then and now

last week i completed an online survey for a study being conducted by some boffin out of mac uni.  it turned out to be a thought-provoking exercise.

mostly it was a bunch of ticker-box questions about the permissiveness and panic that parents get into over their kids.  questions like “do you let your child play in your front yard without you supervising?” etc, etc.  ‘course that question would have been answered very differently three years ago when we had no front yard, just a rat-run, speed-way lane three steps from our front door.  now we’ve gone to a great deal of effort and bought a padlock to make our front yeard safe and secure for tally tornado.

towards the end of the survey there were some open ended questions to be answered as you liked.  the first was something along the lines of “what activities did you do as a child that carried some risk?”  as i was writing my answer i realised the question could more accurately have been; “what damn foolish things did you get up to as a kid that you now, as a parent, would suffer palpatations over?”  i did qualify my answer with the explanation that i grew up in coastal and rural areas where adults were busy doing the stuff that kept life trundling along and kids made the fun they made pretty much only in each other’s company from sun-up to sun-down.

to illuminate… what did i do that i would have a spaz over if percy or tally tried to do the same?…

1. swim in flooded creeks with branches, logs and sometimes whole trees tumbling past at a rate of knots,

2. throw rocks at snakes to get them to move off the bloody road where we were trying to ride our pushies sans shoes and helmets,

3. dig cubbies and tunnels in soft sand cliffs,

4. spend the entire day horse-riding, sans helmet, beyond the reach of screaming for help, without anyone knowing where i was,

5. driving too fast around paddocks with dickhead friends in beat up utes, particularly fun at nite around bonfires, (do we still count as kids if we have driver’s licences?)

6. slaughtering and butchering animals, actually i took a role here that might best be described as “superivising!”

7. swimming in bass strait,

8. climbing rocks and cliffs barefoot and fancy-free…

you get the idea.  is this a case of “then and now?”  were these things inherently less dangerous 25 – 30 years ago?  i don’t really think so.  i also think our parents grew up with parents that were too busy doing the grown-up stuff to mind them 24/7, hence they didn’t do it to us.  do we, the parents of the 21st century have more time on our hands?  certainly i’d say from our grandparents we now have more time/labour saving devices (dishwashers etc.) but not so much from our parents.  or is it a country/city thing?  between the ages of 7 and 9 we lived in a rather remote part of rural nsw, known as “up the gulf” aka, the gulf road, angling north-west out of a little town once known as vegetable creek, renamed emmaville after the mayors’ or doctors’ or some other such dignitary’s wife.  population of emmaville when i lived there, circa 500.  up the gulf our second nearest neighbour was five kilometres along the dusty, worn-out, potted road.  lucky happenstance was that these neighbours included a girl of my own age (hi cheron) and we became friends.  it was in the creek behind her house that we dared the downed trees to drown us, flung noxious weeds on each other, scampered after the goats and tried to influence the behaviour of snakes.  the gulf road was inhabited by perhaps 10 families and just wore out to bush by the end of it.  hence the five clicks between us was so untravelled grass grew between the tyre tracks and animals used it as a convenient by-way.  what i’m getting at is there was no danger of us being driven over or coming across strangers.  our current address is in a street of over sixty houses less than 600 metres long, visited constantly by cars, in the midst of an international city of over 4 million permanent residents.  it’s not comparing apples to apples, is it?  i wouldn’t let percy ride her bike immediately outside our house without me in grabbing distance, my parents thought nothing of sending my brother and i five kilometres away entirely unattended.  (perhaps when she’s 8, i’ll just need to be in shouting distance.)

the second open-ended question in the survey asked what i got out of engaging in those risky behaviours.  my answer was something like “independance, a sense of adventure, a lot of scars, sunburn, life-long friends, a desire to see what’s always over the next hill and an uncanny and unfailing sense of direction.”

obviously i think these are things worth having, minus perhaps the scars!  my knees weren’t destined to be un-scabbed and rubbingly smooth.  you don’t list the things you don’t want to remember, or be remembered by- loneliness, stubborness.  so do i want these worthwhile things for my kids?  yes, of course i do.  do i think they won’t be able to achieve or attain them because i won’t let them swim in deadly bass strait without life guards and a rope nearby?  well, maybe…  i do think risk-taking and unsupervised activities and even shenanigans that i won’t ever be told about are important to develop the individual and unique strengths of my children.  i worry life in suburbia won’t give them thousands of hectares of wild to stretch and push themselves in.  can the experiences that will do that be found in physically constrained places?  i suppose so, i just have no personal history to prove it to me.  i do know many brave, adventurous, battle-scarred people raised in suburban settings… it must be possible!

