The Art of Leisure

I just came across a post in my Facebook feed called The Lost Art of Leisure, which I didn't have time to read but which I have bookmarked for later. I think I know what it says though, and the title struck a chord with me.

Blowback: Mothers' Day

Blowback. Otherwise known as the law of unintended consequences. Always an eye-opener.

Last week was the occasion of that glorious annual institution, the school Mother's Day Stall.

A. announced she intended to spend her own money on me for her gift this year. "That's lovely, honey, but you don't have to do that," I said (stupidly). "I'll give you both $5 each to spend."

A asked, "Next year will you give us more pocket money and we pay for our own gifts?"

"Why yes," I said proudly, "That is indeed the plan, and is how pocket money should work. We'll start that next year."  (We've talked about it before, I just have to work out how much pocket money I'm going to give them, so they can manage it).

M did not even hesitate. "Well, if we do that, I'll just buy really really cheap presents."

Oh yeah. Obviously.

Our work continues.

Here, I've fixed it: Dear Future Husband

There is a song that is currently HUGE on the tween girl circuit that is so teeth-grindingly annoying to me that I was very glad to see Salon just called it out for being "the worst".

If you're not familiar with Meghan Trainor's "Dear Future Husband", the real lyrics are here.

Now obviously, this is a light-hearted pop song, depicting a girl fantasizing about her ideal husband, a man she seems to know does not really exist. The 1950's sound make it an obvious retro-fantasy, and it's clearly not meant to be taken seriously ("Even if I was wrong / You know I'm never wrong / Why disagree?"). So obviously, I know this is just a fun silly song and not an actual guide to life.

But I still hate it!

I hate that whole "treat me like a lady" thing, and don't want my daughters to learn it.
I hate that whole "you better treat me right" thing, and that whole "you have to love me even when I'm batshit crazy" thing.
I hate that whole "if you treat me like a princess I'll have sex with you happily" crap that no one really means or can keep up in real life anyway.

So I've made the lyrics a bit better:

Dear Future Husband Partner

Dear future husband partner,

Here's a few things
You'll need to know I think will help us if you we wanna be
My one and Each other's only all my life our lives

Take me Let's go on a date
I We deserve it, babe
And don't But let's forget the flowers every anniversary
'Cause if you'll treat me right
I'll be the perfect wife
Buying groceries
Buy-buying what you need
We'll treat each other right
No one's the perfect wife

And we'll take turns
Buying groceries

Buy-buying groceries

You got that 9 to 5
But, baby, so do I
So don't be thinking I'll be home and baking apple pies
I never learned to cook
But I can write a hook
Sing along with me
Sing-sing along with me (hey)

You gotta know how I don't want you to treat me like a lady
Even when I'm acting But never tell me that I'm crazy
Tell me everything's Gaslighting's never alright

Dear future husband partner,
Here's a few things
You'll need to know I think will help us if you we wanna be
My one and Each other's only all my life our lives
Dear future husband,
If you wanna get that special lovin'
Tell me I'm beautiful each and every night

After every fight
Just We'll both apologize
And maybe then I'll let you try and rock my body right we'll hold each other tight
Even if I No matter who was wrong 
You know I'm never wrong We won't stay mad for long 
Why disagree?
Why, why disagree?

Dear future husband partner,Here's a few things
You'll need to know I think will help us if you we wanna be
My one and Each other's only all my life our lives (hey, baby)
Dear future husband partner,
Make time for me
Don't leave me lonely And I'll make time for you
And know we'll never see your family more than mine And we'll take turns to see our families all our lives 

I'll be sleeping on the left side of the bed (hey)
Open doors for me and you might get some kisses if you go through them first, 
Or if I'm first through, I'll hold the door for you
Don't have a dirty mind 
at least not all the time
Just be a classy decent guy
You don't have to Buy me a ring
Buy-buy me a ring, (babe)

You gotta know how I don't want you to treat me like a lady
Even when I'm acting But never tell me that I'm crazy
Tell me everything's Gaslighting's never alright

Dear future husband partner,
Here's a few things
You'll need to know I think will help us if you we wanna be
My one and Each other's only all my life our lives
Dear future husband,
If you wanna get that special loving
Tell me I'm beautiful each and every night

Future husband partner, better let's love me each other right


______

Not quite as catchy, I'll agree - but MUCH BETTER! 
Now to get my daughters singing along to this version...

Dollhouse shoeboxes

I recently saw this very cute craft at Be A Fun Mum: shoebox dollhouse. This is very easy and pretty fast to do, and the end result is freaking adorable!

