there's more to life

Yesterday I took the baby into town to the aquatic centre to enrol him in swimming lessons and on the long walk back past the bush reserve, the sound of cicadas lulled the baby to sleep in his stroller. At the entrance to the reserve there was a sign saying "The Sanctuary" and I smiled and made a mental note to come back sometime and take a photo of us in front of it for my blog.
When we got back to the main street I saw a man at the traffic lights who seemed vaguely familiar. He looked to be in his forties or fifties and had on jeans with a shirt tucked in, and silver glasses. As we approached I realised it was a writer I had got talking to once before. He had told me back then how a professor had encouraged him to get his life story published. Now I called out to him, "Hey, you're the guy who wrote that book, aren't you?" and he stopped and said he was. I said I'd been trying to remember the name of his book so I could look for it at the local library.
"There's More To Life," he said. We started walking towards town together and he explained he was on his way to a job interview as a nurse's aide. I wished him luck. I asked if he'd been doing any more writing lately and he said yes, he had just written some new articles. I asked if I could read them and he said, "Do you have time to come back to my house? You can read them there."
So we walked a couple of hundred metres to a small light-blue weatherboard house with a fading sign out front indicating it was a holiday unit.
"Housing Commission bought it," the writer explained as he helped me lift the stroller up the stairs into his house. We entered the living room which was dominated by a large oval wooden table covered in sheets of paper, some typed, some handwritten. The handwriting was perfect cursive, every letter formed with care. He waved at a chair and handed me a sheaf of typed paper and I started reading, rocking the stroller with my foot. The articles concerned alcoholism, child abuse, marital breakdowns. As I read, the writer elaborated on the material with heartbreaking tales of his family life.
"Where did you learn to write like this," I said finally, amazed at the language skills and vocabulary. Sure, his sentence structure wasn't always perfect, but then, whose is?
The man shrugged. "The professor said I had a gift," he said. The stroller started moving so I took the cover off and helped the baby sit up and see where we were. The writer held out a tin of butter biscuits and offered the baby one. The baby took a biscuit in both hands and chewed thoughtfully, looking at the man with interest.
"First time he's seen a blackfella," I said.
The man looked wistfully at my child and told me how much he missed his grandchildren. He said he was always praying they would visit him from Sydney, but that they never did. He had separated from his wife after many years of marriage and she had then alienated him from his children, and now his grandchildren as well.
"Take a look in the bedrooms back there," he said to me. I hesitated, feeling uncomfortable at the idea of going into a stranger's bedrooms.
"Go on, take a look."
So I dutifully ventured to the rear of the house and looked in the bedrooms. In one, there was a neatly made double bed. In the next, there were three single beds, again perfectly made up. Each bed had a teddy bear sitting on the pillow.
I came back and touched the man's shoulder. He had tears in his eyes. The baby ate another biscuit and listened as the man and I got talking (or really, I got listening) about the plight of the suburban Aborigine. He told me how it felt to have grown up with no links with his traditional culture and yet, not ever feeling part of white man's Australia either. He said he'd once had a group of Italian friends staying with him. Over dinner, they had got into a spirited conversation between themselves, but had stopped talking when they noticed him crying. They'd asked if he was upset that they were talking in Italian. He had said no, he was upset because he had lost his own language.
The writer changed the subject. He told me he had recently begun dating a woman called Linda*. He shuffled through some papers covered with the beautiful handwriting and started reading out aloud some of the love letters he had written for her.Linda, I thought. Do you know how lucky you are to get love letters like this?
It was time for the writer to go to his job interview. He wrote the title of his book and his pen-name on a slip of paper and gave it to me.
"Koorie Dhoulagarle", I tried out his pen-name. "What does it mean?"
"Aboriginal Spirit", he said. We said our goodbyes and I promised we'd come visit again next time we were in town. I walked away thinking of the stories he had told me of his family. His father who'd been into an English-speaking school and forbidden to use his own language. One day, they'd asked him to spell 'apple'. He'd simply drawn a picture of one. And now here was his son, who wrote English as if he had a university education.
Anyway, maybe next time I'll ask him if he'd like me to publish some of his articles here.

lowest common denomination

I had some conversations with a local preacher some months ago in which he mentioned that a child is considered to be innocent until it reaches the age where it understands right from wrong in a meaningful sense. The preacher reckoned this usually occurred when a child was about three.
So why do people feel the need to baptise an infant? As I understand it, baptism is a ritual that is supposed to provide "forgiveness for sinning". Well, correct me if I'm wrong but an 11-month-old infant has not sinned.
It is important to me that my child is not baptised. I'd like him to have the chance to remain free of religious labelling until he is old enough to decide for himself whether or not he wants to subscribe to a particular religion. I don't believe it's one parent's right to impose their world-view on a child. I don't intend to tell Harley he is an atheist just because I am one.
Isn't it the child's right to choose what he believes in? Isn't Christianity based around the premise that God gave man free will so that he could choose to believe in God? So why not let a kid decide to believe (or not) when they are old enough to understand the concepts involved? Why tell them they are "a Christian" as if it's something like being "an Australian"?
I know some people will think I am being petty about this, but it's really important to me that Harley has the right to be involved in figuring out his world views and belief systems for himself. I want to expose him to many ideas and philosophies as he grows, and let him enjoy the process of figuring it all out. Hey, it may take a lifetime! I still haven't figured it out entirely myself. I just stick with a basic lowest-common-denominator rule: all religions and humanistic philosophies reckon we should be nice to each other and the planet we depend on. Easy. No need for self-flagellation over various "sins" like masturbation or homosexuality or illegitimacy, and the rest. No need to waste all your life in prayer or at houses of worship.
I'm curious. What if I were Jewish? Would the child's father still have the right to force me to permit a baptism? So why should the situation be any different when one parent is an atheist?
A judge gets to decide it tomorrow, anyway. But frankly, I'll be shocked if a court of law can order a religious ceremony take place and a child be forced to adopt a religion just to please one parent.
We'll see...............

update: The judge said the issues involved require more time to be fully considered and listed it for hearing again on 20 March. And so it drags on...

leading man

Poor Mark. Well, with hindsight it's clear he just wasn't ready for the job, and wasn't the right choice for the job in the circumstances. I now regret having preferred him over Kim Beazley back when the leadership was up for grabs. We really should've let Beazley lose one more for us and then brought Latham in in time for the next election.
But with hindsight I also disagree with Adele Horin's recent claim that Latham's flaw was that he is a bully. I now think he was just out of his depth and nervous, which led to him acting strange and being withdrawn and projecting the wrong vibes, namely arrogance and coldness. That handshake wasn't aggro--it was overcompensation.
And it didn't help that Latham suffered a lot of negative publicity in relation to his personal life. I do think it was cruel and unacceptable for the media to indulge a bitter ex-wife in essentially portraying him as some kind of malignant narcissist. I think the biggest problem for Mark was this sense of coldness he emanated, of unhappiness even. Perhaps he was actually suffering chronic pain from his illness and was therefore just unable to project those qualities we had associated with him from his past behavior: vigour, energy, passion. Something was just missing.
So now Beazley's going to get another go. Fine--et's let Beazley lose another one for us. Can we please learn from the mistake we made with Latham and not ruin the Gillards and Rudds at this point? I have a lot of faith in Julia Gillard, but let's give her a chance to build a public support base. As for the criticism I keep reading that she'll never be leader because she's from the Left faction--that's just a crock. What does it mean? That Julia is never going to get a go just because she's from the Left? That no-one from the Left faction is ever going to get a go? It's a stupid argument. As for Kevin Rudd, I'm happy to have him as shadow foreign minister. He's intelligent, calm, compassionate and good-humored, as we frequently see on Channel Seven's Sunrise breakfast show. All qualities you want in a foreign minister. He might be a good leader one day, but I reckon Gillard would be better.
Anyway, poor Mark. It must have been such a humiliating and disappointing experience to have lost. And to have been ill--as he says, with a life-threatening illness--all along couldn't have been a lot of fun. Let's give him a break. He wasn't right for the job, sure, but he did an OK job. Let's not forget how even up til the end there was a sense he could win it. Let's not forget how he creamed John Howard in the debate (remember the worm?).
The biggest problem for having staked our chances on Latham was the geopolitical circumstances we live in. The War on Terror, the war in Iraq. At a time like that, the country understandably wanted security and economic certainty. That's not Latham's fault. With hindsight, Beazley would've been the better choice (though I still believe he would've lost it). Beazley had the relationship with the US. Beazley had the experience in Defence. So we ballsed it up. But let's go easy on Mark eh? You did OK, son.

giving it up

Inspired by John Quiggin's "creative giving" series, I'm hereby going to donate the money I get for hosting advertising textlinks on my site (see righthand column under "sponsors") to tsunami relief. It's not a huge amount of money but it does roll in monthly so it's an ongoing commitment. And if any other advertisers wish to run textlinks or blog-ads here, I'll be happy to donate their fees to tsunami aid as well.

the benign sea

(photo by Jen)

on message

By the way, I always reply to emails so if you've emailed me and I haven't responded, please try again, putting the word 'blog' somewhere in the subject line so I can differentiate it from spam (unless of course I already know who you are). Thanks a lot.

palpitations

I was folding the baby's clothes yesterday when I saw a small, spiky-looking black spider struggling to get out of a fold in the fabric. I thought it was just a common house spider at first but then I saw the almost fluorescent red stripe on its back: a redback. Far out, that was close!
Anyway, I just looked redback spiders up on the web...online, that is. As you might know, the female eats the male during sex:

The female begins to squirt digestive juices onto the male's abdomen while the first palp is inserted. If he is not too weak, he will manage to withdraw, and then insert the second palp. She will continue to 'digest' his abdomen. Most males do not survive this process, which seems to be unique to Latrodectus hasselti.