a final question in the survey was “what do you fear most for your children?”  gawd, talk about stop you in your tracks!  do the people that compiled this survey have kids?  i sat and i thought, and i thought a bit more… and finally i answered:

“in descending order;

1. loss of life, 2. loss of ability (mental and physical), 3. loss of freedom, 4. loss of desire, 5. loss of opportunity”

i didn’t elaborate in the survey but i think i will here.  loss of life is obvious.  loss of ability nearly as obvious; i fear for them to have to live their life hampered by disability.  loss of freedom encompasses from “wake-in-the-nite-in-a-cold-sweat-from-a-bad-dream psycho kidnapping them to losing the freedoms we associate with democratic systems.  loss of desire means the loss of the love of learning, seeing, doing, asking, reaching, exploring, adventuring, turning the corner, cresting the hill, poking your nose in, caring, anything ending in an ‘ing’ really, as well as the loss of love.  and loss of opportunity to me means losing the chance or the right to try something even if you are willing and able.  for instance living in a dictatorship or a war zone or a religiously dominated society, or being barred from climbing to the top of uluru or not hugging old growth forest trees because they’ve all been chopped down.

are these pretty standard fears and hopes?  would each generation answer much the same?  i suspect as much may change between “then and now”, a good deal of it will stay the same.

misc – noah’s ark

something i came across a week ago…

“Everything I need to know about life, I learned from Noah’s Ark

1. don’t miss the boat,

2. remember that we are all in the same boat,

3. plan ahead.  it wasn’t raining when noah built the ark,

4. stay fit.  when you’re 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something really big!

5. don’t listen to critics, just get on with the job that needs to be done,

6. build your future on high ground,

7. for safety sake, travel in pairs,

8. speed isn’t always an advantage.  the snail were on board with the cheetas,

9.  when you’re stessed, float awhile,

10. remember the ark was built by amateurs, the titanic by professionals.”

 

made me smile and think- that’s a pretty good result from 10 short dot points.

 

thank you sisters

last week i suffered an ever so slight 1950′s moment, i’ll call it.  it’s actually been the case for the majority of women for the majority of history, and persists for many today.

tally took my wallet off for a play and rummage one morning.  when i retrieved it i could not find my bank key card.  little bugger, no cash in the wallet anyways and now an annoying trip to the bank to cancel the card and get a new one, with the associated wait of easily over a week for a PIN to be posted to me.  i would be dependant on paul to dole out the money to me.  akin to a goodie wife i must wait meekly my master’s hand outs.  tho, you understand, it’s not like that in our household anyways.  paul trusts me completely and wouldn’t require me to account for every penny spent.  as it turned out i did find my bank card after diligently searching the entire house and trying to think like a two and half year old- “where would i hide something small, within reach?”  he hadn’t hidden it at all really; it was tucked in behind another card in my wallet.  oops!  should have searched harder the first time.

i did start to think about all the freedoms and equalities that women enjoy now.  i know there are many more yet to achieve and around the world even the simplest are out of reach for too, too many women.  however for what has been achieved and for what men and women continue to fight for; thank you.

to all the sisters who have ever sat down, stood up, lain down or got chained up for a right or a cause, thank you.  to the women who have bought a corset or burnt a bra, filled in a form, refused to tick a box, written a letter, learnt to write, spoken up, remained silent, been labeled, pointed fingers, marched in the pouring rain, refused to get out of a warm bed, held their head high, met the gaze, run away, taken a bullet (particularly literally) stood firm, joined together, remained apart, shouted from roof tops, negotiated behind closed doors, banged drums, banged heads, held hands, held guns, or did any large or small thing that has made my life freer and easier, thank you.

to the men and women who continue to strive, to the suffragettes and the sufferers, i bow my humble head and offer thanks.

alternative focii

is that a word?  focii?  as opposed to “focuses”?

on the importance of an alternative area for focus in your life.

discuss.  (well, not really, i’m just going to expound.)

it is important for every person to have a range of interests or pursuits or hobbies or jobs or things of interest or call it whatever you will, for them to switch their focus between.  unless you are totally driven and fulfilled by one thing.  then, i suppose you won’t be sent mad by doing nothing but that thing, constantly.

