Stay at home parents are people too

22 Jul 2014

I know childcare places are limited.  I know that once you get your child into childcare you’ll do anything you can to keep them there despite the fact that renting Buckingham Palace for a week would be cheaper than the daily fees.

This happens at childcare.  Never at home.

 I know that for working parents are desperate for places so they can carve out some kind of work life balance where they work, raise children and somehow pay the bills as well as being an awesome life partner, great friend, superb offspring and sibling of the year.  I understand the irony that means you pay more for childcare than you do for university and yet no toddlers are rioting in the streets or spitting on effigies of Christopher Pyne.

And I know that when you have literally had to trip a parent over as you sprint to the office to get your child a spot in the worst childcare centre in the country, you might feel a bit resentful that there are children in those centres whose parents don’t have paid employment.

The first rule of getting into childcare is there are no rules

Those stay at home parents.  With money to pay for childcare.  Without having to cut short meetings with clients because childcare has given you precisely 30 minutes to pick up your spewing infant before they use their cross voice.

You never upset the childcare centre.  When it comes to relationship management – this is the most critical of all relationships.  Being in thrall to those caring, gentle, kindly people looking after your children is tough.  Make no mistake.

And there is no point being annoyed with the government because not having enough childcare is of no consequence to any of them with their lifelong pensions and huge salaries.  They do nannies and can take spewing infants to work if they want.  It’s good publicity.

So we all get mad at the stay at home parents.  Who should be attached 24/7 to those children, tending to their every need.  Just because working parents crave conversation that doesn’t start and end with The Wiggles, doesn’t mean that people that choose to stay at home with their children should have options.  Right?

Because to watch the new mob is treachery

Where they might spend a day donating their time to a charity, catching up with friends, exercising, doing the grocery shop without having to use UN worthy negotiation skills to keep the children in the trolley.   They might have hobbies or special interests or study that they want to explore.  They might just need some mental space where they potter about doing the three thousand billion things that you never get to do while you’re building a duplo tower to represent a beanstalk.  They might be caring for elderly parents or supporting friends through a hard time.

Or, because it is a luxury beyond belief, they might just spend all day sitting on the toilet, alone.

But because people don’t have to work, doesn’t mean that they don’t have a life that is rich and engaging beyond their children.  Or yes, they might just be over entitled, rich and hate arts and crafts.  But that’s their prerogative. And we diminish the notion of choices for all when we say that only people that are in paid employment deserve childcare.

So let’s stop hating on the stay at home parents that use childcare.  And put our energies into demanding more childcare options that allow people to access options like nannies, or au pairs, or even paying grandparents.  I don’t have all the solutions, I am just absolutely certain that being cross at stay at home parents is doing nothing useful at all.

*PS – Never google ‘lady on toilet’ when looking for images to illustrate your blog post.  Can’t unsee. 
*PPS – I’m not a stay at home parent

     

New age cabbage #laughlink

21 Jul 2014

I have a lot of friends that back in the day we called ‘new age’.  I also have a lot of friends that are control freaks.  Type A personalities on speed – you know the ones.  They’re terrifying.

And I even have a smattering of friends that are new age Type A personalities on speed.  These people get their chakras aligned while they skim read the economist and fire half a dozen employees.  I never piss them off.  Ever.

Impressive but terrifying

And I have lots of other friends too.  And they are all lovely – it’s a prerequisite for about 99% of my friends.  But for some of my friends – nothing just happens – they mix their new age with old fashioned superstition with the kind of ease I mix my metaphors.  They can not be persuaded that something happened because, well, something happened and they are deeply mistrustful of ‘modern’ and insist we did things so much better back when we only lived to be 40.

And I know I’m a skeptic.  I do.

I mean just this morning as I sat on my desk chair trawling through Facebook, my chair gave way throwing me quite violently to the right.  One might think my desk chair had just broken, but it COULD have been a sign that the ‘right’ are out to get me.

If looks could break my chair….

Then I went downstairs to get my old desk chair from when I was a high school student so I could resume working.  It’s a bonafide wooden chair which is even older than me, which I have dragged from house to house from life to life.  I placed my generous derrière on it and I realised the chair has a slight rock to it. Perhaps my past is unsettled and might topple my future.

Things are looking grim here and I’m just sitting at my desk.  When I think on it, there was a lot that happened on the weekend that could mean the week isn’t going to pan out so well.  If you drop an umbrella on the floor it means murder will happen in the house.  And if she does it one more time without putting the blasted thing away, that might well happen.

You see I once told a girlfriend that the reason she couldn’t move on from Mr Douchebag was her mattress.  Feng Shui indicated that all the negativity from her last relationship was trapped in her mattress preventing her from finding a positive life partner.  She ditched the mattress, found a terrific guy and thanks Feng Shui to this day.

It took me about ten years before I actually saw it written somewhere.  I’d just made it up to get her to do something apart from cry over the cheating bastard.  And the great thing about Feng Shui is that pretty much anything you say works out for somebody.

