IT NEVER ENDS

My house is a mess

It causes me stress

But not quite enough

To clean up, I confess.

I try, I do -

I know you do too -

But all I can manage

Is limit the zoo

A Good Idea and a Happy New Year

The last few years I've done a "Fairwell current year, here's what I did, here's what was good/bad" post on New Year'e Eve (where's the party, right). But this year of course Facebook has done that for us so no need! (joke)

Kate Takes 5 has done a nice 'fresh start' post at her blog, where she makes one simple resolution: identify what makes you happy, and resolve to do a little bit more of it.

Excellent idea, thought I.

The things that make me happy, but which I already do a lot of, are:

• reading
• hanging out with my kids, just talking, watching a movie together, etc
• driving alone

I already do plenty of those, so that will continue.

The other things that make me happy, and which feed me, but which I don't do enough of, are:

• writing
• drawing
• enjoying art
• walking
• being outside

old Life Magazine photo from Barnorama

So those are the things I will strive to do a little bit more in 2015.  To make room for those things, I will have to:

• do better at sharing the mental and emotional work of parenting with the husband
• share the organisational and responsible aspects of domesticity with the husband, because that crap is exhausting and will deplete all your joy

I did enjoy my 12 Resolutions challenge last year, and who knows, that may pop up again - but I like this simple, new resolution a lot.

In the meantime, Happy New Year to you, and may your last evening of 2014 be lovely.

Happy New Year!

12 Resolutions: December (and November recap)

This year I'm playing along with #12Resolutions on Twitter and Facebook. The idea is to set yourself short-term, achievable goals, one each month. 

For November my goal was to tidy and clean the house, in preparation for the kids' ninth birthday party.  

Tick! It took a lot of work, but for a short, sweet time (two weeks) I had a thoroughly clean, tidy, decluttered and sweet-smelling house. 



Even a tidy front and back yard.



It's still not bad, but it is on its way back to normal, unfortunately. I don't have the effort or will to maintain the way it was forever. I tell myself I hold other things in higher importance to a tidy house. I tell myself kids and pets are messy and life is messy. But really, I just hate cleaning, and I am lazy. 

But the kids' party was a success, and I only gritted my teeth a couple of times (for a couple of kids - one not even invited - who push my buttons every time as they never say please or thank you, and their parents never get out of their car while dropping them off and picking them up).


We had a fairly traditional, low-key party, with cheap, homemade games (jelly bean blindfolded taste testing, dance statues, and the bloody mandatory Pass the Parcel). My prizes for the games were the cheapest $1 crap I could source, the lolly bags were filled with cheap toxic sweets and a couple of useless trinkets, and I only offered two drinks to all the kids: cheap fruit cocktail cordial poured from jugs, and water.  

For the grown-up guests I had a cheese-cracker-and-dip platter and some homemade spinach and cheese pies (fancy!), packets of homebrand potato chips, two bottles of soft drink, one $5 bottle of cleanskin wine and 6 bottles of light beer. I usually over-cater, but this year being on a tight budget forced me not to - and sure enough, there was still plenty of everything to go around. 

More surprisingly, I heard from both grown-ups and kids that it was a great party - not that it seemed so to me, but you can't really tell when you're in the thick of it, running round hosting, and are also a hybernating introvert not well-practiced in hosting anything.  

  

So anyway, on to December.

We're almost at the end, but my resolution for December was to have a well-organised, stress-free and on-budget Christmas.  This year for the first time my kids are not expecting Santa, so they have automatically lowered their gift haul expectations, which is advantageous (if a little sad!)  They are still going to do alright, but we are scaling down. 

Christmas this year is going to be pretty easy for us. My sister and her husband are hosting Christmas lunch, and for the evening we are going to my cousin's place. Hence, as I don't have to do anything more than bring a couple of platters and salads and some drinks, there is no reason for me to feel stressed at all.

Except you do, of course. It's a busy time of year with lots going on, and the expenses keep climbing as the day draws near. Chocolates for work, candy canes or tiny gifts for school friends (I hate that one), teacher gifts (suddenly there are a lot of teachers.... I went with boxes of chocolates this year for everyone), endless trips to Kmart and the supermarket as you remember something else... and meanwhile life's ongoing obligations and expenses continue.

So yes, it is stressful, and I am SO thankful I am not hosting Christmas in any way, and I am VERY grateful to my sister and cousin who are.

