Nourish your body & your soul

Well today I am not going to spout any feel good hippie hugging eat lots of unprocessed food palaver – I am going to talk about nourishing your mind and body with great chocolate and better wine. As we know, all good things should be in moderation; too much of a good thing can be bad for you. And this is true if we are talking about things like bread or pasta (dreaded carbohydrates) but the same can never be applied to wine and chocolate.

For Kelvin, chocolate is essential to his wellbeing. It is mind altering, mood shifting and comforting when you are under pressure. You can try to savour it by letting it sit on your tongue and slowly melt or you can crunch it quickly and let the sticky richness swell in your mouth before swallowing. It is nirvana to the fragile and battered soul.

I have this memory etched in my brain; it is of one perfect afternoon years ago now. I was living in my flash Khandallah house (see below) in Wellington. It really was a funky beautiful house and I do miss it on occasion – but back to that perfect afternoon.  It was a Saturday in summer – and summer in Wellington is not like summer here; often the wind can be cool and the temperatures can hover around 23 – 25 and get down to 15ish at night. On this day, the sun was shining through to big plate glass windows into my lounge room. I had a brand new lounge set (still have it, much battered, tattered and torn by feral kids now) and my housework was complete. My house was tidy, I had the stereo playing Jewel, I had a trashy romance novel to read and I had a wine cellar. Oh yes, a wine cellar. Not only that; it had wine in it.


So here I am 2PM on a Sat afternoon, nowhere to be nobody to entertain but myself and a lovely cold glass of sav blanc in my hand. I remember sitting on the couch, looking out of the window and just thinking how blissfully happy I was just then in that moment. I don’t even think that it lasted long – at some point Kelvin would have asked me where something was, my brother would have walked in and sniggered at my listening choices and I would have had to get off my bum and traipse down to the cellar for another bottle – but those few brief moments were truly bliss for the busy soul.

These days I love the social aspect of wine; I love sitting with good friends and talking, laughing and generally solving the worlds problems. People truly underestimate the value of a how cathartic good girlfriends can be. We need to know that other people understand how hard our busy lives are and how challenging parenthood really is. It has taken me years to find my groove here, and I have to say I am loving everything right now.

Life is never perfect is it? Bee is filled with angst and self doubt, Alex is a delicious soul who isn’t learning as fast as some of his peers and Kelvin has spent most of the past four years lurching from one stressful work crisis to another and inevitably taking some of the angst out on his family. But when you can sit outside on a summer evening and laugh like a loon with good friends whilst your kids did what you did as a child (eg PLAY instead of being glued to the television) then life is more than bearable; its bloody good.

Simplicity is the key

Can I just start off by saying that I struggle to keep things simple at times; for some reason my brain loves to wallow in the deep end of the ocean rather than keeping a birds eye over view. I have this dream of having a larger house than I do now, and having it look beautiful with lots of space, clean lines and a fabulous combination of neutral colours and rich textures with homey touches that will ensure it doesn’t look like a hotel. And I have a passion for storage. When most people get the Ikea catalogue I am sure that they spend hours looking at lounges and beds and maybe tables. Me? I wallow in the section on storage – be it the wardrobes, the different boxes and containers for the Expedit shelving or even the canisters for the kitchen. I love it.

But the reason I love looking at storage is that it is they key for making something look simple when it is, in fact crammed full of all the stuff I cant bear to get rid of or secretly hiding my latest passion for ink pads, or coloured markers or, heaven forbid, handbags. You see I want it to look simple but I want it to actually be complicated. When I got through my wardrobe and send garden bags of clothing to Vinnies, I am not doing it to simplify my wardrobe – I am doing it so I can fit more stuff in the space I create. When I buy something, if I can get two for the price of one, I get the two – even though I might only actually need the one.

