I got a text message from my ex on Friday morning, informing me he’d found a rat cage in the eldest’s bedroom. And that marked the premature end of my mental health day. The rat was out of the bag. More specifically, the eldest’s pet rat Twitch was no longer a secret. Let me rewind […]

Just for something completely different … life has been a bit full on this week. The eldest has been crook in bed – I hate to think how far their school attendance rate has plummeted – so I’ve been juggling medical appointments with work. I spent my lunch break on Wednesday  driving them to Douglass […]

Sometimes I wonder if my kids make a deliberate effort to be such polar opposites. You wouldn’t pick them as siblings on their looks and you certainly wouldn’t on their likes. But I remind myself they’ve been this way since birth. For example, as soon as the eldest could crawl, they’d seek out books and […]

It’s so difficult to sort the fake news from the real stuff these days … and I don’t mean it in the delusional Trump sense of the word. It disturbs me that social media can so easily spread lies, with people taking them at face value. I overheard two women discussing why Labor lost the […]

I was sitting in a CRM presentation yesterday when I saw the date on the computer screen and realised Oh! It’s my wedding anniversary! Forgetting your wedding anniversary is no biggie when your husband walked out five years ago. But I couldn’t help doing the maths and noting it was our 19th wedding anniversary … […]

You know you’re getting sensitive about your age when … You think a comedian is making fun of you for being old … when he’s actually dissing you for being in love. I went to the Sydney Comedy Festival Gala on Saturday night with DD and a group of friends. DD unwittingly booked tickets that […]

I spent all my birthday gift cards yesterday. It was such delirious fun for a woman looking down the barrel of a $12,000 bill for her child’s nasal surgery and braces. Free money that can only be spent at Westfield! The cards were sacrificed at the altar of Witchery. I’m now a Silver Member, which […]

I cried when DD told me Bob Hawke had died. We’re on different sides of the political fence, but DD agreed Bob was an amazing man. Bob predicted in December that Labor would win the next election, but didn’t think he would be around to see it. “I’ve had my time,” the former prime minister said. […]

I am very disappointed with certain American middle-aged men right now. Twenty-five of them in Alabama’s state senate – which only has three women – have just passed a bill that outlaws abortion, making it a crime to perform the procedure at any stage of pregnancy. The measure contains no exception for rape and incest […]

You yearn for a few moments of peace each night when your kids are little. When you have teenagers the nights feel a little too quiet. You kinda miss being pestered. I’ve been having a “Cat’s in the Cradle” moment about it. And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue […]