Rules of the playground

If you're friends with me on Facebook, you'd know that today I posted that a scary looking mum in head to toe adidas and dripping in diamonds tried to pick a fight with me at the park. And what was it over? Nothing really, if you ask me. 

Ten minutes prior there had been maybe eight or nine kids all trying to get on the three seat merry-go-round swing thingy. Given the chaos, one kid ended up falling and yet the swing kept going. Each time one of those swings passed over her tiny little body, the legs of the child swinging would kick her. 

As one of only two parents actually watching these kids, I naturally stopped it and let her free. The other parent (a dad), grabbed the other side. Tears followed but I'm pretty sure the little girl was ok, just really shaken up. Bossy it might be, I then told the kids that they'd have to be careful and stand back while it was swinging. One of these little girls didn't want to. She proceeded to run in, out and around it (yep, asking for trouble). Not my place to do much and all I could do was ask her to be careful, which I did. Nicely, I promise. 

She must have run off to tell on me (would love to know what on earth she said), because up comes her mother looking furious. I think she'd have turned it into a physically fight if I'd let her... honestly, she wasn't someone I'd want to cross paths with and I hope I never do again. I briefly told this woman the story but really, what's the point. If she had any interest in her daughter's behaviour, she would be watching her. No, I kept that last thought to myself because I like being alive.

Personally, I'm a bit over the sit-on-the-park-bench-and-text mums. The park might be free but it doesn't come with childcare. Call it whatever you want, but if there are kids in dangerous situations and any adult it present, I think you've got a duty of care. I hate being in the position to discipline children who are not my own but it almost feels an unwritten rule that if there are no parents to be seen in a public place, it's free for all. Some mums need to go back to the maternity hospital and ask for a new handbook. 

I'm no supermum (to further explain this let me tell you that my four-year-old daughter is still awake at 9:10pm. I can hear her now, in bed but wide awake. Great. I wish I was enjoying a quiet night with a glass of wine, but no).. anyway, my point.. it does not take supermum to keep them safe. Just common sense! Wish that mum today had a little more.    

Easter

A day late in saying so, but Happy Easter.
 
Ours was a quiet affair this year because I had to work Good Friday and Easter Sunday and Jeremy is working today (Easter Monday) and tomorrow too. Public holiday rates, you might be thinking.. yes and no. Yes for Good Friday but would you believe that Easter Sunday is not considered a public holiday. I don't really get it?!?! 

About Easter ... I do firmly believe that Jesus did rise again and I very much appreciate the meaning of Easter. But if I'm truly honest, I do not 100% believe that he literally died on the cross. I know I should, and I want to (not because of the actual story, but because I want to have faith in what seems to be very much the story for any Christian). But I don't know what to think. 

It might be because I don't want to accept that level of suffering. I remember being taught as a child and deciding it was simply too horrible a notion that anyone be nailed to anything (I'm pretty sure I cried). I do believe in God, in Jesus and would call myself a Catholic though yet remain unsure. I am a huge contradiction, right? 

On a lighter note, it's been COD around here (chocolate overdose that would be). We've been up to our ears in it and it shows. A pretty crabby four a half year old isn't fun and I'm ready to load some serious vegetables into her come tomorrow. I'm kind of embarrassed about how much she ate on my watch... so I won't say!

I guess it wasn't all my fault though. I did find her under the kitchen table this morning after being very firm about not eating anymore eggs. As these photos show, I'm clearly a great mum with strong direction and authority. Needless to say, the chocolate basket is now up high and out of her reach (but unfortunately in mine).

Today I am feeling totally discouraged by the value placed in nursing care. 

It all started when I set out to find someone to get our garden looking ok again. It's not landscape work I need, just some weeding and general tidying up. I'm talking a few hours manual labour. It's not that we can't do it ourselves, we're just so busy with work/kinder/study/life in general and to be honest, it's not really our thing. We're not good with gardens and don't have the greenest of thumbs.. right Jeremy?.. if you're reading this! 

