26 Mar 2013
Today the second born of my best girls turned one. So as part of my modern mother mania where we like to create memories, moments and traditions – the fam plus Aunty Vicki headed off to Sydney Aquarium and the Wildlife Park for the day to celebrate the occasion.
And it was fabulous. The dugongs were my favourite – only six in captivity in the world and we happened to be there the day the two in Sydney were best in show. The girls loved anything with colour or that they could push their little faces against the glass in a communal saliva smear fest. While my man was captivated by the underwater grace and majesty of the partner killing 700 kg crocodile, and my eldest toddler by the elephants (we have no idea – we didn’t see any), the birthday girl was fascinated by three siblings playing in the photo booth outside the kangaroo enclosure. Truth.
And because we are like that, we took a zillion photos trying to capture happiness in a snapshot. The simple innocence of two sisters playing together on the younger’s first birthday. And so I present to you –
The Cassinator Being Choked to Death on a Wombat
And after we rescued her from the deadly embrace and she coughed violently, regained her natural colour and returned to the business of breathing unobstructed, her sister and she toddled into Kangaroo land to eat dirt and generally be happy.
The end.
18 Mar 2013
I don’t want to big myself up too much but on the weekend I did something extraordinary. Something out of character, something that pushed me beyond my safety zone and out into a world as alien as any you can imagine.
I “did stuff in the garden”.
I’d like to say this was inspired by a desire to commune with nature, get my hands dirty and find the joy in creating order from chaos, but it wasn’t.
We’re hosting a first birthday party next weekend and our yard was more ‘Where the Wild Things Grow’ than urban backyard. Our almost one year old trekked through the overgrown grass at one stage and then had to cry for help when she got lost as the grass was taller than her. Quite frankly, I was a little annoyed she hadn’t taken a safety flare like all good bushwalkers should. I was tempted to leave her there to learn her lesson. But then I remembered I quite like her and so executed a successful search and rescue.
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| It’s okay – I found her! |
On the flip side, the 2.5 year old was loving it. She’d jump off a milk crate arms outstretched as if she was crowd surfing and ride the wave of shifting grass blades until she reached the path. Unlike crowd surfing, she was guaranteed a soft landing and nobody picked her pockets or had a cheeky grope. It was also probably the last time she’ll be able to say ‘Me more grass Mama’ without me recommending an intervention.
So having broken our own mower recently, we borrowed one. And promptly broke it. So we called ‘The Engineer’ and he came and did something with a piece of string and a muttered curse and fixed it for us. I love clever people. So then battle commenced.
Clad in ‘work gear’ to get me in the gardening vibe (think Jamie Durie but not anything like him at all and dressed in female attire) – big boots, shorts, vest, hat and sunglasses – music playlist chosen “Exercise”, I strode into the grass. And the mower stopped. I checked – piece of string intact. I muttered a curse. Nothing happened. I did what all good gardeners do and I yelled for my husband. He came. Discovered that a mere half metre of lawn mowing resulted in the catcher filling up and cutting out the engine in a rather nifty safety manoeuvre. He emptied the catcher, restart the engine. I admired his creative thought and went inside for a drink.
And so it progressed. He manfully handled the mower through over half the lawn (including about 600 catcher emptying side trips) and then I resumed my new role as ‘she who will not be conquered by the bloody lawn’. I decided to take it out the front and do the front lawn and managed to cut up a rock which slammed into my finger so hard I thought I’d cut my finger off. Turned out it was fine, didn’t even break the skin. I may have profaned profusely though while the pain roared through my receptors to my brain screaming ‘MAY DAY MAY DAY MAN DOWN’. Brain replied ‘Harden up girlfriend’.