But the good news is, I am almost ready. Almost.

How are you managing the last days before Christmas?

#12Resolutions:

January: walk 5 times a week (achieved - I now walk daily)
February: write 2 short stories (failed - wrote none)
March: write 1 short story, and start Project Management course (done)
April: visit GP and complete or schedule the follow-ups (done)
May: complete one module of Project Management course (failed)
June: working day money savers: public transport and packed lunch (done)
July: pay attention to needs, moods and emotions to manage reactions (done, and ongoing)

August: limit time-wasting activities on my phone (done - and still going pretty well)

September: 15 mins floor exercises daily (nope)

October: get more sleep (yes)

November: tidy and clean house for December entertaining (done)

December: an organised, on-budget and stress-free Christmas!

Sunday Selections #185

It's time for Sunday Selections!
Sunday Selections is a weekly meme hosted by River at Drifting Through Life. 

The rules are very simple:-

1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. link back to River somewhere in your post

3. leave a comment on River's post and visit some of the others who have posted and commented

    

I've been absent from Sunday Selections a bit of late, not through design but because Sundays have been fairly busy and by the time the evening rolls round I have thought 'ah well, next week' and trundled off to bed.  Tonight I am just making it, at twenty minutes to midnight.

This week it's another collection of 'slice of life' photos:

For my August resolution I resolved to be a bit more productive by curtailing time spent on my phone. One of the things I wanted to do with that time was clean out the linen cupboard.

Well mark that as done, y'all.

It went from this:

To this:

I can't work miracles. With only two shelves and that huge wasted space at the bottom for our old non-working ducted vacuum, it is never going to be amazing. But at least now I can open the door without a towel or two falling on my head, and I got rid of three garbage bags worth of donate-able and make-into-rags-able old sheets and towels.


I also cooked a bang-up meal yesterday: coq au vin!
Well, kind of coq au vin. I didn't have bacon so chopped up some ham instead; I didn't have mushrooms; I didn't have cognac; and I didn't have red wine so used white instead.

But still: bloody delicious!

Here is it simmering away:

And here's the finished pot:

A rather more prosaic mid-week meal:

Paving. Somewhere. Just because.

The dog has outgrown his tiny dog bed, so I splashed out on a new one for him. He loved it immediately.

Unfortunately so does the cat:

This from the cat who refuses to sleep in a cat bed provided for her.  Poor Harry gets a bit flustered when she parks herself here and only gets brave enough to bark at her when I come over to move her out. I might have to buy another one of these I think. 


Cartoon in today's paper (The Age), about the government's humanitarian aid to the displaced people on the Syrian-Iraqi border. Sadly spot on.

More from the paper. I enjoy this word challenge, but today I can only see one word here, can you?

How was your week?

Stay at work mums, full time dads and others

I have stopped using the term "working mother" or at least I am trying to.

There are no perfect terms, because the term that each group of parents invents for itself annoys the others.

"Working mother" is annoying for mothers who are not in paid employment because they are home with their children: " 'Working mother'? What the hell do they think I'm doing all day?"

"Full-time mother" is hated by mothers who work in paid employment, including me. I am a full-time mother. I am a mother 24 hours a day as is every other mother. Motherhood (or parenthood) dictates how and where I work, as much as how I am at home. Also, what?: Anytime someone is away from her kids, she is not a mother? If you're a stay at home mother, when you leave your kids at kinder, or when you have a girls' night out, are you no longer a mother?

"Non-working parent" is wrong - for the same reason that "working mother" is.

"SAHM" (Stay At Home Mum) seems to be the preferred term by most, but what about the dads? They've started using SAHD. Is that a bit ironic, because it looks like SAD? I do wonder if "stay at home" is a bit annoying as it sounds a little patronising or limiting, like "housewife". Maybe just "At Home Parent" (AHP) is better?

"WAHM" (Work At Home Mum) is the one term that no one seems to grumble about. Or maybe that's just my misconception as a WOTHM (Work Outside The Home Mum - what, not going to catch on?)

Not one of these "lifestyles" is better or worse than the others, per se. Not one is a ticket to work-life balance - we're all as stretched and unappreciated as each other. There is of course just what works best for you and your family, or more accurately, what you have to work with and what you make of it.


