28 Aug 2012
Tax time is a bugger.
The step by step forms, the simplicity of the online layout, all the loveliness of the help button – none of it takes away from the fact that I’m essentially dealing with numbers, and logic and it all just reeks a little bit of maths.
I sucked at maths. Whether baffled by the sheer logic or the implausibility of ever having to use any of it in real life – I struggled with maths my entire school life.
My basic arithmetic is just dandy. And having a calculator on my phone means never having to rely on my own calculations which is indeed a blessing for everybody but tax time is no arithmetic. It’s a headache. A big ol’ mean headache.
I could pay somebody to do my tax, but theoretically, my tax is simple. But none of the words or concepts in the tax pack match with the simplicity of my reality. And don’t get me started on family benefits A & B and childcare rebates…. I just fill in the forms and hope to hell that the system can be trusted because I haven’t a clue if I’m getting what I’m entitled to or not. And when I went and asked at Family Assist they guy there knew less than me. And owned up to not having a clue or caring. I suppose such honesty in the government is to be applauded at some level.
Sigh. Anyway, I’m obviously procrastinating. I’m going back to the e-tax screen and I’m not going to bed until I’ve cracked it. Or they’ve cracked me.
10 Aug 2012
When we moved to Sydney in 2007 everybody was prolific in their dire warnings regarding the rental market and the dastardly deeds of landlords and shoddy agencies. We spent a good weekend looking at houses, applied for a bunch, got almost all and moved into the one I couldn’t remember but my guy swore by. We lived there very happily with views of the television towers and the fireworks on NYE (if you hung off the edge of the balcony looking vaguely south). Our landlord was splendid. A paradigm of landlordly virture – quick to fix things, relentlessly fair and equitable – educating us about our rights as we went along so that we never felt she was gypping us and when our little family grew by one and it was time to move – she gave us a glowing reference.
She ruined us. Absolutely ruined us.
We’ve spent the last eleven months in a house that seemed okay at the viewing – with a gorgeous big back yard for us to accommodate both the plus one and soon to be plus two. The place was older but better to be the worst house on the best street and old doesn’t necessarily mean crap.
How wrong we were. Flooding sewage pipes, rising damp, falling damp, possums, mould, drainpipes pouring water in the back door, half the stove plates not working and regularly shorting electrical fuses. We rang emergency plumber after emergency plumber until at last the landlord paid for the plumbing to be ‘fixed’, meaning no flooding but a distinctly unpleasant smell should the weather grow warmer. Our girls were sick constantly, and for every little thing we needed to ring the real estate agent, who would talk to the landlord who would then say no. Their plan is to knock the house down in a few years so they don’t want to spend money on it.
So we’re moving. And the landlords wont let us out of the last couple of weeks of our lease because they haven’t made any money with us as tenants. Which is the shittest excuse ever. They wouldn’t have made money anyway. The fuses still short, the stove is still broken, mould still grows randomly in the hallway. The next tenants are not going to be any happier than we are or indeed any happier than the last tenants. Our real estate agent is perfectly affable but makes their money from the landlord and not the tenant. We understand that – it doesn’t mean the landlord is in any way ethical or ‘good’. And how does that ultimately reflect on an agency?
We’re moving to a new house, higher rent, dry. With a private landlord who has been so helpful he’s in danger of making our first Sydney landlord look Grinch like. Which is quite a feat. And we can’t wait.
A toast to lovely landlords and a pox on the others.
7 Aug 2012
When I embarked upon my blog project, I had lists I ran through mentally of things I felt passionately about, things that interested me, small amusements and I envisaged myself bashing away at the keys for half a delightful hour every day honing my blogging skills and indulging in my love of writing.
Oh the power of the imagination hey?
I really should have considered the impending visit of my in-laws, our imminent house move, the two small children under two that I have, a third anniversary, the list of things that I’m trying to get done because I’m a list writer and the little things that actually make up the vast majority of life. Like the chest infection which actually had me bedridden and indignant with it. Didn’t the world know I didn’t have time to be sick? I had THINGS TO DO.