With no valid excuse (ie: limb removal) to stop, I mowed the verge. Then the neighbour’s verge and then the other neighbours verge. And then acknowledged I had to return to the back yard and actually do the hard yards. (Ha – great unintentional pun by me just then!). By then I was on fire and it had nothing to do with spilling petrol all over the mower. I was incorporating unnecessary walking into my push forward, pull back lawn mowing action and making a dance out of the emptying of the catcher. I assume no neighbours were watching or I would have been signed up for a reality tv show entitled ‘strictly dancing with the mower’ by now.
Then there was hedge trimming. This is where you lop off anything you can reach and then drag it to the pile of grass clippings in the back corner so that quite literally it reaches the top of the fence. I think this is called composting. Whatever – it’s totally nailed! Then a crawl around the perimeter of the yard yanking out the weeds that you can’t reach with the whipper snipper and Voila! I might be permanently crippled but the yard is now ‘good enough’ to host a one year old party in. I’m not saying its perfect. I am just saying small people can enter the yard without the safety beacons. Surely that makes us responsible parents??
Bets are on that it’ll rain now and we wont be able to use the backyard anyway and all the small people will end up running riot in the house oblivious to to the herculean efforts that took place. But in the mean time, I’m going to be sniffing out those sponsorship opportunities with Bunnings and the like. I’m definitely the new poster girl for ‘doing stuff in the garden’. Don’t you agree?
13 Mar 2013
You know when you’re standing waiting for the bus,or the train, or even just to cross the road and you look casually to one side and you see somebody making a hideous face at you and you kind of jump?
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| The ‘Clint Squint’ – imgur.com |
Then you realise they are looking into the sun. They are just squinting.
And your fight or flight reflexes calm down and you breathe a sigh of relief. And then you look the other way and jump because they DEFINITELY don’t like you judging by their look because the SUN IS THE OTHER WAY!
Jeepers and Mary Almighty!
Now, the narrowing of the eyes is not menacing but actually kind of hilarious when you’re walking down the hill and see a bunch of people wilding squinting and distorting their faces to see whatever they need to peer into the sun to see.
All blissfully oblivious to the fellow squinters around them co-creating this interactive comic visual.
And once you notice the ‘squint’ you see it ALL the time.
Squint mobs are everywhere.
Inside bars trying to read the wine menu in bad light, in cars trying to read street signs, in movie theatres trying to work out where the prices might be, reading the instructions for putting the line into a whipper snipper, the drunk trying to work out who they are kissing.
They are like flash mobs! A certain set of conditions – one starts and before you can say ‘Clint Squint’, everybody is taking part.
And now everywhere you go you will only notice the squinters. You can thank me later.
12 Mar 2013
It’s exciting to have been nominated (by somebody or somebodies that is not myself) in the Voices of 2013.
Being nominated for anything is obviously great but there are so many fabulous Australian bloggers out there I am not for a moment expecting to win, but I love being at the party.
I still maintain a ridiculous amount of writers inexplicably include their feet in their blog photographic illustrations – as if having a toe peeping into the vista indicates that is really them. That small wonderment aside, people have an incredible talent with words.
And I love seeing grammar used correctly, spelling just so and paragraphs broken up in an ordered fashion. I’m not the only one to use the Oxford comma on occasion and I like that people can be so eloquent, so expansive and so passionate – all without losing their individual voices.
I get that a picture paints 1000 words but reading 1000 words is much more interesting, perhaps less pretty but a zillion times more engaging. Like music, having somebody express something that has you go ‘YES’ or ‘I hear you brother, I hear you’ is one of the great advantages of the internet age. I even like reading the people who I disagree with to make sure I’m not railing against a non-existent enemy or school of thought. Though I must confess I have banned anything by Ros Reine because she incites rage with just her byline so I’m better off not going any further.
So, to those that nominated me – a big thank you. To those that write so beautifully and interestingly on your blogs – thank you. To those that allow me to rant, to ruminate, to observe, to profane, use grammar correctly and occasionally misspell a word – thank you.