Some people are very clever at coming up with great stuff that is also very simple.  I am not one of those people, but I know a good idea when I see it, and I had four shoeboxes on hand from back-to-school purchases and a printer full of ink, so I gave this a go.

Here are the finished boxes: each kid got a bedroom and a Paris street scene (totally copied from Be A Fun Mum - go here to see how to make them).

You can save on printer ink by using coloured paper and wrapping paper for carpet and bedclothes and wallpaper, but I didn't do that this time round. I printed pictures of cobblestones and 'wallpaper' designs for wallpaper, and I printed out pictures of blankets to use as blankets for the little beds. TOTES CUTE but very expensive on the printer ink, as you can imagine. I was feeling rich and reckless I guess.

I have to say, without irony, that the kids' reactions when I gave them these boxes were totally worth every penny. They LOVED them, and they have played with them a lot.

A couple of weeks later and armed with fresh shoeboxes from a couple of long overdue shoe purchases for myself, I was itching to make some more rooms.  I rescued another box from the garage and one from my mother, and rifled through my wrapping paper and craft paper stores for 'wallpaper' and 'carpet'.  I cut out pictures from magazines for furniture and French doors.  That part actually took the longest. It's quite hard to get enough good pictures, and windows are especially hard to find. Sometimes they're on a foreshortened angle, or they cross a double-page spread, or they're overlaid with text. But you only want a couple of things in the room anyway, so the kids can add their own dollhouse furniture and the rooms are flexible (bedroom / loungeroom / one-room apartment).

I also made each kid a double-garage, using narrower shoe-boxes, as these were too small for rooms.

To make these, I turned the boxes upside down so they made a box with no 'floor', then I covered the top (bottom of the upside down box) and front with white paper, and drew garage doors with black ink. The last step was to cut the sides of the two doors so they open upwards like an old-fashioned garage door.

I also made a little door at the back, so they would look a bit like our garage at home.

So last week I made these second rooms and the garages, and gave them to the kids. They loved them!

So Be a Fun Mum, thank you - this was an excellent, easy, enjoyable craft that even I had success with, and that doesn't happen very often!

Fear

In an early chapter of A Walk in the Woods, as Bill Bryson prepares to walk the Appalachian Trail he reads up on, and obsesses about, bear attacks. After some horrifying stories of people mauled or killed by bears in the American wilderness, he concedes that the likelihood of being attacked by a bear while hiking or camping in the woods is small. But that's not the point:

"Black bears rarely attack. But here's the thing. Sometimes they do."

Bear! Don't run. But don't climb a tree. Play dead.  

Or don't play dead. Most importantly: Don't panic!

Daniele Colombo/Flickr CC

We all know that humans are terrible at calculating risk. We blithely drive in cars which kill us by the thousands, and fear getting in a plane which is statistically the safest mode of transport.

But this point has always bothered me. Sure, traffic accidents happen every day, and so do heart attacks, cancer diagnoses and people dying of old age. But you can't live your life fearing death every time you wake up or walk (or drive) down the street. So our brains quite sensibly put these fears into abeyance day to day, just as they do our general fear of old age, death, and our place in the cosmos.

On the other hand, you don't step onto a plane every day, so it's much more natural to feel nervous when you do. When we all start driving flying cars every day, we will, I am sure, lose our fear of flying.

I also think it's quite logical to fear things that, while unlikely or rare, nevertheless have horrifying consequences if they happen. For instance, car crashes happen every day and plane crashes rarely, but (I know this logic is flawed) you can walk away from a minor car accident. There aren't too many minor plane crashes.

It's fun to scoff at people fearing unlikely things. Like helicopter parents fussing over the safety of their precious children. Parents these days worry too much, and have ludicrously over-inflated ideas of the dangers kids face outside. They stifle their kids' freedom! Kids are missing out on vital outdoor neighborhood roaming! When we were young, we had the run of the neighborhood! Child abduction hasn't increased! Children are missing out on fun, and failing to learn independence and character!

But...

When I was a kid thirty years ago we had 'stranger danger' lessons at school, and our parents were worried enough about child abduction. My sister and I rode bikes around the local streets and walked to and from school, but we weren't allowed free reign over the neighborhood.

But the thing is, back then we knew a lot less. My parents say now that if they had known what we know now about the dangers children face, we wouldn't have been allowed to do even the things we did back then.

We didn't understand the nature of child abuse. For instance, that 'stranger danger' is less of an actual danger to kids than adults they already know. Kids were routinely entrusted to the care of other adults in a way they are not any more.

We didn't understand the nature of sexual assault. I remember in the early eighties, when kids I knew were 'flashed' on their way home from school, the police telling their parents they take it seriously these days, because they now knew that flashing was a precursor crime to sexual assault. I remember we were all surprised, having always been taught to ignore and shrug off these occasional incidents.

We didn't hear as many bad stories. The news cycle was quieter, fewer assaults were reported, perhaps fewer accidents and incidents made the news, back when pictures and video from all around the world were not as easily available. So we weren't all bombarded with horror every day and were a little more naive as well.

Also, just because generations past monitored their children less, doesn't mean danger didn't exist. My grandfather recalled "a Huckleberry Finn childhood" playing in rivers and bushland and coming home at sunset. But my mother's cousin drowned when he was eight playing in a rowboat alone at the beach.


My kids are nine and want to walk home from school. They know the way, we've walked together a few times, and I am happy for them to walk home alone, some days. That doesn't mean I won't be biting my nails waiting for them to knock on the door. And I probably won't let them do it regularly, so as not to set up a routine some waiting evil-doer could notice and take advantage of. (I know: infallible logic).

I don't think you can blame parents for being hyper-vigilant over child safety these days. And I am pretty confident kids are getting enough of what they need.


As Bill Bryson puts it:

"If [bears] want to kill you and eat you, they can.... That doesn't happen often, but - and here is the absolutely salient point - once would be enough."

Bears are super scary:

Valerie/Flickr CC

How do you deal with fear?

I went out

Last night the kids stayed at their godmother's place, so we had the house and evening to ourselves.
We thought we should make the most of this, so we went out.

Oh, that wasn't the only thing we did, of course. During the early evening I dug out some DVDs and watched The Jewel of the Nile, sitting in the loungeroom, while it was still light, while eating the kids' snackpacks of potato chips and drinking a beer. Awesome! My husband had a long sleep uninterrupted by the kids fighting over the iPad and me yelling at him to get up and help while I made dinner. Good times!

The house was eerily, enjoyably quiet. It felt odd, but, I'm not going to lie, quite nice as well. I was actually a bit teary when I kissed the kids goodbye, and YES, at one point in the evening I put some of their clothes away and I stopped in each bedroom and smelled the clothes to inhale their scent. But I got over that, and it was nice having the house to ourselves for a whole night.

We left dinner until decadently late - it was at least 8pm!

We made vegetarian omelettes and had a TimTam each for dessert. Both luxuries unavailable to us with kids around, you understand. Washing the dishes was so fast after feeding only ourselves!

At 10,30, we headed out for drinks to Oakleigh, our favourite (only) local patch of cool.
We took the going out quite seriously. We had showers, and I wore makeup that wasn't just foundation and lip gloss. I used mascara, and actual lipstick. I put on earrings!  I even blew dry and brushed my hair, instead of scrunching it and hoping for the best.  By the time I was done, I decided I looked pretty hot, and tried to take a couple of flattering selfies to prove it. Unfortunately I am very bad at selfies so there is no proof of my hotness last night and you will just have to take my word for it.

Although it is the middle of summer, we live in Melbourne, so last night was suddenly quite wintry. The weather may have contributed to there being fewer people out than I expected. From memory, summer evenings at Eaton Mall are packed. But then, my memories are of earlier in the evening, not the daringly night-owl hours we were now keeping!

Anyway it was still lively, and we strolled in a sophisticated manner down the mall, deciding on a place to bestow our presence. During the day and early evening when we are at Oakleigh with the kids, we go to Vanilla, which is awesome, but we wanted a different vibe for our special evening, so we tried a great-looking new bar, Risk (no link because no website), instead.

We went inside and admired the black interior, spiky ceiling sculptures, beautiful staff, gorgeous but deafeningly loud music, and... giant TV's playing the tennis (well, it is the Australian Open after all - every bar and cafe had the tennis on). We ordered drinks - actual mixed drinks, not just wine or beer for us tonight! "That will be one hundred dollars thanks," I imagined the barman saying, as I realised I had no idea at all what fancy drinks cost these days. Fortunately, it was actually eighteen dollars, and we headed to an intimate table outside.

Having not been out for a romantic evening in approximately ten years, being out dressed up with my husband brought back all the memories of our first heady years together in Santorini and Thessaloniki, where it was all great bars and cool nights, all the time. Like Proust and his madeleine bringing the rush of a book's worth of memory to him, the sensory combination of dressed-up clothes, proper shoes, kid-less company and a gin and lemon transported me back to those beautiful days and nights when we were young and in love, and it felt, for the first time in many, many years, like it was not long ago at all. 