This leads to all sorts of strife with Kelvin. He is a master of simplicity. In fact when he is stressed, he finds clutter and mess inherently distressing. He cant stand the kids toy boxes to be filled to the brim and he will periodically decimate them in a vain effort to reduce the amount of ‘stuff’ that crowds our house. The big book case in our playroom is filled to capacity with my scrapbooking stuff. There are boxes of paper, cartons of pens, inks, stamps, tapes, glues, paints, punches – I could go on for hours. And what I find comforting and delicious, he sees simply as clutter. It’s a battle neither of us can win, so we compromise and I agree to keep the clutter tidy and he agrees to squint his eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Yesterday I had an online meeting at work with the providers of our new CRM system and a massive project that my Director and I are going to do is to document our business processes. The guy from the CRM was explaining how we should start off with a very simple big picture view; a concept that Mark and I both struggled with initially – wanting to ignore the simplified picture in favour of delving into the detail – finding the bottlenecks, obstructions and redundancies in what we do and wanting to fix them. The CRM guy kept having to gently bring us back to the concept of starting off with the simple stuff. Getting us to recognise that unless we truly understood and respected the big picture that we would be Neo taking the red pill and falling into the Matrix but with a zero chance of getting out again. The Simple View will be our ship in the Matrix, the trusty vehicle to keep us on the right path whilst we are out there in the detail.

The only thing that concerns me is that my bosses name is Mr Smith….

Believe in yourself

Sigh, another American feel-good statement. I would kind of love a “have a good whinge about somebody who has really pissed you off” title so I could rant about Australia Post. And boy, I could rant for hours on that one.

You know (and some people would never believe this of me) but when I moved to Australia I would never ever have complained about receiving bad service. It’s not that I thought that I deserved to be treated like pond scum by people who stand behind a plastic counter in a Post Shop, but that my cultural reference was to not complain. I have never sent food back to a restaurant kitchen; inherently I will not eat it and just quietly pay for it and leave. Oh, I would never go back and I would be happy to tell my friends and acquaintances that the food was shite but I would never actually tell the restaurant themselves. Somehow I thought it was rude to do so.

Australia has been an eye awakening experience I must say. Not that the average Aussie is a whinger – but they are simply not afraid at pointing out injustices and when something is wrong. I remember my first real experience was in the mall at Castle Hill. I was shopping with my MIL for a dress to wear to Kelvin’s brothers wedding. Brianna was a baby and there was one pathetic lift working. We were standing there for some time and a couple of other people arrived after us.

When the lift came I had to maneuver the pram to get into the doors and before I could do so this couple walked in ahead of us and took the space. An Aussie woman went right off her nut at them – telling them in no uncertain terms that we had been waiting longer than all of them and they could jolly well just get out of the lift and let us in first. The first couple were shamed into leaving the lift and I was shocked and eternally grateful for the actions of this complete stranger. See, I would never had said anything. I would have waited to the lift had gone and told my MIL that I was annoyed etc, but would never have had the gumption to challenge the idiots who took my space in the first place.

Kelvin learned the lesson faster than me too – I remember him coming home from Big W a number of years ago where he had been queuing for some time in the ‘express -less than 5 items aisle’. A guy from the back of the queue quite loudly demanded to go to the front of the queue because he had only two items to buy. K turned around and held up the packet of Huggies and baby wipes he was carrying and said “Well I only have two items to buy as well. And all the people in this line have less than five items. You can wait your turn.” It’s funny how proud we were of him saying this!

Now I work to overcome my natural inclination to avoid conflict and make a point of getting angry. If I have rung Australia Post and they tell me that I can transfer my PO BOX to another branch and it will only cost me $20 if I get a letter of authority etc etc and then I go to my branch, queue for 25 minutes only to be told that ‘Oh no, you cant do that at all – you need to cancel your box here, pay a cancellation fee and then physically go to the new store and open an account. Oh and they don’t have any post office boxes there anyway’ I am incandescent with rage. That was me. Incandescent with white hot rage. And don’t even ask me to tell you how I reacted when the smiggle pen and pencil they had on ‘special’ wouldn’t scan properly and I had to point out that the special was $2 cheaper than what the POS machine was saying. Just don’t ask.