But, it looking nice (enough) is important to me. So much so that I'm very much willing to pay to get it done. I've had a couple of quotes and to my surprise, none are less than $35 an hour with the average being quite a bit higher (cash in hand). Call me crazy, but I was hoping to pay about $20 an hour. Why, because this is around what I earn and my logic was that I'd go off to work to do what I know how to do well and I'd pay the same amount for someone to do for me what they do well.

If I were seeking a highly experienced, trained, super-dooper garden specialist then maybe, just maybe, I'd get it. But I'm not, and therefore I don't. If I'm honest, it upsets me to think that it's cheaper for me to NOT work a day and attempt the garden myself than to pay somebody else. I don't even want it to be cheaper. Just on par would be nice.

Here's why I don't get it - how can it be so that a nurse earns less than a gardener? And it's not just gardens. I started asking around and it's the norm to pay this amount for anything house related.
Why is being a nurse be so undervalued? Our government and private sector see it appropriate to pay a nurse so poorly that an oak tree is more expensive to care for than their children, or their parents, or any loved one. I don't even have an oak tree, but I'm sure you get my point. 

I AM NOT saying that a gardener, or a painter, or a builder, or anyone who undertakes manual work of any kind of less qualified or deserving than a nurse. I promise you that. These jobs are also important and the people who do them work incredibly hard. But is being a nurse not worth at least an equal amount? My point is not that a gardener be paid less, simply that a nurse be paid as much.

I am someone who feels such passion for nursing. I can't even explain in words how much I love being a nurse. As dorky as it sounds, I feel as if I had a calling. It's as if God (or maybe Florence, standing over me with an oil lamp) spoke to me as a small girl and called me to the sisterhood (and yes, I can say sisterhood even though there are indeed male nurses.. the term Sister applies to both!). 

I take this job so seriously and I can't ever imagine loving another profession quite as much. BUT... people in power, those who control our Government, when are you going to stop taking such risks? You lose those of us that love what we do on a daily basis. It's been happening for years and the result is a whole lot of people working in a hospital doing a job they don't love - and it shows. The best nurses leave (a lot).

I go to work, with pride I might add, to wipe the bottoms of people like your mother who might have had a terrible reaction to chemo that will save their lives, I hold their hands and answer their questions about what will happen if and when they die (unspoken but clear to us both that it's a when and not an if), I tuck your children into bed and rub their backs when they are crying in pain, I hold the hands of your husbands as I reassure them that it's totally normal, and totally ok, to wet the bed (and then I clean it all up). These are not complaints, simply observations. I wouldn't change what I do for the world. Nursing the people other people love, is a great honour.

BUT, I suppose I'd like to be as valued as someone who weeds my garden. Money talks. I wish nurses would get paid a little more. That's all. 

Talent

I'm a sucker for new unexpected talent on TV talent shows. You know the ones, where the audience expect a crappy voice to match the crappy outfit and unkempt look and out comes an AMAZING, jaw dropping kind of voice? Along the lines of Susan Boyle or Paul Potts (who I would have married if I didn't love Jeremy so much... he was just sooo nice).

Here is the newest addition, Michael Collings. No, I don't want to marry this one. But I would buy his CD. I love this and hope you do too. Jeremy says that it's all staged, that they would have found Michael and made him look super scruffy first so that he'd make for good TV. I don't agree! I'm staying in my bubble of believing what I see on reality TV, which in this instance was a very special moment :)

 

  

And if you want some more...

Friends of Mine

So I've become one of those people that fell off the blogosphere. But I'm back. And I'm staying here. 

It's been a crazy couple of weeks and things were just too hard to keep up with. I didn't even get to any of my 87 loads of laundry, let alone a blog entry. I'm working three days a week (how oh how do you full-time working mums do it?) and between that, kinder runs and then school holidays and making the family calendar work with not one but two nurses (AKA shift workers) in the family, life is chaotic. We're finding our way though and I feel myself finding a new normal. One where the house stays a little messier than usual and dinner is whatever there is time to make.