Maybe there's something to that date night thing all those other couples do...

We had a lovely evening. We enjoyed our drinks, chatted to the kids at one point when they called us, gazed at the moon while holding hands, gazed at the tennis, discussed the win of Syriza in the Greek election, and played with our drinks while pretending not to be resisting the effort to check Facebook on our phones. All the other tables were full of people smiling, laughing and talking animatedly while all unashamedly and constantly scrolling though things on their phones. Wow, I thought, people look at their phones while out with people these days! What an interesting social phenomenon! I wonder if anyone has noticed or commented on it yet?

After our drinks we strolled to Vanilla for a coffee and more tennis, then happily headed for home.

It was an excellent night.

Landahlauts/Flickr CC

Let It Go

Adrian ImpalaMata

Parenting, as many have said before me, is an ongoing series of lessons in learning to let go. With each stage as your child develops and grows, you let go of something. And sometimes it's hard.

Sometimes you have to let go of something else: an opinion you held dear, or a view you had of yourself.  That's not just true of parenting - it's part of life. But parenting is one of the catalysts that will do this for you. (Anything from "You should never bribe children" or "I'm going to be an earth mother and do everything natural" or "I love kids and would like to have lots of them!" to your beliefs on gender, nature and marriage, or your personal view of your place in the world and how the universe works).

Sometimes it's a relief to let something go. A long-cherished hobby or life goal can be good to let go when it impedes joy in other areas of your life. (Read: 'The Upside of Quitting' at Freakonomics)

Sometimes it can take awhile to let go of something you really cherish or want. It took me a long time to accept that I could never give my kids the Stay at Home Mum lilfestyle, It took me too long and too many stressful mornings and nights before I let go of the idea that I had to be the one to take the kids to daycare every day, or that all our evening meals had to be a traditional plated meat and two veg. When I let go of those ideas, which did not fit our lives, our lives became better. Y did the daycare run more often, and the picnic dinner and the bento box dinner became our friends.

Sometimes, when a thing won't work despite all best intentions and hard work, letting go and moving on is the only option.

When my kids were little, I made delicious milkshakes. I made them with banana, a spoonful of ice-cream, milk and a couple of drops of food dye. Their favourite colour was pink, but we also had blue, green or orange milkshakes. Sometimes instead of ice-cream I used Greek yogurt and honey. My kids LOVED my milkshakes. When the daycare centre compiled a book of favourite family recipes, our contribution was Pink Milkshakes.

I loved my role as HEALTHY FUN MUM WHO MAKES AWESOME MILKSHAKES. I might have loved that picture of myself more than my kids loved the milkshakes.  So when my kids got a little older and tasted actual milkshakes and started to go off mine, I wasn't ready to give that up.

I upped the ante to chocolate and banana shakes. I increased the proportion of ice-cream. I made smoothies: fruit, yogurt, honey, juice, ice and milk, blended up with a couple of drops of food dye to make them look as great as they tasted. But despite many attempts over the years and Y and I loving them, the kids have never really bought in.

Yesterday I cut up some kiwifruit for the girls and saw a smoothie recipe on the inside of the container: kiwi, banana, honey and juice. I immediately made plans to make a yummy smoothie for tomorrow's breakfast, but when I mentioned it both kids said "NO! Mum! We DON'T LIKE SMOOTHIES!"

Then they happily gobbled up their bowls of kiwi and banana.

I considered my options. I could make my smoothie, which Y and I would like and the kids would not. I could use up all that kiwi and banana in the process, which the kids will not consume in smoothie form but will happily eat cut up in a bowl.

Or I could give them the fresh fruit and let it go.

I LET IT GO.

And it felt good.

What have you let go? What took you too long to accept?

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!

Drama Mama

Parents who don't do paid work outside the home will sometimes blurt out how it must be nice escaping the chaos of home to go to an office with non-sticky surfaces, cafe coffee and lunch breaks, and they are right of course. When your children are very young, work is lovely (and yes, easy) compared to staying at home.

What's hard is managing it - the juggle, the extra organisation required, the 'double shift' piling laundry, food prep and cleaning on top of a day at work, and managing the emotions of tired and overwrought family members - primarily yourself but also the children.

The other bit that's hard is The Drama.