Surely a case of evolution gawn wrong...from the male's perspective anyway. And when you think about it, doesn't this mean each male can only ever mate once? Wonder how that affects their species?

yes you have and yes he is

Prince Harry's non-apology yesterday ("If I have caused offence, I'm sorry"), reminded me of John Howard's message to Mark Latham a couple of days ago: "If he is sick, I wish him a speedy recovery..."
Such a subtle way of expressing doubt. Not.

blue pole

I was lying in bed just now watching a shadow on the blinds and thinking it looked like a man coming towards me and stopping and wavering and then coming towards me again and it was a while before I clicked that it wasn't any man, it was merely the shadow of the enormous Australian flag that's stuck into the top of our house.

make love not war

No, really:

Declassified documents reveal the Pentagon toyed with the idea of an aphrodisiac chemical weapon in 1994. The gas would have made enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. The weapon's developers said homosexual behaviour among troops would deal a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

Actually I reckon soldiers on both sides should get ecstasy rations. Imagine it.

real time

Damn, I would've loved to have seen this--Germaine Greer on Big Brother!--but I don't guess it'll air here. Sigh..........

when he's down

Hey, that's a bit harsh. No matter what we think of Latham's election performance, surely a sick man can go outside a couple of times a day and get some fresh air? Time to leave the guy alone, isn't it?

yours sincerely

The sad thing is that so many people will believe it.

this is a love story

I love this blogger.

goodbye mr chips

Recently I was feeling uncomfortable when my sponsors asked me to update their text links to ones advertising online gaming. So I took down the links and, at the suggestion of Kyte, emailed the sponsors asking if they had something other than online gaming ads for me to host. To my surprise I got a very nice email back saying they "take pride in keeping [their] advertising website owners happy", and providing different links.
Unfortunately, they gave me the payday lenders again, and thanks to Helen for pricking my conscience about them as well, I had to write back and say, "Er...well...if it's all the same to you, I don't really like the loan sharks that much either". OK, not in so many words. To which they cheerfully replied that they would assign me the scooters again next cycle. I guess I can live with it just a little longer.... Anyway, nice doing business with them!

dickie greenleaf

Out in the driveway a chocolate-colored sausage dog had the corner of a woman's sarong in its mouth and ran angrily around her feet. As the woman turned, the dog unwrapped her until she stood giggling in only her bikini and sandals.
“HONEY!” A man shouted. “HONEY, COME HERE!”
A mother and a small child playing in the driveway had stopped to watch the woman and the dog. But when the dog saw them it released the sarong and sprinted towards them, yapping ferociously.
The mother hoisted her child up above her head as the small angry animal tore around them on its shrunken legs. A brown man in white shorts appeared and scooped up the dog. It sat smugly in his arms, fixing dull brown eyes on the child.
“I do apologise,” said the tanned man. “She won’t bite.”
“Oh, he’s not afraid,” the mother said. She smiled at the child. “Are you, sweetheart?”
The child coolly eyed the animal. He had seen bigger dogs.
“You live here,” the man observed, having watched the mother from his balcony during the afternoon. She had been hanging out her washing in a denim miniskirt and her bikini top. Her hair was in two bunches at her neck and was lighter on the ends.
“Yes,” the mother said. “You’re holidaying?”
“Just lobbed in for the week,” he said, nodding in the direction of the holiday units behind her house. He cocked his head at the child. “He’s very good at walking.”
“I know,” the mother rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe how much energy they have, when they’re so much smaller than us!” The man rolled his eyes in sympathy.
“You have kids yourself?”
“Yes, a son,” the man said. The mother asked how old. The man said his son was seventeen.
The mother was shocked. “You don’t look old enough!”
“Surgery,” the man chuckled. The man and his dog walked the mother and her child back up the driveway.
“Any plans for any more?” the mother asked, out of curiosity.
“Kids, or surgery?” grinned the man. “I don't know. Perhaps I haven’t met the right woman yet.”
“Tall, dark, handsome and single,” the mother joked as she steered the child inside. “Well, see you later.”
The mother was a writer, and as she cooked the baby’s dinner she idly thought about the man and how it was a shame she hadn’t been the one to come up with the character name Dickie Greenleaf because it was the only possible name for the man. He had a clean, smoothness about him that suggested hours of preening. The mother was not attracted to vain men.
After she had put the child to bed, she unfolded a chair in the bathroom near the back door so she could look out at the night, and she thought she might write in her notebook for a while.
It was a few minutes later that the barking began.
Dickie Greenleaf’s dog had obviously been locked inside while Dickie had gone to dinner at one of the local establishments that catered to men of his ilk. Meanwhile, unable to comprehend that its agonising solitude was only temporary, the dog screeched and screeched for its beloved master. The mother gritted her teeth and tried to write, but she felt each bark like a whip across her shoulders. From the balconies surrounding her house she heard angry complaints. She put the notebook down in frustration.
The mother tried to read some Flannery. His shirt was green but so faded that the cowboy charging across the front of it was only a shadow--how she loved the details! But the dog’s barks punctuated the sentences in odd places. She shut the book and stared at the photo on the jacket. Flannery is smiling and gazing off out of the frame, as if she’s been telling you a story and has paused because her attention has been captured by some small detail she has seen or thought of and she’s filing it away to use someday.
Up at Dickie Greenleaf’s holiday rental, the dog barked, and barked, and barked. A neighbor began throwing things at the animal’s fence, as if fear would silence the animal. The dog became only more terrified—-it was alone in a strange place, people where shouting at it and throwing things at it--and the barking increased in volume and pitch. The mother considered calling the pound; perhaps they could come and tranquillise the wretched animal.
“How could you leave that animal like that!” she silently yelled at an absent man. “You’ve got more dollars than sense!” The mother distracted herself by calculating that the difference between her and most of her neighbours was roughly eighteen hundred and fifty dollars a week.
The mother rehearsed what she would say to Dickie Greenleaf tomorrow. “Last night,” she would say icily, “your dog was driving us all insane!” But she felt that Dickie Greenleaf would merely shrug and grin, and explain the dog just got a little upset when it was away from home, as if that made it alright.
“Right, that’s it,” she heard a steely-voiced neighbour say, and a door banged with such force that she feared for the animal’s safety. The barking stopped. The neighborhood seemed to hold its breath. But a car started up and was driven off and the barking resumed with renewed determination.
“Shut the fuck up, you stupid fucking animal, shut the fuck up!” the mother raged silently in her head as Dickie Greenleaf’s dog barked and howled. The mother half-wanted her baby to wake, so that its indignant cries would add to the general misery of the situation and Dickie Greenleaf could later be made to feel even guiltier. But the baby did not wake. He had been well worn out at the beach this afternoon, chasing seagulls. The birds would hop a few metres away and the baby would follow, and then when the birds finally flew a long way away, he gave them a look as if to say, “Hey, that’s not playing fair!”
Hours seemed to pass and then the mother could not take it any longer. She wrenched open her back door and stumbled out into the darkness with the intention of screaming out to no-one in particular, “DICKIE GREENLEAF, YOUR DOG IS DRIVING ME INSANE!” She thought she would feel better after that, but the words were forgotten when she looked up into the night sky and saw all the stars had gathered around the moon as if in earnest conference.
It had been a long time since she had looked at the stars.
The mother remembered a friend had once told her how she liked to moonbake. The mother took a towel off the line and spread it out on the buffalo and she laid down on it. She put on her sunglasses and peeled down her bikini top straps and looked up at the moon but she could not make out its face.
After a few minutes she became aware the dog had stopped barking. There was an expectant silence as the mother and the moon and the stars and the angry neighbours all waited to see if the silence was going to hold.
The mother noticed how it wasn’t just silence they were listening to. She could also hear crickets and the roar of the ocean as it threw itself against the beach, and there was a car being driven urgently somewhere in the distance.
It was then that the mother saw the moon’s face.
The mother got up and went inside and just then Dickie Greenleaf’s car pulled up and the dog began barking again, but this time with hysterical joy, and the mother switched on her computer and began typing this post.