You know, in a funny way I have covered the ‘Believe in yourself’ thing haven’t I? By learning to stand up to bad behaviour, to feel empowered to challenge injustice and just plain bad customer service I have accepted once and for all that my opinion and experience as a customer / recipient counts for something and that I deserve to be heard.

How funny is that?

Embrace online business

Ok so I have not done yesterday’s blog yet, my bad  But I cant resist getting straight into today’s topic ‘embrace online business’. The fact is that I am such an embracer of online business that I swear my poor husband has a protocol on our home computer that emails him an alarm if I click on PayPal. I love the online shopping experience.

For a start Hop Shop & Go is nirvana to the female soul. With the Australian dollar so high, you can sit at your desk, log into Saks 5th Avenue and nab fantastic bargains that are cheap, cheap, cheap! And given that their seasons are the opposite to us, when sale season comes around you can pick up ‘next’ season bargains and be both fashion forward AND prudent with your spending. Well that’s the theory anyway; the reality is that I have only bought things for my kids to date – but when Target in the US has their ‘home’ brand as Mossimo why wouldn’t I? And just last week, I received my order of t-shirt and jeans (all Osh Kosh) from the US of A. And how much did they cost me? A$18.83 + postage.

Then there is e-bay. As a three year old Bee could hit my favourites on the inner-net explorer, log into e-bay and had worked out how to go to the kids toy section. Kelvin was somewhat disturbed to see her do it but I managed to laugh it off. Many a companionable hour has been spent by the Bee and Me sifting through ebay – bidding on must have littlest pet shop’s and summer t-shirts. I particularly loved it when she was little and at daycare because I would buy designer clothes (second hand ones) for her to wear to daycare. I was that mother who dressed her kid in Fred Bare to do finger painting. But when you only pay $10 for the dress you don’t get stressed when it comes home with the evil blue paint stain because that’s why you bought them.

Also, we are time poor – and I just cant be bothered going out at lunch time and being ignored by the badly paid, and badly trained retail staff at Myers. I could get my sandwich, log into the internet and search for whatever items I desire. I can window shop without getting off my fat bum – hooray!

Favourite sites:

Shopping Directory | HopShopGo

The Carpenters Daughter - exquisite clothng for women with curves

One Young Family, One Old House Equals Love

The last none is not a shopping site at all – this young couple inspire me to make the best of the stuff that you have; to be creative and to have flair without spending a gazillion dollars. They love IKEA as much as I do and I just adore this website

Do It Now

Ah the old call to action; the antithesis of procrastination and apathy; the old ‘Do it Now’. A concept I struggle with daily. I try the to do list, but it’s a waste of time, because like the wil ‘o the wisp I let myself flit to the tasks the are more interesting, more challenging and what I inherently feel are a better use of my time. Obviously I live in dreamland there; after all it’s the devil in the details that makes the world go around. It’s the crossed t’s and dotted i’s that make business profitable and managers happy.

Once I thought that these things were a strength of mine and then in my last annual review my boss pointed out that really, I am not all that brilliant at the mundane stuff and that really, my filing system is spontaneous rather than organised; and even I have to admit that things make sense to me at the time, but when I am looking for a file three months later and its not filed in a ‘logical’ place that perhaps spontaneous filing is not the best approach for someone who is aiming to be a shared services manager.

And look, I am all for knowing what your own weaknesses and strengths are but sometimes I really think that I was better off thinking that I was much better than I really am. Knowing that what I want to do is not necessarily the thing that I am best at fills me with self doubt and then I think that if I am doubting myself how the hell does my manager feel?