And dreams.  Dreams send too many of my friends astray.  They pore over their meanings, they record them and take them off to ‘dream interpreters’.  Did you know that if you dream of running, there is a big change a’coming?  Or you’re having a nightmare.  Quite frankly, it’s bad enough having to run in real life without having the sound of feet pounding the pavement interrupting my sleep.

People that don’t start a journey on a Friday because it is inviting misfortune.  Whoever invented the weekend obviously didn’t think that through now did they?

We ARE both in demand for selfies though

The fact that Pope Francis and I are both Sagittarians debunks astrology and if homeopathy worked Alexander Fleming would not have needed to invented penicillin.  I am not anti natural, it’s just that now when I get a cold, everybody yells ‘KALE’ which frightens the snot from my nose but is doing bugger all to clear it up.  It’s a cold.  It’s going to go even if I don’t ‘KALE’ and if it doesn’t – I’m going to the doctor.

Because, you know, qualifications.

I get that their is a temptation to look for signs, to believe that the universe has a plan and that by watching out for them, or that because the modern world is messy and chaotic there is some sense to be made of what goes on around us by harking back.

But more than often, your friends are making up the Feng Shui, the black cat just happens to be passing by on his way to find a place to sleep and shoes on the table might just be me getting distracted half way through cleaning the house.  And we’re living past 40.  Just saying.

What about you? Are you a skeptic like me or fully committed to listening to the universe?

    

****

Music confessions of a late bloomer (early 80s to early 90s)

17 Jul 2014

I am what is known in the business as a person with eclectic music tastes.  Actually, that’s a lie – in the business I’d be known as embarrassing.  BUT, I do have eclectic music tastes.  And not necessarily trendy ones.  Especially in the olden days.

****

Come and follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so you don’t miss the next confession

    

Dumb dumb dumbest

17 Jul 2014

There is something incredibly liberating don’t you think in living in a country that is deliberately positioning itself as the dumbest in the world.  Anything we do from now on is going to get a gold star and a big fat ‘well done for trying’.

We just repealed the Carbon Tax.  The one everybody in the world thinks is working.  And some people are going WOOHOO, that’s 500 bucks a year I’m getting from Tony.  I mean the fact that he’s decimated the health and education systems so you’ve got to pay more there is of no consequence.  Or the fact that you’ve sold the future of the planet for 500 measly bucks which makes you a bigger arse than believing repealing the carbon tax benefits anybody but the people on Tony’s Christmas Card list.

there will be a reckoning

It’s okay though.  There are still people out there more stupid than Australia.  And if we’re only welcoming like these days – we should send them an invitation.  The guy that wants us to boycott Spielberg movies because he actually believes that Spielberg shot, killed and then posed with the carcass of a dinosaur?  The sooner we can get that guy here, the sooner we can vote him into government.

Spielberg with one his Jurassic Park dinosaurs

I mean, occasionally there are glimmers that the country can be saved.  As a nation we only bought 54 copies of Robin Thicke’s album in its first week of release.  That means at the time of writing this post 23,533,727 Australians did not.  That’s encouraging.

I have always been proud of being Australian.  I know that my nationality is nothing but luck, but it’s a beautiful country with a rich and vibrant history going back thousands of years full of people that are on the whole quite loveable.  We do have a capacity to laugh at ourselves but we’re not actually supposed to be a joke.  At this precise moment if anyone misheard as Australia as Austria – I’d run with it.  I even half a dozen German phrases courtesy of Frau Kasper that I could trot out to look authentic.

Being the joke. That’s America’s job.  But did you know that the Americans are starting to think Abbott is a bigger fool than Bush.  They’re starting to pity us.  Let me repeat that – the Americans are starting to pity us.  A country tripping over itself to present candidates for the Darwin Awards is starting to feel superior.

A country dripping in religious Christian fundamentalism is astonished by our approach to climate change because you know, like it’s been proven, by like SCIENTISTS.  And people that know stuff. And they think we’re a bit silly for repealing a tax which works for both the country and the future of the world.  Which, well, we are.  Complete dumbarses.

Nothing to see here

If I had faith that the next election would give us some alternatives, that lurking in the festering pool of self interested politicians in any party, there were people that could offer some leadership, some innovation and restore our faith in ourselves I probably wouldn’t feel so glum.  But the signs aren’t good.

And so we continue our journey to the bottom.  Buoyed only by the thought that once we get there, we will have to start clawing our way back up.  Or fossilise in the sludge at the bottom.  And that didn’t turn out so well for the dinosaurs.

Come and follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for the less wordy moments

    

10 woefully under marketed benefits of Facebook

15 Jul 2014

Lets face it.  A lot of people spend a lot of time bitching about Facebook.  Like, seriously a lot of time.  But it’s a business.  And it’s making Mark Zuckerberg very rich and very happy.  And we’ll be part of the history books – we’re living through a significant technological and communication revolution.