G'night.

happy families

One of the nicest birthday presents I got yesterday was the news that my sister Giulia and her family are coming up to live here for a year. I'm so excited, because we love cousins Benjamin and Raph. It'd be awesome to be able to spend some time with them.
To make sure they don't change their minds I'm going to get out and take some persuasive photos (might even post a few here too). Not that they're gonna need much convincing. They've been here. They know.
A year, though? Ha! They'll come here, fall into the habit of leaving your keys in the door and walking across the road to the beach twice a day, and before too long, they'll never want to leave. Hey, I speak from experience. I even caught myself daydreaming about getting into local politics the other day.
So yeah--happy days indeed.

thirtyfour

Wow.

count me in

Blogger Anders Jacobsen is donating to Red Cross every time another blogger links to him and helps publicise the relevant charities. So here goes:

International aid organizations:
UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund)
United Nations' World Food Programme
Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders (donate!)
CARE International
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

UK/Europe:
Disasters Emergency Comittee (DEC) - comprises a raft of aid agencies, including the below and others
British Red Cross
Save the Children UK

North America:
American Red Cross
Canadian Red Cross
Save The Children

Anders Jacobsen: Webloggers: Give to tsunami victims and I'll give too!

when i grow up

I've been thinking about what I want to do when Harley is old enough for daycare or preschool. While I've always wanted to earn a living writing, lately I've come to the conclusion that it's probably just a hobby like my mother always said, and that's OK. I'm letting it go. I'm going to separate it from the concept of earning money altogether. Oh, and let go of the motivation of winning (prizes, accolades--hell--even love).
Still, I remember the day in kindergarten when our teacher showed us those huge wooden A-frames, like giant Scrabble racks, gave us a stack of big black words on white cardboard, and showed us how we could put the words together to create our own sentences. It was one of those defining moments you have. Not long after that, I resolved to be a writer.
Through primary school, my best friend Emily and I wrote, directed and performed in strange little plays that were probably just extended private jokes. Emily came from a family of famous pianists and, herself very accomplished, also wrote and performed the scores.
There was another defining moment, in primary school, winning a role in Rinse the Blood Off My Toga. "My name is Flavius Maximus, I'm a private Roman eye. My licence number is IXIVLLDCC..." I was amazed at the feeling you got when you made people laugh. That was it. I forgot about wanting to be a writer and resolved to be an actor.
When I got to high school though, I got very self-conscious. In the first year of high school I took a lead role in a school play which so bored the audience that the entire production was pulled after opening night. I don't think I ever got over that blow to the ego. So that was it for acting.
I had always been pretty good at design, winning poster competitions and stuff, and had always loved sewing my own clothes, so next I resolved to become a fashion designer. I was really into Morrissey Edmiston in high school and I still have a letter from Leona Edmiston, written in black ink in very elegant handwriting, in which she kindly gives advice on how to become a designer. But then, another defining moment. There was a class assignment to design some boardshorts. I'd done some wild designs--shorts in silver lam'e, black shorts with tiny golden angels all over them, shorts made entirely out of James Dean's photocopied eyes, and so on, but the teacher said you couldn't get fabric like that and she failed me. I kind of lost my confidence with it after that.
I topped the year in French in Year 9 but then, perversely, dropped the subject to take up Woodwork. To make some kind of feminist statement or something, I think it was. Oui, je regrette... For the HSC I took 3 units each of Maths, English, Textiles & Design and Art. I didn't apply myself, preferring to spend most of high school in a gloom, so I got only average results except in English.
After high school, perhaps to please my father or because I'd read The Fountainhead one too many times, I enrolled in Architecture at UNSW but deferred and spent a year working as a junior graphic designer at a big book publishers, a job that had been offered to me while doing work experience there in Year 10. But I found it too hard to concentrate on a fledgling career as I was in a difficult relationship at the time, so I ended up just drifting around waitressing.
Eventually I began studying graphic design at night school while working full-time doing subbing and typesetting at a parenting magazine using the then-standard DTP package Ventura. I loved the promise of desktop publishing. Power to the people! But my TAFE hadn't caught up and had no computers and we were still just handpainting color wheels and gray scales. I remember one of my teachers announcing grandly that red and yellow was "a profoundly ugly color combination" and he forbade us to ever use it. I decided I was learning more about the design of the future (ie. using computers) in my day job so I dropped out of the course after a year. I worked at the magazine for a few years and did a bit of freelance design work on the side.
Together with my brother, who was a doctor at the time, I wrote and published a magazine for new doctors, taking advertising from the pharmaceutical companies. We took off overseas on the proceeds. The plan was that we were going to reproduce the magazine overseas, but once we got to Europe I realised I just wanted to kiss boys and dance on tables and finally, in Lisbon, my brother and I fought for the last time and we went our separate ways. Not for long--we both got on the same train to London and after some hours sulking, deigned to sit together and play chess. When we got to London though we split for real. He went back to Thailand, taught English for many years, and ended up marrying a local girl. Meanwhile, I met a boy from Perth on my first night in London, shacked up with him a week later, and spent the next few years with him. (Hi Jimbo, and congratulations on the birth of Tom). We spent a year back in Perth where I wrote copy for advertising features at The West Australian. I also produced another one of our doctor's mags on my own, which gave me enough money to go travelling again (I have never been able to save the traditional way). After another year travelling I split with my boyfriend, returned to Sydney and enrolled in a BA in Information Science at UTS. One of the subjects was Psychology and I decided after a year to switch to a BA in Psych at Macquarie Uni. And that, my friends, is the one thing I ever stuck with and finished...just!
While at uni I got into legal secretarial temping which paid very well and you could do nightshifts which fit well with uni. The other good thing was you got free taxis home. At the time I lived at Collaroy so it was a forty minute taxi ride home and I mostly enjoyed chatting to the cabbies. I loved temping because I could be an anonymous observer of the goings-on at each office, and every week was different. Ultimately though I was seduced by the income and became trapped in the corporate world in various permanent PA jobs.
And then I got into blogging, had Harley and the rest is...Archives.
So where to now, I wonder?

the cruel sea

It's just so awful and hard to fathom, I don't know what to say about the tsunami. So I guess I'll just keep counting our blessings and hope that we in the rich world continue to do what we can to help, for as long as it takes.
On a happier note, me and the little fella are going to be in Sydney for a few days after January 20, so if any bloggers would like to meet up, please drop me an email.

monster bawl

The child thought all his Christmases had come at once. Auntie Tina had come to stay--he loves Auntie Tina! For three days the child held Auntie's hand and showed her his new house, his new toys, his new beaches. They went for lots of drives in Auntie's car. At Oma and Opa's house he showed Auntie how he could pat the yellow chickens, and how the brown ones wouldn't let him, no matter how much he chased them.
Now and then he complained bitterly to Auntie about how Mama made him wear nappies when he didn't want to, have sleepies when he didn't want to, come in out of the sun when he didn't want to, and so on. Auntie would never make him do that, would she?
In the mornings as soon as Mama got him out of his cot he marched, pointing, around to the spare bed where sure enough, there were those black curls peeking out from the bedclothes. Auntie! The bedclothes stirred and Auntie smiled sleepily and he climbed up to have cuddles. He encircled her nose with his mouth but didn't bring his teeth together like he sometimes liked to on Mama's nose.
On the fourth day, Auntie's friend arrived with her two-year-old daughter. At first, the child was excited. He loves other bubbas! Sure, this one was very big and very loud, and she had something her Mama referred to as "Persian blood" which apparently made her "fiery". But he loved to play with other bubbas.
Pretty soon though the child realised that this bubba was not in fact a bubba but a monster. Every toy the child picked up to show It was ripped out of his hands, usually accompanied by mad shrieks in his face. The child stumbled off, disconcerted, only to find It following him, clobbering him with a rubber hammer and pulling his hair. And all the while laughing!
The monster's mama finally dragged It off and the child sat in a corner clutching his willy nervously.
"Don't worry, Harley," his Mama said. "That's one toy she can't take off you."
The child appeared doubtful.
There was one last, rather traumatic trip to the beach with the monster who, the child was surprised and gratified to learn, greatly feared the sand and the ocean. There was a lot of shrieking.
Then everyone disappeared except Mama and the house became silent. Mama put Angelique on and was dancing as she picked up all the toys the monster had distributed around the house. Normally the child would like a little dance himself, especially to Angelique, but right now he was concerned because Auntie appeared to have gone missing. And Mama didn't even seem to care! The child wandered around looking for a long time, but Auntie was nowhere to be found.
That night after milkies, the child lay thinking as Mama sang to him about twinkling little stars and then she said,
"We had fun today, didn't we, with Auntie--"
The child gave a big smile at this, and looked around in case Auntie had come back, but she hadn't.
"And little Nilufa--"
The child abruptly stopped smiling, then burst into tears. He cast anxious looks about, as if the monster might reappear to clobber him. Mama quickly cuddled him and said it was OK, they were alone now, just him and Mama.
"And she didn't mean to hurt you, sweetie. She was just...excited to see you!"
But the child sobbed. Mama didn't get it. The monster had stolen the child's favorite toy.
The monster had stolen Auntie.

Footnote: Auntie's only gone up to Bellingen, and will be back in a few days, sans monster.

best of times

Best year of my life: 2004
Best thing I ever did: have Harley
Best address in the universe: Boomerang Beach, NSW.

Best to all bloggers and their families for the festive season. Thanks for reading me.

love,
Gianna & Harley.

knit happens

LONDON: A British mathematician has made a crochet model of chaos, the BBC reported yesterday. Hinke Osinga of the engineering mathematics department at Bristol University needed 25,511 stitches to represent the Lorenz equations that describe chaotic systems.