But apart from a masters degree in creative filing, a doctorate in flitting from interesting project to interesting project and an Emmy in ‘Don’t’ do today what can be done by someone else tomorrow’ I think that I am pretty damned good at what I do. Because even in my worst, avoid the drudgery moment, I am still better than the ‘others’. They would have NO idea how to call the building management and complain about the lack of air con; they wouldn’t know where to start on finding the best price for copy paper and they would never cope with learning the difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical broadband connections.

So you know what; even though I am probably pretty crap at doing it now, I am pretty good at what I do anyhow 

Define what success looks like for you and then go after it

Happiness. That is what success is to me. That’s my KISS (keep it simple stupid) definition. For some people this will equate for financial and material success and the comfort and pleasure that this gives them. To me its about health, family, friends and a cold glass of wine on a summer evening. Sure I don’t like to stress about money or about having to pay bills and I would surely love to able to buy whatever I wanted whenever I wanted – but being surrounded by people I enjoy spending time with is what really floats my boat.

Kelvin would tell you that I am a shop-a-holic and if I am feeling stressed or a bit down, my brain desperately wants to hit the mall and get that instant high from retail therapy. But man the downer afterwards is hideous – the guilt of spending money on clothes that should have paid for solar panels for the house or worse food; the desperate stuffing of bags in the back of the wardrobe so the husband doesn’t see them or, and this is the very worst, the lecture from husband who has checked the bank balance and now has to work out how to pay after school care fees, buy food and make sure that the mobile phone account isn’t cut off. Yeah retail therapy is for braver people than me these days!

So I have KISSed my life – take joy in the small things. The glass of wine with good friends on a warm summer evening; the smell of a small boy straight after a bath who wants to tell you about how Batman will always beat Spiderman in a fight; and the smile of a 9 year old who still thinks that you are a fount of all knowledge and wisdom. Oh and the occasional snog from the hen pecked husband too.

I reckon anyone who can get to the end of their lives and who knows that they have a family that loves them; who has had friends to laugh, cry and carry them through the years is a success. It doesn’t matter that in 200 years nobody knows who you were and your existence is immortalized only in birth, death and marriage records – you were still an amazing success.

That’s what I am aiming for anyway! And the good news is that tomorrow is Friday and I am promising myself that lovely glass (or three) of wine. Life doesn’t get much better hey?

Make your own path - take two

You can go your own way, go your own way
You can call it another lonely day (Another lonely day)
You can go your own way, go your own way
You can call it another lonely day
- Fleetwood Mac

With a theme of ‘Make your own path’ I cant help but channel a little bit of Fleetwood Mac. After all ‘You can go your own way’ is all about someone who chooses to make their own path in life.

Last December I took Nic to see Fleetwood Mac in concert. I don’t go to a lot of concerts – growing up in a small isolated community a long way from major music centres will do that to a person. And my taste in music is firmly buried in the 70’s & 80’s so I have never had any desire to fork out $150 to see anything with a name like Florence and the Machine etc. But Fleetwood Mac is one of my top favourites.

I knew that Nic was a fan and I knew that we didn’t have decades ahead of us to lazily miss the opportunity to see them so I got us seats in the nosebleed section and off we went. In hindsight, a concert can be an interesting experience to someone whose skull has been cracked open that often because the base would reverberate in her head and she could ‘hear’ the plates vibrating against each other.

It was brilliant though – Stevie tottered onto stage in her 6 inch heels, did a slow, arthritic turn holding out a lacy shawl and the crowd went wild. Nic and I laughed until we cried. The mad bird sitting on the other side of me kept up a running commentary on how much she loves Stevie and Nic and I had decided that the poor thing was going to spontaneously orgasm if she kept it up, and that led to more snorting and inappropriate laughter from our cheap (well not that cheap) seats.