But regardless of the terms we use to describe "mothering", one of the things driving change most is a critical mass of fathers being home with their kids.

There are so many of them now, and not all of them have blogs of course (pfft - what do those guys DO all day?) - but the ones I've noticed most as change agents are:


"World's Best Father" (Dave Engledow): this is the guy who created all the photos of himself with his baby daughter, she in various ignored or "helping" scenarios (sitting on an ironing board while he's ironing, etc) while he is usually looking away, reading thoughtfully and holding a coffee mug with "World's Best Father" on it.  The photos are genius, encapsulating at once all the best qualities of how we regard the stereotypical dad: involved with the kids but casually; making the kids fit around him instead of the other way around; funny; relaxed; borderline-neglectful-but-actually-good-for-the-kids.  Here are a couple of samples (these are all over the internet and they are a couple of years old now, so I've decided this is okay):

Reservoir Dad: RD is awesome, because he is very proudly a SAHD, and embraces the lot that goes with it, including actual, thorough housework. Not for him the superhero vacuum and willful blindness to dirty toilets and dusty windowsills - no, he happily and manfully tackles the lot.  I actually think this is BRILLIANT. He writes about being a primary carer and shows that when it's done by a man it looks pretty similar to when it's done by a woman; this post in particular is just wonderful and I love it.


Of course, dads bring their alpha guy privilege to stay-at-home parenting, and that's simultaneously irksome and fantastic. RD admits men get more support in some ways than women as parents, and he has a robotic vacuum cleaner which makes me completely jealous ... but at the same time why wouldn't you make things better for yourself wherever you can, and why don't women do this more?  - because we do it all properly!! and we're doing six million other things you can't see!!  ... Sorry, that just slipped out. Where was I?  Anyway, having more men take on the primary carer role (and more women the breadwinner role, and more men and women working part-time and doing a bit of everything), is a good, good thing, with great advances in mutual understanding and improvement for everyone all round.


I've kind of lost my thread with this post, but think I've said what was on my mind anyway, so I'll leave it here.

Meanwhile, if you want a bit of fun, take Buzzfeed's What Type of Parent Are You quiz.

I'm "overwhelmed" which I found a little disappointing. I'd thought I had moved beyond "overwhelmed" after eight years at this parenting gig, but I guess not. Buzzfeed knows best!

Sunday Selections #143

It's time for Sunday Selections!
Sunday Selections is a weekly meme hosted by River at Drifting Through Life. It's a way to showcase some of the photos we take, but don't get shown on our blogs. 

The rules are very simple:-

1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title

2. link back to River somewhere in your post

3. leave a comment on River's post and visit some of the others who have posted and commented: for example:

    Elephant's Child

    Andrew at High Riser

    Gillie at Random Thoughts From Abroad

    

I normally go with a theme for Sunday Selections, but this week for a change I'm going "random".  Here are some photos illustrating my last two weeks.


My clever sister was a state finalist this year in the Telstra Business Women's Awards, and I went along as one of her guests to the gala dinner on October 15th. Here is a very badly exposed shot of my sister collecting her certificate. That's Jane Kennedy on the right, who was the emcee.  Mia Freedman also presented, as did last year's national winner, Carolyn Creswell. It was a really great event.

I wore heels that night, for the first time in a year and a half! Since I broke my arm last July, then had surgery, and it still took a long time to heal, and THEN I sprained my ankle this year... Well, since all that, I haven't felt stable enough to wear heels for some time.  Although I wore what always used to be very comfy wedge sandals, and it was a sit-down event, after walking to and from the carpark my poor feet were on fire, and I had a massive blister on the sole of one foot for the next two days. So, back to flats for me since then.

But I came home to this on the whiteboard in the kitchen:

 

My kids are awesome!

This barely shows up, but here is a "charming" little bumper sticker on the back of a van I was stuck behind last week. What a lovely little sentiment. 
"If you don't stand behind our troops, please feel free to stand in front of them."

This one came about when I sat my phone on top of the toaster with the camera app still open.  This looked kind of cool so I took the photo.  It's almost like architecture, isn't it?  Architecture with a garden of toast crumbs.

One of the only meals everyone in my family will eat without argument is apricot chicken. So eat up, family. I'm making batches of the stuff.

I love these tins, by the way. I know, it's fake 50's nostalgia retro, which normally annoys me, but the design is so pretty.