You know what though, I miss blogging. It's only been two weeks (almost) and I have missed having a creative outlet in which to unwind. Writing, to me, is a nice thing to do. I don't have time to edit and think about what or how I write so you get it as it flows from my mind but that works for me. It seemed to work for others too as to my surprise people were reading. If you are doing that again now, thank you for sticking by me. Now that I know I miss it, I'm going to keep this regular from now on.

Do I have much to write about today? Well, there are a few things but it's 11:51pm and time is of the essence. Jeremy is on day four of six in a row and I'm pretty sure he'd be a up for a catch up chat when I get of the mac. We're like passing ships these days and of course I miss him :( I almost cried for him last night knowing he had to get up at 6am for an early start (after not getting home from the hospital until 11pm last night). Poor thing :( 

So, with little time, I'll leave you with a few pics taken when I went out for a girls' brunch yesterday morning. We tried a new cafe called Friends of Mine in Richmond. It was a non-baby-shower for a lovely friend who didn't want a true shower. So, no gifts, no games, no (ok, not much) baby talk and just some close girlfriends chatting over a yummy breakfast.

This place was so good that I have to spread the word. Truly worth the wait to get in! Thankfully I'd heard this would be the case and arrived half an hour before our party of nine so that I could reserve a table (and that's not nearly as selfless as it sounds - Mums, does half an hour ALONE with the newspaper sound like anything difficult?!?!). So, while I wish they did take bookings (kind of annoying but I get it), the time was well used and appreciated.

No time for a full review so I'll just say this. They get it.. their formula (whatever that might be) works. Amazing food, pleasant & nice but yet not over the top service (just as I like it), unbelievable presentation, little touches that just add to the whole experience, reasonable prices. To me, it had a real feeling of being that little bit special but still so real. A lot of cafes I go to try for that but it doesn't work (truthfully, they try too hard). Go for yourself and you'll know what I mean! 

Doesn't my bircher muesli look delicious? It sure was. 

We judge, yes, but keep opinions to yourself

If you're a 'mummy blogger' reader, or probably even any mainstream media reader at all, you'd have read about the backlash surrounding the (pretty insane) comments of Pru Goward. If not, you read all about it here. I know I'm a little late jumping on the bandwagon and it'll be old news soon enough, but while it's still being talked about I just wanted to add my two cents. 

Like 100% of the responses I've heard, I support Jackie (Golly, if she's going down then so are the rest of us). Actually, make that 99.9% as I did read one ridiculous comment on a parenting board from a mum who agreed with Pru's comments. At the end of the day I feel like this whole thing is more a reflection on the kind of person Pru Goward is than the mother in Jackie O.

If you ask me, this is a lesson in when not to speak up and not about what to think or not to think. We can't tell Pru not have thoughts but we can ask her to keep them private. Because, let's be honest, we all judge (no matter how perfect a mother you claim to be!). Sadly, when it comes to mothering, I truly think the worst culprits of judging a mum, are other mums. Just putting it out there. It's the thing I most loathe about motherhood. I hate being (openly) judged as much as the next mummy but it seems to come with the territory. Wouldn't it be nice if those that pass on their opinions could learn to keep their mouths shut?

So long as the judgment is not passed on and kept private, it's not about being a mean or 'bad' person and it's ok. It's about opinions and we all have them. That's the beauty of having your own mind. You can think as you please. Even if you try, as I do, to think kindly about others (esp mums) there are PLENTY of times that you're going to think, "gee that's not how I'd do it" etc, etc. In other words, it's normal. It's what you do with these thoughts that defines you as a person. It's also about realising, accepting and embracing the notion that different does not mean better or worse. Each to their own, it's a good motto to remember!

What matters is NOT saying anything. NOT responding and NOT passing verbal, written (or otherwise) judgment. Just keep it to yourself and all will be well. Just as Pru should have done. We can't blame her for having an opinion, it's human nature and agree or disagree (disagree, for the record), she is entitled. Her mistake was speaking up and really, little kindness wouldn't have hurt.