Wish I could think of a witty title

The adrenaline rush that I seemed to run on for two weeks after DH died seemed to disappear. Then I became sick. The one thing that seems to make a difference between me being sick for ages and recovering well is sleep. Ah, blissful sleep! But also elusive. While I was recovering, that was [...]

Confused

And bewildered, muddled, sad, angry, sad and confused again.
There’s a reason why I’ve been away for a month.
My dear husband passed away suddenly. A heart attack while he was out on a walk. For several hours I’d worried myself silly trying to find him, phoning hospitals, getting people to drive around the neighbourhood to see [...]

The Rug Rat Race

Fabulous title, eh? For your delectation and intellectual stimulation, may I direct you to the working paper of that name by Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey from the National Bureau of Economic Research, published in August 2009. (So it’s September and I’m behind in my reading. I’ve been travelling. That’s my excuse.)
This working paper [...]

It’s hard to travel

… when part of your luggage is worry.
Since DD was born, I have had 4 nights away from her. Two were when she spent the night at my mother’s over Christmas and I was a suburb away. One was when I eagerly went interstate for a work matter. The other was last weekend when DD [...]

Still not the perfect housewife

I’ve heard there is such a thing. She is the one who has a sparkling kitchen, no grease spots on the splashbacks, no errant crumbs in the bottom of the oven, and she always remembers to wear an apron so that her clothes are similarly spotless.
She irons her husband’s shirts and he prefers [...]

Mother and housewife

Honestly, if you looked at the duty statement, salary, benefits and key performance indicators and then conducted a full cost benefit analysis, you wouldn’t take on the job. See how my mind works when I’m being snarky?
I read this article by Kylie Orr.
So while we debate what level of qualifications our country’s [...]

Daylight saving

Yeah, like we’re saving buckets of it in a dark closet to bring out on a dull winter’s afternoon.
DD is not impressed and insists on waking at some ungodly hour. She took over my side of the bed while I had a shower, covered me in uncompliments while I got dressed (like I really need [...]

What price do you put on your children?

No, not on the open market.
For a while now the figure of over $500, 000 (Australian dollars) has been bandied about as the cost to raise two children to the age of 21. Not so, says Michael Dockery, an associate professor in the school of economics and finance at the Curtin University of [...]

Birth order

OK, I don’t believe in everything in your life being determined by your birth order, whether you’re first, last, middle, or only. But I know that I am also coloured by my notion that I was hard done by as the eldest (by seven years!) and had a huuuuuge amount of extra work to do [...]

Birthday panic

If I could go back maybe 10 or 5 years into the past, I would laugh at myself for any sudden bursts of panic that I had about my own birthday celebrations. I’ve worked out (somewhat late in the piece) that wrangling 5 or 10 adult guests to a restaurant or a park or [...]