--theOz.

traitors

A newsreader and a pulp magazine writer, both female, are discussing Nicole Kidman’s supposed new romance with billionaire Steve Bing:
Newsreader: I wonder, what does Nicole see in him? I mean, he’s scruffy, he’s ugly, he’s a love rat…
Journo: Well, he’s a billionaire of course, so…
Newsreader(smiling indulgently): Ah, gets a girl every time, doesn’t it?

thank god we met lizzie

Yeah, I reckon I can understand why Pride and Prejudice makes women feel good to be a woman (subscription). Don’t we just all want to be Lizzie? She’s kind of the ultimate female character: intelligent, assertive, funny and attractive. And—-contary to the stereotype perpetuated in our modern media, see next post--she doesn’t settle for anything less than love. (To anyone who might comment that Darcy ends up being conveniently loaded, I contend she would’ve loved him even if he had been a pauper. She turned down Mr Collins, didn’t she?) And OK, we want to be Miss Lizzie because of Mr Darcy...We love Mr Darcy...so sue us.
Anyway, I don’t get why Julie Burchill doesn’t get it. So what if Austen and her peers didn’t sit around discussing clitorises? I don’t even think we talk about them all that much anyway.

replay

I've got a bit of an ethical dilemma. As some of you might be aware, for the past year or so I've been hosting a couple of unobtrusive text links (down there in the margin under 'sponsors') for which I'm essentially reimbursed the cost of my internet connection.
So far it's all been links to sites selling lovely Audrey Hepburn-esque motor scooters and stuff, but the other day the advertisers asked me to update their links and now I find I'm advertising...online gambling! The pokies.
I'm not real comfortable with this. My views on gambling have been aired before on this blog. Basically, I loathe and detest the pokies. A friend's marriage and almost their whole life was ruined by a gambling addiction. They're an insidious evil. What are the pokies but machines that blatantly hypnotise vulnerable people into throwing their money away? So I started thinking I'd email the advertisers and ask for a different product to link to.
But then I got to thinking that maybe in a way I was getting a tiny bit of revenge for the common man. I mean, out of my discerning readership I doubt that many (if any) will be remotely tempted to clickthrough to an online gaming site. So the money is flowing the opposite direction for a change, isn't it?

just play me john coltrane

There's a certain blogger trading music with other bloggers (great idea) and I've just emailed him my choices. He's got a helluva lot of good music there to choose from. Anyway, I've asked Santa to bring me two Lucinda Williams CDS - one called "Live at the Orpheum Theatre" from 1999 and something Santa has described as "Crossroads on Country Music TV - interviews, station promos, great talk, singing with Elvis Costello and Lucinda" from 2002. Should be interesting. And just cos Lucinda mentions John Coltrane in one of her songs I've also asked Santa to chuck in some discs from the extensive John Coltrane list as I'm unfamiliar, but interested, in the territory.
Waiting with bated breath.

bully for you

So is Mark Latham really an irredeemable bully, as Adele Horin argues? My problem with Labor is that they'll probably stick with Latham for a good chunk of this term but then turf him at the last minute, again not leaving enough time for whoever the successor is to sell him or herself to the public as opposition leader. Or does Labor really believe Latham can bring it home next time?

cod piece

The delivery man handed me his clipboard. In big red capital letters above where I had to sign it said STRICTLY COD.
"Strictly cod?" I said, signing. "What's that mean?" The man looked at me and said that I was blonde.

phone line between pleasure and pain

Jeez, talk about dramas getting the phone on here--bloody Optus! Grrrr. Wasn't much fun not having a phone for a week. Anyway, as I am fond of promising, "more soon". And hope to catch up with everyone's blogs soon too.

fear and loathing

God, Angela Shanahan irritates me. Here she is, keen to reassure conservative Australians that there is no need to fear "Lesbians going nuclear":

"...the prize for the weirdest reaction was the SMH which apparently saw lesbians at the vanguard of the new nuclear family announcing "Lesbians Go Nuclear!" Sounds alarming. Of course we are used to hearing about this inevitable decline of the family so we are only too willing to accept this gloomy scenario. But is it true?

Right. It's "gloomy" and "alarming" to think lesbians fall in love and want to make formal commitments and raise children together just like heterosexuals. Shanahan goes on to explain that there's no need to worry, because:

As for the gay family. Well, they are almost non-existent. They are mostly lesbians with children from former marriages. They constitute about a quarter of a per cent of couples with children.

Phew, eh! Shanahan acts as if marriage is a finite quantity and there's only so much to go around. If gays start helping themselves to happy family lives and the rituals that go with it, there'll be less for the heterosexuals. Or something. Never can quite figure out why lesbians "going nuclear" would be a threat to anyone.
But here's something there is a finite quantity of: the natural resources on our planet. Yeah, and there's only a finite quantity of our tax dollar, in the form of family tax benefits available to all parents and in all likelihood claimed by the Shanahan family too. So if I were Angela Shanahan, I would stop bragging about having nine kids myself. After all it's just genetic selfishness. And possibly overkill.

lone wolf theory

Had to wince a bit yesterday when I heard Mark Latham drag out that line, "In politics, disunity is death". Because the embarrassing thing is, in 2004, even unity was death.
Still, having read this article about the Latham loss in the Oz at the weekend, I have to say it sounds as if Labor was far less united under Latham than we all thought. Or it was kind of one-sided unity: We all got behind Latham as our one great hope, but Latham allegedly acted the 'lone wolf' throughout his campaign.
You know that saying, nothing succeeds like success? Well, the reverse is also true: nothing fails like failure. So I just can't see Latham getting another bite at the cherry, cruel as it seems.
You wonder how true the stories are though, don't you? There's always bound to be one or two disgruntled staffers who'll spin it like this. But if it is true, well, then Latham deserves to bear the blame for the failed campaign.

let's get metaphysical

One last thought before I switch off the machine...
You know this theory that a more advanced species of life in another dimension of the 'multiverse' could've created our universe using computers? Well, the theory is criticised because an "unimaginably large" computer would be needed to achieve such a simulation. But a computer too large for who? They Might Be Giants, as the band name goes. Their computers might be able to handle it. Just wondering.

beach, baby

We're moving Tuesday so the computer’s about to be packed and I'm not sure how long it'll take to get connected again in the new place. I’m stoked about our new shack. It’s only one bedroom-plus-sunroom, but it’s cheap and big and anyway, who cares when you’ve got the ocean a hundred metres away? Location, location, location! We're going to be right in the middle of three surf beaches. Down the road there's a small row of shops, including a video store (yay), and our chemist and doctor will now be within walking distance. We’re going to be able to go to the beach early in the mornings and in the evenings too if we like and from our house we’ll have a great passing parade to watch, surfers and tourists and kids walking past to the beaches and shops. And we’ll be able to hear the ocean at night....ahhh! What more could a girl and her bub want?
So anyway--back soon, hopefully.

apprentice latham

Anyone else a fan of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice? Yes, I am talking about a reality TV show, sorry. [Insert argument here about watching reality TV being no more or less valid than watching any other sport--Ed.] I find myself in complete agreement with Mr Trump on every sacking. I’m especially glad Raj went. There was something creepy about him, even while he played the role of charming raconteur. He seems like the kind of person you know would be a belligerent and aggressive drunk, not a happy one. And for all his bragging about being such a ladies’ man, he was really quite a sexist pig, once you saw how he actually interacted with the women on the show. The show’s tagline may be ‘it’s nothing personal, it’s just business”, but that’s a laugh--the whole thing is personal. The apprentices, being in fierce competition and apparently unable to control their egos, are unable to cooperate even to achieve a common goal, and most of the disputes seem to be personality-related rather than about business. One of these people is going to be a CEO for Trump? Good luck to him. They may have been to Harvard but they act like kindergartners. Ah, love it.
Speaking of apprentices, if Mark Latham had been on The Apprentice, he would definitely be fired now. After all, he was Project Manager and he completely botched the ‘mission critical’ element of marketing (I'd say particularly on the issue of Labor’s economic ability). Not only that, but the public didn’t warm to him personally--and they had a chance—and that would appear to be fatal. Look at Crean. The same taint of unpopularity is going to be Latham’s downfall, too. Mr Latham...You’re fired.
Having said that, I’m not really a fan of this so-called white-anting as it just seems too easy for Labor to simply blame the leader when the policies were evidently also unpopular with the public. And the team was responsible for the ideas in those policies, and for selling them too. But if Latham really is a deadpollywalking, I’d really like to see Gillard/Rudd up. But it’s probably just wishful thinking!

yesterday's papers

As you may have noticed, I'm still not finding much inspiration in the news. But as I'm packing and culling stuff I keep finding things that make me smile, at least a little. One clipping, from the Manly Daily in 1998 (no link), describes a bank robbery and dwells on the description of what the male and female offenders looked like. The headline was, "Not 'Bonnie and Clyde'. The reporter notes that the man is riddled with acne scars and the woman is "160cm tall with blonde-streaked brown hair in a bob cut." What's more, "she appeared frumpy." I don't even know why I kept the clipping. Perhaps I was imagining some young cadet at her typewriter at the Daily, wishing she was writing up the fashion shows and not the court reports.
Reminds me of when we first came to Oz and my dad was a reporter at the Mosman Daily, one of the same group of papers. When I was three, they put a photo of me naked on Balmoral Beach on the front page. I'm not kidding. I'm holding an umbrella, but it's not hiding anything. I mean, this was about 1975. But still, who's idea was that?
Speaking of beaches, have just been around to look at a place to rent, right across the road from one of the beautiful local beaches. It's smaller than this house but it's cheaper. Think I'll take it. This means I could move as early as next week. Joy.
Oh damn...talking about myself again...was going to try and cut down on that. That's what the anon. blog is for, after all. It's cool having an anon. blog. Feels a bit like throwing a party when your parents are away. Have updated it, for those who are reading me there. Link available by emailng me--I haven't sent the new link out en masse or anything because I don't want to be presumptuous. Horses, water, etc.

facing facts

Well, I’ve pulled that piece I posted yesterday about face-reading because I thought it made me sound like a bit of a wonka (even if I am a bit of a wonka sometimes). But then this morning I kicked over some old psych notes and clippings and the clipping on top of the pile was, completely coincidentally, the Good Weekend article by Malcolm Gladwell called “In Your Face”, the article I was thinking of when I wrote yesterday's post. No link available to that story but Googling leads you to this piecein the Annals of Psychology by Gladwell, called "The Naked Face".I haven’t had time to read but I’ll put up in case anyone's interested in the subject too.

go ahead, don't make my day....