spread the burden of occupying your mind amongst a few things.  they don’t all have to be gob-smackingly amazing.  i don’t encourage you to cure cancer and establish world peace all at the same time.  my mind occupying burden is spread amongst relatively simple things- reading, blogging, house designing, caring for my children, enjoying my friends, re-establishing a liveable garden here in loves ave, o bay.  one of the other things that gets a degree of focus, while at the same time remaining mostly thought-free is cleaning and housework.  it allows time to pass in a fog.  sometimes a nice thing.  i find i clean when my head is in a mess.  when i can’t think straight or don’t know what to do to achieve what i want; i clean.  it’s a bit ocd, and settling.  repeatively doing something (vaccuuming, washing dishes, ironing, etc.) returns me to a placid state.  with the bonus of being able to look around me and feel “well, i can’t seem to sort that out, but look- i can achieve something!”  there’s no more snot on the kids clothes and we have clean dishes to eat from.  that sort of thing.

it’s perhaps telling that when paul and i fight, he goes off to work for his alternative focii and i stay home and clean.  seems the bigger the fight and cleaner the house.  the house is moderate to quite clean today.

breaking the cycle

apparently the likelihood of abused children growing-up and becoming abusive parents is very high.  higher than 50%.  that’s a horrid statistic.  and one i query.

i must first point out that i in no way condone or excuse abusive behaviour.  it’s evil and nasty and under-mining and un-ending in its effect.  abusers are, in my opinion and understanding, hurting and hurtful people that have either disdained or dismissed the opportunity to be bigger and better.  and the opportunity is there for everyone.  even the most addicted, wretched, hopeless person has the ability, at some time, even if only for short times, to think.

i query the statistic and the affirmed fact that victims are more likely than not, to turn into perpertrators.  of the many (unfortunately) abused as children people i know, not a single one, NOT A SINGLE ONE, would repeat the behaviours visited on them.  they would also not abuse by a different method either.  why am i so sure of this?  because i see it and i speak about it.  people have relayed to me their harrowing tales and i see the love and determination in their relationships with their children.  i’ve been into their homes and i feel confident that they are not abusers.  true, i’m not there 24/7 and god know abusers are great at tricking others, either intentionally or subconsciously, into believing love and light is all that happens in their home.  but i just can’t believe such a huge percentage of victims go on to be abusers.  i know men and women now that were beaten and molested and neglected as children, share anxious days, nights, weeks, months and years trying to concieve a child, birth and raise that child and never let that child have even an inkling that they are anything less than entirely safe and loved immeasureably all their life.  these people have broken the labeled ‘cycle of abuse.’

i know supposedly it is those people, already behind the eight ball, that have heaped disadvantages, that make it into the statistics and are the easiest to study, are probably not the people that i, in my cushy, white-bread, middle-class, easy suburban life do not have much, if any, contact with.  the people i do meet, associate with and become friends with, are predominantly tertiary educated, white-collar workers.  they have the brains, the means and the wherewithal to recognise problems and solve them.  they can pay for, access and continue counselling.  they can call on support from friends, family, paid-for professionals and government agencies.  they can understand life can be different and see the light at the end of the tunnel.

perhaps i just don’t understand how different and difficult life can be for the badly marginalised?  i’ve read that most of our prison population were abused as children.  it’s easy to study prisoners, they’re not going anywhere and answering the questions of some arts student is time away from washing dishes and being locked in a cell.  not very representative tho.

my journey out of my parents home, to independance and now into a type of dependance again was relatively easy.  (the dependance i feel now is actually on my children.  it’s an intrinsic and hard to explain need i have for them to be in my life.  i depend on them not to do anything or to provide me with anything, just to be there.  it’s going to take a separate exploration/post to make myself clear…)  i saw no long life for me in my parents home and left it shortly after my sixteenth birthday.  i had the advantage of living in a rural town where rent is cheap and boredom unmitigatable (word?)  i could complete high school at liberty and provided i stole a portion of my needs got by.

 

this has been a difficult post to write.  odd, that after twent years i need to remind myself that the unhealthy behaviour that was modeled to me in my parents house is not something i need to let affect me now.  i want to congratulate all the broken children, that by whatever means you used, you healed yourself and are now a bigger and better adult.  you’ve taken your broken self and broken a cycle.

