My Swiss cheese CV

Recently we attempted a trial departure from TI.  Tony is still on the little island so we haven’t cut the umbilical cord, yet.  But after a month on the big island, I need to find work to cover the costs of fuel, school fees and swimming lessons.  Whoever said TI was an expensive place to live hadn’t lived in suburbia!  Here’s the problem: I’ve been a stay-at-home mum for the best part of 18 years so how the hell do I find a job when I have a Swiss cheese CV?  

     I have always tried to be a good mother; I sent my kids to school each day, I fed them healthy food, they’ve always had lots of sleep and most importantly, I thought, I made sure I was always at home when the kids were there.  I have never wanted them to attend after-school care or worse, return to an empty house after school because Tony and I were working, me pursuing a 'career'. Tony made it clear early on he couldn't cope with full-time parenting and I understood.

    I took my mothering responsibilities seriously and that meant being there for my children … even if I wasn’t actually present in the moment because I needed to be in a nice, silent place in my mind when I made my 3487^th peanut butter sandwich, used Spray n’ Wipe on the 2502^nd ‘accident’ or delivered my 24,295^th smack (including discipline incorporating the use of implements such as the wooden spoon or the more draconian, plastic eggflip).  
     I didn’t work because I wanted to be a ‘good mother’ and to be a good mother I believed I had to give up working in paid employment. I tried part-time work, but with managing two businesses for Tony at any one time and having sole responsibility of childcare arrangements, it was too much.  I couldn't give 100 percent to any job.

     The haze has lifted (my youngest is eight) and I realised sleep deprivation and performing mundane tasks such as cooking pots of bolognaise and pouring glasses of milk, cleaning up body fluids and managing behaviour screwed up my mind and priorities and made me think I had to ‘be there for my kids’.   And not at work where I should have been.

     The truth of the matter is, I did want to be a good mum and I made the mistake of thinking I had to give up work.  It’s time to make a confession.  Giving up paid work wasn’t done with altruistic intentions.  I knew that if I had to choose between spending time at work or at home, I would choose staying at work. My working days in my last legal job became longer and longer.  Why?  Because it was a more pleasant place to be.  Colleagues make their own food and clean up after themselves.  Colleagues don’t need disciplining.  Colleagues are adults and speak in sentences with more than five words.  Colleagues are fun to be with. I found working stimulating, mentally and socially.  I found staying at home with children dull and draining.
     Tony said to me a couple of years ago, 'you try so hard to be a good mother by staying at home, but I can tell you don't like it because you never play with the kids.  You're in another place.'  Oh, those words stung because they were true.
     To deal with the brain-numbing at-home routines I painted on commission and then taught yoga for a bit of pocket money.  It gave me a sense of purpose separate from parenting young children.  A near mental crisis after the full-time mothering of a three and one year old for only two months in 2006 led me to writing.  And later to studying.

     What I ended up doing was performing half-arsed on each of my 'careers' which hasn't been enough to pull a full-time income.  My only grace is that giving half-arsed diligence on say teaching, writing, art and yoga amounts to two whole-arsed efforts.  So I have the potential to devote 200 per cent to one job.  That's a good thing, isn't it? 

    But I am in a dilemma with my Swiss cheese CV.  I wasn’t able to decide how to present it.  Do I put my work history in chronological order so it reads teacher, business owner, writer, artist, lawyer, yoga instructor, commercial fisherman, domestic violence officer? Or do I have teaching in one section, law in another, writer and let go the other occupations which have the potential to show me as indecisive and all over the place?  

     None of my extra-parenting pursuits have earned me more than a few extra dollars and let’s face it, being able to execute a backbend and put your foot in your mouth or knock up a portrait of someone’s loved one or typing out a murder mystery are not skills that have much value in the real world.  

     After all the years I devoted to my children, I haven’t got much to show for it in real- world terms.  I wish now I had stayed in paid work, even part-time.  Unlike Swiss cheese where the bigger the holes, the more intense the flavour, my CV is full of gianormous, humungous vacuums.  Hell, my administrative skills don’t even count for much because I never got my head around MYOB Accounting in 14 years of using the business program. 

     No, I don't have melancholia.  I am being realistic and know other women have felt the same way.  

     One woman said to me not long ago, something to the effect of, 'After ten years at home, the kids don't need me and I have nothing while my husband's career is thriving.'

     Another woman said, 'If I don't work, my family don't respect me because they think I am at home doing nothing.'

     No more whingeing.  I need a CV and a job.  So I asked my friend Pam for advice about my CV and she suggested I elaborate on what my jobs, professional or otherwise, involved.  That added a half page and made a huge improvement.  Then Ashlea said she’d fix it up after I provided more information.

     ‘You’re an artist,’ she said, her voice dripping with exasperation, ‘write about your art and put in an image of a painting. And you're not just a writer. You're a published author. Come on!  You have to sell yourself.’

     She did a fantastic job with it. 

     I have started to fantasise about having a parmesan CV, full and hard, but the future will determine the maturation process.  As the Desiderata decrees, And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.  No, it is not clear at all, but at the moment, thanks to Pam and Ashlea I now have a marscapone CV, full, soft and squishy and without much flavour … and that’s okay for the time being.  Things are unfolding as they should!

A duck is watching ...

Anatidaephobia is defined as the fear of being watched by a duck.  When Nicola emailed me about this anxiety, I was immediately sceptical.

     Anatidae is the family of birds to which ducks belong.  Duck is the common name for the species and the word ‘duck’ is derived from an old English word, ducan, meaning to dive or duck down.  And we all know ‘phobia’ is from the Greek word for ‘fear’.

     So anatidaephobia would actually mean to fear ducks. 

     How could one fear the wisest and gentlest of God’s creatures?

     A quick Google search confirmed what I suspected.  Anatidaephobia is a fictional fear created in the 1980s by Gary Larsen who trained as a biologist.  At the farm, I found Larsen’s, The PreHistory of the Far Side on the bedside table in the spare room.  It has the inscription, Happy Father’s Day, 1992, Your daughter.

     I flicked through and located some duck cartoons.

 

     Note the protagonist's weapon.  All in the name of a few harmless laughs, yes?  Of course, no one could actually fear a duck or her loving and tolerant gaze.  Or could they? 

     Each morning, I wake at 5.55 am, without fail, as Pepper Zen makes her first nasal, ‘haaawnk.’  At first I embraced rising early and, while sipping my tea, watched with great pride as Pepper ducked and dived in the pool. 

     Then, at a loss as what to do with the three-quarter hour between finishing my tea and heading inside to wake the kids for school, I started bringing out my yoga mat and getting in a bit of bend and stretch.  I kept getting interrupted by Pepper. The worst was when I was performing the final and most important relaxation pose, savasana or the corpse pose when the yogi is meant to relax and empty their mind.

     However, these early mornings have taken their toll on me physically and emotionally.  Lately, when the Pepper Alarm sounds I rush to shut her up lest the neighbourhood sign a petition against us living there.  I have been grabbing my sheet, pillow and yoga mat and on the way to the pool, grabbing Pepper (and uttering the odd expletive).  The routine is I deposit her in the pool, I lay out my yoga mat by the pool, wrap myself in the sheet to repel mosquitoes and sleep for an hour.

     My early morning pool-side naps unsettled me from the start.  My sleep was broken and I woke more exhausted than had I stayed awake.  And I did, indeed, experience the sensation of being watched.  I took out my phone to capture on screen any poltergeists or paranormal activity. When I felt uneasy, I discreetly reached for my phone already in camera mode and I snapped proof of anatidaephobia.

     Give me earth-bound spirits and negative chi, but do something about the staring duck!

Ultimate hydration

Fourteen years ago, I reluctantly took up yoga to delay developing the family curse, arthritis.  To my complete surprise, I loved it and have been practising regularly since.  However, I feel like a fraudulent practitioner because I simply like to do the poses and leave the bells and whistles such as yoga breathing, meditation and accoutrements for the real yogis. 

     I don’t go for the string music a devout yogi plays.  I don’t like incense because it stinks and under no circumstances will I chant. In fact, during my yoga practice, my concentration always wanders especially if I have to scream at one of the children (Kibbim or TK, usually), bite a nail, have a doris at someone walking by or playing on the oval or ponder a plot in a story I am writing. 

     I don’t wear the right clothes which are said to enhances one’s practice (hell, sometimes I wear undies, aaagh).  I don’t follow anything resembling a yoga diet because I eat to survive, not for taste or comfort.  I might have a meal that is exclusively meat and sometimes eat bad things like cheese that has cracked and developed grey spots (why? because it is the only cheese in the fridge).  I don’t do vegan (too hard), I don’t juice (think of the food miles on the flesh and skin that are discarded) and I don’t detox (I would if it wasn’t considered by scientists to be unhealthy).  And I only drink water when I am thirsty, nothing like the two litres a day the myth demands.  I drink two litres of tea and coffee, though.

     I don’t have a guru which seems to be a big no no for a committed yogi.  In fact, I am totally against the idea of taking wisdom from one living person. The fact is that I am a white, middle-class, Catholic housewife and I cannot understand how taking on the yogic spiritual lifestyle of an Indian citizen is going to bring me any sort of contentment. 