This week the school held its annual disco, and I couldn't resist a shot of these uninvited guests pining outside. 

Looking up at gum trees in the park

My dog Harry likes to sit on my shoulder, like a big fluffy parrot. But he won't sit still for a selfie.

Meanwhile, Tia has a new favourite "house" to sleep in:

Here is a very sad little dinner I had one night when funds were low and I hadn't been able to go to the supermarket. Yes, I couldn't even afford my own tin of tinned spaghetti, I had to skim off the kids' leftovers:

In happier news, I did some thorough spring cleaning today, tackling just one corner of my kitchen, but removing years' worth of grime from the rangehood, splashbacks, walls and the cupboards over the stove.

Then I did the window sill (which I do tackle a little more regularly).  I have to say, one of my least favourite cleaning chores is getting out all the carcasses of dead flies and bees from the tracks of sliding windows. But at least that's done now.

The Amazing A performs some magic. Her lovely assistant has been "disappeared" at this point:

THIS irked me in yesterday's paper. Because yes, every "modern family" has a McMansion and an SUV, of course we do! (says every newspaper lifestyle supplement ever):

And sure, we take holidays like this:

Every year when I see The Age's "52 weekends away" special, I think "oh lovely", then I look through it and sigh, fold it up and put it quietly in the recycling.


But, life's too short to be irked. To finish us off, this made me smile today:

How was your week?

Housework: the eternal battle

I absolutely loved this piece in The Guardian Comment Is Free today:
Housework: let's come clean about who does the chores by Barbara Ellen.

The gist: even though people are doing less housework than they used to, women are still doing more than men. (I know, you're shocked, right?)

First up, I liked that she makes no apologies for tackling what is so often derided as a middle-class or privileged women's issue, but straight-up calls the housework battleground "this incredibly important arena (equality in your home – where you live)". 

Ellen's main point: It's as unfair as it ever was, when women are doing more housework than men, no matter how many minutes or hours that is.

Housework is not about the amount of hours: it's about ratios and percentages – the true mathematics of domestic parity. Even self-described housewives should not be working nights and weekends if their partners aren't. 

What of "the future", when most chores will be done by robots and machines?  She is doubtful (as are we all), but:

Even if it does happen, it's obvious who'll be doing all the button-pressing. Even if we get that farcical two hours down to a preposterous two minutes, it's evident whose preposterous two minutes they'd be. 

Sing it, sister.

Confession

Two things caught my eye in blog posts this week:

This post on Freakonomics about a study on the effects on a marriage and a woman's work inside and outside the house when the wife can earn more than the husband (short answer: bad);

and this post on Blue Milk about a confessional essay by a feminist man examining his own hypocrisy. In referencing this essay Blue Milk posted:

"[O]ur personal relationships are usually where our most brutal hypocrisies present themselves. I wish we talked more about that part of our lives."

I am glad to hear that this is not just me.

So okay, I'll start:

• I resent the fact that I do more at home than my husband does, but I also sometimes do a bit more to help him feel more masculine and me feel more "wifely"

• It is very important to me that I, the children's mother, be their primary carer - even though it makes more sense economically for their father to do it

• I am sometimes resentful - against all fairness, logic or even what I actually want - that I didn't marry someone with a career which would allow me to be a stay-at-home mother

• when I read blog posts by feminists I admire I often wonder about their partners, how they make their partnerships work and how many of these feelings and compromises they deal with and what if any non-feminist measures they take to "improve" their relationships

I am sure most of us have these feelings. And I am sure the important thing is how you act on them and how you talk yourself down, not the fact that you have them.

What about you?

New Year's Resolutions 2013

I don't usually make new year's resolutions, other than vague ones like "lose weight", "exercise more" or "stop being such a grumpy depressed knob". None of these were very successful in the past, so I stopped resolutions some years ago.

But this year I've decided I want to achieve some things.

In my expert opinion, there are three five reasons why most New Year's resolutions fail:

(1) They are too vague, or are wishes rather than goals -  e.g., "lose weight" 

(2) They are specific, but too hard or unrealistic - e.g., "exercise every day" 

(3) They are big, sweeping things about an aspect of our personality we'd like to change - and that ain't gonna happen. E.g., "Be more patient."  

(4) They set unrealistic expectations about how our minds and behavior work, aiming to do something every day which is really only supposed to be done sometimes. E.g., "Be grateful every day."  "Practice mindfulness." 

