive people could be in the face of uncertainty and hate. It filled me with a deep and lasting sadness that people continue to justify violence by hate, and it made me love London, and the seething mess of humanity within, even more than I did.
I even moved back later that year.
But most of all, ten years on, I do live more empathically.
Despite occasional acts of hateful madness manifested by extremists in the countries I have lived in I have not had the misfortune to lose somebody through acts of hate and violence. I do not live daily with bombs and gunfire. I go to sleep knowing where my children are and that they are safe. I do not live with pain. I do not live a fearful life.
I try to live purposefully in that lucky life. I acknowledge that I am not more deserving. I am not more loved. I am not a better person. I am not, in any way, MORE than any other person. Nor less.
****
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