The hit of the night for us was Tusk – Mic Fleetwood is a God of a man. How old is he? 900 or something and he can drum like a 21 year old on speed. At one point the stage was cleared of everyone but him and he had us on the edge of our seat for the whole time. It was the kind of stuff that gives you goosebumps and brings spontaneous tears to the eyes. Although that could have been from our laughing at Stevie who needed to toddle off stage every five minutes for a nice lie down / strong drink or revitalizing substance (you choose what you think was most likely).

Before we went I watched a documentary on MTV about Fleetwood Mac and they are a fascinating story. So many albums, so many people moving in and out of the band – so many scandals. They kind of make Abba look a bit tame and prudish really. But having said that, the complicated sex lives did give us truly amazing music…

‘Now here you go again,
you say you want your freedom,
well who am I to keep you down’
- Dreams, Stevie Nicks

‘And it all comes down to you,
Well, you know that it does
And lightning strikes once, maybe twice
Oh, and it lights up the night
And you see your Gypsy
You see your Gypsy
- Gypsy, Stevie Nicks

And to bring it back to our theme this morning, Fleetwood Mac have always been carving their own path in the music industry – never afraid to try something new; to incorporate influences from other genres and to make their own unique sound. And their music has lasted the test of time – and OK maybe that’s because people like me love it because the music makes them feel 18 again; young and with the whole world ahead of them, but I am not going to apologise for that! Anything that gives you three minutes of bliss and a rounding chorus in the shower is fine by me!

I am glad that I got to share my Fleetwood Mac concert experience with Nic. Regardless of what the future holds for either of us; we had that night together.

Dammit! I read my Now!vember calendar wrong and have doubled up! Tune in later for the post that I SHOULD have done this morning.

Doh!

Make Your Own Path

Wow these topics are very ‘Inspirational’ aren’t they? Make your own path…hmmm. Well today I will focus on my beautiful daughter and her desire to make her own path. It would be good if the path she forged was not so difficult, but it is the way she wants to go.

Yesterday she woke up sad. Right from the moment she opened her eyes, she said “Mum today I just feel sad”. There was no reason, she just felt sad. And then when doing homework at Grandma’s there were buckets of tears – one minute she was chatting away the next inconsolable. Between you, me and the gatepost I am sure that Grandma thinks that there is something going ‘on’ but there just isn’t.

When she got home from guides I asked her about the tears and it turned out it was all about spelling – she spelled gracious wrong. Bee only went up to ‘rainbow’ level last week and she is adamant that she does not want to get one word wrong. I explained that she is supposed to – that’s why she does her spelling words every night so she can make mistakes and then fix them. But she says that she shouldn’t be making mistakes in the first place.

To put it simply – she wants, more than anything else right now, to be the smartest kid in her class. She wants to stand out and be admired and she wants to do it for being smart. Now, if I am perfectly honest with myself, if my kid was going to be a standout I would love it if it was because she was smart but I am also well aware that she is not the smartest kid in the class. And all she is doing is beating herself up over something that is just not going to happen.

So my 9 year old’s path is fraught with pain. I wonder sometimes where the happy go lucky friendly child has gone and why the emotional, angst ridden, so-hard-on-herself drama queen is living in her skin. I do fret about the changes, but then I remember being her age and being a complete diva myself and I know she is not doing anything worse than I did – but that she does in a way embody both the best and worst of her mother and father.

You see, I was always the drama queen – I wanted to be the centre of attention and I demanded everything of my mother. I threw tantrums, I threatened to run away and whilst at school I was sweetness and light, at home I was a moody, snappy, hideous child – and all before the age of 10. And Kelvin is a perfectionist; a control freak who when he is stressed needs things to be perfect. As a child he demonstrated some OCD tendencies and he has always applied himself with single minded devotion to achieving a goal. Now mix those two personalities and it’s a wonder the 9 year old isn’t on medication!