(If you haven’t a clue what this is about check out http://blogs.kidspot.com.au/villagevoices/voices-of-2013-kidspot-top-50-bloggers-goes-massive – voting has closed now)
6 Mar 2013
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Justice Catherine Davani
(Role Model and generally super clever
and inspirational woman) |
My parents have six small grandchildren – five female and one male who wants to play the bagpipes and soccer (preferably at the same time). They want the same world for the five as they do for the one.
Perhaps with less bagpipes but still equal.
How will that happen? Gender equality.
I hear you before you start – WTF is gender equality and do I have to dress like a man and wear old style birkenstocks and get bitter and twisted Germaine Greer style?
Hear me out on this one okay? Before I start let me just state for the record that I have no affiliation with UN Women or International Women’s Day – I write purely because this issue speaks to me as a female, a mother, a daughter, a sister and an opposer of apathy.
The 18 year old who was sexually assaulted walking home on the weekend by 5 men in a car? What do the comments sections of the papers suggest? Her own fault for being out at night.
The woman from Victoria some years back who killed her daughters because as a survivor of incest and sexual abuse she couldn’t see a way to keep them safe? Nutters on talk-back radio said she should have never attempted to have children if she was so broken.
The woman in western NSW who shot her husband after 20 years of abuse? Apparently she should have hardened the fuck up and left him earlier.
Gender equality at the very least is to stop laying blame on the victims of violence and at the other end, it’s transformational activism which changes lives.
Executive Director of UN Women Australia, Julie McKay has invited Justice Catherine Davani from Papua New Guinea to address the International Women’s Day lunch in Canberra this Friday and in Melbourne next week. Justice Davani is the first woman to be appointed to the National and Supreme Courts in PNG and has a 28 year legal career behind her. Revolutionary in a country where 67% of women experience some kind of violence and have very limited access to support services, education and equal opportunity. And inspirational no matter where you are.
Julie McKay says “All women have the right to live free of violence and proceeds from our International Women’s Day events will help UN women expand their critical services program for women experiencing violence in PNG.”
But what about here – in Australia – our local communities? See that’s the lovely thing – so many woman are promoting gender equality every day and actively contributing to a change in the way Australian society sees women. Canberra is honouring 100 of them on Friday from all walks of life – sports, arts, government, support services, religious organisations, welfare, trade unions, education, and health and disability services. We are ahead of PNG, common sense says the funds are best directed to helping out women in our region who aren’t blessed with the same economic prosperity and opportunity.
FFS dude I hear you say – women in Australia have equal rights. Its all fine! Just shut up.
Ahem. If you honestly believe that our societal impulse to judge women as at fault when they are victims of violence is equality – you’re an idiot. If you think the fact that women doing the same jobs for less than men is equality – you’re an idiot. If you think that it’s unmanly to be a stay at home dad – you’re an idiot. If you think it’s okay that male sports teams are given more profile than female teams – you’re an idiot. If you think it’s fine when an article is written about our female politicians and people write into complain about the colour of their suits in the accompanying picture – you’re an idiot. This is not equality.
Change is needed. And it has to start with you. And me. And him. And her. My parent’s generation. My generation. The X’s, the Y’x, the Baby Boomers, the Z’s. Those born before generations were given names for the purposes of marketing to a target audience. All of them.
Karen Radford – Hipster, music lover, writer – joined UN Women last year after attending an International Women’s day lunch. She’s not saying she’s Justice Davani, or Julie McKay, or Quentin Bryce, but she does know that to do nothing is not an option. “Gender equality is something I am passionate about and being part of the Canberra Chapter of UN Women Australia gives me a chance to contribute. Whether it’s simply tweeting about ending violence against women or being on the committee to help organise an event, it feels great to be a part of the movement”
That’s how easy it is to start changing the world – eat lunch and tweet. And anybody can be part of that.
(For more information on UN Women and their lunches – go to www.unwomen.org.au or for more about International Women’s Day go to www.internationalwomensday.com)
2 Mar 2013
We believe.