And there are some benefits to Facebook which in my view are woefully under marketed.  The kind that give you the kind of inside thrill you know is totally age inappropriate but still, very satisfying.

1. Getting friended by people from school that you were too terrified to talk to then and who turn out to be ridiculously awesome.  And some of the funniest and most fun people online. 
   
2. Checking out the hot stoner with the big ideas that broke your heart one time and finding out that he’s now just a stoner. Phew.
3. Rejecting the friend request from the old work colleague who used to claim all kudos for the work you and the rest of your team did. 
4. Finding out who is fatter than you. Or balder than you. What? Don’t even TRY and pretend this doesn’t make you feel a little bit undeservedly smug on occasion. 
5. Being able to throw a question to your circle of friends and find somebody that knows somebody that once was married to a guy who has a sister who can absolutely 100% help you. 
6. Keeping up with all your beautiful friends and their growing families, insane adventures and state

   of mind even though everybody is a little bit crap at keeping in touch. 
7. Always having somebody online to interact with – even if it’s just about the weather on opposite sides of the world.
   

   source
8. Being able to share ideas, discuss concepts and solve all the world’s problems from one status update.  Just the one.  The UN should totally get in touch with us! 
9. Knowing you are not the only Typochondriac* in the world.  Right Natalie?
10. Networking with like minded people who you might not have had the opportunity to meet if it wasn’t for the internet, and finding out when you meet them in real life they are totally your tribe. 

*Typochondriac, n. — one who compulsively checks and rechecks his or her writing out of fear of publishing typos online.

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and help me pretend to be famous!

    

A kick up the butt

15 Jul 2014

Believe. Dare. Roar.

Those were the three words that I chose for 2014.  For those that want to know why, I refer you back to this post from January.

And I don’t mind admitting – it’s not all gone to plan.  In fact, this picture I stole from a friend’s Facebook page sums it up perfectly.

I’ve been dancing with the black dog more than I would like to admit, cried more tears than I thought the medication would allow and I have seriously doubted myself afresh.  I have been tremendously and generously supported by my husband, my family and my friends, but it’s been a fairly lonely journey in parts.  Working from home has it’s benefits, but it’s not so great when you’re a person that draws their energy from (or submerges their own crap under) the wondrous chaos of ‘other people’.

So my belief has been shaken, my dare turned into caution and my roar was more of a whimper.

And in the last month or so when perhaps I was at the lowest I have been since the dark days of post natal depression, my psychologist sent an email to see if I was okay.  That woman is GOOD.  Or she’s got a camera in my house.  Either way, I realised that I’d stopped actively managing my mind (and it’s entirely possible she was reading it).

And then I got a couple of jobs I’d been waiting on.  Finished a course that has me excited about the possibilities again.  I admitted to people that I was not in a great place. Things were starting to wobble along in the right direction again.

Then I won a free copy of Kelly Exeter’s book ‘Your Best Year Yet’.   Her dedication at the front of the book is ‘To Ant – for being you.  And for loving me, even though I am a massive pain in the arse’.

If that’s not a call to read a book I don’t know what is.

Now on the face of it, Kelly is not a person I have a lot in common with.  She did triathlons competitively, she’s a bonafide introvert and she’s clearly much more of a Type A personality than I will ever be.  But as I read her book, which explores changing your thinking, I kept having the ‘I KNOW THAT’ moments.

It’s like my psych got in touch with her and said – how about you send Al a book to remind her not to be a completely self defeating arse. (Not my psych’s words – she’s very professional, nurturing and clever – but we are agreed that self awareness is actually a strength of mine so I don’t mind paraphrasing).

Kelly writes in her book that “a lot of time, our fears can be boiled down to what other people might think of us”.  She writes about wobbly courage and notes that “nothing ruins a good year more than letting fear rule your life.” And then most tellingly, rather than asking yourself “What’s the worst that can happen”, asking yourself “What’s the BEST thing that could happen?”.

And as somebody with incredibly low self esteem, a thousand internal voices and a ridiculous amount of personal pride – I did some uncomfortable squirming as I ate my lunch with my hand and turned the pages with the other.

I know those things.  I didn’t always.  (Thanks therapy).  But I do.

Awkward basically.  Self awareness can be a bitch.

Mental health is a tempestuous beast.  But ultimately, you’ve got too stay on top of that baby.  You have to believe. To dare. To roar.

So I drew a line.  I put the book on the shelf and paraphrased Kelly’s good sense as “You don’t have to be Chuck Norris you daft eejit, just yourself – the awesome version.”  Hell girl – you just gave up drinking Red Bull (which is described as ‘canned Chuck Norris wee’) – you’re ready!

So here goes…. choosing awesome.

If that’s okay by everybody. Ha ha. Jokes.  I’m doing it anyway.  I think. Umm… Right. Deep breath.

Let’s go.

Big love x

PS: The awesome version is also a pain in the arse sometimes.  Sorry beautiful man.