I can't come in today, my kid's sick. I have to leave early, my kid's sick.
I have to go, my kid's just had a melt-down at school.
I'm going to be late, my kid's sick.
I need to work from home next week, my kid has a specialist appointment.
Sorry I'm late, I just couldn't get my kid ready on time today.
Sorry I'm late, my kids are sick and I had to take them to my mother's so I could come in today.
Oh, can I work from home every Thursday for awhile, so I can attend [insert crucial school/kid-related event here]?
Sorry I'm late, my kid got head lice and I had to shampoo the flammable chemicals out of her hair this morning. Oh and I have to leave right on 5 because it's my turn to do the after-school-care pick-up. And can I leave early on Friday, as I have to take my kids to the school disco which starts at 5pm?

All these are not including the myriad number of times you don't attend school events, get a friend to give your kids a lift, have your mother come by the house at 6.30am so you can leave on time, dose your kid with Panadol and send her to school and hope for the best, or win an hour-long argument with your spouse about whose turn it is to take time off work to tend to a sick child.

To make up for late starts I usually take a shorter lunch break, or I stay back a couple of times a week (and that always has consequences at home).  I'm no martyr and my job and employers and my manager are all fantastic, so I'm not complaining. Not at all.

I'm highlighting how embarrassing it is, sometimes. I don't want to be Drama Woman. I don't want to take advantage of my employer's awesome understanding and flexibility. But sometimes you have dramas.

When I was twenty-six I worked for awhile at a cafe run by two sisters. They were fairly wealthy and people grumbled that their husbands had bought the cafe for them so they would have something to do. But they learned the job quickly and they worked really hard, and they were there every day. One day one of them had her two little kids with her during closing time, and while she tried to pitch in and do all her usual work, she just couldn't in the end, so she asked me to do some extra stuff she would normally do herself. I was tired and grumpy and I did not cut her much (any) slack. I was really annoyed she had the kids there. I made it pretty obvious I was annoyed. I had to stay back later because she had kids with her, who did not belong in the workplace. I was not happy that the rest of us had to make up for her (obvious!) lack of organisation and work ethic!

Did I ever give any thought to the fact she turned up every day and worked hard, and never mentioned her kids or how she juggled her life? Did I even consider the fact that this was the only time we ever saw her kids, and that she might have been truly stuck this one day?  Did I have any compassion for what she was dealing with that day? No, I am sorry to say, I did not.  All I saw was... drama!

You can buy this shirt at Sugarbunny Shop

Farewell Tia

This week we lost our Tia.

She was 11 years old and had been in good health, though she had slowed down a bit in recent weeks. Last week she started having difficulty eating, and she deteriorated from there.  At first I thought it was tooth problems, especially as she developed an awful smell around her head, with no outside infections or problems in sight. We kept her quiet and she seemed OK, and I planned a vet appointment for this week.

Then on Sunday, as she walked outside to enjoy the sun, she suddenly keeled over and was unable to stand or walk. As I rushed to her she stretched out her paws and meowed in obvious confusion and distress. Her back legs were twisted under her and were almost useless.

She managed to get up and walk, and was able to walk normally later as well, but only for a short time. Within minutes she would lose her balance and her back legs would collapse.

I had to help her to the litter box or outside, and hand-feed her tiny, pitiful amounts of soft food or egg and milk. She could barely eat.

She remained very affectionate to the end. On her last morning with us the kids sat on the lounge room floor and she walked slowly between them, pushing her head under first one hand and then the other. The night before she had slept on my lap, purring almost as if she was still well.

But she wasn't, and I knew it was cruel to keep her going, as she was in distress and pain and was wasting away by the day.

On Monday, the kids and I took her to the vet for what we knew would be the last time.

The vet was kindly and wonderful. She agreed there was no hope. Tia had likely suffered either a blood clot or some kind of neurological damage, for which the prognosis is bad even for young cats. In three days Tia had lost half her body weight and critical muscle mass.

The kids kissed her good bye then waited in the waiting room while I held Tia for her last moments. The vet and her assistant were gentle and respectful, patting Tia and soothing her while she was prepared for the catheter. Then they put her on my lap and straight away she snuggled down and rested her head on my hand, purring sleepily.

Within seconds, she was gone.

I cried like a kid, there alone in the room with my dead cat. I couldn't believe she was gone. I still can't.  I know she was "just" a cat, and yes, it's been a few days now, but as I write this I feel the tears coming back, and I quickly blink them away because the kids are here in the lounge with me and they have already cried buckets. M in particular was very attached to Tia and has been distraught. She's coping well and is much better now, but we've had a few days of long talks and various "cheering up" activities to take their minds off it in between the upset times.

It's been a sad few days for us all. Even Y cried, and he supposedly wasn't fond of her (but he was).

So farewell, sweet Tia. Thank you for being a lovely, lovely cat. We miss you x