(5) They are what you think you should do but your heart's not really in it, or they're not what you truly think or want.

With that in mind, I am setting myself a few goals for this year. By the end of this year I will have either: (a) achieved them, (b) achieved some of them, or (c) deleted this blog post in embarrassment.



NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FOR 2013:

Image by Ambro at freedigitalimages.net

• Stop buying cheap clothes without trying them on. They're not cheap if they're wrong.

• Move off anti-depressants. I've changed my life a bit and no longer have the stressors I had before. I'm ready.

• Be nicer to my husband (wow, can I do that and the previous one at the same time?!)

• I've already started this one: quit Ice Breaks. They are evil and delicious and needlessly sweet and fattening.

• Exercise every week. As a starter, get back on the treadmill if watching a DVD episode on the TV.

• Keep the house tidy, at least so's I can have people round without panicking or dying of shame.

• Iron the clothes that need ironing. Don't put off wearing them because I have to iron them.

• Get something published. Anything. Anywhere. Maybe the article I already have an interview and notes done for, might be a logical start. Or the site that rejected my one attempt due to subject matter but told me they liked my style and invited me to submit more [which I never did, natch]

• Get the roof and stumping checked out. If they need to be fixed, set a timeline and make a plan to do that. (I have a fear of the house slowly descending into a contender for 'Houses From Hell' through our general neglect).

• Visit my cousin K who lives on the other side of the city - which we first talked of doing like, six years ago.

• Visit my grandfather again in New South Wales.

• Find a way to manage my need to have the alone time I need to recharge each day, without going nuts at my family to get it.

Yes, that's a long list, but they're all kind of related. In fact it's possible they represent one of those big sweeping personality change resolutions that's doomed to fail ("Be more disciplined!"). Ah well. It's worth a shot.

Have you made any New Year's Resolutions?

The Things I Have To Do

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out. 

- Anton Chekhov  

I saw this great quotation via @qikipedia on Twitter this week.

Gosh, I thought, in all my middle-class, first-world exhaustion, That is so true.

There is so little time in life.  We know this because we all say it, from the time we either (a) get a serious job, or (b) have children or (c) grow out of our twenties. (Or at least my twenties, pre-HECS, pre-internet, were pretty free and wide open. Not sure if that's still the case for the young 'uns today).

I went back to work when my babies were 8 months old, initially 3 days a week, building up to 5. I worked full-time for the next 4 four years, and just recently cut down to 4 days.

That extra day is a marvel, and I am so, so grateful for it. I don't know how long I can "get away with it", because our finances are not great and you know, life is expensive. Especially when you're used to having the money from 5 days' work in your bank account, but anyway, that's my failing and I'm learning to adapt (slowly).

Back when I was working full-time and my twins were toddlers/pre-schoolers/preppies and I was having a nervous breakdown every few months, I used to HATE reading about "work-life balance" and "fitting in" working and motherhood, because everything I read was written by women working part-time.

So I am trying not to bore you with the same opinions and perspectives that used to annoy me.

I will just say, that EVEN with my lovely, precious extra day, life is SHORT and Tuesdays (my day off) are SHORT - and my to-do list is LONG.

There is so little time in the day to do the things we really want to do, isn't there?

For instance, what I really want to do all day is read and write. That's it - I know, I'm horribly unbalanced, but that is what I really love and want to do.

I don't want to clean the house, plan dinners, buy groceries, dust, sort and file administrivia, do laundry or tidy my clothes. I don't want to re-evaluate our super and insurance every 12 months, compare utility providers or switch bank accounts. I don't particularly want to walk the dog. (No surprises there, the dog would grumble if he could talk).

I do love spending time with my kids, and I like feeding them (when they eat what I make), and quite like doing homework or reading with them (when they don't grumble).

So if I do a great job looking after my kids - which I mostly think I do - and I feed them and teach them and listen to them and do their laundry and watch over their emotional state and help them and love them - that is a full-time job, right?

So why do I ALSO have to do all the other house and admin stuff that comes with a grown-up life?

Not fair.


The end.

P.S.: That's not a serious question. Parenthood is a choice and it makes me very happy, blah blah blah. Doesn't mean we can't vent about how hard it all is, every now and then!

Linking up to Picklebums for Real Life Wednesday.