 

percy’s school career (part 2)

percy is doing brilliantly at school.  i think she has settled into kindergarten very well.

she has made friends and we’ve got a couple of lovely families that live one minute around the corner that we walk to/from school with every day.  so many families are popping up so close to us- how come we’ve missed them the past two years?

percy’s teacher is mrs stevenson, who appears very professional and caring.  it’s a large class she’s in.  there are three kindergarten classes at oyster bay primary this year.  each class has 23 kids in it.  apparently if there had been just one more enrollment, the school could have made four kindergarten classes.  oh well.  i think it does percy a world of good not to be the centre of the universe all the time.  i have noticed her temperament, behaviour, consideration, vocabulary, sharing, thoughfulness and general maturity are all changing and improving.  it’s nice.  yeah, we still have disagreements and altercations but not as many and not as fierce.  (i wonder how much this has to do with me being home full-time, also?  there’s no non-stop rush to be out the door at 7:20am every day now.  in fact percy is occasionally still asleep at 7:20am!)

she has already attended her first school friend birthday party, has invited seven friends to her own and has an invitation to another.  i predict a busy year of recycling gifts!  oooh, that’s a bit bad of me, isn’t it?  by way of explaination/apology, i haven’t a clue what present to give percy, let alone another five year old child.

percy is reading her “reader” (a simple book, for all those non-school attending people) every nite with paul.  he has far more patience to sound out the words with her than i do.  she is enjoying mathletics (an online maths teaching program), playing outside when the weather permits, taking things in to talk about for news day (mondays) and otherwise not telling much about it at all.  which apparently is typical.

i’m concerned her reading ability is behind that of her peers. i haven’t much proof of this and i do remind myself that she is not yet five years old while some in her class are nearly six.  we have been advised to give her time and plenty of encouragement and soon enough the “light-bulb” moment will happen when she “gets” reading and then there’ll be no stopping her.  if i was the praying type, that’s the day i would pray for.  if all four us could be curled up on the day bed together, each reading our own book with a gentle breeze and a pleasant sun, i’d be in heaven.

speaking of praying… percy attended scripture class yesterday.  needless to say i was ropable!!  this morning it got worse.  a class mate’s mum and i both approached mrs stevenson to voice our displeasure.  mrs stevenson will do more to ensure it doesn’t happen again.  however the other mum told me her daughter came home to her with this message “the scripture teacher told me to tell you that i should be doing scripture.”  WTFFFFFF!!!!  it’s sometimes lucky that percy doesn’t communicate much about school with me because if she had said that to me i would be demanding to know the name, telephone number and home address of the scripture teacher so i could give her a taste of hell before she gets there in the natural course of events.  they have next week to get things right before they get a letter from my lawyer!

oyster bay public school is split over two campuses.  there about 200m apart along the same road.  one site is the k-2, the other the 3-6.  except this year because the year one student body is so large, as is the kindergarten intake, the year 2′s have been booted up to the 3-6 campus, as space is at a premium on the kindy site.  it makes for a rather sweet, small school with just the kindies and year one kids together.  the new kindergarten kids get teamed up with a buddy from both year one and year six (tho with only one year six class, the year fives have ben drafted in to be buddies too this year.)  i don’t know who are percy’s buddies yet, they may not have been paired up yet.  percy has been down to the 2-6 campus for an official tour, plus that’s where we go on weekends to practice bike and scooter riding on a flat surface.  so when she moves up there i don’t think it will be a big transition.  it is a shame that she’ll be on a different campus by the time tally starts kindergarten.

i made the mistake of only buying one uniform dress and three shirt and short sets.  of course, she only wants to wear the dress.  which she does, four days running until sports day on friday which is a different uniform.  oh well.

i’m waiting for a call back from the principal… about the scripture attendance…

unsubstantiated theories

i should probably mark this as “unsubstantiated theory no. 1″, as i’m sure i have a few bubbling away in my brain.

anyways, here’s this one…

our lovely neighbours have sold their house.  and i have a bad feeling about it.  congrats to them on doing so of course.  they were pulling the plug when an offer came in that was acceptable and both parties signed up.  well done too on negotiating with the agent to pay no commission!  how does that happen?!

but back to my bad feeling.  lovely neighbour told me that the purchaser is a guy buying solely in his name and his wife/partner/girlfriend hasn’t see the place.  why should this trigger doubts for me?  well, because i wonder who will be living next door to us.  we already have absolute shits on the other side, i really like having lovely, nice, sane, rational, friendly, chatty people on one side.  i don’t want to lose that.