    But I really admire the clever creativeness of yoga product advertising.  

     A mandala on your yoga mat (the one the site is trying to sell me) will help calm and centre me. 

     The ethically made yoga clothes will enhance my practice.

     The yoga course will refine and increase the joy of my practice and redefine me as an intuitive and competent instructor.

     At the end of the day yoga is an industry and the yoga industry is no different to the fashion industry or the cosmetics industry or the food industry.  Industries are about selling products or services and making money and good luck to anyone who makes an honest buck from flogging off yoga classes, books, retreats, dietary advice or bling. 

    

     Last week Mum bought a yoga magazine for my brother, Stephen who has recently taken up yoga.   Stephen is a botanist and I felt that a yoga magazine which may contain some extreme claims and advertising would be anathema to his scientific personality and repel him from further yoga practice.  I read the magazine and determined it totally unsuitable for him.  He accepted this when I told him he was not reading it.  My grave error was not informing Mum who, while I was deafened by the sound of Home and Away and the hissing of the tuna patties in oil, convinced Stephen to read the magazine. 

     Stephen’s growl of disbelief caught my attention above the raukus.  I turned and found him reading the magazine.

     ‘Stephen, nooo!’  I was paralysed by horror. ‘I told you not to read it.  Mum, how could you let him read this?’

     ‘Listen to this,’ said Stephen, ‘made by European craftsmen, the Lagoena Drinking Bottle has been specially shaped to correlate with the dimensions of the Golden Ratio to revitalise and restructure water molecules.’  He rolled his eyes and shook the magazine. ‘Water can’t be restructured.  This is bullshit.  The Advertising Standards board might be interested in this.’

     From my ancient knowledge of senior chemistry water has two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen and I don't even know if it can be restructured.  If it was possible and we added an extra hydrogen, the result would be hydrogen peroxide, I think, which has two hydrogens and two oxygens.  Or let’s take away a hydrogen from water and we’ll have hydroxide.  And, hey, while we are at restructuring things we might be able to open the envelope and make gold or diamonds.

     As to shaping the bottle according to the dimensions of the Golden Ratio, I wasn’t sure how phi or 1.6 could apply to a receptacle for liquids.

     But I have a soft spot for yoga and I didn’t want Stephen to be put-off because he’d read one dodgy advertisement.  So I emailed the human chemical encyclopedia, Dad and related the claims about the Lagoena drinking bottle, hoping he'd find a redeeming or truthful element to the ad. 

     ‘Absolute rubbish,’ he wrote.

     Scientists can be so precise.  I emailed him again begging for some elaboration.

     Regarding water, I am not sure what you mean by structure.  Water is an unusual molecule – glory of God’s design.  Water has significant hydrogen bonding which is the property that enables life on earth.  The Hs are bonded to the Os and so as water cools it shrinks like any other liquid however at 4 degrees the hydrogen bonding stops the shrinking and the water expands.  That is why ice floats (less dense) than water and fish can survive the frozen rivers and lakes.  A marvel.

Water has structure but bottles have no effect. 

      So, the claims relating to the Lagoena Drinking Bottle are crap, sorry, have no basis in science, but hey, I couldn’t come up with something as creative in a month of blue moons.  And I realised I never drink water when I am practising yoga.  Bad yogi!  Maybe, if I had a Lagoena Drinking Bottle I would be more hydrated during yoga and I'd be able to ignore the children and my nails and people walking by and deepen my practice to become more spiritual and content.  The bottles are only AUD36.40 and come with an attractive, natural fibre casing to protect ........

Duck incarnations

ARMY DUCK

FLUFFY DUCK

WOOD DUCK

ORANGE DUCK

TOILET DUCK

DEAD DUCK

DUCK TAPE

GARDEN DUCK

LAME DUCK

SITTING DUCK

PEKING DUCK

RUBBER DUCK

POOL DUCK

'Oy, filter ahoy!'

A CHILD'S BOOK OF TRUE CRIME

I found Chloe Hooper’s A Child’s Book of True Crime in the children’s book section of the Salvation Army second hand store in Smithfield, Cairns.  I decided to start reading it to the kids that night.

     It was a hard cover copy though it had lost its jacket so I wasn’t able to read the blurb usually found on the front inside flap.  At home I skimmed over the first chapter, in italics.  Yep, definitely written for kids; Kitty Koala ‘snuggled against Terence Tiger’s soft coat’.  I wasn’t sure if the kids would be interested in a book about native animals.

     The next chapter was in Roman font which I figured was the start of the real story.  I scanned the first few sentences.

     Woah!