My daughter is in the process of making her own path – of moving off the road that we, as parents, set her on and to finding her own groove. As a parent, it is a hard thing to watch and I just know that there are going to be many many times in the future when I will have sleepless nights worrying about the challenges that she faces. And yes, I worry about her right now and I feel helpless when faced with her frustration and anger and I wonder what we need to do to help her through – but she is a glorious being and she shines like the brightest star in my world. Would I change her if I could? No, but I do wish for her sake, that she learns to take it easier on herself.

Carve a niche; get it out there

Carve a niche; get it out there

When I was younger I wanted to be liked by everyone. Sometimes it was a conscious thought but mostly it was just who I was. My mother taught me that by being a good person, I would be liked – ergo the desire to be liked drives positive behaviours. It’s just such a shame that sometimes you have to compromise yourself to be liked by others.

Remember your teenage years? When the pain of being singled out for ridicule or being shunned was the worst kind of agony in the world? How you would do anything to avoid being the one who was ostracized. So if everyone else is wearing the three stripe adidas trackpants with white ankle socks and plastic soled ‘karate’ shoes then you would nag, whinge, cry, and throw whatever tantrums you needed to convince your mother that you absolutely ‘had to have’ the same.

And you know what? It takes a long time to lose that inherent desire to conform. I guess some people never lose it and for most people (well women particularly) there will always be a desire to know what other people are saying about ‘people’ just so you can see where your values sit on the ‘normal’ scale.

But the older I have got, the more comfortable I have become with living outside the norm. Don’t get me wrong, compared to my husband, I am a dyed in the wool conservative with rigid rules on what is right and what is wrong. When you live with someone who sees the world in a different way – you can throw your hands up and walk away because you refuse to change from the ‘norm’ or you find a way to keep your values and accept his as well.

And that puts me in a unique space to be honest – because his friends live in a very different niche from the norm indeed and they, as a rule, find it impossible to maintain long term relationships with people who don’t follow the same path as they do.

On a good day, I take this to mean that I am stronger and more willing to compromise than the average punter. That I rely on trust and some kind of understanding to allow people to be their own selves without prejudice. On a bad day I am terrified that I am really just like my mother and am willing to compromise all of myself for fear of change or being alone. Those are bad days indeed and on those days my husband is the most bewildered and we have to sit and hold hands as tight as we can and commit again to working it through; for sticking through my down days and looking for the brighter side of life.

And I know that as women, we all compromise ourselves – I speak to so many who say that they would rather stay with the man who drives them insane than be out there in the world alone and with kids. And I am completely sympathetic to them because I know that I have the same fears.

So this I say, is my niche – the one that I have carved for myself. And somedays it is not a comfortable place to be. I no longer try and explain my life to other people because they don’t actually understand and to be honest, I have spent far too long justifying decisions to myself to want to do it with others. So sometimes the niche pinches and is harder because there is no-one to talk to about it; but then I remember that I have my husband and he understands completely the space we are living in and he is the very best person to talk to and he is the one that has to understand more than others.

This is my niche. I have carved it for myself and most of the time it is a good place to be. There are times when my desire to conform and be ‘just like everyone else’ wraps me is shrouds of fear and doubt and yes, even rage – but when I come through to the other side I remember that I am proud of where I am and where I have come from. Life is never perfect and life is rarely easy – but if you have someone you love you can hold on tight and make it the best damned ride you can.

Fingers, toes and wiggly bits crossed...

How much can one person suffer? Am thinking of you Nic-Mole – I don’t know the world record for craniotomies but I am sure that there are very few people in Australia who have had their head cracked open as often as you!

Fingers crossed for Thursday my love and see you soon!

Everything you want & need is up to you to make it happen

“Everything you want and need is up to you to make it happen”

Oh God what a thing to start Now!vember with! Fundamentally I don’t think that this is true – I think it’s an Americanism. The honest truth is that you can never have everthing you ‘want’ and no matter how many lotto tickets you buy, the chances are you will never win the big one. In fact, if I accept this statement as an ‘Americanism’ I can look at what it means and how that translates into our culture and belief system.