OK, I get the hint. Ever since our curbside standoff a few weeks ago, my neighbor has arranged to do the very noisiest things possible at the very time he knows my baby is supposed to sleep. In quick succession: spider-spraying the house; re-laying carpets and tiles; something involving two days' worth of jackhammers (again, only during the baby's regular nap periods), and--the piece de resistance--sawing down a massive tree right across from Harley's window. That ended up being fun though, we ended up getting up and dragging chairs outside and watching all the little men up in the tree. I've never seen tree-felling done this way (professionally, I suppose). They go down the tree, sawing off little half-metre chunks all the way down the trunk. They didn't even shout, "TIM----BER!!!!".
Little does my neighbor know that the baby can sleep through sledgehammers.
Well...he used to. In the past two days seems everything has changed again. The baby now refuses to sleep all day but is sleeping from about 9pm til 6:30am, and I'm told I shouldn't complain about that. I don't know, I miss the two regular two-hour day sleeps--doing an eight hour day shift is insane. At four o'clock yesterday, I found myself in the kitchen crying into a teatowel for a minute, moaning my god this is harder than I thought. I rang a friend and she kacked herself and said, "Welcome to motherhood". It's really been turned up to eleven lately.
Anyway, I really think the guy doesn't like me. I mean, maybe I'm just paranoid....anyway, leaving soon so it'll be moot.

self-love

Lately I keep coming across that message, pride comes before a fall. A friend sent my baby a bunch of children's books including the wonderful Mr McGee series [ah, so this is where Bobby ended up...Ed]. One particular book has Mr McGee discovering he can fly, so off he goes, calling out for everyone to look at him! And sure enough he crashes. Or there's the Christian ad you might have seen on TV at the moment where a young boy kicks a soccer goal and then runs around whooping it up until he, too, falls flat on his face. The ad quotes the saying and references it to the Bible.
The gist of it all seems to be that you should be modest and humble, not be proud of yourself and your achievements, not think you are somehow better than you are. See also 'tall poppy syndrome'.
I sometimes look at something I've written on this blog and think it makes me sound like I love myself, but then I think it's OK, I didn't spend many years and many thousands of dollars in therapy doing a psych degree if not to learn how to let me love myself. Or at least, like myself. I suppose it's a fine line--you should love yourself, but not too much. And worst of all, you shouldn't show it. Like writing about yourself in a flattering manner on your blog, heh heh.
Anyway, the whole thing makes me wonder about religious organisations like Hillsong Church, where they apparently preach the usual self-help dogma about getting stinking rich and so on. I don't know. Can you be stinking rich and love yourself and be proud of yourself and yet be humble and modest as well? Anyone out there fit this description? If so, there's a Paypal button over in the righthand column.(I jest.)

she's so weather vane

When is my weathergirl going to get into a bikini, I wonder? Looks like she's in a sarong at the moment, but it's just way too hot for that much clothing right now. I'm not sure the Bureau of Meteorology is passing on all its information. Either that or she's more concerned with her wardrobe than doing her job. She's very chic. But she's now claiming it was only 26C an hour ago up here when it's been about forty in the shade since the sun came up (not to mention about 99% humidity...ugh). But maybe it's just me--maybe Tamworth Airport isn't the closest weather vane after all?

every blog will have its day

What? What? WHAT! Is it April 1? Talk about quitting while you're ahead. Chris has dropped a bombshell and is bowing out of blogging. A sad day for the Ozblogosphere. He's switched comments off so wailing and bashing your head against his comments box is futile. Go read his impressive blogging manifesto and last words. Vale, backpages and best of luck with your book, Chris.

update: "Vale" was probably the wrong word, because there's a chance Chris will return to blogging after his book is finished in six months or so. An eternity after such prolific daily blogging!

fully sic

I was going through some old letters today and came across this one I found in my mailbox once. It is handwritten and photocopied and the envelope says "To the tall lady with the light brown skin". I'm not tall, so I knew he didn't mean me but I read it anyway. The letter read:

To a very pretty woman that I followed once and left a letter there explaining that I will write again when I got a post box address. I would like to explain I never learnt to talk to the opposite sex because I was in boys homes in prison for burglary and i ended up doing three times longer so the woman can work there which allegedly we got electronically brainwashed and destroyed wtih medication because everyone trains against corrective service in the beginning because people can't get their life together through what was done to them and people can't find girlfriends because children were never thought about men's eggs on the end you've got all the ugliness on TV through men's smelling steel and concrete and suffering two frustrations because they require a woman's scent. I put my post box there for you to write back [address]. We have put this under 5 or 6 different doors. Could you give this to the tall lady with the light brown skin.

OK, it's a bit creepy and he sounds mentally ill, but there's something kind of poetic about that last line, doncha think? Wonder if he ever found her?

lightness of being

I've been worrying there's something wrong. I seem to have no appetite and I've lost a lot of weight lately, or so I'm told by a few people who hadn't seen me in a while.
I guess people did say the baby weight would drop off once he started crawling. Or it could just be because I'm in love. I used to lose weight sometimes if I had it real bad. I got it bad.
It's been interesting though, the changes to your body after having a baby. Contrary to all expectations I actually like my body better now. I can't say I feel any of the body loathing that the media encourages me to feel, post-pregnancy. The daily walking, pushing 20 kilos up and down hills, has made me a lot fitter than I ever was before (not that it's hard being fitter than a sloth), and I know I'm stronger because things are easier to lift. Moving house will be easier than last year when I was seven months pregnant...
It's possible the weightloss is just because in recent months I have been eating what the baby eats instead of the other way around. So I'm probably grazing more and not getting very hungry. I often don't have time to cook a proper meal for myself so if I'm steaming the baby some vegies, I'll just have some of that too. The only other thing I can think of is I switched to drinking soy milk about a month ago.
My sister started to get cranky after I told her I'd accidentally lost weight. She is still carrying her baby weight. She says it's because the baby's crawling now.
"Now you'll get busy," she said, long-suffering. She always acts as if I have it really easy because I only have one child compared to her two. She's kind of competitive.
"Hmm, I dunno, I've been busy from the start."
To my other sister I said, "I don't miss the man."
"What do you mean," she said suspiciously. "Which man?" and now I had her full attention. She often reads her emails while on the phone to me. It drives me crazy. I said I meant the role of the spouse; it's not a gender thing. I just never stop to consider there could be someone else helping, another set of hands. It must be bloody great.
Anyway, enough about me. No, really! I'm going to start talking about John Howard again real soon, you watch.

stormy weather?

tamworth airport
These weather pixies are pretty cool. Let's see if mine can keep up with our crazy weather. (Found at lifeislike.)

groundhog year

I knew it was too good to be true. I got a call yesterday from my real estate agent saying the owner wants to move back into this house. I have til January 10 to move. Just when I was congratulating myself on having cured my nomadic ways and finally found a place I loved, where I could see myself settling for a few years at least. Bummer. There go my fantasies about lazy good times over the summer. Another hot Christmas moving house. Trying to look on the bright side though. Might even find something better.
Anyway, posting will probably be slow and infrequent for the rest of the year. (Should get to posting that anon. blog today.....................argh......)

rolled on?

I've finally got around to updating the blogroll. Even though this site is officially on hiatus this month, I still intend to catch up with everyone else's blogging. So anyway, if I have accidentally left off your blog, please email me again.
While I'm here, thank you for those who have emailed me for the link to my new anonymous blog. I have my first story up there but want to do a quick revision so will send the link out later today (baby permitting). It has cheered me up a lot to know that you guys do like my writing. (And yes, I was kidding about the lesbian sex scenes. Just trying to snag a few hapless googlers.)

you're such a lovely audience

I've started a new, anonymous blog where from now on I'm going to post those longer, fiction-style reality pieces (this kinda thing, if you're new here). I've decided to go anonymous out of curiosity to see if being less inhibited affects my writing style.
I find that having people from my real life read my more personal posts makes me feel slightly uncomfortable these days. It's not so much that I have something to hide, or that I want to write nasty things about anyone (never makes you feel any better) or reveal secret love affairs or whatever. It's just that the self-disclosure is too asymmetrical. (Though I did mention the other day how one motivation for blogging is having friends overseas read your blog to keep up with you...those aren't the people I'm talking about...)
Anyway, we'll see how it goes. Its worth a try.
By the way, the Non-Bloggable Thing taking up my time lately should be wrapped up by next month. So instead of closing sanctuary completely I'll just give this site some R&R while I deal with Things and go off on writing tangents. Needs it too, I feel.
Meanwhile, having a new, anon. blog should be fun. I even thought about switching genders, but then decided I didn't want to have to forfeit writing up all the juicy lesbian sex scenes stray too far from reality, so the only real change will be that I won't use anyone's real name.
If anyone would like the new link they can email me. And please don't blow my cover....!

thank god

Signing us into playgroup yesterday my glance fell for the first time on the letterhead, which read, 'Families First Playgroups of NSW'.
"Hey," I said suspiciously, not letting go of my two dollar coin. "You're not affiliated with that Rightwing religious political group are you?"
She sighed and tugged at the coin. "No, that's Family First," she said, in a voice that suggested she'd been asked that question alot lately.
"Phew, eh?" I said, and I let her have the coin.

bloggus interruptus

Hello all. Due to unforeseen circumstances am a little short of free time lately, but expect to be back in the saddle real soon. Don't forget me, eh?