who might move in next door?  perhaps it is to be an investment and some other lovely family will rent it, hence the partner doesn’t really need to see it.  but my concern is that, given women account for 80% of the buying decision, particularly for the family home, what woman hands over this big decision entirely to her partner?  is she a beaten, subjugated, worn, silent observer?  (take that as literally or as figuratively as you like)  does that make the guy an arsehole?  on the other hand perhaps she’s overseas and he’s taken her thru electronically via his smart phone.  i shouldn’t tend towards the negative.  i just don’t want to be at home most of the time and have idiots on either side.

additionally, when we come to extend and renovate our house, shit neighbours are going to make it hell, please, please, don’t let that hell get doubled.

i suppose we’ll find out in six weeks when the settlement happens who the new neighbours are.  no point fretting before then.  except i can’t shake my trepidation.  oh well.

and finally, how do i tell percy and tally their dear friends s and j are moving away??  hopefully not too far away but there’s nothing closer than hollering over the fence and running back and forth between yards to play with each other.  i predict tears (perhaps from all of us.)

three weeks of real estate

some thoughts on my experiences working as a sales assistant in a real estate office…

(these days it’s common for sales agents to have an assistant, or two, or even more!  the assistant does much the same job as the agent but for a set salary rather than a commission on sales made.  the progression is usually after 18-24 months the assistant becomes an agent in their own right.)

it probably won’t come as a surprise to you but every agent is it in for the money.  i imagine i was still being naive, however i thought sales agents were interested in the back story too.  you know- who the seller is, why they are selling, what motivates them, what do they want to achieve in life? and likewise for the buyers.  but they’re not.  and maybe that is a good thing because the relationship should be a professional one, not a personal one. 

i did think some personal connection would be created tho.  some caring, some out-of-hours thought.  not so.  if you think the sales person selling your home cares about you, it’s just pitch.  they’ve practiced this and polished it and it’s working a charm on you.  believe me the agent doesn’t give a flying fig about you.  you are just a walking wallet to them.  sure they’ll remember you for a while and say hi in the street for a year or so, they’ll send you a christmas card every year ’til you move address or die.  but they don’t care one bit.

i asked my ex-boss, when he said to me “it’s the best job in the world”; “why?”  because it’s easy money, and lots of it, he replied.  yes, easy money i suppose it is, particularly for a high school drop-out.  i then asked, “aside from the money, why is it the best job?”  he hedged and fudged and um’d and didn’t have an answer.  tellingly, he’s not alone.  every sales agent i’ve spoken to since, particularly potential employers, emphasise the uncapped income.  i realise none of them are interested in the person.  you could have deaf-mute, disabled twin toddlers to house and all they see is you’ll pay more to get a house that suits your needs.  what are those needs?  who cares!!  so long as you’ll pay thru the nose, and they can skim off a nice commission, when you buy one of their listings.

another observation… total and complete lack of respect.  if you don’t list your house with a particular agent you are a fucking idiot.  if you do, you are an unrealistic fucking idiot.  if you have questions about buying a property you are a deranged fucking idiot.  need i go on?   i will summarise a little story for you…  one of my colleagues and i were talking… about sending our kids to school next year.  my colleague has chosen a catholic education as they feel better discipline, respect, authority and morals are to be achieved in this way.  they then took a phone call from a possible buyer of a listing they held.  after a short conversation about strata fees the call ended and my colleague took to swearing and abusing the buyer, for no fair reason.  hope that catholic education works out, ’cause they sure aren’t going to learn those things at home.  this is not an isolated case.

final point.  if you have bought a property and now need to sell your current place, don’t use the same agent you bought thru.  don’t, don’t, don’t!  that agent now knows exactly how stretched for cash you are and will squeeze you and squeeze you until you accept any price for your old place.  it doesn’t make that much difference to them.  $8k commission isn’t much different from $11k.  but not getting any commission from a non-sale is a big deal.  they will “condition” you every day of the week until you drop the price enough to secure a sale- the faster the better.  don’t get suckered into thinking this person cares about you, they really don’t.  even if it is your uncle jack.

this day in history

sounds a little dramatic doesn’t it? 

it will be significant in my history i’m sure, but probably not for anyone outside my immediate family.

