Resolutions for 2010:

1) I will finally get my act together and formally change my name to married name on assorted paraphenalia. (After over a year). It is too confusing having a driver's licence in one name and a passport in another, an email addy in one name and the signanture block another. Also, the dual signatures are too hard! So the resolution: name commit!
2) Eat breakfast each day (am currently a shocker for just grabbing a coffee at work)
3) Cook dinner at least once a week (as spending far too much money eating out constantly... but so much nicer to have others cook for you!)
4) Start sewing more so that I can branch out from baby clothes into items for individuals old enough to complain if the seams are shite :)
5) Find a form of exercise that I like rather than view as a chore
6) Clean out my clothes. It is absurd to have too many to fit in a large chest of drawers. The Salvos will have a better use for them. Also, then I can shop!
7) Finally get act together and become properly qualified Girl Guide Leader, rather than futzing about and continuing to be an assistant.

Hmm.

That is a lot.

I suppose we shall see as of February if any have been achieved!

Blog paranoia. Sod it.

Okay, so I abandoned the little blog just as it found a reader or two.

The thing is, I got self concious.

I started freaking out about people reading my inner thoughts, and linking it back to me, as MsLaurie is hardly the most impressive bit of pseudonym. Not only have I been using it for years (I have a very stable online identity, which all of a sudden I'm not so sure about), and for some reason, MrLaurie, who blogs in real-name territory, insists upon linking.

Not to mention, writers block and being utterly convinced that I had nothing of import to say!

So I've been feeling a bit exposed. Also, what really gets me ranting about politics is health, and as I work in that area, I don't feel like I can rant in a public space about it!

Hence, a bit of a blog abandonment.

Strategies I've considered to re-vamp:
1) Abandon the blog entirely, start a new one not quite so MsLaurie linked.
2) Stop blogging (but how unfun, and I do so love reading other people's blogs, it feels greedy not to share back)
3) Suck it up and move on.

Assessment? I'm sucking it up.

So! I hereby annouce a return to blogging, at least semi-regularly. Although given my new misgivings, I suspect it will be less big-P political than I originally imagined.

A Good Wife

Late last year, I married MrLaurie. Up until about six weeks before the wedding, we had not lived together (a complicated and multi-state long distance relationship. Virgin Blue made an absolute fortune off us).

And from the moment we moved in together, for some reason, although we had both been very independent until that point, I found myself immediately wanting to be a ‘Good Wife’.

In three and a half years of living alone I had not once planned meals a week ahead, or managed to drag myself to a farmers market for vegetables. I had certainly not looked up recipes online and written shopping lists (my shopping style trended more towards moseying around the supermarket where inspiration took me).

I would often go weeks without doing laundry (benefit of having too many clothes), and my cleaning was scrappy. I’ve always been the sort to do a panicked rush around when people were coming over, and tend to feel that a place is not home if there are not five pairs of shoes sitting in the middle of the lounge room floor.

But since getting married, I somehow care about the groceries. I’m planning menus. Days in advance! I care whether we’ve had the same meal more than once in a week!

I’m worrying about laundry – for some crazy reason I care that his collars are stained, and somehow decide that I need to fix this immediately. So I’m scrubbing in the ‘made into a paste’ napisan early on a Saturday morning. This is ridiculous - who even sees the inside of the collars of his workshirts?

I’ve started planning dinner parties. And worrying about his health (has he made a doctor’s appointment? No? Should I make it for him? – Talk about infantilising). I’m caring about how often he calls his mother (for some reason apparently I think this reflects on me!). I’ve started buying Christmas and birthday gifts for his family ‘from both of us’, where last year I would have firmly declared this was his problem. I’ve even sewn on his buttons, rather than taking the time to teach him, which I’d previously insisted was the only way it was happening.

Admittedly, its not all one way – MrLaurie does tend to clean up the kitchen after I’ve destroyed it through cooking. And he does put loads of washing on much more often than I do (although his attempts to hang the washing afterwards are… artistic). And we have sensibly agreed that we are both terrible at mopping and vacuuming, so we’ve hired a cleaner. (I never knew floors could shine that way!)

I just don’t quite know why it is that I find myself wanting to be A Good Wife. Capitalised. Fifties-style.

What is it about the gender relations that I’ve picked up so comprehensively that I want to prove that I have traditional house-wifely skills? Why after years of simply assuming that he must enjoy my company due to wit and smarts (not demonstrated to date on this blog, but I would like to assure any readers that it really is there, somewhere) have I suddenly moved towards trying to impress with how much I can be like our respective Grandmothers?

