Monthly Archives: March 2012
Tomorrow – open for inspection!
Why yes, we are having our 5th open house tomorrow. I can’t believe how fast time flies.
The house is looking close to immaculate. I write a to-do list on Fridays or Thursdays. Mine includes the following:
Empty rubbish
All newspapers to the recycling
Hide wastepaper baskets
Fresh towels in the bathrooms
Flowers for living room
Sweep steps and back deck
Tell cat to behave herself.
I’m sick of all this!
Yes, I’m sick of keeping an immaculate house at all times. I’ve admitted it. 
Things I need have been tidied away, not in filing cabinet drawers or desk drawers, but in unfriendly boxes in the back shed or tucked behind clothes in the wardrobes. I had to buy a new packet of envelopes because I simply couldn’t find the packet I’d already opened (and then tidied away!) in early February.
Of course, Little Miss Tidy was so tidy, she tidied everything away and couldn’t find things again!
International Women’s Day
Ok, my personal list of women I admire.
1. My mum
2. My daughter – for her resilience, fun, and potential
3. Julia Gillard (my daughter is her greatest fan)
4. A number of my friends who’d be embarrassed if I wrote their names here, but who have shown tenacity, determination, ambition, empathy and more.
5. Eva Cox
6. Germaine Greer
7. Samantha Stosur
Rachel Hills has compiled a list of 21 Women to Admire. And yes, Eva Cox is on the list!
Little Gumnut – words of wisdom
I love the blog Little Gumnut and I especially loved her list of “I wish someone had told me”. Oh hon, I wish I’d read your words of wisdom, too!
One particular piece of advice is one I will repeat here:
Working at your relationship is an activity, not something you can afford to be passive about. Passivity leads to the relationship lapsing just as much as unresolved arguments.
I admit that when I was lazy about working on my relationship with DH, letting things slide, not being observant etc. then this wasn’t good. On the other hand, putting in the effort will nearly always produce results. In the last 6 months or so of our marriage, DH and I were getting along famously – it almost felt like when we’d first met. I am so very, very grateful for the love and kindness and fun that we had together.
Working mothers – will the guilt never end?
Like the writer of this piece, Amy Gray, I don’t feel ‘working mother’s guilt’. I may feel guilty about other things (like when I demonstrate poor language choices by swearing at other drivers in Canberra’s annoying traffic!), but I don’t feel guilty about working to earn money so we have a roof over our head. I’m a widow. I don’t have a big fat pension to lean on and we hadn’t paid off our house when DH died. Like my mother, I’m giving my daughter an example of how to work and how to be a mother, and that neither is a walk in the park, yet both can be enormously rewarding on many different levels.
My paternal grandmother was widowed young with two small children. She also worked and had support from her mother with childcare. I have support from paid childcare. Believe me, I appreciate the fantastic young women and men who run exciting activities after school. I couldn’t come up with that variety of activities (soccer, monkey bars, tag, cricket, craft, etc.) for DD and me to do on our own – some things need a number of kids to make it work. DD loves being with other kids. She’s extroverted and very sociable. Hence the endless cries for playdates on the weekend.