since telling you about my planned career change in october last year i’ve been quite busy and too knackered to write.  i have an unexpectedly spare afternoon right now.  i’m at home, tally is at day care and percy is seeing the picasso exhibit at the art gallery of nsw with her grandparents.  plus i seem to have buggered the chain saw so i’m not outside hacking the damn macadamia tree into burnable pieces like i thought i would. 

the telling piece in that paragraph is that “i’m at home”, on a friday.  here’s the story why…

while serving out my remaining four weeks at housing nsw after i resigned, i secured myself a job as a sales assistant at a local real estate office.  yippee!  the career change plans were so far working well.  i was going to be working very close to home doing something that i’m sure i would love (helping people realise their ambitions of selling or buying their houses) i would make great links to my local community and i would bring ethics and a caring soul into real estate.  these things i did.  and i did really enjoy it.  real estate is not a brain taxing job.  sure, there are things to remember and legislation to follow, procedures and processes, obligations and requirements; just like most jobs.  it is not difficult, however it is time consuming.  time and raising young children don’t really mix.  we had plans to smooth this out tho- a nanny, paul coming home early on certain days, me staying late on set days, long day care, two cars, activities involving kiddies scheduled outside work hours, grandparents… 

the time consumption was exacerbated by the stated work hours and the actual expected hours being quite different.  my boss and i clashed on this a number of times.  i think we were both at fault in not explaining our expectations to each other clearly.  one of the most important tasks a real estate agent must undertake is prospecting for new business- getting ‘listings’.  now if you’ve been in the game for a long time and you have a large referral list perhaps you can let business come to you (tho eventually all that business will move away, die or forget you) otherwise you need to find people who want to sell their house and commission you to do it for them.  finding these people means knocking on their doors or telephoning them.  it’s called cold-calling.  i actually don’t have a problem, as most people seem to expect one to, with this activity.  in fact i love nattering to people about property, and as property is a hobby for near everyone in sydney, most people i’ve come across are happy to natter back.  perhaps it’s different out here in the ‘burbs as i found nearly everyone either wanted to talk, not just tolerated me giving the sales pitch before they released the hounds, or actually wanted to show me around their house and discuss all the good and bad aspects of the place, the street, the neighbourhood, the local shops, the local schools, you name it.  however (here it comes) in the month or two leading up to christmas not many people are concerned with selling their homes.  unsurprisingly they’ve got other things on their mind.  which is not to say some people don’t, but i think it is fair to say their focus is elsewhere.  which for me, meant securing absolutely no listings and turning in dismal numbers.  as an example… i stayed late one evening and made 70 telephone calls, which trust me, is not a big amount, during what is understood to be the prime time to call 5:30 to 7pm.  of those 70 calls, only 7 people actually answered and none wanted to sell their home at that time.  can i force people to answer the phone?  my percieved poor performance and apparent “lack of enthusiasm” meant that after three weeks i was asked to resign.  i wonder if it’s better to resign or get fired?  so the week before christmas i found myself truly unemployed, and i’ve remained so since.  i have applied for two other sales assistant jobs but have been unsuccessful.

fast forward to yesterday.  i made the momentous decision, with paul’s support and encouragement, to take up my other full time job in a full-time way- parent.  for the next year and maybe more i’ll be a stay at home mum.  given that the salary for a real estate sales assistant is $32k a year we may actually save money!  here’s what we won’t be spending money on:  day care (poor tally is going to be staying home with me; hope he survives), driving to day care, me buying lunch, drinks and snacks while at work, make-up, hosiery, hair cuts and colours, car running costs, mobile telephone bill (the $1k a year phone allowance does not cover it!), nannies, before and after school care for percy and i’m sure some sundry other things i’m not remembering at the moment.  the things that we will gain include percy getting walked to and from school everyday, tally having my mostly undivided attention during the day, my time to do the house things we’d all rather not do at 9pm- i mean ironing and the like! and particularly important my time and soon to be much ramped up expertise in being project manager for the redevelopment of our little slice of suburbia. 

i wrote a list yesterday of my goals for 2012.  it is as follows:

1. toilet train tally, 2. help percy to have great year at kindergarten, 3. learn to cook more dishes, 4. practice yoga everyday, 5. complete renovation of front yard, 6. clear excess vegetation from rear yard, 7. relocate shed, 8. build rear deck, including access ramp, 9. complete plans for house renovation, 10. build new chicken run, 11. create vegetable garden and 12. defy mayan calendar!