I have mentally composed the wittiest, decidedly cutting, somewhat poignant blogs in reply to all manner of world and personal events as I rocked my poorly youngest child at three in the morning. I’ve even written the odd note on the old iPhone which now makes no sense – ‘tall poppy exclusive’, ‘art critic bollocks’. I mean really – they are not even ringing a distant bell in a neighbouring dimension let alone setting off anything in my own brain.
So, here’s to a refresh, a reload and a rebirth. My blogging begins anew.
21 Jul 2012
I was scrolling through the news this morning (so very 2012 of me I know) and the news was pretty bleak. The Syrian president is amassing a personal fortune offshore while his people are slaughtered, millions are starving and we’re not sure what to do about it, some maniac has opened fire in a cinema in Colorado and in Australia – mothers are demanding their preschoolers photos be airbrushed.
As I remarked on facebook – you’ve got to be fucking kidding me?
Firstly, how is that anybody can think a small child is anything but perfect. Even in all their dirty grotty snotty smelliness? How can you possibly think that looking at photos of themselves enjoying life to the full at preschool might be detrimental to their older selves just because they were not perfectly ‘made up’ for camera day. How are you ever going to know that wearing Sesame Street knee high socks with a Hawaii themed green skirt and a blue knit jumper was your 4 year old’s sartorial statement?
And how, HOW, when the world is so mental and so many people are living lives so full of pain can you possibly be instilling into your child that this shit matters? That the way you look at 4 years of age is important? What fucked up values are we giving credence to in our society?
We are so very privileged to live in a first world society. But that doesn’t mean the rest of it doesn’t matter. Somebody remarked that none of the stuff I mentioned in the first paragraph affects me so why get het up about it and that in itself is an attitude which drives me wild.
How can we NOT care? How can we tell our children that we want them to be kind and confident if they don’t know that the rest of the world is not as lucky as most of the people in their world? No wonder people are growing up with some misguided sense of entitlement if they don’t know that there but for the grace of god go they. And how can you NOT care that you are living in a world where violence, hunger, pain are NORMAL for people?
It all upsets me. The petty meanness of small children, the bigger less ‘fixable’ problems of the third world, the senseless violence going on around us all day every day. And apathy. Apathy really pisses me off. I don’t have the answers but if people don’t stay angry, don’t stay disillusioned by the world being so off kilter, with people being so nasty to each other, if acceptance of man’s cruelty to fellow man becomes ‘OK’, if airbrushing your small person’s photo seems reasonable, then that saddens me. Because I don’t want that kind of world for myself, let alone my children. Or you. Or your children.
We really need to care that the world is fucked up. We really do. Even if we don’t have the answers.
16 Jul 2012
I have no idea where the idea for Christmas in July first originated but I tell you what – three cheers for the people that sorted it. It is absolutely perfect.
Here we are – in the the middle of winter, nothing to look forward to because all our public holidays are done and dusted (bar one stray one in October), the weather is absolutely shite and then voila! Much wine, big hams, roasted vegetables, bread sauce, christmas decorations and festive tunes.
The afternoon progresses and before you know it the secret santa gifts have been distributed, the singstar has been cracked open and everybody went to bed in a haze of mulled wine fumes and with full tummies.
Friends, food and booze. Have thee all a very merry Christmas in July yourselves!
12 Jul 2012
I was driving around today to the tunes of Jay Laga’aia trying to get my perfect children to have a day time sleep when I passed a pink poster stuck on a mesh fence outside some older style units just outside of Marsfield. A teddybear and flowers were tied to the fence to accompany the poster which was simply encased in a very large clear plastic bag.
Being of a naturally nosy disposition, I did a u-turn and came back. The handwritten sign paid tribute to a girl named Holly who had been found dead in one of the units late last month. She was only 21. No relatives had been found and the sign called for “Justice to be served for ‘poor Holly’.”
The sign touched me. How horrid to die at the hands of someone else and and how horrid to have no family at such a young age. Who knows what the story is and how it came to be but how beautiful that somebody cared enough to mark her passing. It may not have been elaborate and it may not be permanent. But it was bright, it was eyecatching, and it worked. Now I too have Holly in my thoughts.
Rest in peace Holly. And may justice be served.