     ‘I lifted my skirt … peeling off my pantyhose … Thomas liked the way primary-school teachers dress.’

     Hang on, I thought, I need to find that blurb.  It was there after all, stuck to the first page.   After peeling it apart, I realised this was definitely not a kids’ book, but one I would be keen to read considering it contained my favourite literary themes; crime, infidelity and characters who don’t have a handle on reality.

     Narrator Kate Byrne is 22 and has taken her first teaching position in a small Tasmanian town while she figures out if teaching is what she really wants to do.  She considers it fate when she begins an affair, ‘a sex apprenticeship,’ with Thomas, the father of her brightest year four student, Lucien.  Thomas’s wife, Veronica has just published a book, Murder at Black Swan Point, about the real-life stabbing death of a young adulteress in a nearby town twenty years earlier.

     Consumed by Murder at Black Swan Point and believing Veronica’s version, in which the young woman is murdered by her lover’s wife who then disappears, is not completely accurate, Kate starts to construct an alternative scenario. 

     Lucien begins to draw graphic images of himself maimed and Kate suspects he is deeply affected by his mother’s work.  Kate, to make the story of Murder at Black Swan Point palatable for children, creates her own version of the murder as a children’s story told in the third person using native animals such as Kitty Koala and Terence Tiger. But retelling a crime of passion as a children’s story can’t hide the cruel realities of the adult world Kate is struggling with.

     ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely,’ whispered Kitty Koala, ‘if there were some recipe to avoid becoming an adult.’

     Kate wants to end the affair, but she is under Thomas’s control.  At a school cricket match under the gaze of other fathers, Thomas asks her over a water bubbler, ‘Are you being a good girl?’ and ‘Did you want to make all the other kids’ dads hot?’

     By this time Kate has retreated so far into the story of Murder at Black Swan Point and her affair with Thomas she fails to become aware of her reputation in the small community or her tenuous grip on reality.  She starts receiving late-night anonymous phone calls and when someone cuts her brakes, she is convinced Veronica is trying to kill her and she will meet the same fate as the young adulteress in Murder at Black Swan Point.

     A Child’s Book of True Crime is an erotic and suspenseful account of a young woman resisting the responsibilities and conventions of adulthood.  We follow Kate as she retreats into her youth and the world of her students.  I kept cringing as Kate snowballed towards a life steeped in fantasy while all the signs of her mental fragility were screaming out to me.  I wanted to yell at her, ‘Get a grip.’  
     I read the novel in one sitting starting at 6 am.  When the kids woke, they had a couple of hours unrestricted access to any screen in the house providing they didn’t bother me unless there was an emergency.  I couldn’t put the book down except to hurriedly make cups of tea when hunger for breakfast gripped me. 

     My only criticism was the way Kate’s sophisticated vocabulary and thinking were at odds with her young age, 22.  In the early part of the novel, I assumed Kate was around 30.  However, this may have something to do with me not knowing many 22 year-old women.

     I finished reading A Child’s Book of True Crime three and a half hours after starting, delightfully unsettled and wishing the novel was longer.  However, I floated through the next 24 hours in Kate Byrne’s world thinking about her naivety, her doomed affair and wondering how a young and intelligent woman could become so detached from reality.
     Put A Child's Book of True Crime on your list of books to read this year.  

Australian Women Writers Challenge 2014

The Australian Women Writers Challenge 2014 has been set up to overcome the gender bias in Australian writing.  

     Life is pretty tough as a writer mainly because it's difficult to earn a sustainable income.  Annual incomes are half what they were in 2001 and I refer to this in an earlier post, Email from a reader.  

     Last financial year I scraped together the equivalent of coffee money from my writing.  In fact, in my first two days of teaching last year, I earned 25% of the total income I'd earned from writing in the previous five years.  I know. I am new to the craft.  I also know the one cruel reality about pursuing writing as a career - I may never be able to earn a full-time income.  That's fine, sniff, sniff, I would be happy earning a part-time income.  Actually, I'd be very grateful if I could continue deriving funds for coffee and, perhaps the odd slice of cheesecake.
     Breaking things down, it's harder being a woman writer mainly because male writers are more recognised in terms of book reviews.  Check these stats  This is not surprising since Australian women receive less recognition and pay for the same jobs done by men.  Yes, I need to find that research.
      The AWW Challenge has been established to bring attention to this 'gender bias', recognise female writers in Australia and promote their writing.
     You can join and review books even if you are not a writer.  
     I have joined and set myself a task of reviewing only books I buy from second hand shops.  That way, I'll be in a position to buy the books with the money I earn from my writing.  In fact, I might even be able to buy a coffee as well!