PS. So looks like Bush has got in again. Sigh...do I give up all hope or do I give up all hope.....................

fallen idol

Well, that’s Australian Idol for me this season; Chanel was voted off this week. I think she was just too Bjork for the voting audience but that’s OK, it’s not all about what 13 year old girls think. Wearing her hair in those Mickey Mouse bunches and then saying she was ‘taking the mickey’ was probably slightly over the heads of the voting audience though. Me, I didn’t think much of the “R&B” song choice (by someone called Brandi or Cherry or Ashanti or something) because I think there are so many absolute classics she could’ve chosen. Aretha...But that’s so last century, I guess. (I feel old sometimes…)
My favourite sound and look for Chanel is punkish angel vamp--like she did when she did that Sam Brown number. Dishevelled in ripped fishnets with a slightly Portishead sound.
But I have to agree with Dicko that the outfit this week was too outlandish. She has great pins but I’m not really much of a fan of shorts on girls (unless it’s the sexy zookeeper cum Terri Irwin look, or your boyfriend’s boardies with your bikini top, both of which have their time and place).
Anyway, it’s a shame she went. I would’ve liked to have seen her do a Mazzy Star or Lucinda Williams number, I think. Maybe Blue Light or Five String Serenade from Mazzy and Ventura or People Talkin’ from Lucinda. Sigh. Could’ve been…should’ve been awesome.

raison d'blog

Tim Dunlop at surfdom has asked for comment about people's motives for blogging. I've been thinking about this a lot lately myself. I think all bloggers have some idea what blogging is and many of us have tried to write about it. I don’t there is a definitive answer. It’s too many things at once.
When Tim calls his blog a “vanity site” because it follows his interests and whims, he draws attention to the narcissistic nature of the form. But I’d say that it’s much more than sheer navel-gazing self-absorption (a criticism certain family members have levelled at me many times, believe me).
First of all it's writing karaoke. I never used to show anyone in real life anything I wrote. People used to have to take it on faith that I liked to write. Now at least there's some evidence. It’s a place to practice writing daily and to get feedback. With fiction writing, I am a bit of a perfectionist (or given to self-doubt!), because I still insist on having a finished manuscript to show someone. I can’t bear the idea of reading something while it’s still half-formed. Blogging feels different, because it’s such first-draft writing, a consequence of its emphasis on immediacy. I don’t spend much time composing posts, usually just writing off the top of my head. I’m sure others are the same.
When I started blogging it was to practice different kinds of writing, try out different kinds of writing ‘voice’, show off puns, just for the pleasure of seeing my words ‘in print’. And it has definitely given me confidence, and some sense of what works and what doesn’t. I also think the blogger ‘voice’ is different, as it’s more conversational, more like dialogue than other forms of writing. I enjoy that the form has no ‘rules’ (or few, anyway. I think there’s some informal ones?). It’s all micromoments and fleeting glimpses, perfect for the short attention span.
But it’s obviously more than just writing practice, it’s also an outlet for self-expression. It’s a place to ‘be myself’. To kind of wear my inner monologue on the outside.
I also blog to directly communicate with friends and family overseas, some of whom read my blog just to keep up to date about my life.
Well, I'll have to leave it there for now but I'll come back to the subject, as I'm especially interested in looking at blogging-as-documentary.

love hurts

Heard again on the news the other night, a family taking consolation in the fact that their loved one "died doing what he loved". I'm sorry in advance to anyone who's ever been consoled this way and I don't mean to offend, but I don't get it. Why is it comforting? It means something you loved killed you. I'd rather die doing something I hated, like my tax return or waxing my legs, so I could say, "there, I always knew that was evil."

back in five minutes

Would love to post some new ideas today, but unfortunately the baby and I both woke up with a head cold or the beginning of a 'flu. I think it's because we've been having a lot of showers together lately and I probably don't dry us off quick enough after. The baby absolutely loves showers and it's a nice way for us to get some skin-on-skin contact, since he sleeps in the cot all the time now (I miss sleeping with him!). He's getting too big for the babybath but we still put it in the shower so he can sit and play while I get lathered up.
Anyway, been up most of the night and have no energy to write. More another time. Hope you're all having a nice weekend and not thinking about or talking about the Rodent either.

more idol chatter

I keep forgetting to watch Australian Idol, which is annoying, but there's the Thursday night wrap-up anyway which I saw some of last night.
I remain convinced Chanel should win. I saw her do a Joni Mitchell song (something off Blue--I don't know her music) in passing on Wednesday and that was lovely. But I've noticed that she keeps getting criticised in the various media for being a 'poseur', or up-herself. I think this is because she clearly identifies as an artist and often in our society, 'artist=elite=bad'. Then again, they all kind of identify as artists. Maybe she's a bit too confident, and it's tall poppy syndrome. Who knows.
I reckon it's down to Hayley, Courtney and Antony in the final three, then Hayley and Antony, with Hayley to win it. I reckon Casey will be out next because of her extreme youth. Hayley's not bad; great voice, beautiful face, a natural performer. But she doesn't write songs, whereas the others do. Be interesting to see.

dirty work

I'm still grappling with the idea that we live in such a self-satirising culture that a known liar can go to the people and say 'trust me', and win. "Trust me, I'm a politician". Truly! Why didn't that get laughed outta town? Are we Howard-era Aussies losing our sense of humor, our larrikinism, our renowned bullshit detectors?
So I can't help myself blogging about the PM, but then Howard-spotting was always a favorite sport and I mean, why shouldn't it merrily continue? The intention of avoiding talking about him was just to not dignify him with a response, pretty silly, and I was just amusing myself really (you can do that when you have a blog).
We're stuck with Howard so we might as well continue to hold him accountable. Try to, anyway. If Latham had got in the onus would've been on lefty bloggers like me to be just as critical of him, or at least manage to be a reasonable objective observer and that wouldn't have been half as much fun, would it?
And at least this way, Latham/Labor won't have to clean up any of Howard's messes. Howard or some other dodo will have to wear whatever happens in the next term of office. And while I would never wish doom and gloom on Australia as that would obviously be idiotic, I do hope that Howard is forced to spend the time and effort mopping up things like Iraq, so that he doesn't just get to saunter out looking the big hero while someone else does the dirty work. It's funny, because whenever I heard the Pro-Bush Americans on the telly chanting "four more years" it used to sound like they were asking for a prison term to be extended for some criminal. Yeah, give them both another term--punishment for fucking up the world.

i'd rather talk about the weather than talk about john howard

The weather here (midnorth coast of New South Wales) is crazy. Feverishly hot a few days ago and now it's flooding; a state of emergency. And we ran over a thumbtack with the stroller a few days ago so I've been getting around like a donkey, with the baby in the pouch and a backpack and carrying a golf umbrella. Phew! Going out for the day today with some friends but hopefully get to some serious posting later on.

this is not about john howard

It's easier than I thought not talking about John Howard. Thinking about him, though, that's something else.......

"snakes hit the beach"

That's the headline of a story in our local paper (unavailable online) about that dude Peter I once mentioned here. There he is in the photo, looking very ZZ-Top; bushy beard, reflector aviators, red flannie, and wearing a python like a feather boa. That's Candy (so-called "because of her sweet personality"). He's talking about the wildlife rescue service he works at and what to do if you come across a snake, and now I'm feeling very guilty about the red-belly my cat killed the other night. Mea culpa, mea culpa. Next time I'm calling Peter, promise.
Speaking of characters, you know how I'm always going on about this novel I'm going to write? And you know how they say you should write about what you know? Well, in case anyone's worried, it's not going to be about a single mum's seachange (or "tree-change" as drop-outs to our neck of the woods are sometimes called because of the national forests around here). Babies won't feature in it much at all, either.
Also speaking of our neck of the woods, I noticed the other day how, on the local millionaire's strip where the views are unbelievable, someone has erected a neat little sign warning people not to use their 'private beach'. That pisses me right off, because there's a 30-metre reserve around the lake foreshore so that beach belongs to all of us, pal. I'm going to make a point of using it in the summer, haha. Nice beach it is too.

all worked up

Some responses to my question ("think I'm a bludger?) here and at Tim Blair's. Can't say I'm persuaded by the negative arguments at all. Sorry, I'm with the leftwing love beasts* on this one. Wish I had time to comment today but am too busy.
By the way, thanks to new readers and bloggers who have linked lately--I will update the blogroll real soon, promise. (Is it that hard.....?!) Thanks for the emails. Thanks for the donations, too. Some of you are amazing. (There's a Paypal button on this site for those who are into spontaneous acts of kindness. The reason I mention this will become clear in the next paragraph...)
I should also mention that if things suddenly go quiet around here it'll only be because my computer dies on me. It's been playing up a fair bit lately and this morning the screen just completely faded out and I had to reboot. It's about 10 years old, I guess. Anyway, I'll have to figure out how to get a replacement. Might take a while!