Clearly, the patriarchy has some seductive charms. But I’m going to have to do some serious conquering of this trend before we even start to contemplate little ones running about, or I’ll be straight back to 1956.

Pinkification... so that its about THAT baby?

I never liked pink. Even when I deep in my barbie phase as a kid, I didn’t like the pink of all her accessories. I’d go out of my way to find alternative items to furnish my barbie’s lives with (for the record, my fantastic Mum managed to get me teeny little cane furniture for my barbies. Hey, it was the eighties, cane was cool).

My bedroom as an infant and toddler was pale blue – it had been painted before I was born, not because a boy was expected, but because my parents thought it was cool and restful for a baby. Indeed, back in the early eighties, you couldn’t (or perhaps just didn’t… I wasn’t there to know, really) find out the sex of the baby (well, not unless serious genetic issues were in play).

In the last few months, friends have started to have babies of their own. And without fail, they are learning the sex of the baby as early as possible – I understand that, they want to know as much about the little person soon to be in their lives as they can.

I wonder, though, if knowing whether the baby is a boy or girl – and knowing only that really – for several months before they arrive is perhaps driving the seemingly relentless march of pinkification/blueifying of clothing, furniture, and accessories of baby boys and girls? If in the rush to do something in those months of waiting for the baby to arrive, people somehow feel the need to try and connect with the unknown, through identifying clearly that their things were chosen specifically for that child, not a child?

A friends’ little girl was born in January. Being somewhat crafty, I had made the baby a little sundress, in pale lime cotton with a purple, yellow and white daisy print all over it. I decided that the dress might not be enough (what if bub was a bit cold and didn’t want just little straps?), and tried to buy a teeny (size 000) t-shirt, in purple or yellow to go underneath it.

But there were no tshirts in purple or yellow in size 000, not at Target, not at children’s Cotton On, not at Kmart (oh yes, I am classy – on the other hand, how long will a child wear size 000? Not long enough to splash out I say). I had to settle for plain white. If I’d wanted pink, I could have had twenty different styles.

Interestingly, my friend was thrilled at the gift – not only was (most of it) handmade, but it was the only clothing they’d received so far that wasn’t pink.

I guess the question is – did everyone buy pink because they knew a girl was on the way, and wanted to buy for that baby not a baby, or did they all buy pink because that was all that was available? Chickens and eggs… or rather, pinks and blues.

Cossie’s quit – finally.

Today’s big news is of course that Peter Costello has – finally – quit politics. While I’m not generally inclined toward his side of politics, being more your latte leftie, (apparently. Although I prefer flat whites), I think his leaving is good for political discourse in this country. Finally, finally we can stop the too-ing and fro-ing about whether or not Turnbull will be challenged, and the constant ‘oh but Costello would totally whip the Government if only he were in charge’ polling questions. Maybe we can actually have some discussion about policies, rather than silly gossip now? *sigh* I’m sure its just too much to ask…

tram views

Daily, I pass by the East Melbourne day procedure facility. That anodyne name somewhat undersells its primary purpose - its an abortion clinic.

Every morning as I pass by on the tram - long before the clinic itself is actually open - I observe the small group of people who wait outside the gates, armed with three dimensional posters showing fetal development, pamphlets, and scowls.

The group is small - the recent law change in Victoria showed that while there is a group of people deeply against abortion, the majority see it as a necessary evil at least, and certainly a private matter not to be interferred with. Most Victorians were glad to have abortion out of the criminal code.

Usually, the group consists of about four people. Sometimes only one, sometimes as many as seven. Yesterday, I noticed a different composition to the group - they were mainly women. Almost always the group is made up of elderly men, in about their sixties or seventies - probably retired, and with time to hang around and bother perfect strangers about their life choices.

What is the point of this ponder? I don't really know... perhaps the fact that it is mainly older men trying to police young women's choices. Perhaps the fact that the group is so small compared to what I see of the situation in America. Perhaps just the fact that the group is even there, and so persistently. It is just so odd to me.

Surely, if you're really against abortion, you should be spending your time lobbying the government to increase the single parent's pension? Making childcare affordable, and accessible? Looking at contraception access, so that unwanted pregnancies happen less?

It seems to me that if you truly believe abortion is murder - which I do not, but semantics - if you do, surely you should be trying to make both not getting unexpectedly pregnant less common, and - once a woman is pregnant - making the choice to keep the pregnancy easier, by creating the social environment which is supportive, rather than shaming?