This statement says that you can have everything that you want (and need) if you do ‘something’ to make it happen. Now, on the positive side it’s a call to action; an anti-apathy statement if you will. It is saying that if you get out there and do the hard work, the rewards will come to you. And in many cases this true – if you want to be a Doctor, you need to get out there do the hard yards with your study (and lets face it be naturally smart enough) and you will become a Doctor.

But there are two flip sides – one is that this statement is a ‘Me’ statement – another good ol’ American – I am the most important person in the world and I deserve to get everything that I want – statement. It encourages a level of entitlement. A person would believe that they are entitled to everything that they want because they have done something to make ‘it’ happen. I have to say people, this is what is wrong with the Y generation – this huge sense of entitlement. Somehow they are owed everything and feel that they are entitled to promotion, to excitement, to leadership. Although, perhaps enough of them do NOT put in enough of the work now I think about it.

The other negative side is that no matter what you do, how hard you work, and what opportunities you look for, you cannot have everything that you want. Imagine if you were 39 years old with a 5 year old and you have terminal cancer in your brain. They cannot cure you. They cannot cut out all the tumours festering in your head. You can take a million different drugs that make you fat, sleepless or that make you vomit 18 hours a day. You can do everything possible in the world but the thing you want - to be cured – is never going to happen.

Here are the things that I want:

• A four bedroom beach house in Coogee – its never going to happen; seriously I could save every dollar that I earned, I could invest in lotto or I could ask my husband to fall in front of a bus so I could claim his life insurance policy – but I would still never have enough for a flash beach pad in Sydney

• A much bigger house than the shoebox-in-middle-o-road that I live in now – this could happen actually, but I don’t know if I am willing to spend a year eating rice and beans just so we can afford to build it|

• My bestie to NOT have terminal cancer in her brain so that we can grow old together and continue to laugh at the idiotic things our kids do and say and to drink margaritas in the summer time for the next 40 years. I want this more than the beach pad and a large house but I am never going to get this one. Instead I will, one day far too soon, be pouring my own margaritas and writing things down so that I can remind her 5 year old of who her mother was, what she wanted for her daughter and trying to help her grow up to be the person her mother always wanted her to be

And you know what, there is nothing Oprah, Dr Phil or Anthony Robbins can ever say or do that will fix my friend. To be honest I am better off going to Lisa Williams or John Edwards once she has gone and asking for them to ask her if I am doing it right and if there is anything that I have forgotten to tell George.

Sigh, an angry pants start to my Now!vember challenge. Well, it is Monday morning….

Ingrid if you find me....

Can you tell me how i ever got so old that I bamboozled myself using a blog... How hard can it be I say? Sigh, everything is harder when you'd get older. I guess we are seconds away from having the kids starting their own blogs to whinge about us.

Can I just say...

Being a parent is hard - but holy hell there are idiots out there breeding! This woman takes the cake! Mind you, this isnt the first horror story I could tell..a number of years ago, whilst I was obviously INSANE, I belonged to a parenting forum. On that forum there was a mother in Queensland who used to give her toddler beer in a sippy cup. Can I just say that I rolled around on the ground howling with laughter at that one - what kind of idiot would a) give a toddler beer and b) then go and brag about it!

I know parenting is hard - in fact there is a distinct lack of zippy-da-do-da blue bird sitting on your shoulder moments when you are a parent. If parenting had a sound track it would be the same as Nightmare on Elm Street. But regardless of how hard you have to grind your teeth and remind yourself that killing your own offspring is in fact illegal, it isnt so hard that you forget that beer is not for babies.

Oh I know people who phenergan their kids to sleep every single night and I dont agree with that either, and good grief - it doesnt take any more brain cells than it took to have unprotected sex in the first place to know that drugging / giving alcohol to a child is a bad bad thing.

Oh well, if nothing else I get to be smug and condescending about NOT being the worst mother in the world.

Me