(*term stolen from Zoe)

taste of things to come

It's a burning hot blue day here that feels like the absolute height of summer. I rang my sister at work in Sydney just now and she was telling me all her office politics and how stressed she was, and I thought, I so don't miss the corporate and/or city life.
But I felt a bit guilty as I told her that all we have to do today is go down to the lake for a few hours. I'm always conscious that some people will begrudge me this carefree lifestyle because I am on a sole parent's pension. After all there's plenty of people who hate their office jobs too and would like to have nothing better to do than lie around on a beach all day themselves.
Here's the thing though. I appreciate the chance that our society gives me to exclusively parent for a coupla years. I figure I'll do some more study some-time over the next few years (as there's long waiting lists for childcare in the area, I'm lucky enough to have my parents nearby who are always keen to babysit). Whether it's something at uni by distance or a TAFE course locally, I don't know. So I'll most likely--hopefully--retrain and then when Harley is ready for pre-school I can be working again but this time doing something I enjoy.
And you never know, I might surprise myself by finishing something I've started to write and having a commercial and critical success. Ah, those pipe dreams...gotta keep dreaming...
The lake is such a great place for the baby (pollution rumors notwithstanding--but it's a very big lake). We go down almost every day. There's always something to look at: seagulls, pelicans, colorful people in sailboats and on windsurfers, kids playing with dogs, just the wind in the grass. And he can try and eat sand and we splash around at the water's edge.
The whole thing is such a production though. It takes you an hour to pack and then everything is covered in dirt and sand within two minutes. You spend the whole time wrestling because he wants to eat bottle tops and cigarette butts (bastards!), and then he gets all grizzly because he wants to keep playing long after his nap-time. We love it though, we have a lot of fun.
Anyway, to get back to the point, I think there's still a pretty big stigma attached to being on welfare, even if you are genuinely using it as a temporary leg-up, a rung in Latham's ladder. So how about it--any rightwing readers think I'm a bludger?

we've come a long way, baby

Can't believe my little boy is coming up to eight whole months old. It's gone quickly, huh. I guess that's why another term of this Government doesn't seem quite so terrible when I think about it. Time is fleeting.
Harley spends a fair bit of time with a couple of one-year-old buddies so tends to copy them and this week has started pulling himself up to standing. He especially likes to stand with his hands pressed up against the sliding glass doors in the living room, watching the cats and birds on the deck and trying to lick the blinds. Along with all the new action comes the inevitable falls and bumps, which means I'm back to having to watch him closely all the time again. I don't see this job easing up anytime soon...
Anyway, I can't help but be happy regardless of the election result. And I guess that's why--because I'm in love.

idol chatter

This week the Idols had to pick a Beatles tune. I only got to see three kids perform as I was a bit busy. I've haven't been watching Idol that long this season. I tuned in when cute young surfer chick Ricki-Lee did Tina Turner (Proud Mary) a few weeks ago and thought she was pretty good, but since then it has become apparent that if given any say in it, she will choose to wail and scream in twenty-three octaves like Mariah Carey. She absolutely crucified We Can Work It Out.
Spunky young Anthony managed to kill off When I Saw Her Standing There with a caberet-cum-disco-cum-Backstreet Boys treatment.
I hope Chanel wins, but she's probably a touch too eccentric for this evidently deeply conservative public. I adore Chanel. She has a stunning voice, and her personality is so original and quirky. Last week she did kd laing's Constant Craving better than kd. This week she did the Beatles' Across the Universe, possibly better than the Beatles.
That's what I like about Idol over the other reality shows. It actually is about talent.

anti anti climax

Oh well...what's another few years in the wilderness?

update: I don't really feel like reading any of the post-election mop-up in the papers or blogs yet. I haven't been watching the telly news either because I know it'll all just be John Howard beaming jubilantly and no doubt boasting about his enormous humility, etcetera etcetera etcetera.
As far as the people's choice goes, I don't really understand how Learner Latham is supposed to get a whole lot of experience governing from Opposition. Oh well. I can understand the "ain't broke-don't fix it" sentiment...just human nature. It figures.
Anyway, I thought I'd try and avoid mentioning Howard on my blog from now on. God knows I've devoted enough space to the man. As usual if you want election analysis there's far better places to look for it in the Ozblogosphere. And there's loads of other stuff to write about. Of course I often promise to stop blogging about something only to find myself crapping on about it again in the next breath.
However, I'm quite distracted at the moment. I keep thinking about this idea for a story I had the other day. It works its way around my subconscious like the red-bellied black snake my cat dragged up onto the deck last night. (He ate it, too. I thought red-bellies were poisonous to everything except rabbits, but I guess not. My mother had warned me he would catch snakes and I always said as if. It's funny because just the other day my sister and I were conceding that our mother was right about alot of things after all. My father, on the other hand, I still think is wrong about just about everything. Dad, that's a joke. And stop reading my blog!)
So anyway, I thought while I try and write this fiction idea up that I might sort of occasionally blog about the process. To me the process is almost like a parallel story in itself.
Readers are also welcome to tell me (anon. is ok) if there's certain kinds of posts they like to read around here and if others bore them rigid. Be good to get some feedback.

it's your choice

It really gets to me when John Howard starts going on about "choice", like he did in his closing statement:

"There is a very strong philosophical difference that has opened up and it surrounds really the question of the Coalition’s commitment to choice against what I would describe as a preferred model of behaviour that would be rewarded and alternatives punished under a future Labor government led by Mr Latham. There is just a touch of the social engineer about all of this. There is a suggestion that if you behave in a particular fashion you will be rewarded. There is just a whiff of the behavioural policeman about my opponent in this election campaign."

Yeah, right. He can talk about whiff. He doesn't get it. Some people ain't got no choice, and probably never will. There isn't a level playing field, in case he hadn't noticed. All well and good if you can "choose" to (read: afford to) send your kid to a better school, but if you're just managing financially, as are many Australians, or you're struggling, you'd better hope you've got good public education available. Otherwise your kids are just going to perpetuate the cycle of poverty.
Howard gets uptight about Kings School again, pointing out how they only get about two grand a year per student from the public purse. Well, in my opinion that's still two grand too much for such a rich school. They don't need it, for pete's sake. Gimme a break about all this sense of entitlement they enjoy and so on. They don't need it. Full stop. It's not about envy, it's about realism. It's just bad economic management to throw good money where it's not needed.
When you read the transcript, seems Howard wants the Australian public to exercise choice on just about everything except something trivial like, say, going to war and getting the nation all muddled up in Mid-East politics that the Rodent and his half-assed menagerie don't fully understand.
No, it's not about "choice". Nor is it about "the philosophy of free will" as the Herald's sub put it in the headline of the edited version of the transcript. (Though, in fairness, it's Howard who talks about "the philosophical divide".) The philosophy of free will, huh? When was it ever about that? Non-Liberal voting Australians can still believe in free will, surely.

seer-suckers

Listening to John Howard again last night smugly repeating that line that he and his ilk obviously believe to be an absolute, unassailable trump card, that "Saddam Hussein...would still be running Iraq" if it weren't for him, it struck me that even this statement itself is debatable. I mean, how can Howard & Co. be so sure that Saddam would still be in power if we hadn't invaded Iraq? There are other possible outcomes. Why should we trust Howard's "strength of conviction" on this issue any more than we should trust it on the myriad other "convictions" he's had that have turned out to be completely wrong? Even if he doesn't lie, which nobody believes, he still gets it wrong an awful lot, more than we should tolerate from a prime minister. The world is in "safer hands", my ass.
And listen to how Downer spins the WMD issue:

"History shows that we were absolutely right to get rid of somebody who used chemicals against his own people and his neighbours and who, once the UN sanctions were lifted, was going to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction programs". (my emphasis)

"Was going to". This he knows. He didn't know it then, mind, or he would've told us. Then, he thought Saddam was ready to attack us with chemical and biological weapons any minute now. He was sure about that.
But don't quibble. History will judge them. They're visionary guys.

the last days of chez rodent?

Coupla random things...watching telly the other night the news segment about Iraq had a banner that said "US offensive" and I had to think wryly, yeah, it is a bit...the news segment about the election spent five seconds lovingly lingering across the naked bellies of two young girls in low-rise jeans, justified I guess because the segment mentioned students in passing. This is on the same night they're announcing the huge child porn raids...Amongst all the lame election ads there's a very good ad running for the Red Cross. The ad simply introduces all the crew of the ad. I was watching it thinking, oh clever, how self-referential, how postmodern, etc but then I started wondering what the ad was actually for. In the final scene there's a crew member lying there with a needle in his arm and now you're thinking what? And then it explains how every person who worked on the ad donated blood, and it ends with a shot of the voice-over man asking you to donate blood. Something like that. Anyway, it's a good ad, which is rare these days...I think the Labor ad team missed a great opportunity to present Howard as the rat and Latham as the pest controller. You could've had Latho going into Kirribilli House and blasting a scurrying little Howard out the door. Heh heh....I was thinking Medicare Gold is really a great idea. Just the message it sends our older citizens: we'll look after you no matter what, full stop. It's about respect. It says, this is how we value our older citizens in this society. But will it be enough to get Latham over the line?...Maybe not. Here's a vox pop. I was chatting to a young married mother (hubby unemployed, on pensions) about the election and she said, "Labor's gonna take away the family lump sum payment and instead give you four bucks a week. They are telling parents they don't trust them. Now which would you rather have, $600 now or $4 a week for the year?" And this is the sole factor that is making her vote Liberal. That's a worry.

the lying king

I was thinking one of the reasons the Howard-lying thing doesn't seem to have cut through in this election campaign is because we're a nation of liars, as a recent study showed (again, sorry I can't find the link--a blogger sin, I know). We don't think lying is such a big deal, and we think it goes with the territory of politics anyway.
I should point out the following is a bit long-winded in case you're in a hurry. I was thinking about how we lie daily for social reasons. I was thinking about it in relation to one set of neighbors in particular, with whom things have become quite frosty lately.
The other day, just after I'd put Harley down for a morning nap, the neighbor started sweeping his drive which is right next to the baby's bedroom. Harley can sleep through pretty much any loud noise except very sudden, raspy, nails-down-a-blackboard kinds of sounds. So it was keeping him from sleeping, and eventually I went outside and approached my neighbor.
At that moment a middle-aged woman had to walk by with her dog and she paused to greet my neighbor. They left me standing there in half my pyjamas, sunglasses, a straw cowboy hat and purple rubber gloves (I was in the middle of cleaning), while they exchanged pleasantries for a couple of minutes. She finally moved on, smiling a vaguely condescending smile at me as she passed (though that's probably just paranoia), and I finally asked my neighbor if he wouldn't mind sweeping later as the baby was trying to sleep.
There was a pause so protracted I felt like saying "what?", and my neighbor stood leaning on his broom with a look on his face as if I'd asked him for a loan or perhaps to donate a kidney, before he finally said "O-kay", in exactly the same tone a teenager uses to say "whatever". I think he would've liked to have said "whatever" but I probably would've started laughing if he did.
I went inside and thought how social psychology favored me in this situation, because even though he really wanted to say, "You want ME to be quiet, when you won't even do quilting with my wife and you haven't been around to ask her to tea and show her the baby in months and you keep to yourself and huh, don't think we don't see the kind of folk you entertain--", even though these resentments were written all over his face, all he was allowed to do was politely acquiesce. Anything else would have caused awkwardness, socially speaking.
Unfortunately, social psychology also meant that five minutes later, my neighbor got his revenge: he simply started doing something in his garage that evidently required a lot of banging and crashing.
Oh well, I thought. If the baby cries, you have to listen to it too, pal...though actually Harley rarely cries, he just grizzles away, and he was so tired he managed to fall asleep oblivious to all the petty drama going on.
Later I sat outside with my houseguests and said in a voice loud enough to carry over to my neighbors, who were sitting on their deck having tea, resolutely not looking in our direction, "for me this place isn't even isolated enough." I said I would most love to be on a bush block with no neighbors for miles. Somewhere I could walk around in a bikini and gumboots and play music as loud as I like outside and not have the neighbors poking their head over my fence all the time to see what I'm up to. One day, hopefully.