it’s a good, achieveable list i think.  there’s more to it than first appears too.  for instance, the deck is no little bit of wood on a level, easy access bit of ground, it’s to be an enormous structure that spans ten metres across the site, steps over probably three levels with a fall of four to five metres and i estimate around 12 metres of depth.  plus, let’s not get into what it will take to defy those head-strong mayans!

had you said to me five years ago i would choose to be a stay-at-home parent, and be looking forward to it, i would have peed myself laughing.  how we change…

mind you, if anyone has or knows of a book shop for sale within reach of my home let me know.  that’s another career path i’d love to grow old into.

career change

so, big news!  having an early mid-life crises, assuming i’ll live to more than 72.  actually i don’t think it’s any sort of crises at all.  still, big news!

 (note: i use the word “so” too often.  if i left in all the “so’s” before publishing you’d stop reading this blog; quite a few get edited out.  i think i picked it up when i was flying; all the austrian crew said it all the time.  maybe i’m ethnically inclined to pick up the usage, what with being mostly german and what with austrians and germans being much the same people- don’t tell the captain!

on the other hand, i love using punctuation marks and i won’t stop!   think we all should use a lot more punctuation.  spice up your sentences and messages and put your personal twinge on it.)

so!  (ha ha, just kidding!)  the big news is i’ve quit my job.  first time ever in my working life i’ve put in my notice with nothing to put my hand to next.  hummm, errr, ok.  mostly.  i know my working life would generally be counted as a short one.  i’ve been having a tilt at this town planning thingo for 15 years now.  tho i would like to claim my working life, with real responsibility started when i was six years old.  there was a considerable hiatus from age six to sixteen but at six i put myself to work at the caravan park my parents managed.  i don’t recall being asked to do that job i just wanted to, i’ve been a pushy thing all my life!  (i prefer to think of it as supremely well organised and nearly always right now, thank you)  what job was it?  i answered the telephone and made bookings for people to holiday at the park, i manned the office when mum and dad were away and allocated spots to drive-in holiday makers and i led people to those allocated spots.  i did wonder later what the grown-ups used to be thinking when they were driving slowly down a dirt road with a scrubby six-year-old marching ahead of them to show them where to park their ‘van.  or when they were greeted in the office with my piggie-tails sticking out and me probably picking a scab on my knee.  (i didn’t have the finer points of personal presentation in the fore front of my mind at that time.)  i never fucked it up either; never made double bookings, never put people in a spot they wouldn’t fit, always checked whether they’d like to be nearer or further away from the amenities block, near the play ground, how much space they needed to manoeuvre the ‘van, etc. 

mum and dad were often away from the office because they had other duties about the park and mum ran the household too.  one of the things dad did was build a fantastic playground for all the kids that came to the park.  this ‘van park was in blairgowrie on the mornington peninsula, south of melbourne.  during the school holidays it was packed!  really packed!!  there was a large house with substantial outside areas that as the manager’s family we had the run of.  during peak times even these outside areas filled up with caravans and tents too- i wonder if that was legal?  so all the parents of all the kids (there i go again, another “so”) and the kids themselves, were very happy to have a great jungle gym built right next to the bbq tables.  i’m sure it would be an oh&s nitemare now but we loved it.

where was i?  job quitting… well, i’ve got a little under four weeks to go before i’m unemployed.  i haven’t been unemployed in a long time.  i’m not scared yet.  i’ll probably wake up in cold sweats in three weeks time.  the hiatus from when we left the caravan park when i was eight years old (two years that i do like to revisit in my memory, might write about it later) to when i left my parents home at age 16 was pretty much filled with school- so i wasn’t slacking off, a’right?  upon leaving home i picked up some cash-in-hand cleaning jobs, to supplement the $120 a week austudy i was entitled to, to pay the rent.  let me make clear there are not a lot of jobs for a 16 year old in glen innes.  even the only fast food place, the tiniest kfc you’ve ever seen, didn’t open up until after i left town.  since starting uni I’ve had a job ever since.  i feel i’m some what justifying getting to 36 and choosing to be unemployed, by citing the past 30 years have been filled with endeavours of one kind or another.

i will say now that there is a plan; i’m not choosing to be unemployed, i’m choosing to start something new.  it gives me butterflies to think about it, i’m really excited and i’m out to prove something.  stay tuned!