long weekend

Having houseguests is great, except when they don't pull their weight. I was amazed that I ended up cooking dinner for my guests, after they'd seen me slaving away all day in front of them, cleaning floors, chasing the baby, organising the baby's feeds, feeding and changing and bathing the baby, taking laundry off and on the line and putting loads of laundry on, taking him out for an early spin, getting the Sunday papers, organising the guest room and tiptoeing around at night trying not to wake everyone when the baby woke.
So there I stood as they occasionally drifted in to chop a vegie before repairing to the living room again where one buried her nose in New Idea and the other in Dickens's The Old Curiousity Shop, and they drank wine and called out further instructions.
But we had a lot of fun while they were here, and they took the baby off my hands a couple of times, which is always a well-needed break. They came bearing gifts, too, including the wine. Babies get totally spoilt, don't they? Among other things Harley now has his first pair of hibiscus print boardies, little surfer-boy-to-be that he is. We took some photos at the lake so maybe I'll get to post a nice one on the blog. One guest was the baby's city-dwelling single auntie who fascinates him because she sounds exactly the same as me, so he gets his mummy in stereo; and my sister's friend, a journalist.
We took the baby and my sister's friend around to see our parents. We all sat in a circle in the grass and tried to eat poppyseed cake with homemade marmalade while thirty chickens and a baby tried to break through all the barricades. My mother, holding a white chicken on her lap, said proudly to my sister's friend, "This one is a genuine Leghorn. You know Leghorns? L-E-G horn?" My sister and I laughed as my parents regaled my sister's friend with chicken stories. A couple of chickens mated in front of us as we ate. Have they no shame? I observed how my parents are more interested in their chickens than their grandchild. But my sister's friend just smiled and listened.
Later, on the phone to my other sister, the one who has kids, I said I don't really mind about them relaxing and not helping with housework because after all they've been working and needed a holiday, and anyway, until you have kids yourself, you just don't understand what it's like. I didn't understand when she first had Raphy, my first nephew. I didn't have a clue. I didn't know it was a 24-hour job where you sometimes are on your feet literally all day.
I said at least our sister makes such an effort to see her nephews. My sister snorted and said, "Yeah, but when she rocks up in high heels you kind of know she's not really there to play with the baby."
Ah, well, Harley will just have to have one fabulous glamorous city auntie who sweeps in with presents and interesting companions and sweeps out again.

cardinal sin

Back to the election....
Blogger was down for a few days so I know this is very old news now, but I've still caught myself wondering what sins Tony Abbott had such a burning need to confess to Cardinal Pell the other day.
As a newspaper reader wrote (sorry, can't find the link), they must have been grave sins indeed for him to have to consult the Cardinal rather than his local parish priests.
So I wonder...was he coveting his neighbor's wife? Daydreaming about sticking a dagger in the PM's back? Did he come home after the Tony Jones interview, get pissed, shout at his wife and kick the cat? Hmmmm...

dream time

It's been raining--no, flooding--here for the past few days so we're stuck inside again today and I can't go get the Saturday papers. Oh well, that's OK I guess, one less thing on the "to do" list. At least the internet's working today. It's been a bit iffy lately because of all the storms.
So, a week to go til the elections, though Murdoch's still claiming it's "65 days to go", which I just don't understand. I've been wondering lately how the flavor of the blogosphere will change after the election. If Howard gets in again, I think it may just break the heart of this Lefty blogger. After all, it will mean the Australian people are happy to let their Prime Minister practically get away with murder. It will feel like, god, what do you have to DO in this country to get kicked out of Government? I mean, for the past few years we bloggers have been chronicling deceit after deceit after deceit by our Prime Minister. Surely, surely Australia won't put up with it. Surely.
Curiously, I had a dream last night that Latham absolutely caned Howard. Yes, I really did dream about it. Sad eh? Was most disappointed to realise I'd only imagined the whole thing.

kidding myself

Before I had my baby I was a bit worried about how I would go with babytalk, since I've never had much to do with babies before. I thought I'd feel kind of silly. But it's amazing how instinctive it is--it seems you just know how to talk to your baby. You automatically simplify everything: "give Mama" and "Mama give", "Harley hold bottle", "Harley want yumyums?", "Harley go sleepies", "Harley go poosies?", "Harley clever!" and so on. You echo with exaggerated astonishment every sound your baby makes. It seems when he's tired or grizzly his entire 'vocabulary' gets a run. What is really just a long stretch of meaningless sounds gets cut into little chunks that he thinks are words, and he copies my intonations and emphases. "Agaa agoo arra arreee, alla alloooo alleeee, abaa aboof agoof agooooo!" he complains. (The way he so beautifully rolls his "r"s is surely due to his Italian blood...) And the two of you talk this way and somehow understand each other perfectly. It's gorgeous.
In other Harley news, he now has his first two bottom teeth, is eating pretty much whatever I eat (blander versions, of course), and is exclusively sleeping in his cot. Woo-hoo! I am quite proud of this achievement, since I wagged sleep school--I was supposed to go in September but sort of baulked at the idea of giving Harley such an early taste of being institutionalised (kidding). Actually I just couldn't face the idea of five days of crying and screaming. I figured the time would come when he was ready and it did.
So I've got my bed all to myself again. I guess I'll have to find someone else to share it with.

judgment day

As John Howard and George Bush like to say, history will judge them.

heavy

Just finished watching 21 Grams, starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts who I went to school with (sorry, had to namedrop). Another topnotch performance from her; she's a very gifted actress really. And Sean Penn, well, what can I say. I love the guy. Great film but god, how depressing. Even a tough cookie like me shed a few tears. I'm now having to watch Inside Idol as an antidote.

friends and all lies

Anyone surprised by this?

Britain has confirmed Australia was invited to take part in planning for war shortly after British and US military officials started preparations nine months before Iraq was invaded.

Wonder what the Rodent's response will be. No doubt something along these lines:

"No, I didn't lie to the Australian people. I mean, just because we were involved in planning to go to war, doesn't mean we were actually intending to go to war."

Right. It was just all talk, no action.

trash from the treasurer

OK, I'll come out of semi-retirement to say this. He must think we are complete fools:

"I'm treasurer, and I've been the treasurer for eight and a half years and I am running for re-election as treasurer because I think the economic issues are very important," Mr Costello replied. "That's my position. I am running for re-election as a member of parliament and as treasurer."
When pushed again on whether he would pursue the prime minister's job, the treasurer repeated: "My aspiration is to be re-elected to the job that I'm doing."

Duh! Of course you're running for re-election as treasurer, sunshine. Someone called John Howard is running for PM. OK? We get that. That's not in dispute 10 days before the election. What we want to know is, are you up for the PM's job after the election. Why are you guys so squirmy on this issue?
And it's worth quoting Tony Abbott from the Sunday show of 14 March, as printed on The Great Federal Election Scratchie I received in the mail today (I got three Howards, which is a very depressing thought):

You might get..."two years of Howard and one year of Costello, or one year of Howard and two years of Costello."

Argh.

elsewhere: Tim doesn't appreciate the sleaziness either.

down but not out

Blogging will probably be fairly light to non-existent for the next little while because of Things I Can't Blog About, but hope to be up and inspired again soon. Seeya.

swing lowdown

Just out of curiosity, if I happen to have any readers who have changed their mind about which way they'll vote in the election, they might care to explain why, or if it was something specific, what exactly it was that changed their mind.

non-violent femmes

Further to my post below, here's Judith Brett on the same subject (via backpages):

[T]he so-called doctors' wives - women who put moral values before self-interest - are not new. They are simply continuing a long tradition of women's political engagement.
...
It is not surprising that the Liberals are finding concerned women across all age groups in many Liberal electorates thinking about changing their vote. What is surprising is that they know so little of their own history that they are surprised by these women's reaction. Did they really think that it was only leftie, pinko inner-city latte drinkers who opposed the war in Iraq, or were ashamed of Australia's treatment of asylum seekers?
...
As well, the term is extraordinarily patronising, assuming that women should vote according to their husbands' economic interests, that they are someone's wife rather than a citizen in their own right. And further, it is implied that when they don't vote according to their husband's economic interests they are somehow making an inauthentic political choice.
...What this term describes - women's morally motivated political engagement - has a long and proud history. How it is described - in a dismissive and insulting epithet - also has a long history in men's attempts to patronise and diminish women's political voice.

Yeah, exactly.